Paradise Burning Page 12

  And bring the police? Was that what she really wanted? Nadya wondered. To be sent home in disgrace to the life she had tried so hard to escape? To poverty. And shameful disgrace.

  Perhaps, as Karim said, there was no way out. Here, she was in the United States. She did not have to slog through the snow to go to work or struggle to light a wood fire in the one-room log building that was the village school. She was eating well; Karim never stinted on groceries. Her clothes, such as they were, were bright and clean. And her room, though not large, was her own. No . . . not quite her own. But she did not have to share it with two sisters and a baby.

  She was living a terrible life, but in many ways it was better than what she had left behind. She wished to be free, but . . . Nadya glanced at the now-fading morning star—Venus, was it not?—and thought that if freedom was not possible, then death would be preferable to returning home.

  She would not go back. Ever.

  Karim frowned as Nadya came up the path from the river. Sometimes she seemed to float, drifting above the last lingering wisps of mist. Other times there was a spring to her step, a renewal of spirit as she returned from the brown jungle river which, so strangely, seemed to give her strength. But this morning her shoulders were slumped, her slippers dragged along the damp path. She was not even bothering to pick up the hem of her caftan. Foolish girl. Again she would be waiting her turn for the washing machine. The washing machine was very popular. The silly creatures even fought over which one would have the privilege of doing his laundry. Karim permitted himself a slight curl of his lips. The women did not jostle each other over who would wash the clothes of Yuri or Misha, or even the Boss from Miami.

  As Nadya climbed the steps to the raised porch, she did not look at him. Her hip came within an inch of his as he continued to lean against his favorite roof support beam. Her pure white caftan swirled around his ankles, but she never turned her head. Or spoke. So be it, Karim thought. Speaking was not necessary. His alligator shoes, his pride and joy, made no sound as he followed her down the hall. It wouldn’t matter if they did. She knew he would follow. Knew there was no escape.

  And when it was over? As it must be, for these things did not last. Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. That’s what Misha said. Hit and run and move on.

  And the little Nadya?

  She would move with them, of course. Why not?

  Nadezhda. Hope. Was there any for the occupants of this cursed house? Or only a long series of dark, endless nights?

  Peter, wondering what the hell he was doing there, sat at a table against the side wall of Max’s Les Girls. He waved away a drift of cigar smoke from the man in a three-piece suit, who was sitting on the padded vinyl bench next to him, while never taking his eyes off the raised platform where four girls, wearing only G-strings, writhed around tall poles as if they couldn’t decide if they were Eve or the snake.

  Dancing, Peter thought sourly, was not the girls’ primary skill. The only other time he had visited this place he’d taken a table at the edge of the stage so he could easily slip a note to his chosen research subject. The action on the low stage had been too close for evaluation. Too many long nimble limbs, smooth rounded cheeks. Pink- and brown-tipped breasts the size of the Guggenheim bounced within inches of his face. The savoir faire of the supposedly blasé internationally renowned journalist and author had slipped, then skidded, almost plunging into the pit of reveling in his new-found role of voyeur. He had hastily written the note about luncheon, wrapped it in a fifty, and chosen the smallest, most delicate of the dancers. Fawn.

  But from his current vantage point near the wall it was easier to maintain his cool. For a sickening moment an even more flagrant example of sex as a commodity flashed before his eyes. Ruthlessly, he shoved aside the phantom cluster of bewildered children. Here he might be able to do some immediate good. Nothing short of the exposé in his book and outrage by the international community could help the parade of childish brown bodies in a far-away land. Peter forced himself to concentrate on the four young women on stage.

  It was plain to see only Fawn could actually dance. The others writhed languorously around their poles or merely strutted about the tiny stage, their boobs shaking in dubious rhythm to the music. Peter’s guts writhed as well. He hadn’t wanted to come, hadn’t a clue what he was going to do now that he was actually here. But Mandy was worried about the girls, and he’d felt trapped into offering to check up on them. Jesus H. Christ, if he was the sentimental type, he never would have lasted all those years while he traveled the world for AKA and then for himself.

  But he’d changed. As Mandy had changed. They’d grown older, mellower. Become . . . not less dedicated, but less obsessive, less driven. More able to see the individual trees instead of just the vast challenge of the forest.

  They’d become more sensitive. Better able to feel the pain of others.

  Shit! Once again, the parade of tiny Thai puppets popped into his mind. Children, lost and alone. About to be sold into sexual slavery. Okay, so somewhere inside him was a heart. And the steel armor around it had more chinks than the one called Mandy. If he wasn’t careful, his hard-won professional detachment was going to crumble into dust.

  He’d even refused to bring Mandy to the club. How unprofessional and downright old-fashioned was that? He’d gone caveman and given her a flat-out No. In the end, after she’d threatened to follow him, and he’d yelled that he didn’t want her anywhere near the men who frequented what he’d called Max’s Maximum Exposure, she’d been struck by the irony and begun to laugh. They’d compromised on Mandy doing a follow-up with Jade, and then they’d go together to track down Delilah.

  “Hi.” The husky voice that interrupted his concentration on the dancers was more tentative than seductive.

  “Delilah!” His thoughts seemed to have conjured her out of thin air. “Are you working here now? Sit down and tell me how you’re doing.”

  Delilah eyed the chair Peter indicated as if it were a snake. “I don’t want Max to think I’m workin’ the room,” she muttered, her head ducking down as she refused to meet Peter’s eyes.

  “Sit,” Peter ordered. “You’re having a drink with a friend. If Max objects, I’ll explain. Now tell me how things are with you,” he said as Delilah pulled back the chair and slid into the seat as if she expected the bouncer to loom over her at any moment.

  “I ain’t workin’ here yet,” Delilah said, perched on the edge of the chair as if for swift flight. “I jes’ come by to watch. See how the girls do it, y’know. Max says he don’t need no one right now and, besides, I can’t work ’til I’m clean.”

  Peter got a good look at Delilah’s headful of tiny braids as she tucked in her chin, ducked her head still lower. “So are you working on it?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” Her voice was nearly lost in the blare of music supporting the gyrations of the bare-bosomed dancers. Reluctantly, Delilah lifted her head, though she still didn’t meet Peter’s eyes. “But it ain’t easy, y’know. When I’m usin’, the johns sort of all look alike. They’re just business, y’know. Don’t matter what they want, what I do. It’s just a little time, a little money, and then I get to do some crack or crystal or coke, and whole damn shit starts all over again.”

  Delilah’s eyes slid to the dancers, then around the room, which was hazy with the smoke the air conditioning couldn’t quite handle. Not a single one of the avid-eyed males, including the bouncer, was watching anything but the platform where a lithe, well-endowed, and arrogantly indifferent Fawn was currently the featured dancer. “But when I’m not usin’,” Delilah continued, the johns are mean and ugly and I feel like a week-old turd, y’know what I mean?”

  “Yeah,” Peter breathed, “I do.” He was glad Delilah had resumed her study of the tabletop because he too couldn’t keep his eyes off Fawn. With one hand on the pole, the fragile young dancer was leaning out over the two men at the front table, bouncing her assets within a foot of their faces. From twenty feet away Pete
r could see the bulge of their eyes, the sheen of sweat on their foreheads. And Peter, the author, had no trouble putting words to the rhythm of what Fawn was thinking as she dipped lower and lower, until the men’s mouths were gaping open, so mesmerized they’d forgotten to reach for their wallets: Take that and that and that, you motherfucking bastards. Get yourselves off and pay up. Haul out Ben or Ulysses and then haul ass, so I can bounce my boobs for the next bunch of you dumb horny shits.

  “She don’t like men much,” Delilah said, as if reading his thoughts. “When I’m not workin’, I can take ‘em or leave ‘em, but Fawn, she jes’ hates. Real bad.”

  The Peter Pennington who had written about nearly every subject on earth, whose opinions were sought for Sunday morning TV talk shows, found himself in limbo. He wanted to give comfort, find some magic to make degradation go away. But whatever salvation was out there, these girls were going to have to do it themselves. Platitudes and sympathy weren’t going to cut it.

  “However low all this is,” Peter said with a nod toward the stage, his voice as harsh as a hanging judge, “it’s a damn sight better than the streets. You stay on the streets, Delilah, you’ll be lucky to see twenty-one. Clean up or drop dead, girl. It’s your choice.”

  Delilah toyed with the drink Peter had ordered for her. “I was watchin’ Dancin’ With the Stars last week,” she said with seeming irrelevance. “They was all so beautiful. The gowns, the way they moved. I can’t do that,” she added simply.

  “You don’t have to,” Peter countered more gently than before. “All you have to do is make love to a pole.”

  Delilah’s head came up, her dejected frown dissolving as her lips quirked up at the corners. Humor brought light to her dark eyes. “Make love to a pole,” she giggled. “Now that’s real funny, y’know. I’ve made love to a lot of poles, but none of ‘em were as long as that one.” She nodded toward the tall metal rod where Fawn was finishing her act with a split which had the effect of causing her G-string to disappear and the eyes of her already gaping audience to pop. “Well, I guess you couldn’t really call it makin’ love,” she qualified softly, her smile fading.

  “Hey,” Peter countered over the lump in his throat, “that pole up there is a hell of lot safer than the other. And real love isn’t likely to come along on one of your ‘dates.’”

  “I know.” Delilah’s fingers were suddenly shaking so hard Peter could see the sloshing of the liquid in her glass.

  He leaned forward, wondering desperately why his gift for words seemed to have deserted him. Writing about prostitution from the roof-top aerie of his cupola at Amber Run was one thing. Dealing with its victims, face to face, was something else again. “Delilah,” he said, “you’re too young to remember that slogan from the seventies: Black is Beautiful—”

  “Not in my neighborhood it ain’t.”

  Peter opened his mouth to challenge her disillusion, then snapped it closed in defeat. Who was he, Mr. White Success himself, to offer up Black is Beautiful in a world that had said, sure, black women could be in the workplace as long as they wore their hair like Oprah and spoke with the cultured accents of James Earl Jones.

  “We having a reunion?” Fawn drawled, cocking a hip close to Peter’s chin. She had thrown on a large man’s shirt—in lavender chambray—that enveloped her all the way down to her knees.

  For which Peter was infinitely grateful. He had not thought himself squeamish about the female figure, but his intimacies had been one-on-one and conducted in private. That he had trouble looking away from Fawn’s exhibition came as a shock. He was appalled. He knew this girl. He even knew she hated men. And why. And yet he’d sat there with his mouth hanging open, listening to Delilah while his dick twitched and threatened to come to life. Now that Fawn was standing there, right next to him, all covered up in that fag shirt, he felt sick. Ashamed. And better able to understand what made prostitution the world’s oldest profession.

  Peter summoned his most impersonal smile. “You looked good up there, Fawn. And, Delilah, you get clean and learn to dance. Next time I come I want to see you up there on the platform, okay?”

  “I’m surely tryin’. You come back in a couple o’ months. I’ll be up there.” But deep in Delilah’s dark eyes Peter caught the message: Hey, don’t bullshit me, man!

  He stood. His professional facade barely holding firm, he slipped a folded fifty dollar bill onto the table in front of each girl. Their time was valuable. A commodity. But now that he knew them better . . .

  As he walked out, Peter felt goosebumps creep up his spine.

  Chapter Nine

  Mandy pushed back her chair and shifted her gaze from the computer to the corner room’s magnificent view. Giant live oaks, alive with birds, squirrels, and air plants, hugged the house as if cradling it against the world. An opening between the tips of the leafy branches offered an unobstructed view of the dark and slow-moving Calusa River, framed in lush jungle greenery.

  Mandy’s lip curled, a sigh huffed out. Here she was in one of the world’s idyllic spots, and all she could feel was guilt. Compared to Fawn, Delilah, and Jade, Amanda Armitage was a pampered princess.

  The girls haunted her, their faces continually popping up, weaving in and out of the succession of trafficking articles she was reading online. Blast it! She’d broken a basic rule of research and gotten too close. Close enough to be singed by emotions she didn’t want to have.

  She’d spent an hour with Jade and, as Peter found with Fawn and Delilah, there was nothing overtly wrong. Except the whole miserable concept of their lives. There was no other way, Jade insisted. No other way her children were ever going to have a better life.

  Depression as dark as the river settled on Mandy’s shoulders. She wanted to shout, “Abort, abort,” as she had to Kira, but it had been too late then, and it seemed to be too late now.

  Nadya. The name echoed in her head, as strongly as if spoken aloud. Nadya. Perhaps it wasn’t too late for her mystery sprite.

  Stupid. Nadya, after a brief vacation fling in the U. S., was likely back in Russia doing whatever she did to make a living.

  Man-dee! Nadya’s voice echoed in my mind.

  “Go away!” Mandy hissed, glaring down at the river that seemed like a black hole ready to swallow her soul. She had enough problems of her own without taking on the ills of the world’s oldest profession or manufacturing problems that simply didn’t exist.

  Face it, Mouse. Your life’s as murky as the river.

  So where did that leave her?

  Peter wanted a reconciliation. Or thought he did. Mandy supposed men had biological clocks too, though they seemed to run on a slower cycle than a woman’s, which raced through a quarter-century of child-bearing years as if it were twenty-five months.

  But what did Amanda Armitage want? How far would her stiff-necked New England pride allow her to bend? And could anything penetrate the scar tissue surrounding her heart? Her work was prized for independent thinking, for original and creative approaches to difficult problems. Yet with Peter she seemed to fall back on the kneejerk reactions of her childhood training. Stiffen your spine, Amanda. Hold up your head. No one is better than a Kingsley. Or an Armitage. AKA is God.

  Cold comfort.

  It was lunch time. Mandy took one last look downriver, trying to penetrate the tangle of oak, pines, palms, palmetto, wax myrtle, elderberry, and gallberry. Trying to catch a glimpse of Nadya, of the house that surely had to be there, somewhere between Amber Run and Calusa Campground.

  Once again, nothing. As if there was no life on the far side of the river except an occasional heron, egret, or a turtle sunning itself on a log.

  Every day before indulging in a half hour with Claire and Baby Bubba, Mandy fixed Peter a simple lunch and carried it up to his third floor office. Though decidedly against her principles, she knew that if she didn’t, he wouldn’t eat at all. But it was humiliatingly wifely, and she gritted her teeth while climbing the stairs.

  At AKA someone
brought her lunch.

  Peter was so absorbed, he never looked up, so the pat on her fanny came out of the blue. Mandy squeaked, glared at the back of Peter’s head, at the broad shoulders hunched suspiciously low over his keyboard. Shaking her head, she escaped to the sunny uncomplicated welcome of the Amber Run Model Center.

  When young Bradley Blue saw Mandy, he chortled and raised his arms in the simple faith of a child who recognizes the adult leaning over him can be counted on to pick him up. Mandy, as always, was enchanted. Not that she hadn’t wrinkled her nose a time or two while watching Claire change her squirming infant, but Mandy was hooked on babies. In spite of the crow she’d have to eat to get one of her own.

  Okay, so the process of making one wasn’t so bad either. Her weak, foolish body tingled at the thought. It would be so easy to give in, give up. And wave goodbye as Peter flitted off to the next bright flower in an infinite garden.

  Damn it! Taking Peter back would go down just about as well as eating an actual crow. Unplucked and raw.

  Was she a stubborn fool? Probably. Her head and her heart were at war, and so far the hard-headed Armitage/Kingsley brain was triumphing over the more malleable emotions of Mandy Mouse.

  She held Bubba up to the rear window of the model’s greatroom, so he could watch the waterfall she hadn’t been able to find the first day she was here. It tumbled from the hot tub on the deck outside into the intricately tiled pool some six feet below. Bubba loved the waterfall. It was always good for gurgles of glee, waving hands, and unexpected surges of motion as he tried to zoom out of Mandy’s arms, through the glass, and into the beckoning bubbly water.

  Because of the danger of flooding, the pool at the Model Center was raised off the ground. Mandy suspected Peter had not built one like it because his land was even lower and closer to the river. But if we raise the pool only a few feet higher than the model’s . . .?