W Brazil had helped himself to a booth and picked up a greasy plastic-laminated menu, handwritten, prices reasonable. He was aware of people staring at him in a manner that was about as unfriendly as he had ever seen. He smiled back, as if this were Aunt Sarah’s Pancake House, giving them an eat me attitude that made all think twice.
Brazil refused to be deterred from his mission. His pager went off for all to hear, and he grabbed it as if it had bitten him. He recognized the number, and was surprised. Brazil looked around, deciding that the venue probably wasn’t the best for whipping out his reporter’s portable phone and calling the mayor’s office.
He was getting up to leave, and changed his mind when the door opened, the bell over it ringing. The young hooker walked in, and Brazil’s pulse picked up. He wasn’t sure why he was so fascinated, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her, and felt compassion that was equaled by fear. She wore jeans cut off high, sandals with tire tread soles, and a Grateful Dead T-shirt with sleeves torn off. Her naked breasts moved in rhythm as she walked. She took the next booth over, facing him, eyes bold on his as she flipped dirty blond hair out of the way.
Remus brought her coffee before she could even pick up the menu. She studied plastic-covered writing with difficulty, the words tangling like fishing line on the shore of Lake Algae, as the rich folks in Davidson called the pond at Griffith and Main Streets, where her daddy had taken her fishing a few times. This was before she got older and Mom was working in housekeeping at the Best Western.
Daddy was a truck driver for Southeastern, and kept erratic hours. Mom wasn’t always home when her husband rolled in from a long trip.
In the mind of Cravon Jones, his three daughters belonged to him, and how he chose to express affection was his business and his right.
There was no question he was partial to Addie, who was named after his wife’s mother, who he hated. Addie was blond and pretty from the day she was born, a special child who loved to cuddle with her daddy, and with whom her mother did not bond or get along. Mrs. Jones was tired of coming home to a drunk, disgusting, stinking man, who slapped her around, shoved, and on one occasion broke her nose and jaw. The daughters, understandably, were drawn to him out of fear.
Addie reached her eleventh year, and Daddy crawled in bed with her one night. He smelled like sour sweat and booze as he pressed his hard thing against her, and then drove it in while blood soaked sheets and her silent tears flowed. Addie’s sisters were in the same room and heard all of it. No one spoke of the event or acknowledged that it was real, and Mrs. Jones remained selectively ignorant. But she knew damn well, and Addie could tell by her mother’s eyes, increased drinking, and growing indifference toward Addie. This went on until Addie turned fourteen and ran away one night while Mrs. Jones was working and Daddy was on the road somewhere. Addie got as far as Winston-Salem, where she met the first man who ever took care of her.
There had been many since, giving her cain and crack, cigarettes, fried chicken, whatever she wanted. She was twenty-three when she stumbled off the Greyhound in Charlotte some months back. Addie didn’t remember it much, seemed like last she recalled she was in Atlanta, getting high with some rich dude who drove a Lexus and paid an extra twenty dollars to urinate in her face. She could take anything as long as she wasn’t present, and the only turnstile to that painless place was drugs. Sea, her last and final man, beat her with a coathanger because she had cramps and couldn’t make any money one night. She ran off for the countless time in her life, headed to Charlotte because she knew where it was, and it was all she could afford after grabbing some old lady’s purse.