Louise
As I’d thought, Murray moved around. I had to dig out the loan papers, find his number and call him to find out where his latest temporary office was. Yes, he said, he’d see me even at this late hour. In fact, he sounded worryingly pleased to hear from me.
This time, his place was up on the second floor of a mostly-abandoned office building. The scary thing was how much less alien it felt, going to see a loan shark. The last five months had changed me: dealing with criminals was almost normal, now.
In his lobby, the two heavies in suits were waiting as before. This time, though, they gave me a knowing, leering grin, much more obvious than before. Was it because Sean wasn’t there? Or was it because they knew what me being back here meant?
Murray was leaning back in his chair, his hands behind his head. His grin only got wider when I told him I needed another ten thousand.
At first, I tried to brazen it out. “Come on,” I said. “What’s another ten thousand? Add it onto my original loan.”
He let me have a few seconds of hope. Then, savoring the word, “No.”
I stared at him, getting a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I could sense the power in the room shifting.
“You’re a bad risk,” he told me, leaning forward so that our faces were only a foot apart. I could feel his excitement, almost sexual—he was thrilled to see what I’d do next.
I got to my feet. “I’ll find someone else.”
“You think we don’t all talk to each other? You think we don’t swap names and numbers? Ten seconds on the phone and you’re blacklisted, Louise.”
I felt my knees go weak. After the air conditioning failure and then Malone and now the eviction, all in one day, I didn’t have any more fight to give. Now this?! I could feel the mansion, our last shot at saving the crop, slipping away from me.
“Of course,” said Murray as if throwing me a lifebelt, “there’s always the other option. The one I offered you before.”
I thought of Kayley, growing steadily weaker.
“What is it?” I asked. My voice was a low croak.
Murray mockingly tilted his head to one side. “Sure you don’t want to call Sean? He was so against you taking that option.”
“What is it?” I wanted to throw up. But I couldn’t walk out of there without the money.
He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a printed contract. It already had my name on—all he had to do was write in the updated amount. My stomach twisted: he’d been that sure I’d come back.
“Sign it,” he told me, pushing it and a pen across the desk.
With shaking hands, I started to flip through the pages.
“Fucking sign it,” he said victoriously. “Or get out.”
He knew I had no choice, no matter what it said. A few phrases leapt out at me from the densely-printed text.
...provision of modeling services...
...understand that recordings will be adult in nature…
...including open leg, toys, male/female, gang—
I stopped reading.
She was my sister. What else could I do?
I neatly signed my name, just below where it said that the contract would run for two years.
Murray whipped it out of my hand and threw it into a drawer, then opened up his safe and took out ten thousand: in hundred-dollar bills, it looked like a pathetically small stack, given what I’d just signed away.
He seemed to delight in handing it to me, wrapping my fingers around the bills.
“Come back here tomorrow,” he told me. “I’ll take you to meet some people.
I think we can set you up with your first performance right away. ”
I stumbled towards the door on legs that felt waxy. I could feel a tug in my guts—it was as if I was leaving a part of me there in Murray’s office, locked away in his desk drawer, and I’d never be whole again.
“Get your hair done,” Murray told me as I opened the door. “Nails, too, and make-up.”
I paused on the threshold. “What should I wear?” I croaked.
The two heavies in the lobby heard that and laughed. Behind me, Murray laughed too. “Whatever the fuck you want,” he told me. “Thirty seconds in, those guys will have you naked anyway.”
I tried to stalk through the lobby, to not let their leers and laughter bother me, but whatever pride and confidence I’d built up over the last five months had just been stripped away. I’d gone from civilian to criminal and now I’d changed again. Now I was meat.
Back in my car, I took some deep breaths and forced down the tears that threatened to spill out. Then I drove straight to Mrs. Baker’s place and handed over the ten thousand dollars
There. Now it was done, and it couldn’t be undone. But I still didn’t want Sean to know. We had too much to do and no time to argue. I forced my face into a mask and drove to meet him.
One thing was for sure: after the things Murray would make me do, Sean wouldn’t want me anymore. No one would want me. Just as things were beginning to work out between us, I’d wrecked them for good.