Icarus

THIRTY-EIGHT

The Golden Saddle was on Twenty-third Street and Eleventh Avenue. It was easy to spot by the crowd of leather-clad, body-pierced, tattooed customers streaming in.

It was nine-thirty later that night and Jack stood outside, looking up at the small red neon sign that flashed the club's name.

"Bryan was right," Dom growled. "This definitely ain't no gym. And I'll tell you somethin' else, Jackie. The people are so fuckin' weird, I'm gonna fit right in."

"Let's stop talking and do it," Jack said. "We'll find Kim, talk to her for a few minutes, then we'll leave. I called and they said she was working."

"You really think I'm goin' in there?" Dom asked.

"I bought you dinner, didn't I? A deal's a deal."

"Nothin but grief," Dom said. Then they paid their ten-dollar cover charge and went inside.

They found themselves in a rowdy country-western bar, dimly lit, so loud it was almost impossible to talk. There were tables scattered around and two bars, one at either end of the room. One of the bars had a platform extending from it, as if there would be some live entertainment. A waiter led them to a table after Jack slipped him ten bucks and they sat and ordered beer. It took a minute, Jack was waiting for it, and then Dom said, "You notice somethin' a little strange about this place?"

Jack nodded. Then he started to laugh.

"There's no fuckin' women in here," Dom said.

As strange as Jack found it, too, he couldn't help it, the laughter just burst out of him. He couldn't imagine what Kid had been doing in this place, there was something vaguely disturbing about it, and he was not all that comfortable, he had to admit, but in his entire life he had never seen an expression on anyone's face like the one on Dom's right now. Jack hadn't been expecting this, that's for sure. He was probably just as shocked as Dom, he just didn't show it, but here they were, so they might as well finish what they came to do. He tried to explain to Dom, to say the words "We're in a gay bar," but the music came up and it was too loud, there was no way to hear or to talk. And then, over a loudspeaker system, a DJ's voice boomed out:

"Ladies and gentlemen… and there are a few gentlemen here, aren't there?…"

The crowd whooped and hollered loudly in response.

"… the Golden Saddle is proud to present, direct from Texas… where everything is soooo biiiigggg…"

The crowd screamed its delight now.

"… the lovely, the sensuous, the provocative… Kim!!!!"

The lights went down in the room and the spotlight came up on the stage protruding from the bar. By now, Jack wasn't too surprised – he should have expected it, he realized that – but still just a little stunned at his surroundings. There was no denying it. The sexy stripper dressed in full cowboy regalia – boots, chaps, vest, and gun belt with two pistols – was the person they were looking for. This was Kim.

And Kim was not a woman.

– "-"-"THE ACT LASTED about ten minutes. Kim pranced and kicked and ultimately stripped down to the gun belt to the pounding of loud rock and roll. Every so often, Jack would glance over at Dom, just to make sure the old man wasn't having a heart attack. When Kim was finished dancing, Jack stood up, stepped into the crowd to find their waiter, whispered something in his ear, and then a few minutes after that, Kim was sitting at their table, the Western outfit back in place.

Jack did his best to explain what they were doing there, what they were looking for. Kim seemed to accept their explanation without needing to know many more details. They learned that Kid and Kim were, in fact, in the same MBA graduate program and that Kim also did some personal training. He said he was less weight-oriented than Kid, that he specialized more in stretching and yoga. At some point, he glanced at Dom, then said to Jack, "Your friend looks like he's in kind of a state of shock." Kim's thick Brooklyn accent was a bit jarring, it didn't exactly go with the cowboy outfit, but Jack figured that his outfit – and his home state – probably changed every night, depending on the club manager's whim.

"Well," Jack told him, "Kid never told us that he did this."

"He hadn't done it for a while. And never all that often. Just when he really needed money. It ain't a bad little living. A hunnert a night plus tips and the tips add up. Especially with Kid. That boy had a body to die for and he could shake his ass." He smiled sweetly at Dom.

"I'm trying to find some of Kid's clients," Jack said now. "The people he used to train."

"Can't help you there. We don't share names in this business. Too cutthroat. You wouldn't believe how many so-called friends of mine try to steal my customers." His lips took on a quick pout. "Not to mention other things."

"How about some of the women he went out with? There was one he called the Entertainer. She's a dancer-" Jack stopped suddenly. "Wait a second – was that you?"

"Don't I wish," Kim said. "But that's a big no, no, no. Kid was as straight as they come. This was just a job for him. Lotta straight guys, the bodybuilders, do it 'cause it's safe – it's a lotta lookin' but no touching. But you know what? I think I know who youse mean. This Entertainer. Kid used to leave here and go to another club" – he looked at Dom again – "one your friend will appreciate a little bit more. It's called Lace. Over on the East Side. Kid used to hang out there a lot. I got the feeling he went through a lot of dancers, but there was one girl in particular he used to talk about. She sounded amazing. He almost had me interested."

"Did he tell you anything specific about her? Anything you remember that'll help me find her?"

Kim made a clicking noise with his tongue, trying to remember something. "Oh, God… what did he tell me about her? Something weird. She was from someplace totally outrageous… Ohio! That's what it was. Can you imagine coming from Ohio? Anyway, I don't know her name but she's a dancer there. At Lace. And maybe she won't be so hard to find 'cause Kid always said she was to die for. Oh. Sorry. Maybe that's a bad choice of words."

"You think she'd be working tonight?"

"Friday? All the good ones work on the weekends, honey. She'll be there."

"Thanks," Jack said. "I really appreciate it." He pulled some money out of his pocket and tried to hand it to Kim.

"No, no," the stripper said. "You're friends of Kid. No money, please." He smiled. "Use it to buy the old guy some oxygen."

Before Dom could say anything, Kim stood and slithered away.

"Now can we go?" Dom asked, draining his second beer. It was the first thing he'd said in forty-five minutes.

"Yeah," Jack told him. "Now we can go."

"You know," Dom said as they were almost out the door. "I gotta admit that guy had a pretty fuckin' good ass. And that's the last thing I'm ever gonna say about it."

– "-"-"LACE WAS JUST a block north of the Golden Saddle, on Twenty-fourth Street, but it was all the way across town, between Park and Broadway. They took a cab.

There was a bouncer wearing an ill-fitting tuxedo outside the door, talking to a doorman who wore a similar tuxedo that had a slightly better fit. The front of the club was a bit more subdued than the Saddle. No neon. And the customers stepping inside as Jack and Dom's cab pulled up were wearing suits and ties. The cover charge this time was twenty dollars apiece, which Jack paid. Then they stepped through a curtain, into a kaleidoscope of flashing lights and bare flesh – and into a fantasy world that Jack did not have any idea existed.

They were in an enormous, elegant nightclub. There were four small stages in different corners of the room and chairs were set up around each of the stages. Chairs were also set up on either side of one long runway that crossed the length of the room. Poles came down from the ceiling every ten feet or so, reaching the runway floor. There were booths built into some of the walls and more chairs and small round tables in the center of the floor. Music was blaring, popular rock songs that all seemed slightly out of date – a Madonna hit that had come and gone, then something from the Stones' disco era. On each of the four stages, a different woman, nude except for a G-string, danced and gyrated and shook. The men who had seats on the edge of the stage would reach up and slip bills into the G-strings. In exchange for that, they would get a very large pair of tits or an incredibly firm ass waved very close to their faces.

At most of the tables and booths, women were table dancing. Their clothes would slip off and they would dance around their chosen transfixed customer. The men would sit very still and stiff; the women would straddle them in their chairs, run their hands slowly through their hair, thrust their perfect body parts close and then closer. Their lips would pout and their legs and hips would twitch back and forth. Sometimes, when the dance was over, they would sit on a customer's lap, their arms wrapped around his neck, their breasts poking against his shirt or jacket. Every so often, a man's hand would start to reach or caress and a muscle-bound, tuxedo-clad bouncer would instantly appear.

"Christ," Dom said. "There's enough silicone in this place to raise the Titanic. You're never gonna find her."

"I'm sure as hell going to try. You game?"

"What the hell, why not? I ain't done nothin' like this in years."

"Dom," Jack said. "You ain't done nothin' like this ever."

"Hey," Dom snapped. "Try to leave me with some dignity, will ya?"

They wandered around a bit, through the maze of stages and tables. There was a room marked "Private Club." Jack asked about it and a waitress said that it cost a hundred dollars to go in there. They served champagne and there was more privacy. There was also another room that they stepped into. This room had tables and chairs but no stages. More romantic music was playing in here, and here you were allowed to slow-dance. As Jack looked, there were five couples on the dance floor. Each man was clothed, each woman naked except for a G-string and high-heeled shoes.

They walked out into the main room and Jack looked around. There were at least fifty, maybe seventy-five dancers and three or four times that many customers. Most of the audience were businessmen, many in their thirties and forties. Some were older. There was a decent percentage who were younger, in their late twenties. Quite a few of the men were Japanese. Some blacks but not many. There weren't many women customers but there were a few. All were with dates. Jack saw two who looked extremely uncomfortable and three who were enjoying themselves immensely. One woman not far from where they were standing had two dancers spinning tantalizingly over and around her while her husband or boyfriend watched. The woman was ecstatic; she couldn't take her eyes off the dancers' bodies and because she was a woman, more touching was allowed. Jack saw one of the dancer's breasts brush against the woman's lips and, briefly, he saw the woman's tongue pop out of her mouth.

"So what's your choice?" Dom asked.

"Let's try this room for a while," Jack told him. "And we'll see what happens."

What happened was that a hostess – sexy by normal standards, plain-looking compared with the women who were dancing or strolling and looking for someone to dance for – led them to a table, where they were immediately descended upon. Jack was barely seated before a dancer with close-cropped dark hair, almost in a crew cut, did her best to crawl inside his shirt. Before he knew what to say, she was on his lap, her dress was yanked over her head, and she was grinding herself into his thighs and against his chest. The music blared as she pursed her lips and winked and smiled and teased and ran her nail down his cheek. Jack understood the frozen positions he had seen around the room because he'd assumed the same pose. He didn't know how to sit, didn't know what to do with his hands, so he stayed as motionless as possible and tried to figure out exactly where to look. When the music stopped for a moment, the dance was over – it had lasted maybe three minutes – and the dancer placed her perfect leg up on Jack's chair in her best Sally Bowles impersonation, nudging her toes under his thigh. She lifted up the garter belt and said, "The minimum's twenty."

Jack slid a bill onto her thigh and the belt snapped tightly down on it.

"Would you like another dance? I'm just warming up," she purred.

Jack, feeling a little idiotic, said, "You're not from Ohio, are you?"

The dark-haired beauty smiled as the music started back up and said, "I can be if you want me to."

He shook his head, so she shrugged and sauntered off to a nearby table. Within moments, her dress was off and she was wriggling on someone else's lap.

Jack turned and saw a blonde with enormous breast implants sidling up to Dom.

"I never saw you in here," she said, eyeing the stub of his arm.

"Never been here," Dom said, mesmerized by her breasts, which were so stiff they didn't even move when she walked. "Where you from?" he asked her.

"Me?" the blonde said. "Nowhere." She waved her hand around the club. "I was born here. Right in this little room."

At midnight, after countless questions and even more twenty-dollar bills being passed around, Dom announced that he was leaving.

"I'm tired," he said. "I don't think nothin's gonna come of this, and my dick's had just about all the excitement it can take for the night. I'm gonna go home, sit in a hot bath, and wonder what kind of fuckin' world we're livin' in."

"I'm staying," Jack said.

"I didn't expect nothin' different, Jackie." Dom started to say something else, changed his mind, and walked out the front door.

Jack turned back in the direction of the runway stage. A young black woman had her legs wrapped around one of the poles and was lifting herself off the ground without using her hands. Two Japanese gentlemen sitting nearby applauded as if the curtain had just come down on Swan Lake. Jack raised his hand, signaling for the waitress. He needed another beer.

The rest of the night dragged on in much the same manner. By 1 a.m. the flesh had become boring. Women who'd once seemed perfect and exciting now seemed only identical to others standing right next to them. Jack had been in the private room, where, the hostess was right, there was champagne, but it was more like ginger ale and it cost a hundred dollars a bottle. There was more privacy in there and perhaps a bit more physical contact, but the women were the same, they just rotated in and out of the various rooms. He'd also been in the slow-dance room again but declined several offers to hit the dance floor. By 1:30, Jack figured he'd spoken to forty women. He had passed out a small fortune in twenty-dollar bills and had asked the same questions over and over again: Are you from Ohio? No. Do you know Kid Demeter? No. Do you know anyone who knows Kid Demeter?

No.

He was leaning up against the bar, nursing one final beer. The music was still pounding, the dancers were as mechanical and energetic as when he'd first walked in the door. And the place was nearly as crowded as it had been three hours earlier. But he'd had it. He put his half-filled glass of beer down on the bar, turned to head out. There was a dancer blocking his way.

"You look bushed," she said.

He nodded and smiled. She was lovely, this one, vaguely Latin-looking. In a flimsy gold-lame dress that barely came down to the tops of her thighs. The top of the dress was unbuttoned, revealing small but firm breasts – My God! he thought. Could they be real? A miracle in this place! – and her smile was a little bit crooked. It somehow seemed more genuine than most of the ones that had glistened at him all night long. She looked at him curiously, as if analyzing him, or just simply filing away his mental image for future use.

"You want a pick-me-up dance?" she asked. "Better than vitamins."

"You're not from Ohio by any chance, are you?" he asked wearily.

"Newark," she told him.

Jack rolled his eyes upward, not that he was expecting any divine intervention in this place, and then threw his hands up, a defeated gesture.

"Good night," he apologized to the dancer. "I'm outta here."

As he started to brush past her, she stuck her hip out, annoyed. "Hey! I thought you wanted a girl from Ohio. Aren't you the one who's been asking everybody?"

"You said Newark," Jack said.

"Yeah," the Entertainer said back. "Newark, Ohio."

– "-"-"HER NAME WAS Leslee, she told him. That was her real name. She wasn't going to bullshit a friend of Kid's. Leslee Cesar. Her club name was Gwyneth. They liked to have the girls use actressy names and she was a big fan of Gwyneth Paltrow's, thought she was really and truly classy. She was an actress, too, she said. Well, she hadn't been working much lately. It was so hard. And dancing here was so easy. She made so much money, on a good night fifteen hundred, maybe two thousand, sometimes it didn't seem worth it, the whole acting thing…

He told her he was interested in talking to her about Kid's death and he saw her eyes narrow just a bit, then return to normal. She was happy to talk to him, she said. But she couldn't just stop work. She could sit with him, but he'd have to pay her. Otherwise the management would get on her case. She might have to sit on his lap every so often; it made her look like she was working harder to take his money.

They went to a table and the waitress came over. "Just bring me a mineral water," she said. And to Jack: "They rip you off totally if you buy liquor for the girls."

Jack said he'd also have mineral water and the waitress went scurrying away.

He didn't have to prod Leslee. She was anxious to talk, both about Kid and herself. He settled back into his chair, his eyes half closed, and she pulled her chair close to him so he could hear her easily over the music. Occasionally she would shift positions, swing her legs over his, wrapping herself around him as if they were longtime lovers sitting on a couch watching television. Once, in the middle of the conversation, with no prompting, she slid out of her dress, danced a few circles around him, her breasts brushing the top of his head, and then she sat back down. But she didn't put her dress back on for another ten minutes or so, content to sit there topless while she chattered. Periodically he would pass money over to her and she would smile, which made her whole face look off center, as if the two sides didn't quite match up, and he realized the pull this young girl had, knew she fit on Kid's team not because she was the best-looking dancer in the club or the flashiest – she looked disinterested almost, as if she didn't need to be there doing any of this – but Jack was willing to bet that she made more money than anyone else when she was working. She had the look. And the feel. It was the same sensation he'd had sitting in the backseat of the limo with the Mortician. This dancer was a different breed as well. A breed Jack didn't yet understand but found himself being inextricably drawn to.

"A lot of the dancers'll tell you a similar story," she was saying. "My ex-boyfriend got me into it. He used to go to a lot of lap-dancing places, this was in Philadelphia, and I used to get jealous 'cause I'd ask him why he'd go and he'd say 'cause all the girls were better-looking than I was. Deep down, I always thought I was ugly. Really and truly. And he used to tell me I was, so that didn't help any. Anyway, one night we're out at a club and it turns out to be amateur night. Anyone – any woman – who wants to can get up and take her clothes off and dance. He kept daring me, so I did it. I really did it to show him, I guess, that I could be as sexy as those girls he used to give money to, to dance for him. I mean, he had me for free so I never understood why he'd want to pay just for a dance. Anyway, I did pretty well. The crowd went wild, to tell you the truth. And I won the contest. Two hundred and fifty dollars. So a few days later, I went into the club he was always hanging out in and I auditioned. They gave me the job immediately, right on the spot." She turned to him now, studying him again. "You know," she said, "you don't look like a cop."

He was surprised; he hadn't realized that's what she'd thought, since she was being so open with him. "I'm not," he said. "I'm just a friend. I run a restaurant. Or used to."

Now she really scrutinized him. And that lopsided smile appeared. This time there was something behind it, though. He wasn't sure what. But there was a certain awareness there this time. And maybe even some kind of a plan. "Oh, wow," she said. "You're the Butcher."

"I'm the Butcher," he admitted.

"And you don't think Kid killed himself."

He shook his head.

"Well, I think you're right," she said. "People like Kid don't kill themselves." And there it was, the grin again. "People like me kill them."

– "-"-"SHE COULD TAKE off at three, she said. And she thought he should come back to her apartment so they could really talk. Jack almost said no, he was tired, another time, but he realized that his adrenaline had kicked in. He wasn't tired, not now. He wanted to keep going. He wanted to find out more about Kid. And, he realized, about her. He also wanted to go back to her apartment.

She told him she'd hop a cab right out front but he had to take a separate one. Management didn't like the girls going home with customers, she explained. And she couldn't make it so obvious, even though this was pretty innocent, "because nothing looks innocent to these assholes." So she gave him her address and told him to leave a few minutes before she did. "Wait outside my building and I'll be there right after you," she said.

In the cab ride back, he realized he was fascinated by her. He wanted to know how she'd become what she was. He remembered Kid's words. She could surprise you with her intelligence, he'd said, and Jack could see that was true. She was hiding her smarts to a certain degree. He felt that even her speech was slightly dumbed down. He wondered why. Maybe because that's what her customers wanted. He also remembered that Kid had defined her as a Slash. So what did she really want to be? Where did she really want to go? And what was she capable of doing to get there?

Jack wound up waiting fifteen minutes for her to arrive. He didn't mind. The night air was warm and he sat on the concrete stoop in front of her apartment. It was a charming brownstone in the East Thirties. A true brownstone, not just a town house. He peered through the glass window in the building's front door. He could see that the first-floor hallway was covered in a thick, wine-colored carpet. It looked like the carpet ran up the stairs. On the hallway wall was a print. He couldn't quite make out what it was but it looked like it was in an expensive frame. It was an expensive neighborhood, he realized.

A cab pulled up and Leslee emerged. She gave a little wave, almost as if she hadn't really expected him to be there. She was wearing jeans and a tank-top shirt now. And white sneakers. At first he thought, She doesn't look like a lap dancer now. She looks like a normal young girl coming from a late date. But as she got closer he realized that wasn't true. Even now there was something about her. There was a bursting sensuality that jeans and sneakers couldn't remotely disguise.

"Sorry it took me so long," she said. "A few guys I'd danced for wanted my phone number. Well, they wanted Gwyneth's phone number. It's a lot easier to talk to them than to just brush them off. This way they don't get angry."

"Do you give them your number?"

"Oh, sure. Well," she smiled. "I give them Gwyneth's number. It's the number of the movie theater on Second and Thirty-fourth."

On the short climb up, she explained that it was an owner-occupied building. The owner lived on the first floor, that's why the whole building was so well kept. Leslee's apartment was on the third floor. It was the third floor. And it was a beautiful place. The scale was small and intimate and there was nothing remotely flashy about it. The floors were dark and wide-planked. Where she needed carpeting, she'd found subdued Oriental rugs. There was not a lot of furniture but where he was expecting chrome and sleek, modern things, she had delicate antiques. Small wooden chairs with hand-stitched seats, two matching gray sofas facing each other in the living room. The living room walls were lined with bookshelves and the shelves were filled with books. There were two or three tiger-maple end tables, and small lamps, which gave off just enough light, sat on them.

"Look around," she said. "I've got to take a shower. I'll be right out."

She was already yanking off her shirt as she headed into the bathroom – he got a glimpse of her bare back and a side view of her breasts – then she was gone and the door was closed behind her. In seconds he heard the shower running and he even thought he heard a momentary sigh of satisfaction.

He began exploring the apartment. Her books were books. No Danielle Steel or John Gray for this dancer. She had a lot of Freud and Jung and various writers' studies and analyses of both. He was amazed at what she had on her shelves and he wondered if she'd read it all. There were several rows filled with English novels: Swift and Defoe and Jane Austen and the Brontes. She had all of D. H. Lawrence and John Fowles, two copies of The Magus. There were a lot of contemporary novels Jack had never heard of and a lot of female writers he had heard of but had never read: Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, Eudora Welty, Kaye Gibbons. There was a well-worn paperback of Cold Mountain. Balancing those were a lot of thrillers, some by women, Patricia Cornwell and Sara Paretsky, but mostly by men: Parker and Connelly and Bloch. She seemed to be fairly compulsive. If she read someone, she read all of someone.

He peeked into her bedroom. It was totally different from the rest of the apartment. While the entryway and living room were impeccably decorated, fairly sparse and subdued, her room looked as if it belonged to a little girl. It was all fluff and lace and there were stuffed animals everywhere. The colors were bright – yellows and pinks – and didn't go at all with the colors in the other rooms. On her unmade bed he noticed that there was a rumpled pair of pajamas, lying there as if she'd kicked them off when she awoke and left them where they fell. They did not look like the sleep-wear of a hardened lap dancer. They looked like they were last worn by a twelve-year-old.

The second bedroom, quite small, space for just a twin bed and a desk and chair, was more like the rest of the apartment. Conservative. Adult. He noticed that there were stacks of books in this room, too.

The water was still running – she'd been in there for a long time now, close to fifteen minutes. He went into the kitchen, where there wasn't much to see. Her refrigerator had a few bottles of white wine, a jar of peanut butter, half a roasted chicken that she'd bought already cooked, and not much else. It did not look like she spent much time in the kitchen.

It was another five minutes before the shower stopped. And it was five minutes after that before she emerged. One long white towel was wrapped around her body, long enough to go from her chest to just above her knees. Another, smaller towel was wrapped, turban style, around the top of her head.

"I'm sorry I took so long," she said. "I just have to get that place off of me as soon as I get home. I'm compulsive about it and I'm sure there are fairly obvious psychological reasons for it, but I don't really care. I stay in there and just scald myself until the hot water starts to go. Sometimes if I take a bath, I can stay in there two or three hours. Now, I'll be with you in a minute. Really and truly a minute."

This time she was as good as her word. When she came out of her bedroom, she was wearing a black lightweight skirt and a black T-shirt. No shoes or socks. Her hair was brushed but still wet. He thought she looked exquisite. Very young and very fresh and very, very desirable.

"I know what you're thinking," she said as they sat in the living room sipping the white wine she'd brought out. And for a moment he felt guilty. But then she finished: "My apartment surprised you."

"A little."

"Well, most of the girls at the club really are what you think they are. Most of them are fairly shallow and not all that bright. They all tell you that they don't do drugs and that they don't sleep with the customers for money. But most of them do. Or if they don't yet, they will."

"But not you."

"For most of them, this is it. This is their career. They'll make a bunch of money and hopefully they'll meet a guy and then they'll quit. Or else they'll keep doing this until they're way too old. For me this is a means to an end."

"What's the end?"

"Money. Other than that I'm not so sure. I thought actress for a while. But I'm starting to think I don't have what it takes. But that's all right. I'm in school now. Hofstra. Psych major. I graduate in one year."

"So you're twenty-one?"

"Twenty."

"How old were you when you started dancing?"

"Sixteen. But I looked eighteen and they didn't check. Now I'm twenty and I look sixteen and everybody checks."

"Doesn't it worry you?" he asked, surprised that he wanted to talk about her personal life. "That you might start doing what the other girls do?"

"Sure," she said. "I'd be dumb not to worry about it. I can feel it happening, too. It's weird, but what can you do? I try to keep some perspective but it's hard."

"I can imagine."

"Can you?"

"No," he said. "Maybe not."

"You mind if I make myself a sandwich? I'm starving." She jumped up, disappeared back into the kitchen, and returned a minute later with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a small plate. "You want one?" she asked. "Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude."

"No. Go ahead."

He watched her eat and he could see his list, the list he'd made about Kid, in a vision right in front of his eyes. The Entertainer, it said. Eats with her mouth open. And there she was, chewing away, that lopsided mouth open just a crack too much while she ate.

"A few weeks ago, I was at a party," she said when she was two thirds of the way through her sandwich. "A real party. Kids. College friends. None of them has any idea what I do."

"None of them?"

"Nope," she said. "It's not the kind of thing you can just drop into a conversation. Anyway, it was very weird. I was having a perfectly good time. It was a little dull, you know, like they thought smoking dope and drinking was as cool as it gets, but it was fine. And a couple of the guys were really hitting on me. Talking to me, trying to get me to go out with them; one of them invited me to see Beck at the Meadowlands. And that night I got a little scared because the whole time they were talking to me I kept thinking, this isn't right, they should be paying me to talk to them. I get twenty bucks every five or ten minutes, minimum, just to talk. That's weird, huh, that I thought that?"

"Not so weird," he said. "But you're right. Scary."

"I'll tell you something else weird. Last year my mother had a stroke."

"I'm sorry."

"Well, it wasn't so terrible. I mean, it was a stroke but she was okay. She needed some rehab, though, really could have used a private nurse or something to help her, but she couldn't afford it. Well, I could afford it. Easy. Only I couldn't give her the money 'cause she doesn't know what I do, either. She thinks I'm a waitress, and how the hell would a college-girl waitress have an extra ten thousand dollars for a private nurse?"

"So what'd you do?"

"Nothing. I kept quiet. Let her fend for herself. And before you say, 'Oh, that's so sad,' and 'Why do you do it?' it really isn't so sad. My mom's a lunatic and a serious bitch, and I do it because I'm twenty years old and I can afford to rent this apartment and I've got over seventy-five thousand dollars in mutual funds and in five years I think I'll have ten times that." She finished the sandwich now, chomping down on the last sticky corner. "You can read the rest in my autobiography. Which I'm going to write one of these days. What do you want to know about Kid?"

She had brought him back around to the reason he was here and suddenly he wasn't all that sure what he wanted to know. It was distracting, listening to her chatter away. He was tired. And now one of her bare legs was curled up under the other and he could barely turn away from looking at it.

"Just tell me about him," he said, trying to focus. "I thought I knew him like he was my own son. Now I'm not so sure."

"He could be a real son of a bitch sometimes. Did you know that?"

"I never really experienced it. But I suppose I could see it in him."

"Not at heart, though. At heart he wasn't a son of a bitch at all." She took a sip of wine and rubbed her tongue around her mouth. She still had bits of peanut butter stuck up in there somewhere. "I cared about him. Really and truly. In my own way. I knew he was seeing other women, too – he never lied, which I liked. But that was Kid. He was a taker. He took me, I have to say. I loaned the bastard five thousand dollars right before he died. Never paid me back a nickel."

"Did he tell you what the money was for?" Jack asked, surprised.

"He said it was for tuition. That they wouldn't let him graduate unless he paid up. But I didn't believe him. It just sounded like he really needed the money."

"Did he say how he was going to pay you back?"

"Sure." She grinned. "He said he was gonna get the money from you." She poured herself a bit more wine, still working her tongue around her gums. "You know what Kid liked best?" she asked now.

Jack shook his head. Her voice had changed just a little. It was subtle but seductive and he felt the small hairs on the back of his neck start to tingle.

"He liked me to dance for him. Here in this apartment. A private dance."

Jack knew he looked awkward. He wasn't comfortable suddenly and it showed. But Leslee grinned again, as if she was enjoying his discomfort.

"You're rich," she said. "You're really rich."

He didn't say anything. She was grinning like crazy now. She stood up and went to her CD player. Put on a CD, R.E.M., Automatic For The People, not too loud. Michael Stipe's melancholy voice seemed to echo through the apartment.

"You want me to dance for you?" she asked. He realized she was very close to him. She had managed to slide over on the couch so she was less than a foot away. "You want to have a little private dance, just you and me?"

Jack shook his head. "No. I don't think so."

"Are you shy?"

"No."

"Are you married?"

Jack closed his eyes. Left them shut for what felt like a long time. "I feel married," he said.

"Most men feel married," Leslee told him. "I make them feel unmarried."

She was right next to him now. One leg curled over his and she was on his lap, facing him, her mouth maybe an inch from his. She was barely moving but he could feel her grinding herself into his crotch. And he could see her nipples jutting toward him from under her shirt.

"I think I'd better go," he managed to say.

She didn't make any move to get off him. Just kept smiling and for the first time he noticed that the smile could also make her look unattractive. It wasn't just charming. There was something off-putting about it. Something even kind of crazy.

"I could make you stay," she whispered. "I really and truly could. If I wanted. Do you believe me?"

He didn't answer. Because he didn't know the answer. He didn't know what to believe at this exact moment.

"I know what you're thinking," she went on. "First you thought no, she can't make me do anything. Now you're thinking maybe. Maybe she can because she's so sexy I can hardly breathe. But there are no 'maybes' about it. Ain't no 'maybe,' baby." As she whispered to him, she reached over, not far, to her small beaded purse. She reached inside, pulled something out, and Jack heard a sudden click. Then he saw the long, thin blade that she held in her hand. He didn't move.

"If I wanted, I could cut your throat and when the police got here, I could just tell them you tried to rape me." As she spoke, he could feel her warm breath on his face, on his lips and his cheek. "I'd get away with it. Really. Really and truly."

He saw her take a deep breath, watched her chest heave. She reached down, put one hand on his thigh, the hand with the switchblade, and he could feel himself hold his own breath now, but then she pushed herself off him. Quickly, with a gymnast's agility, her legs were no longer wrapped around him, she was no longer touching him at all. When she was standing, she folded the blade up, put it back in her purse.

"Maybe you should go," she told him.

He nodded. Keeping his eyes on her, he backed up slowly until he reached her front door. His hand groped for the knob, found it and turned it. Then he was out in the carpeted hallway.

He didn't let himself think of anything until he was down on the street. And then life seemed to come streaming back into him.

And that made two, is what he thought.

Two women who could easily have pushed Kid off the balcony and ended his life.

Without ever thinking about it again.

– "-"-"WHY IN THE WORLD did she do that, she wondered?

Why do I get this overpowering urge to hurt men?

Oh, you know why, she thought. Of course you know why. But it's no excuse. Everyone's had something bad happen to them. Everyone's been abused.

She liked him. He was nice.

Really and truly nice.

But she'd gone and done it again.

And now she'd never get her five thousand dollars back.