Beside us sits the cop who drove the car the first time, in that alley on Thirty-Fourth. He snickers. “Don’t go hogging her all night, Thompson.”
190 coughs, removes his arm from around me, stands. “Getting a beer. You want something?” he asks me.
I shake my head. I want a drink more than anything, but part of me is still afraid they’ll drug me, lay me out in the living room, and feast.
“She doesn’t talk?” a Richmond officer asks 190.
190 squints at him, says, “Apparently not to assholes,” and walks out the room.
I think 190 might have a moon in place of his heart: waxing and waning, trying to decide if it is whole. Don’t understand men like that—like Tony, like Marcus—but I can’t seem to shake them. Wanna rest my head close to their moons and see if they beat too. Tonight there’s a room upstairs they blocked off just for me and a rotating door of men with belts they’re too eager to remove. 190 comes up every once in a while and checks on me. He knocks on the door and I slip my skirt back on before he enters.
“How about you come downstairs and have a drink? Something to eat?”
I consider it again, but decide against it. Too easy to put something into it, have me out cold and they won’t even pay me for whatever they do when my body has slipped into dark. 190 looks like he wants to sit on the bed, but he keeps his hand on the doorknob and I’m too exhausted to hold him while he sobs right now.
I smooth my hand over the edges of my hairline, try to fix the baby hairs. “Just need some air,” I tell him.
He nods, motions his hand for me to walk out the door. He closes it behind me. I hesitate at first, then reach out to him and take his hand. It’s nice to touch without being told you have to. He smiles, walks a little straighter.
The moment I am back in the swarm of them, another obnoxious eruption of their hollers begins. 190 shoots some of them looks that they don’t even seem to process, just tip their drinks back down their throats. 190 leads me through a couple hallways and I swear this house is as large and endless as the Alameda County Fair corn maze. There are a lot more people here than I originally thought, gathered in different rooms or lounging in doorways. I see a few women with eyes like mine, probably on their way back to their designated rooms, each of them fulfilling some kind of fetish. I see some women in suits and uniforms too, and I wonder if they know what I’m here for, but none of them lock eyes with me and I can’t tell if that’s because they don’t notice me or they’re trying not to look.
Finally, 190 pushes open a sliding-glass door and we are standing on the largest patio I’ve ever seen, stretching out with heated lamps, more couches, and a barbecue. Probably about twenty more people are scattered across the deck. I breathe in, look up at the sky. We’re in Berkeley and I think the stars might just be a little more visible across the city limit because after a couple minutes I spot the Big Dipper.
190 stands with me while I watch the sky for a couple minutes, then nudges me. “Is it cool if I leave you here? Head back in when you’re ready.”
I nod.
He leaves me on my own and it’s such a relief to be alone, the way my arms feel free and this patio doesn’t feel so alien because the sky’s been my friend for as long as I can remember. Spread out big. I think whatever is upward is only comforting when it is dark enough to imagine that there is a beyond.
Most days I say I don’t believe in nothing, except something about the way the night colors everything makes me want to. Not in an afterlife, heaven, or any of that shit. That just makes us feel better about dying and I don’t really got nothing to fear about dying in the first place. I just think that the stars might line up and trail into an otherworld.
Doesn’t have to be a better world because that probably doesn’t exist, but I think it is something else. Somewhere where the people walk a little different. Maybe they speak in hums. Maybe they all got the same face or maybe they don’t have faces at all. When I have enough time to stare at the sky, I imagine I might be lucky enough to catch glimpses of the something. Always get pulled back to this planet, though.
I don’t like when people touch me when I’m not expecting it, and the woman behind me does more than that, grabs my hand and pulls without a word. The sky dissolves into this woman’s face and I raise my other hand up to slap her. If I didn’t recognize her, I probably would have.
Purple Suit’s face is stained into my mind like my fingerprint is permanently tethered to Marcus’s neck. She won’t never leave it. Now, standing in front of me, Purple Suit wears jeans and a blazer and she looks younger than she did outside the HQ elevator. Don’t know if it’s just that I can’t see her that well in the dark or something, but she looks about the same age as my mama, maybe fifty.