Houston Noir

Where the Ends Meet by Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton

Acres Homes

The fridge is empty. Nothing but an expired jar of mayonnaise and a half-eaten box of baking soda at the back of the icebox. I have $14.38 in my bank account. I’m praying that a check I wrote for the light bill doesn’t clear for a few more days, and the disconnection notices are stacking up. I haven’t worked in almost a month. Ever since The Dump opened a new location down the highway, the furniture store I drive for has had a hard time keeping up sales. No sales, no need for a deliveryman.

I try to make ends meet by picking up odd jobs. I worked for a bait-and-tackle store for a while. I loved being near the water. It made me feel like I was doing the Lord’s work, like one of the apostles in the New Testament. But eventually, the long commute to Galveston killed me. Some days, I deliver feed for local farms north of here. Other days, I use my box truck to haul books for the Shepard Library. It never pays much, but it’s kept my belly full... until now. I’ve always depended on community referrals for my next job, and I recently got a tip that this new restaurant may be looking for a deliveryman.

I lace up my Adidas. I put on my last clean white tee, though clean may be relative, slide on my black hoodie, and grab my keys. I jump in my truck and say a quick prayer that they’re launching a catering business. Yeah, that would be steady work. I could see myself making big deliveries on Saturdays before the game or Sundays after church. My mom raised me to believe that God would provide for me.

Just off the feeder road of I-45, I see it. A building with boarded-up windows and graffiti gang tags, but the presence of cranes and dumpsters makes me think it may be under renovation. I park in the empty lot. I think this building used to be a Frenchy’s Chicken — the one my mother used to go to on her way to Bush Airport. It still has the weathered yellow-and-teal awning outside and I’m sure it still reeks of stale grease. Next to where I’ve parked, there’s a single black truck near the service entrance. It isn’t big enough to haul nothing — it’s one of those just-high-enough-to-not-drown-when-the-service-roads-flood trucks. To each his own. This is what it’s come to. I say another prayer that He’ll make some money show up, just in time, like he’s done for me so many times before.

I exit my truck and try to find an unlocked door or a welcoming face. I tug on the service entrance — no dice. So I head for the main customer entrance. Before I get there, I hear keys jingle around the corner. I follow the sound to an old Cajun pimp-looking, redboned man trying to open an emergency exit door near the drive-thru. We lock eyes, but before I can say a word, his brown hands turn into a nervous frenzy and he darts for the back of the building. I chase after him, trying to explain that I just want to discuss business. I lose him for a moment, then hear something bang into the industrial dumpster. I slowly approach and look behind it and see the man cowering, his hands up in surrender. I guess the sight of a large blue-black man in a hoodie in the middle of January is still frightening, even at two in the afternoon. He just keeps repeating in a thick accent, “Please don’t hurt me. I’ll get you the money.” I should’ve known then that something wasn’t right, but the rumble of my stomach drowns out any sensible logic.

I explain, “Sir, my name is Jamaal. I live down the street and am looking for some work. I have seven years of driving experience and—”

“Did Daveon send you?” he interrupts.

“Who is Daveon? I just heard you needed a deliveryman.”

“Oh. Uh... sure!” he says. He seems to be gathering his dignity as he stands up, wipes the tears from his eyes, and straightens his dress shirt. “I thought you were someone else. I’m Mr. LeFleur. I’m the owner here. We can go discuss it in my office.”

He grabs his keys from the ground and heads back toward the emergency exit. When we enter the building, there’s this weird smell. It takes me back to the sea, but this time something about the familiar stench is off. It reminds me of the fish spot that went out of business by the old community center on Montgomery. Someone was always getting sick from their food. One too many cases of food poisoning and the city shut them down. It’s a strong, pungent odor that almost knocks me off my feet. I search for the source as I wobble behind the counter, through the empty kitchen, to a small office near the back.

He tells me I can have a seat at his desk and I plop down hard, trying to regain my balance. His office is composed of a large mahogany block with stacks of papers overflowing off every side. He tells me to excuse the mess. He explains that he has a large shipment coming in, and all of this is the paperwork he has to file by the end of the week.

“So what exactly do you specialize in here?” I inquire.

He rolls my question around in his mouth for a second before replying, “We provide an exotic experience for some of the top foreign executives. You know, the Fortune 500 types. We deliver some of the most delicious cuisine for every palette. Ever worked with that type before?”

“No,” I reply. “But I don’t think it’ll be a problem. What’s the pay?”

“We pay by the delivery. Three hundred dollars a load, and we pay out at the end of every week. Would that work for you?”

He must not be able to smell the desperation on me through the other nose hair — singeing aromas in the air. I ask how soon they’re looking for someone, and he tells me that they need someone to start this weekend, when the shipment comes in. It sounds perfect. I’d be able to work a long day and get some extra money before the lights are cut off. With any hope, I might even be able to afford a case of beer. I tell him I’ll take it. He says he’ll see me Saturday around three p.m.

I borrow twenty dollars from my mom to get me through the week. She’s just happy I have a new gig in the works.

Over the next few days, I try to conserve my gas, only venturing out when I need to. I pass the restaurant a few times. There are never any additional vehicles around. There are no signs that the renovation is progressing. With the holiday coming up, maybe they’re on hiatus. As long as they make sure I stay paid, they can look however they want. I wonder if it’ll be enough to get the used Cadillac parked in front of Mr. Johnson’s place over on Bradmar. I bet I could even put rims on it. Something real clean.

Saturday finally arrives, after a night of me barely sleeping because I’m excited about the new job and the easy money. I got a text this morning telling me to drive my truck to the restaurant for pickup. While two men load supplies into my truck, Mr. LeFleur brings me back to his office to fill out some standard paperwork. I wait in the hall while he finishes up a phone conversation. I hear him yelling and the smell of raw cod starts to swell again. Just before I pass out, he pulls me into the room. He explains that I’ll be carrying precious cargo and gives me a slip with an address to take the delivery. He says the package will need to be handled delicately. I’ll have his two men riding with me: one in the cab next to me, and the other in the back with the delivery. He tells me I’ll back the truck to the loading dock at the delivery address and allow the other two guys to unload it. He instructs me to stay in the vehicle so we can get back on the road as soon as possible. “Time is money,” he insists. If that means squeezing in additional deliveries today, I’m down for whatever weird procedure he has in place. I just want to make sure I’m not sharing my three hundred with these other two musclemen. He assures me I’m not.

I head back to my truck. One of the men, who speaks in nothing more than grunts, is already sitting in the passenger seat. He has a large tattoo on his face and answers to the name Slim. He’s anything but slim. His weathered jeans and wifebeater under what seems to be an old-school Members Only jacket look like they’re going to bust out at any second. The other man is much more refined. He has on a navy suit and carries a large metal briefcase. Since he never gives me his name, in my head I just refer to him as Suits. It isn’t until I see Suits that I start to think I might be getting into something illegal. I joke with him that he looks like he’s dressed for a massive drug deal. He laughs. I don’t know if that makes me feel any better.

The drive is only supposed to take an hour, round-trip. The address is off Richmond, near all the great nightclubs and high-end restaurants. Makes sense. I turn on some music on the way there, thinking it’ll help Slim open up. He just grunts, shakes his head in disapproval, and turns it off. I wonder what kind of food could be so important that it needs three grown men to deliver it.

We arrive at a gentlemen’s club about a quarter to five. Following Slim’s directions, I back the truck up into the alley next to the club’s back entrance. Slim gets out of the cab and I roll down my window to enjoy the cool air. This isn’t the kind of place I imagined we were headed. The building has no windows and only two entrances. Muffled music can be heard each time the back door swings open. I hear the back of my truck slide open and a struggle to move the cargo. I wonder if I can step out of the cab and smoke a Black while I wait on them to unload. I reach for the door handle. Slim suddenly appears by my door, reaches through the window, and grabs my arm. He twists it and grunts for me to stay put. He stares me down like he’ll hurt me if I leave. Then I realize he isn’t here for the package — he’s here for me.

I tell him that I don’t plan on running. That seems to put him at ease and he lets me go. Just then, Suits comes up to Slim and says they have a problem. One of the packages is stuck and they can’t get it moved. I offer to help and they both reply with an adamant no. Slim tells me he’ll handle it and urges me to stay in the cab.

Now, I’ve always been one for following the rules. But you get the itch to smoke, it has to be scratched. I slide out of the cab just as soon as Slim is out of sight. I find a little corner where they can’t see me from the back of the truck. The Black & Mild smells of cherry, even through the packaging. It’s been stressful, thinking about how money’s going to work out, not knowing if this new gig would be a good fit or if I’d have to find something else quick. Sometimes you just need to watch something burn in your hands. There’s always been something beautiful about destruction. The ashes gather on my shoes and I feel myself relax.

About halfway through the third smoke donut leaving my lips, I hear what sounds like trouble. There’s a loud ruckus coming from the loading dock. Maybe one of the packages has slipped off the truck. I hear the two fellas in what sounds like an argument. I want to help, but I wasn’t even supposed to be out of the cab. I wait to see if the yelling subsides, but it just grows louder and louder until I have no other option but to intervene.

I round the back of the truck, and I will never forget what I see at that moment. There, tangled between the men’s four arms, is a girl. She can’t be more than thirteen, though you can tell by the red lipstick and heels she was going for much older. Her heavy makeup is smeared and her mascara is pooling around her collarbone. She’s the kind of groggy that only exists at three a.m., after too many drinks, flopping and flailing like a fish fresh out of school. Her legs are a bundle of seaweed knotting in and out of themselves. To my surprise, in her stupor, she shows an amazing amount of strength. I’m impressed with how she’s leveraged her lean elbow into Slim’s throat. Her other arm is wrapped around Suits’s neck. It’s then that I notice Slim and Suits have seen me, but they aren’t angry. They need help.

Suits gestures wildly at the tire of the truck. I look down and see something on the ground behind it, catching the light of the setting sun. I look closer and realize it’s a syringe. Suits’s face is a deepening shade of midnight as he jerks his head at the girl and tries to pry her arm off his airway. He wants me to inject the girl. I can only guess that the syringe holds some sort of sedative. I reach down and grab the stopper. It feels like God’s eyes are on me as the seconds pile high.

Am I this kind of man, willing to shoot up someone’s child with only God-knows-what for a paycheck? My mother crosses my mind. I wonder what she would think if she saw me here. Then I think of my piling bills, the disconnection notices, and the debt-collector phone calls. I see Mr. LeFleur in my mind with a blank check in his hand. I think about the fridge and all of its hollow depression. There isn’t enough time to make the right decision. Is she more important than my hunger? I’ve been a good man up until now. Doesn’t that count for anything?

I know I have to make a choice when I see she’s all but free from Slim’s grasp. I say a quick prayer: God, you know me inside and out. You know that I am always seeking what is good and kind. I believe You will and have already provided for me. See my heart tonight. Amen.

I stab the needle into her thigh. I watch her body jolt and her eyes roll back like the tide. Then her arms go limp and her gill-cheeks sink back down, and she’s asleep.

Slim yells, “What took you so long? Now help us get her back inside.”

I’ve been so busy watching them, I haven’t looked into the back of the truck. There are four more girls, wrapped in net-like twine. They look unconscious, like they don’t even know they’ve been caught. Two of them still in their school uniforms. I help net our escapee and stow her with the others.

The ride back to Acres Homes is mostly silent. I understand now why Slim doesn’t want any music. There’s no soundtrack for this kind of journey. The whooshing of the tires against the road reminds me of the gulf. Slim mentions that’s where the girls are headed: out to sea. We get back to the restaurant about thirty minutes later than scheduled.

Mr. LeFleur comes storming out, demanding to know why we’re late. I stay in the cab, still in shock over what the day’s held. I watch in the side mirror as Slim and Suits get out and try to explain everything to Mr. LeFleur. I see his face changing from infuriated to concerned. He looks over at the cab of the truck. He fumbles some papers around in his hands, scratches his head, and slowly walks over to the passenger door as the guys empty the remaining catch out of the truck.

I notice that some of the girl’s hair attached itself to me as I was helping her back into the truck. I instantly feel dirty. I remember the last time I went fishing with my father and ended the night covered in scales. Too many to count. I don’t know how to wash any of this off.

Mr. LeFleur opens the passenger door and leans in, his arm on the seat. He peers up at me and slides an envelope against the torn pleather. “I’m gonna toss in an extra hundred dollars for all of the trouble tonight. Things like this rarely happen,” he says. “Hey, but for this kind of money, we all have to take some risks.”

I just sit there, still and silent.

He chuckles. “Sometimes things like this just come with the job. I have more merchandise coming in tomorrow. Pays double. I doubt you’ll have another day like this, but I can’t make any promises. Shit happens, you know?”

I look him in his eyes. All the fear he had when I first met him is now gone. He’s much more confident — almost cocky. Like he’s roped me into his net and knows I couldn’t get out if I wanted to.

He pats me on the knee and says, “See you tomorrow?”

I take a deep breath and whisper, “Sure thing, boss.”

Tolerance by Tom Abrahams

Third Ward

There was something about the rain in Houston that seemed to leave a film on everything. The more it rained, the slimier it got. And when it rained a lot, like it had this week, a city built on a swamp tended to flood. That storm named Harvey had shown the world what Houstonians had long known: flooding made the slime break loose, made it impossible to ignore.

It was eleven thirty on a Thursday night.

The bitter aftertaste of Citalopram was caught in my teeth like a paste, so I sucked out the remnants with my tongue and licked my lips. I was up to forty milligrams a day. At least that’s what my hook-up told me it was. It didn’t seem to make a difference. Nothing did.

So I closed my eyes; the drum of thick, cold drops beating rhythmically on the roof of my ’95 Chrysler urged me to sleep. I hadn’t slept in a while.

A knock on the window drew me from the trance. A gray-haired man with a clean shave and a tan trench coat pressed a badge against the glass.

“Hey,” he said, “you the new guy?”

I cracked the window. “Yeah,” I said. “Unless there’s more than one new guy.”

He swiped the rain from the window and motioned past the Chrysler with his head. “The body’s down there. The sergeant’s waiting on us.”

He backed away from the car and I shouldered open the door. It creaked and hitched, but opened wide enough for me to climb out and onto the pavement. I slammed it shut with my hip but didn’t lock it. What was the point?

The detective offered his hand. “I’m Bill Waters. Homicide.”

“John Druitt.”

Waters smiled and led me from the parking lot across Allen Parkway to the aluminum statue of a kneeling figure called Tolerance that overlooked Buffalo Bayou. The milky light that glowed at its base cast an eerily judgmental form, so I looked away and trudged closer to the bayou’s muddy edge.

Waters slowed his pace, digging his heels into the mud for balance. “You were vice before?”

“Yeah. Five years. Handled sex trafficking. Takes its toll.”

Waters chuckled. “So you moved to dead people?”

My foot slid in the grassy mud and I skated a couple of feet down the embankment. “Dead people don’t feel anything,” I said.

Waters shot me a glance with a furrowed brow. His lips curled upward and his nose crinkled like he smelled something rotten. I’d seen that look before. It came from people who thought they had me figured out. He didn’t, even if he thought he did.

As we descended the slope toward the coffee-colored bayou that snaked through Downtown and Buffalo Bayou Park, I used the cuffs of my consignment-shop blazer to wipe the droplets from the swell under my eyes. The rain gave the wool blend a sooty odor that lingered in my nose.

“According the sergeant, she was weighed down,” said Waters, “but all this rain must have shook her loose. The bayou’s up a good couple of feet.”

I ran my fingers through my hair and shook free the water. “Who found her?”

“Jogger.”

“In this weather?”

“Marathon’s coming up in a week,” said Waters. “People are obsessed.”

The closer we got to the bank of the bayou, the louder the rush of water. Above us was a split bridge called Rosemont. The steel-and-concrete spans crossed the water in a V shape and resembled a train trestle more than a pedestrian bridge.

Under the bridge, within the confines of flapping yellow tape tied to a bridge piling and two young pine trees, was a hive of activity. A drenched rat of a man stood shivering off to one side. He had the narrow frame of a runner and the anxious disinterest of a man detained.

Past him, in the sloppy bank of the rising water, was a trio of wetsuit-clad divers. One was bent over, his back heaving as he worked for air. Another was on his knees next to the woman’s body. The third stood watch, as did half a dozen rubbernecking patrol officers. Dead bodies attracted flies.

I stood there for a moment, lost in the rush of the bayou. It was hard not to listen to the gurgle and wash of a swollen bayou and not wonder, in the muddy parts of my mind, if the water would ever stop rising. I’d heard others voice the same fears over bitter coffee and undercooked migas. They’d huddled close to each other, leaning on the chipped laminate of late-night greasy-spoon bar counters. They’d absently stirred their half-and-half and whispered about the rain as if it could hear them, while lightning had flashed and the feeder roads had filled with oily water.

“I called the dive team on the way here,” said Waters, shaking me from my thoughts. “Gets us a head start.”

The woman was on her back. Her dark hair covered her face. She was clothed in a torn pink dress that clung to her body in a way that would have been unflattering on a breathing woman.

Waters planted his hands on his hips and faced me. “So,” he said, “I don’t know if they told you this when you applied for the posting or when they interviewed you, but in homicide, we split the duties. One of us takes the scene, the other takes witnesses. What do you want?”

“Scene.”

Waters pursed his lips. “All right, I’ll talk to the jogger.”

He slopped over to the thin man. A uniformed sergeant wearing a wrinkled vinyl poncho waved me to the body. Angry raindrops slapped the bayou with a growing intensity. I stepped close to the sergeant.

“You the new guy?” he asked.

I knuckled water from the corners of my eyes and nodded. “New to homicide.”

“Crime scene folks are on their way,” he said.

I thanked him and moved past him to the body. Her stomach was bloated under the dress in a way that made her appear pregnant, almost. Her skin was grayish green, and something had nibbled at her bottom lip and hanging tongue.

The skin was loose at her fingers and on her feet. There was the beginning of a scar on her left shoulder — a small, partially healed burn in the shape of an X. There was a two-foot length of orange rope tied around her right ankle. The rope was knotted at one end, torn and frayed at the other.

Her neck was a different color than the rest of her mottled body: varying shades of purple, concentrated in a thick line that ran across her throat.

I pulled a wet notepad from my coat pocket, made some rudimentary notes, and pressed myself to my feet. Waters was standing behind me.

“Not much from the jogger,” he said. “We’ll have to canvas the apartments across the bayou for witnesses or surveillance cameras.”

I wiped my nose with the back of my hand and looked at the dim outline of multistory buildings through the curtain of rain. They stood watch over the bayou. A couple of the windows glowed yellow from the lights inside; rich people living above the muck, warm and comfortable in their castles. They never flooded. They never waded against the current of rising water, holding their lives above their heads in trash bags.

“She’s a hooker,” I told him. “Probably trafficked.”

Waters’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know?”

I pointed to the wound on her shoulder. “That’s a brand. There’s a group that runs a house off of White Chapel. It’s industrial and they have one of the buildings there. Maybe a block east of the Southwest Freeway. There’s a cantina in the front, girls in the back. All of them have those marks on their shoulders. We keep busting them. Doesn’t matter. They find a way.”

Like the bayous.

Waters rolled his eyes. “Lucky SOB.”

A sharp breeze swirled around us, whistling against the frame of the bridge and sending a chill from my neck to my lower back. I shivered and pulled the soaked jacket collar against my neck.

“How so?” I asked.

“You call scene,” he said, “and in five minutes you’ve got good information on who she was, who the perp might be, where we go for leads. It’s almost like you handpicked it.”

Almost.

Waters’s phone chirped against his hip. He wiped the screen with his thumb and answered the call. While he talked, I stepped back to the body and examined the rope at her foot.

The knot was good. It was a bowline, the type of knot that held its shape and didn’t shrink or expand. The other end, the frayed end, was ragged. It probably rubbed back and forth against something sharp until it gave way. The killer couldn’t have anticipated that. The local weatherman hadn’t accounted for three days of nonstop rain, the most since four feet fell in four days during Harvey. That storm was the stain you couldn’t wipe clean.

Waters slid his phone back onto his hip and crouched next to me. “CSU pulled up,” he said. “They’ll start snapping pictures, taking videos. They’ll do all the measuring. You think we need to expand the scene?”

I shook my head. “Nah. She didn’t drown. At least not here. She’s got ligature marks on her neck. She was dumped upstream. The killer didn’t think she’d break loose. We’re not going to find anything here.”

“I agree,” said Waters. “Good call. Once CSU is finished, they’ll call the medical examiner. They’ll send a team to finish up here. Then she’ll go to the morgue.”

“Then we get out of the rain?”

Waters chuckled. “Something like that. Hey,” he said, thumping me on my arm, “since it’s your first case, you get to buy me coffee.”

“Sure,” I said. “Coffee. Beer. Jack. Whatever you want.”

“I like you already, Druitt.”

Delete. My favorite key on the computer is delete. It erases all my mistakes. There should be a delete key in life, something that helps hide from the rest of the world the things you’ve done but regret. Something that masks the errors with your real intent.

I was holding down they key, racing the cursor back to the left side of the screen, when Waters sidled up to my desk. It was three thirty in the morning on Friday.

He toasted me with his cup of coffee, the Styrofoam stained brown at its edges. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said. “You need to go to Lake Charles and gamble, brother. Your luck is ridiculous.”

I’d been to Lake Charles. I’d gambled there. I’d lost.

“What?” I said. “I’m almost finished with the rep—”

“We got somebody who knows our girl. Says she saw her Monday night.”

“I thought we weren’t heading over to White Chapel until after we have cause of death,” I said. “Then going there with a warrant. Don’t want to blow our wad needlessly. Right?”

Waters sat on the edge of my desk and drew a sip of the coffee. He was slurping what had to be his fourth cup. “We didn’t go. She came to us.”

“What’s her story?”

Waters smacked his lips and set the coffee cup on my desk. “Got picked up in a sweep,” he said. “Had a scar on her arm. Mentioned White Chapel to the arresting officer. Buddy of mine downstairs tipped me. I had her moved for a Q-and-A.”

I saved my unfinished report and followed Waters to the elevator. We rode it to the floor where we do interrogations, talk to witnesses, and argue about the designated hitter and instant replay.

The woman was waiting for us in a small room with gray walls and a rectangular two-way mirror. She was rocking back and forth in her chair, one knee bouncing up and down. She was picking at her cuticles with her teeth. She had stringy brown hair that looked wet even though it probably wasn’t. There was a faded tattoo of Betty Boop above her left shoulder blade. On her arm, there was a thick X-shaped scar.

I stood off to the side and let Waters start the conversation. He spun a chair around and straddled it, leaning on the back with his forearms.

“My name’s Bill,” he said. “This is my partner John. I heard your name is Annie. I also heard that you know about a girl who went missing. One of your friends.”

The woman stopped chewing on her finger but kept it in her mouth. Her red-tinged eyes danced back and forth between the two of us, seemingly unable to focus on either. Her pupils were dilated.

“You high?” I asked.

The woman pulled her finger from her mouth and sat on her hands. She curled her lower lip between her teeth and bit down.

Waters gave a disapproving glance. I guess this wasn’t how we were supposed to start. He softened his voice and tried to hold the woman’s gaze. “You’re not going to get in trouble. We really just need your help.”

“It’s Spice, isn’t it?” I asked. I could spot a synthetic marijuana user like nobody’s business. She had the jitters, the paranoia, and the sallow skin color. “You’re using right now. I can see it.”

Waters leaned back from the table and glared at me. He swung his leg over the chair and motioned me into the corner of the room. His jaw was set. His eyes were wide with anger. He spoke through clenched teeth. “What are you doing?” he asked. “We’ve got a lead here and you’re intimidating her. You think she’s gonna talk if she thinks we’re gonna lock her up?”

I looked past Waters at the woman. She ran her fingers through her greasy hair and then picked at a small black gauge in her right earlobe. She swallowed hard and raked her teeth along her bottom lip. She couldn’t sit still.

“Good cop, bad cop,” I said. “Always works.”

Waters raised an eyebrow. “So I’m the good cop?”

“Without a doubt.”

“I don’t think that’s what we’re doing here,” he said.

He shook his head and resumed his one-sided conversation with the woman. He kept offering her useless niceties, promised her some cigarettes or coffee. Maybe a Shipley’s donut or a hot dog from James Coney Island down the street. Whatever she wanted.

“How about another hit, Annie?” I said. “That help?”

She glanced at me, checked with Waters, who was frowning, and then looked back at me. She nodded.

“No problem,” I said. “You just need to help out Bill here. He thinks you might know something about the woman we found in the bayou last night.”

Annie stared at me. Her lips were pursed. She was stuck in pause mode for a moment, fixated on me, and then she nodded again.

Waters pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. He sucked in a deep breath of air and exhaled. “Okay,” he said begrudgingly, “you tell us what we need to know and we’ll see about getting you some of what you need. Deal?”

She nodded once more and Waters pulled his phone from his pocket. He unlocked the screen, tapped it a couple of times, and slid it across the table to Annie.

She glanced at the phone and closed her eyes. “Her name was Mary Ann,” she said. Her voice didn’t match her appearance. It was timid, almost sweetly apprehensive, the product of a life spent at the behest of others. She looked younger when she spoke. “She was new.”

“New to what?” asked Waters.

The girl shrugged. “Everything.”

Waters leaned in, his voice softer, matching hers. “Drugs? Sex?”

“She was from Connecticut,” said the girl. “New London. They brought her last week.”

“Who?”

The girl hesitated. She peered over at me, as if I could give her approval. As if I was the one holding sway over her. She bit on her cuticle, nibbling on the loose skin before working it free of her nailbed.

I nodded.

She looked back at Waters and ran her hand through her hair. “EastEnders,” she mumbled.

“The gang?”

She lowered her head and tugged at the gauge. “Yeah,” she said. “They have places where they keep us.”

“Like White Chapel?” asked Waters.

She nodded.

“How would she get out?” he asked. “I mean, if they put you in these places, they must keep an eye on you. How did you get out?”

She tucked her hair behind her ear. “They keep some tied up. But most of us, they keep us high. You know, they give us stuff. For free. So we stay close.”

“What if you try to run?”

“Nobody does,” she said. “They’d kill us. I’ve seen them kill girls. You know, give ’em too much stuff. OD ’em on purpose.”

“Did Mary Ann try to run?” asked Waters. “How’d you know she was missing?”

Annie glanced at me and then shook her head. She looked back at Waters and her eyes widened. Her head tilted to one side and she shook a finger at me. “I think I know you,” she said. “I’ve seen you.”

Waters swung his attention to me, a quizzical look on his face. He leaned back in the chair and folded his arms. “You know him?”

She wagged her finger again and narrowed her beady little eyes. “It’s the hair,” she said. “And the eyes. I know I’ve seen you. On White Chapel. You’ve been in there. Drinking at the bar.”

She was right. She’d probably seen me. She might have handed me a Jack and Coke. She might have given me more than that. Sex trafficking. Takes its toll.

“Yeah,” I said, unfazed by the accusation. “I’ve been in there. I worked trafficking for five years.”

“Drug trafficking?” Annie asked.

“Human.”

Waters, apparently satisfied with my explanation, shifted in the chair and planted his elbows on the table. “How did you know Mary Ann was missing?” he asked.

“I heard people talking. Nobody had seen her in a couple of days. They’d dropped her off. She got picked up by some dude in a beater. Never came back.”

Waters scratched his chin. “Did she run away?”

Annie shrugged. “I don’t think so. I don’t really know. We worked different spots. I’m Old Spanish Trail. She’s Third Ward.”

“You think you could show us where in Third Ward she worked?” I asked. “What corners?”

Waters nodded his approval. “That’d be great, Annie.”

“You think I could get a bump?” she asked, scratching the Betty Boop above her shoulder blade. “I’m coming down.”

“If I get you the bump,” I said, “you’ll take me there? The spots where the EastEnders drop off the girls?”

Annie checked with Waters. “Sure,” she said. “As long as nobody sees me in a cop car. I don’t want nobody seeing me with cops.”

“Not a problem.”

Waters hopped up from his seat. “Can I talk to you?”

He motioned for me to leave the room and led me into the hallway. Annie just sat there picking at her cuticles.

Waters stood uncomfortably close to me. “Couple of things,” he said under his breath. “I can’t sanction you giving her synthetic pot. I don’t know what kind of crap you got away with in vice, but that’s not what we do here. She’s already a shaky witness. You give her drugs and she’s toast. The DA will never let her testify.”

I stepped back from Waters, gaining some space. “What’s the other thing?”

“Why do you need her to show you where the EastEnders drop the girls? You know these guys, right? Don’t you already know the spots they control?”

He was right. I did know.

I knew where to find the girls, and the boys, run by Barrio Azteca, Sureños, Tango Blast, Mara Salvatrucha, Bloods, and Crips. I knew their turf. I knew their methods. I knew the legit businesses that fronted their operations. I knew their trafficking routes. I knew the EastEnders were rapidly growing, given their backing by a dominant Mexican cartel.

I also knew that no matter how much we learned about all of them, how much actionable intelligence we gained, how many resources or informants we had, we were only scratching the surface. We’d flip on the light, stomp on a cockroach, and fifty more would scramble into the dark corners where we couldn’t get them.

It had only gotten worse since Harvey. Unlike Katrina, which had drained the delta of its undesirables and sent them to Houston, Harvey clogged the city with more homeless than it could handle. Shady contractors descended on the neighborhoods piled high with Sheetrock, subflooring, and kitchen sinks. Instead of rebuilding homes, they’d spend their cash on women and drugs. The gangs, which we’d gotten better at tracking, had scattered. We’d lost our grip on informants. All of them together floated untethered and just out of our grasp. Some days, just when I thought maybe I was making a dent, I realized it was getting harder to leave a scratch.

“It changes,” I told Waters. “And it doesn’t hurt to check it out, given we have somebody who knows the area.”

Waters inhaled. He planted his tongue in his cheek, rolling it around while he seemed to contemplate the idea. “All right,” he said. “You head over there with her. I’m gonna drive by White Chapel. Kill two birds with one stone. We meet back here and hopefully the ME gives us a positive ID. Then we get a warrant and hit the place.”

“Got it,” I said. “I’ll meet you back here by sunup.”

They say it’s always darkest before the dawn. I’ve got no clue who they is, but they’re right. I’m guessing they’ve lived a life like mine, always fighting the glare of the light, seeking the shadowy quiet between midnight and the alarm clock.

I’ve never been one for daylight. It offers too much promise. I learned a long time ago that hope is nothing but a sexy woman behind the glass. You stuff your credit card into the slot, the curtains peel back, and she smiles at you. But you’re not looking at her face. And there’s nothing but the promise of a big bill at the end of the month, with an interest rate you can’t afford. It’s a nasty cycle, the sun coming up every morning. I’d just as soon it stayed sunken low.

It was five fifteen on Friday morning. That’s what the clock on my Chrysler said. I couldn’t be sure it was accurate. Didn’t matter.

The clouds had the streets darker than normal. Third Ward didn’t get the attention nicer parts of town got. Powers that be would never let the streetlights go out in Memorial or River Oaks. Hell, if a blade of grass was too long on Inwood Drive, the mayor himself would show up with a pair of scissors. But in the Tre, as local rappers called it, a dead body wouldn’t catch much glare, let alone a string of busted streetlights. Gentrification or not, Third Ward was still Third Ward.

I had my window cranked down, enjoying the musty air and fine mist that had settled over the city. Annie tugged on her seat belt, trying to get it to click. “Your car is old,” she said, “and I think my belt is broken.”

I turned onto Elgin and headed southeast. “I’ll drive slowly,” I said. “Just focus on where we need to be.”

A shirtless man on a bicycle peddled past us, riding the wrong way. His wheels were warped and he had to work the handlebars to keep from tipping over.

“Turn right up here,” she said. “Near the train.”

I tapped the brake and swung the wheel to turn onto Scott. We were parallel with the light-rail tracks. I started to accelerate, but Annie told me to make a quick right onto Reeves.

“This is one of the spots,” she said. “They like us to stay close to the train.”

I slowed to a stop, flipped the car into park, and listened to the windshield wipers squeak back and forth, barely cleaning the glass of the water that had collected on it. There was nobody here. We were alone.

I undid my seat belt. “You sure? This is the spot?”

Annie shifted in her seat, inching into the space between the seat and the door. She was facing me. “Yeah. One of them.”

She was right. This was one of the spots. Reeves and Scott. Delano and Berry streets. Milby and Tuam.

“When do I get my hit?” she asked.

“You can have it now,” I said. “Check the glove box. I’ve got a couple packets of potpourri in there. Take whatever you want.”

Her eyes lit up and she fumbled for the latch at her knee. She plucked it open and leaned toward the opening. She felt around for the drugs, but she pulled her hand back empty.

I rolled up my window.

“There’s nothing there,” she said.

“Sorry. Check under the seat, maybe I put them there.”

Annie reached down between her legs, bending forward as far as she could. I turned on the radio. It was a static-riddled AM station playing jazz. Herb Geller, I think. His saxophone cried through the blown speakers. It was like the sax was drowning.

Annie started to pull back from her search when I reached across the seat and placed my hand firmly on the back of her neck. She struggled, but my fingers slipped through the greasy tendrils of her mouse-brown hair. I wrapped them tightly and applied pressure, forcing her to stay down, while I used my other hand to manage an orange rope from underneath my seat and around her head. I pulled it tight around her throat and yanked her back toward me, where I could watch her.

Her eyes bulged, looking at me in a way that told me she either finally recognized me from the last time we’d been together, or she recognized that her sad, pathetic life was ending. The pain was almost over.

She kicked against the door, reached behind her head to grab at me with her fingers — the fingers she’d spent much of the night chewing. Annie was stronger than I’d figured. Her legs pushed. Her arms flailed. There was a determination, a desire to live I didn’t expect from a drug-addled hooker forced into the sex trade by bad men who kept her under their violent thumbs. For a split-second, I considered letting go, letting her breathe.

It crossed my mind I could give a couple of hundred from my wallet and put her on a Greyhound toward Oklahoma or Kansas. She could start clean.

Who was I kidding? There was no such thing as clean. So I pulled harder on the rope. I closed my eyes and tugged. I gritted my teeth and tightened my grip.

As I watched the life and color drain from her face, I promised her this was for the best. It was the same thing I’d told Mary Ann four nights earlier. And Liz a week before. And Cathy two months before that. And Jane. I couldn’t remember how long ago I’d helped Jane. Six months? Nine?

Annie’s body shuddered and went limp, her head dropping onto my shoulder as the rattle left her lungs. I sat there for a moment and stroked her forehead. I told her about the things I’d done, the women I’d saved one way or another. I told her she wouldn’t be the last. I couldn’t let her be the last. There were too many to help, too many to set free.

I told her how, in some ways, it had gotten easier with each of the girls. In some ways, it had gotten harder. I told her about how I’d first understood my calling, as Harvey roiled under the doors and walls of my dank first-floor apartment off the South Loop. I was neck-deep before I escaped, ducking under the water, tasting the gasoline and motor oil, the dog crap, and the grass clippings, as I’d swam through an open window and free of my home.

I’d blown the air from my lungs and surfaced next to a flooded Ford F-150. As I’d risen from the water, the distant calls for help, the sounds of sirens, and the whoosh of cars driving the wrong way on the Loop above filled the muggy air.

The lights were out. It had been dark, the sky almost milky from the storm that would not go. And yet, as I’d wiped the water from my eyes and spit it from my mouth, I could see clearly for the first time in a very long time.

The city needed this flood. It needed a cleansing. And after the waters were gone, it would need me.

I found the task itself less daunting, more automatic. It ushered in less anxiety but produced less of an artificial high. Mary Ann’s salvation hadn’t sustained me as long as Liz’s. Liz’s ascension wasn’t as satisfying as Cathy’s.

Somehow, I’d built up a tolerance.

I inched Annie off my shoulder, gently setting her upright in the passenger seat, and reached into my jacket pocket. It was still damp, but the pill bottle inside it was sealed. I uncapped it, shook the last of my Cilatopram into my mouth, and chewed.

On the radio, Geller’s sax screeched through the broken tweeter, sweetly eulogizing the girl next to me. Outside, the clouds grew too heavy and the rain started again.

City of Girls by Leslie Contreras Schwartz

Aldine

Sergeant Dan Correal opened the door and heard the delicious hush, the whir of the air-conditioning, and the dog snoring gently on the couch. He locked up his holster in the safe, put in the Glock 22, which he’d secretly named Lady Lisa, after his wife. Just taking off the holster made his shoulders and neck ache as if he’d lifted weights for hours, like he used to, but he had hardly moved much from the seat of his cruiser for his entire shift.

At the end of his shift, he’d had to make a domestic disturbance call on Bissonnet, and he already felt old and grizzled as he climbed the apartment steps to the third floor. His radio and its perpetual buzz, the sun’s hot-white glare still strong in the fall, gave him a headache that pulsed into his ears.

He’d knocked on the apartment door, which pushed it open. A young woman, Charlie, stood in a transparent black shift dress. She was a regular, both sad and disturbingly attractive to Dan with her shifty, bottomless gaze, full lips, dark eyes. “He’s already gone,” she said, pushing back her hair into a sleepy pile, a mound of soft cleavage peeking through the V in her dress. Dan shifted his eyes quickly to the window, the spoons, the collection of flip-flops and heels that had been kicked off by the door. A pair of brown work boots, the laces undone in long snakes.

She’d met his gaze, made a small, teasing smile. “Oh, he left those, I guess.” She’d sighed and walked to the kitchen. He did his check, his to-do, and left.

Now, without the weight of the pistol and its responsibility, he let himself think about the black lace trimming Charlie’s breasts. She looked just like his daughter’s friend Chickie, and this thought both plagued and haunted Dan every time he saw her on his calls. Chickie’s little doppelgänger, he’d thought as he saw her striding toward him in a spaghetti-strap dress, the weight of her breasts, the curve of her ass.

Dan closed the bathroom door behind him. He hadn’t changed out of his uniform, wanted to feel the cold dangle of his handcuffs a little. Chickie, in Charlie’s black dress, pulling up the thin hem, pulling down her panties. He remembered the massage parlor, as he did during these moments — that hole-in-the-wall where his father took him for his first time. Those red lips, the mix of humiliation and the sheer pleasure of an orgasm with a live girl, the warm flesh beneath his hands, its softness and its salty taste. Chickie and her wet lips.

“Dad, what the fuck?” The door pushed against him abruptly, the knob jamming into his back as he climaxed.

He looked in the mirror and saw his daughter and Chickie, covering her face. “Oh my god.”

He turned quickly, realizing they’d seen enough in the mirror. He shut the door, locked it, pushed his back against it, holding up his pants. Maybe they’d seen only a bit, he reasoned, zipping up and clearing his throat. He heard them rush down the hall to his daughter’s room.

She was old enough to understand her father was a man, he figured. He looked in the mirror and washed his hands. They felt dirty and he washed them a second time, scrubbing under his nails the way his mom had taught him. He stayed in the bathroom until he heard the girls leave. He wasn’t sure what he did during that time, waiting, except stare at his hands. What broke through his shock was the hard sound his wife made coming home, the thud of her purse on the kitchen counter, all the hurried noise she made after entering the front door. Only then did he dry his hands and go to change his clothes.

The sky was about to crack open and release everything held in its dark clouds, but Chickie Rodriguez didn’t care. She kept swimming, ignoring the shade creeping from the clouds, cooling off the water. She’d paid her two dollars — money she’d saved by skipping lunch — and wasn’t going to waste it.

She sank again into the water, held her breath, let it blow a big balloon in her chest, beneath her breasts. A hot-air pump, made of anger.

At home, her mother waited to be fed, bathed, comforted like a child. But Chickie would no longer be the one to do it now. Thinking of her mother’s stench, Chickie held her breath as she spun upside down, feeling her hair cast wet fingers from her head, floating her legs into a perfect V. She held it as long as she could, picturing her mother’s crooked smile that was no longer a smile.

It’s not so bad, she thought as she left the pool in her worn bikini bottom and the anti-drug campaign T-shirt she’d had since second grade. For instance, she could be that lady in the studded bathing suit with her little brats, clearly trapped in a life of watching them grow and shit and scream. Diamond ring glinting as she moved to grab one child or another, to keep them from scratching or biting each other. Golden handcuffs, lady.

Chickie never cried. She didn’t cry at her father’s funeral, and she didn’t cry when the two police officers showed up at their filthy apartment, full of empty vodka bottles and pills, to take her mother away.

One of the officers was a woman who acted overly compassionate and warm, and to Chickie, it seemed feigned and slightly arrogant. This disgusted her. For some reason, it mixed in her mind with the disgust of finding Renee’s dad in the bathroom pleasuring himself the day before.

“It’s going to be okay,” the officer said, patting her shoulder. The condescension made bile gather in Chickie’s throat. The fuck it is.

Chickie walked to the room she shared with her mother and packed up her clothes: a cotton shirt with the logo of a Mexican restaurant they’d loved, a pair of faded, too-loose jeans, a busted bra, an extra pair of underwear that used to be gray. She looked at her mother’s things, especially the ceramic elephant sitting on the windowsill. Chickie had always admired the figurine, which was probably a gift from one of her mother’s boyfriends. It symbolized the precious, hateful, and painfully loving relationship she had with her mother. She would run her fingers over its lines and indentations after putting her mother to sleep beside her. We’ll be okay, she would say to herself during those times. But she didn’t mean it the way the police said it.

They were waiting. She left the elephant on the sill and left the room for the last time.

Farah Peña is always that other woman. She imagines that, on some other planet, she walks around in a nightgown, fresh from a bath, living the life she should’ve lived. That other Farah leans against the brick of her house, exhaling sweet breath, holding a wineglass to her mouth, tasting something foreign and glistening. Her mouth is not a horrid thing — just a mouth. Her breasts and torso held lightly in a gown for sleeping, and just that — a body. She listens to the crickets’ and frogs’ music. She goes back into her own house, disappears behind a thick layer of curtains fat with dreams, with hours and hours stitched inside them. Oh, how that other Farah sleeps.

She hasn’t heard the sound of frogs and crickets in years. It’s annoying and sad — the wrong background noise for a concrete lot with pitiful fists of grass and weeds growing from split cracks. Farah stubs out her cigarette on the bottom of one of the black stilettos — the ones that don’t slide against the spa floor, that give off a solid crunch when she walks in them, like she might be safe in them. She likes the gritty sound they make when she walks, the way they’re too big for her feet and not two or three sizes too small. She took them from Mary’s feet while she slept off the fresh bruises one of the johns had left. It was a repeat guy, a soccer-dad type who spooned his wife at night — the worst kind. Farah’s prepared for the same john now, her little stash lined up neatly at least an hour before he’s expected to show up: the plastic card with the Pizza Hut logo propped against her can of spray lubricant.

Back inside, Justin tells her to put on the bright pink lingerie — the cotton candy one, he calls it — the one most coveted by all the other girls. Farah used to care about such things, and about Justin’s preferences more than anything.

When she first met Justin — her friend Chickie’s cousin — he paid attention to Farah like no one else ever had. Called her twice a day, bringing her flowers, food, jewelry, little notepads, and drawings. Soon he was fingering her in her bedroom with the door half open while her parents walked around the house, oblivious. She didn’t want to do it, but was willing to endure, to keep his attention on her. Wasn’t that what it meant to matter?

Then, he asked her to endure more things — things she didn’t mind at first, until she realized she minded very much and had all along. Things like him touching her beneath her clothes when he dropped her off at school, a favor her parents appreciated, once they warmed up to the idea of their fifteen-year-old dating a nineteen-year-old. She endured him pushing her head into his crotch on the freeway, on the road to her house, in parking lots behind factories and chain stores, before and after dinner. She endured this with him and soon with others, and he promised her dinners, clothes, makeup. Suddenly, no seemed unavailable. No had disappeared. No had been swallowed with semen and the salt from sweat and tears. She was sneaking out at night to meet grown men behind her house, by the bayou. Not because she wanted to — because it was something she had to do to see Justin, to win his favor. She didn’t know how to stop it.

Months later, Farah packed a backpack with all her money — two hundred dollars accrued from a summer job and six months of skipping lunch — and a notebook in which she’d already written one sentence: And now I’m pregnant, and he has met his goal of destroying me. She left her parents’ home — her family, Chickie and her other friends, and the rest of her life — with no plan, only the thought that she couldn’t live this way anymore.

She had gotten as far as Antoine and Frick Road, near the middle school, before Justin caught up to her in his Chevrolet, as if he knew exactly where she’d end up. Without a word, she got into his car. What else could she have done? She had swallowed that no, and that no was now her life.

She’s over that now. She comes and goes like a ghost, the same way she did in her house with her parents before she ever met Justin. Now she sees the new girls come in with hope in their eyes and takes any opportunity to show them how stupid they are, were. Welcome home.

Farah waits for the other girls to finish making their food at the small stove littered with old pots caked with sauces and sticky noodles, surrounded by takeout containers. None of them care to clean, despite the roaches that scurry behind the stove. When Farah first got here, she cleaned all the pots she could, sometimes during her assigned nap times. She’d throw away the containers and scrub the counters hard with a dingy sponge, barely moving the grime and grease. She did this until she learned, truly, where she was. Not just in physical space, but where she was stuck, inside.

Farah imagines herself as the other woman, living the life she was meant to live. At fifteen, Farah is sure she’s already fucked that woman’s husband. She’ll be happy to tell her so, if they ever meet.

Chickie woke up in a strange room. Across from her, a strange girl sighed in her sleep. This could be anywhere, and that girl could be any of the ones Chickie had met — other versions of herself: runaways, caretakers of drunk or high parents, abandoned or otherwise without a family.

Sleep was the only thing that gave Chickie relief. It kept her from hearing the other foster children, the twin toddlers screaming in their cribs. It was the only way to escape the television playing its gaudy reality shows throughout the night, the disembodied voices and music, the sickeningly sweet jingles that frightened her. There were too many sounds, colors, facial expressions, and products to keep track of in that perfect square. It made her believe the world was too overpowering, too complicated, and that she should just give up.

She realized her face was wet, her dark hair damp and matted. She’d dreamed of the past: Farah warming an eyeliner with a match and letting Chickie rim her eyes with the melted black. Riding in Justin’s backseat, sipping whiskey, then watching porn while his parents sat outside the room eating dinner. She’d dreamed of her mother, standing in the kitchen in a white dress, chopping nothing, then crawling toward her with the knife, like a baby.

Chickie lay in bed remembering the days before she’d been taken away, and thinking of all the days since. All the foster homes she’d been shuffled to, and the one she was in currently.

Now that she was awake, she felt greedy for that sleep that had come so easily the night before. The way she’d collapsed into her bed like it was a lake and she was sinking to the very bottom. To stop these thoughts, she threw the cover off her body and sat up. She had to leave. She wasn’t sure where she’d go or what would change, but she had to stop living this way.

She found Justin — and Farah — on the same road where he’d found Farah months before, right next to Shotwell. It was as if he’d planned this all — had seen this coming from the day the girls were born.

Sergeant Correal kicked open the door to the parlor’s back room. It was dark and smoky, but he could see a hall with a row of showers at one end, closed doors at the other. Men were lined up in the shower stalls, looking at the opened door with frantic faces. It was the typical setup Correal had seen in these salons. The men chose a girl and then showered, a sign of the owner’s “protecting” the girls from disease, since the johns refused to wear condoms. Steam from the showers pushed through the crowded entrance, carrying the smell of blood and sex and something putrid, like flood rot and bayou.

Past the stalls was a small kitchen with covered-up windows and a filthy counter stacked with pots, knives, and open food containers. As Correal’s eyes adjusted to the light, the other officers moved in beside him, and he realized there were two girls immediately to his right. They stood behind glass — a display window that revealed their faces and the upper halves of their torsos, one in garden-pink lingerie and the other in a skimpy black slip. Waiting to be chosen.

He thought of buying lunch for his daughters at a fast-food drive-thru a few days before. The window was the same height, with young women standing behind it. He saw his daughters’ faces in their place: his seven-year-old in leggings and a tank top with cartoon characters, his sixteen-year-old in faded jeans and an Astros T-shirt.

Correal looked at the two girls here, both backed against the wall. They didn’t seem afraid. Instead, their faces, masked by long fake lashes that fanned out when they blinked, glittery charcoal eyeliner, dark lipstick, were held frozen in an expression that seemed prepared for the worst. A sort of going-away glaze over their eyes. Correal was familiar with this look.

Later, when they’d been removed from display, one of the girls asked him, “How did you know I was here?”

He’d been about to say something like, Girls, you’re okay now. We’re here to help, or some other nonsense that shrunk beneath the weight of this place and its horror, its revolting smell. Then his gaze rested on her face and he recognized her as the girl who had disappeared from his neighborhood last year. His daughter’s friend. He searched his memory, past images of other such busts — black lace panties, a skirt lifted, flesh on his hands — and found her name: Chickie.

Her broad cheekbones were cut up, one side bruised purple. The lips made full with red lipstick turned hot pink in the neon light from the signs that said, Massage Alegría. The same kind of sign had glowed over him thirty years before, in this same kind of place, where his father took him for this eighteenth birthday. With a deep sinking feeling in his chest, as if some bottom had dropped beneath him, he wondered for the first time how old that woman — that sweet, delicious woman — had been. He looked at Chickie. She couldn’t have been a girl, could she? He shook his head until he realized what he was doing and stopped.

He answered her question with, “I would’ve come sooner if I did.” He knew better than to reach out or move close.

“How long will I be in jail?” the other girl asked. Her eyes were like ponds: no trace of fear or surprise — just a glassy sort of dreaminess, her dilated pupils reflecting the neon. Despite himself, Correal imagined being a customer to this child, taking her into one of the small rooms, and what would happen, however gentle or violent, and how those pond-like eyes would stay the same throughout. I’m a bastard for even thinking about this.

He remembered, now, the last time he saw Chickie. She’d been sitting with his daughter on her bed, laughing, when he opened the bedroom door to tell them to go to sleep. After he’d walked away, he heard them whisper, howl with laughter, and continue murmuring throughout the night. In the morning, he’d watched them from the living room window, looking over the backyard where they jumped on the trampoline. The way they flung themselves into the air had made him ache in his chest, his throat. Their unfiltered joy as their limbs kicked toward the wide sky, their faces in full sun. When will this end for them? he’d thought. Two years? Three? “Take a look at these girls,” he’d said to his wife. He’d watched for several minutes, making sure they didn’t fall.

“We’re here to help you,” he said to these girls now. “Not send you to jail.”

This was Farah, he now recalled, another girl from his daughter’s school. She looked bored and uninterested, with a sly pinch in her upper lip.

Correal stepped aside as the outreach group and social workers approached the girls. Farah bent awkwardly to take off five-inch black heels, then stood barefoot, barely five feet tall. She looked like a girl playing dress-up. The sliver of sarcasm that aroused and terrified him had disappeared.

Chickie was shaking. She turned to one of the social workers who had led them out the back door. “I’m so sorry. Tell Mama I’m sorry.”

Chickie’s mother was dead. She’d been dead for months now, as Justin had informed her when he’d started working here. Chickie made that knowledge available to herself only sometimes. For the most part, her mother existed as a being with whom she couldn’t communicate, who couldn’t hear her. She was there now, walking beside them. Chickie was still caught up in the heroin high and needed this woman to give her mother the message.

But the woman misunderstood. “I’ll help you find her. Come with me.”

Chickie and her dead mother followed the woman to the car, through the loud noises of the men being arrested and shouted at, feet moving quickly, police, and sirens.

For Chickie and Farah, the sounds were muted. The things still alive within them were kept hidden — almost completely covered.

In the backseat of the car, the girls lay their hands next to each other, not touching.

Miles’s Blues by Wanjiku Wa Ngugi

Montrose

It happened one night in Montrose, in the Fielding Café on Fairview Street. There, love found Jennifer — in the form of Miles, named after Davis himself.

Fielding Café was actually a bar that featured new psychedelic rock and blues bands. Jennifer burst through its doors because Lola’s, her usual dive bar, was closed for renovation. Struck by the youthful clientele, she sat on the barstool nearest the band, the only one left. She could have joined the table with an empty seat, but she had never been the social type. With a tequila firmly in hand, she studied her surroundings. In front of her was a small stage with black curtains and a framed pencil drawing of Obama plastered above. That’s what this place was like: amateurish drawings and pictures and paintings. Artists clamoring for walls on which to express themselves. Take, for instance, the silhouette of the woman standing over a grave in a dark forest; or the man standing in front of a burned-down house with the rainbow flag blowing in the wind; or the children standing in front of an old police truck with fists raised high; or the woman, her blond hair cascading in the air, her arms outstretched in front of her. Pent-up emotions splattered on the wall.

As the band did their sound check, Jennifer paid for another drink. The bartender handed her the whiskey sour, and she spotted, above the bar, a picture of Lance Armstrong holding a little girl. Probably his daughter. She remembered sitting on her father’s shoulders during season games. She had often wished, even as a child, that she was someone else. Or that her father would one day show up at her school to watch her perform poetry at the talent shows, even though she never won. Or that her mother would, like her friend’s mother, take her to the park for a picnic. Or that the popular boy in school would spend his time with her instead of making fun of her looks. Wasted youth, she thought. It was one of the reasons she had gone into teaching — to be close to the youth she had missed.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the drums. And that’s when she saw Miles. She held onto her chair and took a sip of her drink, captivated by his long arms and the way they hit the drums as if they had done him wrong. She could tell he was letting go of something. She watched his face as he hit the red drums, how, in those precise moments, something revealed itself.

This love came as a surprise, like most things in Jennifer’s life. Their relationship developed fast that first night. Right there on the corner of Fairview and Grant, in the early hours of the morning, Miles reawakened in her a longing as covetous as the one she first felt at age five, in her family’s two-bedroom bungalow on Crocker Street. This bungalow was a couple of miles from Dunlavy Park, long before it was named for Eyran Chew. Before the bulldozers entered Montrose, eliminating bungalows and cottages with wide porches in order to conform to standards Jennifer’s family and the other residents had no say about, and displacing them.

Her father was a short man with a penchant for politics and cigarettes; he spent most of his free time exchanging opinions at West Alabama Ice House. So much so that, when he came home, he demanded silence to organize his thoughts for the next day. It had been like this since Jennifer was born, so she’d learned from an early age to temper her tantrums so they only emerged when he wasn’t home. One day her father staggered home a couple of hours earlier than usual and caught them by surprise. No one was in their expected positions. Most times, Jennifer’s mother would be preparing his food and Jennifer would be in her bed, practicing her nursery rhymes. This was good because when her father came home, her eardrums were acclimated to her voice and not his. His was always a few notches louder than necessary, so it bounced off the walls, creating a raucous sound.

On this day, however, Jennifer and her six-month-old baby brother sat on their mother’s lap. It was a small house, so his breath that reeked of ethanol and yeast filled all the rooms as he pounced around the space her mother occupied, pointing out her insufficiency. When he pushed her chair backward, Jennifer’s mother had to make a choice. She chose to hold onto the baby because, as she later explained to Jennifer, his skull was not yet fully formed.

Fortunately, except for the bruises in her heart and the shock on her body, Jennifer escaped unhurt. But from then on, she preferred to sit in her room. In that room, she developed the longing, only she did not know what it was she longed for. She carried this yearning everywhere she went. She only ventured outdoors to try to figure it out.

Once, as a child, she walked two miles in her sleep. Then, as a teenager, she walked ten miles away from Montrose in the daytime. Then she traveled twenty-six miles to attend Clear Lake College. Over time, she had come upon three truths about herself. One was that she had developed a distrust for adults. The second was that she harbored undying love for a youth that had passed her by. The third was a realization that the yearning was a part of her.

So she returned and set up house down the street from the Montrose Remembrance Garden on Converse Street, an homage to the neighborhood’s violent past. She often sat outside her one-bedroom apartment surrounded by antique stores, redbrick luxury apartments, and townhomes and watched pub crawlers prowl through. She knew how lucky she was to have secured a place she could afford on her meager teacher’s salary. The longing, however, remained buried inside her, under the membranes of her skin, until the night she saw Miles play his drums.

After the first set, he asked if she wanted a drink, and she declined. He asked if she wanted to buy him one, and she declined. She wanted to walk away, but he kept talking, saying things about her face and her hair and her body. His shirt clung to his torso and his boyish smile lingered. A wisp of hair fell on his forehead, and she had the urge to push it back. He hung onto her every word. When she indicated she wanted to go home, he would not accept it and asked her to stay for their second set.

She asked why they played so late into the night and he asked why not, tilting his head back and laughing. He said it wasn’t like he had a curfew or anything. She laughed uneasily. He told her he liked it when she laughed. He touched her hand as he ordered another shot, and the touch stirred something inside her. His hands were soft, and when his eyes danced on hers, she knew he saw only her. She decided to wait until the band was done.

Later, outside, he put his hand on her waist. She started to protest, but then surprised herself by kissing him.

On that first night together, she sat nervously on the edge of her bed while he sat beside her, his breathing audible, holding her hand. She stood and went to the kitchen for shots. While there, she decided to take a pill. Then, everything fell into place.

After, he played with her braids, which rested on her shoulders and chest and on the bed. He asked her how her face was the same color as her braids and wondered how she kept that much hair in Houston’s heat. He marveled at how she kept her body so youthful. He spoke to her about his dreams. He spoke to her about rules and how he disliked them.

It was uncanny, their meeting. Moments before she saw him at Fielding Café, she had stood still in this house, imagining standing on a wooden chair. Her head tethered closer to the ceiling, contemplating what it would feel like if her feet were suddenly suspended from the chair.

What a difference time makes, she thought. As she lay on her bed, she thought only of Miles — not of her father, not of her students, and not of all the collective moments prior to Miles.

This continued for days and weeks after. Sometimes she stood at the entrance to the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, where she taught ethics and history, watching the kids trickle in, and thought of how good fortune had escaped her most of her life. But now, like a lottery, she had won it back.

She and Miles saw each other during the daytime, but couldn’t let others know about their relationship. Although Miles belonged to her, he lived with another woman. They were cautious. Any attention might delay their plans.

The hours she spent with Miles and the love they had brewed so quickly played and replayed in her head. They relieved the repetitive memories of her father, knocking living and nonliving things out of his way. There were also more recent memories of days spent in Montrose streets and parks, peddling wares.

These memories were stubborn. They sneaked in and transported her to the time before Miles. Sometimes they appeared real in her mind, just as when they’d happened. There was the night she’d sat on her bed, counting her good fortunes, and heard a knock. She slipped on her robe and the knock got louder. A shadowy, tall figure stood at the door. He was not familiar, but his words were clear. A warning. From higher up the supply chain that oversaw the distribution of the pharmaceutical capsules she was given to sell. She tried to close the door. He blocked it with his foot, then pushed it wide open, but made sure to lock it behind him. She ran toward the bed and he followed. He jumped over the bed, narrowly missing her as she made a dash for it. She stumbled, then picked herself up. In the kitchen, she opened the drawer and drew a knife, but he lunged and wrestled it away from her. There was pain. Then the knife plunged too close to her heart, and she became numb as darkness filled the room.

Jennifer had explained to her mother that the attack was because of the cupcakes. Her mother did not believe her, but it was the truth. She’d barely graduated from Lamar High School, but had picked up a few of life’s skills, such as baking, and put them to use. In the morning, she would fluff eggs and mix them with vanilla, flour, and cocoa powder. She kept the mixture waiting in the fridge until she acquired the dried, shredded hemp-leaf powder, the most essential ingredient. It made the cupcakes a hit on Saturday nights by Hyde Park or at Lola’s Depot, the dive on Fairview Street. The distributors lurked around these places, refilling orders and collecting their loot after the peddling. Soon enough, Jennifer graduated to selling their pills. Along the way, she picked up more tricks of the trade, including keeping some of the pills for herself, so she didn’t have to share all the profits.

After her knife wounds healed, she realized she was underqualified for that job and chose the opposite path: enrolling in college. It had been the right choice, because it had changed everything — except the visions.

They were invasive, visiting during the most sacred times. She watched herself step on a chair, next to the rope dangling like a carrot, and saw her feet suspended in the air. She couldn’t have been dangling, really, because she was in her bedroom. With Miles. Between his whispers, she saw herself hanging from the ceiling in various corners of her apartment. She was not present, and Miles felt heavy. His whispers became loud. She moved her head, leaving him to whisper to her arms and then her legs and then her feet, so she could not hear the promises he made her. Not even when he clutched her face between his hands, which were cracked and calloused, probably from too many hours of playing drums. His mouth moved to hers as if in amazement at a new wonder. His breath reeked like Joe’s Crawfish. He moved to her ears.

She could hear his rapid breathing, not in synch with hers. Her tongue refused to form the words in her head, and the fear pressed on her lungs, interrupting her breathing. He was moving fast, as if his life depended on it. Her eyes became blurry and her body could not distinguish who was who. Her mind did, but she could not get them to work together. He pulled her hair ever so gently. The sharp pains sprang from her memory, moving from her head down her body, piercing her insides, and she became paralyzed. When Miles was done, he took a deep breath, rested his hands behind his head, and smiled. Her tears compelled him to pull her in for a hug. This was the part she longed for, actually. His arms wrapped around her faded the memories to the background, sharpened her affection for him. Their breathing finally fell into synch. She held him as he fell asleep. She had to fight to preserve this feeling.

She watched him for thirty minutes, her body folded into the curves of his, because it was almost eight o’clock — time for him to return to the other who loved him. She did not want him to go, but if there was anything she had learned in the world, it was patience and kindness. Patience for the time they would finally exit Montrose together, and kindness for the other woman who cooked for him.

When he was gone, she jumped into the shower and closed her eyes, listening only to the sound of the water. After, she hugged the pillow, searching for his smell. She tried to make new memories that involved moving away from Montrose with Miles, away from judgmental eyes. Life could be filled with an old pickup, rustic furniture, and a slow life, many towns away from Houston.

The months moved fast. The exhaust pipe of her blue Nissan collapsed, eaten up by the rust as the mechanic had explained, and set them back in their aspirations. Miles talked and Jennifer escaped to her memories. The nice ones, about him. She found a way to interrupt her visions of the chair by simply concentrating on the first time she saw him at the club.

She thought about how, in school, he was no different from the others. It was as if, during their nights together, he was transformed from that person in the classroom.

Meanwhile, she was many things to him — his lover, sister, friend, and mother. When he wanted to be careless, she gave him advice. She knew that for things to go well this time, she had to control everything, including his love for her.

Finally, several months later, he insisted on leaving Montrose. He didn’t understand why they couldn’t just drive off and be together. She reminded him that money played a role in their lives. However, this no longer made sense to him. He wanted to know why she was so concerned with her job when he was sacrificing everything for her, including those he loved. He threw a glass at a wall, narrowly missing her, and then he left her apartment, banging the door on his way out and making new promises that did not include her.

The longing that kept her alive began to escape, inviting fear in its place. The vision reappeared, causing spasms that felt like they were pushing her heart out of her body. She clutched her chest and reached for her cell phone. In that moment, she realized that it had been her all along. They could have left anytime. She said this to a voice recording on his phone. Then she waited.

Past midnight, the door unlocked and he fell into her arms. She felt her breathing stabilizing and thought about how close she had come to losing everything. Just like the first time, she cupped his face and kissed him, and her entire body was riddled with a blinding happiness. His hands were not as active as hers, she realized. Then the trembles started. At first, they were small tremors, but they grew as the minutes stretched. She lifted her face from his chest and looked at him. His pupils had disappeared.

Jennifer felt terror. She needed to act, and fast. First to save him, then to save their love.

It was better if he was outside. If they found him in her apartment, there would be too many questions, then repercussions that would foil their plans. She took his cell phone and shoved it into her back pocket, then she kissed his mouth, even as it foamed. She pulled him from the couch and toward the door. With his limp arm over her shoulders, she dragged him by the waist, out into the streets in the dead of night. She did this out of love.

At the street corner, she called for help. She kept her breath steady and enunciated her words correctly. Any mistake she made, such as giving the wrong address, could cost him his life.

She felt an urge to cover his shivering body with her own, or with her jacket or a bedspread from her house. But this could be traced back to her, so instead she left him words filled with love and plans to escape when he got back from the hospital.

As she entered her house, she heard the siren and breathed a sigh of relief. For the rest of the night, she thought only of packing as she waited for him to burst through the door. The hours were not many, but they were long.

They stretched into the morning, into her workplace. One hour into her history lesson, the principal appeared at her door and motioned for her to step outside. Jennifer walked in silence next to the principal, whose usual jovial spirits were missing. Jennifer broke the silence, but the principal assured her the matter was better broached in his office.

Had they found out? she wondered. The familiar longing emerged within her. Inside the office, Jennifer stood still, waiting for the principal to say something. She motioned for Jennifer to take a seat on the couch next to her, opposite the mahogany desk. The principal said Miles’s heart had stopped in the early hours of the morning, and that the doctors had done everything they could.

For a second, Jennifer felt relief, because it meant the principal did not know. Then the reality of what she had heard set in, and her mind went blank. She did not hear the principal offering to tell her students that their classmate had succumbed to a drug overdose, or saying how heartbreaking it must be for Miles’s single mother, who had sacrificed everything to get her son to college.

Jennifer went straight home from school. Just like in her vision, she stealthily stepped onto the chair. She carefully placed the rope, like a necklace. Then she pushed the chair.