She walked into the room, the smell of cheap wine and perfume filled her nose. She looked around, girls in soft silk robes walked passed her. Women with long, pale legs and men falling to their feet followed them into small closed off red rooms. Eva looked around, looking for the loud ratsnest like hair of on her closest friends.
“Have you seen Mary?” She asked a girl passing.
“No, Miss.” The girl told her. Eva nodded at the girl, looking behind her seeing a man biting his lip.
“If you don’t tip my girl, you’ll have hell to pay.” Eva told the man. He nodded in response, the girl attached to his hand pulled him off, surring up the stairs.
She continued to look around the room, more and more girls were leaving the room with men in their arms.
“God dammit Mary where were you?” She exclaims as she the redhead she had been looking for.
“Sorry was with a friend.”
“Can I talk to you?”
“Yeah, do you want to go up to your room?”
“Let’s go?”
They walked up the stairs, passing men trying to button their pants back up. They got to Eva’s room. She grabbed the doorknob in her hand letting her fingers to soak up the cold feeling of the metal. When they got inside, Mary went straight for Eva’s vanity, picking up a brush and taking it to her mangled hair. Eva Walked to her bed, sitting down looking at a basket filled with dry dresses straight from the line in the basement.
“Do you know what the worst feeling in the entire world is?” Eva asked Mary. “ It’s the feeling of losing your child and knowing that you have to live with the fact that they died because of you.” Mary turned to look at Eva. “ You have to live with the fact that she had her throat slit and was robbed in your own home. You have to live with the fact that the man who killed her was a man you knew for years. You’ll live with the fact that you were the one that suggested that she spend the night with him, instead of the man she was supposed to be spending the night with. You have to keep those facts with you, buried inside.”
“Eva-”
“I was just at the funeral home, the man there was telling me that they are doing a new thing with their gravestones. He told me that they are putting pictures on the gravestone and that every picture means something different. He thought that it would be nice for me to get her one, even told me he would give it to me for free. That it broke his heart to see a mother buy a grave for her young daughter. He even gave me a book filled with these pictures to pick from.” She paused for a moment. “He even suggested to pick the dove. The book said that they put doves on the gravestones of young women to show that they were prue and that she was in peace. And I’m pretty sure he had no idea who I was or what I do.” A laugh made it’s way out of her, almost like she couldn’t believe what she was talking about.
She lowered her head and went on. “ It’s good to know that there is a good honest man out there that doesn’t cheat on his wife for one of my whores. It’s good that I can at least leave him with my daughter’s body and not have to worry about him using her without leaving a tip.”
“Eva.” Mary tried to talk, but Ava kept on talking.
“I looked through the book, and there was nothing there for a women like my Lillian. No picture, no symbol, no image; nothing. There was nothing to represent the life she had to endure with me as a mother, and the men that smothered her. My poor Lillian, never complained. Told me she loved me before she went to bed every night. My Lillian that I could throw any man at and she was still able to hold her own. She would give him a night so wonderful that he would leave a double tip. My baby so young and having to live in this world I created for her. I create this for her. God dammit, if only I could go back in time and try to reason with my younger self. I would try to convince myself to stay in the home I was in, compel myself to stay in that home, to stay and live a life that Lillian would be proud of. If I stayed there then I wouldn’t the good for nothing childless whore I am today.”
“Eva, don’t be so hard on yourself. It wasn’t your fault that what happened happened.” Mary looked at her, trying to show sympathy.
“ I told the man I would take the dove. Lillian might of done things that people might not see as pure. But she was at heart, she was the purest of them all, my Lilli. She was a dove.”
“She’ll get the prettiest dove of all.”
“The man nodded and wrote down on her file when I told him, I wanted to give her a dove. And told me he was sorry for my loss.”
“That was kind of him.”
“Yes he was.” Her voice went soft. “Um..” She cleared her throat. “Enough about me. Did John give you the right amount of money this time?”
“No, he was a few dollars short.”
“Well, then. It seems like I’m going to have to make my way down to that lovely little home of his and have a nice talk with his wife.”
“Are you sure you are okay.”
“I’m fine.”
Mary looked at her, her eyes looking up and down Eva. She was trying to see if she really was okay.
“Mary, I think I’m going to go to bed.”
“Oh, well I’ll be down stairs trying to rally up the girls. We need to clean this house.”
“Mary I know. I told you to do that hours ago.”
“I’ll be downstairs. You sleep.” She patted Eva’s leg and went to the door, “I’ll call you down for dinner in a bit.”
“Okay, Mary.” She smiled and as she watched as Mary walked out and closed the door. She laid down on her bed. And pulled up her legs to her chest. She closed her eyes and let the tears drip out of them. She never allowed this to happen before. But Lillian was her rock, she was the the thing that kept the tears in. And now that she was gone, the tears were able to flow.