Taming Cross

I hear Evan swallow and I look over to find him looking slightly gray. “Are you okay?” I ask. “Should I stop?”

I don’t really understand why he’s acting this way, and maybe it’s not my business anyway. Then suddenly I think get it: It’s the wife thing. He’s probably appalled to hear the details of my ‘affair’. I bite my lip. I can’t really blame him.

I take a deep breath and I can feel his eyes on me.

“Go on.”

I need a minute to collect myself, so I ask him, “Do you know of Jim Gunn? He’s done this more than once. Sold women, I mean.” There was another one: Ginny something, I think. She was a little while before me, and one time Guapo told me she was sold in France. I’m sure there might have been more before her, and some after me as well.

I glance at Evan, and he looks distracted—or maybe upset. I just want to bring things back to Earth a little before I drop anymore sordid details on him, so I ask, “What about Priscilla Heat? Have you ever seen her movies?”

Evan’s brows knit together and his mouth twists, like he’s confused. “Do I know of her?” He shakes his head almost violently, like he’s trying to get a bee out of his hair. Without really looking at me, he rubs a hand over his face. “No, I haven’t seen her movies.”

“Oh. I guess I thought…” I shake my head. “She’s kind of big time.”

He clenches his jaw and moves his head just a little, like he wants to shake it but his neck hurts.

When he says nothing more, I continue hesitantly. “My client didn’t like her, and she didn’t like me. She knew I wasn’t really…in the industry. I think that made her mad. Some women reacted that way when they heard about me. I was a kept girl at a brothel, but I’d never prostituted myself. People used to joke about how I couldn’t satisfy my client. How could I when I didn’t have any experience?”

“How could you?” Evan growls. He looks infuriated, and seeing his face like this makes my throat close off. I swallow hard, feeling stripped. Feeling ugly.

“I-I don’t know how I could.” I shrug, unsure what is making him so mad but taking his anger upon me nonetheless. “I just tried to do the best I could.” A tear spills down my face, and before I know it, I’m up and on my feet, dashing down the hallway to my room. I slam the door and fling my body onto the bed. I feel…humiliated.

I remember a line from The Only Alien on the Planet, one of my favorite books in honors eighth grade English. The main character is lamenting a part of his life that was lost because of some really awful crap he went through. His friend is telling him that he’ll get over what happened, and he says, “Whatever I become. Wherever I go. There will always be—this.”

His friend asks if he can just move past it.

He says, “No.”

I feel that sentiment so strongly right now. I just want to live in a world where I was never Missy King. Unless I can erase my past, I’ll never be happy. I’ll never be free.

All the misery and shame that I’ve been ignoring while I worked at the clinic bubbles up, and I am sobbing in my pillow. Sobbing for my pretty, framed college diploma that I left in my old place in Atlanta. Sobbing for the way my byline looked in the pretty, sleek newspaper fonts: MEREDITH KINSEY, STAFF WRITER. God, I want to see that again. I cry for my aunt and uncle, for my buddies at The Red & Black. Every year there’s a reunion and I’ve never even been. I should have gone. I should have a job, a boyfriend. I should be down here writing about this stuff. I should never be living it. And then I sob harder because somewhere in my heart, I know it’s not my fault. It’s Priscilla’s fault and it’s Jim Gunn’s fault. It’s Guapo’s fault and Jesus’s fault. It’s not my fault. And that makes me a victim.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I watch Merri disappear, then I step into the hallway leading to the laundry room and smash my fist into the stony wall. It’s a stupid idea, but it makes my heart stop pounding so hard, and with the pain buzzing through my head, I’m not seeing red anymore. I walk back to the kitchen sink and run my bleeding, bruised knuckles under cold water while I try to get myself together.

I’m going to go after her, of course. We’re in this together—even if she doesn’t know it yet. And after we get back to the States, I’m going to beat my bastard father to a bloody pulp. I should have done it the last time I saw him, and I hate myself because I didn’t. I guess I was reserving final judgment for when I found ‘Missy’. And the only reason for someone to do that is if they think that maybe—just maybe—it’s the victim’s fault.

I lower my hand to my side, glad to feel it pounding. I deserve it.

I draw the hand back up to my chest and work the fingers. The stinging, aching pain is nothing to the pain I’ve felt before, so it doesn’t bother me that much. I don’t think anything is broken.

I hold out both hands, the battered right one and the useless left one, which hangs limp from my wrist. I look at my hands, and at the opulence of the room around me. I think about the dead man in the laundry room and the dead back at the convent clinic. I think about Merri racing down that hall because she couldn’t stand to face me anymore, and my eyes sting.

I take my time walking down the hall to Merri’s room. I practice some of my meditative breathing and try to send my emotions away for now. This is not about me.

I knock twice with my elbow and when she doesn’t answer, I press my ear to the door. I can hear her sobbing.

Fuck.

I feel like a predator slipping into her dark room, but there’s no way I’m going to stand out in the hall. I see the bump of her form on the bed, a curled-up ball that melds into the shadowed shapes of the pillows. More than anything, I want to lie beside her, but I’m not sure if I should.

“Merri?”

When her sobbing continues, I climb up on the bed and lie on my side, leaving a few inches of space between our bodies. I’m getting near wall-punching frustration levels again when I decide to take the small liberty of putting my hand on her back.

Within seconds, she rocks against me and I have my arm around her.

“That’s right. Here.” I shift her closer to me, so her back’s against my chest. My left arm is wrapped around her mid-section; her soft t-shirt tickling the upper part of my arm, where I still have feeling. Her sobbing doesn’t sound as violent as it did a few moments ago, but she’s still pretty upset.

Moving gently, slowly, I lower my face to the back of her head, nuzzling her hair. When her crying quiets a little, I brush my lips against her head and whisper in her ear. “It’s okay, Merri. It’s okay.”