by Kailin Gow
I guess it doesn't matter anymore. Now that I know the truth about Xander Blue, there's no need to perform for him any longer. There's no need to try and convince him or anyone else that I'm beautiful, elegant, perfect. I can just be sick Staci Atussi, coughing up phelgm, hacking up puke into the toilet seat, probably getting some on his expensive Armani suit, for all I know.
But if I am, Xander doesn't seem to notice or care. He's holding me gingerly, tenderly.
“Staci...can you hear me?”
“Uh huh...” It's the only word I can get out.
If he is going to kill me, then let him do it, I think. I'm too tired. I can't fight anymore. This poison has absolutely wrecked my body. I don't have the strength to fight back, or even scream...
“What happened?”
I don't have the energy to speak. All I do is cast my gaze out the door, at where the cocktail glass lies overturned on the coffee table.
Xander knows enough to follow my gaze.
“The drink?”
I nod, spluttering up more phlegm as I do so. I don't even want to think about how sick I look right now.
“Who gave it to you?”
“R-r-r-oom service.” It takes what feels like an eternity to get the words out of me. “T-t-t-thought it was B-ben.”
“Jesus, Staci....”
Immediately he leaps to his feet and takes out his cell phone, dialing 9-1-1.
“Staci – this place is dangerous. Never, ever take a drink without knowing who it's from. With everything going on out here, you can't trust a single solitary soul. You know that, Staci. God, I hate that you have to know that. When all I want to do is have you somewhere safe, where you'll be protected.” There are what look like tears in his eyes. “God, Staci. I don't know what to tell you. I would die if something happened to you – understand? I'd just die. The paramedics are coming. So you have to hold on, okay? You have to get well! Listen to me, Staci – I love you. Do you hear me, I love you. I can't lose you. Just hold on – just until the paramedics get here. They'll take care of you; I promise. They'll make you well. Just...don't lose heart, my love.”
My love...my love...I love you, I think dreamily, confused. Why is he saying those words to me now? Didn't he come in here to kill me? And the yacht – that was all part of the plan too, right? To kill me? To make sure that I drown, that nobody would ever find my body, so that nobody would ever think to look for me again?
“I wanted to make tonight special for you,” he whispers. He caresses me. He kisses my forehead. “I wanted to have such a special night with you – to explain everything. But we can have it another time, my sweetling. This time we have to work on getting you well. I don't know who drugged that drink. But whoever did, let me promise you, Staci, I'll make sure they never do it again. I'll make sure nobody can ever hurt you again.”
He's not taking me on his yacht... I think. He's not going to kill me tonight.
Small mercies, I guess.
But that makes no sense. If Xander Blue were to want to kill me, now would be the perfect time. I'm too weak to resist. He could bring me out on the boat and drop me in the ocean. I wouldn't even be able to kick or try to scream. I'd just fall like a bag of rocks to the very depths of the Pacific. The last thing I would see would be his face, the moon, the waters closing above me.
But instead he's calling 911. Like he's trying to save me, not kill me?
I shudder as the lights dim again, as his face comes in and out of focus. Xander Blue, I think. What are you up to now?
When I wake up next I am in a hospital. There are fluorescent lights all around me: harsh, ugly white light. Is it the lighting that makes my skin look so sallow, so jaundiced?
The room is full of flowers: beautiful white lilies that cover all the walls.
“Miss Atussi,” a nurse is tapping her folder against the side of my hospital bed. “You had quite a scare there, Miss Atussi.”
“W-w-what happened?”
“Didn't anyone tell you not to mix your pills and your booze?”
“I...I didn't mix anything.”
She gives me a disbelieving look. “You're lucky you escaped with your life. That cocktail you had – had everything - valium, barbituates, and of course a heavy load of booze. If you were trying to off yourself, it almost worked.”
I look around in confusion.
“How long have I been here?”
“We had to give you the works, ma'am. Stomach pump, examinations, everything.”
Shit...
“B-b-but I don't have health insurance.” How am I going to afford this?
“Don't you know? The handsome gentleman who brought you in is covering the bill. Insisted we move you to the nicest room. And insisted on moving all these flowers in here – I hope you appreciate them, because the nurses have been tripping over them all day.”
“They're beautiful,” I say.
“Well, you contemplate them for a while, you hear me? And get some rest. That gentleman – your friend. He's outside. He says he wants to see you as soon as you're awake. Should I send him in?”
“Oh,” Xander's outside. But I can't deal with him right now. I don't even know what to say. I'm still afraid of him – but he did save my life. Or was that just another ruse, a ploy to gain my trust so he can carry out whatever his true plan is? I can't even look at him right now. I can't bring myself to look at him, knowing how attracted I'll still be to him, knowing how much I'll still want him, knowing that I know who he really is. The monster lapdog of the family that destroyed my mother's life. “No,” I say. “Make him wait for a while.”
“Are you sure?” The nurse looks dubious. “He seemed pretty insistent. All those flowers --- and the medical bills.”
“I'll be ready soon,” I say. “Just give me a while.”
“All right,” the nurse crosses her arms and leaves me alone.
I look around me. I'm on so many wires I feel like a fucking robot.
But I can't stay here. Wherever I go, it's not safe. Even if Xander isn't a threat, someone else could come back here to finish me off. I need to be mobile.
I force myself to my feet. I'm still wobbly, but at least I'm functional. Small mercies, I guess. I call a cab, then hang up. I don't even know where I am.
Luckily for me I've got my phone in my pocket.
I locate myself at a hospital in Malibu. A chic one, too. Xander has clearly pulled out all the stops in trying to make me well again. But why?
I order the car. I unhook myself from the wires. I put on my old clothes, sweaty and vomit-stained though they are.
Then, before anyone can stop me, I walk as fast as I can and will not be suspicious through the halls and out of there, past Xander, past everyone.
“Where to, miss?” says the driver.
“Blues Towers,” I say.
Chapter 8
Time to go back to the Blue Room. I'm not even sure what I'll do when I'm there. The Blue Room seems so dangerous to me now; I am so overwhelmed by fear that I can barely face the idea of going back there. But I have to. I haven't got a choice.
Right now, it feels like I could risk death and not even mind, not even care. Right now it feels like I could die. And why not? What do I even have to live for anymore? My career as a singer – singing for the Never Knights? A lovely notion in theory, to be sure. But in practice... I'd have to work with Danny Blue. A man who now knows my past. And who am I kidding? I'd still be under the Blues' thumb. Working for Blue Records, with Danny Blue....I'd never be safe. The same people: Terrence, Danny, Roni, Clarence, in my life. No freedom. No escape. Sometimes it feels like I'll have to go to the very ends of the earth to escape them. Like there's nowhere on this earth they and the Tannenbaums haven't touched. The two of them, proud like the great kings of old, carving up the bounties and beauties of the world between them. I can see these two families deciding who owns which city, who owns which street. I realize any idea of independence is an illusion.
I don't have a caree
r plan. Any career I could get will probably be stopped in its tracks because of my dark past. Who wants to hire an ex-prostitute, after all? And the Blues are powerful people. Powerful and vindictive enough to ensure that the truth comes out. Wherever I try to run, assume a new identity, just the way my mother did, they will find me. They will make sure my past comes to light. That everybody knows what I was. That even my mother knows what I was – and am. And she doesn't have a lot of time left.
So even if I am in danger, it almost doesn't matter. I might as well stand my ground. I might as well let them kill me. I don't even care anymore. I've lost the trust of Xander and Terrence, the two men I thought I loved. I can't bear to look either of them in the face anymore. I don't even know if I can trust either one. I don't even know if I want to. So let one of them kill me. Hell, let both of them kill me. What does it even matter? What do I care? At least this sick drama, this degradation of the Blue Room, will be at an end.
When I come back to my room, I find it open.
Figures, I think. The number of people who get in and out of my room on a daily basis is getting ridiculous. That card trick Julie told me about – stopping the lock to get into the rooms – seems to be known to everyone in this whole building.
My room has been ransacked. Everything is smashed, overturned. Made into chaos. Just like my mother's house back in Vegas. Clearly the Tannenbaums – if it is the Tannenbaums – have a distinctive MO. Ransack, destroy. They haven't taken anything, I notice. They've just made this place uninhabitable. They remind me that they can find me: anytime, anywhere. That's what this is. A way to scare me.
On my desk: the photograph of me and Rita. Someone has slashed it straight through. A clear warning. Stay away from this secret. It's not yours to uncover. It's not yours to tell.
I sit on my sofa, reeling. I'm still in shock.
I'm a sitting duck here, I think. Poisoned drinks, thieves or ransackers coming into my room. I'm not safe here. I know that. But – what does it matter? Maybe I should stay at the Blue Room, wait to die. Wait for someone to come out of the shadows and finish this torture they've started. At last. At last. I wonder how it will be: Xander pushing me off his yacht into the darkness of night. Terrence beating me to a bloody pulp, like what happened to Rita. Or maybe it will be Roni Taylor, shooting me in the heart.
It's like a game of Clue.
Xander in the hotel suite with the poison,
Julie in the hotel lobby with the gun.
Roni in the shadows with a knife.
It could be any or all of them. I don't know.
Then something in me stirs. Something in me rears up in struggle. A part of me I didn't know existed is raging against this.
I can't just sit here: waiting to die. I can't just give up.
I have to fight. I have to fight back somehow.
I'm not done with the Blue Room. I'm going to get revenge somehow, and find the truth. But I can't do it as a Blue Girl anymore. There's nothing for me in the Blue Room but sex, sweat, and heartbreak: in that order. There's nothing left for me here.
I have to move on. I have to fight.
So, finally, I pack up my belongings. And finally it's time to take off, to leave the Blue Room.
I write a note to Mrs. Walters. I tell her that due to my mother's illness, it's time for me to take a leave of absence to check up on her. She'd be proud, I think, Mrs. Walters. She always valued professionalism. And I write her an elegant note in perfect penmanship on Blue Room stationary. Attention to detail, Mrs. Walters said, was always the most important thing for a Blue Girl. Noticing these tiny little details could make a whole difference between a “normal” girl and a truly successful escort. What a man liked to eat. How he drank his wine. The things you had to notice. Details.
I smile as I think about Mrs. Walters as I finish drafting my note.
She always brought something to the Blue Room, I think. If not quite class, then nevertheless a sense of...beauty, elegance. She was maybe the only person in the Blue Room that truly saw the place as a calling: a professional workplace with real opportunities for women to advance themselves socially. She was a relic, I think. A woman of a different age, a different time in life. A woman who cared about making a decent living, working hard, in a world that was strange to her.
I knew very little about Mrs. Walters, I realize. Thinking back, I can only recall a single conversation with her that could be counted as “personal.”
I was in the office of the Blue Room filling out various documents when I noticed a photograph on Mrs. Walters' desk. Her with a very handsome boy on her arm. She looked a lot younger then, but the severe face, the elegance, seemed intact.
“Who is he?” I asked her.
It was the only time I saw her smile: a true, genuine smile.
“My son,” she said. “He's such a smart boy. He's brilliant. He's going to Harvard, you know.” She blushed pink. “Well, he hasn't been accepted yet. But he will be. He's the top of his class. He gets straight A's. Things haven't always been easy for us, you know – but it's never affected his schoolwork. Even the year his father died, he never got below an A- in anything. He works so hard...” Her voice trailed off and her eyes took on a misty glow. “Mr. Walters went to Harvard too. He was such a smart man – a businessman. A great businessman...” she smiled. “Not many people thought that in the end. He went to jail for insider trading, you know. We lost our fortune. But I never lost faith in him. Not once. He was the love of my life...”
She hadn't worked. She had no marketable skills. She was a socialite wife who found herself widowed and penniless and did what she had to do for the sake of her son.
“William,” she said. “He looks like his father. But he's smart. A hard worker. Harry had so many wonderful qualities, but he wasn't a hard worker. Not like William is.”
“Not like you,” I said.
Then she smiled. “Bless your heart for saying that,” she said. It was the first time she'd ever been kind to me.
She told me about her philosophy for the Blue Room. She wanted to “mold women who could use their capital” better than she had. She'd married well, a rich man, and been left penniless. She wanted young women to be independent. To help take ugly ducklings and make swans out of them: women billionaires wanted to be seen with, might even marry. But swans who could balance a checkbook, who were in charge of their own finances.
“And of course, powerful men do stray,” she says. “Mine was no exception. But if they visit a safe place like the Blue Room, they can get just enough sexual relief in a structured way that they're not tempted to cheat in other ways. They won't have mistresses that they might fall in love with, spend money on. We have probably saved more marriages, in our unconventional way, than most relationship counselors.” She smiles. “A funny way of looking at it, isn't it?”
I remember how disgusted I was then. But now I'm not so sure. If billionaires are going to cheat, going to get their sexual needs met somewhere, then I suppose it was better that it happen in a controlled environment like the Blue Room: where it's only ever a fantasy, where nobody can get too involved or emotionally invested.
Until, of course, they do.
I leave the note in Mrs. Walters' office. The picture of her and her son is still on the table.
“Goodbye, Josephine,” I whisper as I leave the room.
Chapter 9
And so I am free.
Or am I?
I am on the road again, for the first time, for the last time, I don't know. I am not the woman I was a day ago, or two, or three. I am not a Blues Girl any longer. I am not a prostitute, and I never again will be somebody's whore. I am freedom incarnate; my hair whipping in the wind. My lips half-parted on the breeze and I can taste it and it tastes so good, better than anything, the salt from the sea and the sun which has a flavor, although I have never noticed before how good the sun tastes on your tongue.
This is what life is like now, I think. This is what life is like outside the B
lue Room. It is as if I have been my whole life in shuttered places: in a windowless, airless room. And now suddenly the shutters have been flung open, the windows have been pulled up to let the light and the air and the breeze in. I am seeing the whole world anew. It is like I am seeing it for the first time. The road is reaching out before me, stretching, and I am driving and I think I have never felt like this before and there rears up in me a real love, a wild love, a love unlike any I have ever known for Xander or for Terrence or for any other man: a love for freedom in its fullest aspect. I love this, I think. My body warms to this. I desire this as hungrily as I have craved any man's cock. I am free. I am free. I am free.
I have rented a car. I've paid in cash: my ill-gotten gains good for something. And now I am on my way to something new: something greater. I am driving to Vegas, and who knows how long it will take me, but there I will see my mother again, and we will build a new life together, just the two of us, truthful with one another, now, truthful with one another for the first time. We do not need the Tannenbaum fortune or the Blue charity. We have one another.
Then, when there is time, I will find out the truth. But I don't need vengeance, I think. I don't have to get back at these people any longer. Getting back at them will just get me killed. The only revenge, perhaps, the best revenge is living well. Don't people say that? Well, right now, all I want is to live well. I want to be happy. I want to make my own meals: simple, home-cooked things, cheaply-bought. Not oysters not caviar not filet mignon not whatever Xander wants to spoil me with. Things I can buy myself. Things I can make myself. I want to make thing with my own two hands. I want to be myself and explore who I really am.
I don't want to be a man's fantasy any longer. I want to grow my hair to the length I want and grow my roots out too. I want to wear no makeup and look into the mirror and love myself the way I am. I want to wear the clothes I'm most comfortable in and never once wonder whether or not I should be wearing something to flatter my curves or my legs or whatever body part some man finds most attractive. I want so much out of life.