The hooker had told me that her name was Kerry. Then again, she’d told me that she was clean in every respect, where both her profession and her trackmarks suggested otherwise.
I’d picked her up a mile from Jeremy’s house on a foolish and immediately regrettable impulse fueled by raw adrenaline and the sheer bloody-minded need to catch something, so to speak. She’d directed me to a remote riverside picnic area on the south side of the city, and had been only too eager to jump into the back of the van, the false promise of mattresses and pillows offering a welcome relief from the repeated prod of a gear lever in the sternum.
Until that point, this, in a nutshell, was the reason I never interfere with ladies of the night: it’s just too damn easy. It’s a game for impotents and bed-wetters. These women queue up to get in the car with you, for Christ’s sake. They actually expect you to take them somewhere dark. That they exercise free will in putting themselves in harm’s way only makes obligingly slaughtering them all the more cowardly.
And as if that wasn’t reason enough to rue my lack of self-control, Kerry was about to give me a couple more to think about.
In her first few minutes in the cage, Kerry, despite the removal of her blindfold, seemed unaware of Erica’s presence. She flung herself at the door, screaming unintelligibly as she clawed at the mesh. As she ran simultaneously out of breath and fingernails, she began wailing that her children were home alone and that the electricity meter was empty. I suggested that had Kerry considered her parental responsibilities the night before, rather than offering to fellate me in a car park, their collective predicament might have been avoided.
Erica, on the other hand, was strangely subdued. She sat cross-legged on the bed watching this leather-skirted animal, knees skinned and blood dripping from its fingertips, howling and spitting at its captor just inches away on the other side of the door. “You bastard,” she said, simply.
Kerry whirled around then, threw herself off balance. She scrabbled on all fours to the corner of the cage and curled herself into a tight ball, fixing Erica with a petrified stare.
“What are you, starting a fucking zoo?” Erica’s face was a picture of self-righteous indignation as she jabbed an angry thumb toward the sobbing, fetal prostitute. “You can’t be fucking serious, surely?”
Not fully understanding the question, I chose not to answer.
At 6:00 p.m. I returned to the basement with two plates of tuna and pasta bake. The hooker appeared not to have moved from her corner; she merely continued to tremble and heave.
Erica had returned to the bed, where she lay silently gazing at the cage roof as I laid her dinner on the floor beside her.
“I’m not eating that,” she said.
This did not surprise me. “What’s the matter now, you don’t eat fish?”
“Of course I eat fish. I’m just not eating anything you’ve made.”
“Great, so now it’s no meat and nothing cooked, is that it?”
“Who said anything about meat?”
“You did, yesterday.”
“No.” She sighed. “What I meant was, I’m not eating any meat you’ve given me. And, yeah, I do prefer my dinner cooked. I just don’t want it cooked by you. I know your sort.”
Charming, debonair, handsome? Probably not what she meant. “Have you got any idea of the effort I went to last night to make sure you were catered for? And now what, you want me to hire you a chef? What do you think this is, the Savoy?”
“You could always just let me starve,” she said. “And yes, I can clearly see the kind of effort you went to last night, and I’m far from fucking impressed.” Her eyes never left the ceiling.
Erica hadn’t thrown her pasta bake at me, but by the following morning she hadn’t eaten it, either. To all appearances, she hadn’t moved from the bed.
Kerry was a different picture. She’d managed to piss herself three feet from the toilet, and had clearly stood in the resultant puddle. She was still pacing back and forth, leaving dirty wet footprints, when I got there. It took the threat of severed fingers to persuade her to mop.
In the evening, with Erica having eaten nothing more substantial than Rice Krispies since her arrival, I took the microwave oven from my kitchen and delivered it to her downstairs. Since I’d used the thing only twice in the three years I’d owned it, this seemed the simplest option if I wasn’t to be stuck with a weak and starving Erica.
I found them huddled together this time; Erica draped protectively over the hooker, shushing and stroking her hair as she lay curled on the mat, shuddering from head to toe. Kerry’s babbling was only barely coherent and preoccupied with her need for some “stuff.” Her domestic situation seemed all but forgotten.
Not wishing to interrupt such a tender moment, I left them a pair of microwave mushroom stroganoffs and went to run a bath.
By Monday evening, there were clear signs of disharmony.
The junkie still had not stopped wailing, and had taken to writhing on the rubber floor like a snake with an ache. The perspiration poured from her, and she wiped it across the mat with her arms and legs, leaving an impression that could only be described as a sweat angel.
Erica had taken to pacing now, teeth clenched, arms wrapped tightly around herself as she circled the cage. She turned to face me as I entered, the hatred in her eyes replaced with a look of haunted despair. “You need to get her out of here,” she pleaded. “She’s sick, and she needs a doctor, and this noise is doing my fucking head in.” She jabbed an accusatory finger then; as a gesture from Erica this was not unremarkable, though its direction of travel raised at least one of my eyebrows. She aimed it not at me, but at the wriggling whore on the floor.
I could see her point. I only had to see Kerry for minutes at a time, and she was already getting on my nerves. It was, however, only a temporary annoyance. “She’ll be out of here by the weekend,” I promised.
“The weekend?” Erica regarded me somewhat incredulously. “Are you taking the piss? Do you think I have any idea what fucking day it is today? I don’t know whether I’ve been here a day, a week or a fucking month. I don’t even know how long she’s been here. What the fuck does the weekend mean?”
Ah, what the hell. “Well, today is fucking Monday and it’s just gone ten past six in the fucking evening. That fucking irritating creature will be out of your fucking hair by ten o’clock on Saturday fucking morning. Provided you tone down your fucking language, which is starting to wear a little bit fucking thin.”
Predictably, she told me to go fuck myself.
I’d purposely built the basement under the garage rather than the house so that I wouldn’t feel compelled to run down and check it out during every ad break. I like to keep a little distance between rest and recreation. I did, however, find the developing situation strangely fascinating, and so on Tuesday I nipped into town and purchased a closed-circuit television camera.
Erica had reverted to gently rocking the shivering hooker when I set about installing the camera above the basement door. “Why are you doing that?” she asked as I wobbled atop my stepladder, up to my elbows in
