“Yeah, I understand now,” Molly said.
Really?
“Maybe Alec and Grayson’s company won’t go under like you so gleefully expect,” she said, “and you can keep your job with them for a long time.”
“And continue to be the airport whore.”
“It’s a dirty job but somebody’s got to do it.”
We’d reached the beginning of the motels. Because we were still on the flophouse end of Heaven Beach, the signs out front boasted ridiculously low room rates, and the pools were small and stained and green.
I said, “Tell me the rest of your story, which is not nearly as interesting as my story. You finally connected with a guy at the café, and he had to go to bed. Aw.”
“Aw.” She poked out her bottom lip sympathetically.
“Will you see him again?”
She took in a slow breath and exhaled before she spoke, as if considering her answer. Which was not like her. “I think he’s going to be really busy this week.”
“But you were all excited about him a few minutes ago. You drove over to my mansion at eleven o’clock at night to tell me about him.” As I uttered the words, I realized they probably weren’t true. Maybe the boy didn’t even exist. Molly always had an excuse like this—she had to see me so she could tell me about a cute boy, or a dorky thing her mom had done, or something she’d seen on TV—but a lot of times when she came over, she was really checking on me, or getting me out of the trailer for a little while. Or casually driving me back to the café and feeding me, as if I didn’t know what was going on. I played along.
“I was excited about him,” she said, “but he seems awfully vanilla next to your whore story.”
“He does. Let’s trade places.” Now I was the one speaking before I thought. I sounded ungrateful and jealous and bitter. Which I was, but nobody wanted to hear that. I opened my mouth, thinking hard, forming a genuine apology.
She opened the console between us, brought out a white paper bag, and set it in my lap. “Warm chocolate croissant.”
“Oh!” My cry of ecstasy at a pastry was so heartfelt and genuine that I burst into laughter.
She glanced over at me with her eyebrows raised like she was worried about my sanity.
“Shut up.” I tore off a big bite of flaky croissant filled with gooey chocolate sauce and stuffed it into her mouth, purposefully smearing it across her cheek. “Mmph,” was all she said. Her mouth was full, and her dad’s chocolate croissants were that good.
And we were right to silence each other with food. It was better that we never apologized to each other. Then we’d be admitting that we were wrong and we owed each other something. That’s where people got into trouble.
“Look, genuine whores.” She nodded out the window at a couple of teenage girls crossing the street in front of us, both with bad blond dye jobs, both in ill-fitting, low-cut T-shirt dresses exposing the real or fake tattoos on their chests. One girl wore cheap heels and one was barefoot.
“How do you end up like that?” Molly asked me, not the whores.
I didn’t know whether they were really whores. There were plenty of whores on this end of town. But there were also lots of trailer park girls from farther inland, vacationing at the beach. Those girls and the whores looked about the same. Peering at these specimens, I decided they were tourists because they seemed happy.
As Molly pulled through the intersection, I changed my mind. The girls had reached the corner and were shouting at cars.
Talk about trading places. I wouldn’t even be trading if I were in those girls’ place. I would be taking a very small step. A girl ended up like that by growing up like me. She made the mistake of tangling with the other people around her. And she never ducked through that fence to the airport.
Not that it seemed to be doing me much good at the moment. I’d resisted working for Grayson. I was alarmed at being blackmailed. I resented having to throw myself at Alec. Yet in the end, I’d given in, hadn’t I? I wasn’t much better than those streetwalkers.
But the thought of reporting to the Hall Aviation hangar in the morning sent a little thrill through me. I would fly again for the first time in two months. Such a rush! I would get involved in Grayson and Alec’s game with each other. It was like starring on a TV reality show where I’d probably be publicly humiliated—but that was better than watching the show on TV at home, or not being able to watch it at all when the TV went missing and the trailer fell silent.
And I would see Grayson again. He needed me. He was using me. He didn’t have a crush on me, yet I could still feel his hand on my knee. Watching the whores shrink in the side mirror as Molly sped down the street, I put my own hand on my knee and rubbed my thumb back and forth, feeling that rush all over again.
six
I concentrated on that rush of feeling, relying on it to push me along, step by step, up the path through the trailer park, into the orange sunlight of early morning, across the long, wet grass that stuck black seeds to my ankles. I would see Grayson. I would fly a plane. Those were reasons to keep walking toward Hall Aviation and the beginning of my charade with Alec.
I’d fretted over what to wear: something innocent that Alec would like? He probably dated cheerleaders who wore pink and slept with teddy bears. Or something super-whorelike to make an ironic point to Grayson? At the tail end of fifteen minutes of trying on clothes, then standing on the toilet and leaning way over to see my torso in the mirror above the sink, I decided I’d better not risk angering Grayson and driving him to spill everything to my mom. I’d worn what I would have worn if everything were normal, everybody were still alive, and I was working for Mr. Hall instead of his son. Admittedly, hmmm, this was kind of whorelike after all, short shorts with a sexy cropped T-shirt cut to fit loose, which I would take off in the plane to reveal my bikini top underneath. The plane wasn’t air-conditioned, and the cockpit would heat to a hundred degrees up near the sun.
Where the tarmac started, I veered toward the pavement to step out of the cold grass. Huge hangars sat to my left, one of which was Mr. Simon’s. I passed it warily, looking through the vast doorway while trying not to look like I was looking. I didn’t want another confrontation with Mark this morning—or ever. Men shifted inside the hangar, but I didn’t recognize Mark’s quick movements. I doubted he could have made it in this early if he’d continued the bender he’d been on last night.