Good Girl, Bad Girl(80)

“I don’t want to be arrested.”

“And you won’t be, I promise.”

Another lie.

“You don’t have to make your mind up now. Come back to my place. See your room. Clean up. Get some sleep. If you decide tomorrow that you’re not interested, I’ll give you the ten quid. No hard feelings.”

Does he ever tell the truth?

*

Felix talks as we walk, escorting me to the multistory parking garage where he unlocks a four-wheel-drive Lexus that is parked in a space set aside for disabled drivers. He opens the passenger door, but I refuse to get in until he moves away. Parking tickets are balled up on the floor next to empty soft drink cans, fast food wrappers, and advertising flyers for carpet warehouses and discount shops.

“The seats are heated. You can adjust the temperature,” says Felix, reaching across to show me. I rear away, balling my fists.

“OK, OK. I get the message. So, who beat you up?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Suit yourself.”

Felix drives to impress me, swerving in and out of traffic, jumping lights, and tailgating slower cars.

“Do you often pick up girls at the bus station?” I ask.

“It’s a good place to recruit volunteers.”

“I’m not a volunteer.”

“Course not. You’re an employee. But you were lucky I found you first. It could have been the Pakis or Bangladeshis. They look for strays and runaways. White girls mainly. First they give you a burger, then it’s drugs and alcohol. Next thing you’re strapped to a bed, fucking every cousin and uncle from here to Birmingham!”

He’s not lying this time.

The car pulls up outside a derelict-looking building with a broken sign that says “Coach House Inn.” A tattered flag flaps from a flagpole and a sign on the Cyclone fence warns: “Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted.”

“I know it doesn’t look like much,” says Felix, “but you can’t judge a book by its cover, you know.”

That’s the only way I judge books, I think.

He ducks through a gap in the fence and pulls back a sheet of corrugated iron, revealing a door with a keypad entrance that looks out of place given the state of the building.

Felix punches in the code, trying to shield the keypad with his body, but I clock the number anyway: 4.9.5.2.

“Is this where you live?”

“Nah, I got my own place.”

“Who lives here?”

“People like you.”

We enter a lobby area littered with broken furniture and smashed ceiling tiles. The walls have been tagged with graffiti or spray painted with pictures of male and female anatomy. Someone or something has defecated in the corner, creating a smell that makes me want to gag. Corridors run off in three different directions. Felix leads me along one of them until the stench starts to fade. He nudges open a door with his foot.

“This can be your gaff.”

I peer inside. The low-wattage bulb barely casts a shadow. The room is shabby and neat, with a bed, a nightstand, a table and chair. Cigarette burns scar the carpet, and the bedspread is a faded green with a yellow fleck, at least I hope it’s a fleck. In my imagination, I picture how many thousands of people have stayed here, and the acts of desperation that have been performed on the mattress; the humping bodies, warm corpses, lonely travelers, tourists, cheating spouses, sales reps, and battered wives who have cried themselves to sleep holding their children.

The adjoining bathroom has a toilet, sink, and shower. Pulling open the rear curtains, I look out onto a wrecker’s yard full of rusting car bodies and piles of twisted metal. Beyond another fence is a factory full of metal shipping containers stacked in rows.

I glance down at a pile of clothes on the bathroom floor: ripped jeans and cheap blouses and a Mickey Mouse jacket with silver spangles threaded around Mickey’s ears.

“Whose room is this?”

“She’s gone.”

“Why did she leave her stuff?”

Felix shrugs. “Maybe I gave her too much money. Maybe she stole from me.” He looks at the pile. “You’re welcome to her gear.”

I shake my head.

“Suit yourself.” Felix scoops up the clothes and tosses them into the hallway.

“Is that you, baby?” asks a high-pitched voice, before an emaciated girl-woman dashes into the room and throws herself at Felix, who catches her and takes a step backwards, carried by her momentum. Her legs wrap around his waist, her arms around his neck. She’s dressed in jeans and a bra. She tries to kiss him. Felix turns his face away. “Your breath reeks.”

“I been sleeping.”

The girl-woman notices me for the first time. “What’s she doing here?”

“This is Evie.”

“You said we didn’t need nobody else.”

“Anybody,” says Felix, correcting her.

The girl-woman frowns with eyes that are black-rimmed and hollow, as if her skull were collapsing. She could be anywhere from twelve to thirty, with sharp hip bones sticking out from above the waist of her jeans and no discernible breasts.

“This is Keeley,” says Felix.

“We’re together,” says Keeley, holding on to Felix. There are bruises along her arms and more on her neck.