Dark End of the Street

She saw his hands reach for the bag and pull it from view. The light was so bright that even when she squinted she couldn’t make out his features. A blue halo pulsed in her vision.

“Where does your daddy keep his papers?” he asked.

She shook her head. “You’re just gonna kill me anyway.”

“Nope. I don’t kill little girls. I just make ’em bleed and hurt like hell till they tell me what I want.”

Abby stared down at her hands. She breathed quick, her heart ticking. She began to pray silently again. It was the prayer she’d said the entire way in the car about appreciating every second the Lord gave her.

“Abby?”

She kept her eyes on her hands. She felt the gentle stroke of fingers across the back of her neck.

“Go on,” the man said to someone behind her. “Y’all have your fun.”

Out of the darkness two people walked between her and the man. One was the older black man with freckles. The other was Ellie.

At least it seemed like Ellie. In Abby’s scattered vision, the face and the body were the same. But she looked different and held herself in an unusual way. She even seemed to breathe like another person as she studied Abby with squinting eyes.

“Shall we go get this filthy bitch cleaned up?” Ellie asked.

The door to the security office was closed and I was about to walk back to the lobby when a black woman dressed in maid coveralls sauntered by and jiggled a set of keys in her pocket. She opened the door.

I followed.

The office was tiny with a cheap desk and seascape prints hanging on the walls. Besides the smell of stale cigarettes, you couldn’t tell if the place was ever used. No loose papers on the desk. No bulletin boards. No appointment calendars.

“You know where I can find Humes?” I asked.

The woman jumped as if touched by a live wire. Her face was round and flat. Reddish brown skin.

“Sorry,” I said, my palms outstretched to show I was cool. Didn’t mean her any harm. “Lookin’ for my old buddy Mr. Humes.”

“Shiiit,” she said. She was very old and very short. Didn’t even come up to my chest. “You up to no good.”

“No, ma’am.”

“Yes, you is.” She smiled. “What you wantin’ Humes fer? He fucked up again?”

I smiled back.

“You gonna kick his ass?”

“Just want to talk to him.”

She looked up at me and studied my eyes. She squinted one eye and then patted me on the arm. “C’mon, he ain’t never in here. But don’t you be tellin’ him how you found him.”

She left the office door open and led me down a long hallway to a metal door by an emergency exit. Hundreds of tourist pamphlets sat in a nearby bin. Everything from Graceland to the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale.

The woman unlocked the metal door and held it wide open.

“Go on,” she said. “Last door on the left. That’s where he sit at, pickin’ his ass and lookin’ at Playboys.”

I leaned down to the short old woman and kissed her on the cheek.

Ever since the truck stop, Perfect had had the uncontrollable desire to scrub Abby MacDonald clean. She stank. She smelled of body odor and gasoline and coffee breath. She had stubble underneath her arms and probably had long hair growing on her legs. Her eyebrows were unkempt and long cuticles grew over her nails. How could she live like that? How could she even think this was acceptable?

Perfect hated everything about the girl. She hated her greasy dirty-blond hair and her unmade face and her sinewy little body. Probably some kind of runner or athletic freak. Abby wasn’t curvy. The girl didn’t understand that women were supposed to be full and rounded.

In the concrete room, Perfect studied Abby. The way her head hung down in her hands, the mud splattered on her wide-legged jeans, and those awful running shoes. And, God, how she wouldn’t shut up. The little girl kept on crying and calling her Ellie and asking her to disappear.

Perfect, now dressed in hip-hugger cords and a white T-shirt with a sequin heart, moved closer to the girl and watched her cry. Humes sat on top of a blackjack table, a gun on his hip, drinking a cup of coffee. That bastard was waiting for the show to begin. Oh, well, guess she’d have to deliver.

Perfect grabbed a good handful of greasy hair from Abby’s head and pulled her to the stainless-steel tub. She tore the horrible-smelling T-shirt from her body and told her to take off those dirty jeans or die.

The girl kept sobbing but did what she said, lightly pulling them down over her knees, shaking.

Perfect knew the girl was expecting rape or some kind of sexual kicks from them. Instead, Perfect shoved her stinking ass down in the tub filled with scalding water. The girl, just wearing white bra and panties, pressed her back to the wall and covered her breasts with folded arms.

Perfect shook her head, put on a pair of Latex gloves, and lathered up a loofah.

She pulled up Abby’s armpit and began her long overdue cleansing process.