Genuine Fraud(59)

Neil was in business. That was what he said when she asked what he was doing at the makeup counters: “I’m in business.”

She wondered where that phrase came from. Was it a Pensacola phrase, or from somewhere else?

She knew what he meant.

“You could earn a lot more than you do now, working for me. I’d treat you so nice,” Neil told her. It was the third day she’d talked to him. “What are you doing for money, pretty baby? I can see you’re not spending any.”

“Don’t call me pretty baby.”

“What? You’re gorgeous.”

“Do you seriously get girls to like you, calling them that?”

He shrugged and laughed. “Yeah, I do.”

“You got some stupid girls, then.”

“I have nice girls, that’s what I have. They would show you how it goes. The work ain’t hard.”

“Right.”

“You’d stay clean. You could get some pretty clothes. Sleep late every morning.”

Julietta had blown him off that day, but Neil had been back around the makeup counters a week later. That time, he asked so politely that she let him buy her a burrito from a fast-food place in the mall. They sat at a dinky table by a pool of water.

“Guys like women with muscles, you know,” Neil said. “Not everyone, but a lot of guys. Those types like to be bossed around. They want a girl built like you, who won’t let them call her pretty baby. Do you know what I mean? I can get you very good money from a certain type of guy. Very, very good money.”

“I’m not walking the streets,” she told him.

“It’s not the streets, newbie. It’s a group of apartments with a doorman and an elevator. Jacuzzi bathtubs. I’ve got a guard who patrols the hall, keeps everybody safe. Listen, you’ve got it tough right now. I can tell, ’cause I’ve been there. I came from nothing, and I worked like hell to get a better life. You’re a smart-mouth girl; a beautiful, unusual girl. You’ve got a bangin’ body that’s nonstop muscle, and I believe you deserve better than what you got going on. That’s all.”

Julietta listened.

He was saying what she felt. He understood her.

“Where you from, Julietta?”

“Alabama.”

“You sound like you’re from up north.”

“I lost my accent.”

“What?”

“I replaced it.”

“How?”

The guys at the gym where Julietta worked were old. They only wanted to talk about reps and miles, weights and dosages. And they were the only people she ever talked to. Neil, at least, was young. “When I was nine,” she told him, “one day I’d had—let’s call it a bad day. Teacher telling us to be quiet. Yelling at me to be quiet. ‘Shut up, little girl, you’ve said enough.’ ‘Stop, little girl, don’t hit, use your words’—and shut up at the same time. They squash you. They want you to be small and silent. Good was just another word for don’t fight back.”

Neil nodded. “I always got called out for being loud.”

“One day, no one came to pick me up at school. Just—nobody came. The people in the office called and called my house, but no one picked up. This after-school teacher called Miss Kayla, she drove me home. It was already dark out. I barely knew her. I got in her car because she had pretty hair. Yeah, stupid, to get in a stranger’s car, I know. But she was a teacher. She gave me a box of Tic Tacs. While she was driving, she talked and talked, to cheer me up, you know? And she was from Canada. I don’t know where in Canada, but she had an accent.”

Neil nodded.

“I started imitating her,” Julietta went on. “I was curious why she talked like that. She said gaz instead of gas. Aboot instead of about. That’s called Canadian rising, by the way. It’s a vowel shift. And I made Miss Kayla laugh, doing the accent. She told me I was a good mimic. Then we got to my house and she walked me to the door.”

“Then what?”

“Someone was home all that time.”

“Dang.”

“Yeah. She was watching TV. She hadn’t thought to come get me. Or she couldn’t. I don’t know. It was messed up, either way. She hadn’t bothered to pick up the stupid phone, all those times the school called. I pushed the door open and walked in. I said, ‘Where were you?’ and she said, ‘Be quiet, don’t you see I got the TV on?’ And I said, ‘Why didn’t you pick up the phone?’ and she said, ‘I told you to be quiet.’ Just another shut up and don’t fight back. So I got myself a bowl of dry cereal for dinner and watched the TV next to her. We had been watching for an hour or more when this idea hit me.”

“What?”

“TV gives you an education in how to talk. Newscasters, rich people, doctors on those medical dramas. None of them talked the way I did. But they all talked like each other.”

“I guess.”

“It’s true. I figured: learn to talk that way, and maybe you don’t get told to shut up so much.”

“You taught yourself?”

“I learned general American first. That’s the one on TV. But now I do Boston, Brooklyn, West Coast, Lowland Southern, Central Canadian, BBC English, Irish, Scottish, South African.”