Sins & Needles (The Artists Trilogy #1) (26 page)

We invaded the penny slots first since we both needed drinks and you could sit there for a long time playing. The longer you sat and the better you tipped, the stronger and more regular the “free” drinks were. After our fourth rum and Coke, our waitress never came back. I guess we’d been cut off.

At this time of the year, the casino wasn’t as busy as peak seasons, so Camden was able to sit at the machine next to me without pissing anyone off. Only sometimes would you have a local who had to sit at the same machine and usually we’d just move over. I didn’t want to sit next to the crazy gamblers anyway
; they usually smelled bad and had a way of eyeing you down if your machine was paying out more than theirs.

We had the most luck at the twenty-five cent Wheel of Fortune games. I wasn’t that much of a gambler to be honest
—I normally just cleaned my money and got out—but I always had some bizarre luck with these ones. Plus it’s fun to yell “Wheel! Of! Fortune!”

As I pulled the lever (much more satisfying than hitting the spin button)
, and as the pictures spun around, Camden whistled a short but familiar tune. A tune that made my heart wrench.

“That was it, wasn’t it?” he said.
He was watching me expectantly.

“Pardon me?” Another pull, another sip of my drink.

He whistled again. “The tattoo on your arm. The tune. It’s from ‘On Every Street.’ Dire Straits.”

Again, I was impressed he was able to deduce it from just the few notes.

“It suits you,” he said, quietly this time.

“Rough and sweet and sad?” I joked.

“No,” he said. “Just sad. God, that’s a sad song.”

I don’t know why but my eyes suddenly flared hot with tears. What the hell? A few rum and Cokes and a sad song and I was ready to go.

I swallowed loudly. “I like that song.”

“I’d hope you would since it’s tattooed on your arm. What does it mean? Are you looking for somebody’s face on every street?”

He started singing underneath his breath, going through the lyrics. I blinked hard, shrugged my shoulders, and resumed pulling. I wanted him to stop. He did when he hit the part on my arm, the three notes from the guitar after Knopfler sings the titular sentence. Three notes that never sounded so desolate. Three notes that sounded so much like
loss
in a song that ended with hope.

“That song is not about someone. That song is about you. You still refuse to be traced.” He sounded awed.

“There’s a cowbell in that song,” I reminded him, trying to make light of it while simultaneously wiping away a tear that sneaked out of my eye. “Let’s not look into it too much, shall we?”

       “Fine,” he said. The conversation was dropped and we went back to losing.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The two of us ended up going to be
d quite early, well early for a casino. After we lost two hundred dollars and earned back one hundred and fifty, we cashed out. I got the same girl as before and she didn’t give me any grief over making up a cashier’s check. Nor did she tell me she’d have to report my earnings to the IRS. At least we had that going for us.

With our fancy che
ck in hand, we got two more drinks to go and went back to our room. We had two beds, which was good because I didn’t really trust sharing a bed with Camden. I just don’t know who I mistrusted more–him? Or me?

After I sent Gus an email updating him on our whereabouts and checked both our phones for new messages (Snooty Neo for Camden, but no one else), I scrubbed off all my makeup, slipped on my boxer shorts and camisole
, and crawled into my bed. The sheets were stiff, the comforter had a bizarre smell, but it would do. I couldn’t say I felt exactly safe, even though I knew there was security in the hotel, and even though our door was triple locked. I wondered if I’d ever feel safe with Camden by my side, or if I was going to live in a constant state of anxiousness. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.

“Ellie,” he called out into the darkness. I had been awake and thinking for such a long time I had assumed he’d be asleep.

“Yes?”

“Tell me the story about your scars.”

It was as if the room got darker. Colder. Heavier.

I pulled the smelly comforter up to my face, wishing I could hide.

“It’s not a fun story.”

“I don’t want a fun story,” he said. “I want the truth. I want to know what happened.”

I chewed on my lip, wishing I could buy time, but there was nothing but time on long nights like these.

“I think you owe me that much,” he added softly.

And that was true. I did owe him at least that much. I brought my knees up to my chest, full-on fetal position, and told my story to the opposite wall. It was easier than facing him in the dark. It was easier knowing he was behind me.

“Once upon a time,” I began, “there was a young girl. The girl lived outside of
Gulfport, Mississippi. She didn’t call the place home but she’d been there for two years and it was as close of a home as she’d gotten before. In her home, she believed her life would turn out better and that her family would start acting like a family again. Her parents, or at least her dad, had gotten a real job at the casino. They promised her they were done being grifters and wanted to do things the right away. The girl believed them because they were her parents. She had always believed them, even when they were asking her to steal the wallets of moms at children’s birthday parties or distracting clerks while they stole pointless crap. She’d seen the movie
Paper Moon
and was happy someone had made a film about her life, that she wasn’t alone. One day, her mother was really angry. Her mother was always an angry person, but this day she was furious. The girl was scared. She loved her mother, but she especially loved her when she was in her rare happy moods. When she was angry, the girl was afraid of her. Even the dad was afraid of her.

So one day the mom tells the dad and the girl that they’re going on a little adventure. Just out to dinner to see an old friend of hers, a man called Travis. Now, the girl knew a lot about this Travis friend of her mother
’s. She had seen him around the house when her father was at work. The girl was old enough to suspect her mother was having an affair but too afraid to ever ask her mother about it. If her dad ever suspected anything, he was too timid and too kind to say anything about it.

And so they went out for dinner at his fancy house in the north of town. At the last minute the mother told the girl she was to sit in the car and wait for a few minutes. With a fat black marker she wrote down a combination of numbers on the girl’s hand and told the girl she was to go around to the back of the house, go in the second window, and once inside go for a certain door. In the room she’d find a safe. She’d use the numbers on her hand to open the safe and take the money out. Then she’d leave the way she came in.”

I paused.

“I’m listening,” Camden said quickly, sounding enthralled.

I took a deep breath and went on. “The girl did as she was told. But she was so nervous that she opened the wrong door. She went into a very black room and before she knew it, there was no ground beneath her. She fell down a flight of stairs and landed on the cold hard floor, crying out from the fall. It took her a few minutes to snap out of it, to realize what had happened. But it was too late. The commotion brought people to the top of the stairs. The light flicked on. It was Travis, with her parents behind him.

He came running down, waving his arms. The girl’s parents were quick with excuses, ‘We couldn’t find a baby-sitter,’ the mother said, ‘we told her to wait in the car.’ They yelled at the girl but it wasn’t enough for Travis. He helped the girl to her feet, grasping her unkindly around the wrist
, and he looked down at her hand. He saw the combination to the safe written on top. It was all over.”

Camden sucked in his breath and I had no choice but to power through the story. It was easier pretending it happened to someone else.

“Travis grew very quiet. For a few seconds there, he didn’t say anything. The girl had never been so terrified. The silence choked them all. Finally, he grabbed the girl by her arm, twisting it behind her back until she cried out in pain. Her parents started running down the stairs to stop him but Travis picked up a container from the shelves behind him. The girl didn’t know what it was, except that it had one of those warning labels on it. All the shelves had similar bottles, different colors, shapes and sizes. The girl had fallen into a sterile, cold basement. It almost looked like a lab but not quite. The man, Travis, threatened her parents. He said that if they told him the truth of what the girl was doing there, he’d let her go. But if they lied, he’d throw the bottle in her face.

Her parents told him the truth. The mother said she set it all up with the daughter because they were going to rob him. Because Travis deserved it. Because it was only fair. The mother didn’t say much more than that. It was enough. Travis smiled
, and it looked like he was going to let the girl go. But he didn’t. Not at first. Instead he held the girl in place, and while smiling at her parents and telling them ‘thank you for your honesty’, he poured the contents of the bottle on the girl’s leg, where it ran down from her knee to the bottom of her foot. She was wearing sandals and shorts at the time. She’d never wear shorts again.”

I trailed off, realizing I had a life before all of that happened. That I had been so free and happy
once. That I knew what it was like to walk down the street and not have people stare at you. I had so much potential back then and I never appreciated any of it. I never appreciated my future until it was ripped away from me.

“They never found out what chemicals were in the poison,” I told Camden before he could comment. “The doctors said it looked like battery acid or methylene chloride, which made them immediately suspicious. To them, it sounded like the girl’s parents were operating a meth lab. It made them sic Social Services on them. They ask
ed the same questions about the accident over and over again. And over and over again, the girl had to remember her lie. That she was playing in the dump near her house, searching for car parts for her dad when she accidently kicked over a bottle of unmarked liquid and it spilled on her. The girl didn’t understand why she had to keep lying, why she couldn’t tell them the truth. It was Travis’ fault. He’s the one who did it. Why were they protecting him? But her parents just said, ‘no darling, it’s our fault.’ And so the girl would spend the rest of her life blaming all of them. She’d blame them until she died.”

The story was punctuated by an overwhelming silence. It filled the room to the brim, heavy with the truth and about to run over. Finally, after what seemed like forever, Camden sighed.

“What is it?” I asked, almost annoyed at his response.

“I don’t know what to say, Ellie,” he said sadly, “
and I wish I did. I wish I had the words to take it all away.  I am
so
sorry.”

“It’s all right,” I lied. “I’m used to it.”

“Did you ever see Travis again?” he asked.

I hesitated. But there was no point in lying anymore.

“Yes. I did. That’s why I went back to Mississippi.”

“And Javier?”

“He worked for him.”

Camden took that information and I could hear him rolling over the bed with it. He exhaled. “So now it’s all making sense. You fell in love with one of the bad guys.”

“Don’t forget though, I’m one of the bad guys too.”

He didn’t say anything, perhaps lost in thought. I settled into my bed and pressed my head into the pillow. My eyes closed, ready for sleep. As I was drifting off, I heard Camden say, soft as air, “You’re not bad, Ellie. The world is bad and you’re just trying to survive in it.”

Or maybe it was a dream.

***

When the phone rang, jarring me out of my sleep, it took me a few moments to figure out where I was. I sat up in the bed and saw Camden stirring; the sun was just starting to rise somewhere in the east. I snatched up the phone from the table between our beds, remembering I’d asked for a wake-up call.

I eyed the clock as I said, “Hello?” It was seven a.m. I thought I asked for a wake-up call at eight.

There was no one on the line, just a faint humming sound. Then a click.

“Hello?” I asked again. A tiny
seed of dread was blooming in my stomach.

“Who was it?” Camden asked groggily as he turned over. He looked over at me, blinking slowly. Without his glasses he looked different. He looked good.

“I thought it was the wake-up call,’’ I said as I put the phone back on the receiver. “But they were supposed to wake us at eight.”

“Jerks,” he mumbled and rolled over. The light in the room was dim but I could see all the beautiful tattoos down his back. There was so much of him that I had yet to see and explore.

“Yeah,” I said absently. I shook my attention off of him. “Jerks.”