AN: Here we go, another chapter here.
This one comes with a little information/warning. Carol is not "innocent" in this story. At least, she's not sexually innocent. She's a working girl at a whorehouse. It's as simple as that. She's not a virgin in the slightest. We'll certainly hear more about that as we go along.
At the end of this chapter, there's a little reference to lesbian relationships/sex. Nothing graphic and nothing explicit. It's mentioned. You're warned that it's there, though, if such a thing offends you.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
"If you got a man that's willing to marry you? You marry him," Andrea said. "It's simple as that, Carol. It isn't hard to figure that out."
It was late and Andrea had invited Carol into her private room to sit and chat with her. Andrea's private room was the one room of the house where she didn't entertain men. At least, it was the one room in the house where she didn't entertain men for business. What she did with her body was her business, and Carol knew that there were a few men—the sheriff among them—that sometimes got invited into Andrea's private room after hours and without money changing hands. But that was Andrea's business too.
Carol shook her head at Andrea.
"He doesn't know any better," Carol said. "That's all it is. He doesn't know any better and he's confused. He thinks he actually loves me. He thinks he actually wants me to be his wife. He doesn't want that. He just wants me. He likes me because..."
"You don't know what a man wants unless he tells you," Andrea said. "Why do you think, Carol, that I started the rule of asking for it up front? Why do you think I told myself that if I ever owned my own house? That'd be a rule. You don't know what a man's got on his mind until he opens his mouth and he tells you just what he's thinking."
"And even then," Carol said, "they lie."
"All men lie, honey," Andrea said. "Just like all women. We'd be out of a job if there weren't liars in the world. Us and them both."
"He don't know what he wants, Andrea," Carol insisted.
"Seemed pretty sure to me," Andrea said. "Hell—he didn't blink. Countin' out all that money? Didn't even flinch. Just stood there shovelin' it into my hands like it was mud instead of hard-earned cash."
She got up from where she was sitting on her bed and went to the dresser where her cigarette case rested. She popped the clasp on the case and took out a cigarette. She liked them tightly rolled—tighter than she could get them herself—and she paid a Jewish man in town to roll them for her just like she liked. Sometimes she paid him in cash, but most of the time, she paid him in trade. She offered Carol one of the cigarettes, and though Carol didn't really enjoy smoking, she took so as to not seem ungrateful for what she knew was a nice gesture. Andrea lit both their cigarettes and she returned to the bed to sit again, flicking her ashes into the silver ashtray she kept there. It was a gift, she said, from a gentleman that she'd once entertained that flew all the way from London to stake a claim that pinched out a couple of months in.
"Men don't give women money like that," Andrea said, "unless they're pretty damn sure of what they want."
"I'm not doubting he knows what he wants," Carol says. "I mean—he seems pretty dead set on the fact that I'm what he wants. But—I don't think he's really thinking that I weren't ever really made to be a wife. Not a good one. Even less now."
"You weren't made to be a whore," Andrea said somewhat blankly.
Carol felt her chest catch with the harshness of the words. Maybe they'd have been music to the ears of someone else, but they felt like a dagger between her ribs. She was a whore. That's what she had now. It was all she had now. And to be told that she wasn't cut out for it? It was almost the most terrifying thing that she could hear.
Her face, too, must have given away her feelings because Andrea sighed and waved her hand at Carol.
As a sign of obedience, or maybe because she truly wanted the comfort that she knew was going to be offered, Carol got up from the chair she was sitting in and crossed the space of the room. She took a seat next to Andrea and when Andrea affectionately wrapped her arm around her, Carol sunk into her. She rubbed her face against Andrea's and Andrea tightened her hold on Carol's shoulder to offer as much comfort as she could.
"I'm sorry, sweetheart," Andrea said. "But it's true. Women are cut out for two things in this world. And that's wifin' or whorin'. And you aren't cut out for whorin'."
"I wasn't cut out for wifin' neither," Carol offered quietly.
Andrea hummed in her throat.
"Why? Because you drew a sorry hand for a husband?" Andrea asked. "Because—you coulda done better but you got stuck with him any damn way? He don't exist no more. Just like—like the damn Sagebrush out there that burned down. Everybody knows it was there, but it ain't there no more. So it don't matter. Just like it didn't ever exist."
Carol swallowed.
"You don't know that he doesn't exist anymore," Carol said. "You don't know that he's not out there. That I'm not still married to him."
Andrea laughed again and she sat up. She pushed Carol off of her a little and she brushed Carol's hair back from her face. The smoke from the cigarette that she still held between her fingers burned Carol's eyes slightly and Carol could pretend, for just a second, that the dampness she felt on her cheeks came from that temporary irritation.
"You listen to me, honey," Andrea said, blowing her breath in Carol's face for her proximity. "I know he ain't out there no more. And I know you ain't married to him no more. I know he—had a very bad accident. Was out on his...out on his land? And he took a fall. A bad fall. Musta landed on his head 'cause—Doc said there weren't near enough of him to know it was him. But it was him, Carol." She shook her head at Carol. "And I know he ain't comin' back. You don't come back from where he's gone."
Carol's pulse kicked up until it felt like her heart was beating in her throat and choking her.
"You never told me that," Carol said.
"'Cause I didn't think you needed to know," Andrea said.
Carol held her breath to try to make sure that it stayed under her control. She only let it out to speak.
"Did you do that?" Carol asked. "For me?"
Andrea smiled softly at her. She shook her head gently and pursed her lips while she considered her response.
"No," Andrea said. "I was right here. Minding my own business. Tending to you girls. I heard about it from the sheriff as he come through. Happened out there on his land. Was a shame, too. Weren't nobody around. He must have been out too late. Drinking probably. Maybe—didn't even see that he was about to walk right over the side of that ridge. Nobody saw it happen, though. Nobody."
Carol nodded her understanding. And she did understand. She understood, better than some of the girls, exactly how far Andrea would go to protect them. And Carol respected that. She respected Andrea, even if there were people out there who would say that she wasn't deserving of anyone's respect because of how she made her living—or what she did with her free time.
"How long ago?" Carol asked.
"Doesn't matter," Andrea said. "Dead is dead. Let's not talk of unpleasant things before bed. It ruins my sleep. And you know how I like my sleep."
"I'm sorry," Carol offered softly.
Andrea laughed quietly.
"Don't be sorry," Andrea said. "Just—marry that man."
"I can't marry him, Andrea," Carol insisted again.
"He got somethin' you didn't report?" Andrea asked. "Sickly?"
Carol shook her head.
"Nothing like that," Carol said. "He's fit as a horse. Or he seems like it."
"And he's not afraid of work," Andrea said. "That much is clear. If work is how he made that money? Honest work? With his hands? He'll build you the kind of life that you'd like, Carol. The kind of life that someone like you could really enjoy."
"Someone like me?" Carol asked.
"Someone that weren't cut out for whorin', sweetheart," Andrea responded. "Am I talking to myself? Need Doc to take a look at your ears next week when he's around lookin' at pussies?"
"I ain't done that bad here, Andrea," Carol said. "You said yourself, a dozen times, I'm good with the skittish ones. I'm good with the first timers."
"And you wanna spend the rest of your life fuckin' little boys that's barely become men, Carol?" Andrea asked. "You wanna spend the rest of your life with the—with the damn unsatisfactory fucks they've got to offer?"
Andrea snubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray as it reached the end of its lifespan and got close to burning her fingertips. She got up and walked back to the dresser to select another cigarette for herself. Seeing that Carol had let her own practically burn out unsmoked, Andrea didn't offer her another and Carol was grateful that she didn't. Andrea lit her cigarette and leaned against the dresser, examining a glass that she'd left there to determine if she intended to use it temporarily for her ashes.
"I don't say you weren't cut out for this to hurt your feelings, Carol," Andrea said. "I say it because I've seen a lot of whores come and go in my time and I know pretty quickly who's cut out for it and who isn't. You just aren't. And that's OK. Better'n OK. Means you were meant to be a respectable woman. You were meant to be...somebody's wife. Somebody's mother. If that's who you are, Carol, then that's who you have to be and he's offering you that kinda life."
"I don't have to stick just to the first timers," Carol said. "But you don't put me with anyone else. I take who you send to me Andrea."
"And I send to you the ones that are gonna go easiest on you, Carol," Andrea said. "I send you the ones that ain't gonna remind you of that asshole that broke his skull fallin' from a ridge. These bullwhackers that run up in here? The sodbusters? The scouts? How sweet and gentle you think they are? Even Daryl's brother? Merle? You think he's sweet and gentle? You gotta keep constant reins on them or they're trying shit they didn't pay for—and don't think I haven't had one or another think they could bust me in the mouth for somethin' not going just like they wanted. You've seen. You've got Doc before." She took a long draw on the cigarette and let the smoke out slowly. She watched it as it drifted around her in the air. "I give you the first timers because—because I know they aren't gonna treat you like that."
Carol nodded at her, but she didn't say anything. Andrea protected her. She'd protected her ever since Carol had met her. And one of the ways she protected her was by putting her in the position of always being in charge. A man, no matter how much of a man he was in age and stature, was always a little less of a man the first time he had his dick out in front of a woman. There was always an element of fear there. There was always an element of submission. With those men, Carol had the upper hand. They were too wrapped up in the possibility of sex—and the idea of it being something magical—to even think of offending Carol with something like a cruel word or a rough hand. Andrea would always take the roughest ones that showed up—like it was something she could smell on them—and she doled the others out to those who would suit them best in the house. Carol always got the first timers. She always got the easy ones. The fresh ones. The ones that still looked at her like she was something special and amazing and just a little bit terrifying.
"He doesn't know me," Carol said. "And I don't know him."
"None of us know anybody," Andrea offered. "Not really. You and me, Carol. We don't know each other. I know what you show me. And that's all you know of me."
"I know more about you than I know about him," Carol offered.
"And I know more about you today than I did when I found you begging in the street, half-starved," Andrea said. "If you want to know him, then you'll come to know him. It doesn't matter if it's here or it's there. And at least there? You're a wife, Carol, and that's a whole lot better than bein' a whore."
"What if he turns out to be like Ed?" Carol asked. "What if it's...the same thing all over again?"
Andrea shrugged her shoulders.
"Then you stage an accident," Andrea said. "A hunting accident, maybe. If shooting him's the only way you can get rid of him. Or you come back here. You can pick life back up as a whore any time you want. But it's not everybody that gets a chance at going back from this life. It's not every whore who finds a decent man that wants to wed her." Andrea shook her head at Carol. "I'm sorry," she said, "but you're a fool if you don't marry him." She smiled at Carol. She studied the glass that she'd decided would serve as a temporary ashtray. "Besides, he don't seem the type. That one? There's something gentle about him. You can tell. His brother too."
"You said he was rough," Carol said.
"Around the edges," Andrea said. "Honey, most men are. It's the lifestyle. It's the heat and the sun and the wind when it blows. The ice that burns in them in the winter. Chaps and cracks their skin—and sometimes the cracks run deeper. And you want 'em a little bit hard. Just on the outside. You want that callus built up because it protects them. That's what a callus does. The ones that are soft? Through and through? Those are the ones that barely make it to the point of not being wet behind the ears before they're tossed in a grave somewhere for gettin' in too far over their heads. One like him? That's what you want. That's one that's good for marrying. The callus is on the outside, protecting him. Protecting you. But the soft is on the inside. Even better when it's you that he's soft for." Andrea shook her head at Carol. "I don't think he's gonna turn out like Ed."
Silence fell between them.
Carol didn't know if Daryl would turn out like Ed or not. She'd never thought that Ed would turn out like he did. She'd never thought, when she told him she'd marry him, that she'd have ended up in a position where the only place she felt she could go was to a whorehouse.
She hadn't seen it coming, and that was what scared her about Daryl. He didn't seem the type, but she feared that she didn't have the instinct—or whatever it was—that was required for seeing the type until it was too late. She feared she wouldn't know the type until his fingers were wrapped around her throat.
It wasn't the strange that scared Carol. There was something charming and sweet about Daryl. There was something that drew her to him and made her want to be close to him. It wasn't the not-knowing him that worried her because there was plenty of time for getting to know him.
It was the fear that her past would repeat itself. And nothing, she knew, would relieve that fear except actually taking a chance and seeing that it didn't—or that it did. Her only other choice was to stay there, hidden away and protected by Andrea, as a whore for the rest of her life. A whore who took only the softest clients and the easiest challenges. A working girl that was always under the protecting eye of her Madame.
"I'm scared to go back out there," Carol admitted. "Scared to try again."
Andrea hummed at her.
"You should be more afraid of staying in here," Andrea said. "The blush wears off eventually. Whores dry up. Wives with a good husband? A good man? They never do."
"Why didn't you ever marry?" Carol asked.
She knew it was a question that Andrea had been asked before and, as far as she knew, it was a question that she'd never answered. She fixed her eyes on Carol and she drew from the cigarette she was poised to put out.
"Because when I would've married?" Andrea said. "They hadn't made a man that could hold me. They hadn't made a man that could handle me. And after I became...well...after I found a life here? There wasn't any man brave enough to try." Andrea snubbed out her cigarette and waved her hand toward the bed. "Crawl on in, honey. You don't have to go out there tonight."
Carol crawled into the bed and arranged herself among the mass of pillows and blankets. Blowing out the lamp and taking off her robe, Andrea joined her. As soon as Andrea was settled in the darkness, Carol rubbed her hand down Andrea's side and moved closer to her in the bed, curling her body around her. She rubbed her fingertips over the soft skin of the woman's stomach and Andrea caught her hand, holding her fingers captive between her own.
"You're off duty for two weeks, sweetheart," Andrea said. "I took the insurance money myself today. And that means off duty from professional and personal pleasure."
Carol swallowed. She was one of only three of them that even knew of Andrea's occasional preference to have the nighttime accompaniment of one of her girls to her bed. Although Andrea entertained a few lady visitors to the house that entered from the back doors, she had little worry that any of them would share her secret because, in doing so, they'd have to share their own.
And Carol kept Andrea's secret because she loved her—no matter the way in which that love sometimes expressed itself.
"You want me to go and get Lila?" Carol asked softly.
Andrea laughed quietly.
"No," she said, the word coming out with a hum as she patted Carol's hand. "I just—want to sleep. And I think that's just what you need too."