AN: So...I had more of this and decided to just post it because it ended at a pretty good place anyway. There's mild adult themes in this bit, but nothing too bad, I think. Unless anyone really likes this, I'll probably just add more whenever inspiration happens to strike me for this story, which probably won't be too often. I still don't know how to classify this genre-wise. I might just not. Enjoy!
The rest from that point is hazy, like the atmosphere of that room. She ate with him behind the screen a few times, using chopsticks and laughing at his ineptitude with his own pair. He thinks the food tasted of curry, maybe, and sometimes he remembers syrupy citrus, and there may have been a few meals where he felt his mouth burn with ginger. He knows now, learned later, that what she did on the other side of that screen was hardly something he should have been in that room for, even if he was probably essentially a vegetable in those early days-weeks?-behind that screen.
Yes, he knows they had a conversation late one night after one of her appointments. There was sound in the later memories, like this one: it had been silent in the room for some time, save the soft rustle of silk every so often. It was dark, save for the small glow of one shaded lantern somewhere, throwing thin lines and dots of light onto the ceiling. He heard her move, more significantly than the previous, muted rustling, and he remembers vividly how she slipped behind the screen and sat on the mattress, nearly touching him. "Vivid" is an odd way to describe a memory with little to see, but maybe the darkness of his surroundings let him pick up on everything else-like the sounds.
"I cannot let you stay here," she whispered. Maybe he imagines the melancholy in her voice, or else simply misremembers, but in his mind, she was somber. "I feel not right about it, as much as I wish to help."
"Why?" he asked. Now he cringes at the question. Ignorance is bliss.
She audibly inhaled and exhaled. Perhaps she was steeling herself. "I'm whore-a whore," she admitted, carefully correcting herself. "What I do in this room...I see my clients here, in this room. I cannot let you stay here." Now he remembers her occasional English blunders with fondness: she was a Russian immigrant, she told him; she came here with her family when she was nearly ten. He also remembers the moans that drifted from the other side of the screen.
"You brought me here," he said carefully. "Why, if you knew this wasn't a good place for me?"
Her kind smile shone with gentility even in the dark. "You needed help, and I could give it."
One of the things he simultaneously loved and hated about her was the straightforward yet vague answers she gave to most questions.