“My Auggy.” She takes a slow, contemplative sip from her mug of coffee. “Tough girl. Disciplined. Hard worker. Someone you could trust. It’s the only reason I could leave them all behind. I know my girls will be in good hands with her.” Tipping her chin down, she tacks on a smug, “And she’s had her eye on you since the first time you walked into my whorehouse, pierced little fuckface and all.” She gives me a long, unimpressed glance. “Don’t really see the draw, myself. But can’t deny that the girl is smitten.”
“I don’t want Auggy.” I say this in no uncertain terms. I could have had her years ago—I’m not a fucking idiot here. She may be charming and disciplined, but she’s never been subtle. I’ve done my best not to be a complete dick about it, but the truth is, it got old quick.
“Of course you don’t. Because you’ve got shit for brains.” She sniffs, examining the rim of her mug. “At least she’s not being hunted by some psycho who wants to axe murder any man who jams his prick into her cunt.”
I snort. “Probably because no one has that many axes.”
Her eyes flash, and on anyone else, it’d look like anger. “Look here, you rat-faced degenerate. There’s nothing wrong with choosing what’s safe. Sometimes that means working for Daniel Payne. Sometimes it means settling for someone who’s stupid enough to care for you.”
I give her a series of fast, surprised blinks. “I’m sorry, is this whole thing actually a cleverly-disguised expression of concern?”
She completely ignores this. “And what’s it matter to you that my Auggy’s got experience? That girl has skills that would bring you to your goddamn knees. Could suck a watermelon through a straw. And god knows Pollyanna up there isn’t in any hurry to wrap those scrawny thighs around you.”
Fucking yikes.
Ms. Crane has been out of the business for so long that it’s easy to forget her girls were always more than products to her. I’ve never been able to tell if she sees them as daughters or as works of art she’s crafted with her own two hands.
Either way, she’s obviously insulted.
Gently, I begin, “Delores…” I can count the amount of times I’ve used Ms. Crane’s first name on one hand, but it seems necessary here. She just basically tried to give me her best girl. Possibly that’s a show of affection I’m not even prepared to calculate. “There’s nothing wrong with Auggy. It’s not even that she hustles, it’s just—” I pause, realizing the words I want to say are going to sound stupid.
I can’t imagine myself playing music for her.
I can’t imagine watching her from across the room, or tucking her against me while we sleep, or pulling her into a bath and rubbing the tension from her shoulders as we smoke a blunt. I can’t imagine fucking her and being overtaken by the urge to look into her eyes as I do it, worried that it’ll be too exposed, but unable to give a shit. I can’t imagine her ever being mine, and I can’t imagine ever being hers.
Not like with Story.
Ms. Crane wouldn’t get it. She’s set her girls up with men before. Nice men who’d take care of them, treat them right, get them away from whoring—away from South Side. This offer is the highest compliment she could probably ever give me, because that’s what relationships are to people like her; arrangements that are made because they’re convenient and sensible. It’s why Auggy wants me so much, because maybe she really is like a daughter to Ms. Crane, but she’s also that piece of art that’s been shaped by her worn, rough hands.
Carefully, I explain, “There’s no spark there. If I let it happen, that’s exactly what I’d be doing. Settling.” I bitterly wonder, “Don’t I do enough of that?”
Her mouth wrinkles up with a purse as she stares me down. I’m not sure what she sees on my face, but whatever it is makes that ember in her gaze disappear. “Yeah, you’ve got it real hard in your mansion, with your fancy schooling and rich friends.” There’s a curl in her lip when she slides her gaze toward the door, and I think at first it’s meant for me. But then she says, “Living here has made us soft, rotten little shits, hasn’t it?”
I bite another cracker. “Probably.”
“How long you suppose it’s been,” she asks, eyes dark, “since you slept with your shoes on?”
I spare her a low chuckle. It’s an old South Side meme by now, but no less accurate. People in the neighborhoods we come from sleep with their shoes on so they can bolt at a moment’s notice. “Not since moving in here,” I confess. But in a way, I was eased into it. Back when I slept over at Tristian’s or Killer’s houses, it felt wrong to go to sleep without my shoes, but more wrong to picture the looks they’d give me if I tried. After so long, it wasn’t so difficult to conceptualize the line between safety and home, and the exact moment I was crossing over it. “You?”