Andrew Vachss - Mask Market

I made an encouraging sound in my throat.

“It was a…They called it a Christian retreat, but it was a prison.”

“Because you couldn’t leave?”

“Because they had bars on the windows,” Toni said, fingering the tiny gold cross that caught a shaft of sunlight as it twinkled against her white sweater, standing between her prominent breasts like a warning. “Because there was no privacy. No privacy ever. Not even in the bathroom. Because they were afraid you might…do something to yourself.

“What I had…what I had inside me, they said that was being possessed. Satan had my soul. But if I worked hard enough, if I prayed hard enough, if I did everything they told me to, I could drive it all out.

“Only I didn’t want it out. I wanted to be…I wanted to be myself. Me.”

I nodded my head.

“At first, I kept that to myself. When I finally said it out loud, that’s when the beatings started.”

She shifted position, opening her stance like a boxer loading up to throw the equalizer. Her voice dropped into a metallic baritone.

“They called it ‘correction.’ The rod, right out of the Bible they made me read after each time. My parents never knew. Part of the program was that they couldn’t have any contact with me for the first six months. ‘Total immersion in the Lord,’ is what they called it.

“I was only fifteen. And sheltered, too—my parents had taken me out of school years before that. Because of my…problem. So I didn’t know much about the world. But it didn’t take me long to understand. They taught me a lot in that place. And the first thing I learned was, those beatings, they liked doing that. It was exciting for them. Got them all…you know.”

“I do know,” I said, reaching for her hand. She let me take it, but didn’t return the squeeze I gave.

“We were at the zoo. To see the baby pandas. It was like a field trip. Only for students who had been good. Obedient, they meant. I knew how to be ‘good’ by then. That’s when I ran.

“I knew I couldn’t go to my grandmother’s—she would have just called my parents. And I didn’t have any other place to go. I kept seeing New York in my mind. The biggest city in the world. Magic was there, I was sure of it.

“Michelle found me on my second night. I was looking for a place to sleep. These two men were…taunting me. It was at this old empty building, right next to a pier, all the way downtown. But they had been there first, they said, so it was their home. And I had to pay rent.

“I would have done it. Whatever ‘it’ was, it would have been better than going back. And then Michelle just burst in. She’s so small—I was bigger than her even then, and the men were much bigger. But they were scared of her. She was so fierce. And she had a razor….

“I stayed with her for a few weeks. She worked nights, but we talked when she came home. Every day. I told her everything.

“One day, she told me she had to go away for a while. She promised she’d be back, and made me promise I wouldn’t go out while she was gone.

“I don’t know how she did it, but when she came back, she told me it was time for me to go home. I was so scared, but I believed her. And when I got home, it was like I had different parents. They apologized to me. My mother was crying, and my father was…well, I don’t know what to call it, but he was very, very determined.

“That’s when I started to become Toni. The doctor they sent me to was so good and kind. I couldn’t have the surgery until I was of age, but he explained I had to live as a girl for at least two years first anyway, just to be sure.”

“Your parents turned out to be really something.”

“They did,” she said, relaxing her shoulders, her hand soft and damp in mine. “They were Christians, but real Christians, like Jimmy Carter, not fundamentalist freaks. That…place they sent me to, it was out of ignorance. When my father found out what they really did in there, he…I don’t know exactly what he did. But I know there was a big lawsuit, and the place ended up closed.”

“That’s quite a story.”

“Oh, it’s a long story, I know,” she said. “But I told it to you for a reason.”

“Did you, Toni?”

“Yes. I wanted you to understand what I’m going to say now.”

I waited.

“Michelle said, anything I did for you, it would be the same as doing it for her. Do you understand?”

“I do.”

“And I’d do anything for Michelle,” the big redhead told me. “That’s N. E. Thing. Understand now?”

T oni dropped me off at a bowling alley. Luckily, they also had a few pool tables. I wasn’t even finished with the first rack before a pudgy kid in a short-sleeved shirt big enough to be a dust cover for a refrigerator wobbled over and asked me if I wanted to play some nine-ball.

The hustler was patient. I was up fifty bucks—the worm on the hook he was baiting—when Toni walked in. She sashayed her way over to me, snapping necks as she went, mane of red hair bouncing.

“How much have you managed to lose so far?” she said, hands on her hips, but smiling to show she was being the indulgent girlfriend, not a harpy.

“Hey! I’m up about fifty, right?” I said, turning to the fat kid for confirmation.

“That’s right,” the kid said, gravely, nodding his head to reluctantly acknowledge my clear superiority with the cue.

“Well, we are late, ” Toni announced.

“Just one more game?”

“ One more,” she said, warningly. Then she perched herself on a high stool, crossed her long legs, and cupped her chin in one hand.

“Double or nothing?” I said to the fat kid.

“Oh, hell, it’s the last game, let’s make it for a hundred.”

“Your break,” I said, winking at Toni.

The pudgy kid’s shot hit the rack like a cannonball going through crepe paper. The balls ran for cover—three of them so terrified they ducked down into the pockets. The cue ball was centered, a little short of the head spot. He cut in the one-ball, came three rails for perfect shape on the two, tapped it into the side, pirouetted like a bullfighter, and comboed the four-nine without drawing a breath.

“In between tournaments?” I asked him, as I paid up.

“You recognized me?” he said, caught between surprise and pride.

“Sure,” I lied.

“You’re pretty good yourself. Want to go one more time?”

“You see that girl over there?”

“I sure do, bro.”

“That’s all the luck I’m ever going to find in this place, son.”

“S he was the third house I visited,” Toni said. “I’m a broker—for real; that’s what I do—Michelle must have told you. I told the woman I have a client who’s much more interested in the right neighborhood than in any individual house. He and his wife have three school-age children, and he’s done his research. I didn’t get where I am today by waiting for the right MLS to pop up—I go out in the field and scout around. Occasionally, you run across someone who wasn’t thinking of selling…until they hear the kind of money my client’s willing to put on the table.”

“ Very nice,” I said, giving her a con man’s respect for a superior opening shtick.

“It’s actually true,” she said, smiling. “If someone were to make a phone call to my office, it would get verified, too.”

“Even better.”

“She was last on my list,” Toni said. “Fortunately, the first house I tried, no one was at home. And the second one, it was only the maid. But if anyone had been watching…”

“Beautiful.”