The Halo Effect

2

“Good girls don’t kiss and tell.” She stroked the cushion she had put in her lap, and the movement of her fingers was mesmerizing.

“Does that mean you’re not a good girl? Or that you aren’t going to tell your story?” I asked.

Cleo Thane laughed. A child’s laugh that was all delight with only an innocent hint of sensuality. “I’m good, but not a good girl.”

To look at her shining blond hair, the flawless skin, the light makeup that highlighted rather than hid, to take in the classic diamond stud earrings and the watch-subtle platinum, not gold-the designer blazer and slacks, the chic shoes and the status bag, you might guess she was an executive at a cosmetic company or the director of an art gallery.

But the night before, this lovely woman had been whispering lies into the ear of a television newscaster whose name you would recognize, while she brought him to a violent orgasm in the back of a stretch limousine with only a thin layer of glass separating them and their hot breaths from the driver. And before she met him, she’d charged his credit card two thousand dollars for the privilege of spending three hours with her.

The contrast of who she was and how she presented herself was just one of the many things that intrigued me.

“Dr. Snow, no matter what kind of gentle words I wrap it up in…I sell sex. That’s what I do for a living. How could I be a good girl?” She kicked off one of her very high-heeled shoes and noticed my glance. Even though I’d looked at her shoes before, she’d never paid attention until today. I made a mental note of that.

“In my line of work, you always wear stilettos.”

“Because they are so sexy?”

“Because they are weapons.”

That was the last thing I had expected her to say. I certainly knew how dangerous prostitution was for street hookers, but the way Cleo had described her extremely exclusive business, the need for weapons hadn’t occurred to me. I covered my surprise. “Other than your shoes, you make a real effort to look like a good girl, don’t you?”

“It’s how I look. Why is that so hard to reconcile? I look like this. And I sell sex. And since I do, I can’t possibly be a good girl, now can I?” By repeating the question, she made it impossible for me to ignore it or how important the issue was to her. We’d talked about this before in the past six months, but there was obviously something about it that we still hadn’t uncovered.

“Well, we aren’t necessarily what we do, are we?” I asked, then leaned back in my chair, crossing my ankles, noticing my own modestly heeled pumps. Classic and not inexpensive, but not sexy like Cleo’s shoes.

She cocked her head and thought about my question. Not everyone did that. Some patients just blurted out whatever came into their minds. But because we’d been meeting for a long time, I already knew Cleo was more calculated with her words, sometimes saying what she wanted me to hear, instead of what she really thought. That was what we’d spent most of her sessions talking about: not that she was a prostitute or her conflicts with her lifestyle, but her inclination to please people too much-both sexually and in other ways. And not just her clients. That would have been natural. But the other people in her life.

With her forefinger she drew circles on the pillow. Her eyelashes were long and dusted her skin, and for the first time since she had been coming to see me at 10:00 a.m. each Monday and Wednesday, a single tear escaped from her eye and rolled down her cheek.

She kept her head bowed.

I waited.

Still, Cleo didn’t move. I took the opportunity to tuck my hair behind my ears. Straight, dark hair-almost black-that hung to the top of my shoulders. Cut to curve and frame my face. My twelve-year-old daughter liked to experiment with it: setting it, braiding it, putting it up with clips. She also liked to do my makeup. Other kids dress up in their mother’s clothes; Dulcie preferred to dress me up and prepare me for the makeshift stage that doubled as the far side of our living room. And then, once I was in costume, she’d make me act out plays with her.

“Morgan Snow appearing as the lead in…” she’d say, and fill in the part I was playing at her direction. She’d act opposite me. Happier with this game than any other.

My daughter wanted to be an actress. Which wasn’t surprising since her father was a film director, and I, being an overindulgent mother despite my better instincts, accommodated her. I didn’t mind that it was her hobby and her ambition, but she wanted to try to act professionally while she was still in grade school, and I didn’t want her to.

Acting is a tough business and I wanted my daughter’s life to be filled with acceptance and success-not rejection and frustration.

Cleo finally looked up. Her gray eyes were soft and wet.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I am really confused. I wish I’d found you sooner. I wish I had known you a year ago. Two years ago. I needed someone like you who I could trust not to judge me, but who would push me to judge myself.”

“That is not what I want to do. This isn’t about judgment at all.”

“Is it about redemption?”

“Do you need to be redeemed? Do you think of yourself as a sinner?”

More laughter. Even though Cleo, at twenty-eight, was only seven years younger than I was, she reminded me of my daughter. For all that she had seen and done in her life, she remained untouched in some fundamental way.

“Not necessarily a sinner. No. But I’m not a good girl, either.”

“You say it as if you are proud of it. What would be so bad about being a good girl?”

She grinned at my unintentional wordplay. “There are some very good things that I do. If I talk about them it will sound like propaganda from some pamphlet.”

“Let me worry about that. I think you are much harder on yourself than you need to be. And we need to talk about that. It plays into you doing too much for other people. You deserve to feel good even if you don’t want to be good.”

She reached out and touched my hand, to thank me. Her skin, even on her fingertips, was like finely spun satin. It was unusual for my patients to touch me, but I didn’t pull back, didn’t flinch or show any reaction. Touch is telling. Lack of touch is even more telling. There is nothing as sacred as one person reaching out to another with their body to offer connection, and I would never treat such a thing lightly. There was nothing sexual about the way she put her fingers on the back of my hand and exerted a small but real pressure, but it woke me up in a momentarily sexual way. It made me think about sex, not with her, not with a man, but just inside of myself. Two fingers on my skin and she made me crave something I couldn’t quite name.

“I don’t meet many people willing to forgo making judgments about me,” she said.

The current of connection between us was strong. It was not something I ignored with my patients. I intrinsically understood some better than others.

“What do you think would make you feel good?”

“Having my book published.”

Cleo had just finished writing a memoir, a tell-all about what she had learned about men and sex, based on the clients she had worked with over the past five years. She’d submitted an outline and the first five chapters to a publisher and just two weeks ago had been offered a substantial six-figure deal.

Now she was dealing with the reality of what she had signed on to do. Reveal secrets, albeit anonymously, about men, albeit disguised and not named, who had paid her and trusted her to never do exactly what she was doing.

My phone rang and Cleo glanced at it with a slight frown, but not nearly with the consternation that some patients show. I don’t usually answer the telephone during sessions, but I do look at the caller ID in case it is Dulcie, or Dulcie’s school.

It was neither, so I let the machine pick up, apologizing to Cleo.

“That’s all right. But you asked me another question and I never answered it. What was it? I don’t like unanswered questions.”

Her voice was soft with a faint hint of a Southern accent. Too soft to be talking about such hard facts and harsh realities.

She sighed and crossed her ankles. It was a dainty movement. A woman sitting on a veranda sipping iced tea and wearing a flower-print summer dress would cross her ankles like that.

“A patient after my own heart. I asked you what was wrong with being a good girl.”

“Can you think of anything more boring?”

“Can you?” I asked.

“Okay. You don’t answer questions, I do. I forgot. So, no, I can’t think of anything more boring than being a good girl. They have no power, no clout. They are so easy to dismiss. Wives. Girlfriends. Sweethearts.” Cleo grimaced. “I know their husbands. I look into their lovers’ eyes.” She shook her head and her hair swung like golden silk. “You know, everyone talks about men having all the power, but it’s easy to take it away. Especially if you have the one thing they want so badly.”

“What is the difference between you and those women? What do you know that they don’t?” I wanted to hear her answer as much to learn about her as to understand more about the men she serviced.

“I know what they want and my entire energy is focused on giving it to them. And to make sure they don’t have any reason to fear me. I’m not about approval or disapproval. Men are scared, Dr. Snow. Some worse than others. Some men, who have trouble getting an erection, or who have trouble with premature ejaculation, are just scared of what is between a woman’s legs. Do you know that? Of course you do. You know even more than I do about all this. One man told me that he imagined it as a big gaping hole with rows of tiny sharp teeth inside and he was worried that if he stayed inside me for too long, I’d bite him off. Have you ever heard that from a patient?”

Not for the first time, I was reminded of how much Cleo and I had in common. In figuring out what her clients wanted, in satisfying them, she had to listen to their fears, which was exactly what I did with patients.

I leaned forward just a little, to make the connection between us stronger. “Did it bother you when that man told you that?”

“Bother me? No, but it made me sad. And it made it much easier to do what I could for him. I never took him inside me. But I saw him for months. Talking, soft touching, listening to him. I’d go to his hotel room every time he came to the city on business. He’d order whatever I wanted from room service and then we’d get into bed with the food. He liked me to feed him. And then he liked to feed me. And he liked me to massage him. Just lightly, you know, with oil. He was strong, worked out a lot, and I liked looking at him. All stretched out on the bed. He never closed his eyes, though. And we never shut off the light. I’d use the oil to loosen him up, and then I’d-”

She cut herself off. “I guess there’s no reason for me to go into all that, is there?”

“If you want to tell me about it, I want to hear about it,” I offered.

She’d pulled me in and lulled me with the cadences of her speech. If Cleo Thane wanted to become a sex therapist, she’d be very good at it. The only problem was that as much as I earned-$225 an hour-she made more than three times that.

“It hurts. This confusion. These conflicts…” Her lips trembled and she looked away.

“What scares you the most? What is the most confusing?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe it’s the book…” She hesitated. And then in a quieter voice said, “No. Not exactly the book. But it’s related to the book. It’s really the man I’m seeing.”

“Seeing? As in seeing a client?” I was surprised. In all the time she had been in therapy with me she had never mentioned that she was seriously dating anyone, and I’d been waiting for a revelation like this.

Six months may sound like a long time for a patient to hold back important aspects of her personal life, but opening up was not always a simple act. Cleo had been obfuscating since she started with me. It was my job to be patient and do the best I could and trust that she would tell me her secrets when she was ready.

She shook her head. “No. He’s not a client. He’s my fiancé. A lawyer. At a very prestigious white-glove law firm. I hired him a year ago to help me set up an offshore account for my company.” She let out a delightful peal of laughter. “How ironic is that? I hired him. After a while he asked me out. This love shit is worse than the guy who pulled the knife on me in bed when I first got into the business. Him I knew what to do with-I reached out and grabbed him by the balls. I squeezed so hard, his little baby fingers opened and the knife just dropped out. But this love stuff? I don’t know where to grab.”

When you are a therapist, you often become preoccupied with a patient’s body language and voice. Obsessed with those things, in fact. From an inappropriate smile you understand a conflict, from crossed arms you pick up on an unwillingness to open up, from closed eyes you detect a reluctance to face the truth. In listening to a client, you hear not just the words, but the subtleties of inflections, pauses and rhythms of the voice. You sometimes hear words that almost come out but are aborted, the sighs, the hints of tears. For me, voices are a rich source of information, especially when a patient is lying down on the couch and I can’t see his or her face.

But Cleo was sitting up and facing me. She had been clear from the first: she didn’t want to lie down on my couch. That, she said, would make her feel too much as though she was working.

“What is so confusing about the love stuff, as you call it?” I asked.

“I never believed in romantic love. I once read that it’s something that was invented in the twelfth century. And up till now every experience I’ve had was just more proof. This has never happened to me before. And I’m not sure I’m cut out for it.” A faraway look in her eyes suggested just the opposite.

Doctors are not supposed to admit this, but we like some patients more than others. And I liked Cleo a lot. She was refreshing and honest. She was authentic. And that went far with me. But mostly it was because I-Morgan Snow, not the doctor part but the woman part-identified with her. It was partly the similarities in our professions and partly that I, also, had to work hard at not trying to please the people in my own life too much.

Identification with a patient is a healthy, normal part of therapy. In fact it helps us to get deeper insight into the men and women we are treating. But it is important to be aware of this identification so that we don’t lose our objectivity.

“Why don’t you think you can be in love, Cleo?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Isn’t it?”

“You are too clever.” She gave me a smile, along with the compliment.

This woman was seductive in the most delightful way. Her charm was like a song that made you happy and, just for a little while, while you were listening, enabled you to stop worrying about everything else.

And if I reacted to her that way-me, her therapist-then I could just imagine how the men she met reacted.

“You do ask good questions,” she said, trying to get me off the track.

I nodded. Waited. Knew she had more to say.

“The man I am in love with thinks I might be in danger.” A slight frown creased her forehead.

This was not what I had expected. “Why?”

Outside a cloud passed in front of the sun and the office was cast into shadow. Just for one second. But in that second, Cleo looked frightened. And even younger. And vulnerable.

How could this woman, who ran a successful twenty-firstcentury brothel, who teased and tortured and pleasured men to the tune of two thousand dollars a session, look so innocent and vulnerable?

“Cleo?”

“Yes?” She had been so deep in thought she couldn’t remember what I had asked her.

“You said that this man thinks that you might be in danger. Have you been threatened?”

“No. Nothing has happened, not yet. But he’s afraid of what will happen when word gets out about the book.”

“Has the deal been announced?”

She shook her head but didn’t say anything. The clock on my desk ticked, making a slight but distinct sound as each second passed. We were running out of time, but I didn’t want her to leave before she answered me.

“I really am in love,” she said.

“You say that as if you have to convince me of your feelings.”

“Maybe…maybe I have to convince myself.”

“Why?”

“Because how can I love someone but not be able to make love to him?”

“And you can’t?” This was an important revelation, and I watched her carefully as she composed herself and then answered.

She shook her head. Once. Twice. And then a third time. Finally she began to speak. “No. No matter how hard I try. I can’t do the simplest things with him. How can I feel the way I do about him and not be able to go down on him without gagging? He puts one hand on my breast and I freeze. He kisses me and I get sick to my stomach. You know, even though I’m getting paid to do it, I still like sex. Always have. It’s what I do. How can I not be able to do it with the one guy who really matters to me?”

Her tears caught in the reflection of the sun in her eyes. Cleo even cried in a lovely way: her eyes didn’t get red; she didn’t scrunch up her face. Her lips quivered and a small sob escaped from her lips. “I’m really confused.”

She had just told me more about herself in the past fifteen minutes than she had in all the days and weeks that she had been coming to see me. I nodded. “I know.”

“Do you think this is what I’m really here to talk to you about? Not how I want to please people. Not the book, but what is wrong between this man and me.” She shook her head vehemently. “Is that what happens in therapy? People come to you for one thing and find out something completely different is bothering them?”

“It might look like that, but everything is connected in some way. However, figuring that out isn’t your job right now. You should just feel free to tell me what’s on your mind. Whether it seems connected or not.”

She didn’t say anything.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“How he’d feel if he knew that I had just told you all that. He’s sort of private.”

“Cleo, is there a reason you won’t use his name?”

“Occupational hazard. I never use men’s real names. To protect their privacy. I just give everyone nicknames.”

“But you said he’s not a client.”

“No. No, he’s not.”

“If you were to give him a nickname, what would it be?”

She laughed. “I’ve given him a few nicknames.”

“Okay. What one comes to mind first?”

“Caesar.”

I must have arched my eyebrows, because she laughed. “Do you think it’s silly?”

“No, but I’m curious. Why Caesar?”

“The real Caesar was so commanding and powerful. Did you see the movie? His passion for Cleopatra was so allencompassing. It just reminds me of how he is.”

“Is he understanding about your sexual conflicts with him?”

She nodded. “No. Yes. Well, intellectually yes. He understands that I am having some sort of resistance to doing what he wants me to do to him-what I want to do to him-and confusing it with what I do with my clients…” She broke off, close to breaking down again.

I’ve been a therapist for ten years, a sex therapist at the Butterfield Institute for five of them, and have had more than fifty long-term patients. One thing I’ve learned is that if we are sensitive to our patients, if we listen to what they say as well as to what they don’t say, they reveal all the clues we are going to need to help them in the first five to eight weeks of therapy. It can take an infinite amount of time to move the pieces around until they lock into place and present us with a whole picture, but we get the clues early on. I was getting them now.

Cleo’s head was bowed. Her eyes were lowered. Her body remained quite still. I didn’t know if she was crying again, but clearly she was distressed. I looked away for just a second, toward the windows and the balcony outside my office-the narrow terrace that is just wide enough for me to stand on and sip a cup of coffee as I watch the pedestrians and traffic on the street below. Beyond that are two lovely trees, one magnolia and the other dogwood, that filter the strong summer light as it spills into my office, sending shadows dancing across the wall and the art deco rug.

Cleo started speaking while my head was turned.

“Caesar seems more worried about the book than about our sex life. He doesn’t understand why my sense of accomplishment at having written the book isn’t enough. He thinks I should burn it now that I’ve gotten it ‘out of my system,’ as he says. He’s afraid that one of the men I am writing about might try to get back at me. Oh, it’s just so ridiculous.” Her eyes filled up again. “I’m afraid he’s going to give me an ultimatum over this. Over a book!”

The minute hand on the small silver clock on the table by my chair swooshed forward. It was ten-forty-five. The session was technically over. But I didn’t mind giving her a few more minutes.

She was twisting the emerald ring on her finger, twirling it around so that every few seconds the stone caught the light, sending reflections to the wall, then disappearing just as quickly.

“Has he read the book?” I asked her.

“No. No one has. Not yet.”

“Because there’s something in it that you don’t want Caesar to know?” I guessed.

She nodded. “I haven’t lied to him about what I do. I just haven’t gone into the kind of detail the book does. Caesar thinks that for the last couple of years I’ve been behind a desk sending out the girls. And I have been doing that. But I’ve also been doing some calls myself.”

“You told him you stopped?”

“He thinks I stopped about a year ago. I didn’t. I still have a half-dozen regular clients I’ve been taking care of for a long time. I know these guys. I have…hell…I have a relationship with them.”

“Cleo, I’m not sure that I understand. Does Caesar know you are still going to bed with other men?”

“Well, see that’s the thing. Technically I’m not. I don’t have what you’d call regular sex with most of them.”

“Regular sex?” I laughed. “I don’t make judgments, but there is no such thing as regular or irregular sex, as far as I’m concerned.”

“See, that’s why I like you. We’re on the same side in all this. The logical side. The side that doesn’t make sex into some religious experience that saves souls or plummets you into hell.”

The clock chimed and the bell-like sound drew her attention. “I guess my time is up?”

I nodded.

“Just one more sec?”

I nodded again

She reached down and pulled out the Tiffany shopping bag she had brought with her. I’d noticed it when she walked in but hadn’t thought much about it.

From inside, she extracted a bulky manila envelope, which she held in her hand for a few seconds and caressed as if it was a velvet pillow, or a man’s thigh.

“I printed this out for you. Like I said, no one has seen the whole thing yet or even knows I finished it. It’s my first draft. I still have a lot of work to do. Not to mention better disguising the guys I write about…” She smiled. “But I really want you to read it.”

“Does Caesar know you’re giving it to me?”

“No.” She stood up.

Even though she was getting ready to go, I didn’t want her to miss what I thought might be a moment of insight for her.

“Does keeping that from him make you feel good or bad?”

Her head tilted to the side and a half smile played on her lips. “Good. And bad.” She sighed. “But here’s the thing. If we are going to talk about whether I can really go through with publishing this book, you have to read it. I mean, if I do publish it, I need to be able to give Caesar a really good reason I still sleep with clients. I want to publish my book, but I don’t want to lose him in the process. So…”

She took the last step to the leather chair where I sat.

Holding out my hands, I took the package from her.

It wasn’t light and somehow that surprised me. Everything about Cleo Thane was. From the lilting voice to the blond hair to the pastel-colored clothes she favored-so different from the almost all-black uniform most of us New Yorkers wear-to her pale gray eyes and barely pink lips. Even her perfume, which reminded me of spring and had a base note of lilacs, was light.

There was nothing heavy or dark or ominous about the woman who handed me her confession.

Nothing except for what was actually in that envelope: all the secrets she hadn’t yet told me or anyone else, but that would, in the end, be like the pins a collector uses to secure butterflies to a board after he has captured and killed them.