You ***ing Forced Me to Say Goodbye

“24 fucking hours?! Are you fucking kidding me?! She disappeared!”

“Sir, let’s try to remain professional.”

“Professional?! My daughter ran away and you are bitching at me about professionalism?!” Austin snapped into the phone. He hadn’t slept at all since finding Jana’s not the night before. He’d spent the night and morning waiting for her to come back.

“Sir, most run aways return within the first 24 hours. If she doesn’t turn up by then we can begin an investigation…”

“Damn it, she is 16 fucking years old! She’s been out roaming the streets all night!”

“I understand that you are upset, sir. But…”

“I am her father! I’m not just upset, or pissed off or whatever you are thinking. I am her father, and my daughter disappeared last night!”

“Chances are she will show up in a couple hours. She may be staying with a friend. After 24 hours we can start an investigation and we can find her…”

“Then people wonder why so fucking many little girls get raped and murdered!” he snapped. He was frustrated, both with Jana and the police. He couldn’t understand why Jana insisted on running away from him, and he was worried she’d end up dead in a ditch some place if she didn’t get things together.

“I am going to have to end this conversation now, sir.”

“Fine, end it! Let my daughter get killed out on the fucking streets in Los Angeles! My 16 year old cocaine addict daughter. I’ll save you the trouble of doing your job and I’ll find her my fucking self,” he snapped and hung up the phone before slamming it on the kitchen counter top.

He put his hand over his eyes briefly to try and gather his thoughts before passing it over his forehead and hair. “Fuck!” he cursed and hit his fist against the counter. He was startled then slightly by the sound of Stephanie’s cry. “No, no babe, don’t cry. I’m not yelling at you,” he promised and lifted her off the ground. She continued to cry.

“Yell,” she sniffed.

“I’m yelling at your momma,” he tried to explain. “She is going to get herself in trouble.”

“Momma gone?” she asked. He sighed and sat at the table in his kitchen with her on his lap. She looked up at him with big eyes.

“Yea, she’s gone.”

“Momma hurt?” she asked with those big eyes now filled with baby worry. He kissed her forehead softly and sighed.

“I hope not, babe. I hope not.”

Jana was standing outside her landlord’s front door. Her eyes were dilated and her mind was violently alert. She knocked on the door and fluffed her hair quickly. The door opened and he looked at her with skeptic eyes and then flashed a sleazy grin.

“Your apartment is gone,” he said and examined her. She was high, and he body was well exposed. This was something he always enjoyed about Jana James. She had a name like a porn star, and a body like one too. But what he liked more was how much that girl was willing to do for a little dope and a place to stay. She smiled an intoxicated smile and rolled her head back, letting her hair shuffled over her shoulders and her breast arch closer to him.

“You don’t have anything for me, Scotty?” she purred as she looked at him as seductively as she could manage. He grinned his sleazy grin again and looked at her chest. He could feel himself grow at the sight of her breasts peaking from the top of her tank top.

“Depends on what you got for me, Jana.”

“What do you want? I lost my kid. I don’t know where she is. I had her and then all of the sudden she was just missing. I don’t need space for her,” she said and looked around her as if she was checking for Stephanie. She could feel herself sweating from the high, and for a minute she felt like she was spinning. She took a rapid breath.

“I might have something for you,” he said and ran his finger tips from her chin to her breasts. She smiled an exaggerated and intoxicated smile, and suddenly he gave her right breast a painful squeeze, causing her smile to contort into an expression of pain. “But it will cost you.”

***

When she staggered out of his apartment she held the key to a new one in her hand, and soreness over her entire body. She got to the stairs and cursed at them. She hadn’t slept in 34 hours and she’d spent her night in the back seat of cars. As she finally fell into her apartment she took a breath to try and clear her mind. For the first time since she’d run away her high was coming down enough to let her think about Stephanie and Austin.

The room was filthy and cold, and she realized she had no clothes other than the ones on her body. She had money enough to eat if she was to get hungry, but chances were it would be for whiskey and cocaine. Those were here only friends anymore. She hoped that Austin would take good care of Stephanie, and that he wouldn’t look for her. She wanted to be away from everything, and she wanted to simply disappear into nothingness. Even as the pain of not having her daughter started to sink in she knew Stephanie was better off without a cocaine addict, hooker mother. She knew she’d finally done something right for her daughter.

She lay on the ground, feeling the dirt in the old carpeting, and hearing the rats as they ran across the ground and through the walls. Her mind was racing with the things her mother had said. She regretted having called her at all. Heather had always been easily upset, and violently ashamed of things Jana had done. But she missed her, and she wished everyday she wouldn’t have gotten pregnant. Stephanie had caused her to leave, but her problem made it so she could never go back. Her mother would never accept a girl that gave herself up for drugs and a sleazy dirty room. So instead she decided she’d stay here, and she’d suffer through whatever life threw at her.

Sleep didn’t come easy for Jana. She was still high and now her body had started to hurt from what she’d done for the apartment. Scotty was never an easy road to cross. He liked when things got rough and head no problem telling her had no choice in what he did to her or he’d call the police. She closed her eyes and though about the warm bed Austin had provided, and the promise to never let her crazy landlord hurt her, and the food she was sure to get. Here it was more likely she’d only be assured food if she ate the rats, if they didn’t eat her first. She figured she’d just have to work enough to stay high. High she wasn’t hungry.

As she lay awake on the ground she wished she still had her soda bottle of whiskey. That would make her sleep, she was sure. But she couldn’t will the bottle to come back. So she lay silently trying not to think of all the mistakes she made, and she repeated to herself she wouldn’t run back to Austin. It wasn’t his responsibility to fix her mistakes or to take care of such a fuck up. And she had guilt for blowing into his seeming normal life and destroying it. Finally the cocaine left her and she fell into a light painful sleep.

By the second day Jana had been missing Austin had only slept in short intervals, never lasting more than fifteen minutes at a time. His eyes were red and he hadn’t shaved, leaving a shadow a day past five o’clock. He’d most of the night out looking around downtown Los Angeles, hoping to find her on a street corner or something. But there was no sign of her anywhere.

In the over a month that she’d been living in his house he’d come to care about her. He hadn’t been sure if there was any love until she disappeared. Now he couldn’t sleep, and he only thought of finding her. He worried about her more with every passing second. He knew she’d managed on the streets for 2 years before she’d found him, but he knew the last time she’d shown up on his door step she was battered and bruised, and he knew that there was always a chance that she’d get into trouble worse than a beating.

Stephanie was quiet. She mostly stayed in her bedroom alone, playing with dolls and teddy bears. She’d come out if she was hungry. Jana had managed to get the child potty trained before they’d shown up at his house. Jana claimed she’d done it because the cost of diapers was beyond what she could afford. But Austin appreciated that Stephanie was a calm child, because he feared without having much sleep and his stress level so high he wouldn’t have the patience for her otherwise.

He was starting to drift into sleep when his phone started to ring, startling him awake and alert. He answered it, hoping it was the police saying they’d found Jana. “Hello,” his voice was tired and hoarse.

“You don’t sound too good, man.”

“I’m not,” he said then. “What do you need, Cody?”

“I wanted to see how I could help. We know this is making you crazy, having that girl missing.”

“We?” Austin asked.

“Yea, we. Me and the other guys, and our girls. What can we do to help? Nobody has even seen Jana but you. We’d look for her but we don’t know what we are looking for. Send us a picture or something.” There was a brief silence.

“You all are willing to help look for someone you’ve never even met?”

“She’s supposedly your daughter, right? Then we’ll be trying to find her. If you have a picture of her or something we’ll look everywhere.”

“She’s probably downtown somewhere. She’s got all these problems, cocaine and shit…”

“Just tell us what we need to know about her and we’ll help,” Cody insisted.

“When she turned up she said she was a hooker…I don’t know how much of that is true, but she was pretty fucked up. The last thing I know she was talking to her mother and then she vanished. I’ve got a picture on the cell phone I’ll get around. She’s defensive, and she’s got a violent attitude and sometimes a temper that would blow you away.”

“Okay, well count on us man, we’re all in this.”

“Thanks, Cody,” Austin sighed and took a breath. He hung up the phone and sent the only picture of Jana he had on his cell phone. She’d taken the picture herself in a moment of vulnerability. When he’d caught her with the phone she’d immediately put her guard back up and went back to the “adult” Jana before giving him the phone and running to her room. It was the one glimpse of being a regular teenager he’d seen out of her.

He stayed in the chair in the living room, thinking of ways to try and find her. He knew even if he went out and found her on the streets she’d never get into a car with him. She’d never let him take her back that easily. And he knew if she wanted to come back she would on her own. But even as he tried to think of things to bring her home, exhaustion took over and he fell asleep. Into the first decent sleep he’d had in two days.

When evening came Jana was out on the street. She’d come up with another soda bottle of whiskey, and enough cocaine to get her through the night. She’d spent the rest of the first nights earnings on a short denim skirt and a red halter top that left her stomach exposed. She had her hair fluffed and make up she’d bought stained her face. She stood on the corner, her feet sore from the new strappy hooker sandals she wore, the heels higher than she was used to anymore. So she took a swig from the soda bottle and set it on the ground next to her.

A car stopped and the window rolled down. She smiled and strutted herself to the open window and rested her hands on the sill, letting her breasts fall forward, leaving a full view of her cleavage. “What can I do for you?” she asked with that smile still on her face.

“Get in the car,” he said. There was no emotion, and there was a look on his face that made her uncomfortable.

“What you need, buddy?” she asked, standing a little straighter.

“I said get in the car.” Now she was worried.

“Not until I know what I’m getting out of it,” she said. He looked straight out his windshield for a second and then reached under his seat. Instantly her breath left her as she was face to face with a pistol.

“Get in the fucking car,” he said. She started to back away from the car as panic filled her. The street was mostly empty but for two other girls. She looked towards them for help, and she looked back towards the car. The driver side door opened and the man got out of the car. She backed up to the curb and fell on her ass. “I told you to get in the car you little bitch.” She scrambled to her feet and attempted to run, but her shoes made it nearly impossible. He took hold of her arm and started to drag her to the car. She pulled out of his grasp with all her strength. She fell onto her hands and knees, and she could feel the skin tear away from her knees. She heard the other two girls on the street start to scream and she looked over her shoulder at the man coming towards here with his gun. He knelt down next to her. “This is your last chance to get in the car before I shoot you,” he said. He lifted her and pulled her towards the car and shoved her in.

As she was pushed into the car she saw a black SUV out of the corner of her eye. She looked at the driver of the SUV. The driver was a man, wearing dark sun glasses even in the dark of night. His face was familiar, but she couldn’t place it in all her panic. She quickly mouthed “Help, please,” and then she was in the car with the gun man.