Chapter 17 Clara
CLARA
I knew I was being reckless. For a moment I thought of Des pointing out a woman on the street once, when she saw me staring at the strange scars on her face.
“Acid,” she said. “She got together with the wrong man and now look at her. She’ll have his marks on her until the day she dies.
” Her skin looked like it had melted into itself, the glazed-looking scars, the tragic air that hovered around her because she still carried herself as though nothing about her had changed.
And then I thought, So what, and reached for the handle of the passenger’s side door.
I had been dreaming of oranges that week, oranges heavy with juice, on the knife’s edge between ripeness and rot like the ones that my mother said splashed into the swimming pool outside of her guesthouse.
It felt like a sign—I would rot if I stayed in town any longer.
My life would have to get uglier, messier, before it would be clean and bright—I would need to do whatever it took to be free.
“Sure,” I told him, making my voice husky and low.
But I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder before I got in, and now I really knew what those girls felt, the ones I had watched all my life.
How they probably wanted one last fresh breath of air, one more moment to arrange their face before surrendering themselves to someone else.
HIS CAR smelled like cologne and peppermint candy. He tried to act calm but he was nervous—he gave it away in the way he kept scratching at the side of his nose.
“What do you have there?” he asked. I held up the doll. He laughed so hard he sprayed spit all over my arm. “A whore with a fucking doll. This place is too damn much.” Yeah, I thought. I feel the same way.
He drove to the parking garage at Bally’s, a shady spot on the upper level. He reclined his seat, unzipped his pants, closed his eyes. When I hesitated, he took me by the hair and pushed my mouth toward his crotch.
When it was over, he gave me a hundred bucks. Up to $350—$1,650 and then I’d never have to do any of this again. He didn’t offer to drive me anywhere, so I got out in the parking garage. I was studying the constellation of old chewing gum at my feet when he called to me.
“Hey,” he said. He hadn’t asked my name.
“You forgot this.” He handed the doll out the window.
I could hear him laughing as he drove off.
Once his taillights disappeared, I threw the doll as hard as I could against a concrete pillar.
Her face broke into pieces: a sliver of cheek, a blue long-lashed eye.
Outside, lightning crackled in the distance, the clouds dense and greenish, otherworldly.
The wind whipped through the city, and finally the clouds deepened in color before they broke apart and released rain.
Huge drops fell, splashes as big as poker chips, and the thunder boomed through the garage, loud enough to trigger a few car alarms. I sat and watched the city get drenched, listened to the blare of the alarms, and savored the feeling that no one knew where I was.
For the first time I could understand what would make a girl want to disappear.
No one else to see the bad things you had done.
I HOPED that Peaches would come back—some people did, after a tough reading.
They wanted it to be like the casinos, when a new deal, another shuffle, might refresh their luck.
When she didn’t, I decided to search for her: in the dim little casino bars on the floor, at the nightclubs, where I sat at the bar and drank an orange soda until the strobe lights gave me a headache.
Every time I heard the click click click of high heels on marble, I turned to make sure it wasn’t her, strutting in those heels with the ties.
I didn’t hear the crying anymore, but I was still having visions, a baby’s hand uncurling then clenching into a fist. Little legs kicking in the air.
Another, of moths fluttering in and out of a streetlight, the blare of horns.
But what I didn’t know, couldn’t understand, was why the visions lingered, repeated on a loop.
They interfered with anything else I might see.
For the first time in years, I couldn’t use my intuition, those little bread crumbs of knowledge that had been helping me get through the world.
Like when I was younger and a bad storm rolled in off of the ocean, and the TV went fuzzy, then dim.
I hadn’t thought of how vulnerable I might feel without my visions.
One more reason to go to my mother—to ask her what was happening, to see if she could help.
I had been looking for Peaches at the Borgata when I met the next man.
At the other end of the bar three drunk girls screeched along with a karaoke machine and spilled their drinks over the rims of their glasses when they danced.
We sat one stool apart, but he ignored me at first, simply sipped a beer and frowned at the women in small denim skirts helping one another climb up and straddle the mechanical bull, cackling when they toppled to the ground, their leopard-print underwear exposed for everyone to see.
Then I felt his eyes fall on the skin of my forearms, where I’d scratched a few jagged tally marks—one for each man who touched me.
He slid over a stool and bought me a drink, something cloudy with sugar that held a bright sprig of mint crushed under cubes of ice.
I knew I was being stupid, getting in over my head, but I’d make my money fast, get to California, and learn how to forget.
As we talked, I kept one eye on the hallway, the slow trickle of people passing by.
I watched for the other woman, too, the one who’d run away from her reading.
If I saw her, it would feel like proof that whatever trapdoor was supposed to open in the universe and swallow her up had been faulty.
Maybe she had already gone home, back to whoever was waiting for her.
But that didn’t make sense. If the first woman had left, why had Peaches found her purse on the side of the road?
And even if I found Peaches, would the answers help?
Still, I carried that purse wherever I went, hoping it might bring one of them around, like bait.
In the man’s room, the chill from the shuddering air conditioner sent a prickle of goose bumps up my arms. He pulled my hair so hard I pictured a fistful of it coming out in his hands.
I didn’t cry out, even though he probably wanted me to.
I bit my lip and waited for the sharpness of the pain to ease into a dull throb.
He kept a length of rope coiled in his dresser drawer, like a snake.
He tied me to a chair, knotting it tight enough so that my head jerked on my neck with the force, and the rope rubbed and scratched against my arms. Then he sat across the room, lit a cigarette, and watched the smoke curl toward the ceiling.
I watched him, both knowing what was coming and hoping I was wrong.
He looked at the cigarette and tilted his head, playacting like the idea had just come to him.
I shut my eyes and listened to his footfall cross the room.
He stood over me until I opened them again, and that’s when he pinned my hand down and pressed the coal of the cigarette into my middle finger.
I screamed at the first hint of pain, my voice high and childish.
I imagined the burn boring into the bone.
I could smell the singed skin. He lit another cigarette and held my left hand.
This time the pain felt brighter. I couldn’t think of anything besides how much it hurt—it was as though I had never lived a single moment without this sensation, that burning, white-hot scald, that awful smell.
When he was done I forced myself to look down at the marks.
The wounds were an angry red, perfect circles dug out of my skin.
The tears fell in a thick patter, rolling off of my chin and into my lap.
He watched me cry, then reached for the buckle of his pants.
I listened to him come, the strangled cry escaping through his gritted teeth, like any pleasure was something he was trying to keep in.
He washed his hands before he untied me, the wounds throbbing.
He left three hundred dollars on the table.
I could hardly pick it up. I couldn’t decide if it was a lot—after all, I hadn’t had to touch him—or not nearly enough.
Back in the apartment, I smeared the wounds with ointment and wrapped Band-Aids around them.
It took me longer than it should have, but my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
The dread I had felt all summer was like a knot in my throat.
I took the cash from my pocket and smoothed it into the back pages of my book.
I counted again: $650. Enough for the bus, for the taxi ride to my mother’s place.
It should have soothed me a little, made it feel worth it.
But I could feel my pulse in each wound, and the thudding of it in my ears when I tried to go to sleep.
WITH EVERYTHING else that was going on, finding Peaches, and the woman who had run away, gave me purpose, though the strangeness, the pressure of it all, was getting to me—I had started to jump at even the smallest of noises when I was alone, or suffer crying jags that swelled up suddenly, full-body sobs that left me feeling used up.
The day after the man burned me, I forced myself to leave the apartment, even though all I wanted to do was curl up and sleep.
Out on the street, a jitney swerved around a taxi, both drivers leaning on their horns. A few drunk college students swayed down the street, bickering about where to go next. This place is a fucking joke, one of them complained. The chicks here are fucking busted.