Nightcrawling(41)

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.

Demond stands and he’s even taller than I expected, close to the ceiling. “Fuck, man.” He takes two large steps and is out the door, slamming it shut.

It’s just me and the girls now. I watch them as they look around, like they’re trying to figure out where they are, like they ain’t had a moment to breathe and see it. I realize none of them have moved since I entered the room. Now a couple of them stand and start to walk around, picking up photos on the shelf or whispering to each other.

“One of Demond’s boys take you too? This your first stop?” Lexi’s voice is a little louder now, but it still sounds like she’s underwater, the sound floating out.

I look at her again, the smoke fading, and I don’t get it until I see the way she fiddles with the strap and her eyes shift wild around the room.

“I ain’t one of his girls. Nobody took me.”

When this comes out my mouth, something in her face droops, and a hope I didn’t notice was there disappears.

I scramble, thinking of Alé and Clara. “You got a phone? I can try to help you out, give you a place to stay and you can call somebody to come get you…” I fumble for my purse to get my phone, but Lexi’s fleshy hand reaches out to stop me.

“Ain’t nobody looking for me.” And she smiles this brutal, hollow smile that doesn’t belong to her face, and she continues to fondle the strap to her bag, not looking at me anymore.

The room has gone from musty to suffocating and all I gotta do is get out, get back to Camila. I stand and, again, all eyes in the room rest on me as I make my way out the door, leaving it a crack open so they might be able to breathe again.





After I found Camila, shirtless man from the front steps came looking for me, brought me out to the shed behind Demond’s house. When he asked me how much, I gave him a higher number than I’ve ever asked for from one man and he didn’t even flinch, just retrieved the bills from his pocket and pulled his zipper down. When I asked him what he wanted me to call him, he said I didn’t need to call him nothing, said he didn’t like no talking.

After shirtless left, his friend—sky man—entered the shed, asked for a turn. I didn’t even ask him what he wanted to be called because in my head he was just sky man and the moment you place a name to that, the fantasy of it dissipates.

I slip the dress back on, alone in the shed now, and climb back into my heels. My feet have swollen over the course of the night and I have to squeeze just to fit back into them. I exit the shed and the first image I see is Camila and her orange, shaking—this time to the actual music—but still she moves more graceful than I ever have.

I climb the steps up to the patio and the moment Camila sees me, she pulls me into her dance. I’ve had a couple more shots and I let the buzz crawl across my chest, bring me into the looseness of Camila, and we are in the music. The thump in my chest, belly swing side to side, hips roll, her body pressed on mine.

At first, I think the buzz is coming from my chest, another wave of tequila or something. But the beat of it is too linear, too compact to be produced from me or the dance. I fumble for my purse, removing myself from Camila to lean over the edge of the patio and answer my phone. I haven’t even spoken yet before the voice does. I know who it is without him having to tell me. I don’t forget any of their voices.