Page 2 of Torment

I shrugged. “It’s just one drink, and it’s not like I have a job to get to, so who cares?”

It was just one drink, but we both knew I’d want more. Once I drove home, I’d pour myself another glass from the cheap bottle in my fridge, and by four o’clock, I’d be lying on the couch in an apathetic trance, watching crappy daytime television without even registering it.

It didn’t take a trained psychiatrist to explain why I behaved like this. Guilt, melancholy, past trauma, a pressing need to escape reality. Take your pick.

Lauren frowned. “I thought you had an afternoon shift at the hotel.”

“Nope.” I shook my head. “Not working there anymore.”

She knitted her brows. “You quit?”

“Not exactly.” I sipped at my wine, trying to figure out the easiest way to disappoint her by letting her know I’d been fired from yet another job.

“What happened?”

I savored the wine as much as possible, rolling it around my mouth as I thought about last Friday. That afternoon, my manager had given me the exact same pitying look I’d seen on many other people’s faces as he let me go from my maid position at a little boutique hotel in the Quarter. I hated that look.

“I got fired,” I finally said.

Lauren narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

I held up my palms. “It was my fault. But I don’t know if I can explain,” I said.

She leaned forward. “Jolie, if there’s anyone in the world who will understand whatever it is you’re going through, it’s me. Tell me what happened.”

My shoulders slumped downward. She was right. I had to tell her.

“I just…” I paused and stared at the decorated wallpaper behind her head, too ashamed to look her in the eyes. “I don’t know if this happens to you, but it happens to me all the time. I try to be normal. Really, I try so fucking hard. But sometimes everything we grew up with comes rushing back at me. So like, sometimes I’ll see a couple holding hands on the street. Nothing wrong with that, right? But suddenly I’ll basically have a panic attack, thinking about how they’re going to be caught and punished. I’m fine ninety-nine percent of the time, but in those moments it’s like I’m all the way back at New Eden.”

It didn’t matter how rational or logical I tried to be. When these incidents happened, my cult upbringing flooded back in a torrent, full of reprimands regarding the terrible wages of sin. The insidious thoughts would accelerate in my head from that second onward, and no matter how hard I tried to slow them, they’d just get faster and faster, whirling around in a frenzy. My breath would start to come in gasps, my heart would hammer like it belonged to an animal running for its life, and everything would seem to spin around me as a creeping blackness swept in. It made me sick.

Lauren nodded slowly. “The early training tends to insinuate itself, doesn’t it?” she muttered bitterly. “Don’t worry, it happens to me all the time too.”

“Really? But you always seem so… normal.”

She gave me a wry smile. “Trust me, it’s not just you. You know Alison, that friend of mine from class? She’s an exchange student from South Africa. You met her a few months ago.”

“Yeah, I think I remember her.”

“She had some friends come over to visit from Cape Town a couple of weeks ago, and they wanted to do the whole tourist thing here. You know, Bourbon Street and all that jazz. Dancing, drinking, getting beads. So a bunch of us from class had a girls’ night out and took them there. Sorry I didn’t invite you, by the way. It wasn’t really my event.”

I waved my hand, eager to hear the rest of the story. “It’s fine.”

“We were all wandering around there somewhere after midnight. You know how crazy it can get. Drunk people everywhere.”

“Yeah.”

“We saw this drunk guy attacking a woman outside a bar. His girlfriend or something. He was punching and kicking her. Everyone was horrified and tried to step in to stop it. But me?” She shuddered and quickly folded her arms as if she’d just gotten cold. “I just froze. All I could think was, ‘Wow, she must’ve spoken out of turn. She deserves this beating, and she’s lucky she doesn’t get her lips sewn shut’. I stood there thinking that for a full two minutes before realizing what the hell was going on. That in reality, a man beating the shit out of a woman is not fucking okay under any circumstances, and that it was perfectly reasonable that someone might step in and stop the guy. I know that’s true, but for those few minutes, I couldn’t help what happened in my head.”

“That’s it,” I murmured, swirling my wine around in the glass. “You just can’t help it.”

“Exactly.” She snatched my glass away and fixed me with an inquisitive stare. “So what happened at the hotel?”

I sighed. “It was kinda like what you just described. I saw something that would make most normal people react, and instead I just glazed over like it was nothing.”

“Uh-oh.”

“I was supposed to be cleaning this couple’s room. Honeymooners. They forgot to put up a Do Not Disturb sign and they didn’t answer when I knocked, so I let myself in, thinking they weren’t there. But they were there, all right. Going at it on the bed. And I don’t mean tender lovemaking under the sheets. They were stark naked and uncovered, fucking each other’s brains out. It was no wonder they didn’t hear me knock.”

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