Chapter Twenty-Two #2
I check where to find it exactly. Temptation Heights is on the southwest side of Canyon, due farther southwest than Surly’s Tavern. It’s not somewhere I’ve ever visited. I’ve never had a reason to.
Until now.
At some point on my way to Temptation Heights in my pickup after dark, the landscape changes and the traffic thins out.
Tall buildings give way to low-rise houses made from wooden slats painted white and surrounded by chain link fences.
Some windows are boarded up and covered in graffiti.
The streetlamps don’t work so well out here.
Where there is grass, it’s patchy and dry.
It’s not the Canyon I was sold when I signed my NFL contract. Far from it.
In front of me, a racoon crosses the road, the headlights bouncing off its feral eyes. I jam on the brakes and my tires screech to a halt. I peer out. The road surface is littered with potholes and fractured concrete.
I take a left into Spring Chase and slow my speed. The houses here are small and close together. I lower my window, and I can hear a dog barking in the night air over the sound of the cicadas.
Outside number 2932 – the number painted on the side of the white mailbox – I pull up onto the curb behind Serenity’s parked car. I raise my window, kill the engine then crane my neck. I can see through the window that the lights are on. There’s a small wooden porch and a screen door.
I look down at the flowers I brought with me. Suddenly, it feels like they’re too much, but I pick them up by the stems anyway and open the door.
On the street, the dog barking grows louder. I glance around me, but there’s no one else around. As I enter the gate, the screen door opens. Serenity comes out onto the porch. In the shadows, I can see she’s wearing jeans and a fitted white tee, her hair tied back in a high ponytail.
‘Hey,’ I say, and even after the events of Friday night, it’s like I’m looking at her in a whole new light. I don’t think I ever gave her enough credit.
‘Hey,’ she responds. Her tone is light. She seems nervous.
‘I, uh, I brought you these,’ I say, holding out the flowers. ‘By way of an apology.’
She walks down the steps. ‘They’re beautiful. Thank you.’
I hand them over and she searches my face. ‘I think I’m supposed to be the one apologizing to you.’
I hold her gaze. If we were in the cabin, I’d ask to kiss her.
I’ve missed her, even since Friday. I think I’d forgive her anything, and hope that she can forgive me for walking away from her like I did in the parking lot at Surly’s.
‘You’ve got nothing to be sorry for,’ I tell her, and she looks like she might cry.
‘I mean, don’t get me wrong,’ I add. ‘I was a little surprised.’
She bites her lip. ‘So… you’re not mad?’
‘Not mad, no. Not anymore. Just a little curious maybe.’
We stand there, in her front yard, face to face.
I feel an urge to ask her if she knows what kind of hold she has over me.
That I’d do anything she asked if it meant even the tiniest shot at making her happy.
Stripper, or no stripper, I don’t care. I just know I’ve never met a woman like her before and all I wanna do is cherish her. Make her mine.
‘You wanna come inside?’ she asks. ‘I can introduce you to my dad.’
The porch steps creak as I walk up. The dog has quit barking though now I can hear a man hollering at the TV in the house across the street. The screen door grates and I notice it’s coming off its rusty hinges.
‘How long you lived in this house?’ I ask.
She turns to face me. ‘I’ve lived here my whole life.’
‘It’s… it’s cosy.’
She tilts her head and glances up at the ceiling, which, when I follow her gaze, I realize is a spiderweb of cracks and lines. ‘It’s not, it’s crumbling,’ she says miserably. ‘But it’s home, and we don’t have the money to fix it. Come meet my dad.’
She first puts the flowers in the kitchen and then I follow her into a living area.
There’s an old TV showing a Dodgers game.
Serenity’s father has his feet up on the worn-out couch, the insides spewing outta one end where it’s come apart at the seams. He’s wearing a mask hooked up to some kind of oxygen tank, attached to a metal cart on wheels. He looks frail and a little emaciated.
‘Daddy,’ Serenity says. ‘This is Jake, who I was telling you about. Jake, this is my father, Glenn Harper.’
He looks up from the couch. Serenity inherited his eyes. His are bright, despite his obvious illness.
‘It’s nice to meet you, sir,’ I say.
He goes to stand, albeit a little slowly and removes his mask.
‘No, no, please don’t get up,’ I add.
‘It’s fine, son,’ he says, then shakes my hand with more force than I would have expected. ‘Always nice to meet a friend of Serenity’s. You’re a football player?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘More of a baseball fan myself.’
‘So I heard. I hope you’re not disappointed.’
‘You kidding? Serenity never brought a young man home before. I’ve been waiting all this time… figured she’s too busy. Working too hard.’
‘She does work too hard,’ I say, but I can’t say anything else because Glenn Harper is coughing.
‘Daddy, put your mask back on,’ Serenity chastises him. ‘Sit your butt down, come on.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he responds to her commands, and I smile at her strength. I’ll add ‘caring’ to the list of things about her that appeal to me. Glenn returns to his original position as instructed, replacing the mask over his nose and mouth.
‘Jake and I are gonna have a beer on the back porch,’ she tells him, and to me, she lifts her chin, tilting it toward the back of the house.
Outside, I take a seat on a ramshackle chair; some of the slats are missing. Serenity returns with a couple of bottles.
‘Are you allowed to drink during the week?’ she asks, hovering above me.
I resist the urge to reach out and trace my fingers around the back of her thigh, right at the crease of her knee, over her jeans. ‘I can have one.’
She nods her head. I pull the other chair a little closer toward mine and she lowers herself into it, passing me an open bottle.
I swallow a mouthful of beer. For a moment, I just watch her. Our knees are touching, and she plays nervously with the end of her ponytail.
‘Dad has oxygen therapy, though it’s not regular,’ she says. ‘They show up with the tank out of the blue and then some other guys come and take it away again. Ideally, he needs the treatment twice a day, but we don’t get that.’
‘Do you have insurance?’
‘We have a managed care program. We get tax credits. It’s not perfect but we get by.’
‘And you work three jobs.’
She raises her eyes to me and her voice trembles. ‘I only get paid for two of ’em. It’s not enough.’
My frown is deep. ‘I don’t understand. I thought you’d… I would have thought it’s good money… you know. Taking your clothes off.’
This time she looks away. Presses her lips together. I reach for her hand and squeeze her fingers. ‘I just want us to be honest with each other,’ I tell her.
Her eyes come back to mine.
‘Can we do that?’ I ask. ‘Be honest? No matter how bad you think it is.’
It takes a moment, but she nods her head, then takes a breath.
‘When I was growing up,’ she begins, ‘my dad wasn’t around all that much.
He worked various jobs; I never quite knew what he did day to day.
One minute he was laying carpet, the next he was fixing somebody’s refrigerator.
Some nights he spent in a bar someplace, and he’d roll on home after I’d gone to bed.
But there were some nights when we were a family.
My mom worked as a nurse, then she quit that, and she worked in a hardware store for a while.
By the time I turned seventeen, she’d had enough.
Said she wanted to leave and that I should go with her.
But by then I knew my dad was sick and had landed in some hot water. ’
‘What kind of hot water?’
‘He’d been gambling and got into some serious debt that year.’
‘How serious?’
She doesn’t answer immediately. ‘A little less than a half million dollars all in.’
‘Holy shit.’
She lets out another heavy sigh. ‘The debt was with a man named Kale McCoy. He owned a casino, and also a titty bar in Canyon… Surly’s Tavern.’
I grip my bottle of beer a little tighter and shake my head, hardly able to believe what I know she’s about to tell me.
‘Soon after my mom left, Kale paid us a visit. The moment he saw me… I guess he saw potential. He asked how old I was, and we made a deal. The day I turned eighteen, he had me at the club, learning the ropes—’
I shoot to my feet, the chair scraping back against the rustic wood. I pace up and down for a moment as she watches me.
‘How could your own father let you do that?’ I say, keeping my voice low.
She gives a shrug. ‘He was scared. He didn’t want me to do it, of course, but you don’t mess with these guys. I knew what would have happened if I’d have said no.’
Questions rip through my mind. So, she’s not doing this by choice, but to save her father’s life?
‘Do you get paid anything at all?’
‘No. I keep a ledger. Every shift I work goes toward paying off the debt. So does every tip I make. Every lap dance. I don’t get to see a dime of that money, though I do well for tips. And I keep track. I keep a copy here in my room.’
‘How much is left to pay?’
Her throat works. She puts down her beer which she’s barely touched. ‘Two hundred thousand dollars. Give or take.’
On the inside, I reel. ‘And you can’t quit?’
She glances back toward the house. ‘For a while, my daddy kept on telling me he’d win the money back. But then his health took a turn for the worse. And I didn’t have a choice.’
‘You’re being exploited. It’s forced labor.’
‘What would you have me do? Bake cookies and sell them by the side of the road? I don’t have that kind of money, Jake. If I do this, I keep my father alive. And one day, the debt will be paid.’
‘You’ve been doing it for, what, five years now? You’ll practically be thirty.’