In Cold Blonde (14 page)

Edna Kaye paced anxiously in front of room 1224.  She could hear her
dear sweet Maggie whining inside.  It had been almost fifteen minutes since
that pretty blonde woman had gone down to the desk and still no one had come to
let Maggie out of the room.  She was about to get on the elevator herself when
it dinged and a room service waiter stepped into the corridor.

Edna recognized him; he’d been the same waiter who delivered her Oolong
tea and sherry a couple of hours ago.  “Oh, thank God you’ve come,” she
said.  “Maggie is trapped in that room there, 1224.  The woman who’s
staying there went to get security but it’s taking forever and Maggie is simply
miserable.”

The room service waiter, Jorge, was actually there to pick up the room
service cart for 1224, which he saw in the hallway across from the room. 
He also saw the Do Not Disturb sign on 1224’s door.  A good way to get
fired from the Bel Air Regent was to knock on the door, or walk into a room
that had a Do Not Disturb sign.

“Please, won’t you please open the door so I can get my Maggie?”

Jorge remembered Edna and remembered her dog.  Edna had tipped him ten
dollars cash, which he liked.  The dog had nipped his ankle, which he
didn’t.  But he could hear the dog clawing at the door.

“How long ago did she leave?” Jorge asked.  Though born in Mexico,
he was raised in Fresno and spoke with no accent.  He was a senior at
UCLA, on scholarship, and desperately needed this job to make ends meet.

“At least fifteen minutes.  Does it usually take that long for
security to respond?  What if someone was in real trouble?  Please,
can’t you help me?”

Actually, security usually responded very quickly but they must have
their hands full tonight, he thought.  He had an electronic pass card, of
course; he was always going into guest rooms to retrieve trays and carts. 
And who could he possibly disturb by opening the door now?  That dog was
making so much noise, that if there was a guest inside, he’d have to be awake.

Still, you never knew.  He looked at Edna, saw the desperation on
her face and made a decision.  He took out his pass card, slid it in the
door and slowly pushed. 

The door was only open six or seven inches when Maggie shot out of there
like a cannon ball and leapt into Edna’s outstretched arms.  “Oh, my poor
baby, it’s okay, momma’s here.”

The door to 1224 was barely open and Jorge couldn’t see inside.  He
thought about walking in and checking it out, but the Do Not Disturb sign
haunted him and since the dog was freed, he saw no reason.  Jorge let go
of the door and it hissed shut.

 Alice’s bloody secret was safe, for now. 

Alice didn’t know that, of course.  She was back in her apartment
about five miles from the Bel Air Regent.  She liked to think in the
shower.  And that’s what she was doing now; Alice was thinking about the rape. 
Or more precisely, what happened after the rape.

As she lay in bed that night eleven years ago, hurting inside and out,
she tried to figure out exactly what had happened.  She must have been
drugged, she hadn’t drunk that much.  And it hit her so fast.  It had
to be a Roofie.  She’d heard about the date rape drug on TV and in Human
Sexuality class.  Mrs. Brillstein warned about never taking a drink at a party
unless you made it yourself.  But who expects your own classmates to drug
you?

She knew she should go to the police.  Make those bastards pay for
what they’d done to her.  She just wished she’d known what exactly they
had done to her.  She had no semen in her vagina, but she had been raped,
she knew that.  So they must’ve worn condoms.  And though she’d never
had anal sex before, she could tell that she had now. 

Mrs. Brillstein had been very clear what a woman should do if she was
ever raped.  Get to a hospital emergency room.  Don’t bathe or change
your clothes.  Once there, call the police.  Then they’d check you
for injuries, put together a rape kit and collect evidence they could use in
court.

But Alice had already showered.  It’s the first thing she did when
she got home.  Stood under the shower and wept.  She felt so guilty
about what had happened.  She actually thought it was her fault.

The truth is, if Adam had said he wanted to have sex with her, she would
have said yes.  And if Adam said he also wanted her to have sex with his
friends, the answer, pathetically, would probably have been yes.  She’d
have done whatever Adam asked her.

And she’d actually had sex with more than one boy at a time once before, with
Tommy Chapman and his friend David.  She’d slept with Tommy a few times
and did the twosome on a dare.  It was kind of fun at the time in a porn-star-wannabe,
slightly perverted, sort of way.  But she’d felt cheap and used the next
day and hadn’t done it again.

Lying in bed that night eleven years ago, Alice was ashamed of
herself.  She knew deep down that she’d been using sex to be more popular. 
And she hated that about herself.  She wished she could just be satisfied
at being a brainiac and not care what others thought about
her.    But she couldn’t. 

And deep down, in that moral, guilt-ridden consciousness that we’re
either born with or our parents poison us with, she felt that being drugged and
raped was God’s way of punishing her for being a slut. 

So as she lay in bed, she decided not to go to the hospital.  Not to
go to the cops.  Just to go to school and act as if nothing had
happened.   And in that twisted, adolescent way of thinking, she
actually decided that if she said nothing, showed up at school as if nothing
had happened, Adam might be so impressed he would begin to respect her. 
Maybe even like her.

She had a class with Adam first period, English.  Alice got to
school earlier, took her seat and waited.  A few seconds after the bell Adam
hurried in, he looked ragged, hung over.  Good, Alice thought, I’m not the
only one in pain. 

His eyes immediately went to Alice; he seemed surprised she was in class,
and then he quickly looked away, embarrassed, Alice thought, guilty. 

She wanted to catch up to him after class, tell him it was okay, she
wasn’t going to say anything, but he hurried out the door as soon as the bell
rang.  She got a couple of glimpses of Blake and Colin during the day as
they were changing classes but they ignored her. 

The final bell rang and everyone went about business as usual. 
Alice felt a great sense of relief.  She was terrified the boys would tell
their friends a sanitized version of what they’d done last night and she’d be
besieged by snide looks, whispers and ridicule.  But as she walked home,
alone as usual, everyone ignored her, as usual.

Everything changed the next morning.  When she got to school she
could almost feel it in the air. 

A buzz. 

About her. 

Boys were looking at her, whispering, smirking.  Girls were staring
with a mix of disgust and pity. 

They know, she thought.  Adam, Blake and Colin had told
everyone.  But no, it was even worse.  Lizzy Grinaldi, a fuzzy-haired
member of the nerd herd, and the closest thing to a friend Alice had, grabbed
her in the hallway and pulled her into an empty classroom.

“How could you?” she said. 

“How could I what?  What have you heard?”

“You mean, what have you
seen
, don’t you?” she said, showing Alice
her cell phone.  There was a picture on the screen of Alice, naked, spread-eagle
on the pool table.  She hit a button, a new shot, this time of Alice with
a penis in her mouth.  Then a shot of Alice making love with a man. 
The image only showed the man’s butt, so there was no telling who it was. 
And a final shot of Alice being penetrated by a pool cue.

“Oh, my God,” Alice mumbled.  “Where did you get these?”

“They were emailed to a few guys last night who turned around and emailed
them to all their friends who emailed them to their friends.  It’s gone
totally viral, Alice. Everyone has seen them, and there are even rumors of a video. 
What were you thinking?”

“I was drugged, Lizzy.  Raped.  I don’t remember any of this.”

“Did you go to the police?”

“No.”

Lizzy was shocked.  “Why not?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” she said, fighting back tears.  Then
Alice ran out of the classroom. 

Lizzy chased her, calling out, “Who did this to you?”

Alice ignored her, racing past startled students out of the school, all
the way home.

But a tsunami built in her wake.  Lizzy told her friends that Alice
was drugged and raped and they told their friends and by lunch Blake, Colin and
Adam heard.  Colin was afraid Alice might go the police so he called his
dad who called his lawyer, Zachary Stone.

Meanwhile, Alice told her mother what happened when she got home from
school.  Her mother had called her father at work at Knotts Berry Farm,
who listened, furious, to the story and promised they’d talk about it and
decide what to do when he got home.

And that’s what they were preparing to do that night when the doorbell
rang.  Zachary Stone was at the door and needed to speak to them
urgently.   Once he determined that they hadn’t yet contacted the
police, he launched into his pitch.  The parents of the boys involved are
so sorry for what happened to Alice.  They would like the ability to
punish the boys themselves without calling in the authorities and were offering
a five-hundred-thousand-dollar settlement fee in return for the Waterman
family’s cooperation.

“A half a million dollars could make a lot of dreams come true,” Stone
said.  “You’d be able to pay for Alice’s college education and still have
plenty of money left to buy a new car, put an addition onto the house or take a
family vacation to anywhere in the world.”

Alice’s Mom exploded.  “My daughter is not a whore who can be bought
for half a million dollars!”

“All right then,” Stone said calmly.  “Go to the police and let’s
take the case to court.  But I should warn you, there is a very good
chance that because of your daughter’s sexual history, the boys will be
acquitted while your daughter’s reputation will suffer irreparable harm.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Cliff, Alice’s father, demanded.

Alice had told her parents about the rape at Colin Wood’s house, but her
parents had no idea that she was sexually active.  In fact, she’d given
them every reason to believe she was still a virgin.  Her heart sank as Stone
turned to her and asked, “Do you want to tell them or should I?”

“Tell us what?” her mother asked.

So Alice told them.  Told them she’d been having sex since sophomore
year with a number of boys.  And that even before then, she’d been with
boys in others ways.

Her father turned beet red listening to her.  He finally held out a
hand, saying, “Stop.”  He turned to his wife.  “Did you know all
this?”

Alice’s horrified mother said, “No.”

“But a lot of kids at school know it, Mr. Waterman,” Stone said. 
“And if we go to court, the whole world will know.  Your daughter may
claim she was raped and drugged but the boys say she came willingly, drank too
much on her own volition and wanted to have sex with them.”

“That’s a lie,” a mortified Alice said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“And with her sexual history,” Stone went on, “What jury is going to
disagree?”

Alice’s Mom and Dad exchanged a defeated look.

“But we can avoid the legal circus.  The families are very sorry for
what happened, and like I said, are willing to pay five hundred thousand
dollars to make the matter disappear.”

Alice was about to say
no, I’m going to the police
when her father
said, “Make it a million.  Make it a million dollars and we won’t file
charges.”

A shocked Alice looked on as Stone took out his cell phone, made a brief
phone call.  She tried to catch her father’s eye, but he was pointedly
looking away from her. 

“Deal,” Stone said.

But no one was happy in the Waterman household.  Alice’s father took
her promiscuity as a betrayal and shunned her.  Alice’s mother was ashamed
of her and worse, knew that all the other mothers would badger her about her
slutty daughter.  She started sniping at Alice, relentlessly criticizing
her.

At school, it was worse.  Everyone knew her parents got a huge cash settlement. 
Some kids thought Alice’s parents sold her out.  Others thought the boys
should never have paid a cent.   She was mocked, the butt of jokes,
ostracized.

Her first suicide attempt was three days later.  

Alice turned off the water, grabbed a towel and dried herself off. 
She had her TV tuned to NBC.  It was 11:00 p.m. and the newscaster led
with the day’s top local stories: a fire in Culver City, a metro bus collision
in Van Nuys, and a robbery in a Denny’s restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard. 
Nothing about a body found at the Bel Air Regent.  So far, so good.

She slipped into a worn Angels tee shirt and walked into the living
room/dining room/kitchen/bedroom.  She picked up the red magic marker and
stared at the picture of Adam Devlin.  “Sorry, baby.”  She drew a
circle and a slash through his face.