Madam by Cari Lynn Read Free Book Online

She gulped air, then as steadily as she could muster, she said it: “I need my own crib.”
    Her words hung in the air, and she could feel the muscles in her face tighten as she waited for him to answer.
    He dropped his trousers. “Can’t,” he said flatly.
    “You know I can make money,” she pleaded.
    “Anderson’s got us all by the balls.”
    “But I’m not old and sagged. I got all my teeth. I can make good money!”
    “I says no.”
    Mary’s jaw clenched. She hated how he talked to her like she was still a child, how he talked like he controlled her. She knew she should just stop there and that to push more would be asking for Lobrano to erupt. But she always gave in, always stopped and cowered from him. Her thoughts darted to Charlotte, to Peter, to the baby coming into this world. And she decided here and now to test Lobrano.
    “What if,” she said coyly, sidling up to him, “what if some other pimp wants to get me my own crib?”
    He let go of her waist and grabbed her by the wrists, pushing her hard against the tree. He put his face right up next to hers. “You’re so full o’ shit, your eyes be turnin’ brown,” he hissed. “You and your brother’d be in the ground years ago if not for me. You’d be nothin’. Who the fuck’s Mary Deubler? Nobody, that’s who.” Disgusted, he stepped back and let her arms drop.
    Mary rubbed her wrists, sure to be bruised tomorrow. There was no denying that a part of what he said was true—maybe she and Peter would have starved, and somebody would be stepping over her bones when the earth spit them out. But she’d been paying Lobrano for years; was she expected to owe him for the rest of her life? She stepped toward the door of her house.
    “And go take a bath,” he yelled after her. “All that perfume don’t cover the cunt underneath.”
    Mary wanted to scream at him that she had an excuse for the way she smelled—that it was her job to lie under men, even if they were odorous, and it was her job to make them heated. What was Lobrano’s excuse for his putrid stink? But she forced herself to say nothing, and instead slipped quietly into her house, where, with a stifled sigh, she bolted the door.
    The house was toasty from a crackling fire, and Mary was heartened to see Peter still awake, leaning over the hearth, shifting the embers.
    “Hiya, Josie,” he said quietly, calling Mary by the nickname he’d used since he was a little boy. He turned to face her, but the smile that usually came so easily to brighten his face now seemed strained.
    “She okay?” Mary whispered, nervously looking to the corner of the room, where Charlotte, flushed and sweaty, was asleep on the cot. Mary hadn’t realized she was holding her breath until, at Peter’s nod, her chest sank with relief.
    “Don’t know how she’s still sleepin’, though,” he whispered. “That baby be kickin’ so hard, nearly knocked me outta bed.”
    Mary smiled at their sweet girl, her dark hair clinging in damp clumps to her heart-shaped face. She looked still a child herself, with thick lashes and a dainty, upturned nose. Her dry, delicate lips moved faintly and silently from the midst of whatever she was dreaming.
    “Hard to believe that tiny thing can have a belly so swollen,” Mary said as she leaned her kip against the wall. She then went to the only piece of furniture under their roof that held any meaning for her: a cherrywood bureau that had been Mama’s. It wasn’t much to look at, especially not for anyone used to fine furnishings, but it did have pretty carvings on its four corners of small bouquets strung together with ribbons. Mary gave the bureau a little shove, then squatted down behind it.
    From a hole in the floorboards, she removed a cigar box, its wood smooth and worn. A picture was revealed as she tipped the lid. A scene of a yellow streetcar, the A-B-C line, which, so the box told her, traveled to places she’d never heard of—Akron, Bedford, and Cleveland.