The Decoy (10 page)

She wakes Bessie, raiding her closet for emergency clothing supplies.

'Take care of yourself,' Bessie says anxiously. 'Don't let these people freak you out.'

'I won't,' Claire promises. Flicking through Bessie's underwear, she looks briefly at the gun, gleaming amidst lace and cotton. Then, a little reluctantly, she covers it up again.

There are so many things to say. But the policeman's waiting, and for once she can't think of a line.

'Break a leg,' Bessie says softly.

Claire nods.

As she pulls her suitcase down to the waiting car, she feels further from home than she has done for months.

===OO=OOO=OO===

He takes her to a walk-up on West 14th Street, on the fringes of the old meat packing district. Parts of this area have been redeveloped recently.

Not this part.

The apartment is a shithole. Black candles line the walls, beneath mounted animal parts and ripped heavy-metal posters. A battered electric guitar leans in one corner.

'For Christ's sake,' she says furiously, peering around at the fake velvet drapes and the Rothko prints Blu-tacked to the walls. 'Why not go the whole hog and give me white make-up and a Mohican?'

'It cost a lot of money to make the place look this bad,' Frank says mildly. 'You'd be surprised.' He picks up a painted human skull on which a candle has been mounted. 'Maybe they did go a little over the top.'

Wordlessly, Claire plucks the skull from him and tosses it into the trash.

'I'll let you unpack,' he says diplomatically. 'Get your own things around you. It'll feel homier then.'

She doesn't hear him. She's just seen the glass tank in the corner. Something silvery grey is slithering around inside. 'Is that a
snake?'

'It's just for show, Claire. Kind of like a stage prop.'

She sighs, reaches for the suitcase.

'One other thing,' he says as he turns to go. 'The apartment is wired for audio and video, right? The boys are working on the facilities right now in the apartment downstairs.'

'What are you saying, Frank?'

'Well, the cameras aren't meant to be operational yet. But they'll be testing the system from time to time. All I'm saying is, if you take a shower it might be best to turn the lights out.'

===OO=OOO=OO===

He comes back at noon and drives her to a small gym in SoHo. There, in a private room, he introduces her to a muscular man called Ray.

'Ray's gonna show you how to defend yourself.'

'Right,' Ray says. 'Just a crash course, you understand.'

When he says a crash course, he really means crash. She hits the mat over and over again, until her ribs ache and her body's black and blue.

But by the end of the session she knows how to disable someone who comes up behind you and puts a ligature over your head; how to maim; what a man's testicles feel like in your outstretched hand, before you start to twist them off, like an apple twisted from a tree.

She remembers stage fights, learning how to duel with blunt-tipped prop swords. It seems like another lifetime.

Who are you?

My name is Claire Rodenburg.

Where do you come from?

I was born in Ferry Springs, near Boise in Idaho. My father died in a plane crash when I was ten. My mother never remarried. I guess I've always had a thing for older men, for rebels.

Go on.

I had the usual high-school boyfriends. I lost my virginity to one of them when I was sixteen. After that, sex came easily. I hung out with a pretty wild group. But they were never really all that wild, underneath. They all wanted the same things everybody else wanted: me, principally. Then, at college, I had an affair with one of my teachers. He was married.

What was his name
?

Mr Furbank.

You didn't use your lover's christian name?

Sorry. Eliot Furbank. That was when I discovered I had a darker side, a part of me that wanted to be forced to go further than I'd ever been before. We couldn't be together that much, so he used to write stuff for me. Fantasies. He'd send them by e-mail, usually, or leave them in my pigeon-hole.

Good, Claire. What happened to him?

His wife found one of the letters. She took it straight to the dean. Eliot was fired, of course.

How did you feel about that?

I was elated. I thought we could finally be together. But he couldn't handle it. He ended up by killing himself. He left me one last note. He — he wanted me to join him.

And then?

Then I travelled. With hindsight, I can see I was just running away from something that had got way out of control.

You were running? Or you were searching?

A bit of both, I guess.

And what were you searching for?

I don't know. I read stuff — 'The Story of O', Anne Rice. After what I'd been through, it seemed a bit tame. But I'm curious. I guess I need a guide.

Don't say that. It's too overt. He'll see your potential for himself. Now, one more time: Who are you?

===OO=OOO=OO===

'I'll be moving into the apartment right below you,' Frank tells her later, in the car. 'If you need anything over the next few weeks, just knock on my door.'

'Is that really necessary? Moving in, I mean.'

'Maybe not yet. But it saves on commuting.'

'Won't Mrs Durban mind?'

'There is no Mrs Durban,' he says gruffly. 'Well, there is, but she's living with a designer now. Some guy who makes wedding cakes and stuff out of cardboard. He earns more in a month than I do in a year.'

'Is that why she left?'

'What makes you think
she
left me?'

'Because you strike me as too loyal to walk out on anyone?'

He keeps his eyes on the road. 'She left me because I worked too many nights and I'm grouchy when I don't get quality sleep.'

'So it's not the horrors of the job keeping you awake?' she asks, and suddenly now he does look across at her, his lips thin with anger.

'You've been spending too much time with Dr Leichtman, Claire. Save the psychobabble for her, hey?'

She's silent, puzzled. For the first time she begins to see that those putting this operation together might have different agendas, different plans of attack, perhaps even different objectives.

===OO=OOO=OO===

Frank finishes some take-out and channel-hops on the TV. There's nothing on.

He looks at his watch. It's gone midnight. He wrings one last tumbler of bourbon out of the bottle on the table.

Wandering round the deserted apartment, still festooned with leads and wires which the surveillance boys haven't tidied away, he stops in front of another, larger TV set, dumped incongruously in the middle of the main room.

He turns it on.

This time the remote control surfs, not through the late-night cable offerings and talk shows, but through a dozen different views of Claire's apartment, directly above.

He sees a table with an abandoned deli box, a half-empty bottle of Chardonnay. He hesitates, presses another button, sees the empty bed. He presses again.

She's standing, naked, by the open window, her back to him, looking out at the New York night.

She turns. There's a glass of wine in her hand, mirroring the shape of the dark shadow at the top of her legs. And he swears she must know where the cameras are, know that he's watching, because she looks directly at him and runs her free hand down her body in a slow, lingering caress.

She steps towards him. Her breasts fill the screen, and then she's beyond it.

And though he switches between the cameras for several long minutes, it's as if she's vanished into thin air.

She's woken the next morning by a banging on her apartment door.

'What's up, Frank?' she says blearily, opening the door to him.

He shows her the printout in his hand. 'It's from Vogler. We're in business.'

From: 'Christian Vogler' (CV@nyscu)

To: 'Claire Rodenburg' ([email protected])

Claire,

Of course I remember you. I seem to recall that on that occasion I was rather rude. I can seem a little distracted when my mind is on my work. I was deeply touched by your kind words, and not a little intrigued by your references to your own life.

Baudelaire is notoriously difficult to translate, but I hope that you find, as I have, that the effort is rewarded. Perhaps, if you are still struggling, you would like some help?

Regards,

Christian Vogler

'Are you sure?' Claire says doubtfully, reading it again. 'He sounds to me like he's just being polite.'

Frank says, 'Or he's being careful.'

From: 'Claire Rodenburg'

([email protected])

To: 'Christian Vogler' (CV@nyscu)

Dear Christian (may I call you that?),

Thanks for your e-mail. Re-reading my own letter I worry that I may have come across as a little strange. I suppose I have led a rather unconventional life, perhaps too unconventional. I guess that's why the words of someone like Baudelaire, someone who has dared to go beyond the everyday, are so inspiring.

I love to imagine myself as his Venus, receiving all those extraordinary poems, unsigned and anonymous. I wonder if he thought they would shock her, or if he knew she would be turned on by the things he had dared to conjure up?

I say imagine, but in fact I was once in a similar position myself, and I know what it's like being allowed inside someone's mind, being led little by little into their darkest, most bizarre fantasies. It's an amazing feeling.

I guess some people would call what that man wrote me pornography. But to me they were as beautiful, and as honest, as any poems.

Claire

Dr Leichtman agreed she should continue her acting classes, for the time being.

At the next session, Paul introduces them to mask work. The masks are Japanese, their features saved from mere caricature by the hint of cruelty in the way they're drawn. Hers is the Waif: an innocent, a lost child, with a smile that, though it never changes, seems somehow to be by turns eager and ingratiating, or knowing and coquettish.

Paul talks about them as if the masks, and not the actors, are the real people. When one of the students, having put on the mask of an old man, comes up behind Claire and pokes her with a stick, Paul says, 'He's always doing that, the old fool.'

Rather than act a scene together — there are no eye holes, and they'd have fallen over each other this first time — he has them stand in a row, facing him, as if he's the audience, acting out their roles simultaneously on the spot. The story is that of a landlord who comes to the rice fields and rapes a woman whose family can't pay the rent. The actor wearing the Rich Man mask knocks at an imaginary door; two actors down the line, the Waif opens it. When he rapes her, he has to mime his aggression, and Claire her fear, ten feet apart, without either of them being able to see what the other's doing.

Suddenly Claire realizes that, underneath the mask, she's crying. She doesn't know how, or why. It's as sudden and inexplicable as a nosebleed. For her, used to being able to control her tears at will, this sudden lack of control is as unsettling as the tears themselves.

When the scene's over she pulls off the mask and sits down, sucking in lungfuls of air to control herself. At first the others think she's fooling around. Then, one by one, they fall silent.

Paul comes over and squats down, so he's at the same height as her. 'You OK?'

She nods, not quite trusting herself to speak.

'It's like that with the masks sometimes,' he says quietly. 'If they trust you — if you're good —
sometimes they make you pay a price for borrowing them.'

===OO=OOO=OO===

On her way back to her shithole apartment, she wanders into an optician's store. She chooses a pair of wire-framed glasses and tries them on, looking at herself in the mirror.

It works, kind of. The Hurt Girl.

She nods thoughtfully at her reflection.

From: 'Christian Vogler' (CV@nyscu)

To: 'Claire Rodenburg' ([email protected])

This sounds fascinating, Claire. Perhaps, if you are still in town, we could resume our conversation over a drink?

'We can't risk a meeting yet,' Dr Leichtman says firmly. 'Claire isn't ready, and neither am I.'

From: 'Claire Rodenburg' ([email protected])

To: 'Christian Vogler' (CV@nyscu)

Thanks, but I'm not actually in the city at present, though I am picking up my e-mails.

I don't quite know why I told you all that stuff about myself. Maybe it's because travelling alone makes me thoughtful, or melancholy, depending on your perspective.

It was a long time ago now, but yes, it was fascinating. Fascinating and terrifying and thrilling, all at once.

Claire

From: 'Christian Vogler' (CV@nyscu)

To: 'Claire Rodenburg' ([email protected])

If you are still in need of a shoulder to cry on ... I have two here, and they're both at your disposal.

From: 'Claire Rodenburg' ([email protected])

To: 'Christian Vogler' (CV@nyscu)

Thanks. Could I have some arms to go with that?

From: 'Christian Vogler' (CV@nyscu)

To: 'Claire Rodenburg' ([email protected])

You could indeed. Anything else you need?

From: 'Claire Rodenburg' ([email protected])