Authors: J.M. Hall
“This photo is twelve years old,” she added. “I find myself looking at it a lot this time of year. Nostalgia and all that.”
“Jesus…” I continued flipping through the book, taking in all the memories Vanessa and I had shared during our time at the Academy. Whether it was day trips to Philadelphia, New York, Washington DC, or even the school-sponsored dances each fall, winter and spring, she clearly kept better records than I did.
“How long did you keep this thing going?” I asked.
“Until graduation. Other people are in the photos, too. But there were definitely more photos of you during sophomore and junior year. Until, you know…”
Indeed, I did know what she was referring to. When Vanessa got pregnant, her parents had pulled her out of the Academy in order to not only have the abortion, but also give her a much-needed mental health break. To them, there was nothing more horrifying than getting knocked up by some common scholarship kid like me.
“I’m glad you showed me this,” I said. “Brings back a lot of memories.”
The final page was one from graduation. To my surprise, Vanessa had shown up at the actual ceremony itself, having fought with her parents that she wanted to walk just like her peers. Though the photo itself was a group shot of Vanessa and her all-female friends, in the corner of the photo, I could make out Bobby’s face.
“Which one are you looking at now?” Vanessa asked.
I held up the book and showed it to her. “Oh, yes. Notice Bobby scowling from the far right corner.”
“He wasn’t scowling at you,” I said. “At least I don’t think he was…”
“He’s hated me since the moment he met me, Jesse. I don’t blame him. After all, he probably saw me as competition.”
“Should I be honored that I’m one of few men that was lusted after by a teenage girl and a grown man? Seems impressive.”
“I can’t believe you slept with him again,” Vanessa said.
“I won’t apologize for it. You know that. After all, I’m hardwired for sex at this point. I’m even good enough to get paid for it.”
Vanessa lay down on the sofa and motioned for me to join her. After I wrapped her in my arms, she finally asked the burning question that she’d never dared to ask before: “How is being with a man different than being with a woman?”
“Well, you know what it’s like to sleep with a man.”
“Yes, but I don’t know what it’s like to
be
a man and have sex with another man.”
It was a fair point. But how could I explain something so intimate to Vanessa, especially when I didn’t quite understand it myself? I took a deep breath and began forming what I hoped would be a satisfactory explanation.
“For starters, Bobby is the only man I’ve ever been with. When we first started fooling around, it scared the hell out of me. I’d never been attracted to a man before, but all of a sudden, I’m letting him…” I trailed off, unsure of how much detail Vanessa truly wanted to hear.
“Go on,” she said. “I’m listening.”
“Being with him
was
different. He was tall, strong. He made me feel things that I didn’t even know my body was capable of feeling.”
“And women don’t make you feel that way?”
“No, it’s not that,” I said. “But with Bobby, I could just… let go. In many ways, he was everything I hoped I would be one day. Smart, successful -- the kind of guy that walks into a room and can charm anyone not only with his looks, but also with his brain.”
Vanessa leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. I ran my fingers through her hair, and guided her head against my chest. The alcohol was getting to us both, slowly but surely putting us both to sleep. It certainly wasn’t the first time we’d passed out together after a night of drinking -- and something told me it wouldn’t be the last time, either.
“I’m falling asleep,” I said.
“I know. Me too.”
“I should go. Before Eric wakes up and finds you in here with me.”
“Let him find us,” Vanessa said, almost defiantly so. “I don’t care.”
Against my better judgment, I shut my eyes and drifted off to sleep with Vanessa in my arms. By the time we woke up, we wouldn’t be alone.
*
*
*
Vanessa was gone when I woke up.
Early-morning light bled in through the windows of the study. I sat up, rubbed the sleep from my eyes and stretched my arms over my head. Still shoeless, I meandered through the apartment and made my way back to the living room, where I saw that Eric was waiting for me.
“Hello, Jesse,” he said. “Good to see you again.”
“Likewise. Is Vanessa around?”
“Early-morning soul cycle class. I’m taking the day off.”
I sat on the sofa and put on my shoes. I didn’t have much to say to Eric, but it appeared he wasn’t going to let me go just yet. He went into the kitchen and returned with two cups of coffee. I took the steaming mug in took a few quick sips.
“I heard you were back in Pennsylvania this past few days?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I had some business to take care of down there.”
“Look, Jesse…”
I got up before he could continue -- but to my surprise, he grabbed my arm and pulled me back on the sofa beside him. He wasn’t here to make a pass at me, he said. All he wanted was a few minutes’ worth of my time.
“All right,” I said. “Say your piece.”
“Do you want Vanessa back? Is that what this is about?”
“Honestly, Eric? I don’t know what the hell I want at this point. This past week has been a bit of whirlwind. So, if it’s all right with you, I think I’ll just head downtown and sleep in my own bed for a change.”
“Once again, you don’t answer my question,” Eric quipped.
“What’s there to answer, Eric? Really -- what do you want to know? Your wife was the love of my life back in high school. I got her knocked up, her parents freaked, and then they pulled her out of school and wouldn’t let her see me again.”
“Yes, I’m well-aware of what happened.”
“But to answer your question: No, I don’t want your wife back. I’ll always love her, but I realize it would never work.”
“Do you still blame her for what happened back when you were kids?”
“The abortion?” I asked. “No, of course not. It hurt, her not telling me she was pregnant until after she’d had the abortion. But it’s in the past. We all have to move on.”
“She’s still not being completely honest with you, Jesse. I just want you to know that. If you two are truly putting everything behind you, then you deserve to know the truth.”
“And what would that be?”
“That’s up to her to tell you,” Eric said. “If she can do that, you’ll finally know that you can trust her.”
Things were (relatively) back to normal.
I linked arms with my client as we climbed the staircase at the Metropolitan Opera. She’d paid me to escort her -- no pun intended -- to a 7:30 show of
Madama Butterfl
y, starring a soprano that I’d never heard of but had received glowing reviews in
The New York Times
.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she said. “This place, this art form. I love it here.”
“I enjoy it, too. I think my favorite occasion was seeing Renee Fleming in Rusalka. That, and Nico Mulby’s Two Boys.”
“You’re quite the connoisseur, aren’t you?” she said with a smile.. Her auburn hair fell down her back in a sleek shine, while her red dress matched the color of her lips. In fact, her entire ensemble was red, right down to the ruby bracelet on her wrist and the shoes on her feet.
“You match the decor,” I teased. “Intentional?”
“Ha! Of course not.”
We continued making pleasant if uninspired conversation as we made our way to our seats. The client had paid, and given her wealth, it was no surprise that we were seated in the Parterre section, just one row up from the main floor.
I held her hand in my own, gave her a sense of intimacy. Even if we both knew that our time together was bought and for, escorting was built on a mutually-held lie between both parties. I’d pretend to be her lover for the evening, and she’d hand me an envelope full of cash.
We’d seal the deal by fucking at her apartment in Central Park West after the show. By ten o’clock tomorrow morning, I’d be gone.
The theater darkened and the overture began. By the time the curtain rose, the audience broke out in obligatory applause. Right on cue, Lieutenant Pinkerton arrived to inspect his bride to be, a fifteen-year-old girl named Cio-Cio San.
I looked on as she showed him her few possessions; promised him to become a Christian; and winced as she admitted her family was poor.
It wasn’t the first time I’d seen
Madama Butterfly
, and this production was as beautiful as any. When Cio-Cio San and Pinkerton broke out into the Love duet, I lost myself in the moment, each lyric like a page from the diary of my life.
In the sky, along the shore, out to sea.
Oh, come, see all things sleep!
Quivering, I press you to me. Oh, come!
In an ecstasy of love, the sky is smiling!
Oh, come!
Behind them, a wall of rose petals fell from the sky. Lanterns dangled from wooden tree branches, and when Lieutenant Pinkerton carried Cio-Cio San into his arms to make love with her, it was enough to trick the audience into believing they would live happily ever after.
The curtain closed the scene, finishing Act I. The audience erupted in applause, for this soprano was everything the
Times
had said she would be. When the house lights dimmed back to life, I took my date to the bar, where we both ordered glasses of champagne and claimed one of the small tables dotted throughout the reception hall.
“You really lost yourself during the Love Duet,” she said. “Anything particular on your mind? Or, shall I say,
anyone
?”
“What is it with women that makes them so perceptive?” I asked.
“We have to be perceptive, given that men rarely share how they’re feeling. How else will we know what’s going on inside those minds of yours?”
“Some things are better left unsaid.”
She was about to press the matter further until she spotted a friend of hers across the way. Instead of recoiling or falling victim to any momentary embarrassment, she told me to watch her drink, and then rushed over to air-kiss her friend hello. They lost themselves in conversation as only women could, giving me a few moments of much-needed peace.
My phone vibrated in my coat pocket. I didn’t recognize the number, but it wasn’t a call. It was a text.
Jesse, it’s David Winter.
We need to talk. I’m here at the Met now.
I glanced across the bar, over my shoulder, up the stairs.
Finally, I spotted him standing beneath one of the crystal chandeliers. I texted him back:
What the hell? You’re stalking me?
I’m on a date -- fuck off!
No more than ten seconds passed when my date returned from her meet-and-greet and insisted we get back to our seats. I shoved my phone back in my coat pocket, managed a fake smile. Funny that for all her talk of women’s intuition, she didn’t sense that I was alarmed.
The rest of the opera went off without a hitch. I didn’t hear from David again until after midnight.
*
*
*
I never could sleep at a client’s apartment.
The air was cool against my nude body as I walked through the living room. I leaned against the wall and gazed out onto Central Park. The city lights twinkled in the darkness of the night, while the moon hid behind a puff of clouds.
The apartment was beautiful -- but it still wasn’t as stunning as Vanessa’s. I had no idea whether or not the client lived alone or her husband was just out of town. There hadn’t been a ring on her finger, and really, who was I to judge anyone?
For five-hundred dollars a night, I knew better than to bite the hand that fed me.
It was nothing short of a miracle that I’d managed to focus on anything
but
the fact that David Winter had stalked me all the way to Lincoln Center, and could have fucked up my booking in the process. What was he after? And if he’d followed me to the Met, just how long had I been on his radar?
Too many questions, not enough answers…
I padded into the kitchen and poured myself a shot of Whiskey. There were photos of my client with two young women on the refrigerator. Her daughters, perhaps? Looked to be in their early twenties, grinning ear-to-ear on a park bench in a leafy field.
“What are you doing out here?”
The client stood at the kitchen island, clutching the belt of her silk nightgown. She moved forward, noted that I’d helped myself to a glass of Whiskey and was standing butt-naked in her kitchen.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“It’s all right. The only reason I’m awake is because your phone kept vibrating.”
“Oh?”
She handed it to me, along with my clothes. Seemed she wanted me out of her place now that the magic of the evening was over. I’d already been paid, and the fact that I’d helped myself to her liquor probably didn’t help matters, either.
“Thank you for the company,” she said. “I trust you can show yourself out?”
“Of course. Thank you for the lovely evening, um…”
“Cassandra,” she said. “My name is Cassandra.”
“I had a lovely time, Cassandra. If you ever need another date to the opera, let me know. I’ve heard
The Enchanted Island
is coming back this spring.”
She all but ushered me out the door. Once I was inside the elevator, I looked at my phone and felt my heart sink as another taunting texted flashed across the screen.
Jesse, another prostitute was just murdered.
I’m covering the story and I need your help.
The doors opened into the marble lobby. I staggered onto the street with not a cab in sight. The Upper West Side was a far cry from the crowded, round-the-clock crowds of Midtown. It was quiet, anonymous, not unlike TriBeCa or Battery Park.
At last, I saw a cab -- but not before David emerged from the shadows. Was he
still
tailing me?
“I’m sorry to do this,” he said. “But I need you to come with me.”
“You’ve got about ten seconds to explain yourself before I slam your head into the goddamn pavement. Starting
now
.”
“Get in the cab, hot shot. We’ve got some things to talk about.”
“Fuck that. I’m calling the cops right now and telling them that--”
“Tell them what? That you just got paid to fuck some rich broad on the Upper West Side and now you’re upset that a reporter is texting you?”
My thumb hovered on the keypad of my phone, unable to make a move. David was right; cops were hostile to sex workers, no matter what the circumstance. I got inside the cab and watched as we drove away from Cassandra’s building.
The driver weaved in and out of lanes, passing slow-moving cars as all cabs do. David gave him an address around twenty blocks north, then took out his phone. He handed it to me, and I saw there was a tweet announcing what appeared to be a murder -- a dead body found inside Central Park, not far from the entrance at 96
th
Street.
“What the hell?” I said. “Murders don’t happen in that neighborhood.”
“They do now. And once we get there I think you’ll be interested in seeing the crime scene. Seeing how the victim is one of your own.”
“Sorry?
One of my own?
”
“Keep scrolling through the photos on my phone, Jesse. I know what you are.”
I scrolled through the photos, seeing that David had somehow taken photos and videos of the orgy Autumn had hosted on the Upper East Side. There I was, a glass of champagne in my hand, smiling alongside her in the foyer. What followed next was even worse -- he’d actually captured me naked alongside Vanessa in the basement pool.
“How did you get these?”
“I’m good at my job,” he said. “And lord knows there were a lot of fun things to capture on-camera that night.”
He wasn’t lying. He’d captured the S&M devotees; the gay and lesbian floor; even and, most damning of all, a photo of MetroBank CEO Brian Turner fisting a woman who was
not
his wife.
“What do you want?” I asked. “And why haven’t you just published these?”
“I thought about it. But I have something far better in mind. I want to investigate the Gilgo beach murders. All those dead hookers in Long Island? It’s a once-in-a-decade story, and I want in.”
“And what the hell does that have to do with me?”
“You wrecked my fucking career,” David answered “Because of you, no magazine wants to have me on-staff. I have to take shitty freelance work and teach journalism classes just to make ends meet.”
“Not my fault,” I said. “You got your facts wrong and you know it.”
David ignored my comments, brought up a picture on his phone. There I was, sitting with Autumn in the lobby of the Trump SoHo. It proved nothing, though clearly David had other ideas.
“Her name’s Autumn, right?”
“What’s it to you?”
“She has quite a reputation. People know she’s a pimp. By associating yourself with her, you’re either a client or a whore.”
“Why don’t you just drop the theatrics and tell me what you want?”
“Believe it or not, all I want is your help. Actually, what I want is access. Prostitution might be the world’s oldest profession but the people who work in it aren’t exactly friendly.”
“And with good reason,” I said. “Considering there are cops who rape prostitutes and journalists who try to blackmail them.”
The cab driver reached 96
th
Street as David and I continued our round of verbal sparring. Two squad cars blocked the entrance to Central Park, their red-and-blue lights flashing in the darkness. David walked on ahead of me but was stopped by two uniformed officers.
“Park’s closed,” one of them said. “Hit the road.”
David wouldn’t take no for an answer -- not that he needed to. A red-haired detective emerged from the inside of the park. She was tall, slender, dressed in a black blazer and jeans, her knee-high leather boots clicking against the pavement as she approached the barricade.
“It’s all right, officers,” she said. “He can enter.”
“And the guy with him?” one of the cops asked, gesturing to me. “You didn’t say nothing about him bringing a friend.”
The detective paused, then turned to David. “I assume he’s the one you’ve been telling me about?”
“Yes, he is,” David replied.
She let us pass. David and I ducked beneath the yellow police tape and followed the detective through the dark recesses of the park.
Uniformed officers brushed past us, seemingly disinterested in who we were and what we were doing at a crime scene. Then again, David and I were being escorted to the scene by a detective.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Could I have your name?”
“Detective Caroline Grant,” she answered. “NYPD.”
And then, I saw her.
The victim was young -- no older than twenty-two, perhaps even younger. She wore a short pink dress, one that’d been torn open at the center and left in tatters around her body. Her black panties were tangled around her ankles, and her pale thighs were smeared with blood.
“Jesus,” I whispered. “What happened…?”
Of course, I knew the answer. This woman -- this
girl
-- had been raped and murdered and left for dead in Central Park. It was horrifying, gruesome, and all too familiar.