Even Better (Stripped 2.50)

He laughs, and I see that I was wrong before. That wasn’t a smile. It was a taunt. A tease. This is a real smile, one with teeth. The sound rolls through me like a coming storm, deep and foreboding.

“I know,” he says gently. “What’s your name?”

“Candace.”

He studies me. “Pretty name.”

His voice is deep with promise, and something else I can’t decipher. All I know is he isn’t really talking about my name. And I know it isn’t quite a compliment. “Thank you.”

“Now come inside, Candace.”

He turns and walks away before I can answer. I can feel the night closing in on me, the sharks in the water waiting to strike. It’s not really a choice. I think the man knows that. He’s counting on it. Whatever is going to happen inside will be bad, and the only thing worse will be what happens outside.

It’s the same thing that kept me in Harmony Hills for so long—fear and twisted gratitude.

I hurry to catch up with him, almost running across the crumbled driveway, under the marquee for the Grand, desperate for the dubious safety of the man who could hold the darkness at bay.

* * *

Harmony Hills is a place of purity, of paleness, and the city is black. Inside the building is something else entirely, an explosion of light and color. The women are beautiful, skin flushed and painted and glistening with glitter. Their bodies are strong—and almost naked.

No man is telling them to cover their bodies.

No man is making them sit down and shut up. Instead the men are looking up to them, practically panting in their eagerness, desperate for a glance or a touch, holding up money for the possibility.

I’m so enraptured by the sight of the stage that I almost lose sight of the man.

He stops in the crowd, and I see the way other men look at him—with apprehension. I see the way they move aside to let him pass. Fear shivers over my skin. The other men are panting after the girls, but not this one. He’s too cold for that, too sure he can have any one of them with a snap of his fingers.

That’s what he does—snaps his fingers, like I’m a stray puppy who’s lost her way.

Maybe that’s what I am to h

im.

I hurry to catch up. I get curious looks from the other patrons, but I ignore them. I’m not sexy and beautiful like the women onstage. I’m still wearing my white shift from Harmony Hills, my hair long and uneven at the bottom. We’re not allowed to cut it.

There’s a stairway to the side of the stage, and I follow him down. A guard of some kind waits at the bottom. His gaze flicks over me, dispassionate, as if evaluating me as a threat. I guess we both know I don’t pose any, because just as quick his gaze returns straight ahead.

The room below is more basement than office, the ornate wooden desk out of place on a concrete floor. He shuts the door.

His footsteps echo as he crosses and sits behind the desk.

“Sit down,” he tells me without even looking at me.

Sixteen years of training, of scripture ensure that I do what I’m told. I perch on the old wobbly chair in front of the desk. This room scares me. It’s suited to interrogation…or torture. If that door can keep the noise out, it can hold my screams inside. No one would hear me over the thud of music anyway. And that guard waiting outside… I know without asking that he wouldn’t let me leave.

I’ve traded one prison for another.

The man pulls out a cell phone and dials. Alarm spikes through me. “Who are you calling?” I demand, my heart beating fast.

“The police,” he says, his eyes meeting mine.

Panic claws at my chest. “No,” I burst out. “Don’t.”

One eyebrow rises. “Don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll give you a lollipop before they send you home.”

“You can’t send me back there.” When I was five years old, I colored on the walls of the chapel. I had to write I am a sinner on my arm twenty times with a steel-tipped feather. You can still see the scar of the last r if I’m in the sunlight. The punishment for running away, for getting dragged back, would be severe.