Page 35 of The Last Housewife

A smile spread over her face. She was pretty: red hair, freckles, dark halos of eyeliner. Younger than me, but you couldn’t tell by the way she sized me up. “New, huh?”

I resumed moving and stood in front of a mirror, two sinks away. “That obvious?”

“Normally, girls don’t look so surprised by—” She gestured at the drugs on the counter. “Not with everything happening out there.”

“Right.” I looked at myself in the mirror. The crack in the glass ran horizontal, splitting my face in two. My mouth moved, but above it, my eyes stayed still—glittering, pupils dilated. A stranger’s eyes. “Does it help?”

Her voice was a honeyed trap. “With what?”

I turned to face her. “Everything happening out there.”

She grinned this time, rubbing fingers under her nose, examining herself in the mirror. “Please. This place is for amateurs.”

I stood taller. “What do you mean?”

She pursed her lips, which were almost as red as her hair. “Amateurs and hustlers. The Sparrow’s where you come to make a little money, indulge people who want to pretend to be a freak for a night. It’s not the real deal.”

I found myself leaning in her direction, the edge of the counter digging into my hip. “Where do you find that?”

She slid me a coy look. “Asks the nice girl.”

“I’m not nice.” I took a step closer.

She scanned me. “Yeah, right. I can smell it on you. Money, good school, dinners around the table with your family growing up. Choir girl, probably.” She glanced down at my ring finger, and I resisted the urge to turn the diamond. “It’s like a film on your skin. You can take your clothes off, let someone do filthy things to you in the dark. But it doesn’t wash off.”

I’d done a good job with myself, then. I was a convincing forgery.

“Maybe so,” I lied. “But like I said, I’m not nice.”

She eyed me. “All right. Everyone knows the Sparrow’s for people who want to dabble in kink. It’s not for true believers.”

“Why not?” Would Laurel have known?

“It’s the transaction,” the woman said, turning to look at herself again in the mirror, skimming a hand through her hair. “Cheapens it. Makes it a performance. When they’re fucking you, you can’t shake that you know it’s not real. They’re hitting you and calling you a cunt because it’s a novelty they paid for. They don’t actually mean it. And they have to really mean it for it to feel good.” She gave me a small smile. “Don’t you think?”

“Yes,” I said, sliding into place beside her.

She narrowed her eyes at my nearness.

“I want to be hurt by someone who means it.” I ignored the hum of warning inside me. I tilted my head, offering the long, exposed line of my neck. “I want someone who can see who I am underneath.” I dropped my eyes to the countertop, allowing headiness to wash over me, leaning in to the effects of the pill. “I thought I could live without it, but it’s hardly living, is it?”

There was a long stretch of silence. Then she asked softly, “What kind of pain do you like?”

We locked eyes. She was close enough to touch. The light from the candles flickered over her face.

“Most kinds,” I said. “Whatever puts me in my place.”

“Submissive.”

“But not for money.”

“No. Because you deserve it.” Her eyes tracked over me, and she lifted her hand to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear. That’s when I saw it.

The scar.

A pink, raised mark on the underside of her arm. One horizontal line. One triangle. Four lines connecting them, straight and tall, like pillars.

It was Laurel’s symbol.