I started to go up to my room.
“Hold up.”
I paused and looked back. “What do you want? Is there some sort of discount for guests who endure more than two nights here or something?”
He smiled and shook his head. “You’re different. Gramps is right.”
“Really? How am I different?”
“You’re clean, and so far, you’ve stayed clean.”
“Excuse me?”
“What the hell are you doing here and still clean?”
“It isn’t easy, considering the shower has water the color of a penny, and the warmest it gets is cold.”
He shrugged, illustrating how low his concern for the residents of the hotel could go. “So why are you slumming?”
“Slumming?” I looked around, pretending to be shocked. “I thought this was the Plaza.”
His laugh was more like someone gasping through clenched teeth and shuddering. “You know, if you need work or want to make more money, I know someone who’d put you at the top of his list. You just kick back ten percent to me. You know, like a manager or something.”
“What sort of work?”
“You know. Work?” He smiled lecherously and turned his upper body like a flirtatious teenage girl. “The work the other girls who live here do.”
“Oh. I see. Well, it’s work to you,” I said dryly, realizing what he meant. “To me, it sounds like digging in the garbage.”
He lost his smile. “I’m just trying to be of some help.”
“Yeah. That was exactly what the hangman used to say.”
“Huh?”
“Thanks. I don’t need work. I’m independently wealthy and here only to complete a major financial deal,” I said, and headed for the rickety stairway again.
The elevator still had an out-of-order sign on it. Actually, it looked as if it had been out of use for as long as the building had stood. Despite my sarcasm and defiance in the lobby, when I entered my hovel of a room, I felt myself sink into an even deeper sense of defeat and depression. The creep downstairs was right. Really, what was I doing there? The only thing that had happened was the creep downstairs offering to become my pimp.
Great accomplishment, Roxy, I told myself. You showed them. You showed them all.
How much longer could I do this? I had the money to stay for another couple of weeks, but where was it getting me?
This time, I had a great deal of trouble falling asleep. The sounds coming from other rooms began to resemble sounds I might hear in a jungle. Someone was obviously in great pain, someone sounded as if she was pleading for mercy, and someone else was coughing so much I was sure he would crack open his chest and drop his lungs on the floor. Later, someone again tried to open my door, and I had to shout, “Get away! I’m calling the police!”
I fell asleep again, but the nightmares were taking on more vividness. In one, I saw the inhabitants of the hotel coming up the stairs, but they were all just skeletons, their hair, no matter what the color had been, now a stringy ash-gray. The following morning, I rose very early and rushed out of the hotel, stopping only to get coffee in a takeout cup. Most of the time, I walked with my head down, bumping into people, crossing streets against the light, and hearing drivers shout curses at me. I felt myself fleeing and didn’t realize how far I had walked until I saw that I was turning on a familiar street not far from my school. I got there just when most of the students were arriving, but I stepped back behind the corner of a newsstand so as not to be seen.
I didn’t know why I had walked up there, but I stood watching the girls and the guys I knew. Just the sight of them laughing and joking around disturbed me. A few days ago, I either ignored or teased and insulted many of them, but suddenly, I was watching them with envy. How nonchalant and carefree they all seemed to me now. For some of the girls, not catching the eye of a boy they had a crush on would be the worst, most dreadful thing of the day. Others would be jealous of another girl’s clothes or jewelry. What they would do on the weekend was their biggest worry. Not one of them would be concerned about how much money she had in her pockets and her purse, and I couldn’t imagine any of them worrying about where they would sleep that night or if it would be safe and clean.
Nevertheless, I wasn’t prepared to tell myself how good I’d had it just a week ago. I refused to admit that. The truth was, I hated this longing and regret that had come over me while watching them. I winced when the bell rang for everyone to go inside to homeroom. I always hated those bells, hated feeling like a trapped mouse reacting to some stimulus, being in my assigned seat, quiet and attentive. I was confident that most of my teachers would look at my empty chair and be relieved that I wasn’t there. Only Mr. Wheeler would be sincerely upset. He would probably be the only one who would go to the dean to ask why I was absent so many days.
What would my parents tell the school? That I was sick? Would they claim that I had run off? Would anyone in the school bother to call them? Why ruin a good thing? they might think. Would the news of my continued absence trickle down to Emmie’s class, would or one or two of the younger brothers or sisters of girls and guys in my class ask her about me? “What happened to your sister? Is she finally in jail or something?”
Poor Emmie, I thought. How confused and upset she must be. What sort of answers had Mama given her to use or to understand? Did Papa just grunt or say something like “Don’t ask about her. Be happy she’s not here”?
Somehow, I had thought it would be a no-brainer, easy to give it all up, even to give up my family, since we were at each other so much and so often. I had craved this independence. I had wanted this freedom.
Stop whining about it, I told myself. You wanted to be out in the real world and on your own, with no one bossing you around. So now you are. You have what you wanted. So shut up. Soldier up!