Role Play (6 page)

“I found these two bills in the drawer,”
I said flatly. “I gave you my share last week, and you said you’d pay them. Now they’re both past the due date.”

“I paid those online,” Lola tossed off.

“No, you didn’t. I checked.”

Lola shrugged.
“Well, I thought I paid them. What are you getting so mad about? It’s not like they make you pay extra if you’re late.”

“No,
but you get dinged on your credit score if you wait too long.”

“That’s why you’re yelling at me?
Because of your
credit
score?” Lola snatched the bills from my hand. “I’ll pay them now, if it makes you happy.”

“Do you have enough money?”

Lola let out an exasperated sound. “Why do you always ask me that?”

“Because you don’t have Dick to borrow from now if you need it.”

Lola’s eyes narrowed.  “What’s he been telling you? He made me take that money. He said it was a
gift.
Or I wouldn’t have taken it.”

“Why did you break up with him, Lola? I thought everything was going good.”

“Lot you know!” Lola flounced over to pick up her lap top and flop down in the chair by the window. She looked at the bills again, checking the amount.

“What went wrong
with you two?” I asked again.

Lola tapped into her computer, opening her account.
“He’s boring. He never wants to go out. And sex with him was like… snooze time. I never could get him to do anything fun. He’s always so jealous and weird.”

“Sex.
Is that what you want?”

“It’s not
all
I want. But I want something better than
that
.”

I
was really worried about her. “Is that why you went to the Chamber last night? To find better sex?”

Lola sat up straight. “What do you know about the
Chamber?”

“I know plenty. It’s full of guys jacking off watching people beat each other. Why d
o you want to go to a place like that?”

“How do you know I went there?”
She gave me a look. “Dick told you. What an asshole!”

“You
went to that place with some guy you just met. What’s wrong with you, Lola?”

Lola glared at
me. “Wait, you’re on Dick’s side? I broke up with him!”

I
tried to sound reasonable. “He’s worried about you, Lola. Like I am. What kind of place is that for you to go to?”

“You don’t understand. You don’t want to understand.”

“You haven’t even tried to explain it to me.”

“You’ve already passed judgment against me! Look at the way you’re talking and you don’t know anything about it.”

I had to tell her. “Yes, I do. I went there last night looking for you. I was worried about you.”

Lola’s
mouth fell open. “You spied on me?”

“Oh my
god, Lola, I’m your sister. It’s not spying when it’s your sister making sure you aren’t choked to death and stuck in a dumpster!”

Lola stood up, looking down at
me. “And that’s not judgment? You think I would put myself in that kind of danger? Seriously, how stupid do you think I am?”

I
couldn’t speak for a moment. My throat closed in, shutting off all words.
As stupid as me,
I thought miserably. Lola was madder than heck, but I needed my sister.

“It happened to me,”
I managed to say.

That stopped Lola, as realization slowly filled her eyes. “What happened to you?”
I clenched my hands together. “I let some guy tie up my wrists. But first I hit him with the ruler they gave me.”

“You
hit
him?”

“Yeah.
Pretty hard. On his palms.”

Lola was staring at
me. “And then what?”

“
Then he tied my wrists. He said some things… I got scared because I realized he could really hurt me. But he didn’t. Then it was over and you were gone.” I tried to bring the subject back where it belonged. “That’s how I know this stuff isn’t just play acting. It can get serious. You shouldn’t go to a place like that.”

“Excuse me, big sister, but even I know
enough not to mess around with a strange man. What got into you?”

“
You went there with that old man you just met!” I hated to admit it, but I added, “And Victor is different. You must have seen him. Blond hair, taller than the rest of the guys, dressed really nice. People know him there—he’s got a fancy job with the airline.” I didn’t want to add that he smelled good and his eyes were to die for. “Another girl told me he was really popular, and that she was dying to get together with him. I thought it was safe.”

“Damn… you had a
freakier night than I did. We went back to Martin’s place and watched Hot Tub Time Machine.”

“Is Martin that
man you were with?”

Lola nodded, sitting back on her heels. “Did you see our scene?”

“What do you mean? You were talking to him. He had his hand on your shoulder.”

My
sister glanced away. “Nothing. But I think this proves that I know better than you what I’m doing.”

“So you
are
doing this S&M stuff with Martin? You’re letting him hit you? Why, Lola? I saw him—he’s practically an old man.”

“He’s thirty-
four!”

“And you’re twenty-one.”

“Well, he doesn’t try to scare me like your random hottie did, I can tell you that.”

I
had no retort for that, because hopefully it was true. “I want to meet Martin. I want to make sure he’s not a psycho.”

“As if you’re
any judge!”

“I made a mistake
. But I never would have been there if you hadn’t gone.”

“It’s your
own fault for following me around. Fucking hell, Sierra! It’s time for you to let me live my own life.”

With that, Lola packed up her stuff and huffed off to the bathroom. She blasted the radio and sang to it as she fixed her hair and makeup. She didn’t say good-bye when she left.

Which left me feeling even worse. Lola was right. It was my own fault that I got into that mess. Why did I fling away all common sense? Because Victor looked deep into my eyes? Because my guts told me that I could trust him?

Maybe b
ecause I was sick of working so hard with nothing to show for it. Because I was ready for more, and was willing to take a short cut to get it.

But t
hat was Lola, not me. It had never been me. Lola was used to taking whatever she wanted. As if she had the right. As if nobody else should care.

Maybe
I wanted to feel that for just a moment. To feel that a hot, sexy man wanted me so badly that he would stand there and take my blows. And then feel him lose control over me. Because he did lose control. I had seen it in his eyes, the way Victor had blazed into pure aggression and desire. And then at the end, how his fierceness ebbed as he came back to himself, looking at me with concern. He couldn’t have been sweeter as he held me as I cried, comforting me.

I
smacked my forehead.
I am so messed up! Seriously fucked! Stop thinking about him!

...

I tried to talk to Lola over the next week. My sister wasn’t very sympathetic about what had happened to me. At one point she yelled that it was my own damn fault. Lola said if I was going to be that stupid, I couldn’t blame her for it. Lola kept saying she knew what she was doing.

I
seriously doubted it.

Dick was super-pissed that
Lola wouldn’t talk to him after that. He kept texting and calling me, trying to find out what was going on with my sister. I didn’t want to admit that I didn’t know because Lola didn’t come home.

But days later,
because Lola wouldn’t talk to me, I was finally driven to text Dick back:
Do you know where Lola is?

A few moments passed,
then Dick replied:
Meet me so we can talk.

He was going to pump
me about Lola and what she had been doing. But I didn’t know anything. Lola came home a few times really late, after I was already in bed. And then she was still in bed when I got up to go to work.

Lola would hate it if
I talked to Dick about her. But what choice did I have? I knew firsthand the danger she was flirting with. I had to do something. I couldn’t sit by and watch my sister flush her life down the drain. Lola had nearly gotten into real trouble last year when she started dating a guy who did hard drugs. She called it weekend partying, but then she started staying out all night during the week, too.

Dick had
busted Lola with ecstasy in her pocket last summer in the park. If he had arrested her, Lola’s life would have been ruined. But Dick had taken pity on her, bringing her home in handcuffs, and releasing her to me as long as Lola promised to get into treatment. And she did, with Dick’s help. He went with her to meetings, setting her back on the right path. It had been a real relief for me to have help with Lola. Lola had relied on him, and even though her drama continued, there hadn’t been any real trouble over the past year.

Until now.

What if Lola started spiraling out of control again?

Finally,
I texted Dick back:
Okay, after my class tonight.

...

After a long day at work, I got on the bus from Midtown to the Long Island Expressway that took me deeper into the island to Queensborough College. It was strictly for people getting their associate degree, and everyone worked while they were doing it, so it wasn’t the college experience that I had always hoped for. But financial assistance was nonexistent, so I had to adjust my dream. The degree was a means to an end, not the end itself.

I
would be glad when I never had to take the long bus ride again. I wasn’t sure where I would finish my bachelor’s degree, but I would make sure it was closer to home than Horace Harding Parkway.

By the time
the class was over and I got back, I wished I had put Dick off until the next day. But he was parked up the street, texting me impatiently.

I
got into his car as he silenced the radio that was mounted on the floor. There was a view down the sidewalk to the front door of our four-story tenement building. The light in the front window on the third floor was coming from our apartment.

“Lola
’s home,” I said.

“Yup.”

My sister knew I would be at class. So she was deliberately avoiding me.

“I wish I knew what was up with her
,” I said.

“You’re
not even trying. You’re letting her self-destruct.”

“How can I do anything when I never see her? She won’t answer my texts. She thinks I’m judging her.”

Dick let out an anguished sound. “She won’t talk to me either. Did you find out anything about that asshole she’s seeing?”

I
was acutely aware that if I told Dick that his name was Martin, Lola might get so mad she would do something drastic. “Nothing. What about you?”

“I followed her to
a couple different places—in Flushing and Red Hook. I haven’t seen that guy around, though.”

Now
I was really glad I hadn’t told him Martin’s name. “You should stop following her, Dick. It’s not right.”

“I wouldn’t have to if you would do something about it! It’s just like last
summer. You’re sitting there watching her slide into hell.”

That stung. “I
’m trying to help her. She keeps pushing me away.”

He looked up at the window where a shadow passed. “She needs a jolt, like last time. She freaked when she thought I was taking her
to jail. She knew she was facing serious shit. That’s the only reason she changed, because she didn’t want to lose everything.”

“How can we do that now? She won’t be arrested for going to a club like that.”
I considered it. “Will she?”

“Nah, they keep it on the legal side of the line. I checked it out. No real sex happens in that place. No drugs
. They keep it clean because they have to.”

“It wasn’t clean,”
I retorted, thinking of the sticky floors with a shudder.

“We need something.” He turned to
me, his voice softening. “You have to help me figure out something. I can’t stand seeing her ruin her life like this.”

“
Ruin her life?” I asked. “Isn’t that a little extreme?”

He jerked his head. “She has a profile on a fetish we
bsite. Kind of like kinky Facebook. She has a list of events she clicked as maybe-going. What if those places are worse than the Chamber?”