Andrew Vachss - The Weight

“And this Jessop…?”

She lit another cigarette. “I lied,” she said.

“You lied about what?”

“Everything. I’m not thirty-nine; I’m thirty-five. I married Jessop in 1989. That was to keep him from going to prison. He paid my mother to sign some paper so we could get married.”

That’s what the lawyer told me about Jessop , I thought. He got married to some girl who was fourteen . She wasn’t lying about that, anyway.

“I’d already been with him for almost two years then,” Rena said. “I’d probably still be with him except he once brought me along to a meeting with Albie.”

“At that big house?”

“No,” she said, like only an idiot would even think that. “In a restaurant. I already had the first implants by then, and Jessop, I think he wanted to show off. Show me off, I mean. I was all slutted up: four-inch heels, raccoon eyes, a little skirt I had to fight to fit into.

“Albie had two men with him. The same men who are coming for his book now. Not them, necessarily, men just like them, I mean.

“They started talking about some job. Right in front of me, like I was a piece of furniture. All of sudden, Albie says to Jessop, ‘This is the way you work? You bring a little girl along, let her listen to everything?’

“ ‘She’s dumb as a fucking rock,’ Jessop says. ‘By the time we get back home, she won’t even remember she’s been here. How old do you think she is-twenty-two, maybe? Well, she’s fifteen, and she’s been stripping for a couple of years already. You got nothing to worry about.’

“Albie just looks at Jessop. ‘I drove a long way for this,’ he says. ‘Did I say you could bring anyone?’

“ ‘No,’ Jessop tells him. ‘But what’s the-?’

“That’s when Albie cut him off. ‘You take any risk you want. But you don’t make me take them with you. So this girl, she stays with me until it’s over.’

“The way Albie said it, you could see he wasn’t asking. I’d never seen Jessop like that before. Scared, I mean.”

“He left you there?”

“Sure. Far as he was concerned, this was just a long trick. Like a rental. I think he even expected Albie to throw a bunch of cash at him when the job was finished.”

“But…?”

“But Albie brought me to the house, the one you stayed at. He told me I was going to stay there until I was old enough to make intelligent decisions.”

“Weren’t you scared?”

“Not for a minute. Albie told me to take a shower, scrub all that shmutz -that was the word he used; I still remember-off my face. Put all my clothes in a plastic bag. He didn’t have any women’s clothes, so I had to wear men’s stuff for a couple of weeks, until he brought all kinds of things back. I didn’t know exactly what the stuff was, but I could tell it was good.”

“He never-?”

“Don’t you even think it! I had to read all the time. Books, magazines, newspapers. And watch TV; that was okay, too. Anything I didn’t understand, I’d ask Albie. Some things he’d tell me. Sometimes, he’d say I was just being lazy, go look it up. An education, Albie called it. The first time he said, ‘Rena, you are a truly intelligent young woman,’ I thought I would die, I was so happy.

“All I know is that Albie met with Jessop again. After the job, I mean. I don’t know what they said, and I know they kept doing business, but Jessop never came around the house. None of the people that Albie set up jobs for ever did. Just those other men; the ones I told you about.

“So, one day, I asked Albie if he’d bought me from Jessop. ’Cause I knew Albie had money, and Jessop loved money.

“You know what Albie said? He said he told Jessop he’d disposed of me. I knew too much; I’d seen too much. That’s when Jessop wanted to get paid-he must have told Albie he had a lot of money invested in me. But I know Albie told him he wasn’t getting a dime, because it was Jessop’s fault in the first place, for bringing me along.”

“Jesus.”

“I know. I… never really believed it, not for a long time. I remember, once, Albie told me to stop being such a little brat. I knew what he wanted then. To spank me, you know what I mean? A lot of guys are into that, especially with a young girl. Only, I was wrong. You know what he wanted?”

“For you to stop being such a little brat?”

“Yes!” she said, smiling for the first time since… I didn’t even remember the last one.

She lit another smoke. “I was with Albie twenty years, that much is true. But I wasn’t his wife until the millennium came. The year 2000, that’s what everybody called it.

“I was Rena for ten years, but only by name. One day, I just marched into his den-that’s where the partners desk was-and I told him I was old enough to make intelligent decisions. And I’d made one.”

“That’s almost like this old movie I saw once.”

“If you say Baby Doll , I’ll spit in your face. I saw that movie. We’ve got a satellite dish, with like a million channels, so I know what you mean. And it was nothing like that. Albie wasn’t waiting until I turned legal, and he damn sure knew I was no virgin. And I didn’t walk around shaking it, either.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what? You’ve got no idea-”

“I’m sorry for saying something that hurt your feelings, Rena.”

“Rena’s gone.”

“Lynda, right?”

“Yeah. Albie always told me this day would come. That’s why he replaced the implants.”

“I don’t under-”

“After Albie… went, I was supposed to go, too. I always had Albie’s little book. I was supposed to take that with me, and hide it where I could always find it. A life-assurance policy, Albie called it.”

“Life insurance?”

“ As surance. Something I could trade for my life if any of… those men found me. And that isn’t all. Anyone can get paper ID. Only the implants, they were like this secret weapon. Plenty of women change their hair, but how many have implants taken out ?”

“I know a girl who did.”

“A stripper, right? And she went jumbo on them?”

“That’s right.”

“The size I got, it makes me… stand out, I guess. But they’re not the kind that would herniate my spine.”

“They don’t… pull on you?”

“Not a bit. I wasn’t lying about the working out every day.”

“So, if you got… smaller, you wouldn’t look like yourself?”

“Depends on where you’re looking.”

“I get it.”

“Good,” she said, like she was a little annoyed. “You have any more questions, Sugar?”

“Yeah, I do.”

She turned a little straighter, facing me like she was making sure I still had the different-colored eyes.

“So?” is all she said.

“You said you could find this Jessop. That can’t be just because he was on some paper as your husband a long time ago.”

“What’s your question?” She sounded a lot colder than before, but I didn’t have any choice. So I asked her: “Have you… seen him since you-?”

“Your whole mind is dirt, huh? No, Sugar, I haven’t ‘seen’ him since he brought me to that meeting. He brought in a piece of poor white trash, a… thing he could do whatever he wanted to with. If I’d just been dumped by the side of a road, I’d have been happy, just knowing I’d never have to see that… filth again. That answer your question?”

AJ/WT/X , I thought. Abner Jessop, White Trash, maybe? But what was that “X” for? I knew I couldn’t ask her about that; I had work to do. So I only said, “Then how could you know where he is?”