24 Hours

“It wasn’t like that. Not at first. But we needed money. Joe tried some straight things, but they never seemed to work out. And I knew how to strip. He put me in a club in Metairie, just outside New Orleans. Nice club. He stayed every night watching over me. No drugs, no drinking. I was making so much money, we couldn’t believe it. Everybody said I was better than the featured dancers who came through, you know, Penthouse pets, girls like that. So I got into that for a while.” Cheryl’s eyes suddenly lit up, the way Abby’s did when she was telling someone about her doll collection. “I had a dozen different outfits, props, the whole works. I had a Jeep Grand Cherokee, and we’d drive around the country, following my club tour. Texas, Colorado, Montana… man, it was something.”

“But?”

She looked down at the gun in her lap. “Joe got jealous. I was good enough that people started talking to me about other things. Movie people. Not like Sandra Bullock, you know, but still Hollywood. Soft porn stuff, like you see on Cinemax. And Joe got nervous about that. He didn’t… He-”

“He didn’t want you out from under,” Will said. “He wanted you all to himself, all the time.”

She nodded sadly. “Yeah.”

“You couldn’t break loose?”

“I owed him, okay? I owed him in a way only me and him understood.”

“For getting you off crack?”

“Not just that, okay?”

“What do you mean?”

“Where’s my damn drink?”

As though in answer to her question, a knock sounded at the door. Will walked through the sitting room of the suite and accepted the tray from a young Mexican girl. He tipped her liberally, then hung out the DO NOT DISTURB sign and carried the tray in to Cheryl.

“How did you owe Joe?” he asked, pouring Bacardi and Coke over the small hotel ice cubes.

She took the glass and drank a long sip of the sweet mixture. Then another. She clearly meant to finish the drink before continuing. Will poured himself a steaming cup of tea, added sugar and lemon. The scent of Earl Grey wafted through the bedroom.

Cheryl finished her rum and Coke and held out the glass for a refill. Will mixed another-stronger this time-then took a sip of tea and sat on the edge of the bed.

“How did you owe him, Cheryl?”

“You don’t just walk away from the kind of work I was doing at the club in Jackson,” she said quietly. “I owed them money, and they wanted me working it off. When I started dancing in Metairie, they heard about it. They sent a couple of guys down to get me. Joe offered to pay my debts, but they wouldn’t go for it. They wanted me back at the club. The guy who owned the place… he had a thing for me.”

“So what happened?”

A little laugh rippled the bruised flesh of her abdomen. “Joe convinced these guys to change their minds.”

“How did he do that?”

“Convincingly.”

“And they left you alone?”

“Those guys did.”

“And?”

“The owner sent another guy for me. To bring me back. A really bad guy.”

“And what happened?”

Another swallow. “Joe punched his ticket.”

“You mean he killed him?”

Cheryl looked Will right in the eye. “That’s what I mean. Messy, too. So that anybody else they sent would know what he was getting into. You know? And it worked. Nobody else came. I was free.”

“You weren’t exactly free. You’d just traded one master for another.”

“Hey, I ain’t nobody’s slave.”

“Who are you trying to convince?”

“Shut up.”

“You carry a lot of pain around, don’t you?”

“Don’t we all?”

“Yes. But I don’t think Joe understands that. He thinks he’s got a monopoly on suffering. That everything’s stacked against him from the start.”

“How do you know it wasn’t? You sit up there in your perfect little house, with your money and your kid and your paintings and your swimming pool and your cars. Everything laid out just right since the day you were born. Well, some people don’t have it that way.”

“Is that what you think? You think I started rich? My father worked in a mill for eighteen years, Cheryl. No college degree. Then the mill shut down. He put his life savings into his dream, a music store. Every dollar he had went into Wurlitzer organs, Baldwin pianos, and brass band instruments. Five months after he opened it, the store burned to the ground. His insurance had lapsed two days before.” Will reached out and took a shot from the Bacardi bottle. “He drove off a bridge a week later. I was eleven years old.”

Cheryl shook her head. “You must have inherited something. You’re silver spoon all the way.”

Will laughed bitterly. “My wife’s mother was a waitress. Karen was the first woman in her family to go to college. Then nursing school. Then medical school, but she had to drop out because she got pregnant. And her father died before he could see how well she did. She fought for everything she has. So did I.”

“The American dream,” Cheryl mumbled. “Get out the violins.”

“I’m just pointing out that Joe seems to have a personal problem with me. Some kind of class thing. And he’s way off base.”

She looked up, her eyes alert. “How much money do you make a year?”

“About four hundred thousand dollars.”

“He’s not that far off.”