The Dark End of the Street: New Stories of Sex and Crime by Today's Top Authors (13 page)

And the talk became deliberate, wretchedly obvious. They didn't introduce us, didn't break that mystical fourth wall of their profession, but instead interviewed us in tandem, asking questions the answers to which they perfectly well knew, Jessica's truths, my lies. Career, birthplace, status. The scripted-seeming pauses in these oh-so-casual twin interrogations, intervals devised to make certain the replies were sinking in, revealed the Israeli girls as aspiring directors of a one-act play, one in which Jessica Droory and I were cast both as the audience and, eventually, the star performers, even if the final act was intended to take place out of view of the directors themselves.

Their pièce de résistance, their showstopper, was a piece of timing: By slowing my haircut to a crawl, Marina managed to have us reach a conclusion at nearly the same moment. Jessica Droory was released from her chair, to pay and tip, and then delayed with chatter, a charade with which Jessica cooperated, it seemed to me. Meanwhile I was finished too, and freed to reclaim my jacket and to step to the counter to pay. They'd orchestrated it so that we might leave at the same moment, and then find one another available for conversation on the pavement, leading perhaps to coffee, an exchange of phone numbers or cards—nearly anything was possible, wasn't it?

This I wrecked deliberately, with a pantomime of my own. I keep a no-good credit card in my wallet, just for such occasions, decorated with the name I've assumed, and though I'd always previously paid the Israeli girls with cash, this was obviously the moment to employ it. Most people, I find, are plagued with shame at the refusal of a credit transaction; American class definitions are so insecure that a small plastic failure can threaten to undermine them, and in fact the tradespeople who are forced to deliver the bad news are often drawn into shame themselves. This was not my situation, obviously, but I do find such discomfort both useful and entertaining. When Larissa handed back my card with an apology, I smiled and handed it back to her and insisted she try again. Ripples of awkwardness spread through the salon, as Maja was forced to struggle to delay Jessica Droory further. Jessica Droory already had her coat on. The card failed again, of course. Larissa suggested sheepishly that I might have another one. Jessica Droory, embarrassed to be stalling, moved for the door. I asked Larissa please to call the company and inquire as to the problem, since, I insisted, the card was perfectly good. (It is astonishing, or perhaps not, how few people in her position feel able to refuse such a request.) Jessica Droory at last went through the door, smiling as bravely as she could in my direction, but there was nothing to be done. Perhaps she'd idled on the sidewalk an instant or two, but I made certain enough time passed in my dumb show with the credit card that the Israeli girls could entertain no hope whatsoever that we'd meet outside. Meanwhile, with Larissa occupied on the telephone and Maja washing the hair of Marina's next customer, an older woman (I mean, a woman my age) who'd entered in the meantime, I leaned over the appointment book. Jessica Droory's phone number was written beside her name, as was my own. I memorized it, just for sport.

When I dialed the number at nine the next evening, that was for sport as well. I sometimes think my life is nothing but sport. Likely Jessica Droory was in her robe and pajamas by then (I'd find these later, on the pegs of the bathroom door), settling in to watch
Lost,
but, supposing my guess was right, she had the self-respect not only to let her phone ring a few times but to mute the television in the background. I explained where we'd met, as swiftly and courteously as I could, then interrupted myself and asked if I'd made a mistake, and that it was too late to telephone her? An unfair question: She'd never have admitted so, and by assuring me that no apology was needed Jessica Droory eased herself past other, perfectly valid objections to what was surely a disconcerting call.

I could have made it easier on both of us, I suppose, by calling at seven instead of nine. Yet even as recently as eight o'clock I'd been deaf to the summons of my appetite, while after the passage of barely less than an hour more it had become too clarion to ignore, or even to defer to the following evening. Such is appetite. And I do like to walk a tightwire, sometimes, just seeing what people might actually balk at. They so rarely do. On that same score, who am I to say that Jessica Droory shouldn't have let me inside? I appreciated her self-possession and daring, even, in reaching for what was before her, or seemingly so. That we had in common. Beginning with the really exquisite contents of her liquor cabinet, her apartment, a parlor-level floor-through, was superbly appointed for my purposes, the high ceilings and heavy sashed curtains giving us privacy and making a nice proscenium for my foolish indulgences. Very little of her liquor had to be poured before I was able to beguile the giggling Jessica into a reenactment of “how we met”: two chairs in the center of her parlor room, in front of the large framed mirror I'd moved to the floor for this purpose. More drinks, pantomime haircuts, mock Israeli accents. How obvious those girls had been in steering us together—how poignant, really, their surrogate yearning! My hands invaded Jessica's clothes while we parsed the paltriness of the salon, judged the abjectness of the girls' makeup and dress sense, all of it giving sweet sustenance to Jessica Droory's need to believe that youthfulness, that svelte, kibbutz-firmed flesh, wasn't enough to turn the head of a man of substance, rather that style and poise and experience meant something, and that that was why I had called her telephone and arrived at her door and why she was cross-eyed drunk and half undressed in a chair, pretending to let me shampoo her while my cock pressed against her ear. We fumbled along like this until Jessica's eyelids sagged once or twice, then it was time enough. Curtain sashes more than sufficient to bind her limbs to the chair's legs. Her own shredded blouse to muffle cries. Then a search. That it was pinking shears I found was pure accident; I savor those serendipities which distinguish one adventure from another. The rest you know. You read the
Daily News,
don't you?

So it was that I had to find another salon. I'll miss Maja and Larissa and most of all Marina, and I suppose you may wonder why it was necessary to ruin a good thing. Sometimes I wonder this myself. But really, women such as these and myself were never meant for one another; this sort of vicarious transmission is the only thing possible between us. No matter how imperfect our actual encounter, a woman like Jessica Droory and I come from one world, the same world, while the girls at the salon come from entirely another. They're not, finally, my type. In truth, I'd never so much as touch a hair on their heads.

Tricks

LAURA LIPPMAN

H
E IS AWARE
of the glances they attract as they cross the lobby of the Hotel Monteleone, but doubts she even notices. She is too busy looking at him. Her gaze is like a stray hair on his cheekbone—light yet irritating, hard to brush away. He's much too handsome for her. Everyone sees it. Even she sees it. She clearly cannot believe her good luck.

She shouldn't.

He, however, is flush with luck, the luck that comes only with due diligence and hard work. You don't find a mark like this by accident. It takes weeks and, at first, moving patiently and slowly, building a rapport. It takes a little money, too, to appear as flush as he claims to be. This suit he's wearing, the Hermès tie, the Gucci loafers—those things cannot be faked. Stolen, on occasion, but never faked.

However, that's phase one. Moving on to phase two now, the honeymoon, literal and figurative, where everything will be on her. Also literally and figuratively.

They approach the registration desk and she is all fluttery, old-fashioned enough to think that the hotel cares whether they are husband and wife yet. “Darling, lots of women don't take their husbands' names,” he assured her when he told her to make the reservation. “I would,” she said. “I can't wait to take your name.”

And I can't wait to take whatever you have to give.
But there will be time enough. Time enough to settle in, to move into her house in the Pacific Palisades, the one in all the pictures she has sent him. Time, too, to persuade her to tap into the equity, which he will use for his can't-fail business venture. That part is true—it never fails, not where he's concerned. He makes a profit every time, no matter what's going on in the economy.

“Olive Dunne,” she says to the clerk in her little mouse of a voice. God, if he really had to live with that voice until death did them part, he would soon be exhausted from leaning in, the better to hear her. She's a timid one. They run to timidity, his brides, but she's especially shy, irritatingly shy. The courtship was an unusually long one, almost three months since he sent his first e-mail, and that doesn't include the start-up costs, the search process on various matchmaking sites. But once he gets her in bed, she will be his.

He hands the clerk his new credit card, the one Olive presented him with just this morning when they met face-to-face for the first time at Louis Armstrong International Airport. She was the one who offered to add him to her account after he explained how the problems in the financial markets overseas were tying up all his accounts, threatening this long-planned rendezvous. The clerk takes them in. The clerk takes
him
in—his tailored suit, the Hermès tie, the Armani sunglasses. All the real thing, purchased with his own scarce dollars, the cost of doing business; he should be able to deduct them from his income tax. Not that he pays income taxes, but why should he, when the system is rigged against the working man? And make no mistake about it, he works hard for his money. He's like a soldier, or someone on an oil rig. When he gets a gig, it's 24-7, no time off for weeks. Sometimes the highlight of his day is his morning crap, the only time he gets to be himself, by himself.

The clerk upgrades them to the Tennessee Williams suite, but it's not quite as grand as he'd hoped. Nice enough, but he's seen better. Olive, however, is overwhelmed by the smallest things—the galley kitchen, which is nothing more than a noisy minifridge and a coffeemaker, the enormous glass box of a shower stall, the fact that there's a dining room table. “It's like an apartment,” she says over and over. She flits from window to window, taking in the views of the French Quarter, exclaiming over everything.

“What do you want to do first?” she asks.

He thinks that's pretty obvious, although it's not what he
wants
to do first, but what he knows he should want to do first.

He takes her in his arms, closes his eyes, and thinks of … his mind scans several images, actresses, and models, settles on the literal girl next door, Betty. She used to anoint herself with baby oil and offer herself up to the sun, moving her ratty old lounge chair as the shadows crept over her, hour by hour. That was out in Metairie, barely ten miles from here, where he grew up. Betty was always on her back when he saw her, breasts pointing to the heavens, yet her tan was very even. She was five years older; he had no shot, the gulf between twelve and seventeen too huge. When he started out, the women were five years older, ten years older, fifteen years older. He likes older women. Olive is his first younger woman in a long time and she has a trim little figure beneath her dowdy suit. He caresses her promisingly firm little rump and thinks of Betty, wonders if Viagra is going to be added to the list of his professional expenses, but, no, thank goodness, he's going to be able—

“Not now,” she whispers, pulling away. “Not yet. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I want to wait until I'm your bride. Besides, didn't you say you wanted to call your bank, straighten out what's going on with your credit cards?”

“My bank is in London,” he says, “and that's six hours ahead. They're closed for today.”

The story, this time, is that he's a victim of identity theft and all his credit cards, even his ATM card, are “locked” until he can talk to his personal money manager. He discovered this problem when he and Olive began planning their trip a week ago, and she quickly agreed—volunteered, in fact—to add him to her credit card account, even procured an extra ATM card for him, which he used this morning to pull out the maximum amount. “Because a man needs to have cash,” she said. “Walking-around money, my daddy called it.”

Yes, indeed. A man does need money to walk around. And even more to walk out. How much will Olive be good for? Assuming she can get a second mortgage, the house in California must have at least a half million in it. He's looked up the property records and she's owned it for at least ten years.

“Do you want to walk around?” he asks her. “Go shopping? See if we can get a table at Galatoire's?”

“Could we”—she is blushing, furiously—“walk along Bourbon Street? When I was twelve, my church group came to New Orleans to compete in a chorale competition, but they kept us out near the airport, never let us get near the city proper.”

“Of course we can, baby. I'll buy you a big ol' drink, if you like, and we'll walk along Bourbon Street.”

He's no stranger to Bourbon Street. His life tricking began here, almost twenty-five years ago, and that's how he always thought of it:
tricking
. Not hustling, but engaging in a fantasy with a consenting adult, and how was that any different from someone paying money to go see a magician? Almost too good-looking as a young man, he decided early on to find out what that commodity was really worth, to test how high the sky was, what one could procure with a pretty face and a great body. Back then he had sex with men and women alike, and while he found some good sugar daddies in his salad days, he also discovered that men were a little harder to control. He lived almost six months with an older man, Jacques, in a mansion Uptown. They had an argument one night, and it had been shocking how quickly it escalated. The old queen had beat him up pretty bad—and
he
had ended up being charged with assault somehow, not that he stayed around to face the music. He had decided then and there to stick to women for business.

Besides, with women, there is the possibility of marriage in all fifty states. And with marriage, there is so much more access to whatever wealth they have, and no one in the world can call it a con, what happens between husbands and wives. Sure, some of them made him sign prenups, but prenups didn't matter when a man never bothered with the formality of divorce. He got whatever cash there was, he moved on. He's lost count of how many times he's been married by now. Twelve, thirteen? Yeah, he's pretty sure that little Olive is going to be number thirteen. And she hasn't breathed a word about wanting a prenup. She's a pliable one, a sheltered girl whose parents, before they died, had spent most of their time telling her that she had to beware fortune hunters, that no one would ever love her just for her.

The Internet was both friend and foe in his business. A few ex-wives had set up blogs, tried to spread the word about him, but his name always changed just enough so that a Google search wouldn't kick him out. A background check under his original name—that's what he really lived in fear of, but no one knows his real name or Social Security number. He barely remembers his real name or Social Security number. Besides, the gals never run that kind of background check. They don't want to. They buy into the fantasy willingly. They know themselves, what their prospects really are. They don't want to question too closely why this handsome, rich man is on an Internet dating site, much less why he is interested in them, writing them flowery e-mails.

Relatives, however, can be skeptical. That's why all-alone-in-the-world-Olive, as he thinks of her, is such a prize. A few years back, he dated a woman whose daughter was clearly skeptical of him, based on the e-mails he began to get. “Jordan wants to know—” “Jordan asked me to ask you—” “Jordan thinks I should see some kind of prospectus before I invest.” That was one of the ones he didn't take to the end. He got some money from her but decided to skip before marriage, mainly because of that pesky daughter. He's smarter now, makes sure his ladies are isolated.
All alone in the world
, as Olive described herself in her listing on the dating site. Although, come to think of it, who isn't alone in this world? He's been fending for himself all along, his father figuring that room and board to age eighteen were all he was owed, his mother barely lifting a hand to wave him goodbye. He was doing the best he could with what he had. People think it's an advantage to be born handsome, but that's just raw material. No, it's the Olives of the world who have it easy, being born with money. The things she takes for granted. She thinks everyone knows how to eat escargot, for example. Certainly, he does, but that was part of his training. He had taught himself by watching
Pretty Woman
. Something else he should be able to deduct, buying his own copy of
Pretty Woman
, but it has paid off. He learned everything he needed to know from movies—the James Bond films, although only the early ones;
The Philadelphia Story, Bringing Up Baby
. He has better manners than most. Better than Olive, for example, who is openly gawking at the sights along Bourbon Street. She slips her sweaty little palm in his, and he can tell she is nervous, but exhilarated.

“How about one of those?” he says, pointing to a stand where the drinks are served in large plastic cups that resemble grenades.

“Oh, I couldn't,” she says, pressing her face into his armpit, which can't be that pleasant. He's a little damp. Who wouldn't be, wearing a suit on Bourbon Street in September? He forgot how long summer hangs on here, but Olive wouldn't be dissuaded. She had never been to New Orleans, she told him, first in e-mails, then in their Skype conversations. Besides, Louisiana makes it very easy for out-of-towners to marry here. That reminds him: They should wander over to the clerk's office in an hour or so, do the deed. Bless his laissez-faire hometown, where most of the rules can be waived by simple request—the waiting period, the requirement to show a birth certificate. Then on to the wedding night, but first a lovely meal, paid for with his new credit card. He would be needing some oysters, for sure.

But the drink has hit little Olive hard. Has she eaten anything today? Imagine how excited she was, how early she had to start to fly here from California. She starts to stagger, complains of feeling nauseous. The wedding will have to wait. He leads her back to the hotel, half carrying her the final blocks, puts her gently to bed, makes a cold compress for her head, runs his fingers gently across her arms and shoulder blades. “Giving chills,” his mother had called it. “Come here, Gus, give me chills.” She would stretch out across the sofa in the living room, the blinds drawn so the room was dark all the time, the television on but silent, two or three beer cans on the floor. Never more, because if you drank more than three beers in the afternoon, his mother explained, you were an alcoholic. But if you drank three between noon and five and then another three between five and bedtime, you were just honoring the packaging. “Why do you think they sell them six to a pack?” she would say. Did that mean one should eat a dozen eggs in two sittings? Once, he drank a six-pack of Coca-Cola in one sitting and she gave him a spanking for being greedy and wasteful. But he liked giving his mother chills, was happy to stand next to her and provide her a little pleasure. It was, he supposes, how he discovered his vocation.

He will marry Olive tomorrow. In fact, he will insist they spend the morning shopping, purchasing a new outfit for her to wear, as today's suit is now a little worse for wear, crumpled and hanging on a chair. She's sleeping in a full slip; he can't remember the last time he saw one of those. The shopping trip will distract her and she will probably forget about him calling his bank in London until, once again, it is too late. Once they are married, he will tell her—he sifts through the stories he has used over the years. His London-based business manager is a con man, a scoundrel. He made up the story about the attempted fraud, the locked accounts, and used the time to clean him out. Oh, he has other money, but it's so complicated, tied up in a trust, he won't be able to get it right away. It might seem counterintuitive, telling a lie so close to the truth, allowing Olive to consider that there are people in the world who are not what they say, people who will pretend to be on your side but want nothing more than to fleece your pockets. But it works surprisingly well, he has found. Raise the specter of the very crime you are committing and no one suspects you of perpetrating the exact same fraud.