11. What’s Left Of Her
WHAT’S LEFT OF HER
CAIN
I ’m not a strip club kinda guy.
Have I been to Nectar? Yes. That was when I was a dumb kid, but as a grown-up there’s something gross about seeing men watching women take their clothes off. It’s worse being one of those men.
Feeling hot under my collar for all the wrong reasons, I walk up to the door below the flickering neon sign that says NECTAR: Come In For A Drink.
The bouncer nods at me. He knows who I am. The pleasures of living in a small town.
Depending upon who’s inside, everyone will know that Cain Ripley went to Nectar, and after that, God knows what story would be spun.
They’ll say, “ He got a lap dance ” or “ He was drunk as a skunk .” Or maybe they’ll get closer to the truth—that he was there to see Faith.
Ricky’s eyes widen when he sees me. He’s sitting at the bar, watching the show, with a drink in hand. He lets out a low whistle.
“Well, well. Cain Ripley, slumming it with the rest of us.”
I grunt and sit next to him. I put Faith’s coat, which I brought along, on the empty stool by me.
“Onyx, whatever he wants, babe, you charge him double, yeah?” Ricky instructs.
I glare at him. He winks in response, amused as hell.
I get an IPA just as a stripper comes onto the stage.
Manhunt by Karen Kamon comes on, and the lighting reminds me of Flashdance, but that’s where any resemblance ends.
The woman on the pole moves easily like it’s muscle memory—slow, practiced arcs that shimmer under the low red lights. This isn’t classy dancing, it’s tits and ass and pussy.
Her sequined thong catches glints from the disco ball overhead, but it’s her eyes I notice—flat, glassy, disconnected.
The men hoot and slap the edge of the stage, waving bills like they’re holding power, not paper.
The dancer slides down the pole in an elegant spiral that feels more like surrender than seduction.
Ricky chuckles beside me, nudging my arm. I jerk away.
This place smells of desperation.
Of stale beer, sweat. Cheap perfume clings to everything.
There’s no joy in this room. Only hunger, transaction, and women learning how to disappear in plain sight.
Faith works here.
Georgia said she was cleaning, but I needed to check it out for myself. I don’t think I could stand it if she were working the pole or giving lap dances.
“Faith here?” I ask as casually as I can pretend.
Ricky scoffs. “If by ‘ here ’ you mean cleaning up puke, scrubbing urinals, and mopping the floor for minimum wage, then yeah — she’s a regular career woman.”
I bristle. “She in today?”
“Yeah, she’s in every day.”
I swallow.
“She don’t take days off,” Ricky continues.
I drink some more beer that I can’t taste.
He leans an elbow on the bar, so he’s in my face. “If she stole ten grand, you really think she’d be here? Cleaning toilets for me? Puh-lease . She’d be in Mexico with a drink in her hand and your money in her bra.”
I stare at him. “She was told not to leave town.”
Even I know that sounds stupid. If she did steal the money then what the fuck did she care that a small-town county sheriff told her to stay in town?
There wouldn’t be a manhunt for a crime so banal. She could leave. No one expects her to stay… if she has all that money.
I can still hear Lo. “We dusted the safe. No prints were hers.”
“Where is she?”
“Why the fuck do you want to know?”
I pick up her coat. She called it vintage. It’s second-hand, bought at the thrift store off of Main Street. By the look of it, it’s probably fifth-hand at this point.
If she stole in Seattle, wouldn’t she be doing something with that money instead of working at a diner for minimum wage?
If she stole, Cain.
But Kyle said…
Kyle isn’t reliable, is he?
“Ricky, don’t be a hard ass, yeah?” I drop some bills on the bar, which the bartender, Onyx, swipes away. She brings back change. I shake my head.
Ricky gives me a measured look and then shrugs. “Men’s room. Better have a gas mask.”
There’s a yellow clapboard “ cleaning in process ” sign outside the men’s room.
I walk in and find her bent over a mop bucket, rubber gloves on, bleach in the air.
The bathroom smells like piss and broken lives.
She’s cleaning the sink, her hair tied back in a messy knot. Her face is blank when I see her in the mirror, which she probably just cleaned because it’s shining.
“Faith,” I say softly.
She doesn’t look up. She doesn’t say a thing.
“Faith,” I try again.
She finally looks up in the mirror, at me. “Yes”
Her voice is calm. Flat. No trace of the girl who read Cicero and let me tease her with kisses. She might as well be someone else entirely.
She didn’t steal. I know it now in my bones.
If she did, she wouldn’t be here. If she did, she wouldn’t be Faith.
Oh my God! What have I done?
“I wanted to check in on you.”
She looks away, keeps scrubbing.
“I didn’t think I’d find you like this,” I say quietly.
“Why not?” She drains the bucket of dirty water into a urinal and then flushes.
“I…you shouldn’t work here.”
She lets out a chuckle, but it carries no trace of humor. “Sure, I should. This is where I belong, right? In the dirt. With the other trash.”
“Don’t say that.”
This woman is a shell of the one I knew. I kept lamenting that she was eight years younger than me. A child. But right now, she looks as old as me. The past few weeks have aged her and not in a good way.
She’s just a kid, Cain, and you fucking had her arrested! What the fuck were you thinking?
You sent her to jail. To jail!
She walks out the door. She moves the “cleaning in progress” sign to the other side of the corridor in front of the women’s bathroom.
She tugs at her gloves to keep them in place and picks up the mop, bucket, and a plastic box of cleaning supplies, and walks to the women’s bathroom.
Finally, before she goes in, she turns, looks at me. “What do you want, Cain?”
“I need to know...did you take the money?”
It’s stupid to ask. If she took it, she won’t confess, and if she didn’t, which I have a strong feeling she didn’t, then…
She laughs.
Not the bright, warm laugh I remember.
This is sharp. Bitter. Empty.
“If I did, do you think I’d be here cleaning piss off a wall? Use your head.”
“Faith—”
She pushes opens the women’s restroom with her shoulder. “Don’t come back.”
I hold up her coat. “Ah…this is yours.”
She comes forward and takes it with the gloves, the dirty ones, like she doesn’t care.
“Thanks.” She goes inside the bathroom, the door swinging slightly behind her.
I stand watching the door, the remnants of her presence.
The hallway smells of bleach and lies.
It’s painfully hard to breathe.