I don’t know why I followed him and started laughing until my stomach convulsed. Maybe so my tears of shame could flow again in disguise. When I finished laughing and flicking them away, he had already pulled into a vacant, rubbish-strewn lot in back of an abandoned Laundromat. I didn’t know exactly where we were, but I could hear a coming Metra train sound its bells. So we were in South Shore, probably within walking distance of my aunt’s just in case I changed my mind or things got out of hand. He parked the car but didn’t turn it off. It was cold. He swallowed hard and I finally was able to hear his breath even though the volume on the radio hadn’t been touched. I didn’t exactly notice how he maneuvered his way upon me, slithering over the Lincoln Town Car’s middle console with an ease that made me suddenly think he did this all the time. I had no reason to be, but I was disappointed anyway. I could feel the decades-old cracks in his lips slicing a pattern into my own. The hairs I had known would scratch my chest instead stabbed at my chin. Then he held me tight against him for a whole verse of Luther, which song I couldn’t make out because I had lost my focus. But he was my mama’s favorite so I could make out that voice underwater if I had to. The old man squeezed me into him and ran his lips and chin over the top of my hair. He massaged my back, let me taste his heart beating on my face so strong I felt the need to open my mouth and swallow. I inhaled too many breaths of Old Spice and felt the tart beginning to throw-up cascade down the back of my throat. Mind over matter, I convinced my pregnant self, knowing he might be too disgusted to continue—even if I wiped every last speck of vomit off his nice leather seats. I needed to push him off me to concentrate on keeping it down. I held out my arms tight as my eyes watered from nausea.

“What’s wrong there, sugar?” he whispered, holding my face in both his hands and looking into my eyes with a new rage of want. “What’s wrong, darling? Huh? I ain’t scare you, did I?”

“No,” I managed. “No. I ain’t scared of shit.”

He started to fall back into me but I wasn’t ready yet.

“How much you gonna pay me?” I shouted, turning away and bending forward from my stomach.

“Huh?”

“I sa-id, how much is you gonna pay me?”

It was an unfair question at this time, and that’s exactly how I liked it. His mind was too gone to expect any other response than the one he gave.