On Sunday the first story of her series ran. “ WALKING THE WALK,” the headline across the top of Page One read, “ THERE’S NOTHING SEXY ABOUT THE SEX TRADE.”
Accompanying the story was a shadowy photo of a girl with chubby, naked legs leaning into a car window. Aubrey’s story was chilling:
HANNAWA -Keesha will party with a dozen people tonight, but she will have a lousy time.
That’s because Keesha is one of an estimated 50 to 60 women selling sex on Hannawa’s bleakest streets. Like Keesha, most of these women are not women at all, but teenage girls, some still attending high school. Most, like Keesha, are black.
“I ain’t doing this forever,” Keesha said minutes after exiting a dark green Ford Explorer, where she’d performed oral sex on a big-bellied white man.
SEE WALK PAGE A6
Tuesday, May 23
Aubrey leaned on the counter where I was sorting out a month’s worth of obituaries. She was smirking. “Maddy-you’ll never guess who’s descended into the dark, slimy world of corporate PR.”
I made sure my expression was as flat as an Ohio corn field. “Dale Marabout?”
Her smirk got even uglier. “I figured you already knew about it.”
“Of course I know about it.”
She leaned on the counter. Rested her chin on her knuckles. “I ran into him at the library last night. Working away at a little table in the corner like a Franciscan monk.”
“And he told you about the job, did he?”
“Only that he was doing a freelance project for a local company. He was pretty tight-lipped about it.”
“And you figured I’d fill in all the horrible details?”
“Well-yeah.”
I did not like Aubrey taking pleasure in what she considered Dale’s misfortune. Nor did I like her drilling me for information. “Dale and I have been friends for a long time,” I said. “You and I have been acquainted for five minutes. If Dale doesn’t want you to know more, then neither do I.”
The word acquainted stung her and I was glad it did. “Come on, Maddy-I’m happy for him,” she said.
I batted the air. “Poop! You’re just happy it isn’t you.”
“True enough,” she admitted. “I think I’d slit my wrists before I sank to writing PR.”
Good gravy, Aubrey made me angry that day. Angry at her and angry at myself. I was helplessly attracted to her sassiness and her tenacity, like a mosquito to a bug zapper, as they say. But I was also helplessly loyal to Dale. “Not if you had a family to support,” I growled. I gathered up the obits and headed for my desk. She knew enough not to follow.
I wasn’t about to tell Aubrey, but Dale never would have taken that freelance assignment if it hadn’t been for me. I’d learned about the job though the grapevine and knew it would be perfect for him. It was with a prominent corporation in town. It would pay big bucks and maybe lead to a full-time job. So I’d invited him to Speckley’s and told him about it.
Freelancing always gives reporters the heebie-jeebies-even unemployed ones-so I wasn’t surprised that his first reaction was to shake his head like an oscillating fan. “No-no-no-no, Maddy,” he said. “There’ll be no have-keyboard-will-travel stuff for this boy.”
I patted his nervous hands. “I admire your standards. I really do. And I admire the courage it took to walk away from the paper. You’ve got moxie out the wazoo. But if you’re anything like other reporters I know, you’ve also got bills out the wazoo.”
Dale hemmed and hawed through several cups of coffee. But in the end he agreed to put on a suit and tie and meet with the corporate honchos dangling that big, fat freelance job. They offered and he accepted.
I was happy for Dale. And pretty damned pleased with myself. So when Aubrey started smirking at me that morning in the morgue, I guess I got a little crusty. Later in the day I made amends by sharing a pack of stale Fig Newtons from the vending machine with her. Thank God she had the good sense not to bring up Dale’s freelance job again.
Wednesday, May 24
During a little mid-week pillow talk Aubrey learned that Eric was having a birthday on Sunday. Instead of taking him to the Olive Garden and a movie, she got the bug to throw a surprise birthday dinner for him. She not only wanted to bake a cake, she also wanted to make him a lasagna. I was astonished. “This is suddenly very domestic of you,” I said. We were on our phones grinning at each other across the newsroom. “You must be either pregnant or in love.”
She cradled the receiver under her chin and playfully gave me the finger with both hands. “Those are two things I will never be. I just thought a nice dinner with the three of us would be fun.”
“The three of us?”
“You can’t possibly think I could tackle cake and a lasagna by myself.”
“And here I thought it was because we’d become something of a family.”
Again she gave me the fingers. This time I gave them back.
So the secret birthday dinner for Eric was set: I’d go to her apartment early Sunday afternoon and help her make the lasagna and the cake and then when Eric showed up that evening, expecting Dominos pizza and sex, he’d get crepe paper, balloons, and Dolly Madison Sprowls in a pointy paper party hat.
Thursday, May 25
All week Aubrey worked the phones. All week people hung up on her.
The one person who did talk to her-and talk and talk-was the eyebrow woman. Having spilled the beans about Sissy’s child in Mingo Junction, she now freely rummaged through her brain for anything Aubrey might find useful. “And of course you know about Family Night,” she said matter-of-factly during one of their conversations.
“Family Night?” Aubrey asked.
Five minutes later Aubrey was standing in front of my desk, telling me everything that the eyebrow woman had told her. “It appears we have a few loose ends to tie around the Reverend Bandicoot’s neck,” she said.
Friday, May 26
Aubrey drove. The insurance company had replaced the windows in her old Escort two days after they were smashed, but there were still tiny shards of glass everywhere in the car. So all the way to Hannawa Falls, I sat in the back fishing out the glass between the seats, and Eric sat in front fishing them off the dashboard. It became a game, like seeing how many out-of-state license plates you can spot.
Hannawa Falls is a tidy blue-collar suburb just east of the city. It’s where many of the area’s autoworkers settled in the Fifties and Sixties. The endless acres of Cape Cods and ranches had been paid for with years of sacrifice. The owners of those tiny palaces were not about to allow the teeniest bit of sloth, by themselves or their neighbors, to eat into their hard-won equity. Every lawn was mowed. Every shrub was trimmed. We wound our way through a series of concrete streets named after deciduous trees until we arrived on the cul-de-sac where Tim Bandicoot lived. We parked and waited.
At six-fifteen, the garage door went up and a dark green minivan backed out. Four heads were visible through the windows: Tim Bandicoot, his wife, Annie, and their two sons. Aubrey waited until they reached the end of the street and then followed. We wound back through the deciduous tree streets pretty much as we’d come in, until we reached East Tuckman, the wide, four-lane street that runs through the suburb like a barbecue spit. The Bandicoots turned left and drove to Eastfield Centre, the gargantuan shopping strip that has sucked most of the retail out of downtown Hannawa.
They pulled into Arby’s. We parked across the street at a Burger King. They went inside to eat. Aubrey sent Eric inside for carryout. It took the Bandicoots forty minutes to eat. Then they drove to the book store next to the mall. “How boring is this,” Aubrey moaned as we parked five rows behind them. “Friday night at Borders.”