what she babbled at me I missed, though I thought “yung hel-lup” might have been meant for “You help?”
I nodded, catching her under the elbows as she stumbled against me.
She gave me some more language that didn’t make the situation any clearer—unless “sul-lay-vee gull” meant slave-girl and “tak-ka wah” meant take away.
“You want me to get you out of here?” I asked.
Her head, close under my chin, went up and down, and her red flower of a mouth shaped a smile that made all the other smiles I could remember look like leers.
She did some more talking. I got nothing out of it. Taking one of her elbows out of my hand, she pushed up her sleeve, baring a forearm that an artist had spent a lifetime carving out of ivory. On it were five finger-shaped bruises ending in cuts where the nails had punctured the flesh.