Shattered Innocence

The air in the VHS Lounge tasted like cheap vanilla air freshener and old carpet. I was eighteen years and three weeks old, and I was lying to a man named Sal.

“I’ve been doing this for two years,” I said. “Phoenix. I worked with a guy named Marco.”

Sal didn’t look up from the stack of twenties he was counting. He had a face like a bulldog that had been punched one too many times. His office was a closet off the main floor, walls covered in posters of women I’d never heard of, all of them smiling with their mouths open.

“Marco’s dead,” Sal said.

I kept my face still. “I know. That’s why I’m here.”

He stopped counting. Looked at me. His eyes were small and watery, the color of dishwater. He let the silence stretch, the way men do when they want you to fill it with something incriminating.

I didn’t fill it.

“You’re a baby,” he said finally. “You got ID that says different?”

I slid my driver’s license across the desk. The picture was bad. I looked like a scared rabbit. But the date was right. I’d waited three weeks after my birthday to come here. I wanted to be sure.

Sal picked it up, held it close to his face, then tossed it back. “Marco never worked with girls your age. He liked them broken in.”

“Marco didn’t know everything.”

This was true. Marco didn’t know I’d spent six months watching him from the bleachers of the strip club where he booked girls. Didn’t know I’d memorized his schedule, his phone calls, the way he talked to the bartender about which girls were reliable and which ones would steal from the tip jar. Didn’t know I’d chosen him because he was small-time and desperate, and small-time desperate men leave openings.

But Marco got shot last month. Some deal with a boyfriend who didn’t like the footage. So here I was, starting over with Sal.

“What do you want?” Sal said.

“I want to shoot. I’ve got a camera. I’ve got ideas.”

He laughed. It wasn’t a nice laugh. “Ideas. Every girl who walks through that door has ideas. They want to be directors. They want to be their own boss. They want to make art.” He spat the last word like it was something stuck in his throat. “You know what they make? They make a mess. They make me lose money.”

“I’m not every girl.”

He looked at me again. Longer this time. I let him. I’d learned that lesson from Marco. Don’t look away. Don’t cross your arms. Don’t give them anything to read except what you want them to see.

“You got a place to shoot?” Sal said.

“I’ve got access to a house.”

This was also true. My grandmother’s house. She was in a nursing home now, her mind gone somewhere I couldn’t follow. The house sat empty in a neighborhood of empty houses, the kind of street where nobody noticed anything because nobody wanted to.

“Who’s your talent?”

“I’m working on it.”

Sal leaned back. His chair creaked. “Let me tell you something. You’re pretty. You’re young. You could make good money just showing up and doing what you’re told. Why you want to make it hard?”

“Because I don’t want to be the product,” I said. “I want to be the one selling it.”

The words came out sharper than I meant. I saw something flicker in his eyes. Respect, maybe. Or wariness. Hard to tell with men like Sal.

He pulled a business card from his shirt pocket. Wrote something on the back. “There’s a warehouse on Industrial. Thursday nights. Ten o’clock. They run amateur nights. You bring your camera, you show me you can get something usable. If I like it, we talk.”

I took the card. Didn’t look at it. “I’ll be there.”

“Don’t waste my time,” he said. “I don’t like my time wasted.”

I stood up. “I won’t.”

The main floor of the VHS Lounge was empty except for a bartender wiping glasses and a girl on the stage, slow-dancing to a song I didn’t recognize. She looked bored. She looked like she was somewhere else entirely. I knew that look. I’d practiced it in the mirror.

Outside, the parking lot was half-full. Late afternoon sun, the kind that makes everything look tired. I got in my car, a 1998 Honda Civic with a dented passenger door and a heater that only worked on high. I sat there for a minute, hands on the wheel, breathing.

I’d done it. I’d gotten my foot in the door.

Now I just needed to figure out the rest.

The house was dark when I got there. My grandmother’s house. I let myself in through the back, the way I always did. The kitchen smelled like dust and old spices. Dishes in the sink from the last time I’d stayed here, three weeks ago. I hadn’t washed them. I didn’t care.

I walked through the living room. The furniture was covered in sheets. My grandmother’s china cabinet, her collection of porcelain birds, the TV from 1995 with the rabbit ears. All of it waiting for her to come back, which she wouldn’t.

I went upstairs to the bedroom that used to be my mother’s. The bed was still made. The closet still had her clothes. I’d cleared out the personal stuff, the photos, the letters. But the clothes stayed. I didn’t know what to do with them.

I pulled out my phone. Scrolled through contacts. There were three names I could call. Three girls I knew from high school who’d asked me about the industry, who’d said they were interested, who’d backed out when it got real.

I called the first one. Voicemail.

The second one. Voicemail.

The third one picked up. “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Maya.”

A pause. “Oh. Hey.”

“You remember what we talked about? A few months ago?”

Another pause. Longer. “Yeah. I remember.”

“I’ve got an opportunity. Thursday night. Amateur night at a warehouse. I need someone to work with.”

“Work with how?”

“I need a performer. I’ll shoot it. We split whatever we make.”

Silence. I could hear her breathing. Could hear the TV in the background of wherever she was.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I thought about it. A lot. But I don’t know if I can.”

“You can,” I said. “You told me you wanted to. You said you needed the money.”

“I do need the money. But I don’t know if I want it like that.”

I closed my eyes. Counted to three. “Look, just come with me. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Just come see the place. See what it’s like. If you don’t want to do it, that’s fine. But at least you’ll know.”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll pick you up at nine. I’ll bring you back by midnight. No pressure.”

She was quiet for so long I thought she’d hung up. Then she said, “Fine. Nine o’clock. But if it’s weird, I’m leaving.”

“It won’t be weird,” I said. “I promise.”

I hung up. Looked at the phone. One down. Two more to go.

I called the second name again. This time she answered.

“Maya? What’s up?”

“You busy Thursday night?”

“Depends. What are we doing?”

“Making money.”

She laughed. “I’m listening.”

I told her. She said yes. Fast. Too fast. But I wasn’t going to question it.

Three performers. One camera. One house. One chance.

I sat on my mother’s old bed and looked at the ceiling. There was a water stain in the corner, shaped like a map of a country I didn’t know. I’d stared at it a hundred times. Never figured out what it was supposed to be.

My phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number.

*Thursday. 10pm. Don’t be late. – Sal*

I saved the number. Didn’t reply.

Outside, the sun was going down. The street was quiet. No cars. No kids. Just the sound of a dog barking somewhere far away and the hum of the refrigerator downstairs.

I thought about my grandmother. She used to tell me I was going to do something with my life. She said I had a fire in me, something that wouldn’t let me settle. She said that fire would either make me or break me.

I hoped she was right.

I hoped she was wrong.

Either way, Thursday was coming.