The Salvation Shark, Chapter 17

Becki

I lean against the window. I don’t want to let Anton see me cry. I begged the stripper to not tell him I vomited. I don’t want him to know how bad it was, how much I wanted to die. This was a mistake, a huge mistake. I want to cry so bad, but I can’t.

Anton slides into his seat and turns on the dome light. “What did you think of them?” he asks. From his tone, I can tell this is serious, he’s not trying to hurt my feelings, or at least he’s trying to do things in addition to hurting my feelings. “All of the whores and prostitutes you saw today, how did they make you feel? Were you disgusted? Were you sick?”

Slowly, I nod.

“Say it,” he demands. “How did they make you feel? What do you think of those prostitutes selling their bodies, selling themselves away for something so shallow?”

“I hated it!” I scream. “I’ve never been so humiliated in my entire life, watching those women walking around naked. Then the one you paid to... I wanted to fucking die, Anton!” I’m pounding on the door of the car and crying openly now.

“Stop it,” he demands, grasping my knee hard. When my sobbing slows, he says, “I have one more thing I want you to see.” He reaches between my legs, under the seat and produces a manila folder that he drops it on my lap. When I just stare at it for a moment, he says, “Open it.”

It’s a stack of 8x10 photos. The one on top is a picture of me from Rolling Stone. I’m wearing a school-girl uniform, seductively pulling the skirt up my thigh. The next picture is from the same shoot with me in the uniform crawling around on my hands and knees. The next is a picture from Entertainment Weekly shoot, where I’m laying on a bench in an orange bikini. It was very cold on the beach. I think the picture was airbrushed to enhance the effect. The next three are stills from my “Come To Me, Baby,” video. All of them are of me in short, cut-off shorts and a half-shirt that was so small I couldn’t wear a bra.

“What does this mean?” I ask. “Are you obsessed with me, or something?”

He looks at me for several seconds. Then he turns away and starts the car.


Go to Chapter 18