Andrew Vachss - Safe House

“For what?”

“To get an—oh, you mean, what did I study? Just a bunch of different stuff. Looking for the blend. Science and math, history and literature. Even philosophy . . . although I never liked that stuff much. I was trying to get . . .”

“. . . closer to your parents?”

“Yes! How did you . . . ?”

“The courses—the ones you studied—the mix sounds like them.”

“I guess it was. But the truth is, or it was, anyway, that it didn’t work. The books always seemed so hollow. If there was anything valuable in them, it was in a vacuum, kind of. Not connected to anything. The way I was . . .”

I waited a few minutes after her voice trailed off. Until I could see there wasn’t going to be any more. “What then?” I prompted her.

“I thought about the Peace Corps, but . . . I remembered my mother telling me about the missionaries who came to her village, and I crossed that one off. So I became a VISTA volunteer. In Appalachia. I didn’t like the trainers much. They kept giving us a whole bunch of long stupid speeches about ‘shedding our middle-class attitudes’ and stuff like that. I didn’t have any middle-class attitudes. They did. It was mostly the males. White males. Just another way of asserting dominance. Pressuring the women. For sex, mostly.

“But once I got out into the field, it was great. Just like it should be, I thought. I taught and I learned. I just didn’t learn enough, so I moved on. That’s when I came to my first shelter.”

“For the homeless?”

“For battered women,” she said. “I never realized how . . . frightened people could be until I worked there. They were so helpless. Nobody would listen unless they were half-killed. Even then, sometimes. And I had trouble fitting in. The director, she wanted to do therapy all the time. For the men, mostly. The perpetrators, the ones who needed all the ‘understanding’ so they could ‘break their patterns,’ ” Crystal Beth said, her voice heavy with scorn.

“And the director liked to give speeches too,” she went on. “Fund-raising. She worshipped the media. Any reporter who wanted to talk to the women, that was okay. There was no . . . privacy for anyone.”

“Like on the commune?”

“No! You don’t understand. We didn’t have private property, that isn’t the same thing. But you could be by yourself. The others would always respect that. In that shelter where I worked, even your thoughts weren’t your own. Everything had to be . . . examined. Talked about. That’s what it was. All it was. Talking, not fighting.”

“Who did you want to fight?”

“Not who, what. The . . . Beast. The Stalking Beast. There’s a legend . . . Never mind, now isn’t the time to tell it. I left there with a couple of the other women. We wanted to start our own place. I thought . . . runaways. That’s where it started for me anyway. Not just girls, we took in boys too. Most of them were prostituting themselves for—”

“Them selves? ”

“Okay, you’re right. That’s what I thought too. At first. People call them child prostitutes, but they’re not. They’re prostituted children. The girls, anyway.”

“Why just the girls?”

“Some of the boys, they went into business for themselves. They didn’t have pimps.”

“Sure. I get it. Just ran away from a nice home where everybody treated them good and started peddling their bodies for cash to buy clothes and CDs, huh?”

“I didn’t mean that. I know they were mistreated at home. Just—”

“You ever read about the cops busting a whole whorehouse full of girls from another country?”

“Yes. Just last week. On the West Coast. All the girls were from Thailand.”

“Sure. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old, right? At least that’s what they told the cops. You think that was the first time they turned a trick?”

“No. I’m sure they started . . . Oh, I see.”

“Sorry I interrupted you.”

“That’s all right. I mean, you’re right. I should have said—”

“It doesn’t matter. Tell me what happened next.”

“They closed it down. The pimps. They just closed it down. They hung around outside. They dropped on the girls like hawks as soon as they left the place. A couple of them even came inside. By the time the police got there, they were always gone.”

“And some of the girls recruited for the pimps themselves.”

“Yes,” she said softly. “You know about that too. Some of them did that. We weren’t . . . prepared for it. We thought we could all stand together, but some of them, they wanted to—”

“You can’t want something else unless you believe something else really exists.”

“ We really existed. We were really there.”

“You’re not there now.”

“I know,” she said. Not ashamed, just stating a fact. “It didn’t work. It wasn’t my . . . purpose. But this is. This truly is.”

“This is a shelter too?”

“Yes. But not for battered women. Or prostitutes. Or runaways. It’s a safehouse from the Beast. From stalkers.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Maybe it’s just the degree, I’m not sure. But some men, no matter how ugly they were in the . . . relationship, when it’s over, they let it go. And some women, they aren’t afraid enough. Or they still think things can be fixed. I’m not a psychologist. I couldn’t give you a name for the difference. But we know it when we see it.”

“So where do I come in?” I finally asked her.

“It’s too dark in here now,” Crystal Beth said by way of reply. She stood up, walked over to the desk, took out a candle, held a match to the bottom until it was soft, then jammed it against the desktop and lit the wick. The flame was faint, but it bathed her in a red-yellow glow.

Then she studied me. Or my face, anyway. If it was a patience test, she was playing with a pro. I let her do it, not challenging, just waiting.

“You’re here because now I have one too,” she finally said.

“One what?”

She didn’t say anything more. I went back to waiting.

“You never stared at my body,” she said suddenly.

“What?”

“My body: My chest. My legs. My hips. You never stared. Not once.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Look isn’t the same as stare. I meant, oh, leering, I guess. You know what I’m talking about. Some men are more subtle about it than others, but a woman can always tell when they’re doing it.”

“You don’t exactly . . . display yourself.”

“No, I don’t. But that wouldn’t matter. That only . . . frustrates some men, doesn’t it?”

“I guess so. What I don’t get is the point.”

“You’re not gay,” she said. A flat statement, not a question.

“If I was, I wouldn’t score any style points for not checking you out?”

“No, I don’t mean that. Gay men do that too. Especially your butt, for some reason.”

“Where are you going with this, Crystal Beth?”

“You like my name, don’t you? Most men don’t. They always call me ‘Crystal,’ like that’s easier for their tongues. Do you know why?”

“No.”

“Neither do I,” she said, getting to her feet. “You’re very into self-control, aren’t you?”

“I’m not saying.”

It got me the laugh I was playing for. “You don’t drink, right?” she asked. “Or take drugs?”

“No. Unless you count nicotine.”

“I’m not a hypocrite,” she said, nodding her head toward her own cigarette makings. “I know it’s a drug. But that’s not what I mean. About self-control. I’ll bet I could come and sit on your lap and we could talk. Just talk. Comfortable. What do you think?”