Page 5 of The Bronze Garza

She told me she’s the daughter of some mega pastor in Canada, that she’d devoted herself to living a life of purity and doing God’s will. Yet this is where it got her.

I’ve held her hair back while she puked each time she returned from a session. I’ve hugged her to my chest while she cried rivers of tears saying she couldn’t do it anymore and just wanted to die.

“Kill me, Cola. Please, please kill me,” she would plead with wracking sobs. And I’d talk her down each time. Whispering promises I didn’t believe. That it would all be over soon. That help was coming. That she needed to trust that her God hasn’t abandoned her.

Except her god did abandon her, didn’t he?

At the sound of the telltale chime that signals when someone’s entering the penthouse, I sit up straight and suck in my stomach, plastering on a fake smile.

When Dimitri, another of Igor’s men, comes into view, I drop the smile and exhale a silent breath of relief.

Kimbella sashays in behind him, wheeling her small suitcase. With legs for miles, her white-blonde hair kisses her waist, and her blue eyes are bright and sparkling.

Igor’s golden hen has returned.

Kimbella claims she’s a princess where she’s from, though she doesn’t tell us where that is. Since she speaks with a strange accent and her English isn’t fluent, I assume it’s some obscure European country.

Breezing past us, she flips her hair and smirks, and I wonder about her family. If her disappearance has left them mired in grief and misery. If she has a mother somewhere drowning in depression, not knowing that her daughter is having the time of her life here.

As she and Dimitri disappear down the hall, I shift my gaze to Kristie. She’s sitting at the far end of the long S-shaped sofa, staring off into the fireplace with black, vacant eyes.

Sucking in my stomach, I get up and hastily cross the room to go sit beside her. She doesn’t even blink. Gosh, I feel for her more than I feel for myself. As I run my fingers through her brown tresses and rest my chin to her shoulder, I don’t miss Zoey’s eye roll.

All eyes are then drawn upward as The Bronze Man strides from the direction of Igor’s office, along the length of the interior balcony, then down the stairs. In a long, chestnut-colored coat with a black turtleneck sweater, black slacks, and polished leather boots.

He looks so regal and dangerous at the same time. No-nonsense, but still...warm...in a sense. I wish I could crawl into that coat with him and let him smuggle me away.

Let me beyourslave.

I remember the first time he came in, on a gust of icy November wind. With stern features and a perceptive gaze. As harsh as he appeared, he didn’t emit the same odious, reprehensible aura as all the others who prowled through here did.

Still, I knew he wasn’t a good man. There can be no goodness in a man who supports forced prostitution. Knowing this, however, did not impede the inexplicable pull I felt toward him. A pull that made me want to smile at him, talk to him,bein his presence.

But, alas, we aren’t allowed to speak to a client unless he speaks to us first.

Twice a month he came in. Always on a Monday. And he’d pick either Kimbella, Zoey, Kristie, or Simone. Take them to a room upstairs and would return exactly fifty-eight minutes later, with two minutes to spare from his hour—yes, I count them. And apparently so does he, because how else could he be so precise and exact each and every time? Does he calculate his thrusts beforehand? Allot a quota of minutes to each sexual act?

Control freak.

By April, he’d stopped taking girls upstairs and instead started leaving with two or three of them at time. They’d be gone for anywhere between two weeks and a month.

Once, one of the girls had whisper-asked Zoey, “Where does he take you for so long? I mean, what does he make you do? Does he fuck you every day?”

Zoey had flipped her hair and giddily replied, “To his strip club. We dance on stage, but the men aren’t allowed to touch us.”Then she’d dropped her voice to whisper,“Best of all,no sex. But he makes us promise not to—”She’d stopped abruptly and straightened up, refusing to say more.

Now, as he descends the stairs, the Diamond Girls preen. Even Kristie, her blank stare sparking to one of hope, of earnest.

But The Bronze Man just walks right out without sparing any of us a glance.

“I don’t understand,” one of the girls whines. “If Kimbella is back, why didn’t he take any of us?”

As they all begin to trade suppositions, I nudge Kristie and ask in a whisper, “What’s it like with him?”

She sags, as if trying to disappear into herself, and replies in a voice so wispy it’s as though she’s responding to herself rather than to me, “Not like the others.”

Frowning, I ask, “What does that mean?”

Before she can answer, the chime sounds, and two men stroll in. Oh, this duo. Two twenty-somethings who always come together.