Page 83 of If Looks Could Kill

The carriage ride uptown went all too quickly.

Rosie hounded me the whole way with questions about what I’d done to Joe, to Ira, to Dan.

Where they were. Why they hadn’t come back.

Why some of them had insisted one of us was a snake girl.

Apparently, she’d tried to pump the Gorgon of Gotham for answers, but Giselle had been as helpful to her as she’d been to me.

It was the small hours of the night, when even New York pauses for breath.

The carriage stopped before a door, and the two men with Rosie, whom I’d learned were called Mack and Zeke, shoved me out of it.

I stumbled but landed on my feet. Thirteenth Street, the sign told me. The road to hell was a short one.

“Zeke,” said Rosie.

Zeke took me by my shoulders. I honestly thought he was helping make sure I didn’t fall.

“Don’t get ideas,” he told me, and slugged his fist into my stomach.

Pain exploded through my entire body. I couldn’t breathe. I buckled over.

Nothing in my life had prepared me for agony like this.

“That’s in case you’ve got ideas,” Zeke said, “of making noise as we go inside, see? Crying for help won’t do you any good. And that’s just a taste of what you’ll get if you try it.”

They prodded me up a narrow stair to a flat above another saloon. Even in the small hours of a Tuesday morning, patrons sat at the bar and watched this procession with bored eyes. Just another kidnapped girl, going to her ruin. Nothing to see here.

Up the stairs in the dark. Rosie turned on the gas jets and lit the lamps. A yellow glow flickered over a room full of couches and cushions.

“Welcome,” Rosie said, “to your new home sweet home.”

My voice was hoarse and dry. “Is this your crib?”

“Nope,” she said. “This is the brothel.”

God help me.

The men lumbered in and helped themselves to drinks, then splayed themselves out on the couches.

“Mabel,” Rose called. “Bring that peach-colored getup. Lizzie’s old one.”

The person named Mabel, dressed in next to nothing, wandered in with a bit of salmon-colored silk. It dangled from her hand like a scarf. She gave it to Rosie and drifted off again.

Rosie held it up and examined it, then eyeballed me appraisingly.

“All right, Salvation Baby,” she told me. “Take this and go put it on. In that room, there. Put it on and wait for me. We’re going to have us a little talk.”

I took the flimsy article and entered the room, still groaning in pain. Mother Rosie followed me in, lit a lamp with a match, then left, pulling the door shut behind her.

The room held nothing but a bed, a chair, and the rank smell of sweat and stale perfume.

Never had I felt so utterly alone.

Never had I felt so ready to die.

I knew well what would happen now.

“Tonight?” I heard Mabel say on the other side of the door. “Aw, Rosie, have a heart.”

“Have a heart, nothing,” said Rosie. “Little bitch thought she could make a fool of me.”

The door opened, and a girl stepped in. Around my age. She, too, was shockingly dressed, but she didn’t seem to care. She took a long look at me, then sat down on the chair.

“They call me Delilah,” she announced. “How about you?”

I sat opposite her on the edge of the bed. “Tabitha,” I said, seeing no reason not to.

“That’s no good,” she said. “Doesn’t have the snap.”

The snap.

“Maybe,” she said, “something like, the Tabby Cat.”

Not my father’s nickname for me. Not that. I pressed my fists into my eye sockets, but it didn’t stop my tears.

“Hey,” Delilah said. “I’m sorry, all right? I’m really sorry.”

I looked up at her. She watched me beneath heavily painted eyelids.

“I can see you’re a nice girl,” she said. “It’s harder for the nice ones. I know.”

Nice.

“I was raised for this,” Delilah explained. “But you weren’t.”

“I’m sorry too, then,” I told her.

She shrugged and began untying my hair from its style with a surprisingly gentle touch. “It’s easier,” she said, “if you don’t fight it. Less painful.”

I let her tend to my hair. “Do you mean, in body,” I asked her, “or in spirit?”

“Sure,” she said. “Both. But you’re better off not worrying about your spirit here.”

“What’s your name, really?” I asked her.

She stopped working my hair. “Sarah,” she said. “My name was Sarah. Till I was ten.”

Ten. Oh, God. In a world where this happens to children of ten, how do I ask you to save me? Yet save me, please; save me.

“I didn’t start here,” Sarah said. “I started at home. With my ma. Till she died and Rose bought me in.”

“ Bought you in?”

“Paid off my ma’s pimp.”

This goes on everywhere, I reminded myself. In countless numbers in this city alone.

I am not special. I am not chosen. I am not alone in this nightmare, or this pain.

Bring them home.

Oh, sweet Jesus, bring me home, I prayed, and I promise, I promise I will devote the rest of my life to this. Because I know you love these other girls too.

And if I can’t go home, dear God, give me strength to endure what’s coming.

Sarah picked up the salmon outfit. “I know this one,” she said. “It’ll look nice on you.”

“Sarah,” I whispered, “wouldn’t you leave if you could?”

Sarah gave me a cold look. “Don’t ask stupid questions,” she said. “Leave me out of it. I’m not getting beat up on account of you.”

I shrank back. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re in for a rough time of it here,” she said. “I was trying to warn you.” She tossed the salmon silk at me. It rolled down my front like water pouring down a glass.

“You’d better get changed,” she told me. “If you don’t, Mack or Zeke’ll beat you and dress you in it themselves. You don’t want that.”