Chapter 5 The Lustful Gateway (5)

• Vanessa rolled her eyes, clearly at herself more than anything else. "Oh, I screwed up a bunch. I'm not sayin' otherwise. But I was in college once, too. Started dating a guy. Thought he was cool. Found out what an asshole he was when we went to Mexico together and he used me as a drug mule without asking me. I'd have dumped his ass right there if I'd known he was into that. But there I was, caught with a shitload of coke in my bag at the airport. My ex-boyfriend figured out the score before I did and started copping pleas. The prosecutor figured he could still get an extra check mark in his conviction column and fuck what anyone's confessions said or how credible his witnesses were, right? My public defender was good, but she wasn't fuckin' Superwoman. I got eighteen months and figured I was lucky.
• "My family basically freaked out and disowned me. I couldn't get a job. I figured I needed a clean slate, so I took what I could scrounge up and came out here, but it was 2009 and I couldn't land even fuckin' Wal-Mart or McDonald's, and well..." she shrugged. "I like sex. I like sex a lot. I don't see anything wrong with what I do, really. When I was just operating on my own I could decide to turn guys down if something seemed wrong or if they grossed me out. It wasn't like I couldn't defend myself if one of 'em tried something violent. You learn things in prison, y'know?
• "Last year, along came Rudy. I was tired of handling everything on my own. He was slick enough to go easy at first, but one thing led to another and as soon as I trusted him a little too much, bam. He's got all my papers, he's got Chester and he's probably smart enough to find me even if I did run on him. And he'd have to look, too, otherwise his other girls might run, too."