Page 27

27

ALISSA

I tent my fingers in front of my nose, close my eyes, and take a deep breath in.

I’m trying to make sense of what Maddox just told me.

Five years of service in exchange for housing, food, medical and immigration expenses.

It’s unclear if they get paid. But I did fill out a tip line when I closed out my tab this afternoon. There was a separate line for service and for bar staff. I’d ask one of the waitstaff if they’re allowed to keep their tips, but none of them will talk to me.

The world can be a cruel place. An unjust one.

I didn’t exactly grow up rich, but we were comfortable. There was always food on the table, always petrol in the car.

Mum was an absolute nightmare at times, but I had a roof over my head.

I look around at the waitstaff. The women in their skimpy bikinis, the men in the short shorts, united by the pattern of the card suit of whichever section they’re assigned. All the men have visible sixpacks, the women toned abs and arms. They’re gorgeous across the board—any of them could land a gig with a modeling agency after their time at the club has finished.

I’m sure a lot of them are smart, too. They could go to college, become lawyers, engineers, doctors. One of the people here could have the cure for cancer lying within their future, and it might never come to fruition if it weren’t for Rouge bringing them over to the States.

When May comes back from her suspension, I’ll make sure to give her a good tip. In cash. Make sure it goes to her and only her.

I look around at the club. How different it looks now from this afternoon. The colored lights illuminating each section, each one carefully positioned to hide the scratches on the floor, the watermarks on the tables that I noticed when I came in this afternoon. The way it looks now, you’d never notice the small faults lying in plain sight.

It looks clean…but it isn’t clean.

And damn, I know a bloody lot about clean and unclean.

* * *

The tiles are bloody.

My blood.

I fell to my knees and started sobbing the moment Mum left the kitchen. I fell on the shards of china and glass that littered the floor in the wake of her destruction. I’m wearing shorts, and my knees were fully exposed.

And now I’m bleeding. More mess to clean up.

I just hope Mum doesn’t see.

I can’t even feel the cuts in my knees, or the minor burns on my belly from when Mum threw the boiling water on the floor. I think I’m in shock. I brush as much of the glass off as I can and get to my feet, trudging over to the cleaning closet for a broom and dustpan. I find a couple of rags in the closet, which I wrap around my knees to stop the bleeding. Then I return to the kitchen and begin sweeping.

The pieces of china are big enough to sweep into the dustpan, but the glass is harder. I’ll have to vacuum once I’ve swept up as much as I can. I’ll have to mop, too, because of the still-hot water coating the tiles.

I’m sure Mum will find something wrong with this job, too.

I jerk when the front door slams shut. “Honey, I’m home.”

Oh, no. It’s Daddy. He’ll see the mess in the kitchen and ? —

I don’t know what he’ll do.

He walks in and widens his eyes. “ Dios mio , what the hell happened in here?”

I bite my lip. I don’t want Mum to get in trouble. I love her, and I love Daddy. I have friends whose parents have gotten divorced, and they’re miserable. Always packing a bag to spend every other week in a different place, having their Mum and Dad compete for their love. Having to choose a side whenever they have a fight.

And Mum isn’t always like this. It’s only every so often.

“I… I broke some dishes.”

Daddy scans the kitchen floor. “Lissy, this looks like every dish in the kitchen.”

“I got mad. Mum wasn’t happy with how I cleaned the dishes. So I broke all the dishes.”

Dad squats down until he’s at my eye level, pushing my hair back. “Lissy, that’s not the truth and you know it.”

I burst into tears. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t clean the dishes right, and Mum got upset. She told me I had to do them all again, and when I told her I spent so much time cleaning them already and had to do my homework, she got this scary smile on her face and said that we’ll just have to buy new dishes. And then she broke everything.”

He wraps his arms around me for a moment and then whispers in my ear, “Let’s go talk outside, querida .”

He holds my hand as we walk into the backyard. I take care not to get my shoes muddy.

Dad takes a deep breath and sighs. “Lissy, you know that your mummy and I love each other very much. But…you should know that Mummy is sick.”

“She’s sick?” I feel an ache in my gut. We had an aunt who died of cancer a few years ago. “Is she going to die?”

“No, angel, not at all. She’s not sick in her body.” He taps his finger on the side of his head. “She’s sick in her mind.”

“Huh?”

“People can get sick in their brain the same way they can get sick in the rest of their body. It’s called a mental illness.”

“Are there doctors for mental illness?” I ask.

Daddy nods. “Yes, and your mum sees one once a week. He’s called a psychiatrist, and she’s been going to see him for a few months now. Mum has learned that she suffers from something called obsessive-compulsive disorder.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a disease that makes your brain focus really hard on keeping things clean. That’s why Mum gets so intense sometimes. The disease in her head rears its ugly head now and then. And she has another issue as well. It’s called Anti-Social Personality Disorder. It makes her act aggressive sometimes.” He runs his hands through my hair. “Did it seem like Mum became another person when she started breaking the dishes?”

I swallow and then nod.

Daddy sighs. “Your mum is getting medicine to help her with the OCD—the disease that makes her need everything to be clean. There isn’t medicine for her personality disorder, but she’s learning how to manage it, to live alongside it. But there will be good days and bad days. Today was clearly a bad day.”

My lip quivers. “There isn’t medicine to keep Mum from becoming the scary smiling person?”

“No, but she sees her psychiatrist once a week. He talks to her, helps her learn to deal with things. She fell short today, but I think in time your mum might start to get a little better.”

I furrow my eyebrows. “How can talking make her less sick?”

Daddy smiles. “He helps her see things in a different way. The other day, he told her that even the most clean, pristine kitchen you can imagine could still have one tiny flaw. A wayward crumb, a singular grain of rice, or a teeny-tiny germ just waiting to get in your body and make you sick. You can’t tell just looking at the kitchen that it’s not perfectly clean. It still looks good.” He places his hands on my shoulders. “But nothing is truly clean, Lissy. Whenever something seems too good to be true, it probably is.”

* * *

Nothing is truly clean, Lissy. Whenever something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Dad is the only person who ever called me “Lissy.” Mum always called me by some pet name. Pumpkin, angel, sweetheart.

Mum got better over the years. She still had bad days, but it was never as bad as the day she broke every dish in the kitchen.

At least…it wasn’t until the bitter end.

Dad helped me clean everything up that night, and when Mum came down the stairs, she acted as if nothing had happened. We went to a department store the next day and bought new dishes and glassware. White with red stripes. My dad still uses them to this day. Before Mum died, I would check to see if any dishes were missing every time I came home. They were always all accounted for.

The kitchen was still in immaculate shape, but every so often I would go hunting for the wayward crumb my dad talked about that day. There was always something, usually tucked away under the fridge or under a counter. The kitchen was never perfectly clean. It wasn’t the day it was built, and it wasn’t now.

Just like Aces Underground isn’t perfectly clean. The lights hide the tiny flaws that I saw this morning.

And they’re hiding something even more sinister than scratches and dings. I feel it in my bones, pulsing like a dark secret just waiting to be exposed.

Rouge may have Maddox and every other patron in this club fooled with her “making the world a better place” rhetoric, but there’s something underneath her perceived benevolence. It’s gnawing at the edges of my mind, crawling under my skin.

The reserved, risk-averse Alissa that abandoned a promising career as a flautist would just sit down and shut up. Take the path of least resistance, the straightest line, the rightest angle. God knows I learned that the hard way, growing up with my mother. I walked on eggshells, always fearing something would set her off.

But this club, and the man sitting across from me, have chipped that facade away to reveal someone willing to jump into the world with both feet. I don’t know how long this new personality of mine will last, so I’ve got to act now.

I’m not sure how deep the rabbit hole goes, but someone has to figure it out.

I sear my gaze into Maddox’s, repeating my father’s words. “Nothing is truly clean. Whenever something seems too good to be true, it probably is.”

Maddox squints at me, his mouth hanging open. “What?”

“Something my father said. He was talking about my mother, but his words bear repeating.” I get to my feet. “Something weird is going on here at Aces, Maddox. I’m not sure exactly what, but I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”

I turn and leave the club, not looking back at the stupefied expression on Maddox’s face.