The Venus Fix

Ninety-Two

A laptop and a birthday cake sat on a small table in the middle of the stage. The cake was small, frosted with what looked like white buttercream, edged with pink roses, with one pink candle sticking up in the center.

Blythe, wearing a blue butterfly mask, sat two feet from the table. Her wrists were tied together behind her back. Her ankles were tied together beneath the chair. There was a gag in her mouth.

“What is Blythe doing here?” Nina asked.

“She’s here for the party, like you are.”

“Did Blythe know Simone?”

“No. But Simone knew Blythe. She and her poor friend found Blythe online. She taught these two innocents all she knew. While I was doing everything I could to make sure my daughter grew up to be strong and sure of herself, she was sitting in her bedroom surfing the Internet, learning how to be a slut from a slut like this. I loved her. I loved her so much. And this is what she did. That’s what we’ve raised, Nina. You and me…all of us…despite our efforts and our understanding and our rebelling and our screaming and our marching and getting arrested…we wound up raising a generation of daughters who are so desperate for men’s attention that they are willing to debase themselves. Do you know what they did? My daughter and her friend? They turned themselves into New York City Web-cam girls.”

Stella had moved to the very edge of the stage and stood staring down at Nina.

“You have it wrong,” Nina said, her voice soothing. “It’s not the fault of the girls like Blythe. Blythe is a victim, too. She’s someone we need to help. Come down, sit here with me, we can talk about how we can help these women. We’ve spent our whole lives trying to help. We can’t give up yet.” Nina held her hand up to Stella, offering her support. Her faith took my breath away. She actually believed she could talk her down. Oh, God, I hoped she was right. I was scared for her. And for Blythe.

“You think you can help?” Stella gave a short, ugly laugh. “Think back to when we started. What’s changed? It’s only gotten worse, hasn’t it? Women are more subservient. More accommodating. Men are more abusive than they have ever been. Millions of them involved with pornography now. And what do they want? Women who perform. Who demand nothing. Who accept less than nothing.”

I needed to sneeze, but I knew that if I did Stella would realize I was there. And that was dangerous. It hurt to hold it in, but after a few seconds the urge passed.

“Nina, she dressed up like a whore. She and her friend pretended they were lesbians to titillate those boys. They filmed themselves and sent it to the boys, and the boys sent it all over the school. And you know what? Simone didn’t care. She loved it. She was thrilled. She had never been happier. She thought they wanted her. I tried to explain to her that what she was doing was only making them want her breasts. Her vagina. Her as a fantasy. As an image. Not to talk to her or share with her or understand her or help her or have her help them, but to have her to masturbate to.

“And you know what she said in her note? She blamed me. She said I only loved her when she agreed to be one kind of daughter. She said I only wanted women to be powerful if they were going to be my kind of powerful-women who didn’t need men-who could raise a child without a man, who would rather be single than subservient.

“She was my baby. She didn’t think I loved her. Do you know why? Because of these women who are not women, these women who have fangs and claws. She said I was angry with her because she didn’t meet my political objectives.

“I watched that movie and I hated her, hated my daughter. I hated her and hated her-until I realized it was all these other women who were to blame. I loved Simone right. I did. I loved her and wanted her to be a woman who had self-esteem and never went on crazy diets and never needed to wear lipstick or to dress to please a man, and she said that I never loved her right.”

The whole time she was ranting, Stella was holding something and nervously, anxiously, shifting it from one hand to the next.

The smell I’d noticed when I first came into the theater was stronger here, but I just couldn’t tell what it was. It was so rare that I couldn’t identify an odor. But my cold was throwing off my sense of smell. But I couldn’t worry about that. I had to listen to Stella. I had to keep my eye on Nina. I had to watch out for Blythe. I had to figure out what to do.

“What happened to Simone couldn’t go unpunished, don’t you see that? What these bitch witch women do has repercussions. Someone has to show them.”

“Simone didn’t die of an accidental overdose, did she?”

“What does that have to do with it? This is about the women who taught Simone how to be a whore. Who poisoned her.” Her voice finally cracked, but her expression remained defiant. “Do you understand? While I was fighting to save girls like this, my own daughter was becoming one. So I hired someone to hack that porn site’s servers. Everyone thought I cared about getting caught. That I cared about that trial. I didn’t lose. That was a joke. They all thought I lost. No. I won. I needed to get to the girls. I needed to tell them they were throwing their potential away. I didn’t lose. That cunt Rushkoff lost. I found out her husband was watching those girls. He used a pseudonym online, but I had the credit card records. Finding him there, now that was sweet. That was something I could use.”

Stella laughed. Whatever disaster she’d planned was close to coming to fruition and she was becoming more agitated. Meanwhile, the smell was growing in intensity. I could see that she’d stopped to sniff the air, too. Then she smiled again.

“She didn’t know her own precious husband was one of the men who couldn’t stay away. Judge fucking Alan Leightman. Paying to watch the same sluts who were ruining Simone. He’s in jail. You know that? He’s paying for his sins now. For his and his wife’s sins. He’s my little joke on her. He turned himself in. Can you imagine?”

“None of this will bring Simone back,” Nina said.

“No, but it will take me to Simone. I’ll go to her offering revenge. She will forgive me then.”

I needed to call the police and get them here. But how could I do that without making a sound? Either I backed out and hoped that I could do it quietly enough not to alert Stella, or I tried to dial from where I was.

But how could I say anything without her knowing I was there? Would 911 respond if I didn’t talk? No, they couldn’t. This wasn’t a land line; they wouldn’t know where I was. I was going to have to back out and shut the door. But I couldn’t do that until Stella turned around. I couldn’t risk her seeing me and panicking.

“Stella, I know how upset you are. I can’t imagine how horrible it is when your daughter takes her own life. But Blythe didn’t have anything to do with Simone killing herself,” Nina said, trying to reason with her old friend.

“She debased herself for those boys, and still they didn’t care. They passed the file around and all watched it, and they still didn’t want her. When I found out, I did everything I could to make her understand. I wanted to help her cleanse herself. But…but…she didn’t listen to me. All she wanted was one of those boys to put his prick in her mouth. That was all that mattered, and if she couldn’t have that…”

She was on the verge of losing control. I could see it in her eyes.

“No more explaining. No more. I’m tired. This was all I wanted. To give her this present for her birthday. Every one of those girls she copied has been punished, each of them poisoned by the very act that poisoned Simone. She’s the last one…” Stella nodded toward Blythe.

“Now it’s time to wish my baby happy birthday. Will you sing with me, Nina? Sing. Happy birthday to you-” Her cracked voice was off key.

Nina didn’t join in.

“You have to sing with me.”

I had seen people break before but it never lost its horror. Stella was angry now. Her eyes were on fire. She fumbled with the thing in her hand. It fell. She bent over to pick it up.

Now I could see what it was.

A box of matches.

Of course, she had to light the candle on the cake.

I don’t remember putting it all together.

One second I couldn’t tell what the smell was, the next I could suddenly breathe clearly and knew what it was. There was no time think about what needed to be done. Even calling out to Nina wouldn’t have accomplished anything. It would have taken me too long to explain.

In one long, slow motion, Stella moved her right foot forward, then her left. She was only two steps away from Blythe and the table and the cake. I saw the tremor in the hand that held the matchbox and heard the sound of the wooden sticks hitting each other so loudly it was as if it had been magnified a hundred times.

I ran forward, taking the steps to the stage two at a time. In my peripheral vision, I saw Nina standing with her mouth in a small astonished O.

Stella had opened the box. She shook out a match. It fell to the floor. She looked at it. Bent to pick it up. Retrieved it. Stood. Held the match to strike it.

I reached her, running right into her, knocking the box and the match out of her hands.

Shocked, she didn’t focus on me but looked down at the spilled matches.

“I have to do this. She is the last one. I promised Simone. I have to do this. Get away.” She pushed me with enormous force. I wasn’t prepared and I felt myself falling, fought to find my balance.

“Nina!” I shouted. “The theater is full of gas. She has matches. She wants to blow the place up. Get out. Call the police.”

Stella was coming at me with her hands open and her fingers curled. She tried for my eyes; I ducked. She grabbed my hair and yanked. I heard myself scream and swung my right arm. The flat of my cast made contact with her face. I heard something crack. My wrist? The cast? Stella staggered back, clutching her face. She was screaming. Blood was running through her fingers.

Nina had reached us by then.

Stella’s fingers were smeared with blood. Blood was still streaming down her chin and dripping onto her neck and it occurred to me that I had done that to her.

While Nina tied Stella’s hands together with my scarf, I pulled the gag out of Blythe’s mouth. Clearly drugged, she looked at me with glassy confused eyes.

“You’re going to be okay. Just hold on,” I told her.

Awkwardly, I pulled my cell phone out of my bag with one hand, dialed 911, gave them the address of the theater and told them to send both the police and an ambulance. “There’s a young woman here who I think has been poisoned. Hurry.”

Knowing the more information we could give the paramedics, the better the chances for Blythe’s survival, I told them all I knew. Once I hung up I turned to Stella.

Sitting in a corner of the stage, she was rocking slightly back and forth as if she could hear music and was moving to its beat. Nina, standing above her, looked down on her old friend with an expression of desperate sadness.

“What did you give her?” I asked Stella.

“She can’t hear you, Morgan,” Nina said.

I knew what kind of shape Stella was in, I could see it, but I couldn’t give up, not yet. “What did you give Blythe?”

Stella didn’t even look at me. Staring out into the distance, she was seeing something beyond Nina and me, beyond the stage and the theater, beyond the present.

“What did you give Blythe?” I was screaming now.

Stella started to answer me in a hoarse whisper and I leapt forward to make sure I heard every word.

“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you…” she sang in a thin, cracked voice.

“What did you give Blythe?”

As if she’d actually heard the question, she stopped singing and cocked her head toward me and I felt a flutter of hope.

“If only we’d had the cake.” Stella’s voice was low and without inflection. “It would have made Simone so happy. She would have liked to see all of us so much. If only we’d had the cake. It would have made Simone so happy. She would have liked to see all of us so much…”

Meanwhile, Nina had opened Stella’s bag and was rifling through it. “Let’s hope this is all she gave Blythe.” She held up a prescription bottle of popular sleeping pills.

Even though it was probably pointless, I tried once more. “Did you give her these pills, Stella? How many?”

“If only we’d had the cake. It would have made Simone so happy. She would have liked to see all of us so much. If only we’d had the cake. It would have made Simone so happy. She would have liked to see all of us…”

Her recitation was interrupted by the arrival of the police and the paramedics right behind them.