Innocent works hard for her money.
She works hard for it, but she doesn’t look for clients on poorly lit street corners.
Clients find Innocent online. It starts as a straightforward exchange of information, and it’s up to Innocent to decide whether a client is someone just looking for a little love or a potential murderer likely to bash her head with a wrench.
It’s simple, but when you think your life could be at stake every night, it’s also infinitely complex.
Innocent is only 22, but she’s been in the business for over 6 years already. She has vast experience with people, all kinds of people. It doesn’t take her more than a single look to tell if someone is attempting to escape a bad marriage for a moment or simply catering to a fetish. She’s good at reading people, she’s gotten very good at it over the years. Yet she’s also misread her clients plenty of times, and the beatings she’s received for such mistakes were anything but innocent.
On some nights, Innocent earns enough to cover her cost of living for an entire month. She can pay her bills, all of them, buy several new outfits, a nice pair of shoes, and fill her fridge with essentials. Some nights she earns enough to cover her parents’ expenses as well. One night she made enough money to help her brother buy a used car.
Some nights she makes just enough for a pack of cigarettes. Sometimes she makes nothing. Some clients refuse to pay, and even though she’s good at reading people, she seems to always misread the cheap ones.
Innocent’s mother doesn’t work, although she’s only 47. She has bad knees and asthma–both self-diagnosed and unconfirmed. Innocent’s father goes to work once or twice a week, laying floor tiles for a construction contractor he grew up with. It’s not a steady job, or regular, but it pays for his beer and betting habit.
Innocent thinks people who bet on sports are worthless, but she loves her father very much and gives him money whenever he runs out. She covers his debts and secures the peace at home for a few extra days.
Innocent distrust her mother and fears her. She suspects her mother knows the truth about her job. To avoid confrontation, she makes sure she’s never left alone with her mother. If her father leaves the room, she follows him out, pretending to be making a phone call. It’s easier that way, not only for Innocent, but also for her mother. That way, she can keep taking Innocent’s money without feeling embarrassed about where it comes from.
It’s easy to pretend when the money’s good. And the money’s good, most of the time. As long as Innocent can keep her looks and health, money will keep being good. There isn’t that much competition in the area, not that many girls as pretty or as skilled as Innocent. None that conscientious.
But it’s all dependent on youth, and Innocent knows her time will run out sooner rather than later. She’s seen it in other women, now married to husbands who settled and compromised even though they knew the truth about their wives.
Innocent also knows she’ll be lucky to get married. Although she’s careful to work only with men from other towns, she knows many in her own neighborhood already suspect her. Big Mouth knows the truth, and if Big Mouth knows it, so must his wife and everyone at his wife’s work.
Big Mouth came to Innocent one Saturday evening, pretending to be in need of a portable battery charger. Innocent doesn’t own a car, so his pretense was needless and quite stupid. She knew instantly what he wanted, but turned him away at the door. That’s not how she does business, and his assumption made her angry. She didn’t slam the door in his face, though, aiming for politeness and kindness instead. She knew that anger could provoke anger, and although she doubted Big Mouth had in him that night, there was no need to risk an outburst of violence.
But her kindness backfired, as it so often does, and Big Mouth dejectedly walked back home, determined to start a nasty rumor that very night. It was easy enough to come up with a story that featured another man from the neighborhood, the one everyone badmouthed anyway. Every fact instead of the main character’s name could stay the same–Big Mouth told his wife the truth, only not about himself.
The night Big Mouth struck out in front of Innocent’s door, Big Mouth’s grandson stood in a dark corner across the street, trying to gather enough courage to ring her doorbell himself. When he saw his grandfather, he retreated into the shadows, both terrified and amused.
Innocent knows that there’s no way to really hide anything, because every shadow in the world has a pair of watching eyes. If he’d lingered at her door for a moment longer instead of skulking away, she would’ve explained that to Big Mouth.
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