The Venus Fix (22 page)

She was dark and alien—the kind of witch woman who lured you and swayed you and turned you into something dark and alien, too, and that’s one thing I can never forgive her for. It’s not just that because of them you’re gone, but because of them you thought you lost me, because of them I lost you.

Soon, I will have gotten to them all, in exactly the way they got to you. I promise.

This I do for you.

A
lan Leightman sat in the kitchen across the breakfast table from his wife and watched her stir her coffee. Over and over the spoon circled the cup, long after the sugar had dissolved, and all the while tears dripped down her cheeks. He wanted to get up and wipe them away, and with them her pain.

Until the past few months she had not cried often. He could count the times: when her father died and when she’d had her miscarriages, and even then only for a few minutes. She had always been so stoic. She moved past sadness. She had a bigger agenda than her own personal disappointments. She had a Constitution to save. And she’d been saving it, year after year. He was so proud of her. He had been. So proud of her.

But ever since she’d lost the big privacy case and gone on antidepressants, her emotions had been out of whack. Weeping one minute, furiously angry the next. This morning had been no exception. She’d started out angry. Now she was crying. Scared, he’d say, if the word wasn’t so incongruous when used in conjunction with his wife.

How disturbed was she? How badly was the medication affecting her? He couldn’t take his eyes off her stirring the coffee.
Over and over. Only someone deeply disturbed became obsessive like that. She needed help. More help than he could give her. How was he going to help her? He had to help her. Because whatever had happened to her was his fault.

“What are you going to do today?” she asked. The spoon did another revolution, the silver stem glinting in the overhead light.

“I need to finalize which criminal lawyer to hire. Adam can’t handle this if it goes to the next stage. I also need to hire a software genius who can figure out how my credit card was charged with visits to those girls’ Web sites on days when I didn’t go there and—”

“Hard to do,” she interrupted. Another revolution.

“What?”

“That will be hard to do.”

“It’s not like you to suggest that it’s a lost cause before we even get started.”

“Did I say it was a lost cause?” Another circle with the spoon.

“I heard it in your voice.”

“It amazes me that you think I’d still be on your side.”

Finally, she laid down the spoon, and he almost cheered. She took a sip of her coffee, then grimaced. “It’s cold.” Getting up, she walked to the sink and poured it down the drain.

She put the kettle on to boil again, and then, standing there, staring down into the flames that were licking up around the black enamel, she said, “No matter which lawyer you hire, the best they can do is figure out a way to get you off, but you do understand it’s too late for you to come out of this totally clean.”

“You’re smiling through your tears, Kira. Does the idea of my humiliation make you that happy?”

“Happy? That your reputation is going to be tarnished? That I’ll be a joke? That our marriage will be exposed as a sham? No, Alan. I’m not happy. Of all the things you could
have done to humiliate me, you had to do this? You had to go online? You had to deal with those women? Those women? Alan?” She was screaming. “If you had stopped and thought about it for two minutes, you would have realized it would be the worst thing you could have done to me.” She shook her head and then reached out and touched the pot with her forefinger, pressing her flesh against the kettle as if she were testing to see how cold it was, not how hot.

How could anyone just hold her finger against burning metal like that?

She grimaced, but she didn’t move her finger.

“What the hell are you doing?” Alan yelled as he leapt out of his chair and pulled her hand away.

She struggled with him. “Leave me alone,” she growled.

He backed off.

Kira smiled. Turned back to the stove. Reached out and touched the kettle with her middle finger.

Alan pulled her hand away again and wrestled her away from the stove. She fought him, beating him with small fists that he hardly felt. She was acting crazy. He expected anger and recriminations. Even tears. But she was being irrational.

“Let go of me. You don’t have the right to touch me. Not anymore. Not since you stopped loving me. Not since them. Not since you don’t love me.”

Even her voice, instead of being in the mid-range, was now low and edged with madness.

He let go.

She straightened up, ignoring her fingers, even though, he thought, they must have been throbbing with pain.

He wanted to tell her that he did love her. Had never stopped loving her. No matter what he did online—that was something else. But he knew it wouldn’t make any difference.

“Can’t I do anything, Kira? Won’t you let me help you?”

“Help? Your help?” She giggled. It was unexpected and totally out of context. A six-year-old’s glee escaping in the midst of a forty-five-year-old’s rant. “I’ll survive, but I don’t think you will. I don’t think they’ll find out that someone else logged into your account at those sites. I think they’ll find out you were connected from your own computer. Will that convince them that you were responsible for those women dying? Who knows? The press is on a rampage, Alan. They are all over these murders. They can’t let go of all the salacious details. It’s becoming a media sensation. Just imagine how they will jump all over you once your dirty little secret is out and your name is linked to the Web-cam murders. Your career will be over.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with those girls dying. You know that, don’t you?” He heard his own voice, pleading, begging the one person who had always been on his side to tell him that she still was. “Kira, you can’t think I’m capable of anything like this.”

But to his astonishment and horror—because if she didn’t believe him, would anyone else?—she didn’t give him what he was asking for. She just stared at him, and for those few minutes he did not know if he would be able to ever breathe normally again.

“Kira, do you really think I could have killed those girls?”

“Of course not.”

He started to breathe.

“If I wasn’t your wife, I might even be able to convince them you’re not involved. But I am your wife. Isn’t that the ultimate irony? Even if I could prove it, no one would believe me.”

And then Kira walked out of the room, leaving him sitting there at the table, listening to the kettle shrieking its song.

B
lythe had brought two cappuccinos and two large black-and-whites to her appointment, so we sat across from each other at my desk, drinking the coffee and munching on the sweet cookies. I knew she was ambivalent about talking to me that day. The food and coffee was a distraction.

“You didn’t want this to be a session today, did you?” I asked.

“Why would you think that?” Blythe gave me the slightly mysterious smile that was unique to her: As her lips moved up in the corners, her eyes closed for just a moment. The viewer’s attention was, again, pulled from Blythe’s eyes to her mouth.

“Is it true?”

“Maybe, but how did you…” She eyed the cookies and the drinks and thought it through. Then she smiled. She got it. “That was impressive.”

“No, it’s good training. You have it. You’ll get there.”

“I guess I’m going through a crisis of faith that I can do this job.”

“Okay. Do you know why?”

She shook her head. “I don’t suppose you’d just tell me why?”

“No, I can’t. Even if I was sure I knew, which I’m not, it
won’t help unless you get there yourself. You know that, Blythe. But I’ll help you get there. What’s happened in the past few weeks that’s set you back?”

“The Web-cam girls, the ones who have been getting killed.”

I nodded. “What else?”

“There’s something else?”

“How do you feel about what’s happening to the girls?”

“There but for the grace of God…”

“Right, but you stopped doing Web cast work months before all this started. Why is this affecting you so personally now?”

She thought about it. She looked up at me. I wasn’t going to help her make the last leap. She had to do that herself. And then she did.

“The interview with Stella Dobson.”

I didn’t have to tell her she was right.

“She was someone I looked up to, Dr. Snow. She went on a hunger strike for three weeks to protest that judge in Alabama who was trying to prevent a teenager from having an abortion unless she got her parent’s permission. When everyone else stopped talking about women’s rights, she talked louder. And now even though she’ll never know my real name, and even though I’ll disguise myself, it will still be me, meeting her.” She stopped talking and looked away from me. “How do you know when you’re doing the right thing?” Blythe asked.

“With a patient?”

“No. Personally. When I’m working with a patient I have a good sense of whether her behavior is destructive or not, but I can’t turn my intuition on myself.” She leaned forward and clasped her hands under her chin, focusing her attention back on me. It was slightly affected but charming, and made me feel as if my answer mattered to her very much. It also drew attention away from her eyes and to her mouth.

“It’s hard to do. Our own neuroses and needs get in the way.”

“What kind of process can I put myself through to test my decisions and make sure I’m doing the right thing? How can I be my own therapist?”

I shook my head. If there was an easy exercise, I wouldn’t mind knowing it myself. “You can’t be. That’s why most therapists are in therapy.”

“I don’t want to be in therapy forever.”

“You won’t be. Most of us need to be in therapy at the beginning of our careers, but then, like any other patient who has gone through the process, we terminate, knowing there’s always the option of coming back when issues resurface.”

She seemed to be taking mental notes, nodding her head slightly, studying me with her inscrutable green eyes.

“I told Stella Dobson I’d do the interview, and I want to do it because I’m curious. I’m flattered. Isn’t that nuts? I’m flattered she wants to interview me about the big secret of my life. I’m excited that someone wants to know about it. But I’m embarrassed about it at the same time. I’m afraid of what she’s going to say if I’m really honest with her. I mean, what is a feminist going to think about the fact that I loved showing off?”

“What do you think she’s going to say?”

“That it was wrong of me to crave the attention. That it’s part of what’s wrong with our society. That I exacerbated the problem. Set a bad example.”

“Do you think you did?”

“I don’t know. I just loved the idea of the attention. I loved the idea of invisible hands stroking me. Of the eyes staring at my body. Taking me in.”

“Did you feel powerful?”

She nodded. “You can’t imagine how powerful you feel when you know you can move men without even being in the same room as them.”

“Go on.”

She hesitated, then took a breath. “It’s crazy when you first realize that just watching you can give them a hard-on and make them come. It made me feel so sexy—”

Another hesitation. “It’s okay. Tell me.”

“Sometimes…there were some times when the session was over and I’d shut off the Web cam and masturbate for real because I was so turned on. And the…the orgasms I had then were more intense and better than any I ever had with anyone.” She was whispering. Her flawless skin was flushed with pink. Her eyes sparkled. “And then I’d get paid for it, the check would come in the mail, and I’d feel so disgusted.”

“Why?”

“It turned it into something else.”

“Into what?”

“Into something disgusting.”

“Is that how you feel about the interview?”

“I’m worried I will. But I could use the money. Since I’ve given up webbing, I’m strapped. I’ve even asked Nina if she can give me some more patients from the clinic. In the meantime, Stella Dobson is giving me five hundred dollars for this.”

“ I’ll talk to Nina. If you’d be willing to work another day at clinic, I might be able to make that happen.”

“Yes, that would be great.”

“Will that help you decide about the interview?”

“I’ll probably still do it. I’m excited to meet her, to talk to her, to help her with her book. Although I know it’s another form of showing off. That’s one thing I need to work out. That and wondering how I’m going to feel when she pays me.” She sighed deeply and tossed her hair again. “I’ve been dreaming about being on camera again. I wake up and when I realize it was just a dream I’m so depressed. I miss how it used to make me feel.”

Her eyes filled with tears but her face didn’t crumble. She contained herself and then started to laugh. “Can you believe this? I must be the only woman in the world who gets weepy at not having to play dirty in front of a Web cam anymore. I hope I don’t do this in front of Stella Dobson next Friday.”

“Is that when the interview is?”

“Yes. Can you imagine?” She was excited again. “I’m going to meet her! A real hero.”

Friday
Seven days remaining

I
t had taken Amanda’s parents forever to leave. First her father was late getting home from the office. Then they’d had a fight about some bill for a new couch that he said cost as much as some people’s monthly rent, and her mother said there was nothing for him to worry about because she was using her money to pay for the redecorating.

Amanda tuned them out. They always argued about money. She didn’t understand how they could stand to go over the same thing all the time. Her mother shopped too much. Her father got annoyed. Why didn’t one of them change? Why did her father even care? Her mother was a really successful designer. He was a high-powered businessman. What did the cost of a couch really matter to either of them? So what if the apartment never looked the same for more than two years. At least her room never changed. She’d got her father on her side and he’d convinced her mother to let her keep it the way she wanted. Her sanctuary, her father had called it.