I clench my fist under the table. “I haven’t helped at all.”
“Without you –” Mrs. Blake inhales, like what she’s about to say requires more air, more life force. “Without you, Leo would have –”
“I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t save Isis in time,” I snap. “She got hurt because I wasn’t fast enough. I failed.”
The last two words ring in the near-empty, dim kitchen.
“I failed,” I say, stronger this time. “And she forgot me because of my failure.”
“She didn’t - Jack, no. That’s not it at all.”
Yes. It is. It’s my punishment. And I’ll take it. It has been a long time coming, after all.
I stand and go into the hall, pulling on my coat. Mrs. Blake nervously follows.
“I didn’t mean – I’m sorry. You don’t have to leave,” she says.
“I have work.”
She doesn’t know what work. She just knows I have to leave. And she knows it’s an excuse as much as I do.
“Alright then. Drive safely.”
Before I get a foot out the door, Mrs. Blake grabs my coat sleeve. I turn my head over my shoulder, and she murmurs softly, sympathy glowing from her eyes with near-uncomfortable warmth.
“You’re always welcome in this house, Jack.”
I’m quiet. Mrs. Blake reaches up and hugs me. I quell the urge to push her away. Her arms are gentle. For a moment, she feels like my own mother. I’m the first to step away. I always am.
“I should go,” I say. She nods.
“Will you be there? At the trial?”
“I’ll try. I don’t know if they’ll let me in the courthouse. I’ll ask my mother’s lawyer.”
Mrs. Blake watches me go from her doorway. There’s no fear in her eyes – not anymore. Not like the fear I saw that day. She didn’t try to stop me, or the bat. She let it happen. Maybe she feels guilty she let me beat Leo nearly to death. It’s useless to tell her she couldn’t have stopped me anyway. The thing in me – the thing that’s lusted for blood and anguish and justice since that night in middle school - could not have been stopped. It had been starved for too long, and the bars of its ice cage melted too thin by an idiotic, annoying girl.
It will not happen again.
I get in the car and start it, pulling away from the curb.
The beast will not come out again. I will restrain it next time. That’s what I’ve told myself since that night in middle school. I promised it would never happen. But it did. And I couldn’t control it. I’d nearly beaten a man to death because of it.
He deserved it.
I was as terrified as he was.
I shake my head and merge onto the highway. The beast will have to wait. The fear will have to wait.
Blanche Morailles, on the other hand, cannot be kept waiting.
***
Few women on this earth are as intimidating as Blanche Morailles. She’s a frightening combination of chilly poise, svelte cheekbones, and a wickedly sharp smile. It combines to make her a disarming presence, always cloaked in dramatic, floor-sweeping velvet coats. No one knows her real age – countless beauticians she no doubt pays by the bucket keep her looking younger than she really is. Blanche is the daughter of a French ambassador. She isn’t low-class enough to resort to botox, so the fine lines around her eyes tell the story of a woman in her late forties. Perhaps fifty-two. But that’s pushing it.
I spot her perfect dark-haired coif over a dozen typical heads of Ohio dishwater blonde, and weave around the tables. Du L’ange is a prestigious restaurant, and the one I used to work in before it was bought out and taken over by a new staff and crew.
I slide into the seat opposite Blanche. She sips icewater and twists her amethyst ring around her finger, raising one eyebrow to indicate she acknowledges my presence.
“Feels familiar, doesn’t it?” She asks, her voice rich and strong.
“The opposite,” I correct. “I’m an alien in this place, now.”
“You’ve only been away a year. Less than that.”
“A year and one month.”
She sips her water again, pauses as if thinking, calculating, and nods. “So it has. I should’ve known better than to test your memory.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Blanche smiles. For all her upkeep on her face, she’s rarely touched her teeth – they remain tea-stained and slightly crooked.
“It means I know you’re far smarter than the average man, Jack. And the above-average man. In fact, you are smarter than most men. This is a compliment, I assure you. Almost every man I’ve met is an idiot in some way. But not you.”
“Does my intelligence concern you?” I ask. The waiter offers me bread, but I refuse it.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” Blanche tries to change the subject.
“No. Does my intelligence concern you?”
She sighs. “Yes. It concerns me. Every personality of a working member of the Rose Club concerns me. I have not gotten this far - I have not become the best simply by ignoring the strengths and weaknesses of those I hire. I use them appropriately.”
There’s a long pause. The waiters bustle about and bring Blanche a lobster dish. She thanks them in French and begins picking at the red shellfish delicately.
“I’m sure you already know what I’m going to say, Jack. In fact, we both know what I’m about to say. And you also know I’m going to say this thing only because I know what you’re going to ask. That’s why you set up a meeting with me, is it not? To ask me something.”
I nod. She smiles and folds her hands over one another.
“Then ask.”
“But I already know the answer.”
“Ask anyway.”
It’s a command, not a request. My eyes dart around the room. Blanche doesn’t have bodyguards, but her manservant Frasier is constantly at her side, and in his own quiet way he is every bit as protective as a bodyguard. I spot him eating at a table to our left by himself. His tailored, dark suit hides his slight yet powerful frame. I’ve seen Frasier deal with the more unsavory clients of the Rose Club when Blanche feels the need to send a message to the escort community at large. It isn’t pretty. I don’t know their story. No one does. All we know is Frasier handles the business Blanche is too ladylike to touch.
I turn back to Blanche. I’m not afraid of Frasier, but now that I know his eyes are on me, I feel less brave.
“I only need two more weeks of payment. Then I want out.”
Blanche looks down into her lobster and smiles. “This is what I was afraid of. The smart ones always know when to leave. Usually they are not as handsome as you, my dear, and thus earn less. So I feel more inclined to let them go.”
“You aren’t ‘letting’ me go. I am leaving of my own volition in two weeks.”
Blanche’s expression turns steely, a frown carving her face. I see Frasier straighten in his seat out of the corner of my eye.
“You seem to have forgotten our agreement, Jack,” she says.
“Our agreement was you get me the clients to earn myself thirty thousand dollars. And I did. I earned more than double that, considering you take sixty percent.”
“And you’d earn a lot more, if you stayed. You turned eighteen recently, right? You could start making enough for yourself. Real money.”
“I don’t need the money.” I can barely contain my sneer.
“Oh, I know. Full scholarship to Harvard. Read all about it in the local newspaper. You certainly are going places. With or without me.”
I’m quiet. Blanche flicks some hair away from her face, expectant.
“Thank you,” I say finally. “For working with me. I learned a lot.”
“I’m sure you did.”
“On the fourteenth, our agreement is over. I’m hoping you’ll be amicable about this.”
“Of course I will, Jack. I’m a businesswoman. I’m simply lamenting the fact you and I won’t be able to build more together.”
&n
bsp; She looks down at her phone as it buzzes. A shadow crosses her face for a moment, but a faint smile replaces it as she looks back up at me.
“You know, you’re right. It is time you left. You’re much too good to be stuck in little old Ohio forever. You’ll do well in Harvard, I’m sure.”
She extends a hand to me. Everything in me screams not to trust it. It’s too sudden. The shift in her mood was instantaneous – something in that text message must have said something about me. Or maybe I’m paranoid. Maybe it wasn’t about me at all. Maybe it was another Rose Club business deal going smoothly and netting her a lot of money. That’s much more likely.
“Why the sudden pleasantries?” I ask. Blanche laughs.
“Oh, Jack. Always so suspicious. Don’t worry. Honestly, don’t. I know you won’t be an escort for much longer with me. That’s bittersweet, assuredly. But I did mention, didn’t I? When we first met? What did I say again? You have that stellar memory, surely you can tell me my exact words.”
The moment comes flooding back. I’d just turned seventeen. We were sitting in Blanche’s car, a silver Rolls Royce or something else stupidly showy. I’d just gotten off shift at Du L’ange when Blanche stopped me in the alley as I was throwing away the day’s trash and asked to give me a ride home. I don’t know why I went with her – but she reeked of money, and money was all that was on my mind since I’d found out how much Sophia’s surgery would cost just a few days before. I went hoping some of her wealth would rub off on me, maybe. I was desperate. And she could smell that like a fox downwind of a rabbit’s den.
We talked. She proposed I join her Rose Club. She told me what it meant, and what I’d have to do. There was no trickery or secrets. She was very honest and up front, and I was prepared to do whatever it took to get the money for Sophia. And when we were done, when I’d agreed to it and signed the contract, she’d snapped her Louis Vuitton handbag closed and smiled at me.
“This club isn’t just a way to provide people with luxury experiences, Jack. You benefit from it with more than just money. You meet politicians. Their daughters. Their wives. You meet stock brokers and dot com billionaires who have daughters. You meet the movers and the shakers of the world. You become connected. It’s a web that spreads far and wide, and you’ve just become a single string of it.”
Coming back to the present, I recite the words to Blanche. She claps her hands softly.
“Very good. A single string. That’s what you are. Even if you leave the web, the web will never truly leave you.”
I narrow my eyes. “What does that mean?”
“You’re smart enough to know what it means.”
She makes a motion for Frasier, and he gets up and pulls her chair out. She stands, and he smoothly puts her coat over her shoulders. Blanche pulls her gloves on one at a time.
“In two weeks, our contract is over,” she says. “The payments will proceed as usual until that time.”
“I suppose this is goodbye, then?” I ask. Blanche flashes one last smile at me.
“No, Jack. I’m certain you and I will meet again.”
I watch her go. My phone buzzing tears my attention away from her figure. It’s a call from a blocked number. I answer.
“Jack? It’s Naomi – ”
She doesn’t have to say anything more.
“I’ll be there in ten,” I say, and hang up.
-4-
3 Years
25 Weeks
6 Days
One time I had this really sweet dream where I had wings made of crystal feathers and I was slender and beautiful like an elf queen made of light and purity and also maybe I farted rainbows to propel myself forward but that isn’t the point – the point is it was a wonderful coolio dream, like probably the best of my life. Most importantly I am not having it right now, because right now I’m having a dream about a giant spider.
It’s chasing me through a forest of some kind, and I’m sort of pooping my pants whilst hoping I’m not actually pooping the bed in real life. It’s a weird mix of lucid dreaming and lucid terror, so I can’t get scared enough to wake myself up but I’m awake enough to be scared.
And then all of a sudden, the dream changes.
The spider disappears, the forest disappears, and I’m suddenly in the shower of my old house at Aunt Beth’s in Florida. The tiny one, with green tiles and mold in the cracks, and the windchime hung over the bathroom window. I’m three years younger and naked and my fat is obvious to the world – hanging in great chunks off my belly, my thighs, my chin. I’m crouched in the shower, curled up in a not-so-little ball, my flesh pressing against the enamel and the water trickling down from the shower head. It’s cold water. I don’t know how I remember that, but I do. Aunt Beth had a solar heater. I stayed in the shower that day until the water got cold.
And I’m crying.
That isn’t anything new, really. But seeing myself like this, in a third-person bizarro out-of-body-experience, is a first. I know this moment. I’d know it anywhere.
The girl in the shower clutches herself – her stomach, her face. But her hand keeps wandering back to one place; her right wrist. I know what she’s feeling. That wrist burns. No amount of cold water can douse the pain coming from it. She’ll put a bandage on it later. But it takes her four hours to sit up. Five hours to stop crying with no sound. Six hours to dry off and get dressed. Six hours to stop staring at herself in the mirror as she makes a decision.
It takes six hours for the girl to decide to change herself.
It takes three years for his voice to stop ringing in her ears every time she walks out the door. And even then, it doesn’t fade. It still hasn’t.
Two weeks from the day in the shower, she stops eating. The girl loses five pounds. Then three more. A month later she’s ten pounds lighter. She puts on layers of sweatpants and sweatshirts and runs in the eighty degree Florida summer for hours. Aunt Beth thinks she’s at Gina’s house sleeping over when in reality she’s on the side of the road behind a hibiscus bush, passed out from heat exhaustion. When the sun sets and it cools down, she wakes up and starts running again. She runs because she can’t stand the thought of who she was a step behind. One step. A new Isis. Another step. A newer Isis. She recreates and leaves herself behind over and over because she can’t stand any of them – because she can’t stand the girl who thought the boy who destroyed her could be her everything. He was the only one in the world who looked at her like she was human, treated her like she was more than a sack of too-much skin. She rarely eats, and if she does it’s only in front of Aunt Beth, to convince her she’s alright. But Aunt Beth is smarter than she lets on. One day, she and Isis talk, and it’s the sort of talk aunts are supposed to give – boy talk. I remember her every word as clear as day, and that reflects straight into the dream.
“You haven’t been eating much, Isis.” Aunt Beth, with her gentle smile and bright red hair held back by a head scarf, treats me every bit like her daughter. I was the kid she could never have.
“I’m not hungry,” I say lamely. And then my stomach gurgles and my charade is thrown headfirst over a cliff. Aunt Beth sighs.
“It’s about that Will kid, isn’t it?”
My stomach goes from gurgly to vomity. I flinch. But that flinch is important. It’s the first flinch I made when I heard his name. The first of hundreds.
“Did you two break up?” She asks softly. I shrug like it doesn’t matter but it does, it does, it’s the only thing that matters -
“I didn’t break up with him. He broke up with me. I sort of just broke down. You know how it goes.”
“Oh.” She puts her arm around my shoulder. “I do know how it goes.”
There’s a massive silence. The ocean laps just a half-mile away from our tiny, kitschy beach shack. The suns slants through the window, throwing turquoise and emerald shadows around the kitchen as it passes through a collection of seaglass on the sill.
“Whenever someone would break up with me,” she starts. ?
??I’d sit myself down and make a list.”
“Of what? Ways to kill yourself?”
“No. I’d make a list of traits my dream man would have. And by the end of it, I’d always feel better.”
“That sounds stupid.”
“Of course it’s stupid. That’s the point. It’s supposed to make you laugh with all its stupid!”
I knit my lips together. Aunt Beth nudges me.
“Well? Go on. Describe your dream man.”
I mull it over for an agonizing few seconds.
“I want him to know the alphabet backwards, and fast. He’ll make perfect cinnamon sugar doughnuts. He can jump rope a million times in a row. He’ll have bright green eyes and be left-handed and be a master of the obscure lost art of ocarina playing.”
“He sounds impossible.”
“That’s the point!” I insist. “He’s my dream man, right? So, if my dream man is someone who can never really exist, then he can’t hurt me. He can’t come up and make me fall in love and smash my heart.”
“Oh, Isis.” Aunt Beth pats my knee. “You don’t have to think like that. Not everyone is out to hurt you.”
“He’ll be really kind.” I smile down at my hands. “He’ll call me the prettiest girl he’s ever seen. Those things are even more impossible. So. So there. That’s him. And he doesn’t exist and he never will. So I’m safe.”
The dream shifts. The kitchen table disappears. Aunt Beth disappears. And then it’s suddenly four months later. Four months of passing out and stumbling through classes on nothing more than a piece of bread and celery. I didn’t need food. The word ugly reverberating through my head sustained me better than any calorie could.
By the time Aunt Beth notices, everyone else is noticing.
Jealous, Gina disappears to Costa Rica for one weekend and comes back fifteen pounds lighter. But no one notices. Not when Isis Blake goes from two hundred pounds to one twenty in the span of six months. Nameless notices. And now, instead of ignoring me, he laughs with his friends whenever I walk by. Smirks. Scoffs. He thinks I did it for him.
I did(n’t).