Exposed

by Jasinda Wilder

  Logan blinks at me. "Jesus. By 'train,' I assume you mean he fucks them all and calls it training?"

  "There are actual lessons. Weekly reports and assessments. Techniques."

  "So the clients aren't allowed to fuck the girls, because they belong to Caleb." This is phrased as a question, but spoken as the bitterest of statements.

  "I hid under Rachel's bed during an assessment," I whisper.

  "Meaning . . . you discovered all this by accident? Overheard Caleb having sex with some other girl?" he asks.

  I nod. "Right." I swallow hard. "Then one time I was visiting Rachel, because we were kind of friends, and I needed someone who wasn't Caleb to talk to. He showed up, and caught me watching. Listening. So he . . . he forced me to watch while he--finished. With Rachel."

  "Isabel. God." Logan wipes his face with both hands. "This is fucked up on so many levels."

  "I admitted to him later that I was confused by the difference in the way he treated Rachel versus the way he treated me. He did things both to and with Rachel that he never did with me. And I wasn't--I wasn't saying I wanted those things, just that I was confused. He'd say things to her, do things with her sexually that--" I cut myself off, start over. "So then the next time I saw him, he did . . . what I told you. Which was the kind of thing I heard and saw him do with Rachel."

  I cannot put into words the confusion. The anger. The fact that part of me liked what was done to me. That part of me craves those moments of helpless weakness, those moments of belonging, of being owned, dominated, subjugated. I hate that part of me, and cannot speak it into truth.

  But Logan, oh . . . he sees. His eyes, crystalline and indigo and piercing me like scalpels slicing through tissue. Cutting me open and baring my secrets for his perusal.

  "Isabel." His voice has that note of warmth. That layer of understanding. "There is nothing you could say, nothing you could do, no truth that could change my feelings for you. Do you know that?"

  I cannot move, breathe, or feel, much less speak. I try to nod, try to seem like I am giving him an affirmation. But it ends up a sniffle and a wobble of my head. My eyes are squeezed shut and my head is ducked, and I am clutching myself, arms wrapped around my middle.

  "You watched, and you were curious." His voice is a murmur in my ear. "You saw him do things to that other girl that he didn't do with you, and you were curious."

  I nod. I owe him truth, even embarrassing, disgusting, mortifying truth.

  Logan continues baring the secrets I cannot say. "You didn't . . . want those things. But you were curious. And Caleb is a perceptive motherfucker. He can read people as easily as you read books. So he saw that. Saw your curiosity. And he's a manipulative bastard, so he used it against you. Used your curiosity as an excuse to force those things on you and make you feel like maybe you asked for it. That maybe you did want it, and just didn't know how to say it. Like maybe it was you all along, and not him."

  I am choking. Oxygen is not reaching my brain. Thoughts are like moths fluttering in kamikaze circles around a burning-hot lightbulb. How does he know? How do these men see so clearly into me? Do my thoughts and desires and emotions appear on my forehead in visible form?

  I roll away. Logan is at my back, hand on my shoulder, mouth at my ear. "Hey. Talk to me, Is."

  "And say what?" I speak to empty air in front of me rather than facing Logan. "That you're right? Fine. You're right. And so was he. I . . . was curious. And part of me did want it. Just . . . not the way he did it. I didn't want the humiliation. With her, it seemed like it was mutual. Maybe he was teaching her, but there was a two-directionality to the way they interacted, sexually. And . . . god, this is so hard to say out loud, especially to you. But with Caleb and me, it has always seemed . . . one way. Him doing what he wanted to me, and me allowing it. I wanted that--I don't know how to put it. I wanted that feeling of being an active participant and not just a . . . a receptacle for his needs. And all I got for my curiosity was to be used yet another way."

  "What did you feel with us? You and me, just now?"

  "There is an us. There always has been. I've always felt like with you, that you see me. You . . . you both see me, and see me. The emphasis on both words is important. You care about what I want. You care about who I am."

  "Caleb doesn't."

  I have to let a silence hang until I can force the words out. "I don't know if that's true. I think he just cares about me being the version of me he wants me to be. The version he created, rather than the version I am becoming."

  Lips touch my spine between my shoulder blades. "And I care about you, who you were and who you are and who you're becoming. All of you."

  "I know."

  His hand tugs at my arm, and I roll to my back. He's levered over me, staring down at me with too-bright eyes. Knowing eyes. A gaze full of understanding and compassion and hurt and love. Yes, love. I see it there, though neither of us will speak of it outright. "But for all that, there's still something there between you and Caleb, something you can't deny and can't ignore. And I can't have you until you've seen that through."

  "I hate how right you are, so much of the time," I say.

  "Me too," he says.

  "I don't know what it is, between Caleb and me. I wish I did, so I could be done with it."

  "Me too," he says again. "But until there's an end between you and Caleb, there can't be a beginning between you and me."

  The silence quavering between us then is rife with pain. This hurts. Worse than anything I've ever felt, this hurts. My throat closes, and my eyes sting. It's hard to breathe for the weight of pain in my chest. For the weight of the good-bye swinging like a thousand-pound pendulum between us.

  I have nothing else to say. No more words. I leave Logan's bed and his room, and I take a shower. I take my time, scrubbing every inch of my body carefully. I don't want to. Even now, I want his scent on me. I want to be marked by him on the outside the way he's marked me on the inside.

  My dress has been laid neatly on the bed, along with my undergarments, and my shoes are on the floor near them. Logan is nowhere to be seen. I dress carefully, smoothing the worst of the wrinkles out of the dress as best I can. My hair is still wet, because Logan doesn't own a hair dryer, and my hair is thick. I braid it and tie off the end. Slip on my shoes.

  And yet, when I look in the floor-to-ceiling mirror in Logan's closet, I see only Isabel. Despite the familiar clothes, I do not see Madame X. I see me. I see a person. A woman becoming her own individual. I inhale deeply, run my hands over the bell curve of my hips, exhale, and then go in search of Logan.

  I find him in his backyard, pacing in troubled circles, smoking a cigarette, drinking a beer. Cocoa lies on the ground near the door, chin on her paws, watching him, thick brown tail thumping the flagstones.

  He halts, and his eyes rake over me. "You are so beautiful, Isabel."

  "You've already seen me in this dress, Logan," I point out.

  He shrugs. "Doesn't make you any less gorgeous than the first time I saw you in it."

  I try another breath, but my lungs don't seem to want to inflate all the way. "I should go."

  A long inhalation of the cigarette, causing the orange tip to flare bright. "I know." Smoke trickles out of his nostrils. "I'll take you."

  The drive back through the pink-to-gold light of dawn is silent. The radio is off. Logan does not speak and neither do I.

  He pulls up directly in front of Caleb's tower. Finally, he looks at me. "You know how to find me. I will wait, Isabel."

  "For how long?" I ask, wanting to look away from his indigo gaze and finding myself unable to do so.

  "Until you tell me to stop waiting."

  TEN

  I stand alone in the middle of the lobby of your tower. The reception desk is fully staffed: two older white men, a striking young black woman with a shaved scalp, and a Hispanic man of indeterminate age, which means probably about thirty. They all glance at me, notice me, and then return to their work, but
the black woman makes a very brief phone call. Which means they know who I am and have alerted Len, most likely.

  Indeed, it is Len who appears from the bank of elevators, expression inscrutable, aged, weathered, hardened features cast in stone. He does not greet me, doesn't say a single word. Merely gestures at the elevators. I nod and accompany him onto the elevator marked Private.

  The ride up is long.

  "Len," I say, curiosity getting the better of me. "How old are you?"

  "Forty-nine, ma'am."

  "What is the worst thing you've ever done?"

  A very thick silence as Len stares down at me. "I would say it's probably impossible to pinpoint one single thing. I'm not a good person, and I never have been."

  "Indulge me."

  An outbreath, blown between pursed lips, eyes cast to the roof of the elevator car. A moment of thought, in which Len looks nearly human. "I fought in the first Desert Storm. Marine Recon. We caught this insurgent, me and two guys from my unit. We holed up in a little hut near the Kuwaiti border and tortured the unholy fuck out of the poor bastard. He knew where some high-ranking Iraqi military generals were hiding, and we were told to get the intel by any means possible. So we did."

  "What kind of torture?" I cannot help asking.

  "Why would you want to know this shit, Madame X?"

  "I'm not Madame X anymore, Len. My name is Isabel. And I'm learning that no one is ever as they seem."

  Len nods. "Fair enough. We ripped his fingernails out with pliers. Cut strips of his skin off with a box cutter. Burned toes off with a blowtorch. Waterboarded him. Beat him half to death. Stuck pins in him until he looked like a pincushion, and then heated 'em up with a lighter."

  "My god," I breathe. I am horrified. "Did he survive it?"

  "Oh yeah. Point of torture is to cause pain so bad they'll tell you anything to make it stop. So yeah, he survived long enough to sing about the generals, but when we had what we needed, we put a couple rounds in the back of his head."

  "Double-tap," I say, thinking of Logan.

  Len nods. "Yeah, we double-tapped him, and left him for the vultures and the ants."

  "Tell me one more thing," I ask.

  "Sure, why not."

  "What's the best thing you've ever done?"

  "That's a helluva lot harder." Len is silent for a long time. "There was this girl. In Fallujah. Local girl. We were headed out on foot after a raid, and I heard screaming. Followed the sound, against orders. Discovered some local fellas running a train on the girl. Killed 'em all. I had some local currency in one of my pockets, and I gave it all to her, then pounded leather back to my unit. Whenever I could, I stopped by and helped her out. Brought her money, food, clothes. Whatever I could scrounge up. I still dunno why. I don't stand by rape, I guess. I'm an evil motherfucker, don't get me wrong. I'll beat up, torture, and murder men without thinking twice about it, but I won't touch a woman in violence, and won't stand to see it happen. I may be a bastard, but I've got my own code of honor. Such as it is, at any rate."

  "What happened to her?" I ask. "The girl?"

  A shrug. "Lost contact with her. Battle of Fallujah happened, and it got to where I couldn't really go looking anymore without getting my ass shot off."

  "Have you ever killed anyone for Caleb?"

  A stony stare. "We're not talking about Mr. Indigo."

  "You have." I meet Len's glare. "Would you kill Logan if he told you to?"

  Len's answer is immediate: "In a heartbeat."

  "Why?"

  "Because he's dangerous."

  "So are you. So is Caleb. I'm surrounded by dangerous men, it would seem."

  Another shrug. "You're not wrong there." The car stopped a long time ago, but Len has been holding the doors closed. Now he allows them to open. "He's not back yet, but he will be shortly." The conversation is over, apparently.

  "Thank you, Len."

  Len seems puzzled by my thanks. "Yeah." And then he's gone, doors closing between us.

  I don't know what I'm going to say. What I'm going to do. You will be here soon and I've got a million, billion questions, and answers that I don't know the questions to, and demands I don't know how to formulate. Needs I don't know how to meet. And all of this requires that I face up to you and not flinch, speak to you and not succumb to your sorcery.

  I do not have the best track record when it comes to that. I am weak.

  I stand for long moments a mere three steps into the colossal space you call home, the echoing, open-plan apartment occupying the entire footprint of the tower. There, the couch. Where you fucked me. Here, where I stand, the carpet under my feet where you shoved your cock into my throat and came on my face. The haptic memory is overwhelmingly strong, a twinge in my jaw reminding me how wide I had to stretch my mouth, a ghost of heat and wetness on my face where you finished on me. There, the kitchen, the breakfast nook. You pulled me down onto your lap in that chair, the westward-facing one, with all of Fifth Avenue spread out for you. You pulled me down onto your lap, wrapped your fist into my hair, tugged my head backward so I was forced to stare up at the ceiling while you thrusted up into me and bit my neck in sharp nips. You never spoke a word, didn't touch me other than to fuck me and bite me. It was almost like a punishment. But for what?

  Strange that I remember that encounter. You'd woken me up out of a dead sleep at three in the morning, hauled me into the kitchen, yanked off my underwear and tossed them onto the table, and then proceeded to fuck me until you came, and then you were done. You shoved me off you, snatched my underwear and shoved them into your pocket. Tossed back the last of your doppio macchiato, strode out without a backward glance. I went back to sleep, and the next morning it had seemed like a dream, easily forgotten.

  There is a crystal bottle of something amber on a side table near a window. It is an artfully crafted little vignette: a small round table of dark wood, a cut-crystal decanter and two matching tumblers on a silver tray, the table and tray nestled against the wall between two floor-to-ceiling windows. There are two overstuffed armchairs facing the table at oblique angles, and each armchair has a tiny table near to hand, on which rests a cut-crystal ashtray, a silver cigar cutter, and a torch-style lighter. A few feet away, between the next pair of windows, is another small table, this one with two rectangular boxes, glass-topped. Cigars. I open one of the boxes, select a cigar. I bring my cigar with me and pour a measure of scotch whisky into a tumbler. I've seen you do this a thousand times. I cut the end off the cigar with the platinum cutter sitting on the table nearby, put the freshly cut end to my lips and light it, rotating the cigar and puffing as I've seen you do. When it's smoking merrily, I suck in a mouthful and taste it. Thick, acrid, almost sweet. Blow it out. Roll the smoke around in my mouth, let it trickle away. Play with it. I try a sip of the scotch. This, I've had before. I think of Logan as I roll the powerful liquid around my mouth and then swallow it.

  I wait for you this way, the way you have often waited for me, a cigar coiling serpents of smoke toward the vent cleverly hidden in the ceiling, a glass of scotch in hand. Eyes dark and brooding, watching traffic and the sunset or the sunrise. Time seems to have no bearing on you. You are the same at dawn as you are midnight, always put together and perfect and silent and powerful and tensed.

  The elevator whooshes open, no ding here. Just the door sliding open to frame you. My throat closes and my mouth goes dry. You are shirtless and sweaty, wearing a pair of tight black sweatpants with the elastic cuffs tugged up to the knee, pristine white socks peeking up over the edge of black athletic shoes. Your muscled chest is coated in a sheen of sweat, beads trickling down between your pectorals, shining on your biceps, running down from your hairline over your temple and into the day-old stubble on your jaw. Your chest heaves rapidly. Cords trail from your ears, meet beneath your chin, and extend to your cell phone, which is in your hand. You are speaking rapidly in fluent Mandarin as you enter, and your eyes find me. A gleam mars the blankness of your expression as you see me
, and I think you almost smile.

  Even half naked and sweating, you are a work of art, perfect even thus--perhaps even especially thus--crafted particularly to please the female eye. To rile the female libido.

  I take a large swallow of whisky to fortify my nerves, letting out a breath as you approach, still talking in a low voice in Mandarin. You stand two feet away from me, and I smell the sweat on you. The person on the other end of your conversation is speaking now, judging by your focused silence, and you reach down, take my glass from me, drain the rest of my scotch.

  Gesture at the bottle with the glass as if I'm your servant, sent to fetch more for the imperious master.

  I do so, refilling the glass, but I remain by the table and drink it myself, staring at you. I place the cigar in my teeth, baring them, an unladylike expression in the extreme, and replace the crystal stopper in the decanter. You lift your chin and your eyes crackle, spark, spit fire. You see then. You see that I will not be cowed any longer.

  You spin away, stalk to the kitchen, say a few angry-sounding words in Mandarin, then resume listening as you pull two bottles of water from the refrigerator. You down one without stopping for breath as you listen. Say a few sentences, pause and listen, say a few more, and then slowly drink the second bottle.

  Ignoring me now, are you? Fine by me. I take my seat and stare out at Manhattan, swilling my second glass of scotch and feeling the first. Smoking my cigar. Studiously not rehearsing what I will say, because I know whatever I might imagine you will say, it will not be close to the truth. You are not predictable.

  Finally, you say what sounds like a good-bye, touch the screen, and stand in silence for moments more, finishing your water.

  You turn to me. "Good morning, Isabel." This, from the kitchen, many feet away from where I sit.

  "Good morning, Caleb."

  "Early for scotch, isn't it?" Your voice, so calm, so deep, so deceptively hypnotic. Like staring into a sinkhole, unplumbed depths, darkness and mystery and danger.

  I shrug. "I haven't been to sleep yet, so it is late, for me."

  Your expression hardens at this. "I see. And how is Logan?"

  "None of your concern," I return. "What is your concern is that he told me how you got him put in prison."