The High Season(77)

    “So you have this fancy girlfriend, who I haven’t met, okay, but don’t you think she’d have some contacts over there in the Hamptons?” Shari asked.

“So go back to Florida. You have contacts. Of the non-criminal variety, I hope.” Doe took another sip. “Or maybe it’s time for Phoenix.”

Phoenix had once been a joke between them. Shari’s sister Belinda lived there, a woman so odious Shari kept her name written on a piece of paper in her freezer. Things are bad, they used to say, but at least it’s not time for Phoenix.

Shari pushed her plate away. She was quiet for a few minutes.

“You blame me for that girl,” she said.

The girl had been sitting at the kitchen table when Doe had come over to see Shari one afternoon back in Florida. She wore an oversized Miami Dolphins T-shirt and did not look up when Doe said hello. By now Doe was a gallery girl in a tight black dress and Shari and Ron had been together for two years. Shari hadn’t looked as happy during the last six months or so but kept saying she was, because any relationship took work, said Dr. Phil.

Ron muscled Doe just a little bit into the living room and said the girl couldn’t speak English, that she was a cousin of a friend, she just needed a place to hang for a day. Doe said it had nothing to do with her.

Doe knew a few words of Spanish. After they’d eaten and Ron had left, Doe asked the girl in Spanish if she could help. The girl said nothing, just gave a slight, terrified shake of her head.

Doe canceled her evening plans. She sat in her car and followed Ron when he came back and picked up the girl. He drove to Trevor’s motel. A woman was waiting, a woman whom Doe knew without knowing her, a woman she’d cross the street to avoid, or, back when she’d waitressed, would make sure to bring her what she wanted quickly and efficiently. The woman took the girl by the elbow and led her inside.

    Shari had wrapped up leftovers for Doe and the bag was sitting on the seat next to her, fried shrimp and plantains. She threw them out on the street. The smell was making her sick.

Doe figured that if she waited too long, she’d start thinking of reasons not to, so she drove west to the turnpike and north to the Pompano rest stop, because they still had phones there. She placed a call to 911, spoke briefly, and drove away.

She lived like a cat for the next two days, spooking at every sound, until Shari finally called at midnight. She drove to the house, which was dark. No one answered her knock and it wasn’t until she saw the glow of a cigarette out back that she found her mother.

Shari sat smoking. “He said he didn’t know,” Shari said.

Doe stood, barely breathing. “You believe that?”

“He was hoodwinked by that guy Trevor. Running a prostitution ring out of the motel.”

“It was sex slavery, Mom.”

“It wasn’t him, it was Trevor. He’s going to beat it, he said. He’s got a lawyer. Did you do it? Did you make the call?”

“Does he think I did?”

Now she could see Shari’s face, puffed and bruised, all along the left side. Her nostril was caked with dark blood. Doe sank to her knees. “Mom—”

“He thought I did it. He was mad, said I should have told him what I thought. He could have steered me straight.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know. My life’s blown apart.”

“He was trafficking in underaged girls, Ma!”

“That girl. Elena, Maria, whatever her name is. Don’t look at me, it wasn’t her real name anyway. She got hurt.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. She’s in the hospital. The police came and she ran, and I guess she got hit by a car? Run get me some aspirin, baby doll, will you? My head hurts.”

    “Your head hurts because your boyfriend beat you up!”

“He thought I turned him in. It was all Trevor, the motel was just an investment for Ron, he was never there. I never liked Trevor’s eyes. Stop looking at me like that. Like I’m stupid.”

“You’re not stupid,” Doe said. “That’s the trouble. Then you’d have an excuse for this shit.” She went to get aspirin and ice.

That night she drove back to her apartment in North Miami and packed. Ron would know that she did it. Somehow she hadn’t bargained on him being that smart. She was afraid of him but she was more afraid of Trevor and that woman.

She sold her car to her roommate. She talked her surfer boyfriend into leaving that night. He’d been talking about Montauk all June, about how easy it was to get jobs. It was so hot in Miami. They left as the sun was coming up.

Doe put sugar in the coffee, but it didn’t help. “I don’t blame you for the girl,” she said. “I blame you for staying with Ron.”

“I left him!”

“You gave him another chance.”

“I believed him. That was enough to go on. Everybody deserves a second chance. I didn’t give him a third, okay?”

Doe put her earbud back in.

“Do you remember that time I came to your class? Kindergarten, I think. That teacher with the frosted lipstick.”

Miss Karen.

Shari leaned over and yanked out one of Doe’s earbuds. In one ear, Drake. In the other, Shari. “You met me at the principal’s office and led me to the classroom. You were so proud of me. I wore that dress you liked, and you said, ‘I hoped you were going to wear that.’ I read that book you liked, Outside Over There. I sat on a chair, with all of you on the floor, and you sat right at my feet. You kept your hand on my foot the whole time I read.”