Chapter Twenty-One
Talking Lane into staying at the hotel while I went to the brothel to see Jasmine was like talking an automatic door into never opening.
I assured him that sitting in the passenger seat of the car in the parking lot of a brothel would look a bit suspicious.
He eventually agreed and allowed me to drive solo the three miles to the brothel where I park the car.
I head inside but don’t even make it to the bar before Jasmine finds me. She greets me with a genuine smile.
“I’m surprised you asked for me again,” she says.
“Yeah…I just…thought I’d give it another try, you know? Like if I slowly work my way up to it in maybe a couple of visits…I can go through with it, you know?”
“Of course. We’ll just go at your pace,” she says as she leads me back to her room.
“Thank you for being so understanding,” I say.
“Of course,” she says as she shuts the door behind me.
I watch as she undresses me before telling me to lie down on the bed. I do and pretend I’m interested as she strips. Then she gets up on the bed and begins massaging my hand.
“I’m so sick of having to do what my family wants me to do,” I say as her hands travel up my arm.
“I feel like I just can’t be myself. I can’t be who I want to be or do what I want to do.
I have to go to school for business because that’s what my dad wants me to do.
I have to take over his business, but I don’t want to.
I want to be a journalist. What did you want to be growing up? ”
“A photographer,” she says without hesitation. Then she blushes as she looks away like she said something she shouldn’t have.
“A photographer? That’s amazing! Hey, maybe you and I should work together. We can create our own magazine. I’ll write the articles and you take the photos.”
She smiles. “That would be fun.”
“Did you take the photographs for the website?” I ask.
“I did…I asked them if I could.”
“Really? They are amazing. I thought for sure it was a professional photographer,” I say even though I don’t really remember even looking at the photos. I might have glanced at a few just out of curiosity, but I couldn’t remember if it was this place’s website or a different one.
“I really loved doing it,” she says.
“So…why don’t you go to school for photography while working here?” I ask. “You have to make some good money through this place.”
She bites her lip and looks away from me. “Um…no, I’m just…happy with this right now.”
“Are you?” I ask, voice calm and quiet. I don’t want her to think I’m pressuring her for an answer or I think I’ll scare her off.
“Of course,” she says.
“When you came over here from India, is this what you expected you would be doing?” I ask.
She looks like she’s close to tears, and I know I’m getting somewhere. “Can we please stop talking about this?”
“Are you okay?” I ask as I sit up. I wrap my arms around her because I know that if a human is close to tears the quickest way to get them to cry is to hug them. “Don’t be upset, what’s wrong?” I squeeze my arms around her as soothingly as I can as she lets out a sob.
“This isn’t what I wanted,” she says as she clings onto me desperately.
“What did you want?” I ask gently as I smooth her hair away from her face.
“I wanted…to be free…to have the American dream. To be a photographer. I didn’t want to do this,” she says as she buries her head against my bare chest.
“I can help you,” I say. “I can get you out of here. There’s a life outside of this place. I can show it to you.”
“I want to go,” she whispers like if she says it too loud, someone will hear.
“Then come with me,” I say.
She pulls back and looks at me. Her thick eyeliner is smeared around her eyes. She shakes her head. “I can’t,” she says.
“Why?”
“I can’t…I’m going to go…to the bathroom. I’ll be right back,” she says as she quickly pulls her dress back on.
“Okay,” I say as I watch her go. As soon as she’s gone, I get up and head over to the cabinet in the corner.
I pull it open and look in at the small tin box inside.
It must be where she stores her private belongings so that others can’t get into it.
There’s a lock on it, so I pull open a few more drawers.
I can’t imagine where she has her keys for it because she clearly doesn’t have them on her.
Instead of finding the keys, I grab two bobby pins. I pull the plastic ends off them with my teeth and spit them out onto the ground. I stick one pin into the lock in order to bend the bobby pin up. After pulling it out, I bend just the tip of the other.
I stick the bent one into the lock and turn it like I would a key, which puts tension on the pins inside the lock.
Inside the lock are six pins that need to be pushed up to release the tension of the lock.
I slip the other bobby pin into the lock and feel the first of the lock’s pins.
It slides up and down easily, so I move on to the next.
I move past the ones that easily move up and down, and only stop once I find the one that is stiff.
I jimmy the bobby pin up. As soon as the lock’s pin is free, the tension of the other bobby pin keeps it from falling back down.
I move to the next stuck pin and push it up, causing the lock to give, so I can unlock it.
I pull the pins out and set them down, so I can take the lock off.
I glance at the door, but it’s still firmly closed, so I peek into the tin box.
Inside is a purse that I quickly pull out and open.
I begin to quickly dig through the purse, looking for anything that I can use, pulling useless things out and dropping them onto the shelf next to the lock.
I look down into the empty purse and silently curse.
I open her wallet but there isn’t anything resembling drugs in there.
I start putting her stuff back in her purse when my finger catches on a tear in the side of the fabric.
I slip my finger into the hole and feel something down at the bottom.
I catch it with my fingernail and pull it up.
With some jimmying, I drag the plastic out through the hole and look at the little baggie.
It’s a rose-colored powder, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.
It wasn’t like I had an overwhelming knowledge of drugs, but I’d seen my fair share to know what most of the main ones looked like and this isn’t anything I recognize.
Quickly, I start shoving everything else into the purse, hoping it doesn’t look like someone raided her.
Although, she’ll quickly find out as soon as she looks for the drugs.
I pick up the lock as I hear the door handle turn.
I shove the purse into the safe and snap the lock on before quickly shutting the cabinet door.
Jasmine steps in as I walk over to my clothes that are on a chair by the window. I set my hand on the pants as I slip the small baggy into my pants’ pocket.
“I’m so sorry about that,” Jasmine says. “I’ll, of course, take it out of your payment, or we can go over a little longer?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say as I sit back down on the bed.
“Where were we?” she asks as she crawls up next to me. She doesn’t strip back down this time, and I don’t much care.
I just talk to her for our remaining time, but I don’t get too private. Just talk about things that I want her to desire. Want her to long for more than anything. But I know far too well that it’s hard to convince someone that they want something more than they want drugs.
“Did you want to stay over?” Jasmine asks when I notice that our hour is up.
“No, I have to get going. Honestly, I’m not mad. Maybe I can request you again this week?” I ask.
She smiles at me. “Of course, just let me know,” she says.
“Well…are you free some time tomorrow?”
She nods. “Seven?”
“Yeah, I can do that,” I say, and she smiles. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I pull my clothes on and check to make sure the drugs are still in my pocket.
With my finger, I can feel the tip of the little plastic baggie inside.
I wonder if she’ll figure out it was me.
Honestly, I hope not because I want her to trust me.
I want to help her get out of this place.
I want to show her that even if it doesn’t feel like it, there is a better world out there.
“Hang in there,” I say.
She smiles at me. “Thanks.” She rubs at her face as she opens the door.
“I can walk myself out…your makeup is a bit smeared. People will think I was abusing you,” I joke.
She rubs a finger under her eye. “Thanks, yeah, I’ll get that cleaned up.
I walk down the hallway toward the front area.
As I open the door that separates the two, music floods in, and I see a small group of men near the front door.
I stop the moment I realize that I recognize the man.
How couldn’t I? He’d stood by and watched while I was dragged into an alleyway and beaten. Then threatened my life.
I quickly reach for the door leading back into the hallway as he turns and sees me. Quickly, I yank the door shut, but there’s no lock on it and of course, it swings outward. I turn around as I see Jasmine step out of her room. She looks at me in surprise as I run toward her.
I grab her shoulders and yank her toward me. “I can help you. I can really help you, but you have to help me. How do I get out of here?”
“Through the front door,” she says cautiously.
“Back doors?”
“There are none,” she says.
“Fuck. Do you want to be free of this place?”
“Yes,” she whispers. “But I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. I promise. If I get caught, go to the hotel on Broadway Street. Ask for Lane Price, and give him the drug, he’ll help you. I swear he’ll help you,” I say as I pull the baggie out of my pocket and press it to her palm. “You don’t have to do this.”