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I hear a man’s voice. I can’t hear the words. I hear Tasha’s voice, chirpy and loud and fake as hell. “Okay, bye! Thank you! Tell Misha I said hi!” Laughing.

A long pause.

The longest pause in my whole entire life.

Then I hear a buzz and a clank. And the car rolls forward.

I put both hands over my mouth so I don’t scream.

* * *

Ten minutes later, Tasha pulls over on Sunset and pops the trunk, and I climb out in my red dress in front of a smoke shop, and a homeless man on the corner starts clapping.

“GIRL,” Tasha screams. “WE DID THAT.”

We scream and jump up and down on the sidewalk like we just won the lottery. I’m laughing so hard I’m crying. I’m shaking so bad I can barely get my heels on.

I’m out. I’m out. I got past the gate and the cameras and the guards with their rifles, and he doesn’t know, and he won’t know, ‘cause my phone’s sitting under his pillow on top of that hill.

“Where you wanna go?” Tasha says. “Anywhere. Name it. Tonight we free.”

I look down Sunset. The lights. The traffic. The billboards.

I know exactly where I wanna go. I’ve known since that trunk closed.

I know it’s the first place he’d look, if he knew where to look. I know he’s got people there. I know it’s the stupidest place in all of Los Angeles for me to go.

“Gilt,” I say.

Tasha stares at me. “Bitch, why?”

I fix my dress. I fluff out my braids. I put on my lip gloss.

“‘Cause I wanna dance,” I say.

That’s not the whole truth.

I don’t tell her the whole truth.

Seven

Sasha

She kissed me at the door. I’m standing at the end of a dock in San Pedro at ten-thirty at night, watching two of my men hold a harbor man under the black water by his hair, and that’s all I can fucking think about.

Six days she’s been in my house, and she hasn’t touched me first once. Not one time. I take, she fights, and then she comes on my cock crying.

Tonight she got up off my bed in her old gray sweats with her hair tied up in that silk scarf, walked across the room, put her hand on my chest, went up on her toes, and kissed me.

Soft. Sweet. Her lips tasted like mango.

My cock’s been hard for four hours.

The harbor man comes up gasping. Choking. Begging. He’s been skimming off my containers for three months and he thought nobody would notice. My guys put him back under. The bubbles come up. I watch them pop and think about her soft little hand on my chest. About how she looked up at me afterward. Big brown eyes. Not scared. Not mad.

Like she was memorizing my face.

My phone rings.