MAD DOG AND THE SEA DRAGON

By Lisa De Nikolits

We met at an art gallery one lazy afternoon.

“You and me, we could be listening to Frankie singing at The Desert Inn,” he said with a sideways grin. “I always dress like this, what’s your excuse?”

We were standing shoulder to shoulder and I turned to face him. I let it show that I liked what I saw. He was a straight split between Chaz Palminteri and Anthony Mad Dog Esposito, whose stark black and white photograph I had been admiring on the wall.

This man never really left the jungle, the caption under the photograph read. New York Daily News, 1941, picture credit, Weegee.

“He was nuts,” I said, gesturing to Mad Dog.

 “Not as much as he would have liked to be. Him and his brother pleaded insanity to try to get off a murder charge, they barked and hit their heads on the table at the trial, they howled and cried and behaved like animals for the whole thing.”

“So that’s why they called him Mad Dog?”

“Nah. The New York police commissioner called him and his brother ‘mad dog killers’ for what they did. They killed a man in an elevator for a few hundred bucks and then they ran out into the street and started shooting everybody. That’s the part that was nuts. William, the younger brother, shot a cop and then a taxi driver tried to save the cop and then he – the taxi driver – got shot in the throat but he lived and the cab company got him a new car for his troubles.”

He paused to take a breath. “The whole Esposito family were hoods, the father had done time, the third brother was in prison, the two sisters were thieves. But the mother was behind the whole thing. Mothers. The root of all evil if you ask me.”

He fell silent and turned to look at Mad Dog Esposito again and I thought I had lost him and I struggled to think of something to say. I panicked. Things had seemed to be going really well but now it had come to a grinding halt. My sister had given me a bunch of lines to use but I couldn’t remember any of them, my mind was a complete blank and I felt close to tears. I was going to ruin this before it even started. To my relief, he picked up the thread of conversation.

“Look at Ma Barker,” he said, turning back to me. “I don’t care what they said, she made her boys and her husband do what they did. She led that gang, I don’t care what anybody said about her being innocent. And Violet Kray, Ronnie and Reggie’s mother. It was all her fault too. She used to dress Reggie and Ronnie up like little girls after her baby girl died. No wonder they were both bisexual paranoid schizophrenics. Violet killed Reggie’s wife, Frances, and made it look like a suicide. Mothers are behind most gang wars and crime. Women. You can’t live with them, you can’t live without them.”

He shot a glance at me and gave a shrug as if he was about to turn and leave and I fired a question to stop him. 

“What happened to the Mad Dog brothers?”

“Their pathetic attempts to look crazy didn’t work. Him and his brother were electrocuted in 1942.”

He looked angry about something and once again I felt like I had ruined the great start to our conversation and I frantically fished around for a way to get us back on track.

“I love these photographs,” I said in my most practiced sultry voice and I could see his mood lift again, his shoulders relaxed and he smiled, a halfway twisted smile that I wondered if he practiced in front of the mirror.

“Yeah,” he said. “Weegee. Great photographer. His real name was Arthur Fellig. He got his nickname after the boardgame for his weird way of knowing where to be when a story broke. He said it was just in his blood.”

“You’re a wealth of fascinating information,” I purred. Why couldn’t I remember what my sister had told me? We had practiced often enough. But all I could think of was cigar smoke and Paco Rabanne. Could you even get Paco Rabanne anymore? Obviously, yes.

“Paco Rabanne,” I said and he smiled and he straightened his tie. His suit was charcoal pin-stripe and he had a blue tie and matching folded handkerchief sticking out of his pocket. His shirt was crisp white and he shot his cuffs, giving me a glimpse of gold cufflinks.

“Yeah. So what’s a dame like you doing in a joint like this?”

I smoothed my form-fitting red dress over my hips and made sure my chiffon scarf was draped just so. I was wearing six-inch heels and I was still only eye level with his chest, this man was a linebacker.

 “I could ask the same of you,” I said, looking up at him, trying for coy. “You look more like a business man than an art aficionado.” I figured he’d like feisty and he did.

“Well, you gotta love Weegee,” he said. “He used to say the easiest kind of a job to cover was a murder because the stiff would be laying on the ground. He couldn’t get up and walk away or get temperamental. He would be good for at least two hours.” He laughed like this was the funniest thing. “He also said murder is my business. I can relate.”

His last sentence sent chills up my spine but I forced myself to smile, full wattage, trying for Jessica Chastain if she’d been a star in the late 50’s.

He grinned and moved closer to me and I figured I was in. But I didn’t have big boobs. A guy like this, he’d want big boobs and I’m tall, with a good round ass and a tiny waist and long legs with slender calves and a finely turned ankle if I say so myself but there’s no getting away from the fact that my boobs are like teacups. I sighed.

“Bored of me already,” he asked, one eyebrow raised.

I shook my head. “My boobs are too small for a guy like you,” I said and he gave a sharp bark of laughter.

“See, I knew I liked you already,” he said. “You tell it like it is, no beating around the bush. Hey, I wouldn’t worry about it. My wife’s stacked, double D’s and I don’t much care for her.”

His wife. I shut the whole thing down with a look and turned away but he grabbed my elbow.

“Don’t be like that,” he said and he held my hand between both of his. His hands were enormous and slightly damp.

“This is nuts,” I said, my voice breathy like Marilyn’s. “I met you like three seconds ago, what’s with the electricity between us?”

He grinned and pulled me closer.

“Maybe it’s Dog Esposito getting me so excited,” I whispered in his ear. “I’ll be honest, I crush on crazy criminals. This is the third time I’ve come to see this exhibit and now you’re here.”

He caressed my palm and I leaned into him, my eyes shut, my breath coming fast.

“Crazy criminals aren’t all they’re made out to be,” he said but I only half heard him. The Paco Rabanne and his touch and the whole situation I was in was making me feel dizzy and I worried for a moment that I was going to faint.

“Oh, we’ll have ourselves some fun, you and me,” he said, and all I could do was nod.

“You want to go someplace?” he asked. I nodded and that’s how it all started. Me, letting him know that I wanted him, with Mad Dog leaning over my shoulder and this man, all big and handsome, and the gallery lighting throwing shadows like cloaks and daggers.

But he was a gentleman. He took me for coffee. The place was deserted except for us.

“Tell me about you,” he said while I dipped my finger into cappuccino foam and licked it clean.

“I was born into the wrong era,” I said. “In my real life, I’m a late night janitor in a high-rise office. Believe me, you’d have a healthy fantasy world if that was your life too. I spend my spare time and money, not that there’s much of either, sifting through thrift stores looking for garments from a better time. I’ve got quite the wardrobe by now, I’ll tell you that for nothing.”

“Girl like you should have new clothes,” he said. “Shiny. Styling, yes. But new.”

I shrugged. “It is what it is,” I said. “No use in complaining. And you? Tell me about you.”

He was silent. “I’ve gotta be careful,” he said. “My life’s complicated. My work, my family, it’s all complicated. I’ve got a wife, like I said but let’s not talk about her. She’s a piece of work but let’s not go there. I’ve got a daughter. The apple of my eye.”

He dug out his wallet and showed me a picture of Anne of Green Gables, red-hair, braids, freckles and all.

“Isn’t she a beauty?” he said. “God help the boy who lays a hand on her. She’s only ten years old, so I’m okay for a while. I wish I could lock her up in a tower forever, keep her safe from the world.”

“She’s pretty,” I said. Kid looked like she thought her dad was Santa and the Easter bunny all in one.

“Enough about me,” he said, “I want to know more about you.”

I felt like I had run out of things to say and I hesitated but luckily for me, he looked at his watch. “Oh darn. Listen babe, I gotta run. Can I give you a ride somewhere?”

“I’m good,” I said. “I’ll catch the streetcar.”

“Nah, let me give you a ride. But listen, come here, you’re driving me nuts. I’m giving you some warning here, I’m going to kiss you, babe, I can’t help myself. It’s kismet that we met like we did.”

“So stop talking already and kiss me,” I said and he did and we were locked into each other when a loud nasal voice broke the moment.

“Get a room people,” the voice said and we broke apart and looked up to see the skinny teenage barista standing there, hands on his hips. “Don’t you think you guys are too old to be deep-throating it in a public place?” He grinned at us, a stupid goofy smile, not a care in the world.

My guy stood up and adjusted his suit and next thing the kid was crumpled on the floor trying to breathe.

“What’s wrong, kid?” my guy growled. “You can’t handle a punch from a geriatric like me, huh? Come on, babe, let’s get out of here.”

We left the guy on the floor and I tottered after my new boyfriend, wondering if I really could handle what I had gotten into.

He gave me a ride home and when I updated my sister, she seemed satisfied.

“I told you,” she said. “We’re gonna land the big fish this time.”

The next time we met, it was at the bar at the Four Seasons hotel and he had booked a room on the fourteenth floor, with a view of the city that stretched for miles.

“I hope you don’t think I’m presumptuous,” he said as we rode up on the elevator. “I have to watch who I am seen in public with, I’m sure you understand.”

“Of course,” I said but my heart was hammering in my chest like a nail gun.

When we got to the room, he ordered champagne and an array of desserts and pastries.

“My mother watches what I eat like a hawk,” he said, biting down on a cream-filled éclair and washing it down with champagne. “Now my wife, she wouldn’t dare say a word to me but mothers can say whatever they like. You never get out from under the thumb of your mother.”

 “Never, ever talk about his mother,” my sister had told me. “Italian matriarch, she’s like the Virgin Mary and the Queen of England all rolled into one. The woman is a saint to him. I met her once. She was like Hannibal Lector in drag. She’s more dangerous than I can tell you. When he talks about her, just nod.”

I nodded.

“You’re not eating, babe?” My guy drew my attention back to the spread in front of us. He was chewing on a custard Danish, crumbs flying everywhere.

“Don’t want to ruin my figure,” I said, running my hands over my waist suggestively. Actually I could eat like a horse and never put on an ounce, something my sister constantly reminded me, as if that was my fault. If she even walked past a muffin, she gained a pound. But I was sick with nerves now and couldn’t eat a thing. I couldn’t even take more than a sip of champagne. What if I didn’t get the sex right? What if he didn’t like me?

“I’m nervous,” I blurted out. “I’m worried you won’t like me or find me attractive. I just want you to like me.”

“Oh honey,” he said and he came over to me and pulled me up out of the chair I had been sitting in. “You have no idea how much I like you already. I haven’t been able to think about anything except you. I can’t concentrate. I can’t think straight. Come here, let me show you just how much I want you.”

And he did. And it turned out the size of my boobs was perfectly fine, thank you very much, and when he cupped my ass in his big hands, it seemed like it was all working out just like we had planned.

I lay on my side as he slept next to me, his arm draped over my waist and I looked out at the stretched out city below and I thought that maybe for once, I really did have the world at my feet.

“I just don’t want to screw it up,” I said to my sister when I was getting ready for a date. “What if he gets bored of me? What if I say something stupid?”

“You can handle it,” my sister said when I told her my concerns. “You just don’t think you can. Why someone with your looks has such low self-esteem is beyond me. Let me tell you, if I had your looks, I’d own the world. Frickin’ own it.” I had lost count of how many times she had told me that in my life. “The mistake you made in the past,” she continued, “was dating good looking losers who folded like cheap tents when it counted. This time, just listen to me, do what I tell you and you’ll come out the winner.”

I nodded. I didn’t agree with her that I had low self esteem. And I was no floozy. I had only fallen in love with one guy and he had let me down badly, that much was true but you couldn’t help who you fell in love with, it just happened.

My sister had always been more like a mother to me than a sister.

When I was five, my father came home and found my mother passed out on the sofa, drunk. He sat down next to her and he looked at me. I was sitting on the floor, waiting for my sister who was making me chocolate milk and toast for supper.

“I can’t take it any more,” my father said to me, and I remember exactly how he said it. He was very matter-of-fact, very calm.

Then he turned back to my mother and he pressed a cushion to her face, pushing down on her while her legs thrashed and flailed and drummed against the arm of the sofa.

I wet my pants and sat there in a puddle while my father killed my mother and my sister made my supper in the kitchen. She didn’t hear a thing.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” my father said and then he got up and left me alone with my mother who was staring straight at me with bloodshot eyes. Not that bloodshot was anything new.

I don’t know how long it was before my sister came in with my supper and when she saw my mother lying there, she dropped the toast and the chocolate milk and the brown puddle spread into my pee and I just looked at my sister and stuck my thumb in my mouth.

“Where’s dad?” she asked urgently and I shook my head.

She ran to the bedroom and she was gone a long time. When she came out, she said she had found him and she needed to phone the cops. He had hanged himself, off the doorknob in the bedroom. I remember I wondered why she had been in there so long with his dead body but I couldn’t ask her because I had forgotten how to speak.

It took me a long time to talk again after the murder suicide and that’s when my sister became my mother, my best friend and my guardian angel.  We went to live in a bunch of foster homes and I escaped into books, reading anything I could get my hands on. I loved Wuthering Heights best of all and when I met Joey at one of the homes, I thought he was my Heathcliff forever. He was the love of my life. I was sixteen and my life finally seemed good. I was even happy for a while but a couple of years later, Joey got arrested for armed robbery and that was the end of that. I never stopped loving him, not for a moment but my sister never let me see him again. I would have visited him in prison but she wouldn’t let me.

So I made up this fantasy world where I was a big movie star with elegance, grace and style and I spent hours in thrift stores, finding the right garments that a real star would wear. I practiced talking in a slow and famous way, keeping my voice lazy and even. I pictured myself on a big screen wherever I went, like the world was watching me with all my grace and loveliness and I never let myself slip. My name was Vickie but I changed it to Jessica, after Jessica Lange. I thought I looked a lot like her. And no one was allowed to call me Jess or Jessie. I was Jessica.

My sister’s name is Glennis. And she told me all the time that I had ruined her life. But it wasn’t me who ruined her life. What ruined my sister’s life is that she’s not like me. She’s not a looker. It’s like she got the opposite of everything I did. I’m tall, she’s short, I’m willowy, she’s a dumpling, I’ve got tiny tits, she’s loaded. When looks were being handed out, she came out on the short end and there isn’t one thing about her that is pretty and if you ask me, that’s why she was so mean to me all the time. And I felt bad for her, how would I feel if I looked like she did? I’d be angry with life too and my heart broke for her when I saw how people looked at her.

“Life’s not fair and that’s just the way it goes,” she often said but she would look at me accusingly, like it was all my fault that she wasn’t pretty and she’d never had a man to love her.

Apart from Joey, and he didn’t count anymore, my sister was the only person in my life.

“Why do you need friends when you’ve got me?” she asked me when I made plans with schoolmates and after a few tries, I just gave up. It was easier that way.

“Do what I tell you,” she said again, when I told her I was worried I was going to screw things up with my guy. “I’ll make sure you land this man, get him in the bag, hook, line and sinker.”

And she did well. I paid attention to what she said and I worked hard and not even a month later, my guy made me give up my job and he moved me into a brand new condo with a view of the lake. He’d never been to my place, I’d told him I shared a basement apartment with another janitor but he hadn’t cared about those kinds of details about my life.

“You don’t need to be handling anybody’s garbage,” he said. “You’re my girl now and I’ll take care of you. Thing is, I got some rules. First off, you don’t get to talk about my wife. Ever. Next, you do not step out on me. Thirdly, you tell me where you are, twenty four seven. Fourth. Do not steal from me. If you need money for something, you just got to ask me. You wear my gifts, you do not sell them. Number Five. You always gotta look like a million bucks and smell like a peach. I don’t want to turn up and find you in your pj’s with your hair from yesterday. One more thing. You’re only out if I say you’re out. Out of this – you and me. Never think you can skip town on me, you got that? Wait. One more thing. Don’t ever ask me what I do for a living. Any questions?”

“I got it,” I said. “ But I will ask one thing of you and if you agree, then you’ve got yourself a deal.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“I want a leafy sea dragon,” I said. “It won’t be cheap. It won’t be easy to get. And it will cost you about ten grand.”

“A leafy sea dragon,” he repeated and he smiled.

“There’s one at the aquarium,” I said, “I can show you.”

“I know what a leafy sea dragon is,” he said. “Looks like a fancy long seahorse in a wedding dress. They’re special, just like you, babe, beautiful and delicate. Sure, I’ll get you one.”

“How do you know what it is?” I asked.

“I take my kid to the aquarium a lot,” he said. “She loves them too. You’ve got good taste.”

I wasn’t sure why I asked for a leafy sea dragon. Maybe it was because I thought there was no way he could get me one and that my asking would shut down this crazy thing once and for all.

I was glad I never told my sister about me asking for the leafy sea dragon because she would have killed me. She would have said I was self-sabotaging and ruining everything.

Now, here’s the thing. My sister has worked for my guy for ten years. Ten years and he still can’t remember her name. She works in the accounts department, faithfully handling all kinds of stuff and no matter how many hours she logs, or how much money she saves him or how many secrets she keeps, he can never remember her name. He calls her doll or cookie but in ten years, he has never once said her name and finally, one day, she had enough and that’s when she got the idea for us to work him over.

 She had realized that the girlfriend on the side was no longer in the picture and that it was time for him to get himself a newbie. It was all her idea. She knew all about previous girlfriends, all Jessica Rabbit look-alikes that he’d kept in gilded cages. Clothes, cash, jewelry – my sister said we could collect a real good stash and head to Florida. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, she said. And I didn’t have to do anything except look pretty.

“Nice work if you can get it,” she said and she sounded bitter like always and I wondered if she had a crush on my guy and that was the real reason she wanted to get me in to score the big bucks. Maybe it was her way of getting revenge. But wasn’t she putting me in the line of danger? But would she do that?

“If they all had it so good, why did they leave?” I asked and my sister gave me an even look.

“Who says they left? You’ll have to be careful. But don’t worry, I know how his timing works, I’ll get you out when the time comes. And who knew, all your bargain basement fifties clothes will actually be good for something. All this time, I thought your obsession with dressing like a vintage calendar girl was a waste of time and money but it’s going to turn out to be perfect for what we need.”

Her admission didn’t make up for her nasty comments every time I had brought home a new five dollar gem of a dress or a pair of shoes that fit me just so but I held my tongue. If this scored us the big time, it wasn’t worth arguing about.

As luck would have it, she heard him talking about the WeeGee exhibit and she knew exactly when he was going to the gallery. So we came up with the plan, I got all dolled up, and next thing, Bob’s your uncle, I was sitting in my gilded cage and Daisy the leafy sea dragon was happily waving her lacy little fins at me and floating around her five hundred gallon tank.

My guy had no idea that I had only seen a leafy sea dragon because of him. He’d had to cancel a trip to the aquarium with his daughter and he had given the tickets to my sister because he had chewed her head off about something and then he couldn’t go with his kid and even although he couldn’t remember my sister’s name, he gave her the tickets.

The aquarium bored me but when we found the sea dragon, I fell in love. There was this perfectly beautiful little creature, with her lacy fins spinning and waving, and that perfect tiny horse face looking me, only at me.

And there was me looking at her. I could see my reflection in the glass. I was lovely too, exotic even, with my careful coiffure and my perfect red lipstick and what did I have to show for it? Nothing. The sea dragon was stuck in her cage and I was stuck in mine. My life was a cage. So what if I was beautiful? It’s not like it ever got me anything except my sister’s quiet rage and my own heart broken.

Which is why, when my sister told me about her cockamamie plan, I agreed to do it. I wanted to try to be something more than a late night janitor with thrift store dress-up dreams. Maybe I wanted to prove to my sister that I was worth something. Or maybe I was tired of being poor. It sounded nice to have a guy look after me and not have to worry about money all the time and it would be nice to not have to live with my sister. And to be honest, the whole thing made me feel like I was the star of the show, like I was playing a role in a Dashiell Hammett book, with shady gangsters with names like Whistler, and beautiful women who wore dresses made of Crêpe de Chine.

And then when my guy asked popped the big question about setting me up for real, the leafy sea dragon popped into my head and I asked for her on a whim and my guy said sure, it wouldn’t be easy but for me, anything.

I settled into a routine pretty quickly and it wasn’t too bad at first. I got to buy all the books I wanted and I read for all the hours of the day and night. And I can’t say I minded the fancy jewelry boxes that came filled with glittering gems or the envelopes of cash that elevated my wardrobe to that of a real star.

But I wasn’t in love with him and I couldn’t even find a way to like him and sometimes when we were having sex, I felt like I was a custard Danish he was chewing on. And it was horrible, never knowing when he was going to show up. I had to be ready, on call all the time and when I heard the sound of the key turning in the lock, my stomach clenched.  He liked to surprise me by coming at all kinds of different hours like he was testing me and after a while, I couldn’t even concentrate on my books, I was listening for that sound, that grinding sound that told me it was time to sit up and look happy like a good puppy dog.

And now, it’s six months later.  I am sitting here in my prison, dressed to the nines, waiting for my guy and Daisy is looking at me inquisitively, like she wants to know what’s going to happen next. “I don’t know,” I whisper to her. “I don’t know.”

 I try to stop myself from picking at my cuticles because my guy hates it, he says only poor drug addicts pick at themselves until they bleed. But I get a release from the pain, it helps me focus my worry and fear.

“When will it be time to get out?” I asked my sister the last time I had seen her. We met once a week in the hats and glove section of the department store and we talked like spies do, side by side, facing forwards, pretending to be strangers who just happen to be muttering at each other, like that’s not obviously weird or anything.

“Not yet,” she said, trying on a pair of lambs’ wool gloves.

“When is yet?” I asked. “My life is killing me.”

“Poor baby,” my sister said. “Living in the penthouse, being treated like a queen. Suitcases of cash to spend on whatever you want. Sex with a gorgeous man. Yeah, you’ve really got it tough.”

Sex with a gorgeous man? I swung around to face her, not caring who might see us arguing.

“You’re in love with him, aren’t you?” I asked. “You’ve always been in love with him.” I saw the hatred flare in her eyes as she looked at me.

“But why set me up with him?” I asked when I saw she wasn’t going to answer me. “What good would that do you? Is it the money? You know I am saving as much as I can, for you and me, just like we planned.”

She was struggling for words, I could see she was thinking half a dozen things and that she wanted to say something but she couldn’t find the right words.

“You and him. You deserve each other,” she finally said.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Talk to me. I don’t get it.”

“He thinks you love him,” she laughed. “So stupid. I like to look at him and think to myself, buddy, you’ve got no idea how you are being played, played by me! Nameless, faceless me! What would he think he if knew?”

I felt dizzy and the department store lights seemed to swell like crazy faces and I nearly stopped breathing.

“Do you plan to tell him somehow?” I asked, hardly able to talk. “He’ll kill me. And he’ll kill you.”

“Like I’ve got so much to live for,” she said. “I’m nothing but a blob. No one sees me. I don’t matter to anyone. I’ll never be happy. I’ve never been happy, not once, not my whole life.”

“You’ve got me,” I said. “We’ve got each other. We’ve always have had each other. Through everything. You’re just upset now. Think about our lives in Florida, how we’ll live in the sunshine and never have to worry again. We’ll be happy then, we will be.”

But would we be happy? Who was I kidding? My sister was right. She would never be happy. And me? I didn’t think I could find a way to be happy either, not even with all the money in the world.

I was silent and we turned away from each other and starting touching the gloves again, picking up random pairs.

“Maybe,” she finally said, “his mother fill find out. If you ask me, you should be worried about her, not him. I get the feeling she doesn’t approve of him having fancy girls on the side. But you know what? I like her. She stopped by the office and we got chatting. What do they call people like her? Salt of the earth, that’s it. Salt of the earth.”

“Tell me,” I said, struggling to get the words out, the words that had been stuck in my throat for over twenty years, “what were you doing in the bedroom all that time with dad’s dead body?”

She stared at me. “You’re asking me that now? Why now?”

“I always wondered,” I said.

She shrugged. “I was letting him finish the job. He could never get anything right, our father. So I stood there and I made sure he did it right, for once.”

Then she left me. She didn’t say another word, she just turned and left. And I didn’t know what to do. Would she tell my guy? Could I even go back to my apartment? But where else could I go? What else could I do? So I went home and I watched Daisy float this way and that, and I tried to figure out what to do.

I can’t tell Daisy what I am really thinking because I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that my guy has the place bugged. So I press my face to the glass of her tank and I know that Daisy knows. She knows that I have no choice. I’ll have to kill my guy. And I’ll need to be packed and ready. I’ll take all my fancy clothes and all my jewels and my stash of money and I’ll leave and I won’t go to Florida, I’ll go somewhere glamorous like Las Angeles and maybe I’ll try my hand at acting. I’ll become a star and then it will serve them right, both of them. I try to think but my head hurts and the glass of Daisy’s tank is cool and soothing against my forehead.

I’ll make sure you’re looked after, I tell her silently. Don’t worry. I’ll never let you down.

I don’t have a phone. I’m not allowed one. I am too afraid to buy one. I think about trying to call my sister from a pay phone. My sister hasn’t met me for our drive-by hello after that terrible conversation. I walked around the hats and gloves for hours on our appointed meet-up day, picking things up and putting them down but she never showed. I was sure she would come back and say she was sorry, that she had never meant to say the things she had said, that she loved me and our plan was a good one and she had just been tired that day. Maybe my guy had been rude to her and she had taken it out on me. I was so sure she would show up and tell me everything was going to be okay. But she didn’t and that’s when the real terror began.

It was time to face the facts. Life’s not fair and that’s just the way it goes. My sister watched my father die. I watched my mother being murdered. And now I’d have to rely on myself to get out of this.

I don’t want to die. So I sit and watch Daisy and I know that one day, I’ll come up with a plan. I will kill my guy and I’ll make my great escape. I just don’t have that part figured out yet.

And now I’m not sure how much time has passed. I have the terrible urge to suck my thumb but I sit on my poor picked-at hands instead. All I do know is that I can’t remember the last time I ate and I need to take a bath. Nerves have left me fragrant as a marathon runner’s old shoes and my hair passed yesterday’s sell-by-date by a long shot. Why hasn’t my guy come? And he was supposed to bring the fellow who cleans Daisy’s tank which is looking worrying cloudy. The apartment is filled with dead air and I can’t explain the silence.

There’s a knock at the door and I jump up in fright. Why is my guy knocking when he’s got the key? But then my heart fills with joy – it’s my sister, she’s come to say she’s sorry, she’s come to rescue me. We’ll make our big getaway together and go and live our lives in the sun.

I rush to the door and pull it open. The big wide smile on my face is killed by what I see.

I’ve never met the woman before in my life but I know who she is. I am looking up at my guy’s mother. She’s tall like him and just about as wide and the expression on her face doesn’t reassure me.

“I thought it was time we had a little visit,” she said, pulling on a pair of gloves which alarmed me even more. “Step aside dearie and let me in.”