Page 27 of Rage & Paradise
“Long dark hair, green eyes.”
“Oh, the one with the fat ass. Yeah. I tried to get a piece of that. She wasn’t having it.” The man jokes, and it takes everything in me not to reach forward and rip his fucking face off.
I don’t want to cause any extra trouble for Estrella in this place. In fact, I don’t want her in this place at all.
My emotions are a swirl of confusion. This is what I should want for her. I should want her to be in the gutter, to be on the bottom of the bottom. Yet all I can think about is what I can do to get her out of here.
“Yeah, her. Where is she?” I shove my hand in my pocket and wait for the drunkard to give me the information that I need.
“That one. Careful, the other girls in there aren’t very nice either.”
Shit.
I walk through what seems like a large room. It has been sliced into four. Three so-called apartments and one main space that includes the kitchen and bathroom. Seems like all three of these apartments share one bathroom.
I knock on the door the man told me Estrella would be in.
“Who the hell is knocking on the door so fucking early?” I hear someone say, but the voice is rough, like they’ve spent decades smoking. Definitely not Estrella.
It swings open and a young woman with sores on her face and arms stands in front of me. “We paid the rent this week.”
“I’m not here for rent. I’m here for Estrella.”
“Estrella? Are you going to pay her share? She’s three weeks late now.”
“Three weeks late? For rent?” I ask.
“Yup, we’ve been covering for her, but I’m about ready to sell her clothes and put her ass on the street naked.”
“Leelee, I told you I’d get you all the money by the end of the week. I just got a job.” I hear Estrella say from inside the room. I’m curious to figure out what the inside of this space looks like. I gently move this Leelee woman to the side so I can look in the space. It’s the size of a large bedroom with sheets dividing it into three. Each of the three girls is set up by a window. I’m surprised to see that she doesn’t have a legit bed but instead what looks to be one of those portable cots used in hurricane tents after a bad storm. Her stuff is still packed in two duffel bags and there’s a small shower caddy with her personal items on the window sill. This is how she’s living.
“Oro? Give me a second. I’ll come out.” She slides her feet into a pair of slippers and hurries to meet me out in the main room.
I stop the door from closing, looking to the Leelee woman. “How much does she owe you in rent?”
“Two hundred and forty dollars.”
My eyes open wide. That’s fucking highway robbery. She pays eighty dollars a week for a cot in a corner.
I don’t question the woman. Instead, I reach into my pocket, pull out my wallet, and peel off four hundred dollars. “That’ll cover what she owes and the next two weeks.”
“Oro, no.” Estrella hisses at me.
“Hush.”
Leelee doesn’t hesitate. She snatches the money from my hands and goes back to her space.
Estrella storms out of the small room and shuts the door closed behind her. “You didn’t have to do that. Coca said I’d get paid at the end of the week. I’d be able to cover what I owed.”
“Now you don’t have to worry about that. It’s not that big a deal.” I shrug.
“It is a big deal. You’ve made it very clear how you feel about me. I don’t want to have to owe you anything.”
“You don’t owe me anything. I’d do the same for someone on the street. It’s my attempt at good karma. It’s got nothing to do with you.”
She puffs a breath out of her nose. I can tell she wants to argue more but doesn’t.
“What are you doing here anyway? Did something else happen?”
