“Baby, baby,” he said and squeezed my breasts, shot with pain. The elevator opened, offered a hallway, dim-lit and long. I put my weight in my heels. “I’m fucked up,” I said. The words got halfway out and dropped. Jake pulled my hand a little.

“I got you,” he said. “Remember how I take care of you?” Every step counted off in my head. I had to consider where to put my feet. The hall became a hole, the hole became a room. I counted my steps to get inside. Then, I fell.

I felt Jake help me land, felt cushion beneath me. I thought of my phone, thought it was on me somewhere, thought I might remove it from my body, might film the room and find my place inside it. As it was, my phone was upstairs and my eyes had become shutters. I could only see in bars. Other senses turned up. The smell of liquor and coke drip: leather, poisonous flowers. Jake’s body, warm, then gone, a cold hole instead of him. The door clicked, soft. I was alone.

I closed my eyes, those shutters, fell further, fought my way back. I opened the shutters and the bars of light had slanted. I heard the door, heard Blaze’s voice, and the sound of someone I didn’t know. I blinked and couldn’t see. I tried to move and couldn’t move. Hands clasped around my waist. Dry skin snagged. The grip was hesitant, then sure. The hands flipped me to all fours. I saw the back of a green couch; I saw a handle, the door. I wanted to see the men, who was there, how many of them. But I couldn’t manage. I could move my arm and reach, but my fingers closed around empty air. Acrylic tips dug into my palms. I opened my mouth and maybe I screamed. Maybe I tried but no sound came out.

19.

Out of the Princess Suite and into another hotel elevator. I step in and it lifts, pushed upward. I count the dings of every floor, reach into the robe, careful with my fingers, feel the hilt of the steak knife, my dull protector. The doors open and I walk into a hallway, the smell of carpet cleaner, an arrangement of maudlin flowers, the light a jaundiced yellow.