Others watched us like we were on exhibition. A couple of times I tried staring them down, but their eyes would not budge. There was an old man with an indigo ship on his forearm, maybe a navy tattoo, who planted himself beside First and just gawked. When we finally got off the subway she told me he was one of her customers. I didn’t understand how this could be true. He ogled her as if she were from a different world altogether, an alien beauty. There wasn’t a scrap of recognition in his stare. “He don’t know he seen me,” she explained. “Poor dear, to him I’m some sweet dream, dissolvin’ into morning.”

  I wondered what kind of a fierce bender the old man must have been on for her to dissolve. After one day, she was part of my balance. I had to lean up against the hallway wall while she wrestled with the sticky lock on Arsen’s door. Her threat to beat me was nowhere near as serious as her vow to take me in. I knew getting away from her wouldn’t be easy.

  I was disappointed when Arsen still wasn’t home, then, giving it another thought, thankful. Surely he would have turned to her first, smiled for her first. Maybe he wouldn’t have had any greeting for me at all. I jumped when I heard banging in the bathroom.

  “Nah, don’t worry. That’s just Second. Arsen figures you ought to meet the whole family.” First pounded on the back of the door. “What in the Lord’s name are you doin’ in there?”

  A tall willowy girl emerged, blonde and pale. She did a good job of not looking at me.

  “This is the one Arsen is takin’ as Third,” First slowly explained to Second, like she was bearing bad news.

  “I already told you I don’t care,” said Second. She backed into the bathroom again. The sink counter was covered with cosmetics. Second twirled a blush brush in a pot of powder. I caught her gaze in the medicine cabinet before she squeezed her eyes shut, dragging the blush brush across her face, masked in a white powder cloud.

  “Don’t think you’re the only one needin’ the bathroom,” First warned her. “This little one has to pretty herself up too, you know.”

  When Arsen arrived to pick us up, it was as bad as I had predicted. He held the car door open for First while I crawled in the back beside Second. First sat sideways in the passenger seat, bent forward toward Arsen to talk in his ear as he drove. Her voice, loud as a bass line pouring out a bar door, was lowered to a coo. I still heard every word.

  “Smells clean in the city. No piss. No smoke. Nothin’.”

  “Night’s young,” Arsen said, rolling his window down. He took an abnormally long route, looping around a block twice or more, stopping curbside every so often to idle a minute or two. I thought it was because he didn’t really want to drop me on some corner, but was going to.

  Doom struck me as we circled the skids and as I spotted the threadbare women, the lacklustre women, working there. “We don’t work ’longside them hoodrats,” said First. “Wait ’til you see the Glories.” She turned around to face me—wide-eyed and with a toothy smile, but Arsen nudged her shoulder and she quickly turned back around again.

  After we pulled off the main road and wove through a few more streets I was completely lost. I hated going to unfamiliar neighbourhoods; in this one I couldn’t see a bus stop or a gas station or even a street sign. Until that moment, I’d been mentally mapping my escape route. I even noted where some doughnut shops were situated so I could wash off some of the makeup First put on my face before making my way back toward downtown. I didn’t look forward to riding the bus looking like a hooker, but that was better than actually being a hooker.

  But as Arsen’s car inched down the unknown streets, my map and my plan had deteriorated. I was lost. What’s worse is I could barely keep track of familiar landmarks we’d past before getting lost. Was that a Donut Diner or a Waffle House a few blocks back? The last of summer’s sandflies swarmed the flickering streetlamps. I watched a sheet of stray white paper blow past the car and hug the curb. Most of the buildings around us were abandoned: boarded up with plywood or left without glass in their empty windows. Only one business remained. A neon sign in front of us read eat cigarettes 24 hours. It was No’s Smoke Shoppe, the place First had talked about on the subway. Arsen half-waved to a boy sweeping the front stoop. We parked out front awhile. Arsen kept his left turn signal blinking. To our left was a blind alley, the kind of alley victims in crime movies find themselves in. It was pot-holed and seemed too narrow for any car to fit through it. Arsen turned down it anyway. I braced, expecting to hear the scrap of metal against brick. To my surprise the alley widened—like some sort of enchanted red sea or something—to let us through. Someone had written in red spray paint on the side of the Smoke Shoppe; the words bled through the darkness, I left my heart in Sub Rosa. Arsen lurched the car forward. I couldn’t see where we were going. Again, I thought we were going to hit a wall, head-on this time. The tires squealed and suddenly light rolled across the hood of the car; it was pink and patterned like a little girl’s nightlight. First’s cherry hair seemed to switch on like a red lantern in this new light. Arsen’s gold twinkled on his fingers like jewellery does in television commercials. What I thought was a loading zone or a dead end turned out to be the entrance to an entire street. Second rolled her window all the way down and let her arm drape out of the car. I caught a whiff of spring leaves, but there wasn’t a single tree in sight. There were girls decorating the corners. Soft, like watercolour paintings, as if they were carefully cut from a coffee table book and pasted onto the street. While I’d been relieved to drive past the skids hos, I couldn’t look away from these women. At a glance, I understood that everything about them was right. They stood as if the sidewalk was laid out just for them. The late-afternoon sun arranged itself beautifully across their shoulders. One of them smiled and pointed as we passed, and I realized I was dressed almost the same as her and I was suddenly pleased with my outfit. The lamplights turned my white dress and boots a pale pinkish hue, like I too had been washed in colour. First had chosen the outfit for me: ankle boots and a stretch lace dress with an empire waist, scalloped sleeves, and little plastic rhinestones glued on in no particular pattern. Basically, I wore an oversized christening dress, cut off several inches above the knee.

  “Where you gonna put Little?” asked First.

  “She has to do her Dark Days, same as everyone else.”

  “I was thinking.” First usually trailed her “g”s. She was always “thinkin’” or “havin’” or “pleasin’.” I wasn’t sure yet, but I suspected First’s “gs” were reserved for serious discussions.

  “Maybe Little should shadow me from the get-go. I can break her in better than the Dark can. You know how I been waiting for a baby girl I could train up for myself. You see, Second doesn’t listen to a thing I say anymore.”

  I turned to Second sitting beside me in the back seat. We’d been ignoring each other the entire ride. She mouthed “bitch” at me again and again until I looked away. Out of the corner of my eye, her white frosted lips continued to lip-sync curses at me. I knew better than to steal a third look. Besides, the scene on the street—the glowing shop windows, the cobblestone sidewalk, the girls—was too captivating to bother with Second’s insults.

  “Just the other night,” First went on, “I asks her to come up an’ entertain a couple of live ones, and the minute I turn my back she’s walkin’ off like she has some other thing to be doin’.”

  The car swerved slightly as Arsen turned around. “You mind your First,” he told Second. First snapped her head from side to side as he spoke.

  “I’m sayin’, what kinda Glory turns down a live one? Little wouldn’t. Would you, Little?” She nodded her head in my direction as if I had already said yes to this. “So, if it is okay by you, I could use her right away.”

  “She won’t be of any use if she jinxes you. She has to do her Dark Days. That’s the way it is. I’d change it if I could, Mommy.”

  “There are ways around it. It’s not like we don’t got money,” grumbled First.

  “Dark Days can’t be bought out,” said Arsen.

  “With a little bit of smarts they could be. I’d think up something,” said First. I had no clue what her argument was, but I was inclined to agree with her. We were leaving the beauties behind us.

  “You know where she’ll wind up if she don’t do her Days,” said Arsen, cryptically. First only sighed at this. She had no further debate. Straight ahead more darkness was about to meet our path. Sickness stirred up in my stomach as I began to disappear. All the lamplights at this end of the street were out; some were burnt-out globes at the end of rusted metal poles, others had been smashed and left jagged and broken. Even Second’s heavy layer of frosty makeup vanished in the night. She whispered, “You ain’t worth light.” I inched away from her, pressing up against the car door.

  “How much you have her at?” First asked.

  “Five.”

  “Fuck off. Five,” Second blurted out. Arsen jerked the car to a halt. I slipped half way off the seat, vinyl squeaking under my thighs.

  “Five,” Second repeated. “Why does she only have to do five? You had me at a grand.”

  “Little comes to us pure. I hand-picked her myself. You came from low track,” said Arsen.

  “Beggin’ to get into the Rosa, as I recall,” said First. “And I can’t wait and wait forever for her, like I had to wait for you.”

  “Like you even remember how long it took me to get out of the Dark?”

  “Twenty-seven nights,” First chirped.

  “What did you do, write it down in your fucking diary? I don’t need to write it down to remember, twenty-seven fucking nights of this place.” Second trembled in anger. I couldn’t see her. I only felt the back seat vibrating. My dress, barely covering me already, rode up with the vibration. Upholstery stuck to my skin. I reached under me and pulled my g-string underwear from out of my ass crack. What the hell, no one could see me.

  “Don’t be mad at us, Second, honey, if you took your time gettin’ out,” said First. Her fingernails started tapping the window glass.

  “And this little one can do better?” Second asked. “You know what happens to darlings in the Dark? You think she’s such a virgin prize. She’s virgin stupid, hasn’t learned how to fight her way out of a wet paper bag. I bet she gives up before morning, just like the last loser did.”

  I heard First’s nails scrape up the glass with a high-pitched squeak and run across the car ceiling, followed by a yelp from Second. “That mouth will only bring bad luck on yourself,” said First. “Or I could square up your fortune right now with the back of my hand if you don’t quit. We ain’t on the Rosa, so there ain’t much to stop me.”

  “I hear you,” grumbled Second. “I hear,” she said again. “Let go of my hair.”

  Arsen opened his door a crack and the inside light flickered on. First was leaning over the back seat, inches away from Second. One of Second’s long blonde hairs hung from a prong of First’s diamond ring. There was a fist-sized hole in Second’s teased hair.

  “Are we finished this nonsense?” asked Arsen. First lowered herself back into her seat. Second rifled through her purse for a hair pick and wordlessly fluffed her hair back in place. Arsen surveyed me with his head cocked to one side. A queasiness gripped me, and I wished Second would pick another fight. The arguing might have bought me a few more minutes before I was dumped out of the car.

  “We’ll see you in the mornin’, won’t we, Little?”

  “Sure.” I was revamping my plan: as soon as I was out of the car, I planned on getting far enough away to never see any of them again. For some reason I still stalled, though. Why did it have to be so dark out there?

  “This is your stop, Little,” said Arsen. “You being a smart girl, I suppose you’ve already caught on to how this works.”

  “Dark Days,” I said, staring him straight in the face.

  “Good girl. It’s only ’til you make five bills.”

  “How do you suppose I do that?” I asked. First chewed her bottom lip; neither she nor Arsen said a thing. “I mean, who’s going to come out here? It’s completely deserted.”

  “There won’t be many live ones, but there’s no competition either. You’re the only darling out here,” Second said, her voice thin, probably straining with the effort of being slightly kind.

  “Get whatever you can, any way you can. There are no rules out here, not like the rest of Sub Rosa.” First reached her hand behind her seat and poked my knee with a plump finger.

  “You know you can’t give her advice.” Arsen grabbed First by the elbow and turned her forward in her seat again. “You’re on your own, Little.”

  “We’ve all had to do it,” First reassured.

  “Yeah, some of us for twenty-seven damn days.”

  Arsen faced the vacant windshield in front of him and told me again to get out of the car. I grabbed the little white purse First had bought for me in the city and stepped out into the black. I had barely shut the car door behind me before he pulled away.

  The taillights trailed until they were two distant red eyes that winked shut. “Fuck me,” I whispered, then immediately felt as if someone had heard me, something was listening. The darkness was so dark it breathed, an ongoing loop of asthmatic gasp and cough. There was the sound of rainwater emptying into a sewer and of winter wind blowing through metal pipes. But there was no rain and no wind.

  I discovered the weight of the Dark after taking my first step. It bore down on top of my head and shoulders. I strained to walk, as if I had to drag the darkness behind me. Slowly and instinctually, I moved toward the direction we drove in from, toward the beauty. I figured that course would take me back to where I had come from. Every dozen or so steps I felt the curb brush up against my foot, even though I thought I was walking a perfectly straight line. I righted myself again and again. I started counting my steps (if they could be called steps, since my feet barely lifted from the pavement) but the numbers kept switching around on me: eighty-four became forty-eight. I never reached one hundred.

  I still don’t know how much of the night I spent just learning how to walk through the Dark. Eventually, I could take on what felt like twenty yards at a time before losing my balance or my breath. Then I got so I could sprint short distances, twisting my ankles each time I ran in my heeled boots. No matter how much ground I covered the darkness didn’t let up.

  When delirium offered to lead the way, I was too exhausted to decline. I teetered and tripped along and quickly found myself, nose to an unseen wall, swearing and laughing hysterically. The laughter felt like it was being sucked out of me. The night was a finger in my throat, gagging out more and more laughter. My cheeks grew hot, my tongue dried up. I didn’t think I’d be able to stop. I slapped myself in the face and it only made me laugh harder. I had to wrestle my possessed head, one arm braced under my chin, the other yanking my hair downward, in order to force my mouth shut. And still there was my laugh, puffing my cheeks out, slipping through my clamped teeth.

  When it was done I was slumped against a wall; it was cold and hard like corrugated metal. Around a corner, there was a weak bluish light, the only light. I made my way, quietly and deliberately, toward it. The closer I got the more my eyes adjusted, and I could make out the barn-like building I had walked beside, ghosts of steam rising out of high windows, rust patches on the steel. I got closer still, and the sidewalk glittered under the blue light. I was encouraged by this until I realized that I was walking on tiny shards of broken glass. The blue light was a halogen bulb in a wire frame cage, plastered with dingy feathers and dead flies, and hung in an alcove that had been used as a urinal more than once. I stared into the light for a good while, until I could make out the delicate opalescent wings stuck to the bulb. I wasn’t so bad off. At least I wasn’t one of the fried black flies that flew too close to the light.

  That light was enough to see myself—my pretty boots and dress. What I needed was a man in a plush car to carry me out of there. I looked good enough for a stretch limousine. I would have given anything for a ride and a bit of money. I imagined crisp bills between my fingers. The scent of leather upholstery, like in Arsen’s car.

  Like Arsen’s scent. He smelled a bit like leather. Leather and toasted vanilla pipe tobacco, smoking, not in the canister. And maybe of black pepper, and maybe grapefruit. I never considered his scent until he was naked; even then I’m not sure I had noticed. I remembered it when I couldn’t see worth shit and all I could smell was piss. It was his scent that kept filling my nose. I wished he had touched me more so that his scent was left on my skin. I wondered if he’d come after me. If he’d feel a pinprick or hear a buzz in his ear as I stepped into the car that would take me away.

  Except there were no polished Lincolns, no sports coupes, no cars cruising the street. On both sides of my peripheral vision, small unknowns darted and crept. For comfort, I counted them like sheep. I forced myself to be happy whenever I could keep my numbers in order. Simple victories. I reached a whopping 174 before admitting to myself that I was really counting how many times I felt afraid. I wanted a drink. A sip of whisky to relax my breathing and warm me up. I had never been cold in August before. I squeezed my hands under my armpits to keep them warm.

  Nothing changed for hours. The only tangible measure of time passing was how tired my feet grew inside my high-heeled ankle boots. I stood on one foot to give the other a break, then switched. Each raised foot tingled as I wiggled my toes. I squatted for a while, tucking my knees into the stretch-lace of my dress, rocking from heel to toe. I remembered doing that when I was little; squatting down into a tiny ball and pulling my T-shirts over my legs. I used to pretend my kneecaps were breasts. I used to also stuff rolled socks, or Tupperware bowls, or anything round that would fit up my shirt. I couldn’t wait to be a woman. What did I know?

  I walked in circles so many times I was surprised the sidewalk didn’t form a whirlpool. I would have paced, but I didn’t want to wander out of the blue light. The pain in my feet gradually did outweigh the fear. It climbed up my legs and nested in the small of my back. I could not continue standing, but I refused to sit on the urine-soaked concrete, so I stepped out of the blue light a little to search the ground for a cardboard box or newspaper, anything to sit on and rest. Eyes straining, I imaged things that weren’t really there. A crushed pop can became a baby’s shoe; a mound of dirt, a fetal puppy dog, lifeless. At last, I found a strip of clear plastic that was somewhat wet, but not with urine, which was good enough for me. I laid it down under the light. The pavement was chilly through the layer of plastic. Still, it was a relief from standing. I propped my little purse under me like a cushion, leaned back onto my tailbone and gazed up at the splinter of a moon. A waxing moon.