Butterfield Institute - 01 - The Halo Effect (15 page)

The only person we saw from our old life was Nina. My mother cleaned up when her friend came over and tried to act as if our new life was working out. Nina knew better, but she
never knew how bad it was. No matter how far my mother fell, she was still a good actress.

That last day, when I found my mother, I called my father on the phone. And he called Nina to find out our address. I didn’t know it. They both arrived within fifteen minutes of each other.

After she died, my father took me back to the place I’d grown up in. My old housekeeper, Mary, was still there. I begged her that year to let me watch her cook. To stay in the kitchen. I suppose I yearned for something that I could only get from watching butter melt in a pan or smelling chicken fry or licking the bowl of brownie batter. But Mary was elderly and ornery and she cooked while I was at school and didn’t want me in her kitchen.

Eventually my father remarried, but Krista was not much better in the kitchen than my mother had been.

Longing to be the kind of mother I had not had, I invested in every gadget I read about in the pages of lifestyle magazines and looked at them lovingly. But when it came time to use these clever apparatuses, I was inept.

At twelve, Dulcie was a better cook than I would ever be. She loved to impress me with her skill, and have me taste and “ooh and aah.” She even tried to teach me.

My miniature little woman, who already could cook certain things without recipes, tried to show me the ropes that her grandmother, Mitch’s mother, had taught her. Sarah had handed down the time-honored traditions of women in the kitchen to her granddaughter. But it was something the two of them shared without me.

I still attempted adventures in this kitchen that if they did not lead to delicious dinners, at least led to laughing fits. We never went hungry, but that was only because we both learned to suffer through my pathetic attempts to be creative, or else my daughter took over.

The rest of the apartment was indicative of the same homebody yearnings. I had projects started but never finished in every room. Attempts at needlepoint, quilting, knitting, the materials to make my own frames, to stencil my own walls, to hook my own rugs.

What was it about homemaking that kept calling me back and enticing me? This time, I would think, I’ll be able to get the hang of it. So I couldn’t knit, but I’ll be able to learn to arrange my own flowers. If I can’t baste a turkey, I’ll be good at staining a wall.

But I wasn’t. Nothing ever turned out the way it did in the glossy pages of the magazines I pored over late at night while I watched the Food Channel and sipped burned hot chocolate made from the finest Valrhona the way the diva on TV said Angelina’s in Paris had been making it since the nineteenth century.

But after I filled a mug with steaming coffee, it wasn’t a magazine I opened. I had work to do. I pulled out Cleo’s manuscript. This was one thing I had started I would finish. Someone’s life might depend on it.

F
rom Cleo’s manuscript:

He is not who you think he is. You imagine a bald, overweight man who smokes cigarettes and is lonely and pathetic in some way that allows you to put him outside your world. People I know, men I love, do not go to prostitutes.

You have to close your eyes and picture this man, you need to understand that human need is not disgusting. You have to wipe the stereotype away. You have to, if you want to see something more about men than you already know, understand that he is a catch. He wears three-thousand-dollar suits and has his shirts made. His salary is in the stratosphere.

And he is with me tonight instead of you because he can be. Peter Pan is married. To a lovely woman whose pictures you have seen in the style pages and society
pages of
Town & Country
magazine. He is a real estate mogul. Only forty-seven. Already one of the most successful developers in New York City.

He is sitting in a darkened theater. He has rented this private screening room from a film company. It has cost him eight thousand dollars for the night.

On the screen is the film
The Graduate
. The soundtrack is turned down lower than normal so that only bits and pieces of the dialogue are distinguishable, but you can hear the music. Especially because Peter Pan sings most of the Simon and Garfunkel songs along with the soundtrack. We have a bottle of Cristal champagne in a silver bucket and are sipping the pale gold wine out of fine crystal glasses that were waiting for us in a box from Fifth Avenue’s Tiffany & Co.

I arranged for the champagne and the glasses and the pound of Sevruga caviar that sits in a glass caviar dish on the table.

Peter Pan is wearing jeans. And a white shirt. And a tie. A tie from the prep school he went to. On his feet are loafers and crew socks. And a blazer lies on the empty seat next to him.

I am wearing a navy-blue, pleated skirt, a powderblue, button-down shirt. Knee socks and almost identical loafers. My hair is loose. Underneath the skirt I am wearing a pair of white cotton underpants.

We are back in tenth grade. We are sixteen. The age Peter Pan was when
The Graduate
was released.

I will not ask the scion of real estate why we are dressed like this or why we are watching this movie. Just like I did not ask him last week and will not ask him next week to explain the scenario he requests that I enact for him. He has provided me with the money to make this dream come true. And that is all I do. I pander
to my clients’ dreams. Some are darker, but many are surprisingly simple. Rarely do I have to turn clients away or say no.

And tonight I will not only do as Peter Pan wants, but I will enjoy all of it. Will I feel what you feel when you look into the eyes of a man you love? Who makes your heart beat faster and makes you wet between your legs? Is this coming together something I long for the way you do when you lie in bed and imagine your lover kissing your lips and stroking you gently?

No. This is how I make my living. But I do enjoy my job. Especially when I have clients like Peter Pan.

The play is about to begin. Shh. Sit back. Let go of your preconceived notions. Watch the action. And don’t judge. Just watch.

We have not touched. At all. We are both properly dressed. The movie has been playing for fifteen minutes.

Now Peter Pan puts his arm around the top of my seat back. He leaves it there for a minute. Just resting it on the edge of the seat. I am aware of his arm being there. I wait.

The scene on the screen shifts. Benjamin is going to meet Mrs. Robinson for the first time in the hotel. We watch the film. We laugh. My laugh is more authentic than Peter Pan’s. He is really more interested in making his next move than watching the movie. And as soon as the music comes up again, I feel his fingers on my shoulder. I shut my eyes.

I am sixteen. I am sitting in a movie theater with my boyfriend. He has just touched me. It is helpful for me to be in character. The better I can be at my role, the more authentic it will seem to Peter Pan, and pleasing my client is my only true role.

Ah. You see. You get the first glimpse. You don’t like where I am going, do you? Of course not. This is not about equality. This is not about a relationship of two people building a life together. Yes, there is sex in that equation. But sex of a different nature. In a relationship you both have needs, you must each bend, give, take, learn and understand. That is right. It has its place. But it has its restrictions, too. It has its problems. It makes for issues. It is constricting, limiting.

I, on the other hand, want nothing from Peter Pan. I am an actress in his play. The money has already changed hands. He is the director.

Too pretty? Too easy? Am I sugarcoating? Oh, sugar, I wish I was. I wish I could tell you how ugly and deranged what I do is. But the truth is, it just isn’t. Men are not all monsters. Most of them just want to believe for a little while that they really are the center of the universe and that the power they yearn for is really the power that they wield. They want their fantasies to come true. And they are used to buying what they want and making it happen.

There are other women who will tell you different stories. Maybe there are more of them than there are of hookers like me. But listen, there are wives and girlfriends who will tell you other stories, too. There are women who wear diamonds on their fingers the size of olives in a martini, and they get treated worse than I do and perform far more demeaning tasks in bed. Whore, mother, wife, mistress, lover, girlfriend. We are all giving up something to get something. I just chose to get my alimony payments or divorce settlements without having to go through the emotional turmoil of love and marriage.

Peter Pan’s hand plays with my hair. And it feels
good. He has a light touch. He leans over now, closer to me. And I pull away just a little. This is my role. I’m supposed to be shy. I have never been to bed with a boy. I’m sixteen. I am in love with him.

And to tell you the truth, it is not hard at all to imagine this.

Peter Pan smells of a cologne called Fahrenheit. And beneath that scent he is clean. He is trim. His nails are manicured. He has thick black hair. Yes, his hairline is slightly receding. He has dark green eyes and an engaging smile. A small scar on his chin makes me curious. I don’t ask, though. Not now. His eyebrows are expressive. His mouth isn’t. His secrets are words. You can tell this, too, the better you get at this. Everyone has secrets that they hide. Peter Pan’s secrets are words he has spoken. His mouth is pressed tight. Another man’s secrets are actions he has taken; he will keep his hands pressed tightly in his lap.

There is no more time to think about this. My sixteen-year-old boyfriend leans forward and then turns in his seat so that he can kiss me. It is tentative at first and I pull back. Stare at him with a mixture of surprise and confusion. He whispers, please, just let me kiss you. Once more.

I do not say no.

He presses his lips against mine with more certainty this time. And more pressure. It is a sweet-smelling kiss and I taste champagne. The kiss moves in me the way the bubbles in the wine did a few minutes ago.

If I were to break role now I would tell you that I am not feeling this the way you would if this were a man you were having a relationship with. But the man you are in a relationship with will not tell you that in his fantasies he is always sixteen, always just falling in love
with his first girlfriend, always hot and horny and needing to make out in every dark corner he can find. He will not tell you because you are his wife or his girlfriend now, and what would you say? Go to a therapist. Stop fantasizing about someone who dumped you. Don’t you love me?

I don’t say any of those things. I act the part. I make the money. I pay the bills.

I kiss him back. His mouth opens just a little. I open mine.

Sixteen. Summertime. The movie is
The Graduate
. The music is Simon and Garfunkel. The theater is dark. His hand is moist but not unpleasant as it works its way from around my back to my shirt buttons.

I pull back.

I’m not sure you should—

Shhh. He kisses me quiet.

He knows how to kiss. And what he has forgotten by being married to the same woman for the last eighteen years, I am making him remember.

The problem is, the woman he’s married to has his balls in a vise. She is a good, hardworking woman who is obsessed with her image and her notoriety and her power. She came to it later in life and she adores it. As well she should. She is brilliant and she has worked like a slave for her success. But sexually, she’s not interested. She provides but isn’t passionate. She loves him but isn’t “in” love with him.

You know about this. Either you are in a relationship like this or you know someone who is. The marriage is fine. The couple are friends. But the fire’s gone out a long time ago.

Peter Pan’s wife isn’t his fantasy. Hell, she isn’t even his lover anymore. And he worries, more than he
should, that if she finds out what he’s doing with me, she’ll leave him. And if she does that, he’s afraid of what else she will do. Because the trouble is her father’s inheritance started his business. So in effect she owns his business. Or at least half of it. And that is half more than he ever wants to give up.

I tease him with my tongue and he teases me back. I have to go slow, play my part and not be too eager. His hand is inside my shirt now, his fingers moving over the fabric that keeps him from making the contact he wants so very badly to make.

I don’t help. I let him fumble with the cotton bra. I actually have forgotten what this was like. And for a while I, too, slip back and am sixteen again. Going out with one of the handsome guys. In a movie theater making out.

He unclasps my bra and has access. As he cups my breast he sighs. A long, slow, deep, sweet sigh. His first goal. He touches my nipple as if he has just discovered that such a thing exists and I harden under his touch. He kisses me now with more ardor and some urgency. On the screen, a new song starts. “Feeling Groovy.”

He is. I am, too. I like this role. Being Peter Pan’s girlfriend feels groovy, and as long as I concentrate on that, I can make him happy.

Each kiss is longer now.

The space between them is shorter. He pulls away to look at me. His face is flushed, his lips are wet and the Technicolor movie images are reflected in his eyes. Wide boy eyes. This is real. He is as lost in his dream as he can be. And now, watching me, holding my eyes with his, he moves his hand to my thigh and under my skirt and up the rest of my leg. He moves the elastic of my underpants with his fingers and feels around. Seeking
heat, seeking warmth, he finds the space he has been heading for all along and his fingers slip into the wetness. He smiles. A satisfied smile. He loves the wetness. This is his proof. This is his hope. It is not an aborted attempt but an equal want.

He moves in for another kiss while he continues to stroke me. He knows how to do this. I benefit from what women before have demanded of him. A fortyseven-year-old man cannot be a groping sixteen-yearold boy no matter how much that is all he wants to be. He knows how to move his fingers in slow circles. He cannot unlearn this just to have his fantasy, and so I benefit.