Sold to the Man Who Took Me, but I Hold His Life novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Paper
Roz's father brings Augie into her dressing room and tells her to put on her coat; in the office the man behind the desk is the man who raped her, and she refuses to sign, writes her own line and walks out ahead of them.
My father came into my dressing room without knocking, with Augie Farina behind him.
The other dancers stopped with their lashes half on.
"Roz," my father said. He had not looked me in the eye in a year. "Put your coat on."
It was eleven days since the night in the back office, and I had not said a word of it to anyone.
I had danced the early show on Tuesday and the late show on Thursday and counted the tips like it was any week.
"I go on in twenty minutes, Dad."
"Not tonight you don't." He looked at the floor. "It's settled, honey. I settled it. The way a father can."
Augie smiled at me from the doorway.
He kept the Starlite's books and its door, and he had never once looked at a dancer's face.
"Sixty-one thousand dollars," Augie said. "Your father was kind enough to find a way to clear it."
Nobody in the room said anything.
The dancer at the next mirror put her brush down very slowly.
I had paid my father's electric bill since I was nineteen.
I had never once been asked.
I took my camel coat off the hook and put it on over the sequins.
I wanted to see what the paper was before I said anything.
They walked me down the back hall, my father on my left and Augie on my right.
The door at the end was open and the green lamp was on.
I knew that lamp.
I had looked at it for a long time, eleven nights ago, because it was the only thing in the room I could look at.
The man behind the desk was Declan Mallory.
He owned the Starlite and the pier and the lease on my grandmother's taffy shop.
He had stood on our stage every December and told us Philadelphia's one rule: nobody on the Boardwalk is touched against their will.
Eleven nights ago he stood between me and this same door.
I said no.
He did not stop.
He raped me, and I could not leave, and the manager stood on the other side of that door and did not open it.
I had gone home and scrubbed my skin with the hot tap until Kieran knocked to ask if I was all right.
Declan was looking at the paper.
He looked up and saw me.
I watched him understand.
His face did not change much. His hand, which had been reaching to turn the paper toward me, stopped in the air an inch from the desk.
My father slid the page across and set a pen on it.
"It's only a signature, honey. Four years in Mr. Mallory's house. Housekeeping, company, whatever he needs. That clears everything."
"Whatever he needs," I said.
"Roz," my father said, low.
I looked at Declan.
He did not say a word.
He did not tell my father to stop, and he did not look away.
His signature was on the bottom of the page, in blue ink, dated nine days ago.
He had signed my sale before he knew my name.
I understood that, and it did not help.
"You know me," I said.
My voice came out level, which surprised me.
"You know exactly where you know me from."
Declan went completely still.
My father looked from one of us to the other with his mouth open.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he said. "Roz, what are you saying?"
Augie stopped smiling.
I picked the pen up out of my father's hand, and I did not sign.
I turned the paper over and wrote across the bottom, under the line that said sixty-one thousand, in my own handwriting.
*Paid in full by Rosalind Dunleavy, in whatever it costs him.*
I capped the pen and put it down on the desk in front of Declan.
My hand did not shake until it was off the paper.
"My brother's tuition is on that page somewhere," I said. "My aunt's dialysis. The lease on my Nana's shop. I can't take them out of it, so I'll take them in."
Nobody moved.
"I'm going to walk into your house on my own feet," I said to Declan. "Nobody carries me, nobody drives me in a car with the doors locked, nobody puts a hand on me. If one man in this building touches me on the way out, I tell Philadelphia what I know."
My father had gone gray.
Augie's eyes flicked to Declan.
Declan said, very quietly, "Nobody will touch her."
It was the first thing he had said to me since the lamp.
I turned my back on him.
I went down the hall past the open dressing room, past the dancers standing in the doorway in their robes, past the doorman who would not meet my eyes.
I pushed the fire door open with both hands.
The cold off the Boardwalk hit my face, and the ocean was black and loud beyond the rail.
My brother's gray Corolla was idling at the curb with the wipers going, where Kieran had been waiting to drive me home after the show.
I got into the passenger seat before any of them came out.
"Roz?" Kieran said. "You're early. What's going on?"
Behind us, the door banged and a black car started its engine.
"Follow that car," I said, "and don't lose it. I'm going to Brigantine."
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