She was a cute baby, Vanessa observed, nothing like her father. She would grow up to be as pleasant on the eye as Vanessa, though Vanessa’s looks were beginning to wane.
She sat beside Heather and stroked the top of her head.
“I’d date any crappy guy right now just to help pay the rent.”
Heather didn’t reply.
“Mummy’s doing it tough, girl.”
She got up from the couch and went back to the kitchen. She took a fork from the drawer and placed it on the lip of the bowl and drained the water into the sink. The noodles looked like a handful of wet, gray hair ripped from the scalp of a dying old woman.
“This is what it’s come to,” she said aloud.
She squeezed the last of some tomato sauce over the noodles and went back to the living room. She forked at the meal and ate it in awkward mouthfuls. She turned the television on and watched some ads. Heather began to cry at the sight of food but refused to eat any. Vanessa picked up the phone, turned the television off, left the room and called Adam.
“Hey. I need to score some stuff.”
Chapter 5
When Adam arrived he kissed her on the cheek and she let him into the living room. She grabbed at his pockets with flirtatious fingers and he told her to slow down.
“I should have told you on the phone: I need to pay you later if that’s ok?”
“Vanessa, you’ve done this a few times now.”
“I know, but I’ve always paid.”
“I had to chase you down on pay day and demand it.”
“Things are just really tough right now. But I’m getting more shifts at work.”
“So I’ll hopefully see more of you?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re so beautiful, ‘Ness.”
Vanessa shied away from him. “Can we get high now?”
Moments later Vanessa sucked the smoke from the burnt smack into her lungs and she thought about her face, her skin, how Adam was a dish hand and didn’t earn enough to be worth her while, plus he was younger. She didn’t like younger guys. She missed Benny, Heather’s father. She sat back on the couch and five minutes passed and soon she wasn’t awake, but not really asleep either.
“’Ness?” Adam said. He looked around the room, at Heather sitting under the waft of smoke hanging in the dense air. He smiled at the baby and the baby smiled back.
“’Ness, you awake?”
He left the room and went to her bedroom. He opened the top drawer of her dresser and took out a bra. He looked at the cup size on the tag.
“E’s,” he marveled, his heart beating.
He put the bra back and left her room and returned to the lounge. Vanessa’s eyes were open.
“I thought you’d left,” she said, her voice sounded forty years older.
“Nah, just went to the bathroom.”
“What do you want to do?” she asked.
Adam sat down beside her. He looked at the baby. “I want to sleep with you.”
“But we’re just friends,” she said.
“I know. Just for fun. And you won’t have to pay me for the drugs.”
Vanessa smiled and looked at Adam from the corner of her eye. “That’s prostitution, Adam. I’m not a prostitute.”
“I know, I didn’t mean that. I just think you’re lonely.”
Vanessa reached for his pocket once again and made a lazy moan.
“You want to get higher?”
She nodded, too duped to speak.
“Okay.”
Vanessa spent the next ten minutes getting higher and when she was incapable of moving Adam took her top off and sunk his face in between her enormous breasts. Then he took her pants off and bent her over on the couch, her body a silent and dead weight. He peeled her underwear down to her mid-thighs, not bothering to take them off entirely, and began to fuck her. He pulled out after some minutes of not feeling much and licked his fingertips and touched her asshole, lubricating it enough to not wake her from her stupor as he jammed his penis inside it. When he’d come he got up and put his pants back on and then dressed Vanessa. He carried her by the wrists out to her car and put her in the backseat. He went back into the house and collected a sleeping Heather. When he had them both in the car he locked the front door of her house and drove to a secluded part of town full of rusted factories and empty fields. The town’s industry had atrophied to a dank wasteland. This was a place nobody wanted to go. He was going to be on time.
Chapter 6
Vanessa was sitting on a log with her back to a dense forest, weakly clutching her baby in her arms. She looked up at Adam, who stood before an enormous abandoned factory. Vines clutched to the red bricks that reached as high as the broken windows thirty feet up. There was the vague sound of running water in the forest behind her, the low hum of machines from the building. Everything seemed soggy and on the verge of rusting away. Adam was panting from exhaustion for reasons Vanessa did not know.
“Where am I?” Vanessa mumbled.
“This is the place you wanted me to show you.”
“What place?”
“Remember? I told you about that research company, how they wanted volunteers.”
“No.”
“I guess you were pretty high. They’re paying people top dollar to test foods and stuff. You wanted me to take you. Now we’re here.”
“I don’t remember talking about this at all.”
“You wanted to come here. It’ll help you pay your rent. Hell, you could do a lot more with what they’re paying.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’ve rung the bell, they should be coming soon.”
“Who?”
“The people who run the tests. I’ve gotta go.”
“Don’t leave me here.”
“Your car is here, just drive home when you’re done.”
“But I don’t know where I am.”
Adam was already gone, vanished around the corner of the factory. She thought she mustn’t be far from home if he left without driving. She assured herself it would begin to make sense to her the more she went along. She needed the money enough to not get up off the log, and her body ached; her genitals throbbed. Her head was too cloudy to speculate why.
