Sugar (11 page)

Stepping off the elevator into the hallway, she saw that Liz’s apartment door was ajar. Judging from the high-volume chatter filtering out into the hallway, FATE was in full force. Entering, she confirmed that everyone had arrived. Congregated in the small living room, gabbing over mugs of coffee and assorted cookies, they looked like any meetup group might. Liz moved about carrying her coffee pot, topping off cups and pausing to compliment a new scarf or to ask after a boyfriend. Seeing her friend so smiling and at ease, Sarah was glad she’d set aside her reservations and come.

Liz beckoned her over. Addressing the room at large, she said, “Now that Sarah’s back, let’s get started.”

Watching Liz in action as the informal discussion leader, Sarah privately considered that her friend had missed her true calling: counseling. Then again, given the fluid job market, it was never too late for a second or even a third career. She made a mental note to mention that thought once Liz came through her treatments—once not
if
.

“Hey, gorgeous, come join the party,” Patrick called out, waiving her over with a half eaten Oreo.

A gay, fortyish former prostitute now working as a window dresser for Ralph Lauren, Patrick was of medium height and build, with shoulder-length, dark-blond hair, mischievous blue eyes, and a spa tan worthy of Southern California. He and Sarah had hit it off from her first session.

His polar opposite was Brian, a former videographer for a once popular lesbian porn site. Second to watching women fuck, Brian loved cars. These days he worked as a mechanic at one of the West Side garages. Single-word responses—thanks, cool, great, okay, hi, and bye—comprised his social vocabulary. Wiry and dark, he sat quietly with his hands laced around a coffee mug, his lean body tilted forward, as if listening avidly. No one ever pressed him for more. FATE was first and foremost about feeling safe, and for those who’d been involved in AE, feeling safe meant not feeling judged.

“Lovely to see you again, Sarah,” said Honey, looking over her shoulder from her perch on Liz’s salvaged, orange-striped sofa.

“You too, Honey.” She poured herself a coffee and settled into the circa 1950 lounger covered in faded floral fabric. “Great suit,” she added, gesturing to the other woman’s smart, hot-pink silk ensemble. “Is it vintage?”

“Vintage Chanel,” Honey admitted with obvious pride, smoothing a gloved hand over the tight pencil skirt.

The twenty-something brunette bore more than a passing resemblance to the late Audrey Hepburn, an image she cultivated with chic, short bangs and piled-high hair, liquid-black eyeliner, and a carefully modulated accent that bordered on British. Sarah seriously doubted Honey was her real name anymore than Sugar was hers. Then again, in an age where celebrities were known to christen their kids after fruit—Apple, seriously!—she couldn’t one hundred percent say. Like her screen idol, Honey was reed slender with big brown eyes, a pert nose, and a pearlescent complexion. Her standout feature was her “upside down” mouth, the top lip extending beyond the bottom. It was a mouth made for cock sucking, to put it crudely, which would have given Honey a definite edge in her former profession as an escort to hedge fund managers and visiting Saudi sheiks. Boat neck dresses, broad-brimmed hats banded with bows, and elbow-length gloves were her fashion staples. Sarah wasn’t buying that she’d left the life, at least not entirely. That Hermes scarf wasn’t bought on a stylist’s salary.

Settling onto the sofa, Liz called them all to order. “Sarah, you went last the other week, so why don’t you get us started tonight. Anything you want to bring up or get input on?”

Sarah hesitated. As nice as she found the FATE folks to be, she wasn’t a group person. She might be a former porn actress, but in her off-camera life she’d always been more of an introvert.

“No, I think I’m good,” she said quickly, perhaps too quickly.

“Are you sure?” Helping himself to another cookie, Patrick asked, “After last week, I feel like you know so much about us, but we still don’t know anything about you apart from the screen legend.”

Wow, a legend! Hearing herself so described had her feeling really flattered and kind of old. Sarah took a sip of coffee. Above the cup’s rim, she sent Liz what they’d used to call their SOS Look.

Catching the signal, Liz said, “Pat, Sarah can share when she’s ready—or not. We don’t judge here, and we don’t push.”

Chastened, Patrick nodded. “Sorry, Sarah, I get carried away sometimes.”

Feeling like a jerk, Sarah shook her head. “No, that’s okay, and you’re right. If I’m going to be here, I should participate. So, here goes . . .” Sending her gaze around the small sitting area, she said, “Hi again everyone. You all know me as Sugar, but my real name is Sarah, Sarah Halliday. I grew up in Brooklyn Heights long before it was the trendy hot ‘hood it is today. Even though I’m part Italian and Irish, I’m an only child—crazy, I know.”

“My boyfriend, Pol’s from Dublin,” Peter broke in with a grin.

Sarah acknowledged the commonality with a nod. “That’s cool. My father’s people were from Belfast, my mom’s from Sicily.”

“Do your parents live here?” Honey asked.

Sarah hesitated. “My mom passed away when I was seventeen.” Aware of Liz watching her, she avoided mentioning that it had been from breast cancer. “My dad’s a retired NYPD detective, but don’t let that freak you out. We don’t really talk all that much. Actually, we don’t talk at all.” Feeling like she’d majorly over shared, Sarah sealed her lips and sat back.

Honey’s doe eyes filled with sympathy. “I’m so sorry about your mother, Sarah. Your father must be so thrilled to have you back home.”

Sarah hesitated. “Well, actually I left him a voice mail before I left Los Angeles, which he never returned. Then again, he has a bad habit of letting his phone bills go unpaid, so it’s possible he never got it.” Her dad had a lot of bad habits, and his unpaid bills weren’t limited to the phone.

“How does he feel about your career in adult films?” Patrick asked. “Sorry, I should say
former
career,” he amended with an apologetic smile.

Sarah slanted him a look. “He’s a NYPD cop from Brooklyn, a devout Catholic, and half Irish. How do you think he feels about it?”

Rather than being cowed, Patrick chuckled. “Pol’s parents are Catholic too, and so conservative they still see Vatican II as some sort of personal betrayal, so enough said. But still, Sarah, shouldn’t you at least make sure he knows you’re back?”

No matter how well meant, unsolicited advice from virtual strangers was tough to take. Annoyed, she looked over to Liz, seeking support.

“Maybe he has a point,” Liz said, shocking her to speechlessness. “It’s something to think about anyway.”

More than anyone, as her former roommate Liz knew the hell Sarah’s father had put her through. It took effort, but Sarah screwed her jaw shut and forced a shrug. “So are pigs flying, but I’m not checking the sky for them anytime soon.”

Rather than being put off by her sarcasm, Patrick pressed forward. “Look, Sarah, I know you’re the newbie here, and other than Liz, you don’t know any of us from Adam, so here’s my deal: I spent more years than I care to count as a closeted drunk, a functional alcoholic, until one day I wasn’t even that anymore. A group of friends talked me into joining AA. It turns out drinking served a lot of needs for me, but mostly it was about numbing myself against all the anger I was afraid to let myself feel, especially against my family for not accepting me for who I am—a pretty awesome gay man.” He shot her a good-humored wink and Sarah found it impossible not to smile back. “I don’t know your dad, maybe he’s a real son-of-a-bitch, but it seems to me that you’re being back in New York is an opportunity for making amends.”

“No promises, but I’ll think about it,” Sarah said, reaching for a cookie. Hello, stress eating!

Biting into the Oreo, she made a quick mental review of the last three weeks. Committing to turn her journal into a possible book, caretaking for Liz, finding a fuck buddy, and now possibly making peace with her dad—her return to New York was shaping up to be a lot busier of a “retirement” than she’d bargained for.

S
arah and Cole spent the week working their way through her roster of film roles. Having received their respective lab results, uniformly negative for all STDs, their play began in earnest. They fucked in the back of a hired stretch limo. They fucked in the bodega where they’d first met. They fucked in the bathroom of Balthazar, not very imaginative but fun nonetheless.

So far as the fucking went, there were no rules, only hard and soft limits. Outside of sex, Cole was a consummate gentleman. He opened doors. He held out chairs and remained standing until Sarah was seated. At meals, he always served her before himself. Grudgingly she began to admit there was a lot more to him than the bored party boy she’d first met at the bodega. Like the props they used to recreate their movie fantasies, his dilettante demeanor seemed almost a prop to mask his pain.

Whatever had happened in Iraq had messed him up majorly. She wasn’t a psychologist, but even for a layperson like herself, his sudden silences, chain-smoking, and admission of insomnia pointed to at least mild PTSD. His stubborn refusal to so much as acknowledge his war hero status was laudable but frustrating.

Standing in her bathroom getting ready for their next “date,” she reminded herself that his mental health wasn’t her worry. Fucking, not talking, was the objective of their meet ups. Gliding the tube of pink lipstick across her mouth, Sarah could scarcely wait for their afternoon session to start.

The manager at Top of the Rock’s Pulse restaurant owed Cole a favor. To ensure that he and Sarah would have the privacy to play out their next film-related fantasy, Cole had secured the banquet room as if for a private midday function—
very
private. Sweetening the deal with a few hundred bucks had guaranteed him that none of the lunch staff would bother them. He had the rest of his life to eat lunch. Today he was much more interested in making a meal of Sarah.

Dressed in an overcoat, despite it being May, an Armani suit, and striped silk tie and carrying an attaché case, he stepped off onto the complex’s third floor. Striding through the sleek, maple-paneled hallway, each carefully calculated step carried him that much closer to fully hardening.

Today’s reenactment was the opening scene from
Sugar Baby
, Sarah’s—Sugar’s—breakout role. In it, a suave, domineering businessman embarked on a mutually satisfying master-slave relationship with a secretly submissive restaurant coat-check girl. Increasingly intense punishment and humiliation eventually led the pair to fall in love. The premise wasn’t all that original. The mainstream movie,
The Secretary
, was a cult classic by the time Sarah’s porno had released. The quirky 2002 romantic comedy had starred James Spader as the dominant boss and Maggie Gyllenhaal as his enthusiastically submissive secretary. Cole was a fan of the film as much for its offbeat humor as for the sexy subject matter.

To prepare for today’s Don Draper-esque role, he’d dug
Sugar Baby
out of the box of DVDs and watched it the night before. Knowing Sarah as he now did, he could appreciate how much acting had been involved. Though she sometimes enjoyed being submissive in bed, outside of sex she was the opposite of meek and mild.

By prearrangement, she waited for him inside the deserted coatcheck room. Sidling up, he saw she’d recreated her film appearance to perfection. Despite the movie being seven years old, she looked almost exactly the same. She wore her hair pulled up into a high
I Dream of Jeannie
ponytail and a demure little pastel-print dress he couldn’t wait to peel off. So far the gated door kept him from seeing her feet, but he’d bet anything she had on hot pink stilettos.

She greeted him with a tentative smile. “Good evening, sir, can I check your coat for you?”

The shelf in front of her held a tip jar with some change and a few crumpled ones. Behind her were several racked coats, including one impressively authentic floor-length faux fur. Vaguely he wondered how she’d gotten them up.

Reminding himself that wasn’t his concern, he focused back on his character. “I don’t know,
can
you?” He forced himself to stare at her coldly. Given how completely cute she looked, pulling off the iceman routine was harder than he would have thought.

“Sorry, I should have said
may
I check your coat.”

Flushing, she bit her bottom lip, her display of school-girl nervousness pitch perfect though, he suddenly recalled, the anxious habit was drawn from real life. He’d recently begun teasing her that soon she’d have no lower lip left.

“In that case, yes.” Sticking to the script, he made a show of looking around before turning back. Leaning toward her, he whispered, “In fact, you
may
perform several services for me.”

“Sir?”

She sent him an uncertain smile and peeked up at him through her artificial lashes. The modest mien conveyed the impression of a much younger woman; the girl she’d been almost a decade ago, not the sultry sexpot he knew her to be. The temporary transformation was impressive. She not only looked different. She
smelled
different, doused with some fruity, floral fragrance in place of the minty soap he’d spent the last weekend licking off her.