Red Light

I’m late for her this evening. I learnt her name last night, or at least what she tells them all her name is. Lila, she’d said, enchanté. She spoke to the one last night longer than she usually does; he probed her with question after question and filled her with drink until she stumbled out holding his hand, giggling and barely standing up. 

I felt like I knew her the moment I saw her, on that misty Friday evening in July. She was wearing very little—as girls like her often are—and she was leaning against the doorway of that gentleman’s club, hair hanging loosely around her shoulders. When the man appeared and slung his arm around her shoulder, she looked right past him. At me. Her eyes seemed to shine with some kind of recognition. They widened in a way that seemed to beg: follow me down. And of all the nights I’d been here, she was the first to look at me like that, not a pleading so much as a curious invitation. So I did. 

The chandeliers twinkled above us and the mirrors turned the whole place into a kaleidoscope. I'd always felt like this place was a menagerie, some kind of cabinet of curiosities where faceless lonely people reached for girls in the half light. 

The man led her to the bar, where he whispered something in her ear and she threw her head back in a girlish laugh. The bartender handed her a deep pink drink in a martini glass and she pushed her lips into a beaming smile. Sitting down in the blood red armchair, she swung her legs crossed, leaning forward over the champagne bottle in the middle of the table and letting her necklace swing over her clavicle. Laughing, he beckoned her over, and she sat down in his lap, legs swung over the side and hands clasped around his neck. I watched them whilst I poured myself a vodka soda. He was stroking his fingers up and down her thigh, playing with the chiffon fabric of her minidress. I felt as if I were going to be sick. 

 When they finally left, I slipped after them. I watched them snake through the maze of lanes and side streets. The lights in this part of town are all so red. And the one above her door even more so, beaming as they slipped inside. Red light streamed from her window angrily and all over me at first, but then just a slit that cut my face in two, once she pulled the curtain shut. Her eyes scanned the street as she did so, and she looked at me quizzically before hiding her face in the fabric. Their shadows jerked behind the curtain and then disappeared. 

I do this every night. I don’t trust them, the way they look at her, their leers and their gropes. The way they piss away money to get her good and drunk. It was a few months ago that they stopped looking at me. That I came to the club, bruised but made-up. And it was as if I were some grotesque creature they couldn't bear to look at, as if I'd become invisible to them all. It feels like a gift now though, the way I can slip into the crowd unnoticed and sit and watch and know that she is safe. 

But tonight I am late. I head straight to her house, desperate to catch the end of the encounter. 

She comes out the front door and pulls a cigarette packet out of her pocket. Looking up at me, she mimes flicking a lighter and I blink, taken aback. She’s never given me more than a look before. I dash across the road in the short break from the traffic, pull a lighter out of my coat and hand it to her.

‘I looked for you tonight,’ she says, ‘you weren’t there.’

‘I was late.’

She is so beautiful. Her pale face glows a soft pink in the light above her door frame, her round eyes looking up at me from a high cheek-boned face. She offers me her cigarette packet and I take one, hands shaking. 

‘What’s your name?’ she asks, hands curled around her cigarette, her long-nailed fingers struggling with the lighter. I take it off her and light the cigarette for her before my own. 

‘Ruby,’ I say.

‘Is that your real name?’

‘No.’

‘Smart girl.’

‘You’re Lila.’

‘Alina. My name’s Alina. I want you to know that.’

She takes a drag of her cigarette as the light flickers on and off.

‘Why Ruby?’

‘They liked it.’

‘Yeah. They always do. I never see you with them, though. In there.’

‘Not anymore.’

‘Lucky girl. So, what do you do now, look over the rest of us? Like some guardian angel?’

‘Something like that.’

She finishes her cigarette and drops the butt on the ground, grinding it out with her heel. Tying her black hair loosely into a bun, she slowly pushes open her door, pausing a second and sighing before she steps inside.

‘Until tomorrow night then, Ruby,’ she says over her shoulder. 

I come early and smoke outside the club until the night’s client arrives. My breath catches in my throat when I see him, all angles and sharp edges, tall and gaunt with wolfish eyes. I know this man. At least, I knew him once. Two kids. He showed me their pictures one time, in the early hours of the morning. Max and Jo. Twins. I was blind drunk that night, and it comes back to me only in blinks and flashes. I remember the way he held my chin up to his face, his spidery fingers hot and sweaty on my face, and holding on too tight, and hearing Ruby, you are such a pretty thing.

 The summer evening is paralysingly hot. I feel like the air is choking me. He looks up from checking through his business emails. Stares right through me.

‘Evening Gorgeous,’ comes Alina’s sing-song voice as she glides around the corner. Her hair is twisted up on top of her head, the outline of her spine peeping out from the scooped back of her minidress. She catches my eye across the road and winks at me, before trailing her fingers up his arm and holding onto him loosely. I stub the cigarette out on the wall, tighten the straps on my heels and clatter after them. Alina looks back and nods at me. 

This one is different, I mouth, but she’s barely looking. Inside, I grip tight to the arms of my chair, watching my knuckles turn white so I don’t have to look at their entangled reflections in front of me, like some funhouse mirror. I’ve come here every night. I have watched every man palm his tentacles all over her body, I have watched her smile and laugh and sip her drink. I have watched her make every man think that she would love him even if he wasn’t producing that wad of cash at the end of the night. And I have sat and I have gritted my teeth and I have borne it. 

Something is different tonight though. The air is so heavy. Looking at them makes me burn up, starts an itch in my body that makes me want to rip my skin from my bones. Conversations seem to get louder and become ear-splitting, piercing right through me. I try to down my drink and I feel it twisting in my stomach, threatening to come straight back up. Finally, I watch Alina head over to the cloakroom whilst the man examines the bill. I jump up and stride out of the room, starting to run up the stairs onto the street. My breathing is heavy and I can feel the sweat trickling down the back of my neck. It’s all so wrong. Something is so, so wrong.  

Three streets. I have to travel three streets from here, and it’s a path that’s branded into my brain. It takes me seven minutes which is three minutes quicker than usual. The street lamps are spinning around me, and when I arrive, I place my palms on the front door, trying to ground myself with something solid. The red light flickers above. I can feel the nausea rising in my throat whilst I punch in the code to the key box. 4352. I have been watching her for six weeks now. I have her every move memorised and I will not let him touch her.

Gently, I push open the bedroom door. Peeling floral wallpaper covers the walls, and the bed is unmade, the duvet hanging limply off the side. Jewellery is scattered haphazardly over the bedside table and a small dressing table sits in the corner of the room. I walk over to the dressing table. The room is suffocating me, it feels as though the ceiling is pressing down on my body. I clutch my wrist, digging my nails into my skin, trying to bring myself back to earth. I can hear the clatter of shoes coming up the stairs, and I edge backwards behind the door just before it swings open. They are glued to each other, like one complete gruesome body falling backwards onto the bed. I clutch the door handle, trying to keep my breathing shallow and low. Alina turns and locks her gaze on me; her eyes widen and her body starts. She shakes her head frantically.

‘What are you looking at?’ The man asks, laughing and stroking her neck. He follows her eyeline towards me and I am fucked. Alina is staring at me speechlessly, opening her mouth as if she is about to start trying to explain, but when he finally looks at me, he says nothing at all. In fact, he doesn’t even seem to register that I'm there, he just turns back to Alina and continues. Does he want me to watch? Is that the kind of sick fuck that he is, that he can stare right at me and not even care that I’m here? I step forward.

The next part happens very quickly. There is a flash of something silver and a scream. Alina scrambles across the bed, away from a knife lying on the other side. She is clutching her shoulder. 

‘Ruby!’ she screams, as the man reaches to grab it, and that seems to throw him off, just for a 

second. The man’s eyes widen, looking frantically around the room. 

‘Where the fuck is Ruby?’ he shouts. 

I’m here. I am right here. I rush forward, grabbing him and shoving him onto the bed. 

‘What the fuck?’ He shouts, and I keep pushing, throwing all my weight on top of him, ‘What the fuck is that?’ 

Alina grabs the knife, thrusting it into his back. Again. And again, and again and again, like she’s been possessed. 

‘Alina—’ I start, but she backs away, still holding the knife and collapsing onto the floor holding her shoulder which is seeping blood.  

‘Ruby,’ she shouts weakly, ‘where did you go?’

‘I’m here. I’m right here.’

‘Ruby!’ she calls again. She pants in the corner of the room, then starts to cry, softly and soundlessly, lip quivering and body shaking. She clutches her knees to her chest and she looks so young then, just a fragile, pale, little thing, all skin and bones. A far cry from the glamorous woman she convinced him she was just a few hours earlier. Alina drags her tiny body off the bed, her frame bent over like an old woman, nearly crawling across the room. She steadies herself on her dresser, gripping the edge and dry heaving, her fingers fumbling for the phone. Something shifts on the bed frame. The man’s body begins to shudder, but Alina stays with the phone glued to her ear, unnoticing. 

‘Alina,’ I begin, reaching for her, but she doesn’t seem to hear. 

The man sits up and suddenly there are two of him. One, stone cold and pale white, still lying on the bed. And another, slowly standing up, staring directly at me. For the first time. The man on the bed lies, face down, and when Alina tentatively turns him over there is fear etched across his face. Like a scared little boy. They’re all little boys, in the end. But the man on his feet betrays nothing with his face, just keeps his gaze locked on mine. 

His lips curl into a smile and he nods in my direction. It feels like a fist is clenching around my chest. I step backwards, hand reaching clumsily for the doorknob behind me but he lunges forward quicker than I can open it, hand gripping tight around my wrist. 

‘Pleasure to see you again, Ruby,’ he says softly, ‘always knew you’d be waiting for me in hell.’