Read Online Sunflowers by Sheramy Bundrick - Free Book Online Page B

Virginie like I’m supposed to.”
    Jacqui jumped in again. “Four francs! That’s a laugh, I earned ten francs last night. Oh, I bet he told you that you were the prettiest girl in Arles and that he was so lonely and sad.” She tried to imitate Vincent’s accent. “Rachel, you inspire me sooo much—”
    My face grew hot. “It’s not like that.”
    “—and you fell for it. Cooking him supper, for God’s sake!”
    “You’re just mad because he didn’t want you!” I exploded. “You think you’re so special, but he wouldn’t give you the time of day!”
    Her mouth twisted with anger, and she drew close to loom over me. “ Petite salope , why would I give a damn what that redheaded loon thinks?”
    “Don’t call him that!”
    Our shouting summoned the other girls to the landing or down the stairs, and Françoise stepped between us. “Stop it! Madame Virginie is going to catch you both out, and Rachel, you’re in enough trouble as it is.”
    “What do I care anyway,” Jacqui said with a shrug and slinked away. “She’ll catch fleas or the clap, then who’ll want her?”
    Françoise caught my arm before I could scurry upstairs. “You’re wasting your time. One day he’ll go back where he came from and forget all about you. He’s no different from the rest of them.”
    “You’re wrong. He’s kind and gentle and caring.” I tried not to think about Sien as I spoke. That was different. She was different .
    “He’s still a man.”
    Madame Virginie’s voice thundered across the room, shouting my name, and she hurried toward us. “What do you have to say for yourself, missy? Where have you been?”
    “With that painter,” Jacqui said smugly from the bar. “All night.”
    I bit my lip so hard that I tasted blood, but I kept my temper and reached into my basket. “He paid me, Madame.”
    Madame Virginie stared at the coins in her hand. “You were gone the whole night, and all you have to show for it is two francs? It was busy here, you could have made a lot more than that. You work for me, young lady, not him!”
    I shoved the other two francs at her. “Then take my share too, and leave me alone!”
    No one spoke to Madame Virginie that way. Her face turned purple, and her eerily calm tone made me take a step back. “If I threw you out, where would you go? Your name is on the police register, and until you have enough money to get it taken off, it’s a brothel or the streets for you. And you know what that means.”
    I did know. At Leon Batailler’s the girls slept on hard cots in a damp attic, and they didn’t get half their fees, either. Half a franc each time, more like, and they did things for men that Madame Virginie wouldn’t let happen at her house. The other maisons weren’t much better. To work the streets like those filles soumises drunk on absinthe and wearing too much rouge, whining to passing sailors for a few centimes…it’d be weeks, maybe months, before I wound up in hospital with the clap or the madhouse with syphilis. Or in the cemetery.
    “Rachel’s a good girl, Madame,” Françoise said, sliding an arm around my shoulders. “She made a mistake, that’s all. She won’t do it again.” She squeezed me to get me to talk, but I couldn’t speak.
    Madame Virginie looked from her to me, and her face went back to its normal color. “Then you best not dally with that foreigner any more, unless he pays a fair price. You have to earn your keep. Do you hear me?”
    I wanted to walk out the door, go someplace, anyplace, maybe to the yellow house and beg Vincent to take me in. He couldn’t support me, though, Françoise was right about that, and going to Pauline in Saint-Rémy or Tante Ludovine in Avignon was out of the question. No, I had to stay at Madame Virginie’s until I saved enough money to get my name off the police register and make an honest living. What choice did I have?
    “Do you hear me?” Madame repeated.
    Françoise gave me another nudge, and I forced