Butterfly (53 page)

30

He was falling in love, damn it.

He wasn’t supposed to, not with one of the members; it was against the rules. “Don’t

let yourself become emotionally involved with the club members,” the director had told

him when he had been recruited to work upstairs at Butterfly. “Keep in mind that most of

our members are married. They aren’t looking for real or permanent relationships. Some

of them might want to tell you their problems. By all means, listen, but don’t give advice,

and don’t get involved. Give them love, that’s what they’re paying for. If it will help, think

about the money you’re earning. Think about getting a good tip. It helps keep the emo-

tions at bay.”

Well, he
had
thought about the money and the tips and the occasional expensive gifts,

and it hadn’t helped. He was falling in love with one of the members and he couldn’t help

himself.

It was a gray March day, and when he arrived at Venice Beach he found deserted sand

dunes and a ferocious surf pounding the shore. Locking his car, he zipped his nylon wind-

breaker up to his neck and headed into the cold wind.

Who was she? What was her name? Where did she live?

He knew so little about her, how could he possibly be falling in love with her? Was he

really in love with her, he asked himself now as he committed himself to the salty spray of

the Pacific, or with just an illusion? Was he in fact in love with
her
or with the idea of her?

Was it the woman who had insinuated herself into his heart, or was it just a phantom, a

ghost, someone unreal, untouchable, and nonexistent except in his own imagination?

She had been on his mind so much these past few days that he was afraid it was turn-

ing into an obsession. It was getting so that he looked forward to her visits at Butterfly,

and anxiously awaited the call from the director with the familiar instructions. He was

beginning to dislike time spent with other members, time that was not with her, that

should be with her only.

And that was not why he had been hired. To love just one woman. He was expected to

love them all.

Some kids had set up a barrel and a ramp on the Speedway and were trying to break

their necks on skateboards. He paused to watch them.

And then, on the other hand, what did she feel about him? He thought he knew

women, thought he knew how to read them. Was he really seeing love in her eyes when

she lay in his arms? Was he sensing real tenderness and devotion when they made love? Or

was she merely making love to her own particular phantom and not the flesh-and-blood

man?

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Kathryn Harvey

Illusion. That was what Butterfly was. Nothing but an illusion.

But his love for her was real. He knew that. He could feel it as surely as he now felt the

biting March wind against his face. When his phone rang and it was the director asking

him to come to Butterfly, and she spoke the words he so wanted to hear—to get himself

ready for that fantasy—he felt his heart leap in a way it hadn’t in a long time. Not since a

painful episode in his past when he had decided that love was no longer written in his

stars. And yet here it was again, knocking on his door. He would enter that familiar room

and see her, and he would be consumed with joy and passion and the outrageous desire to

keep her there with him forever.

She seemed so vulnerable at times. At others, she came across as a tough lady. He did-

n’t know what she did in the real world, but he suspected she was a career woman in the

sort of profession a female might have to prove herself in. There were just a few clues here

and there, nothing to go on really.

She was such a mystery. Was that what he was in love with? A mystery? If she did one

day reveal her identity to him, if she exposed all there was to expose about herself, would

the “love” vanish? Was the very enigma that seemed to surround her the thing that kept

his love alive?

He thrust his hands into his pockets and watched the kids fly up the ramp and land

miraculously upright, the way kids and cats do.

No. He wasn’t in love with any enigmas or mysteries or phantoms. She was a flesh-

and-blood woman and even though he didn’t know her name, he knew her and that was

what he was in love with.

But the problem was, where to go from here?

The March cold got to him and made him shiver. It also made him realize he was hun-

gry. There was a hamburger stand down the Speedway, nestled in between the old syna-

gogue and a roller-skate rental place. Most places were closed at this time of year. The

elderly residents stayed indoors, the beach was left to itself. But because a few hardies did

venture down to Venice in the winter, and because someone had to take their money,

Sylvia’s Burgers was open and Sylvia was glad to see a customer. He ordered a chili cheese

dog with onions and a cup of coffee, and ate standing up at the counter, catching the

greasy drippings with inadequate little paper napkins.

Feeling a little warmer and a little fuller, he said good-bye to Sylvia and continued on

his walk.

“Our members come to Butterfly because it’s
safe,”
the director had told him. “We

promise safety from violence, from disease, and from anyone finding out who they are.

Break one of those rules, and you will answer for it.”

But that was exactly what he was thinking of doing—breaking one of those rules. He

wanted to ask her who she was.

But dare he risk it? Suppose he risked asking her and she ran from him? Suppose she

never came back to Butterfly? How would he find her, in this vast Los Angeles sprawl? He

wouldn’t have a clue about where to start looking.

He felt so helpless. Something he hadn’t felt in a long time. He wasn’t used to it; it

made him angry. As a man used to being in control of things, he resented having to wait

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229

for the phone call. It made him frustrated and perplexed. Everything seemed topsy-turvy.

Nothing was going according to set rules. She would ask for him, he would hurry to be

with her, they would spend an afternoon, an evening in perfect intimacy and lovemaking,

then she would vanish and he would be left with only a memory of what she had felt like

in his arms.

I’ll tell her I’m in love with her, he thought.

He stopped and turned to gaze out at the gray, angry ocean. A lone seagull swooped

overhead. It gave out a single cry and disappeared over the rooftops.

He suddenly saw the futility in his plan. Butterfly companions were expected to tell

the members what they wanted to hear. It was part of the fantasy. If I tell her I’m in love

with her, she’ll think it’s part of the role I’m playing, she’ll think I’m reciting a rehearsed

line.

But what if…

His gaze traveled to the pier where a few old men and some Mexican kids were hang-

ing fishing lines over the side.

What if she feels the same way about me?

His heart began to race. Was it possible? After all, she asked for him over and over

again. As far as he knew, she wasn’t seeing other companions. Could that be it? That she

was falling in love with him?

But…how to find out? How to make sure? And how to go about doing it without

risking losing her altogether?

If I’m wrong. If I reveal my feelings to her and she runs…

His shoulders slumped slightly. There was no safe solution to the problem. He saw

that now in the metallic ocean and fine sand skimming over the beach. Dark clouds were

rolling down from Santa Monica. The kids were dismantling their launching pad and

Sylvia was boarding up her burger stand. And he realized that he was trapped in a conun-

drum that had no exit.

All he could do, he finally conceded as he pushed into the wind back to his car, was

wait for her next phone call. And pray that there would not be a day when it would be the

last one.

31

Linda had just finished tying her black velvet mask when she heard the door handle

move.

Her heart racing, she looked in the mirror, at the room behind her.

It was all Louis XVI confection, a lady’s boudoir lifted right out of the palace at

Versailles: small gilt chairs with satin upholstery, cabinets of polished tulipwood and

bronze fittings, a delicate writing table mounted with Sevres porcelain, a bed covered in

creamy white satin with gold tassels and fringe, its four posts ornamented with tiny gold

bellflowers, the canopy rising to an ornate gold crown guarded by winged sphinxes. There

were wine and goblets on a table, and plates of sweet breads, cheese, and fruit. The air

swirled with the fragrance of crushed roses; a harpsichord played a minuet softly, as if in

the next room.

And Linda herself—not a product of the nuclear age but a daughter of a past age of

elegance and gentility. Her hair was hidden beneath a white powdered wig, tall and fes-

tooned with strings of pearls; three carefully combed curls fell over her bare shoulder. The

dress of pale blue satin was cut daringly low, lavishly decorated with tiny embroidered

bows, and flared out over outrageously wide panniers. Around her neck she wore a white

lace choker. And beneath the dress, complicated corsets with an impossible number of

bows, each to be slowly untied in its turn.

She kept her eye on the door. No beeper was going to intrude upon tonight’s fan-

tasy—she had seen to that. Tonight was too important.

And then he came in.

He took her breath away.

His athletic figure was clothed in the finest black velvet: flared jacket with wide, gold-

trimmed cuffs, a tight-fitting black waistcoat, snug black velvet knee breeches, white

stockings and shoes with large silver buckles. At his wrists, the frilled cuffs of his white

muslin shirt; at his throat, a white lace jabot. And his hair—the beautiful black hair that

Linda so liked—was hidden now beneath a silver-white wig drawn back into a ponytail

and tied with a large black velvet bow.

He closed the door and remained standing there, looking at her. Linda kept her back

to him; their eyes met in the mirror.

Finally, after a long moment in which the two were held frozen in the perfume of

bruised roses and the melodies of Mozart, he stepped forward and offered her an extrava-

gant bow. Linda watched him as he theatrically pointed one foot forward, made a swirling

gesture with his right hand, bent elegantly at the waist, and said, “Madam, your servant.”

She smiled, turned in her seat, and held out a hand to him.

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BUTTERFLY

231

When he came and took it, bending to kiss it, for an instant their eyes met again,

framed by two black masks.

“I missed you at court today,” he said, spinning out the fantasy.

She rose and swept past him, having to turn sideways because of her wide-hipped

skirt, and went to pour sweet red wine into the silver cups. Her hands trembled slightly.

“I doubt that, monsieur,” she said. “You would have had the attention of every lady in the

palace, including the queen herself.”

When she turned to hand him the cup, she caught a fleeting look cross his face—a

dark, disturbed look, she thought. And then it was gone and he was smiling and she was

wondering if she had imagined it.

But she had seen that same look before, in each of their meetings. Did she perplex

him? No doubt she did. Linda was probably the one member of Butterfly who would

allow him to go only so far and no further.

“Even the blessed Marie Antoinette is a dull star eclipsed by the brilliance of yourself,

madam.”

He took the cup; their fingers touched. She was trying desperately to give herself up to

the fantasy. Every time she walked through Butterfly’s doors Linda tried to leave behind

reality and the world of medicine and Barry Greene and her fears. She tried to allow her-

self to become someone else, so that that someone, and not Linda Markus, could have her

sexual spirit set free. But it was almost an impossibility. One did not just shuck off eight

hours spent in surgery and then rounds on the burn wards, a meeting of the Ethics

Committee, and a half-typed article for the
Journal of the American Medical Association