“Poor Melissa,” she continued, shaking her head. “She thinks she’s got it all figured out. But she’s playing a vicious game.”
“Vicious?”
“Yes. She thinks that trading money or stuff for sex puts her in control. What she’s really doing is putting her life in the hands of the Devil.”
“What?” I was incredulous. My mother had never spoken like this before.
“Yep,” she said forthrightly, undaunted by my reaction. “The Devil wants us to have a puffed-up ego – to be thinking we’ve got it all under control when we obviously don’t -- because we’re much easier to shoot down that way. And it normally doesn’t take too long, either. You said she practically ran out of there at the end because she got a text?”
“Um, yeah, she said it was a date she forgot about.”
“Maybe,” my mother said grimly. “Or maybe it was her pimp. They can usually get their girls to move pretty quick.”
“W-What?” My eyes bulged. “What makes you say that?”
“Honey, when you were little I worked the ER nights, because that was the best paying job,” she looked me square in the face. “That’s where I saw what pimps do to their girls.”
I shook my head. This was all too much for me. Melissa was brought up in the best part of town; girls like her didn’t end up as prostitutes. I regarded my mother with disbelief.
“Y-You don’t know that any of this is true,” I said, half-accusingly.
“No, I don’t,” she admitted. “And I hope for her sake, and for her mother’s sake, that I’m wrong. But it sounds like she’s lying pretty smoothly, and she’s dressing the part, plus she’s obviously on her own with someone paying her luxury bills because her mom would never pay for any of the stuff you saw.”
I had to admit she had a point.
“W-What should we do?” I whispered.
“Well,” she sighed. “I’m going to give her mother a call. She may not want to hear from me, but if this is true, she may need a shoulder to cry on.”
W-Wait,” I said, not believing my ears. “You are going to help the woman that-that stole your husband?
She thinks that trading money or stuff for sex puts her in control. What she’s really doing is putting her life in the hands of the Devil.”
REGINA | 70
REGINA Fiction