Page 109 of If Looks Could Kill
He chuckles. “If you say so.”
“And the wrath,” adds Pearl, “of all the girls and women beaten, abused, and violated under your roof, with your consent.”
“Wrath?” he muses. “The females you refer to don’t generally seem too frightening.”
“Wait and see.”
Pearl feels her snakes grow restless, itching to be unleashed.
“I am a businessman,” he says. “A man of property looks for the best price he can get.”
“Greed,” says she. “Does your priest agree that profit is more important than principle?”
He places one hand atop the other. “Even unfortunate girls need a place to sleep.”
“They deserve to sleep in their own homes, in their own beds, with family close by.”
For a moment, the mask slips. “I am a busy man,” he says. “What is it you want?”
Pearl’s heart sinks. None of her arrows has dented his armor. Instead, she has unlocked his memory of both their names. So much for hunting. She is the one who walked into a trap. All she has left is white-hot fury. All she knows is that she hates this cologne-scented man.
So she tells him what she thinks. “You are a despicable human being.”
“Am I?” He shakes his head sadly. “You may despise me, Miss Pearl, but I admire you. It’s not often you find someone with passionate convictions such as yours. I congratulate you.”
She scowls at him. “I don’t want your congratulations.”
“And because I admire you, I’ll do you a greater kindness than you would ever do me.”
“By giving up this polluted business of yours?”
“By not going upstairs right now,” he says, “and telling Rose, who is there ordering her movers about, that you are here.”
Pearl watches him through narrowed eyes. Upstairs, even now.
“She will pay a handsome price to anyone who helps secure you for her.”
“Secureme?”
“Recruit you, naturally,” he said. “She intends to take her revenge upon you in the most lucrative way possible.”
Pearl closes her eyes as a memory crashes over her.
“Which would be a shame,” he says. “Say what you will of me, but I do hate to see nice girls like you fall victim to such a fate.”
She grips the table edge till her knuckles whiten. “What about the girls who’ve been up there all this time?”
He leans across the table, closer to Pearl. “They’re mostly Jewish,” he whispers conspiratorially. “Rose, the girls, the pimps, the clients.” He spreads his hands wide. “I wouldn’t rent the space to someone keeping all Christian girls up there. But what Jews do to their own kind is scarcely my affair.”
Something explodes inside Pearl then. The sight of Freyda, crouched on the floor upstairs, bruised and crying, fills her vision. A memory of a barn and a bale of straw. The weight, pressing down upon her, of an entire city filled with girls whose assaults are scheduled, negotiated, bartered. Where the girl must, herself, cooperate in soliciting her own violators, dancing in trainside windows, or be beaten. Be beaten regardless. Burn out life’s brief candle and too quickly die when her health and sanity can’t endure the pain.
Pearl boils in the heat of it. Writhes and stretches and unhinges to plant herself firmly, to brace herself for all the hurt. She wants all of it, so her rage can be fully justified.
A city. A nation. A world of men who have no problem with this state of affairs. Who find it convenient and preferable. A world of women who feel they have no better option.
Johnny Leone shifts back in his seat, satisfied. “So you see,” he says, “things are rarely as simple as they seem at first glance.” He gives her a complacent smile. “Not even me.”
She rises from her seat and bends herself close to a baffled Johnny Leone, till he seems to think she plans to kiss him, till he has no choice but to gaze into her roiling eyes and to watch her golden curls slide into serpentine life.
