Chapter Text
Lacey’s reflection gripped the edges of the metal sink, using it unwillingly to hold her body up. The water she spat in it, murky with cum and bile, lingered before her – trapped by a drain webbed nearly shut with soiled strands of hair and browned pieces of plastic.
The plastic, she understood. The pills sold and shared between the women here, and the skittish men that stalked the alley behind the building, often came wrapped in small, thin plastics and the promise of shifts that stained the memory in mere blots and flashes, like they were only odd and terrible dreams.
But the hair, on the other hand, confounded her, so tangled and grimed, it netted the drain’s mouth like the parted lips of an aged corpse.
And so, her bile remained clogged by it in the sink, slithering in the water, like white ink in thick oil, indistinguishable from the cum.
Music from the lounge above her made its way into the private room – the base low and deep against the bathrooms thin ceiling. It was loud enough for Lacey to know which song was playing. Some nights, when she had it in her, she would even hum along.
Tonight, she stood nearly still before the thin mirror. Her body reflected and mimicked by the glass – but not quite her own.
After her first bad client, when she had first seen herself again, bile shot its way up from deep within her stomach in a violent invasion of her mouth. It had stung as it quickly climbed her throat, greedy in its journey to meet the thick, unventilated air of the bathroom, then the uncleaned metal of the sink.
She hadn’t wanted to throw up in it, she had known the vomit would linger. But the throwing up had taught her to be more appreciative of the bathroom’s size. The second time it had happened, she was more prepared. One quick move and she had been on her knees before the toilet close behind her – the porcelain cracked and the base of its bowl stained yellow by old urine.
Sometimes keeping a client means putting in the extra work.
Lacey knew everything Mariotte had taught her was out of love. She knew she’d been preparing her. Protecting her. Using knowledge and readiness as tools for her safety.
She’d told Lacey to pick a normal name. Actually, she’d told her to pick two; so she’d have a second fake name she could use when asked for her real one.
“They ask because they want to feel like it’s real when they’re with you,” Mariotte had told her. “Calling you something stupid like Candy or Diamond takes them out of the moment. Makes it harder for them to connect with you.”
“I don’t want them to connect with me.”
Lacey knew how she had sounded; like a small and stubborn child, vulnerable and scared.
Mariotte had smiled at her then, like she was a small child, the fine lines around her brown eyes deepening with fondness and care. When she spoke again, her voice came out in a near whisper, though it was filled completely with earnestness and intent.
“Our job isn’t about what we want. It’s about what they need.”
A sigh, quiet and soft, had left Mariotte’s scarred lips. It had been a sigh of knowing. A sigh of experience.
“Some of them will ask you to look them in their eyes during it. They’ll ask you to whisper their name, tell them you love them.”
She had paused, looking past Lacey. Lacey had watched her more closely then, the embers of Mariotte’s cigarette, bright and orange, as they floated past her face and into the darkness of the cool evening air. In the soft crease of her brow, in the far away absentness of her eyes, Lacey could tell only some of Mariotte had still been sitting next to her on the unrailed balcony of her apartment, their feet kicking softly below the concrete. The rest of her was somewhere else, somewhere where past clients waited to be visited and relived.
“We’re not just selling our bodies, Lacey. God, I wish that was all this was,” she’d scoffed, before her eyes had found Lacey’s again. “We’re selling an experience. If you want them to come back to you, you have to be better than just good. You have to be so much more than just pleasure. You have to figure out what they need and become that thing. Whatever that thing is.”
Lacey had known what Slinger needed the moment she saw him. She had known it in the way he’d spoke to her, like her presence had been mere recreation for him. Like he had had something Lacey desperately needed. At the time, both of those things had been true; Lacey had needed the clients.
More than clients, she'd needed money. Experience, too. She’d hated the truth of it no less than she hated speaking to him. No less than she hated being with him.
She released her fingers from the sink and exhaled. The exhalation was a promise to herself, one she had whispered into her vapid mind throughout the duration of every session, this will end.
She knew, at some point, clothes would be reworn, loose cash would be tossed onto the bedside or into the mess of the sheets, and the client, gratified by her services, would eventually leave.
Those were the promises Lacey enjoyed the most, the ones that weren’t quite promises at all, the ones that were more so inevitabilities – true by default. Truth simply in pending.
Promises like that were something she could have when she could not give herself her old anger for her clients or her old hatred for the bathroom’s smell. She wasn’t sure when it happened, but she had grown used to it; sharp and repulsive as it was, it seemed her senses had permanently learnt it, taking away its ability to disturb and disgust her. To make her feel something.
Her hands made their way to her purse, its old leather skin cracked and thin. There was hardly anything in it; a few painkillers, a small razor blade wrapped in tissue, her phone, off, and scarlet red lipstick.
Her fingers squeeze it open then drag the stick across her bottom lip. It leaves tiny clumps she has to pick of when she’s done. She dabs some on her cheeks too, hoping the redness of her lips and cheeks will distract from the redness creeping into the corners of her eyes.
She willed her feet to move below her. Eventually, they listened and Lacey emerged from the bathroom feeling only somewhat physically recovered. The private room her and Slinger occupied was one of the nicer ones at the very end of the brothel’s main hallway. It was slightly more spacious and even had a small wooden coffee table placed in front of the doubled bed.
Slinger sat heavily on its edge, the thin mattress nearly flattened by his weight, his olive-green suit back on and his chin tucked tightly into his neck creating ripples of fat as his short fingers fiddled at his tie.
“You’re leaving?” Lacey asked plainly.
She wanted the session to end, of course she did. But she wanted it to end when it was meant to. When she had earned three hours of pay like she usually did from Slinger.
“Actually, I shouldn’t have come at all!”
Slinger’s loud, wet chuckle erupted from him, then halted abruptly, like the words he spoke were a mistake. He shot up from the bed, his short legs straightening below him with a crack.
Something wasn’t right.
“Uh–Come help me with this.”
Slinger’s sessions were tortuous winding roads. He was a man deeply in love with, and easily impressed by himself. His voice, his words, his opinions – he couldn’t get enough. They poured out of him, haughtily and endless, interrupted only by short rounds of one-sided sex.
Actually, Lacey was reluctant to call it ‘sex.’ What Slinger did to her body didn’t feel quite like sex. She wondered, throughout every session, how his wife put up with it for seven years. They were still together when Slinger had first come in and he’d spoken about her at length during their first session, claiming to love her more than he loved himself. Even then, it had been obvious that wasn’t possible for Slinger, but Lacey had only listened and nodded.
“Her body was just like yours, once upon a time,” he’d said, and her stomach had twisted, “After our daughter was born, well… here I am!”
And then he’d laughed, watching her, waiting for her to laugh too. So, she did.
“Mia!” he called.
Lacey crossed the plain room to Slinger. She had to bend down to adjust his stained tie properly. When she was done, she took a step back.
“Sit.”
She did, the thin metal of the bed frame groaning against her weight.
A brief moment of silence passed between them as a song playing loudly from lounge came to an end before the next one began; it’s steady beat, soft and rhythmic as it filled the dimly lit room.
Slinger stood in front her, his stance wide, his hands clasped together, like he was about to address her with a lecture.
“Mia,” he started, a wide and prideful smile stretched across the lightly wrinkled skin of his small face, “I’ve been good to you, haven’t I?”
Him, too? Lacey thought to herself.
“Better than your other clients, I’m sure!”
He was better than most of them, but only in terms of tips.
His hands unclasped, eager to sprawl out before him and wave themselves around in the way they always did as he spoke, like Lacey wouldn’t understand a single word he was saying without the visual cues to help her feeble mind along.
“How long has it been now? Two… no! Three, now! Three years. I know, after all this time, you might feel… attached to me.”
He weaved his fingers together to symbolise the two them. It was a small thing, a mere gesture, and yet it almost shook something awake in Lacey – something that laid quiet and unfeeling for a long time in her mind.
A deep sigh left Slingers lips, the kind that felt disingenuous; like he was rather enjoying his delivery of his speech and acting distressed was a part of it. He sat down next to her and cupped her cheek with his hand, rubbing it almost too quickly with a sweaty thumb whilst watching his other hand paint abstract concepts into the air before them as he continued to speak.
“Look, Mia. Life is always moving and… and changing. All good things – all of them – they all come to an end.”
When he turned to face Lacey his chipped front teeth were sunken into the thinness of his bottom lip.
“And God knows this was a really good thing,” another gross, wet chuckle rumbled from his chest, “And you always do a really good job.”
Lacey hated him. She hated his rancid breath and his severely misplaced self-importance. She hated every word he spoke, every touch of his that landed on her skin.
There was a layer of protective numbness spread across her mind but she was certain what laid underneath was vicious and vile in her hatred for him, for nearly every one of her clients, old and new. But even if she could peel her numbness back like a film of wet ink, even if she could reach the part of herself that burnt and ached and writhed with rage, what would it give her? What would the point be?
“But the truth of the matter is, Mia: you are getting older.”
His eyes searched her face excitedly for a reaction. For sadness or offense – just something he could revel in being the cause of; a chance to celebrate having power and impact, so she frowned.
“Oh, don’t worry, Mia” he let out another ugly chuckle, spittle landing on her chin. “It’s natural! I’m getting older too! Like I said, life is always moving… and always, always changing.”
He gave her a faint wink, then after a few heavy steps, he yanked the door open, the music from the lounge spilling into the room as he disappeared behind it, then softening again as the door shut with a bang.
That’s five clients Lacey had lost. Gone.