For a long while, shed only tended to the men at the bar, only slaked that thirst. But there were long hours of thinking how tight the money was, and the joking offers came fast and loose. They were made with a laugh, but there was always the dangle and jangle of coin. Hey Rose, I give you fifty to go upstairs right now. Hey Rose, one hundred. Just scored big-time down in Low-Pub. Hey Rose. Hey Rose. Hey Rose.
There was one night where a hundred and twenty coin was enough. This was the cost. Enough to pierce some membrane within her, some barrier she wouldve sworn could not be crossed; but it had been worn down over months and months of lean times. Worn so thin the right words could make it through.
The offer came from a customer she knew well enough, might have dated if theyd been sitting on the same side of the bar, if theyd been around any other bar, in any other place, at any other time. She wouldve had sex with him for nothing, the way a respectable woman does. Instead, she let him pay. And it wasnt bad. He cared. Asked her if that felt okay. Did all the work. Didnt hit her or spank her or ask if he could choke her a little. Pulled out and even cleaned her up with his shirt. She wouldve done it for free. Nearly told him so as he left stacks of coin on her dresser. Fragile, wobbly things, all that coin. Like the tall scrapers to the east.
And then he went back to the bar, and Rose sat and stared at the towers of coin on that dresser her husband had left her, and it was a different woman who walked out that door. She would survive, she realized. But it would be a different her. It would be someone else who did the surviving, who would drag memories of a former self along, a tiny echo of a woman somewhere deep in her skull, a small voice of who she used to be.
When Palmer had come asking for a little help the next day, it had felt different. He was fourteen back then, and Rose thought he could see. She thought he knew. She sure as hell did, and the same ten coin that he asked for and always got suddenly weighed the same as ten thousand. Palmer pocketed it too easily. Like it was the same coin. But itd been too hard won for that. Not to slide away so easy. Not to just disappear. And here was when the gulf with her children opened. It opened not the day her legs had, but the day her palms did. It was the only way, she told herself. There was no other. She would earn her keep the only way she could. And the cost of dispensing that keep could only grow.
It was inevitable that her children would find out. Men dont just talk, they brag. They brag about rented love, even. And children hear everything. They are echo chambers. And they take what they
learn from their parents off to school more readily than they haul anything of merit home. A fathers boast becomes a way to torment a peer. And so the boys heard about her new line of work from the worst source possible.
No, not quite. Vic had heard about it from someone even worse than the boys. A client. A young man who made a flippant comparison, who thought it might be taken as a compliment, who had said in the heat of passion that the daughter was more expert than the mother.
Vic had already stopped coming around the Honey Hole, wouldnt even approach the place. And after this, she wouldnt agree to see Rose anywhere. Not for three long years. And so her children began to wither like the roof gardens did when showers and beer water took precedence. They began to die to her and she to them. Even as the small voice she carried deep within her soul relented now and then and dispensed with hard-fought coin. Even though some part of her left her pillow wet in the morning as it leaked out in quiet sobs. Leaked out, but never emptied.
All this and more, her husband had taken the day hed run off. All this and more he had stolen. But she would survive. Rose told herself this as she studied the column of numbers where more was subtracted than added. There was a knock at the door. She checked her watch. It was her six oclock.
Oh yes, she would survive.
38 No Place for a Girl
Head left here, Conner told his brother. There was a doctor on the edge of Springston that sometimes took people in from Shantytown. He might help them. He might be trusted if he found out where the girl came from.
Where the girl came from. Conner chanced a look over his shoulder. She could be sleeping or dead. She could be someone who wandered into No Mans Land with her family and turned back after two days of hiking. But she had spoken his name. Had mentioned his father. If she died, would anyone believe their account of things? Or would he become Old Man Joseph, standing at the intersection of the great dunes, holding a sign, screaming to frightened kids about No Mans Land?
These were the thoughts swirling in his mind long before the sun came up. Conner couldnt stop thinking of all the girl might know, might say, if she survived. Their father might still be alive. Twelve years of camping on the edge of No Mans Land, twelve years of listening to the wind moan across the Bulls gash, twelve years of Shantytown, of their mother selling herself, and their father might still be out there.