SHE OPENED the door, wearing an apricot sweatshirt that came down almost to her knees, face sweaty, no makeup. No contact lenses either, yellow cat's eyes patient.
The apartment looked the same. Fresh rosebuds in a steel vase on the coffee table. The air smelled sharp, ionized. Like after a hard rain.
I sat on the couch. She curled her legs under her, wrinkled her nose when I lit a cigarette. I waited.
"I have a daughter," she said.
I dragged on the cigarette, watching the glowing tip.
"You don't seem surprised."
"I don't know you."
"I know you. You're the same. So am I."
"Okay."
"She's almost sixteen years old. Always had the best. The very, very best. Designer clothes, dance lessons, private schools. The last school she went to, they even had a rule about boys in the rooms. You had to have one foot on the floor at all times."
Candy's mouth curled- her laugh didn't come from her belly.
"Imagine that, huh? I was older than her before I knew people fucked lying down. Remember?"
I remembered. The dark stairwell at the back of the building where she lived with her mother in a railroad flat on the top floor. Candy standing one step higher than me, her back to me, her skirt bunched around her waist. I remembered taking down a drunk in an alley just past a waterfront bar with two other guys from the gang. Thinking my share of the loot would buy her a sweater she wanted. And me another few minutes on those stairs.
"Her name is Elvira. Pretty name, isn't it? I wanted her to have everything I didn't." She waved her hand, taking in the sterile waiting room to her office. "That's what I started all this for."
I watched her lying eyes, waiting.
"A few months ago, she ran away from school. She's staying with this cult. Over in Brooklyn. I don't know much about it…even what it's called. The man who runs it, he's called Train. I don't know how he got to her. I went there once. They wouldn't let me speak to her. I told them she was underage, but they must know something about me. Maybe she told them. Call a cop, they said."
I lit another smoke.
"I want her back. She's mine, not theirs. She's too young for this. She needs help. Maybe even a hospital. She…"
I cut her off. "What do you want from me?"
She tilted her chin to look up at me. "Get her out of there. Get her back."
"I don't do that stuff."
"Yes you do. You do it all the time. It's what you do. What you used to do before…"
I looked a question at her.
She pointed a finger at me, crooked her thumb. "Bang bang," she said softly.
I shook my head.
"All you have to do is ask, okay? Just go there. See the man. Ask him to let Elvira go with you."
"And if he says no?"
"Then I'll do something else."
"Do something else first."
"No! I want to keep my life. Just the way it is, okay? Just ask him."
"Why should he go along?"
"It doesn't matter. He will. I know he will."
I got off the couch, walked over to the window. It was dark outside, lights spotting the building across the street. Nothing was right about her.
"Say the whole thing," I told her.
"You go there. You ask him for Elvira. He gives her up. You bring her to me."
"He says no?"
"You walk away."
"No more?"
"No more."
"What kind of cult is this? They have the girls hooking, begging, selling flowers, what?"
"I don't know."
"How do you spell this guy's name? Train."
"Like a subway train.
I lit another smoke. "You said you'd pay me."
"I said I'd give you whatever you want."
"Money's what I want."
"Tell me the price. I'll have it here for you when you get back."
I smiled.
She didn't. "Half now, half when you come back."
"Five now."
She padded out of the room on her bare feet. I punched the redial number on the white phone, memorized the number that came up on the screen, hung it up gently before it could ring at the other end.
Candy came back in, handed me a thick wad of bills wrapped in a rubber band. I put it in my coat pocket.
"Here's all I know about him," she started, curling up on the couch again.