Page 8 of The Allure of Ruins

“No one is going to unseal my?—”

“Oh no?” he dared me.

He could probably do it. Someone, somewhere, would fall for the lazy grin, the laugh lines in the corners of his warm, honey-colored eyes, and the rumble in his whiskey-soaked voice.

It was inevitable. More importantly, the man had so many acquaintances practically everywhere.

His network was unbelievably big. I was always surprised when we had to fly to some random place, like the last time when we were in some hole-in-the-wall part of Texas and someone walked up and greeted him warmly.

“Are you listening to me?”

“Yes,” I said tiredly. “What do you want to know?”

“You were in foster care, right?”

I nodded.

“Where?”

“Los Angeles. That’s where I was born.”

“And?”

And I had all trust beaten out of me by the time I was five. I didn’t say that, of course, and I had to think how to phrase what I wanted him to know.

“Just tell me. Did you get hit?”

I had to be honest. “Yes,” I husked.

“How badly?”

“Very badly,” I confessed quietly, unable to look at him.

“No. Don’t hide. Eyes here.”

I met his gaze.

He took a breath, girding himself. “Were you molested?”

“No.”

“But you had the crap kicked out of you on a daily basis?”

“I did.”

“Broken bones?” he asked, and I heard how professional he sounded, like he was interviewing a witness, and for whatever reason, how dispassionate he was helped.

“Many. Yes.”

“Until when?”

“Until I ran away at sixteen,” I said, starting to walk, knowing where we were headed. He immediately got moving as well.

“You realize the trauma you suffered up until you were sixteen would be enough for a lot of people to be fucked up forever, right?”

I nodded.

“But then something else happened. Someone new came into your life.”

“Correct.”

“How did it start?”

“I got a job at a twenty-four-hour laundromat in West Hollywood, and one night this guy comes running in, and he’s bleeding, and begs me to let him into my cubicle so the guys who are after him don’t get him.”

“And you did that?”

I made a face at him. “Oh hell no. I put him in the big washer for rugs and quilts and whatever and flipped the latch so he could breathe. When three guys came in ten minutes later—all big guys, maybe Russian, definitely Slavic from the accents and the sound of the words—I put on my bored face, and they talked to me through the plexiglass.”

I had described how I was locked in there until eight in the morning, showed them the combination panel on the outside—didn’t show them the override on the inside—and yawned a lot and said they could search all around if they didn’t believe me.

“You have cameras,” one of the men said, pointing at all of them, one in every corner of the room. “Show us the footage.”

“Those don’t work,” I lied.

“Then what is to stop us from shooting you right now?” another guy said, pulling his gun from his shoulder holster and pointing it at me.

I tapped on the six-inch-thick plexiglass. “All I have to do is duck and hit the silent alarm under the counter here.”

They looked at me, at the box I was in, and when I arched an eyebrow, the guy with the gun holstered his weapon.

It was a good choice. The police station was five minutes away, and a lot of patrol officers stopped in to say hello at three in the morning when there wasn’t much else to do.

Even criminals were in bed at that time.

They gave the laundromat a cursory check, saw nothing out of place, and left. I waited fifteen minutes before I went to the washer and informed the guy that he could come out. He said no, thank you, that he would remain there.

“But you’re bleeding,” I reminded him.

“It stopped already, and I’ve been hurt worse than this.”

Since I had been as well, I got a couple of clean towels from the lost-and-found bin, opened the door, and gave them to him.

I also got him a bottle of water from the machine and then closed the door again.

He thanked me, and I returned to my cubicle.

The same guys came back another twenty minutes after that, checked more thoroughly the second time, and still found nothing.

They would have had to open every machine, and by then, there were college students in there watching them, eyeing them suspiciously.

When they asked me if I was sure I hadn’t seen anyone, I squinted at the main guy like he was stupid.

He groaned and left. Not even mad, disgusted with himself was my guess.

Now, had any of them been remotely smart, they would have known that locking me in a cubicle all night—what would happen if there was a fire?—was against the law. But they didn’t, so I got lucky. Not one of them knew what an OSHA violation was.

Around six, I went to the cash office, pulled the tape out of the VCR—it was not an upscale establishment, so there were no DVDs and nothing was saved to a Cloud—and rendered it unusable, unviewable, basically dead.

Since my shift ended at eight, I woke up the guy at seven, helped him out of the washer—he had some trouble moving, he was all cramped up by then—and opened the back door so he could go out through the alley.

When my relief showed up at eight, Mrs. Kwon and her husband, I explained that the VCR had eaten the much-used tape and they would need to put a new one into the rotation.

She gave me a pat on the cheek—she liked me, I always showed up for work—and told me that was fine.

Walking down the street toward the pay-by-the-night hotel I was staying in, a black SUV rolled up beside me, and when I turned, there was a man in the back seat on the driver’s side, staring at me from a partly rolled-down window.

He appeared much like every other thug I’d seen in the neighborhood.

Tatted up, expensive suit, lots of gold rings, and easily a two-hundred-dollar haircut.

When you had no money, you always knew what everything cost.

“Hey,” he said, and his voice was husky and low. “Come here.”

I tipped my head, the question there in the gesture. Who did he think he was talking to?

He surprised me when he smiled and grunted, leaning back so I could see the guy I saved waving from beside him. Leaning forward, he gestured me over.

I got closer, still making sure I stayed out of grabbing distance, and he held out three hundred-dollar bills. When I reached for the money, he held on, and I had to pull a bit harder. He relented, and I thanked him.

“I haven’t seen you around here.”

I squinted, and he laughed that time.

“You’re a wiseass, kid.”

Crossing my arms, I waited.

“Name?”

“Paxton Walsh,” I answered, because why not? I was hiding out from Child Protective Services, not the Russian mob. “Who’re you?”

“Genrikh,” he replied, and his eyes narrowed. “Genrikh Antonov, but I go by Gen, yes? You saved my cousin Erast, and I am in your debt, Paxton.”

I shook my head. “Just Pax, and no, this covers it fine. We’re good. I didn’t do it for a reward anyway, yanno?”

He nodded, the window rose, and he, and my good deed, were gone. I remembered thinking in that moment that I would never see them again.

If only.

I exhaled deeply and turned to Colton. “That was the first time I met Gen, but after that he’d show up out of the blue, usually when I was walking back to the hotel in the morning.

Finally, after weeks of that, he caught up with me at my second job as a barback, where I worked from three to eleven. ”

“Two jobs at sixteen and nobody cared?”

I made a face like he was ridiculous. “I got paid cash under the table. No one gave a shit. I had three a year later at seventeen.”

“Okay, go on,” he prodded, steering me around a frozen patch on the sidewalk with an arm draped around my shoulders, and not moving it even when the sidewalk was clear of anything but soft snow.

“Well, once he found me at that club, he offered me a job at his, promised to pay me more—a lot more—and said there was an apartment in a building he owned that would be better than paying weekly for a place where I could be murdered.”

“And you believed him?”

“Where I was staying was bad. There was a bathroom everyone on the same floor shared, and it was scary, especially at night.”

“Then what?”

“I moved in. There were two other guys sharing the apartment, both young like me, both really beautiful—like, they could have modeled—and it was nice. The apartment was clean, we all had our own rooms, and when Gen came and said that in his club, all I had to do was serve drinks, it sounded great.”

“But?”

“No but. My roommates served drinks, so did I, but none of us were allowed onstage, no dancing for us, and we weren’t allowed to turn tricks in the back room—not that I ever considered that—like a lot of the dancers did.

In fact, once, I was back there, carrying a tray of drinks to Gen and his friends, who were playing poker, and this guy grabbed me, and Gen was there really fast. I don’t think he beat the guy to death, but it was close and there was a lot of blood. ”

Colton smiled down at me. “You liked that. You felt safe.”

I nodded. “I did.”

“Things changed after that, didn’t they?”

“Yeah.”

I didn’t add that when I was in the bathroom, rinsing out my jeans that were soaked in vodka and beer, he came in with extra clothes for me.

When he was about to go, I took hold of his arm, made him stop and thanked him.

For years after that I’d blamed myself. If I had let him leave, never reached out, never touched him, maybe things would have been different.