Exposed (16 page)

“I see your point. It’s a very mature way to look at it, I would say.”

A snort of laughter. “I had five years to think about it. At first, yeah, obviously I placed all the blame squarely on Caleb’s shoulders. I spent hours just dreaming up ways I’d get even with him when I got out. But as time went on and I started to really think about it, I came to the conclusions I just shared with you. Yeah, he’s culpable, and I do hold him accountable for me doing jail time. But the real blame falls on my shoulders. Both for doing dirty business and for being an idiot about it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still pissed off at him, and I was even more so when I first got out. I went looking for him, planning on exacting some kind of revenge, I guess.”

“How did you find him?”

“It wasn’t easy. He’s not exactly listed in the phone book. Nor are any of the companies he’s legally associated with in his name. Also, I couldn’t just sit around and hunt for him. I had to start over. See, when I started working for him, I made sure I had money stashed all over the place that couldn’t be easily tracked back to me. So when I got out, I had seed money. Started over. Started small. Made sure my record was buried as deep as it could go, made sure I kept myself out of the light, bought up companies via dummy corporations and turned them over, one by one, small ones, building up capital. And the whole time I was looking for Caleb, on the side, sort of. Eventually I started hearing little rumors. Mostly about a kind of escort service for the super rich. Not really an escort service though, I discovered, as much as a kind of matchmaking program. Nothing illegal about it, on the surface. You weren’t buying a match, you were paying for a service. And that service could be a date for an event, a long-term companion, or if you were serious, a potential bride. It was wildly, prohibitively expensive, super secret, super exclusive. ‘The first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club’ sort of thing.” He glances at me. “That’s another movie reference that went straight over your head. Whatever. The undertone of the whole thing is that you were for all intents and purposes buying the girls. Not outright, and they weren’t sex workers. You couldn’t initiate sex during contracted events, that sort of thing. It was the kind of thing you didn’t talk about, so it was hard to find out much because no one would talk about it.” He eyes me speculatively. “And then as I got closer to the actual service, to the real Indigo Ring, I started hearing about another layer, an even more exclusive service that was even more hush-hush. You.”

“Indigo Ring?”

“That’s what it’s called. The Indigo Ring, capital
I
, capital
R
. That’s not what he calls it, I don’t think, but that’s the name for it
among the people I could actually get to talk about it. I tracked down a guy who’d married one of Caleb’s girls. He was a forty-five-year-old multimillionaire, not really sure how he made his fortune. He was awkward and lonely and difficult, one of those work-all-night-and-all-day-for-a-week-straight sorts. His wife was twenty-nine, beautiful, voluptuous, smart, a real knockout. But apparently she was also an ex-drug addict and former sex worker; this is what she told me herself. She ended up in Caleb’s program somehow, got clean, worked her way through the program. I don’t know how she met Caleb, and she was squirrelly about what she meant by ‘program,’ wouldn’t answer me directly.” He shrugs. “She seemed grateful for Caleb, and also seemed to really love Brian, her husband. He helped her get a college degree of some kind. Apparently she was actually pretty intelligent, but the way she’d grown up had precluded her from really pursuing any academic interests. Once she went through Caleb’s mysterious program and got off the drugs, she was able to get a GED and explore what interested her. And Brian is a computer geek, developed a software program or something, I really don’t remember. But he sent her to school, and she got a degree. I don’t remember what, economics or politics, or social work, maybe? Something along those lines. It was kind of cool, to be honest. I mean, they were two totally different people from wildly different backgrounds. He was white-bread, from a well-to-do upper-middle-class suburban family, grew up in Connecticut, and she was a Latina girl from Queens who’d spent most of her youth hooked on drugs and turning tricks. But they met through Caleb and for all that I could see legitimately fell in love. It was weird.”

I think back to Rachel. “I know one of the girls in the program right now. When I ran away from Caleb the first time, I hid in her apartment. The girls in the program live in the tower, sequestered
in these apartments. They’re all like that girl, the Latina who married the rich computer guy. Drug addicts and prostitutes living dead-end lives, and Caleb finds them and puts them through his program. It’s basically just getting off drugs, getting educated, learning how to function in normal society, how to be a good escort, basically. A companion, a Bride.”

“So they’re really not prostitutes?”

I shake my head. “According to Rachel, no. If there is sex, it’s always their choice. Of course that’s expected if they become a Bride, or a long-term companion, but it’s not part of the contract, explicitly. The client is not allowed to proposition the girls, and no money directly exchanges hands between the client and the girls. The client pays Indigo Services, who takes their cut, and then pays the girls.”

“So they’re basically contractors.”

“I suppose so.” There’s so much more to this, so many layers, and I don’t know how to put it all into words.

“What aren’t you saying?” he asks.

I shrug. Try to breathe. “The girls. The sex thing. There’s more to it. Caleb . . . trains them. Sexually. So when they become long-term companions and Brides, they know how to please. How to be good at the kind of sex men like.”

Logan blinks at me. “Jesus. By ‘train,’ I assume you mean he fucks them all and calls it training?”

“There are actual lessons. Weekly reports and assessments. Techniques.”

“So the clients aren’t allowed to fuck the girls, because they belong to Caleb.” This is phrased as a question, but spoken as the bitterest of statements.

“I hid under Rachel’s bed during an assessment,” I whisper.

“Meaning . . . you discovered all this by accident? Overheard Caleb having sex with some other girl?” he asks.

I nod. “Right.” I swallow hard. “Then one time I was visiting Rachel, because we were kind of friends, and I needed someone who wasn’t Caleb to talk to. He showed up, and caught me watching. Listening. So he . . . he forced me to watch while he—finished. With Rachel.”

“Isabel. God.” Logan wipes his face with both hands. “This is fucked up on so many levels.”

“I admitted to him later that I was confused by the difference in the way he treated Rachel versus the way he treated me. He did things both to and with Rachel that he never did with me. And I wasn’t—I wasn’t saying I wanted those things, just that I was confused. He’d say things to her, do things with her sexually that—” I cut myself off, start over. “So then the next time I saw him, he did . . . what I told you. Which was the kind of thing I heard and saw him do with Rachel.”

I cannot put into words the confusion. The anger. The fact that part of me liked what was done to me. That part of me craves those moments of helpless weakness, those moments of
belonging
, of being owned, dominated, subjugated. I hate that part of me, and cannot speak it into truth.

But Logan, oh . . . he sees. His eyes, crystalline and indigo and piercing me like scalpels slicing through tissue. Cutting me open and baring my secrets for his perusal.

“Isabel.” His voice has that note of warmth. That layer of understanding. “There is nothing you could say, nothing you could do, no truth that could change my feelings for you. Do you know that?”

I cannot move, breathe, or feel, much less speak. I try to nod, try to seem like I am giving him an affirmation. But it ends up a sniffle and a wobble of my head. My eyes are squeezed shut and my head is ducked, and I am clutching myself, arms wrapped around my middle.

“You watched, and you were curious.” His voice is a murmur in my ear. “You saw him do things to that other girl that he didn’t do with you, and you were curious.”

I nod. I owe him truth, even embarrassing, disgusting, mortifying truth.

Logan continues baring the secrets I cannot say. “You didn’t . . .
want
those things. But you were curious. And Caleb is a perceptive motherfucker. He can read people as easily as you read books. So he saw that. Saw your curiosity. And he’s a manipulative bastard, so he used it against you. Used your curiosity as an excuse to force those things on you and make you feel like maybe you asked for it. That maybe you did want it, and just didn’t know how to say it. Like maybe it was you all along, and not him.”

I am choking. Oxygen is not reaching my brain. Thoughts are like moths fluttering in kamikaze circles around a burning-hot lightbulb. How does he know? How do these men see so clearly into me? Do my thoughts and desires and emotions appear on my forehead in visible form?

I roll away. Logan is at my back, hand on my shoulder, mouth at my ear. “Hey. Talk to me, Is.”

“And say what?” I speak to empty air in front of me rather than facing Logan. “That you’re right? Fine. You’re right. And so was he. I . . .
was
curious. And part of me
did
want it. Just . . . not the way he did it. I didn’t want the humiliation. With her, it seemed like it was mutual. Maybe he was teaching her, but there was a two-directionality to the way they interacted, sexually. And . . . god, this is so hard to say out loud, especially to you. But with Caleb and me, it has always seemed . . . one way. Him doing what he wanted
to
me, and me allowing it. I wanted that—I don’t know how to put it. I wanted that feeling of being an active participant and not just a . . .
a receptacle for his needs. And all I got for my curiosity was to be used yet another way.”

“What did you feel with us? You and me, just now?”

“There is an
us
. There always has been. I’ve always felt like with you, that you see me. You . . . you both
see
me, and see
me
. The emphasis on both words is important. You care about what I want. You care about who I am.”

“Caleb doesn’t.”

I have to let a silence hang until I can force the words out. “I don’t know if that’s true. I think he just cares about me being the version of me he wants me to be. The version he created, rather than the version I am becoming.”

Lips touch my spine between my shoulder blades. “And I care about you, who you were and who you are and who you’re becoming. All of you.”

“I know.”

His hand tugs at my arm, and I roll to my back. He’s levered over me, staring down at me with too-bright eyes. Knowing eyes. A gaze full of understanding and compassion and hurt and love. Yes, love. I see it there, though neither of us will speak of it outright. “But for all that, there’s still something there between you and Caleb, something you can’t deny and can’t ignore. And I can’t have you until you’ve seen that through.”

“I hate how right you are, so much of the time,” I say.

“Me too,” he says.

“I don’t know what it is, between Caleb and me. I wish I did, so I could be done with it.”

“Me too,” he says again. “But until there’s an end between you and Caleb, there can’t be a beginning between you and me.”

The silence quavering between us then is rife with pain. This
hurts. Worse than anything I’ve ever felt, this hurts. My throat closes, and my eyes sting. It’s hard to breathe for the weight of pain in my chest. For the weight of the good-bye swinging like a thousand-pound pendulum between us.

I have nothing else to say. No more words. I leave Logan’s bed and his room, and I take a shower. I take my time, scrubbing every inch of my body carefully. I don’t want to. Even now, I want his scent on me. I want to be marked by him on the outside the way he’s marked me on the inside.

My dress has been laid neatly on the bed, along with my undergarments, and my shoes are on the floor near them. Logan is nowhere to be seen. I dress carefully, smoothing the worst of the wrinkles out of the dress as best I can. My hair is still wet, because Logan doesn’t own a hair dryer, and my hair is thick. I braid it and tie off the end. Slip on my shoes.

And yet, when I look in the floor-to-ceiling mirror in Logan’s closet, I see only Isabel. Despite the familiar clothes, I do not see Madame X. I see me. I see a person. A woman becoming her own individual. I inhale deeply, run my hands over the bell curve of my hips, exhale, and then go in search of Logan.

I find him in his backyard, pacing in troubled circles, smoking a cigarette, drinking a beer. Cocoa lies on the ground near the door, chin on her paws, watching him, thick brown tail thumping the flagstones.

He halts, and his eyes rake over me. “You are so beautiful, Isabel.”

“You’ve already seen me in this dress, Logan,” I point out.

He shrugs. “Doesn’t make you any less gorgeous than the first time I saw you in it.”

I try another breath, but my lungs don’t seem to want to inflate all the way. “I should go.”

A long inhalation of the cigarette, causing the orange tip to flare bright. “I know.” Smoke trickles out of his nostrils. “I’ll take you.”

The drive back through the pink-to-gold light of dawn is silent. The radio is off. Logan does not speak and neither do I.

He pulls up directly in front of Caleb’s tower. Finally, he looks at me. “You know how to find me. I will wait, Isabel.”

“For how long?” I ask, wanting to look away from his indigo gaze and finding myself unable to do so.

“Until you tell me to stop
waiting.”

I
stand alone in the middle of the lobby of your tower. The reception desk is fully staffed: two older white men, a striking young black woman with a shaved scalp, and a Hispanic man of indeterminate age, which means probably about thirty. They all glance at me, notice me, and then return to their work, but the black woman makes a very brief phone call. Which means they know who I am and have alerted Len, most likely.

Indeed, it is Len who appears from the bank of elevators, expression inscrutable, aged, weathered, hardened features cast in stone. He does not greet me, doesn’t say a single word. Merely gestures at the elevators. I nod and accompany him onto the elevator marked
Private
.

The ride up is long.

“Len,” I say, curiosity getting the better of me. “How old are you?”

“Forty-nine, ma’am.”

“What is the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

A very thick silence as Len stares down at me. “I would say it’s
probably impossible to pinpoint one single thing. I’m not a good person, and I never have been.”

“Indulge me.”

An outbreath, blown between pursed lips, eyes cast to the roof of the elevator car. A moment of thought, in which Len looks nearly human. “I fought in the first Desert Storm. Marine Recon. We caught this insurgent, me and two guys from my unit. We holed up in a little hut near the Kuwaiti border and tortured the unholy fuck out of the poor bastard. He knew where some high-ranking Iraqi military generals were hiding, and we were told to get the intel by any means possible. So we did.”

“What kind of torture?” I cannot help asking.

“Why would you want to know this shit, Madame X?”

“I’m not Madame X anymore, Len. My name is Isabel. And I’m learning that no one is ever as they seem.”

Len nods. “Fair enough. We ripped his fingernails out with pliers. Cut strips of his skin off with a box cutter. Burned toes off with a blowtorch. Waterboarded him. Beat him half to death. Stuck pins in him until he looked like a pincushion, and then heated ’em up with a lighter.”

“My god,” I breathe. I am horrified. “Did he survive it?”

“Oh yeah. Point of torture is to cause pain so bad they’ll tell you anything to make it stop. So yeah, he survived long enough to sing about the generals, but when we had what we needed, we put a couple rounds in the back of his head.”

“Double-tap,” I say, thinking of Logan.

Len nods. “Yeah, we double-tapped him, and left him for the vultures and the ants.”

“Tell me one more thing,” I ask.

“Sure, why not.”

“What’s the best thing you’ve ever done?”

“That’s a helluva lot harder.” Len is silent for a long time. “There was this girl. In Fallujah. Local girl. We were headed out on foot after a raid, and I heard screaming. Followed the sound, against orders. Discovered some local fellas running a train on the girl. Killed ’em all. I had some local currency in one of my pockets, and I gave it all to her, then pounded leather back to my unit. Whenever I could, I stopped by and helped her out. Brought her money, food, clothes. Whatever I could scrounge up. I still dunno why. I don’t stand by rape, I guess. I’m an evil motherfucker, don’t get me wrong. I’ll beat up, torture, and murder men without thinking twice about it, but I won’t touch a woman in violence, and won’t stand to see it happen. I may be a bastard, but I’ve got my own code of honor. Such as it is, at any rate.”

“What happened to her?” I ask. “The girl?”

A shrug. “Lost contact with her. Battle of Fallujah happened, and it got to where I couldn’t really go looking anymore without getting my ass shot off.”

“Have you ever killed anyone for Caleb?”

A stony stare. “We’re not talking about Mr. Indigo.”

“You have.” I meet Len’s glare. “Would you kill Logan if he told you to?”

Len’s answer is immediate: “In a heartbeat.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s dangerous.”

“So are you. So is Caleb. I’m surrounded by dangerous men, it would seem.”

Another shrug. “You’re not wrong there.” The car stopped a long time ago, but Len has been holding the doors closed. Now he allows them to open. “He’s not back yet, but he will be shortly.” The conversation is over, apparently.

“Thank you, Len.”

Len seems puzzled by my thanks. “Yeah.” And then he’s gone, doors closing between us.

I don’t know what I’m going to say. What I’m going to do. You will be here soon and I’ve got a million, billion questions, and answers that I don’t know the questions to, and demands I don’t know how to formulate. Needs I don’t know how to meet. And all of this requires that I face up to you and not flinch, speak to you and not succumb to your sorcery.

I do not have the best track record when it comes to that. I am weak.

I stand for long moments a mere three steps into the colossal space you call home, the echoing, open-plan apartment occupying the entire footprint of the tower. There, the couch. Where you fucked me. Here, where I stand, the carpet under my feet where you shoved your cock into my throat and came on my face. The haptic memory is overwhelmingly strong, a twinge in my jaw reminding me how wide I had to stretch my mouth, a ghost of heat and wetness on my face where you finished on me. There, the kitchen, the breakfast nook. You pulled me down onto your lap in that chair, the westward-facing one, with all of Fifth Avenue spread out for you. You pulled me down onto your lap, wrapped your fist into my hair, tugged my head backward so I was forced to stare up at the ceiling while you thrusted up into me and bit my neck in sharp nips. You never spoke a word, didn’t touch me other than to fuck me and bite me. It was almost like a punishment. But for what?

Strange that I remember that encounter. You’d woken me up out of a dead sleep at three in the morning, hauled me into the kitchen, yanked off my underwear and tossed them onto the table, and then proceeded to fuck me until you came, and then you were done. You shoved me off you, snatched my underwear and shoved them into your pocket. Tossed back the last of your doppio
macchiato, strode out without a backward glance. I went back to sleep, and the next morning it had seemed like a dream, easily forgotten.

There is a crystal bottle of something amber on a side table near a window. It is an artfully crafted little vignette: a small round table of dark wood, a cut-crystal decanter and two matching tumblers on a silver tray, the table and tray nestled against the wall between two floor-to-ceiling windows. There are two overstuffed armchairs facing the table at oblique angles, and each armchair has a tiny table near to hand, on which rests a cut-crystal ashtray, a silver cigar cutter, and a torch-style lighter. A few feet away, between the next pair of windows, is another small table, this one with two rectangular boxes, glass-topped. Cigars. I open one of the boxes, select a cigar. I bring my cigar with me and pour a measure of scotch whisky into a tumbler. I’ve seen you do this a thousand times. I cut the end off the cigar with the platinum cutter sitting on the table nearby, put the freshly cut end to my lips and light it, rotating the cigar and puffing as I’ve seen you do. When it’s smoking merrily, I suck in a mouthful and taste it. Thick, acrid, almost sweet. Blow it out. Roll the smoke around in my mouth, let it trickle away. Play with it. I try a sip of the scotch. This, I’ve had before. I think of Logan as I roll the powerful liquid around my mouth and then swallow it.

I wait for you this way, the way you have often waited for me, a cigar coiling serpents of smoke toward the vent cleverly hidden in the ceiling, a glass of scotch in hand. Eyes dark and brooding, watching traffic and the sunset or the sunrise. Time seems to have no bearing on you. You are the same at dawn as you are midnight, always put together and perfect and silent and powerful and tensed.

The elevator whooshes open, no
ding
here. Just the door sliding open to frame you. My throat closes and my mouth goes dry. You are shirtless and sweaty, wearing a pair of tight black sweatpants with the elastic cuffs tugged up to the knee, pristine white socks
peeking up over the edge of black athletic shoes. Your muscled chest is coated in a sheen of sweat, beads trickling down between your pectorals, shining on your biceps, running down from your hairline over your temple and into the day-old stubble on your jaw. Your chest heaves rapidly. Cords trail from your ears, meet beneath your chin, and extend to your cell phone, which is in your hand. You are speaking rapidly in fluent Mandarin as you enter, and your eyes find me. A gleam mars the blankness of your expression as you see me, and I think you almost smile.

Even half naked and sweating, you are a work of art, perfect even thus—perhaps even especially thus—crafted particularly to please the female eye. To rile the female libido.

I take a large swallow of whisky to fortify my nerves, letting out a breath as you approach, still talking in a low voice in Mandarin. You stand two feet away from me, and I smell the sweat on you. The person on the other end of your conversation is speaking now, judging by your focused silence, and you reach down, take my glass from me, drain the rest of my scotch.

Gesture at the bottle with the glass as if I’m your servant, sent to fetch more for the imperious master.

I do so, refilling the glass, but I remain by the table and drink it myself, staring at you. I place the cigar in my teeth, baring them, an unladylike expression in the extreme, and replace the crystal stopper in the decanter. You lift your chin and your eyes crackle, spark, spit fire. You see then. You see that I will not be cowed any longer.

You spin away, stalk to the kitchen, say a few angry-sounding words in Mandarin, then resume listening as you pull two bottles of water from the refrigerator. You down one without stopping for breath as you listen. Say a few sentences, pause and listen, say a few more, and then slowly drink the second bottle.

Ignoring me now, are you? Fine by me. I take my seat and stare
out at Manhattan, swilling my second glass of scotch and feeling the first. Smoking my cigar. Studiously not rehearsing what I will say, because I know whatever I might imagine you will say, it will not be close to the truth. You are not predictable.

Finally, you say what sounds like a good-bye, touch the screen, and stand in silence for moments more, finishing your water.

You turn to me. “Good morning, Isabel.” This, from the kitchen, many feet away from where I sit.

“Good morning, Caleb.”

“Early for scotch, isn’t it?” Your voice, so calm, so deep, so deceptively hypnotic. Like staring into a sinkhole, unplumbed depths, darkness and mystery and danger.

I shrug. “I haven’t been to sleep yet, so it is late, for me.”

Your expression hardens at this. “I see. And how is Logan?”

“None of your concern,” I return. “What
is
your concern is that he told me how you got him put in prison.”

You smirk. “Ah. He told his side of the story, did he?”

“His side?”

A nod. “There are two to every story, aren’t there?” You swagger to me. Sit in the chair opposite mine, nearly empty water bottle in hand. “He went into the situation eyes open, Isabel. He knew exactly what he was getting himself into, but wasn’t smart enough to not get caught.”

“So what he told me is true.”

“Oh yes. Very much so. He was a pawn. I used him, kept him disposable, and let him take the fall when the SEC came knocking. I was grooming him for it the entire time, keeping him isolated, keeping him flush with cash, making sure he had the requisite skills to do what I needed. And he did. So I made use of him. Lured him in, hook, line, and sinker. And then, yes, I intentionally set him up to take his share of the blame when things went bust, as I always
knew they would. And really, I didn’t set him up. I just made sure he was out in the open and I wasn’t. I didn’t accuse him of or frame him for anything he didn’t do. If you’re going to commit a crime, you have to plan on getting caught, and have a plan for getting away when you do. Your boyfriend was a sucker, Isabel. And if you’re expecting an apology or an explanation for that, or for any of the many ways I’ve made my fortune . . . well, don’t hold your breath. I will not apologize to anyone, not for anything.”

“I would never expect an apology from you, Caleb.”

“You know me better than that, obviously.”

“No one knows you, Caleb.”

You finish your water and crumple the bottle into a ball, twisting on the cap. “Not true. You know me. Better than anyone, I think.”

“Which is saying something, because you are a complete mystery to me.”

You merely breathe and stare at me for a while, and I merely breathe and stare back. I set my scotch down. I’ve had enough. I’ll need my wits about me for this, something tells me.

The silence extends. The history between you and Logan is irrelevant, really. It doesn’t concern me, or the crux of my problems. It’s rather underwhelming, actually.

“What do you want, Isabel?” you ask, eventually.

“I don’t know,” I say, truthfully. “I wish I did.”

I hand you my glass of scotch, but keep the cigar. It’s something to do with my hands, something to distract myself from your beauty. You take the tumbler and swirl the amber contents, toss back a sip. I watch your Adam’s apple bob as you swallow.

Your eyes pin me. “You
do
know, you’re just afraid to say it to me.”

Damn you for being right. “I want my freedom. I want to be . . . a real person. I want to love and be loved. I want a future.” I swallow hard against the hot stone of emotion searing my throat. “I want
my past back. I want . . . I want to not need you. To not be addicted to you.”

“I will give you anything you ask me for, Isabel. I have never kept you prisoner. I kept you isolated, it is true. Sequestered, perhaps. But it was for your own good. And also, truthfully, because I am selfish. I do not want to share you. Not with anyone. Not any part of you. I must, however, so I do. I do not like it, but I do.”

“So if I asked you to have the microchip in my hip removed, along with any other means of tracking my whereabouts, would you do it?”

“Is that what you are asking me for?”