The moment we step into the room, I’m hit with smoke. They’re hotboxing and I swear there ain’t no air left to breathe. The bed is the central focus in the room, gotta be king-size, and about ten people sit and lie scattered on it. They’re all girls except for the man in the middle, who is wearing sunglasses and has the most delicate designs shaved into his head. He is skinny, but longer than any man I’ve met in real life. His feet reach the end of the bed. I don’t know where he’s looking under those sunglasses, but I feel watched.
Camila leads me toward the corner of the room to a couch I didn’t even notice was there under the fog of smoke, and we sit down in between two girls.
“Demond, this my girl Kia. The one I was telling you about.”
Demond slides his sunglasses down to the bridge of his nose and I can finally see his eyes, even through the mist of smoke. They look like grease has saturated the eyeball, slick and slippery. They are black but there’s something else behind the black, edge-of-the-knife silver flashes. He twirls his nose ring around a couple times, then coughs.
“She special.” His voice is a penetrating croak, rings out across the room.
Camila swirls patterns on the back of my hand, her legs crossed, leaning toward Demond. “And she don’t got no daddy.”
I shift on the couch, the leather sticking to the back of my thighs, uncomfortable, and I’m not sure what Camila thinks she’s doing, selling me off like this.
“Doing fine on my own,” I say, and every head in the room swings to stare at me, all the girls’ eyes blazing.
Demond sits up, pushing one of the girls off him, setting his feet on the floor. He clasps his hands together and stares at me. We can’t be more than five feet from each other now, but the haze is still so thick.
“Baby, I can take you to a whole new level.” His breath is a mix of peppermint and weed, flows out with the husk of his voice.
Camila turns to me, whispers in my ear, “Just listen to him. You don’t gotta make no choices tonight. Give him ten minutes, then come find me.”
Her torso rolls back up and she is standing, removing her fingers from my hand, orange and radiant and leaving me. I watch her disappear through the smoke and out the door until it is just me, Demond, and a coven of girls.
Demond reaches for the hand Camila has left unoccupied and pulls it toward him. He opens each of my fingers from the fist and stares at it, palm up, like he’s reading it.
“You young.” He isn’t asking. “I don’t mind ’em young but I can tell you gon’ be trouble, that right?” The bones in each of his fingers poke at me.
“Just don’t like being told what to do,” I respond in a deep voice to mask the chill that has migrated to my stomach.
He laughs at this and within seconds the girls have made a whole chorus of giggles. The moment he stops, they do too.
I remove my hand from his grasp, lean back into the couch. “Don’t wanna be your little bitch, laughing at shit that ain’t funny.” Only way to make it out this room is to talk as big as he does. I try to make my voice guttural now. I thought I might have wanted this before I came, but now, looking at him, I know he won’t protect me, won’t make things any easier, even if I do make more money. I’d be giving up my chance at anything close to freedom, at a life outside the night world.
“You really is Camila’s girl.” He mimics me, leaning back. “How many nights you out on the streets? Five? Six?” I don’t respond, but he can see the collapse, the fatigue in me, keeps talking. “My girls only out there two, maybe three nights a week and they raking in over two grand each. Lexi’ll tell you about it, won’t you?”
He’s talking to the girl directly beside me. I didn’t concentrate on her through the smoke until now, but the moment I focus on her, I want to edge away.
Lexi is small, under five feet, and she can’t be much older than fifteen. Her hair looks just like mine did when I was a little girl and Mama took care of it, tight coils framing her round face. You can tell she tried to paint her face, contour herself a woman, but she still looks so young. Her hands grasp her handbag tightly and she’s fidgeting with the strap.
“Hi,” she says to me, and I don’t think she’s trying to whisper, but her voice is shallow. She’s about to say something else when the door to the room opens and a man steps in.
“Yo, Demond, some niggas out here tryna take your shit.” It’s the same man who stood guard at the patio door, short and wide.