“Hey! Hey Kid!” A girl, who looked to be in her late teens or early twenties, called out to Tequila as she walked past.
Tequila glanced back at the girl who was leaning against the doorway to some seedy bar called the Kat Scratch Fever. The girl was pulling out a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her extremely short and extremely tight shorts. In the dim lighting of the alley, the girl’s bright make-up made her complexion look even paler, almost ghostlike. The girl looked like one of those people who were always being arrested on COPS. Tequila sped up.
“Hey, kid! Stop!” The girl called out again.
When Tequila didn’t heed her words, the girl ran after her, high heels clicking on the pavement. With a curse, the girl stopped, pulled the heels off of her feet, grasped them tightly in her hand, and ran after Tequila in unshod feet. Tequila spared the girl one more look and was surprised to find she was actually fast and had almost caught up. Tequila ran harder but she didn’t run fast enough. The girl grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around.
The girl gasped, sucking air into her burning lungs. “Kid, I told you to stop! Is everyone of your generation so disobedient?”
“What do you want from me?” Tequila asked, fear creeping into her voice.
“To kidnap you.” The girl responded. Tequila’s eyes widened and she thrashed, trying to pull out of the girl’s grip. The girl, laughing, put her other hand on Tequila’s other shoulder and rooted her in her place. “You have as little a sense of humor as your mother. For Christ’s sake, it was a joke. I’m not trying to kidnap you and sell you for ransom you or anything, so get all that out of your brain. This is not a Movie-of-the-Week, OK?”
“Who are you? Why won’t you leave me alone?”
“Aren’t you high-strung? Jesus, you are just like your mother. Colleen never could take a joke or just chill out.”
“How do you know her? And she’s not my mother!”
“Whatever. Point is, I saw you earlier today, remember? I’m Aura. I wouldn’t call myself a friend of Colleen’s, however. I want to know what you’re doing running through downtown LA, by yourself, in the night. It’s not even safe for streetwalkers most times, and believe me, I know.”
“None of your business.”
“Oh yikes.” The girl, Aura, responded sarcastically. “Some little snot kid is giving me lip. I’m so scared.”
“Leave me alone.”
“Would you shut up for one damn minute? I think you’re running away from home and it’s going to get you killed, because not all prostitutes are as nice as I am.”
“You’re a prostitute?”
“Sort of. I’m reformed. I work there now.” Aura nodded her head in the direction of the Kat Scratch Fever bar.
“You’re a stripper?”
“Yup. I’m moving up in the job industry.” Aura said with a grin. “Both literally and figuratively.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind, you’ll understand when you’re older. Anyhow, I have a flat—”
“A what?”
“A flat. An apartment! Haven’t you ever seen Austin Powers or Spiceworld?”
“Sure I have.”
“Good, then let me finish. I have an apartment near here and you can stay there for a bit if you want.”
“Really?”
“Sure. Call it a favor to your mom.”
“She’s not my mom.”
“OK, whatever. Like I care about your petty little problems. So do you want to stay there for the time being or not?”
Tequila cocked her head, thinking it over. She would still be out of her own house with that lying sister of hers, Colleen. She wouldn’t have to wander the streets and she would be able to stay with someone who was definitely much cooler than Colleen.
“Sure, I want to.”
“OK then, come on.” Aura put her high heels back on her feet then headed off, with Tequila following her.
“Wow.” Tequila breathed. She looked around Aura’s apartment and found Aura’s apartment was the lap of luxury.
Aura’s apartment was huge and was fully stocked with a big screen TV, DVD player, VCR, state-of-the-art stereo system, and every other expensive appliance you could think of. Her couch was made of the finest leather. Her bed and chairs were made of the softest and finest fabric Tequila had ever felt. Expensive-looking pictures adorned the walls. Outside of her apartment, Aura’s car was parked: a flashy red convertible.
“You like?” Aura asked with a grin. “Me too.”
“How can you have all of this?” Tequila asked, awed.
“Let me put it this way: very few people make more money than I do. There’s pretty much just Bill Gates, recording and movie stars, and the owners of Wal-Mart.”
“The owners of Wal-Mart?”
“Don’t ask me. They just make a lot of dough for some reason. Anyway, I don’t have Colleen’s number. Tell me what it is and I’ll call her and tell her that you’re here. No, better yet, you call her. I’ve got to go apply a new coat of polish to my nails.”
“I don’t want to call her.”
“Fine, don’t. Like I care. OK, there’s just one rule here.”
“What is it?”
“If you want anything, get it yourself. I’m not you slave or maid or personal cook or babysitter, got that? If you’re hungry, get your ass up and into the kitchen and fix yourself something. If you need a ride somewhere, take a bus or learn to drive. If you get an injury, unless you’re hand is severed and you’re bleeding all over my carpet, fix it yourself. Get it? Got it? Good.”
“So what you’re saying is that I have freedom?”
“H*ll yeah. As long as you don’t break anything, I won’t bring out the manacles.”
Tequila’s mouth dropped open in shock.
“That was a joke. I only bring out the manacles for special occasions.” Aura smiled wickedly. “So you’re Tequila, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Kick ass name. My boss will have a good laugh about that one back at the club.”
“What about school?”
“You still want to go?”
“I like everything except math.”
“Math. Pshaw. What do you want to be?”
“An actress.”
“Oh God, you really are just like Colleen. See here, the only math you really need to be able to do as an actress is to calculate your salary.”
“That what I try to explain to everyone but they don’t by it.”
“Screw them. OK, I’ll be generous. I’ll drive you to school if you want. I’ll be working at the club when your school lets out so you can take the eight bus straight to the club if you want and do your homework there. I’ll tell Ronnie, the bouncer, to let you in.”
“Cool. This is all just so cool.” Tequila announced.
“Whatever. You’ll need bus fare and lunch money, I suppose?”
“Yeah.”
Aura pulled out a thick wad of bills from her bra and peeled off a ten. “Here. Now that all the particulars are done with, I need to relax. Want a smoke?”
“Are you serious?”
Aura shrugged. “I guess it wouldn’t be good for a kid to have one. Oh well.” Aura pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from her pocket. She tapped the box then pulled a cigarette out, lit it, and began to smoke. “Ah, that’s much better. Don’t listen to those idiots who try to tell you that smoking is bad. If it makes you feel good then do it, I say.”
“Is that really a good philosophy?”
“It works for me.”
Tequila looked around at all of the splendor of Aura’s apartment and realized she didn’t really have a response to that. On top of it all, Aura seemed happy and confident and at peace with herself. Even Tequila, at her young age, knew those were things that Colleen didn’t have.
Tequila sat down in one of Aura’s plush chairs and relaxed. She could do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted. She could get used to this.
Alanna unlocked the door to her house and stepped inside. She remove her shoes and shook the dirt off of them into the outside, before closing the front door, walking to the steps and putting her shoes on the right of the second step with the tips of the shoes touching the step in front of them. Alanna put her briefcase down on the living room table, exactly in the middle of the table. Alanna straighten her long skirt, brushing off nonexistent dust.
Like Alanna’s clothes, Alanna’s house was immaculate. There was no dust, dirt or any other type of grime anywhere in the house. Alanna walked into the kitchen, tiding up on the way, straightening a few books on the bookshelf, fixing the antennas on top of her television so that they were at a perfect forty-five degree angle, moving the Kleenex box so that it was in exact alignment with the lamp eight inches away from it. When she entered the kitchen, Alanna flipped the light switch on, then, off, then on, once more. You always had to turn the light on an even number of times, Alanna believed. Even numbers were the key to success. The TV was always turned up to an even volume, your hands were always washed an even number of times, and so on.
Alanna removed her suit jacket and arranged it just so on the hook of the pantry door. She stretched, getting out the kinks in her back and neck. After she was done with that, she turned so she could look at her reflection in the mirror that stood just above the top cabinets. She frowned, obviously not liking what she saw in the mirror, and for an instant looked like she was about to cry. But crying was for the weak. Action was for the strong, and Alanna was definitely strong, so she would, once again, take charge.
“Fat!” She exclaimed, disgusted. “It’s all there is here!” She glared at her arms and legs, not seeing how skeletal they actually were. She noticed, with anger, how her complexion was sallow. “Once again, I must take measures into my own hands.”
Alanna opened the cutlery drawer and pulled out the sharpest knife she could fine. Next she pulled a plastic bowl from a cabinet. Plastic was much easier to wash things out of, Alanna affirmed. Lastly, she pulled out a roll of bandages and paper towels from a cabinet above her head. She arranged them in a neat row along the countertop.
Alanna untucked her shirt from her skirt, then lifted it up to reveal a stomach and chest riddled with pockmarks, so old scars, some recent gashes, barely closed. Alanna picked up the bowl in one hand and held it against her lower abdomen. With the other hand, Alanna picked up the knife. She admired it for a moment, reflecting the light, before stabbing it deeply into her exposed flesh.
Not a cry or shout or any sound whatsoever passed from Alanna’s lips. She wasn’t a masochist or anything of the sort, however. It was just that had seen so much pain in her time as a lawyer: kids growing up in houses knee deep in filth, the tears of people as their family members were dragged of to jail or execution, she had even good as signed the death warrants of kids by being a prosecutor. After all of that, physical pain just didn’t seem to matter.
Alanna carved upward, cutting off a piece of her own flesh and smiling as it dropped into the bowl. She looked at it and saw raw fat. This was a way of removing that fat. After only a few seconds the blood had started to flow and was dropping into the bowl. Scarlet droplets ran down her abdomen. It wasn’t until one splashed against the kitchen’s tiled floor that Alanna reacted. She put the bowl on the counter and grabbed the bandages, which she quickly wrapped tightly around her stomach. She pressed some paper towels against it as well and held them there with one hand as she began to clean the spilled blood. Then, without warning, Alanna fainted.