I nod. “I had a stroke, too.”
“What?!”
I scrub my hand over my eyes. Why the frack am I telling her all this?
She’s looking at me with sadness, but it doesn’t feel like pity.
“I got moved from one place to another. Like a rehab place, to another rehab. When you're moving people who have head injuries, or I guess any kind of injury that's bad enough, sometimes their blood pressure goes up.” I take a swig of wine and force myself to meet her eyes again. This is so personal, it's hard to get it all out, even though the facts are pretty straightforward. “If they get in too much during the transport...strokes can happen.”
Her mouth twists. “That’s awful.”
I shrug, then feel like I’m bragging. Why am I telling her this? “I wasn't awake or anything like that, but sometimes I think I remember it. I just get this feeling... Kind of like dread or...I don't know, doom or something. I think maybe I can remember...almost dying.”
She's chewing again, beef jerky this time, carrying on with her meal like she talks about these things every day. I heave a deep breath. I'm sweating. I feel awkward. Like I shared too much. Because I did share too much. I take another gulp of my wine and wish that I was Nightcrawler from X-Men. I could vanish in a poof.
I'm not looking at her, but I can see her out of the corner of my eye, and she looks calm and unperturbed. Just a girl eating. She says, “That must be weird. And awful. I bet no one can relate. That's an experience hardly anyone has had.”
I nod, and it occurs to me that hers is too.
“I can't picture you as a sex slave.” Oh fuck. Did I just say that? I squeeze my eyes shut. Drop my head into one hand. “Shit. I'm sorry.”
“Uh-uh.” She swallows some of her own wine. “Don't be sorry. You just spilled your stuff, so I think we're being honest now. And while we're being honest, thank you. For today. I noticed that you got between David and me.”
I shrug. “You waited for me to get off the bike before you ran. You grabbed my arm to help me off. Remember?”
She nods. “It was no big deal.” She takes a bite of bread, then says, “And as far as the sex slave thing, I wasn't really a sex slave in the sense most people think. You know, since Jesus was gay. I was just a beard for him, most of the time.” She says it so naturally, I almost miss the flare in her eyes when she says 'most of the time'.
I want to know everything that happened to her, and I want to know right now. But it’s not my story to take. And I’m not drunk enough to go there.
“It was a lucky break,” she says. “I guess. I mean, if there's something lucky about being sold, it would probably be being sold to someone who only wants you for appearances.”
“Like my hand.” I hold up my gun-shot palm and make a bullshit face. “When I think about this, I feel lucky.”
She makes a bullshit face back at me, then sticks out her tongue. “I'm just trying to look at the bright side.”
“Maybe sometimes there isn’t one.”
She looks down at her beef jerky. “Maybe.”
I feel ashamed. I rub the back of my neck and try to move our conversation back on track. “So no one knew? About Jesus?”
She shook her head. “No. He screwed his way through most of the women in Mexico before he 'settled down' with me.”
I close my eyes, because the zing is back. It shoots down my neck and through my bicep, down into my fingers. Damn.
“Are you okay?”
I flip my eyes open and try to lie. “Yeah. For sure. Just tired.”
“We should go to sleep, I guess. Or try to.”
I sit up straighter, ignoring the hell fire blazing down my arm. “Any ideas about when and how to leave without drawing attention from our friends?” I ask her. “I don’t know if I can fix the bike this time.”
She nods. “I have this fuzzy memory of Jesus having a garage somewhere in here. He should have a dirt bike. Possibly even a car. And there’s a garage nearby where he keeps trucks. You know, like transfer trucks, for moving cargo.” She scrunches up her face. “Drugs and guns.”
“Okay. Well good to know.”
“I wouldn’t want to go to the garage because I bet they have that guarded, but if we’re lucky, nobody knows about this place.”
Jesus, there’s that word again. Lucky.
Maybe if I’m lucky, I can dip into the wine cellar and dull some of my pain before the neuralgia takes my ass down to the ground. It’s not something I’d ever do in normal life, but then back in California, it’s okay to spend a day or two flat on my back.