Baltimore Noir (12 page)

He put the camera down on the bed, stood, came over, and clasped her hands in his. “And even that’s just the start. Then there’s CD collections, DVDs, webcams—so many opportunities,” he said. “You’ll have more money than you ever dreamed of, enough to go out to restaurants, to buy the clothes you want—and wear them without anyone telling you otherwise.” His grin was full of eager complicity. “I’ll even buy you your very own computer.”

He released her. “Now, sweetie, let’s get to work.”

So here it was at last.

“When you take my pictures,” she asked, “will anyone else ever be … there? In the room?”

He shook his head. “No. Never. I promise. Just you and me—” He bent over and unzipped the larger of the two bags and pulled out a camera. “And our little witness.” He pushed a button and the camera made a whining, dissatisfied sound.

A glance at her body. “I hope your uncle gave me your measurements right.” A smile. “Of course, we won’t mind if the outfits I brought are a little tight, will we?”

“Can I …” She hesitated. “Can we start with what I’m wearing?”

Eyes narrowed, tapping his chin with a forefinger, he studied her, then aimed the finger at her sweatshirt. “Take that off,” he said.

She removed her new necklace, wrapped it around her right hand, and took off the sweatshirt, static electricity snapping around her ears. Handed the sweatshirt to Gary and put the necklace back on over her gray turtleneck.

Scanning her body, Gary pushed his tongue into the side of his mouth, making a little mound in his left cheek. “Hmmm,” he said.

He stepped close to her. “This will do,” he decided, “with an adjustment or two.”

Reaching out, he pulled the turtleneck tighter, tucking the extra fabric into the waistband of her jeans. She felt the pressure of the material through her bra against her breasts. “Better,” he said.

Head tilted to one side, he walked around behind her. She felt his hand on her hip, on her waist, on her bottom. She stepped away from him, saying, “Stop that.”

He seemed not to have heard her. “Next time, wear jeans a size smaller, ’kay?” he said. The camera whined again. “I think we’ll start next to that chair over there.”

On your tiptoes. Now lean forward a little. Good. Smile. No, try again, you look like you’re eating soap. That’s better. Jane has crooked teeth—that’s why she keeps her mouth closed. Yes, she’s planning to get them fixed. But your smile is perfect, we don’t have to hide it. There! Excellent!

Now, come here. Yes, on the bed. Lie back—good! This leg up. No, like this. Your left foot here. Hmmm. Let’s try it with your shoes off. Who wears shoes to bed, silly? Don’t worry, only the shoes. Well, the socks too. Most people don’t find socks to be a turn-on, even cute little white ones like yours. See, I’ll put your shoes and socks right here near the door, where you can find them when we’re done.

Oh, Tania, you have the most gorgeous feet! Our members will just love you. Some of them get very excited by feet, you know. Well, yes, I agree, it’s weird. I mean—feet? But that’s people, you know. You can’t ever tell what will raise their temperatures. Though I have to say, when I look at you, your feet aren’t the first things my eyes gravitate toward. Tania, you’re blushing! Great … a bit of shyness, embarrassment, are perfect for your first shoot. Your cheeks are like little apples!

Okay, now, sit up. What? Don’t worry, I’m not taking it off, just rolling it up a little. Just to here, so they can see your bellybutton and the bottom of your rib cage. Just a smidge higher. Now let’s loosen the belt, just a couple of notches, and open this. I promise, not too much, just enough for a glimpse. I always think the glimpse is sexier than the full view, don’t you?

I remember watching a comedy show on TV years ago, and there was this scene set in a nudist colony. Everyone was naked, of course—though they made sure we didn’t see anything—but no one was aroused because there was, like, too much skin everywhere, you know? All the men were really bored until this dressed woman came to visit, and then, boy did they go wild, trying to figure out what she looked like under her clothes! Too funny.

You see, that’s why my sites make so much money, even though they’re non-nude. It’s all the power of imagination, seeing how far we’ll go, always expecting, hoping, dreaming they’ll catch a glimpse of something we didn’t mean to show. That’s why they’ll love you, Tania, with your shyness and reserve and hints of something more. Oh, great. Perfect.

Now lean back. Wait, let me adjust the pillow. Good. Now arch your back. More. Excellent! You’re so toned … do they have a gym for young Jewesses down Park Heights way? Okay, roll this way a little and look over your shoulder at us. Play with your necklace. Great. Lips apart, teeth just barely showing. Eyes open wider—we want that half-innocent, half-whore look. What, they didn’t teach you that at the yeshiva? Doesn’t matter, it comes natural to you. Good. Good. Good!

As Tania got off the bed, Gary stepped close and kissed her on the mouth. A quick kiss, done almost before she could react, leaving behind the impression of his soft lips and the smell of his sweat and the salamander sensation of his tongue.

“Don’t do that!” she said, but he had already turned away and was back at work. Rummaging through the larger of his bags, he pulled out something white and lacy.

He came back toward her. “This next,” he said, holding out the nightgown. “Give everyone a look at those lovely long legs of yours.”

“I don’t know,” she said. Her voice was hoarse.

Something set in his face, a tightening of skin around his eyes. But when he spoke he sounded just the same. “Oh, sweetie,” he said, “don’t start getting all Red State on me now. It’s just a nightgown. I’m not making you wear a thong or a see-through or anything like that, yet. I know you’re new, which is why I didn’t bring anything too … too
much
But you have to work with me, Tania, you have to meet me partway. You can’t expect to show nothing, you know?”

His words washing over her.

The opportunity provided by liminal moments is that they give you the chance to shed the skin of your past life, and be reborn,” the rabbi had said. “The danger is that you may leave your old existence behind, but be unable to find your way into a new one. Then you can be lost forever.

Gary dropped the nightgown on the bed, reached down, and yanked her turtleneck out of the waistband of her pants. She felt the goosebumps rise on her newly exposed skin.

“No!” she said. Then, more quietly, “I’ll change in the bathroom.”

“Okay.” He smiled, rubbed the back of his hand against her belly. “Take your bra off, but leave your panties on,” he instructed her. “We’ll give them something to dream about!”

Her face looked simultaneously chilled and feverish in the blue fluorescent light of the bathroom, her hair tangled under the headband, a vein pulsing in her forehead. Did the members find such discomfort sexy? She thought they did. That’s why they liked Jane, the girl who never smiled, who looked like she was posing against her will.

Tania’s eyes traced the scattering of birthmarks on her chest above her bra, the small scar on her belly, the extra flesh above her hips. Already her body didn’t seem to belong to her. Already she was studying it as if she were one of
them.

She hung the lacy white nightgown on a hook and took a closer look at it. At most, it would come down only to midthigh. Gary was no doubt planning future ones to be shorter still, to reveal even more.

Turning away from the mirror’s accusing gaze, she reached back, unhooked her bra, and put it down on the counter beside the turtleneck. Unzipped her jeans, pulled them down and off, folded them, and placed them on the counter as well. Took the nightgown off the hook.

She was dropping it over her head when the door swung open and Gary came in. The whites of his eyes had a yellowish sheen and his lips were very red. As she stood there, frozen, he closed the door, raised the camera, and started shooting, the repeated clicking of the shutter like a bird pecking at her skull.

“Get out!” Her voice emerged as little more than a whisper. She struggled to slide the nightgown on, but the hem got twisted around her neck. “Turn off the camera!”

He focused below her waist, the camera clicking. “You have too much hair,” he said. “Our members don’t like so much hair. You’ll have to shave.”

Suddenly the camera was on the counter and he was close to her, so close that she could smell his sweat. One hand rested on her hip while the other moved, searched, probed, further down. “Let me shave you,” he said into her ear. “I love to photograph my girls as I shave them. It’s the most intimate thing—”

“No!” She twisted away from him, stumbled toward the door. But before she could get it open, he grabbed her shoulder, spun her around, and hit her.

Not in the face, not where it might leave a mark during the next shoot. In the stomach. She fell back, her head slamming against the wall. And then he was up against her, his fingernail scratching her flesh as he yanked at her panties, his wet, confident voice apologizing, begging, muttering incantations that she no longer wished to make sense of.

She’d waited long enough. It was time to reenter her life.

She brought her right knee up, felt it slam into something hard and something soft. The breath whistled out of Gary like he’d sprung a leak, and then he was rolling on the floor, grasping himself, moaning and cursing, his red face suddenly white with shock and pain.

Tania stood over him. Men are amazing, she thought, rubbing the back of her head. All you have to do is keep your mouth shut, nod at everything they say, blush a little, and they assume you’re whatever they want you to be. A runaway, a slut, a victim, a whore.

The one thing they never seem to expect is for you to fight back.

She untangled the nightgown and pulled it down, the soft cotton brushing against her skin. Then she stepped over the writhing, gasping Gary and walked out of the bathroom. Found her bag. Reached inside and pulled out the pistol, the .22 she’d had for three years and knew how to use.

She returned to the bathroom, stood near the door, waited for Gary to notice her. When his eyes finally stopped watering and he saw the gun, he grew very quiet and still, even as his hands continued to clutch his groin.

“Didn’t anyone ever teach you,” she said to him, “that when a girl says stop, she means stop?”

He stared up at her, startled by the sound of her true voice. Then he took a deep breath, another, made a nodding motion with his head. “You’re right,” he said, filled with contrition. “I’m sorry, Tania. I lost control. It won’t happen again. I don’t know what came over me. I thought you wouldn’t mind. I thought you understood. My mistake. My terrible mistake. It’s just that you’re so beautiful, so gorgeous … I mean, look at yourself! Just look. Any man would have—but I know I shouldn’t. I know, I know, I’m so sorry, it was like …”

She glanced at the mirror, saw no great beauty, just a tall girl with strong arms and long legs and lots of hair down below. Then she squatted beside Gary and put the gun to his head.

“If you apologize one more time—” she said. “In fact, if you say one more word before I tell you to, I will shoot you.”

He opened his mouth, closed it again, kept quiet. At last he was learning to listen.

In the sudden silence she heard a thud, a knocking sound, a muffled curse, another thud.

Finally.

“Don’t move,” she said to Gary. “Don’t speak.” She stood, looked at the gun, back at him. “You don’t know me well enough to know whether I’ll use this or not.”

She walked across the room to the front door, swung it open just as the man on the other side was hurling himself against it again. He came in fast, catlike, somehow keeping his balance in his heavy leather boots, his wiry hair a mess, his eyes wild beneath his tangled eyebrows. Staring at her, then scanning the room, his gaze resting briefly on Gary lying on the bathroom floor before coming back to her. His sharp-featured face turning murderous as he saw the streaks of blood on the nightgown.

Tania put a hand on his arm. “I’m okay, Yoshi,” she said.

“It’s nothing, a scratch. I’m fine.”

“It was the traffic,” he said with furious frustration. “I was stuck on the Beltway, and then this boulevard—I didn’t know what to do. I finally left the car at a hydrant and ran the last eight blocks, and then the guy at the desk wouldn’t give me a key.” His eyes were still frantic. “I was going to call you, call the police, but—”

“It would have ruined everything,” she said. “You did right.”

She went up on her toes and kissed him on the cheek, which at last seemed to calm him a little. “Check the bags,” she said. “I’ll see what he has to say.”

Yoshi took a deep breath, another, and nodded.

She went back into the bathroom, where Gary had propped himself against a wall. His face was flushed a deep red, but his eyes were like blue glass beads.

“You set me up,” he said. “Both of you.”

Tania made a scornful gesture with her hand. “It was easy.”

“You’re robbing me,” he said.

“Among other things.”

She sat beside him, reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet. Glanced at the address on his driver’s license and sighed.

She could tell that he was looking at her. Tania thought that, despite all his praise for her beauty, he probably hadn’t paid much attention to her face till now. It was her body, and how much of it she would expose to the camera, that had mattered.

He said, “How old are you?”

She raised her gaze to his. “Twenty, Gary. I’m twenty. Much, much too old for TeenHeaven.”

She heard someone enter the room behind her and got back to her feet. “Gary Sims,” she said, “this is my uncle, Joshua Blumen.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Yoshi said, and planted his boot in Gary’s face.

“Shut up,” Tania said.

She was wearing her own clothes, the clothes Gary had assumed were a costume or a sign of rebellion. Herself again, though not quite. Each time she emerged she was changed.

Gary lay there at her feet, hands on his face, exploring the jagged edges of his broken teeth with his tongue, blood from his cut lips streaking his fingers. He hadn’t said anything.