I was supposed to call Lana in the night. After finding out what those pills really were, I didn't want to anymore. Of course, I didn't know for sure that she was giving me these with the knowledge of what they really were, and I had a good feeling that she was probably just as oblivious as I had been. But just thinking about calling her and just thinking about Lana, Ester, and all the other prostitutes sent a very vile feeling in my stomach.
I probably wasn't the only victim of those horrid steroids.
When Harry went out to take a smoke deep in the woods, my eyes immediately steered to where the telephone was. After much hesitation, I found myself sitting at the end of the couch with the telephone on my lap, hands clinging around the neck of the phone as I debated dialing in Lana. In the end, I found my fingers magically gliding accordingly against the buttons in vivid recalling. I pressed the phone further against my ears, and when I heard Lana's familiar voice, a sharp breath became lost in my lungs.
"Iris?" She answered. "I was wondering when you were going to call."
When I was taking much longer than usual to respond, she became confused. "Iris, is that you? Are you there?"
Finally, I answered. "It's me."
She sighed in relief. "Okay, thank God. I was thinking maybe Beau answered the phone or... that thief! You have a lot of explaining to do."
"I know."
"So, where are you going to start?" She pressed. "Wait, before that, are you okay? How do I know he's not holding you hostage right now and pointing a gun to your head?"
I leaned forward over my lap, pinching the bridge of my nose as I mumbled, "he's not."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah."
"Okay... So, how do you know him!?!" She suddenly bellowed, startling me.
I licked my lips, wondering what to tell her. Normally, I'd say Lana was harmless , but just an hour ago, I had grown very skeptical of her. I wasn't sure.
In the end, I ended up telling her the truth. "He's hiding out in Beau's trailer."
"What?" She exclaimed. "So he lives in the trailer with you and Beau?"
"Yeah."
"For how long?"
I shrugged to myself. "I dunno... maybe a couple of weeks."
"And you didn't tell me until now?"
"Beau told me not to," I mumbled. "I mean, I was told not to tell anyone since he's hiding out from the police."
I heard her hmph as she processed my response. "How has he managed to not murder you on the spot?"
"I dunno."
'If I were him, considering what you did to him, I probably wouldn't have hesitated."
I raised a brow, frowning. "I didn't do anything."
"Yeah, that's what I meant," Lana said back sheepishly. "Does that mean you cleared the air with him?"
"If I didn't clear the air with Beau, what makes you think I cleared the air with him?" I retorted.
She chuckled at my rhetorical question. "Okay. I don't know Iris, he's definitely got a thing for you if he's that nonchalant around you. I mean, you saw the dagger eyes he was sending you when the police were dragging him out of Pink Panther. We both did. Only pussy power can ease that much rage."
My eyeballs nearly fell out of their sockets hearing her. "Lana!" I exclaimed.
She chuckled again.
"I'm done talking about this," I warned, making my enunciation very sharp.
"Hmph. Be careful around him Iris. He gives me bad energy." Lana suddenly said, her tone growing eerier.
"What?"
"I don't get good vibes from him is all."
Now I chuckled. "Weren't you literally fawning over him a month ago?"
"Yes, but I've been thinking about it for the past few hours, there's not much else to do considering how vacant Pink Panther is nowadays." She trailed, but in a quick moment, her voice became slender. "Listen, I've seen a lot of faces in this brothel and majority of them, I've seen more than once. Loverboy's face... it's unforgettable. I would never forget a face like that."
"Where are you going with this?" I sighed, pressing a thumb to my temple.
"I'm saying that there's a lot of frequent visitors stopping by our place, but he isn't one of them. The one day he shows up though, there's a murder? A vicious, devilish kind of murder? Stuff like this has never happened before, Iris..."
I sat up straight by the time she finished sharing her theory. "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"
"No," I reacted flatly. "That's not Harry."
He was literally, desperately, trying to hunt the real murderer down. It wasn't Harry.
From the phone, I could hear an amused gasp escape Lana. "Oh my god Iris."
"What?" I hissed.
"'That's not Harry?'" She mimicked over the line. "What, you know him now?"
I stayed silent and involuntarily listened to her continue mocking me. "Don't tell me you trust him too...."
Well, at this point, I probably trust him more than you. I thought in my head bitterly. There was further silence from me, and that bitter thought instantly sparked me to snap out the topic I was trying to introduce strategically in the back of my head.
"Lana, did you know that the pills you gave me aren't medicine pills at all?"
This time, she was the one to respond with silence. "Did Ester tell you they're livestock steroids used to fatten up cows that are to be sent to the butchershop?" I continued to press, waiting to irk her enough to audibly react.
Finally she did. "I was doing you a favor."
All the air left me once I heard her. Out of everything I was expecting to hear, that was not one of them.
I had been mostly sure that she was just innocent as I had been when taking in those pills. But what kind of response was "I was doing you a favor?"
"Excuse me?" I finally asked, collecting my breathing.
"Does it really matter what they are?" She breathed out helplessly. "They still helped us."
"They are livestock steroids," I reminded flatly, every enunciation of every word delivering as sharp as a knife.
"I know..." She admitted softly, and it was that admittance alone that sparked the final anger in me. I didn't even let her continue.
"You knew and you gave these to me?"
"Hey, I took them too," She pointed out deafeningly.
"So?" I cried, extremely baffled and enraged at the same time. "That doesn't make it any better Lana!"
"It got us a bunch of clients. That's what matters at the end of the day."
"No it doesn't?" I argued back loudly. "There are other ways to resort to than taking those things. We are not animals."
"No there aren't," she argued back weakly. "You know that. Those pills are the only thing that got you to look healthy again."
"Shut up Lana, shut up." I warned, gripping my kneecaps as a way to control my rage.
"Look, I don't like Ester and how she treats us, but I think giving us those pills is one of the best things she's ever done for us."
"You're brainwashed."
"Seriously, why does it matter what those pills are? We're prostitutes Iris. So that kind of does make us animals... to society anyways. Animals have no value to humans unless it's for their entertainment. The zoos, pets, aquariums.... it applies to us whores as well. The men only want us for their entertainment and when that purpose is done away with, they'll just toss us around like rag dolls. So, I'm asking you again, does it really matter?"
"Yes it matters," I seethed. "We're much more than stupid rag dolls."
"You are sweetie, not the rest of us. Unlike the rest of us, you got out. You escaped this whore life with Beau as your knight in shining armor."
"Not true," I muttered, gritting my teeth.
"Fine, if you don't want to appreciate those steroids, that's okay. But for the rest of us, they're miracles. There's no out and these miracle pills are the only things keeping us from being thrown out into the streets. That's right, we're not the only ones taking them. Ester's been giving it out to several of us. Patty, Estella, Margot, Janet..."
"Without those pills, I would not be sane. They give me closure; they bring the men to me. It gets so lonely sometimes knowing that I can't ever go back home... to my parents... to know that they'll never treat me with the same warmth if I were to show my face at their doorsteps again... no amount of touch or affection will ever equate to the love they once gave me. One or two clients only give me a slight breeze of their love, but when you've got a string of them lining up for you, it's enough to make up. That's what the pills do for me."
I wish she hadn't told me all of that. It made it harder for my anger to stay put and I didn't want my anger to go anywhere. Not after she had willingly fed me those atrocious pills. Before the conversation could go deeper down the sentimental route it was surely heading towards, I took a huge breath before saying my final words to her.
"It was nice knowing you Lana."
I hung up the telephone and for the next few moments, I stared off into the distance with an empty mind. I didn't know what to think. I was startled back into reality when I heard a voice behind me.
"Everything good Iris?"
I nearly jumped off the couch before turning to see Beau standing a few meters in front of the trailer entrance. He had probably come back from his library shift just now.
"I'm fine," I nervously nodded, getting on my feet to stand up now.
"You sure? You look really pale..." He observed with concerned eyes.
"I'm sure," I meekly answered back.
Fuck, I really needed a cigarette.
And some air at it too.
I quickly scanned the console table where the pack of cigarettes normally was. We had just gotten a new pack from the discount store earlier. It wasn't there though.
Harry had probably taken it with him when he went out to take a smoke.
"Um, I'm going to go out for some air," I declared, refocusing back on Beau. I didn't wait to hear anything from him, already dismissing myself from the trailer.
I spent the next eight minutes walking around in the dark, looking for Harry. I found him not far from the pond's edge, with his legs dangling into the body of water without touching it. I nearly stumbled approaching him, but when I did, he took no notice. All his attention was centered into the outer distance as he was close to the last puff.
When I sat down next to him, he almost jumped.
"Relax, it's just me," I mumbled.
Even in the dark, I saw him roll his eyes and let out a small sigh.
"Can I get a cigarette?" I asked straight to the point, squinting down at his lap to see him grasping the pack.
He followed my gaze, looked back at me with an unreadable look, before opening the pack to hand me a cigarette.
"Thanks."
We smoked in silence and the atmosphere around us soon became concentrated in wisps of burnt tobacco. When I was halfway done with my cigarette, I detached it from between my lips, tilting my head to face Harry, who was stuck in his own world.
"You know that ex-coworker of mine we saw earlier today?" I asked, pulling him into the real world. He turned to me with a mouth of eccentricity, curved in surprise.
"Yeah," He responded in a very delayed manner.
"Yeah, so her name's Lana and she's been the one giving me those steroids."
His mouth widened even more, but this time, his eyes widened too. He swallowed, unsure of how to respond.
"Turns out she knew from the start what those steroids were. I was kind of hoping she didn't." I added when I knew he wasn't gonna respond.
"Are you going to say anything?" I snapped, my tone coming off sharper than I had intended it to come out.
He exhaled loudly, fully turning to me. "What's to say?"
I sighed, shaking my head. "You know she thinks you're the murderer right?"
His face washed into amusement at that. The very corner of his lips upturned into a small smirk as he made a curious "ah."
"And why does she think that?" He followed up, throwing his cigarette butt not too far away. I saw him crush the thing with the sole of his feet before I answered him.
"She said murders have never happened in Pink Panther until the day you showed up. She also said the first and only time she ever saw you was that night... until today of course." I pulled my knees up to my chest after feeling the night chill begin to settle in the atmosphere.
"Sounds like a reasonable theory to me," Harry commented.
"Yeah right," I murmured, cupping my face into the space between my kneecaps.
"You don't think it can be me?" He asked, charmed.
I shook my head. "No, I've got my bets on it being one of the Pink Panther girls."
Harry snickered next to me. "Interesting."
hey lovelies, how are you?
I've noticed that I've garnered some new readers in the last week, so hii!
we're in chapter 19 now that's a lot of chapters so I want to thank you guys for giving Lowlives a chance :)
What are you guys thinking so far? Please let me know your thoughts, I'd love to hear your thoughts :))
This is probably going to be the last time you'll hear from me in a while. I have several aps to take next month so I'll probably dedicate the entire month of May to studying. But I might publish a chapter or two in that time frame; i don't know. again, thank you for reading up to ch 19, your interest in Lowlives brightens up my day. See you guys in chapter 20!