Object of Desire (28 page)

The day was bright, with an unbroken blue sky. On either side of us, rolling green hills stretched for miles. But I couldn't see where we were going. My face remained pressed into Lenny's back. I could tell when we got off the highway, however, since Lenny took a hard left and the entire bike leaned on its side. I was terrified that we'd fall over and go spinning across the road, so I instinctively tried to counter Lenny's weight with my own, leaning to the right. “Just hold on to me, kid,” Lenny shouted over his shoulder. “Don't move around.” I did what he said, gripping him as fiercely as I could, my eyes once again closed against his back.

Then finally we started slowing down. I opened my eyes and looked up. We were on a road that led through some deep green woods. Warren and Mom were ahead of us. We followed them down a bumpy dirt road. The bikers had to go real slow since there were so many ruts. Clouds of chalky dust were stirred up as we went along. My eyes watered, and I started to cough.

Up ahead there was a small house made out of cement blocks. Several motorcycles were parked out front. Four Dobermans came bounding toward us, barking furiously. Warren slowed his bike to a stop and called out to the dogs, who seemed to know him. They ceased barking and gathered around his bike.

Lenny stopped a few feet away. “Don't let the dogs scare you, buckaroo,” he said. “They're not as mean as they sound.”

I was immediately embarrassed by the fact that my arms were still around him. The break of my embrace was jarring. I didn't want to look at him. I kept my eyes lowered as I slipped off the helmet.

The Dobermans were growling as we approached. “Hey, King,” Lenny called. “How's it going, King?”

The lead dog sniffed at him but growled at me.

“He's okay, King,” Lenny said. “He's okay.”

Out beyond the house, I spied the carcasses of old cars, their engines gutted. Overhead the trees were so thick, only scattered patches of sun managed to break through. The ground was covered with ferns and jack-in-the-pulpits and lilies of the valley, but the smell of the place was unlike any woods I'd been in before. Everywhere was the aroma of motor oil.

Walking up to the house, Warren called through the windows, announcing our arrival. There was no response. Warren gestured for us to follow him. Mom told me to wait outside, but I ignored her again, keeping close behind her.

The interior of the house smelled of motor oil, too, but mingled with the smells of cigarette smoke and wet dog. Through a filthy kitchen, we filed past a sink loaded with dirty dishes. Beer cans were stacked high on the counter. Off to our right was a small living room, where a gray-haired man sat in a large recliner, watching television. His back was to us. The rabbit ears on the set were twisted oddly, and the picture on the tube was all snowy. Some soap opera. I recognized Susan Lucci and knew it was
All My Children.

“Rub,” Warren called. “This is Peg, the lady I've been telling you about.”

We came around in front of his chair. I almost gasped out loud. The Rubberman was unquestionably the ugliest man I had ever seen. His eyes were crooked, one pushed upward by an enormous scar that sliced through the right side of his face. His nose had been broken so many times that it looked as if it had been removed and pasted back on. He had no teeth, and the corners of his mouth were distended by more scars that ran across his cheeks. I knew immediately what had happened. Someone had used a knife to cut a hideous smile into his face, like the Joker in
Batman
. His body was misshapen as well, with one shoulder higher than the other, scrawny bones jutting out of his white tank top. His shriveled arms and sunken chest were covered with a mosaic of blue and red tattoos.

The Rubberman did not move his eyes from his soap opera. He just reached over to the table at his side and lifted a can of beer to his lips.

Mom spoke up. “We're not the heat. I can assure you of that.”

I cringed. I wished she would stop saying “the heat.”

“Please, sir,” Mom said, “if you can help me find my daughter, I am prepared to be very generous.”

He still said nothing, keeping his deformed eyes riveted on the TV. I glanced over. Susan Lucci as Erica Kane was arguing with Tom Cudahy. Not until the scene faded to a commercial did the Rubberman finally turn his attention to us.

“How generous?” he asked in a low voice.

“Extremely,” Mom said, and she opened her purse. She withdrew a thick envelope, which I figured to be stuffed with cash. It was even thicker than the envelope she'd handed to Warren. So much money being thrown around when we hardly had any.

The Rubberman took the envelope, peered briefly inside, then placed it on the table.

Warren stepped up. “Her daughter's the bitch that Bruno's taken on,” he said, oblivious to any disrespect he might be showing. “We've all seen her.”

“Lots of bitches look alike,” the Rubberman mumbled.

“
Please,
” Mom said. “Please, sir. I need you to help us find this Bruno.”

“He's like a son to me,” the old biker said, not looking at her. He was lighting a cigarette, taking a long drag. “Why should I help you take away his bitch?”

“That bitch, as you call her, is my little girl!” Mom cried.

My heart cracked in two. Suddenly the outrageousness of our situation overwhelmed me. Here we were, in the middle of the woods, and Mom was handing over what was probably the last of the money we'd raised to some filthy derelict and actually calling him sir. Peggy Fortunato was a proud woman. I'd seen the way she ran the church bazaars held by the Rosary Altar Society, clapping her hands and directing her ladies on how to best hang the crepe paper and set up the microphones. This was a woman who had once taken pride in her appearance, getting her hair done every Saturday, and in her spotlessly clean house, which had always smelled of Lemon Pledge. Not anymore. The visits to the hairdresser had stopped, and the dust was half an inch thick on the end tables in our living room. And now here was Peggy Fortunato, groveling in front of a man who didn't even have the courtesy to shake her hand or look her in the eye.

“Bruno's in New York,” the Rubberman said, seemingly unmoved by Mom's outburst.

“Where in New York?” Mom asked.

“I think the city.”

“Will you talk to him for us?”

“I have no phone here. How can I reach him?”

“When's he next due for a visit?” Warren asked.

The Rubberman shushed him. The commercial was over.
All My Children
was back on. Erica and Tom were still arguing.

“No!” I said, surprising myself with my suddenness. I reached over and switched off the TV. “Talk to my mother about finding my sister, or we take the money back!”

“Danny!” Mom shouted.

“Little boy,” Warren growled, “you shouldn'ta done that.”

I saw Lenny's eyebrows rise in disbelief.

The Rubberman had me fixed in his crooked gaze. “You put that television back on now,” he said in a low, threatening voice.

“Okay,” I said, starting to tremble, “but please, you gotta help us.”

“I'll help you,” he said impatiently. “Now put the fucking television back on.”

I obeyed. The Rubberman watched for a few minutes without saying anything. We were all quiet, waiting.

“All right,” he said finally, not waiting for a commercial this time. “Bruno is due up to see me this week. I'll find out what I can about his bitch.”

“Here's Becky's picture,” Mom said, handing him a photograph she'd removed from the family album. He didn't take it from her, so she placed it on the table beside him, next to his beer. The Rubberman gave the photo a sidelong glance.

“Looks like her,” he said. “But I can't be sure.”

“She has a birthmark that resembles a crescent moon on the inside of her upper arm,” Mom said. “It looks like mine. See?”

She pulled up her sleeve to show it. The Rubberman barely glanced over.

“You'll be able to see the birthmark if she raises her arms and she's wearing a sleeveless shirt,” Mom said.

“She may be wearing less than that,” the Rubberman told her cruelly.

I wanted to punch him. I saw the pained look that crossed Mom's face. No doubt Bruno lived in a hovel as filthy as the Rubberman's. Looking around, I realized that if Becky was with Bruno, this was the kind of life she was now living. The little girl who less than a year ago was still watching Saturday morning cartoons with me was now living as a biker's bitch. It seemed too outrageous to be real. But maybe it was.

Yet even as the Rubberman waved us away, agreeing to contact Warren through some bar they both patronized, I was filled with doubt. The story Warren's girlfriend Lee Ann had told, about falling in with Bruno and being lured into his world, just didn't seem to fit for my sister. Never once had Becky exhibited the slightest interest in bikers. She didn't hang out with a rough crowd. She was a girl who wanted to be an artist, who had stood in our backyard at her easel, painting houses and sunsets and apple trees. She had a boyfriend she was crazy about, covering her notebooks with squiggly letters that spelled out “Chipper.” If she was with Bruno now, she was being held against her will; that was the only way to understand it.

Maybe the Stockholm syndrome explained why she had never tried to contact us. But how had Bruno gotten her? Had he just snatched her off the street? Warren said that sometimes happened. But it had been the middle of the day! Sometime after noon, probably while she was walking back from the pond. It wasn't a dangerous walk. Becky would have walked through the woods and then along a quiet suburban street. It was a route both Becky and I and lots of other kids had walked many times. How had Bruno got her? Had he just pulled up alongside her and grabbed her? She would have screamed. The houses were dense along that street. Somebody would have seen or heard. But in none of the hundreds of leads had there been any such description. It just didn't make any sense to me.

Straddling Lenny's bike yet again, slipping on the helmet and wrapping my arms once more around his big torso, I couldn't shake my doubts. This was all too surreal. I thought of the envelope of money sitting on the Rubberman's table, and in my mind, I heard the arguments between Mom and Dad over the bills that were going unpaid. Lenny revved his engine. Carefully, we took off down the dirt road. I knew my doubts merely echoed the arguments of the police, who had told Mom that they doubted Becky had been kidnapped by bikers. For a while, I'd been swayed by Mom's utter confidence in the theory, but now, coming here, riding around on the back of a motorcycle, everything just seemed far too absurd to be real. This wasn't my life. It was somebody else's.

Troy was waiting for us at the rest stop. I slid off Lenny's bike and removed the helmet from my head, handing it to him. “Thanks for taking me,” I said.

“Hey, buckaroo,” Lenny said. “You showed guts, standing up to the Rubberman.”

I shrugged. “He's just an old, skinny guy.”

“He's killed men with his bare hands.”

That scared me. But I was determined not to show it.

“You're okay, kid,” Lenny said and tousled my hair.

I watched him walk away. I kind of liked the fact that the smell of his leather seemed to cling to me.

Mom was conferring with Warren. From behind me, I heard Troy calling.

“Danny, what happened?”

I approached the car. “Nothing much. Some freak in the woods said he'd try to help us find Becky.”

“I was worried about you,” Troy said.

I looked at his face peering up at me from the car window. A couple of shiny red zits had broken out on his chin. My face was reflected in his tinted aviator glasses.

“Well, you didn't need to be,” I said harshly. “I was with Lenny. He's cool.”

Chipper would have liked Lenny, I thought. I couldn't wait to tell Chipper all about the ride on the motorcycle, about the Dobermans, about how I'd turned the TV off on the Rubberman. Chipper would love hearing that.

But to Troy I gave no such information. We were utterly silent driving home. When we pulled into our driveway, Mom thanked Troy for the ride and told him never to drive again until he got his license. She'd square it with his father, she said, but Troy said again not to worry about it. His father didn't care what he did.

“You wanta hang out tomorrow?” Troy asked as I got out of the car. Mom had already rushed up the driveway to tell Flo Armstrong she could go home.

“I can't,” I said. “Chipper and I are hanging out.”

“Oh.”

I didn't say any more to him. I was worried Chipper was watching from his window across the street, and I didn't want him to see me with Troy. I slammed the car door and headed up the driveway. Troy sat there for a few moments. I could feel his eyes on the back of my head, burning me like laser beams. Then he backed the car out and sped off down the street.

In my room, I pulled my Beautiful Men scrapbook out of my drawer and paged through the photos. The trip to see the Rubberman had disturbed me. I felt anxious and dirty. Looking through my scrapbook, I found some small comfort in the way John Travolta's cheeks dimpled when he smiled.

“S
o what makes you think you're in love with him?”

Randall was playing devil's advocate. I was backstage, peeling off my jeans and strapping on my yellow thong. Aretha Franklin was pumping through the speakers.
We goin' ridin' on the freeway of love in my pink Cadillac
….

“Because when I'm away from him,” I said, “I just can't wait to get back to him.” I was adjusting my cock and balls in the pouch. “And because he makes me laugh. And because he's the sweetest, nicest, most considerate man I've ever met.” I looked at my image in the mirror, buck naked under the strobe lights. “And he wants me to quit this.”

Randall took a sip of his sloe gin fizz. “Really? What will you do for money?”

I squirted some gel into my hands and rubbed it into my hair. “Maybe get serious about acting. It's time, don't you think? Stripping has been a huge distraction.”

“In other words, he said he'd support you.” Randall made a face. “He'll be your sugar daddy. Okay,
now
I understand the attraction.”

“You are being
such
a bitch.” I rinsed my hands off in the sink. “Frank is no sugar daddy. He is not rich by any means. He's just a doll. You'll see. He'll be here tonight, and I want you to meet him.”

“Guess I just didn't see you ending up with a schoolteacher.” Randall sighed and took another sip of his drink. “That seems more
my
league.”

It was then that I understood Randall's reaction to my announcement that Frank and I were moving in together. Randall had always been more serious than I was, dating guys he thought would make good husbands. I was just turning tricks. No doubt he'd expected to land a steady, reliable boyfriend long before I did, but all he'd managed was a string of duds. I suspected he'd begun to worry, at the ripe old age of twenty-two, that he'd never find someone. That was certainly in character for Randall.

“Hey, Danny,” Benny called, peeking his head around the door. “You're on in five minutes. Carlos is exhausted.”

“I'm all set,” I told him.

“I just worry,” Randall said, once Benny had closed the door, “that in a few years the age difference will really start to matter.”

I made a face. “You're crazy. He's in perfect shape. Better shape than I am. He doesn't look his age at all.”

“But he's
thirty-five.
”

“So?”

“Danny, that's
fourteen
years older than you are. When you're thirty, he'll be forty-four.”

“Big deal.”

“And when you're forty, he'll be—”

“Randall!” I grabbed his ears. “I know how to add! Besides, that's almost two decades from now! We haven't even moved in together yet.”

He smiled. “Sorry. Just wanted you to think it through.”

“I have.” I took one last glance in the mirror. “Frank is the first thing I think of in the morning and the last thing I think of before I fall asleep.”

“Okay, so you're in love,” Randall said. “But is he in love with you in the same way?”

I was glad I didn't have to answer the question. Benny came barging through the door at that moment. “Okay, Danny, you're on!”

I hurried out front and hopped up onto my box. Randall followed, leaning against the bar and watching me as he sipped his drink. Chaka Khan was playing.
Baby, baby, when I look at you, I get a warm feeling inside.
I began to swing my hips to the music. Men gathered around, waving their tens and twenties.
I feel for you. I think I love you….

I spotted Frank coming into the bar and saw right away that Gregory Montague, in sweater vest and oxford shirt, was with him. He was smiling his toothy Katharine Hepburn smile, glancing around the bar, careful not to look at me. That took some effort, since I was in the middle of everything, up on a box, with a spotlight shining on me. But Frank made eye contact immediately. His face creased into a wide smile, which I didn't return right away. Why had he brought that man with him? I had no desire to ever see Gregory Montague again after what had happened at his house.

I stopped dancing. I just stood there, shifting my weight from foot to foot. I heard a hiss from below. “What's the matter with you?” It was Edgar, standing behind me. “You can't be tired already. You just got up there.”

“Sorry,” I said and began dancing again.

Edgar gestured for me to lean down. “You need a little pick-me-up?” he whispered in my ear, his breath stinking of tobacco and gin.

Right about then, a line of coke would have been absolutely fantastic. But I didn't want to do it with Frank around. And I also knew that Edgar never offered any blow without a price. “What do I have to do for it?” I asked.

“See that guy who just came in? The one in the sweater vest?”

I looked from him over to Gregory.

“Yeah,” I said.

“He wants you. Came in here a couple days ago asking about you.”

I laughed, straightening up and continuing to dance. “No kidding,” I said.

“Yeah. He'll pay us well.”

“Oh, I'm sure he would,” I said. “But no sale.”

“Danny, don't be a prick.”

“Fuck off,” I told him. “I gotta dance.”

What an asshole Gregory Montague was. So I was still just a whore to him. I knew that Frank had told him that we were dating. But obviously, Gregory didn't care. Or maybe he cared too much. Maybe there really
were
feelings still lingering between him and Frank. Maybe Gregory was jealous. Maybe he was trying to break us up. Or maybe he was testing me to see if I was good enough for Frank.

I watched them. Frank had bought a beer for himself and a cocktail for Gregory. They leaned up against the wall, in exactly the place I had first noticed Frank months before. Frank gave me a little wave. I finally acknowledged him with a smile. Gregory still didn't look over at me. He was clearly waiting to see what message he'd get back from Edgar.

I began bouncing in place, catching the rhythm of the music.
One night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster. The bars are temples but the pearls ain't free.

“Come on, baby, show me the family jewels,” one old man, with curly dyed black hair, called. He was standing right in front of me, his head level with my stomach. He flashed a twenty at me and licked his dry, chapped lips.

I peeled down the thong just enough to expose my pubes and offer him a glimpse of my cock tucked inside. I didn't often do that; he might have been a cop, waiting to charge Edgar with illegal nudity. But he was just a horny old geezer, and for the peek at my pubes, he tucked the twenty into my pouch, copping a little feel as he did so.

I looked up. For the first time, Gregory was watching me directly. He had seen the whole little interaction.

I felt dirty. His eyes appraised me, glassy and hard. A twist of a smile played with the corners of his lips. My face burned. I couldn't bring myself to look at Frank.

Why did it matter? Stripping was what I did. This was who I was. A stripper in a bar who showed his cock and balls for tips. And sometimes I went home with men who paid me money to have sex with them.
This was who I was.
Gregory knew this. Frank knew this. It was no secret.

But suddenly I stopped dancing again. Murray Head went on without me.
One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble. Not much between despair and ecstasy…

It was strange. It had been a full year now that I'd been dancing at the club, and not once in all that time had I thought about the place I went to with my mother when I was fifteen. But standing now on my box, with Frank and Gregory watching me, I suddenly remembered that place. It was a stripper bar, much like this one, except it was grimier. And the dancers weren't boys; they were girls. And the men watching them weren't as lively as the men here, but rather sullen, hostile, and hunched over. Mom and I were following a lead the Rubberman had given us. Becky, he'd said, might be dancing there, using the name Heather. The place was called Les Chats, and it was up in Yonkers, New York, just off the Saw Mill River Parkway.

Troy drove us, as he usually did in those days. It took us about three hours to get there, because we got lost and ended up in New Jersey before winding our way back. The building was a plain concrete rectangle, with a giant neon blue electric sign that flashed
XXX
. No longer did Mom make any pretense of trying to shield me, or even Troy; we just walked into the place behind her, all of us nearly knocked over by the smell of stale beer and piss. On the stage, three topless girls danced, wearing fringed boots and thongs—not so different from the thong I was wearing now. Two of the girls were obviously not Becky. They were short and plump and far too old. But the third might have been—if Becky had dyed her hair blond and gotten a tattoo of a leaping tiger on her thigh. The men hunched over their beers turned to look at us as we came in. We were hardly the type of clientele they were used to. We gathered around the girl who might have been Becky and looked up at her closely. She ignored us and just kept on dancing. My mother didn't seem to care that Troy and I were gazing up at this naked girl. Suddenly Mom just broke down in tears, big, heaving sobs, her breasts rising and falling. The girl wasn't Becky. But she might have been. Mom was crying out of both relief and disappointment. The men looked at us strangely. The bartender came over to us and asked us to leave.

“She's in a place like this,” Mom said when we returned to the car. “She's taking her clothes off in front of men like those inside.” She heaved deeply with her sobs, so deeply that I had to grip her arm to keep her from losing her balance and falling down. “My baby. In a place like this. Men looking at her body. Touching her body. Her little body, which I once diapered…” She dissolved into sobs in my arms. I held her, stroking her hair.

“Mom,” I said. “I will go into every bar in every state and look for Becky. Please don't cry.”

She looked up at me with bloodshot, swollen eyes. “My poor little Danny. My poor little boy. What have our lives become?”

It was the first time she had ever voiced such sadness, such regret. I continued to stroke her hair as if she were a little girl. If I could have, I would have held her forever. I loved her that much.

And now I never spoke to her. Now I kept her far, far down in my memory. When she did occasionally surface in my thoughts, I became quite adept at pushing her away.

And now here I was, taking my clothes off in a place not so different from Les Chats, allowing men to look at my body, touch my body, the same little body my mother once had diapered…

The same life she had so despaired of that day in Yonkers.

“Hey, sugar meat,” the old man was saying to me, waving another twenty. “Flash me those family jewels again.” He licked his lips like a lizard.

I couldn't. My eyes moved from him to Frank to Gregory. Gregory was grinning.

I hopped off my box and ran backstage.

Edgar was right on my heels. “What the fuck you doing? You've still got fifteen minutes out there.”

I pulled off my thong and stood stark naked in front of him. “Fuck you,” I said. “I'm done.”

“You little bitch. You can't walk out on me. You owe me money!”

“Fuck you I do.”

Edgar got up into my face, his drawn yellow skin stretched tightly over his wasting muscles, his cheekbones sticking out like knobs. “I've been keeping track. The last four guys I fixed you up with. You didn't give me my share.”

“Fuck you,” I said again. I could feel my face getting hot.

“You little bitch!” Edgar shouted again and raised his hand to strike me.

And just like in the movies, Frank was behind him to catch it.

“Don't even think about hitting him, you asshole,” Frank growled, shoving Edgar away so hard that he fell on the floor. He turned to look at me. “You okay, Danny?”

“I'm quitting,” I told him. I was still naked.

“Good,” Frank said.

Edgar was getting to his feet. “You walk out of here, Danny, and don't expect to come groveling back to me.”

Frank's eyes were burning. “Don't worry. He never will. He won't need to.”

I just stood there, looking at my savior.

“Come on, baby,” Frank said. “Get dressed and let's get out of here.”

“I love you, Frank,” I said in a little voice.

He pulled me close to him, then let me go.

Randall had asked me if Frank was in love with me in the same way I was in love with him. It didn't matter. All that mattered was that I loved him. And he was going to take care of me. That was enough.

I got dressed. I didn't tell Frank what Gregory Montague had tried. To do so would have spoiled the moment. And that, too, didn't matter. Not anymore. Frank might carry the torch for him, but it was
me
he had chosen. Me he had just rescued from a life that was destroying me, a little bit more each day. That was all that mattered.

In two months, Edgar was dead from AIDS. The bar closed down. A year later it reopened under new management. Sometimes Frank and I would go in and watch the dancers there. I looked around the place but didn't recognize it. It was almost as if I'd never been there at all.