Karin Slaughter - Triptych

“Oh,” John said, thinking she was either stupid or crazy if she thought he had the extra money to send her to the dentist. “Okay. Yeah. Sorry.”

“No, you dumb prick. I’m saying I can use my hands but you can’t put it in my mouth.”

John didn’t realize he was clenching his teeth until his jaw started to ache. “No,” he answered. “That’s okay.”

“Lissen.” She stopped, dropped her hand, and started swaying like a raft in the middle of a tsunami. “You can head on back, Romeo. I can make it the rest of the way myself.”

“No,” he repeated, this time taking her arm in his hand. With his luck, she’d fall into the street and the cop would pin a manslaughter charge on him. “Let’s go.”

“Whoops,” she breathed, her knee buckling as she slipped on a broken section of sidewalk.

“Steady,” he told her, thinking she was so thin he could feel the bone in her arm moving against the flesh.

Out of the blue, she told him, “I don’t take it up the ass.”

John couldn’t think of which was worse: the thought of her mouth or the thought of her asshole. A quick glance at the sores on her arms and legs made him taste the peanut butter and banana sandwich from lunch.

“Okay,” he said, not knowing why she felt like sharing and wishing to hell she’d stop.

“Makes me shit funny,” she told him, giving him a sideways glance. “I thought I should tell you if that’s what you were planning.”

“I’m just going to make sure you get back,” he assured her. “Don’t worry about that other stuff.”

“Nothin comes for free,” she told him, then laughed. “ ‘Cept maybe this time. Of course, the walk-now, if you consider that your payment, it ain’t exactly free.”

“I was going this way anyway,” he lied. “I live down here.”

“Morningside?” she asked, referring to one of the wealthier neighborhoods backing onto Cheshire Bridge Road.

“Yeah,” he said. “Three-story house with a garage.” She stumbled again and he kept her from falling on her face. “Come on.”

“You don’t gotta be rough, you know.”

He looked at his hand around her arm, saw immediately how tight he was holding it. When he let go, there were marks where his fingers had been. “I’m sorry about that,” he told her, and really meant it. Jesus, he was thinking about women all this time and he didn’t even know how to touch one without hurting her. “I’m just going to walk you back, okay?”

“Almost there,” she told him, then mercifully fell into silence as she concentrated on navigating the bumpy path where the sidewalk ended and dirt took over.

John let her take the lead, keeping two steps behind her in case she fell over into the street. He let the enormity of what had just happened wash over him. What had he been thinking? There was no reason to get himself involved in Ray-Ray’s troubles, and now he was losing a day’s pay so he could take this pross back to her strip, where she’d probably make more money in one hour than he made in three. Christ. He could have lost his job. He could’ve been thrown back in prison.

Art got a nice stipend from the state for employing a parolee, plus extra tax breaks from the feds. Even with all that-all the so-called incentives that were out there-finding somewhere to work had been almost impossible when John had gotten out. Because of his status, he couldn’t work with kids or live within a hundred yards of a school or day-care center. Legally, employers couldn’t discriminate against a felon, but they always found a way around the law. John had been on nineteen interviews before finding the car wash. They always started out, “How you doing/we’d love to have you here/just fill this out and we’ll get back to you.” Then, when he called the next week because he hadn’t heard from them, it was always, “We’ve filled that job/we found a more qualified candidate/sorry, we’re cutting back.”

“More qualified to pack boxes?” he had asked one of them, the shipping manager at a pie company. “Listen, buddy,” the guy had answered. “I’ve got a teenage daughter, all right? You know why you’re not getting this job.”

At least he was honest.

The question was standard on every application. “Other than misdemeanor traffic violations, have you ever been convicted of a crime?”

John had to check yes. They always ran a background check and found out anyway.

“Please explain your conviction in the space provided.”

He had to explain. They could ask his P.O. They could get a cop to run his file. They could go on the Internet and look him up on the GBI’s site under “convicted sex offenders in the Atlanta area.” Under Shelley, Jonathan Winston, they’d read that he raped and killed a minor child. The state didn’t differentiate between underage offenders and adults, so he came up not as a person who had committed this crime when he was a minor child himself, but as an adult pedophile.

“Hello?” the hooker said. “You in there, handsome?”

John nodded. He’d been zoning out, following her like a puppy. They were in front of the liquor store. Some of the girls were already working, hoping to catch the lunch crowd.

“Hey, Robin,” the hooker yelled. “Come on over here.”

The woman who must’ve been Robin came over, doing a better job on her high heels than John’s companion had managed.

Robin stopped ten feet away from them. “What the hell happened to you?” She looked at John. “Did you get rough with her, you motherfucker?”

“No,” he said, then, because she was digging into her purse for something that would probably bring him a great amount of pain, he said, “Please. I didn’t hurt her.”

“Aw, he didn’t do nothing, baby girl,” the hooker soothed. “He saved me from that jackass down at the car wash.”

“Which one?” Robin asked, her anger still well above ballistic. The way she was looking at John said she hadn’t quite made up her mind about him and her hand was still in her purse, probably wrapped around a can of pepper spray or a hammer.

“Which one? Which one?” the hooker said, a good imitation of Ray-Ray. “That skinny nigger that says everything twice.” She looked up at John, batting her eyelashes. “You like ‘em a bit younger, don’t you, honey?”

John felt his body stiffen.

“No, I don’t mean it like that,” she said, rubbing his back like she was soothing a child. There was something almost maternal to her now that she was back in her fold. “Lissen, Robin, do me a favor and give ‘em a half-and-half. He really saved my ass.”

Robin’s mouth opened to respond, but John stopped her. He held up his hands, saying, “No, really. That’s okay.”

“I always pay my debts,” the old hooker insisted. “Kindness of strangers or whatever the fuck.” She followed a car with her eyes as it pulled into the parking lot. “Shit. That’s my regular,” she said, using the back of her hand to wipe the blood off from under her nose. She waved at John as she jumped into the man’s car, yelling something he couldn’t make out.

John watched the car leave, feeling Robin’s eyes on him the entire time. She had the same steely stare as a cop: what the fuck are you up to and where do I have to hit you to bring you to your knees?

She said, “I’m not her fucking stand-in.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, throwing up his hands again. “Really.”

“What?” she demanded. “You too good to pay for it?”

“I didn’t say that,” he countered, feeling his face turn red. There were five or six other hookers openly listening to their conversation and the amused expressions on their faces made him feel like his dick was getting smaller and smaller with every second that ticked by.