Page 10 of Dirty (Chicago Underground 5)
“I know. It’s like an old lady’s name.”
“Kind of old-fashioned.”
“Whatever, it’s stupid. But you know what? It doesn’t matter. Claire was a problem child. Ella is the prostitute that couldn’t. I fail at everything. It doesn’t matter what my name is. I’m nobody.”
I swallowed. I should have seen her hurt. No, I had seen it and ignored it. “You’re somebody, Claire.”
“Don’t call me that. I don’t want to be her anymore. I’m nothing but a pain in your backside. You don’t like me.”
“Sure I do.”
“You didn’t know my name until two seconds ago. You don’t even know me.”
“You like Philip because he makes you feel safe. You figure even if he beats you, he’s strong enough and possessive enough to make sure no one else does. You like nice things, which is why you steal them. It’s simple really, but the psychologist your parents pay for tries to turn it into something about your self-esteem, like maybe if you win a cheerleading trophy, you won’t care anymore. But the truth is, you like power and money and having these things when other girls don’t. You want to be a good girl and have everyone love you for it, except you know you’ll never succeed, so you push them away before they can reject you. You’re scared and you’re sad, but most of all you’re lonely, and you’d rather risk death than be alone.”
Her eyes were wide and luminous, as deep as the sky above us.
“That’s you,” she whispered.
Shit.
“Just tell me why you’re helping me,” she said in a rush. “If this is some sort of new-age training program for escorts or hazing the new girl or something like that.”
I stared at her wide, owlish eyes, incredulous at her thought process. Although maybe it was a relief—for a second there, I’d thought she was uncannily intuitive. “That’s ridiculous. This isn’t a game. I’m trying to help you.”
“I know. I mean, I think so. You have this way of talking and looking at me like you really see me, and I want to believe what you say. But then I think you must do that for everyone, right? Everyone thinks you really like them. They want to believe it’s true. That’s why you’re so good at…”
“Whoring?”
“Sex.”
“Same thing. If you want to believe something that comes out of my mouth, believe this: you’re safe here.”
“Then what was that before? You and Philip. I know you were doing it. Fucking.” She forced the word out. “If you have to have sex with him to keep us safe…to keep me safe, I don’t want that.”
“It was consensual.”
She looked doubtful. “You’re telling me you have paid sex and recreational sex?”
Hmm, when she put it that way, it sounded excessive. In fact, I didn’t understand it myself, how I ended up having sex for money, how I just couldn’t stop. I was trapped in the fun house, the mirrors showing ever more incarnations of me fucking for money, distorted depictions of my depravity. I couldn’t escape. Philip was a sleek tiger, lethal within his cage, and Henri the ringmaster. The only player I didn’t understand was Luke. He wanted to protect me, and he wanted to punish us all, and I wasn’t sure which one would win out. He looked at me with grave sympathy, an experience I both hated and craved, and yet at other times, though he tried to hide it, I felt his bone-deep revulsion.
“Prostitution isn’t black or white. If our goal was just to get off, we could curl up with our hands and be done with it. Sex is about wanting something from the other person, whether it’s affection or intimacy, security or money. I’ll admit I owed Philip something, but I wasn’t coerced. If I had said no and meant it, he would have listened.”
She frowned. “When do you say no and not mean it?”
“We’ll save that lesson for another day, grasshopper.”
Chapter Six
I suspected Philip hadn’t left at all. He could have been at a meeting or at another one of his houses, but given his fascination with Ella, I figured he would stay close. Which meant he was probably in the basement. True to paranoid form, it was a fully decked-out storm shelter, probably designed to withstand a nuclear explosion. Probably filled with the latest gadgetry and every comfort. Though in my mind, the basement was darker and definitely damper, like canal-woven caves in The Phantom of the Opera, and there he dwelled, hiding his face, listening to the sounds from above and feeding off the gaiety.
With a closed-circuit audio feed, most likely.
So we would give him that. It gave me the opportunity to patch things up between Allie and me. I went downstairs to call her from the kitchen.
“Hello?” Her tone was guarded. Clearly she had checked caller ID.
“Hey, sweets. How’s my best girl?”
