Everything was silent with the exception of the crickets outside and the “bom chicka wah wah” background music of the pornography on the television.  She rolled her eyes, sighed, and thought “…men.”  That particular man who paid rent on the apartment she happened to be spending her night in was currently spread-out on the sofa, nothing more than a pile of arms and legs flung in every direction.  He had fallen there hours before and quickly descended into the deepest sleep, twitching and stirring now and then with dreams likely inspired by the images that still assaulted her eyes from across the room.  She did not bother to switch off the television, but instead threw a resentful glance in its direction, stalked across the room to the balcony, and stepped outside.

           Fresh, cold air.  As fresh as it could be, anyway – she was certain that the reality of fresh air had long since escaped her.  There was only one place she knew to have truly fresh air, and she had not seen it for over a year now.

          She had neither left a note nor given any warning as to what she was about to do. The day before, she had even made plans to go shopping with her younger sister, who needed a dress for the prom.  The morning of the escape, when everyone had left the house, she quickly packed a small suitcase of only the most important things.  The bag consisted mostly of assorted teas, journals, clothing and toothpaste, and once it was packed she calmly and steadily walked out of the door in the direction of the train station without looking back. 

Standing on the balcony, Helena stared thirteen stories below her into the street.   Taxis, buses, and people rushed around in their typical early Saturday evening frenzy.  The women were dolled up in their little black dresses and long coats, the men were debonair in their best suits, and they were all rushing off to dinners, parties, the opera, and the ballet.  She took a quick mental scan of herself in comparison: she was entirely composed of yet another black dress, tall black stilettos, long auburn hair perfectly curled under at the ends.  She was a mirror of those women on the street in nearly every way.  The only difference between those women and herself was the ultimate destination, the fact that she was standing on the ledge of a balcony, not sure whether she was about to fall or step back down into safety.  She was facing this dilemma high above while they rushed down the street, one-hundred-percent sure that they were headed toward San Francisco Ballet’s performance of “Sleeping Beauty.”  One heel slipped and she smirked at the way that the moment reminded her of a scene in a movie she had seen long ago.  The woman in the movie had been startled when her balance was so suddenly thrown off, second-guessed her suicide attempt, and stepped off the ledge back to safety, scared of what had almost happened.
Helena reminded herself that she did not scare easily.

San Francisco had welcomed her with open arms and neon signs..  She had been nomadic at first, dependent upon that select group of old friends who had taken a vow of silence concerning her whereabouts, as well as more recent acquaintances.  One of those more recent additions to her social circle had struck up his first conversation with her with intentions of ordering her one more drink than she could handle and taking her home, but after a few minutes of conversation, the alcohol must have gone to his head much more quickly than it had gone to hers.  He found himself babbling on about philosophy for a while and then reciting an Emily Dickinson poem that made him wonder the next morning if he had actually ever read it.  Helena was amused by his drunken intellect and thick British accent so she sat and listened to him until the bartender politely informed them that they could not stay there after closing..

It turned out that he did take her home that night, but instead of acting upon his original intentions,  he found himself acting the perfect gentleman, offering her the king size bed, and sleeping on the couch himself.  He awoke the next morning to the smell of fried eggs and buttered rye toast, and over breakfast he silently made up his mind that he would mention her ability to influence others’ decisions without even trying to a friend of his who happened to be head of an advertising agency.  It was a skill that usually required some sort of training and here she had used it on him from the moment they met, seemingly without even noticing how she had manipulated him.  The girl needed a purpose and a place to call home, and without really understanding why, he wanted to place her on a road that would lead to at least both of those things and hopefully more.

 Helena wondered how in the hell she could have been so incredibly stupid – after all, to risk her job like that could not be called anything but incredibly stupid.  A little extra money was not worth losing a real salary, a stable place to live, and a purpose. Now she was left here, with only her risks and her “pocket money” source to depend on.  She had no home and was instead living for the night in this seedy apartment with that wretched man that got her into all of it in the first place.

Helena brought one arm down from the ledge above that was serving as her anchor, and as she moved out of the way a strand of hair that had blown into her eyes on the nighttime breeze, she noticed how visible the scars still were.  She couldn’t do this.  She hadn’t been brave enough then and she certainly wasn’t brave enough now.  She let another wave of cold air wash over her, carefully stepped down from the ledge, and went back inside.  Wonderful, she thought.  Now the asshole is snoring? Helena perched on the small footstool, watching him for a moment, wondering how the same man who had found her a decent place in life to begin with could take it away just as easily.  That was when she realized why she could not bring herself to actually jump – this was in no way her own fault.  He had done this to her.  He had found her the way in, and just as easily, he had found her the way out. 

Every time that she looked at the two keys on her “I heart San Francisco” keychain she could not help but grin.  The keys looked old, antiquated, reminiscent of something one might have saved from the ruins of the Titanic, but more importantly, they opened the door to something that was one-hundred percent hers. She had come to the city with only a little money to take care of herself.  Being careful and frugal with her money had always been her strong point and so she had just enough money saved up to eat at least one good meal every day, but not quite enough to have her own place to live.  The first six months at the advertising agency had finally provided her with the means to fix that problem.  It was only an entry level job, but combined with what was left of her savings it paid just enough to make rent on the small apartment.  She did not need more than a small space anyway – she was, after all, just one person, and with the fact that most of her friends and family had no idea where she was, she was unlikely to have visitors often.  She had chosen it for the antiquated, rusted over bathtub.  Rust aside, it was another thing that was old and beautiful, and she was sure that there was some way to scrape off the rust so that she could actually use it.  The second evening in her new home, she did exactly that. 

He was the reason.  He was the fucking reason!  She suppressed a scream of rage, wondering why she hadn’t come to that conclusion earlier, when she had been about to waste her own life for what he had done.  He was the reason she had even found a job to begin with, and that job had provided her with the money for the apartment.  He had been the one to offer help when she realized she needed a little extra money, and his help was the reason she had lost both her job and her apartment in only a week’s time. Suddenly, a rainstorm outside hit hard, and she got up to close the balcony doors.  A few drops blew in on a gust of wind to slap her across the face, as if admonishing her for shutting out the weather, for not letting the storm rain all over him as punishment for what he had done.  It would be too kind, she explained to the storm in her head.  He did not deserve to get off so easy.

She had successfully spent most of the day scrubbing and scraping at the rust until it was ninety-eight percent gone.  She had experimented and experimented with the water until the temperature seemed perfect.  She had found the best smelling bath salts and the best quality bubble bath she could track down.  Mild candles had been lit and the window was open just in case the smoke from the candles was too much for the small bathroom.  She had even brought her small stereo into the room and set it up with a serene jazzy soundtrack to set the mood, and she had a glass of white wine in hand.  Now the tub held water scented with green tea bath salts, and it seemed that everything needed for perfection was in place.  She set the glass on the chair she had pulled next to the bathtub in anticipation of needing such a space and stepped in, eyebrows slanted towards nose. She had never really understood the appeal of taking a bath in real life – oh, in books and movies it was a terribly romantic thing to take a rose petal bath in a candle filled room, but in real life the bubbles dissolved too quickly, the petals sunk, the water was never the right temperature, and the candles inevitably set off the smoke alarm.  One could not read in there either, at least not without one of those overpriced bath pillows and an impressive amount of upper arm strength, and she hated that part of it the most. 

Sitting in lukewarm, partially bubbly water with nothing to do but stare at the wall ahead of her was not exactly appealing, but tonight she was determined to experience why so many of the people she knew seemed to thoroughly enjoy bubble baths.  She slipped beneath the bubbles, just enough to wet her hair, and resurfaced with a smile of satisfaction.  The temperature really was just right this time, and the bubbles were somehow still perfect even though her body had been disrupting them for about fifteen seconds.  She had found a comfortable place in this new life, finally. 

Helena stood slowly, unsure of where the next few footsteps would take her.  She knew that the balcony was no longer an option.  This was not her fault, and so she would not waste her own precious life for it.  She reminded herself that she still did not scare easily, that she hadn’t chickened out – it just wasn’t about that anymore.  She had realized that she was blaming the wrong person and going about trying to fix things in entirely the wrong manner.  She paced the apartment as the ideas rolled over and over in her mind.  Helena knew what she had to do, but finding a way to do it was something entirely different.  As she racked her brain for any clue to use as a starting point, an accidental squeak of frustration escaped her lips.  At that same moment the man on the sofa stirred and she froze mid-step, silently begging him not to wake up.  If he woke up now, there was no solution.  The plan would be ruined, and she would have to continue on like this, dependent on him until she found something better.  To her relief, he did not wake but instead shifted his body around a few times, and after a minute he fell still again, back to that obnoxious snoring.  It came to her then – the bedroom.  She would find her escape in the bedroom.

She watched from the window as the men on the street below loaded both her sofa and the painstakingly restored bathtub into a truck.  She had a shower, she had chairs to sit on, and so she could spare these things when she had to.  She hated to see the things that she had gotten so used to taken away, but it had turned out that after her savings were finally gone, she made only enough money to pay rent and didn’t have anything left over to cover life’s other necessities.  She had no time to take another job, and she had a distinct and stubborn fear of needles that meant she would never resort to plasma donation or anything similar.  Selling furniture that she did not really need seemed to be one of the only other possibilities.  As it turned out, the once-rusted bathtub was actually a very rare and valuable antique worth about two-thousand dollars, and the sofa had earned her a decent amount of money as well.  Just as she was contemplating what could be sold the next time she ran out of money, the phone rang. 
            “Hello?”
            “Hey, Hellie, what’s going on? I got your message and you didn’t sound good… is everything all right?”  The familiar British accent was comforting to hear after the past week’s panic.
            “Oh…. no, I’m fine for the moment, I guess… I just didn’t know what to do when I called you.  I’m fighting about twenty others for that possibility of promotion at work, and my savings have run out so now I only have enough money to cover rent, and it’s all just-”
            “Do you need money, love, because I can-”
            “No! No no no, don’t lend me any money. I’m horrible at paying back      debts, so that’s really not a good idea.  I sold that old bathtub I had.  Turned out it was worth more than I thought, and the sofa as well, so I’ve got some to sustain me for a while.  Don’t worry.”  She didn’t want to borrow money from him.  It would give her the feeling that she needed him to look after her, which just seemed so pathetic.  
            “Well, actually, I was going to suggest another job you could take on.  I know some people who would be happy to offer you one.”
            “Are you crazy?  I might be underpaid but that doesn’t mean I have time for more work.”
            “I think you’ll find the time for this.”

Helena rummaged through the drawers where her things had found a temporary home until she found the red satin wrist gloves she had been wearing earlier in the evening.  She pulled each one on and then continued rummaging until she found his Derringer pistol.  Small but deadly, she mused, turning it over in her hands, and just as if I was a saloon girl gone wild in the old west.  She checked that it was loaded, and made her way back to the living room. 

She sat and listened while he explained the escort service to her.  It seemed more respectable than prostitution – sex was never a specific, guaranteed part of the deal, and she would have more flexibility on the exact terms even if sex were included.  It would be much less dangerous than actual prostitution as well.  The best part was that she could be done with it as soon as she got that promotion.  It sounded easy enough, and she agreed to meet his friends who ran the service the next day after work. 

She stood in front of where he was still sprawled across the sofa, dead to the world, and raised the gun, aimed at the perfect spot between his eyes. 

It went well for a while.  She didn’t always have to sleep with her clients, because sometimes they truly did just want an escort, someone to go to dinner and the ballet with them, or someone to watch a movie and have conversation with.  There was the occasional crazy, of course, with a need to smack a woman around and/or tie her up while he did what he liked with her, but these were few and far between and if they got too violent, she simply walked out the door.  That money wasn’t worth it.
One night, everything was turned around.  A colleague of hers answered the door.  Both surprised, they stood in the doorway for a moment staring at each other, unsure what to do, until he finally pulled her inside and closed the door.
            “You can’t tell anyone at work what I do.”  She said the words before he could open his mouth.
            “Right, right… of course… Shit, Helena, is this why you want the promotion so badly?”
            “Unless that’s the reason you called the escort service to begin with, there will be no work talk tonight, okay?”
            “Okay, sure.  That makes sense.”
They agreed that the evening could continue without any mention of work to make it awkward, and when they were at work they pretended as if that was the only context in which they knew each other.  He became one of her regulars and the charade went on flawlessly, until one night after she had been coming to see him regularly for about two months.  He had gotten very drunk, and in turn very violent, and, as was her own personal policy in that sort of situation, she started to leave.  He grabbed her and threw her up against the wall. 
            “You can’t leave.”  The whiskey on his breath alone nearly choked her to death.
            “Excuse me?”
            “You can’t leave.  You know that you can’t.  If you do, I’ll have to talk to George.”  She bit her lip.  George was their boss at the advertising agency, and she knew that if he found out about her secret life she would be fired.
            “You wouldn’t dare.”  She was scared, but she spoke the truth.  He was so drunk that it could easily be an empty threat that he wouldn’t even remember in the morning.
            “Why do you say that?”  He grinned, thinking he had her, that there was no reason she could come up with.
            “Because he’ll want to know how you know about me, idiot!  You’ll have to tell him that you’ve hired me, and then you’ll be in the same place I am.  Unless you want to lose your job too, saying anything to him would be even stupider than threatening me like this.”
            He thought about it for a moment and she grinned.  She was right, and he knew it.  She shoved him aside, picked up her bag, and walked out the door, thinking that the problem was solved.   

On Monday, she walked into the office and met whispers and cautious glances in her direction.  She hadn’t been at her desk five minutes before she was called into her boss’ office and fired for her “total abandonment of decency and disregard for this company’s reputation.”  The jerk had made up a story that he had heard about her through a friend of his who had hired her and thought that she looked awfully familiar.  The bad timing of the matter was that rent on her apartment was due soon, the next payday for job number one would have been that coming Friday, and her last check from job number two had been sent in the form of cash and without a return address to her younger sister, with instructions to use it for only college-related expenses.

He woke to see a slight smile on her lips, and the pistol aimed straight at his forehead.

Upon realizing that she could no longer afford to keep her apartment, she had packed up her things and walked the ten blocks to his building.  She had called him beforehand so that when she buzzed Unit Thirteen-A, the only response was a sleepy “Come on up, Hellie.”  She would remain there until a solution was found, until she could get back on her feet again.  She did not want to be part of the escort service anymore, and he had promised to help her find something else.

“What are you doing?”
            “This is all because of you, you bastard.  Yes, you helped me find the life I wanted, but then you took it all away from me.  What were you thinking?  You thought you were offering help?  Help would have been insisting that I take a loan from you even when I refused, or finding me another respectable means of earning money.  You must have known the risk, and yet you willingly put me in that situation anyway without a second thought.”
            “So… what, as a solution, you’re going to kill me and then get put away for murder?  Seems like that’s not going to put you in a better situation, baby.”
            “Don’t ‘baby’ me, you sad excuse for a man.  I’m not as stupid as you are.  I’ve thought this through.  I know the combination to your safe.  I know enough not to leave prints.  I know enough to lock the safe back up and then make it look as if you were as disgusted with yourself as you ought to be and committed suicide.  I know enough to get myself far, far away from here and start over, and I’ll do so peacefully knowing that you can’t ruin anyone else’s life the way you ruined mine.”

            She was right about how stupid he was.  Had he been more intelligent he would have used the time she took to deliver her monologue to think of a way out of certain death.  Instead, he simply listened to her and regretted having ever bought her a drink.  When her speech was done, she shot him without further ado and placed the pistol carefully in his hand.  She then packed up her things again unlocked the safe placed the contents of the safe inside of her suitcase with everything else, being careful to lock the safe back up before leaving. 
She was free.  As she peeled off the gloves and stuffed them in her coat pocket, she decided that it was time to go back home.  She would do that – she would head home, offer her family an edited explanation of where she had been for the last year, and start over.