The Venus Fix

by M. J. Rose

  “But you didn’t instigate the divorce—”

  “I know, but it’s easier for her to blame me….” I took another swallow of the salty vodka. “Mitch thinks we should try again. He’s convinced that—”

  “Try again?” he interrupted. “As in, the two of you try as a couple again?”

  I nodded.

  He was waiting for me to say something. To tell him how silly an idea it was. I could tell; I knew him that well.

  I started to, because I knew it was. Because I knew how I felt about him. But what if Mitch was right? What if we did owe Dulcie one more try?

  Noah fished an olive out of his drink with his fingers and ate it. “So since I’m always Mr. Nice Guy, I should understand this and step back and offer you my best wishes.” His voice was tinged with iciness.

  “Noah—”

  I’d thought nothing could scare me as much as Dulcie’s disappearance the other night, and probably nothing could. But the expression on Noah’s face was ripping at my heart, leaving ragged edges that I knew were going to hurt me for days. For weeks. Maybe forever. I couldn’t do this.

  “Noah—”

  “No. Don’t interrupt me. Let me say this, and when I’m done you can talk. We’ll take turns. We’ll pretend we are utterly civilized and sophisticated even though what I feel like doing now is getting up out of my seat, taking you by the shoulders, and shaking you until your brains rattle back into place. So can you—you who always has something to say and who loves to control everything—be quiet long enough to let me talk?”

  He didn’t understand. I needed to explain. To stop him before—

  Before I could answer, the waiter arrived with our food. The iridescent black shells glistening in their fragrant broth should have been tantalizing, but suddenly I wasn’t the slightest bit hungry. Noah, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be affected, and popped a steaming mussel in his mouth.

  “I don’t want to go backward, Noah.”

  “With me? With Mitch? What do you want, Morgan?”

  I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I didn’t want to break any promises. I didn’t want my daughter to become a stranger. I missed Dulcie so much my eyes hurt when I got home at night and I couldn’t see her, my arms ached at not being able to hug her before she went to bed.

  I played with the mussels, tried to eat a few, and then gave up.

  When he was halfway done with his food, he pushed his plate away, took a long, slow drink, sat back in his seat and said: “I can’t believe we’re here again. But we are. Listen, I’m not a hard-ass, Morgan. I understand that this fight with Dulcie is torturing you and that you’ll do anything to make it right again. I’m not even going to suggest that if you do get back with your ex-husband that it won’t help your relationship with Dulcie get better. Because I don’t know that. It might. It just might.”

  He stopped to drink what was left of his martini and then waved the waiter over and ordered another for each of us, even though I hadn’t finished mine.

  I started to say something but he put up his hand. “I don’t have a lot more to say, so if you can, I’d appreciate it if you could continue not interrupting me till I’m done.”

  I didn’t want to. I hated seeing him in any kind of pain. But this was so complicated. There were too many questions on the table, along with all the forks and spoons and knives.

  “You should see your face. This is hurting you like hell. Well, it’s hurting me like hell, too. But you know what? It’s too complicated. So let me make it easy.” He smiled sarcastically. “Go do whatever it is you think you have to do. But understand, I don’t believe for one goddamn second that you are really doing this because it will solve everything between you and Dulcie. She’s thirteen, she has to rebel. She has to argue. She has to want things you can’t give her. It’s a rite of passage for both of you. Hell, you know that. You are a goddamn shrink. That’s why you know you wouldn’t be going back to Mitch for any of the right reasons, but because it’s the path of least resistance. It’s goddamn easier.”

  This was a mess. Like the stupid roux. It had gone from golden to burnt and I hadn’t even known where along the way I’d screwed it up. Reaching down, I grabbed my bag off the floor, prepared to leave. I couldn’t quite see where I was going because of the stupid tears. I wanted to hold Noah and tell him how I felt about him. Instead I said, “You can’t know what my reasons are. The presumption behind everything you just said is astounding.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that the couple next to us were listening. It was too late to care.

  “You’d be right if I was wrong. But I’m not wrong.” Noah shook his head. “I’m not the one who you want to hear this from, but I’m the one who is sitting here and I’m the one who is crazy about you and I’m the poor fucker who is going to lose out here. What you’re doing is wrong. It’s not that it’s wrong for me, or Dulcie, or Mitch. It’s wrong for you, Morgan.”

  Fifty-Two

  The apartment was not only empty but it was cold. Too cold. It wasn’t until I went into the den that I found out why. When I’d left in the morning, in a hurry to meet Alan Leightman early, I’d forgotten that the window was cracked open from the night before, and now there was a small pile of snow on the carpet.

  For some reason this, of everything that had happened, overwhelmed me. I shut the window, then kicked at the mess with my bare foot, not caring that it was freezing or that it was wet or that I was only making a bigger mess. Snow did not belong inside. It was an intrusion in my home.

  Down on my knees, I rubbed at it, freezing my fingers until it melted and the rug wicked it up.

  After that I took a bath, went into the kitchen and made some tea. I picked up the phone and dialed Mitch’s number so I could talk to Dulcie, but I hung up before it connected. Instead I punched in Nina’s number. She wasn’t home either and I didn’t bother leaving a message.

  It was quiet in the house and I kept hearing Noah’s words in my head. I didn’t want to think about what he’d said. He didn’t know me that well. He had no idea what he was talking about. I had been married to Mitch for fourteen years. It had been good with him. With us. It would be again. Dulcie would have her family back. It was a happy ending.

  No. It wasn’t a happy ending. It was a happy beginning. That was even better. A new start.

  Then why did I feel as if I were in mourning?

  Thursday

  Eight days remaining

  Fifty-Three

  Dearest,

  One more candle has been lit to commemorate one more death. One more step closer to full retribution and one act closer to fulfilling my promise to you. There are only eight days left and then I’ll be done with the fun and the blood and the guts and the gore and nothing will matter because you are still gone.

  I am so tired. Tired from being careful and from keeping track. I have so much to do, to monitor, to control. There are a million details, just like the millions of men out there addicted to Internet porn. Addicted to watching women, women who are not women. I pity the men who come up against them and, more than the men, I pity the boys who have had their first sex on screen. Watched virtual women undulate and whisper to them and them alone long before they’d ever approach a real young woman. All during their developing years, the Web lifts its shirt and flashes these spoiled boys the prettiest breasts and tightest vaginas and never ever asks them to give anything back. Not a word, not a thought, not compassion and not caring, no, none of those, just a credit card number that their parents give them, or they steal.

  No one, not therapists, not lawyers, not teachers, not parents, has the experience or the knowledge to deal with our troubled children because they are a mutation—the first generation who have been suckled by twenty-four-hour, easily accessible and practically free instant gratification. Twenty-four-hour poison.

  The more I watch what you watched, the more sacred this quest, the more critical these rituals and important this cleansing. We need to burn every one of them at the sta
ke until there are none left to tempt, lure, entice, bait and seduce. To set the devil’s examples that young women follow into hell.

  It was frightening to watch that girl cutting herself and watch the razor blade slice open her skin and see the blood rise so quickly to the surface and to think you once watched her cutting, too. This time she made fourteen cuts until her skin was ribboned with thin, sad lines of blood.

  When she was done cutting the computer did not go black and she didn’t realize what was happening. She never went for the phone and no one came to her aid.

  She was dark and alien—the kind of witch woman who lured you and swayed you and turned you into something dark and alien, too, and that’s one thing I can never forgive her for. It’s not just that because of them you’re gone, but because of them you thought you lost me, because of them I lost you.

  Soon, I will have gotten to them all, in exactly the way they got to you. I promise.

  This I do for you.

  Fifty-Four

  Alan Leightman sat in the kitchen across the breakfast table from his wife and watched her stir her coffee. Over and over the spoon circled the cup, long after the sugar had dissolved, and all the while tears dripped down her cheeks. He wanted to get up and wipe them away, and with them her pain.

  Until the past few months she had not cried often. He could count the times: when her father died and when she’d had her miscarriages, and even then only for a few minutes. She had always been so stoic. She moved past sadness. She had a bigger agenda than her own personal disappointments. She had a Constitution to save. And she’d been saving it, year after year. He was so proud of her. He had been. So proud of her.

  But ever since she’d lost the big privacy case and gone on antidepressants, her emotions had been out of whack. Weeping one minute, furiously angry the next. This morning had been no exception. She’d started out angry. Now she was crying. Scared, he’d say, if the word wasn’t so incongruous when used in conjunction with his wife.

  How disturbed was she? How badly was the medication affecting her? He couldn’t take his eyes off her stirring the coffee. Over and over. Only someone deeply disturbed became obsessive like that. She needed help. More help than he could give her. How was he going to help her? He had to help her. Because whatever had happened to her was his fault.

  “What are you going to do today?” she asked. The spoon did another revolution, the silver stem glinting in the overhead light.

  “I need to finalize which criminal lawyer to hire. Adam can’t handle this if it goes to the next stage. I also need to hire a software genius who can figure out how my credit card was charged with visits to those girls’ Web sites on days when I didn’t go there and—”

  “Hard to do,” she interrupted. Another revolution.

  “What?”

  “That will be hard to do.”

  “It’s not like you to suggest that it’s a lost cause before we even get started.”

  “Did I say it was a lost cause?” Another circle with the spoon.

  “I heard it in your voice.”

  “It amazes me that you think I’d still be on your side.”

  Finally, she laid down the spoon, and he almost cheered. She took a sip of her coffee, then grimaced. “It’s cold.” Getting up, she walked to the sink and poured it down the drain.

  She put the kettle on to boil again, and then, standing there, staring down into the flames that were licking up around the black enamel, she said, “No matter which lawyer you hire, the best they can do is figure out a way to get you off, but you do understand it’s too late for you to come out of this totally clean.”

  “You’re smiling through your tears, Kira. Does the idea of my humiliation make you that happy?”

  “Happy? That your reputation is going to be tarnished? That I’ll be a joke? That our marriage will be exposed as a sham? No, Alan. I’m not happy. Of all the things you could have done to humiliate me, you had to do this? You had to go online? You had to deal with those women? Those women? Alan?” She was screaming. “If you had stopped and thought about it for two minutes, you would have realized it would be the worst thing you could have done to me.” She shook her head and then reached out and touched the pot with her forefinger, pressing her flesh against the kettle as if she were testing to see how cold it was, not how hot.

  How could anyone just hold her finger against burning metal like that?

  She grimaced, but she didn’t move her finger.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Alan yelled as he leapt out of his chair and pulled her hand away.

  She struggled with him. “Leave me alone,” she growled.

  He backed off.

  Kira smiled. Turned back to the stove. Reached out and touched the kettle with her middle finger.

  Alan pulled her hand away again and wrestled her away from the stove. She fought him, beating him with small fists that he hardly felt. She was acting crazy. He expected anger and recriminations. Even tears. But she was being irrational.

  “Let go of me. You don’t have the right to touch me. Not anymore. Not since you stopped loving me. Not since them. Not since you don’t love me.”

  Even her voice, instead of being in the mid-range, was now low and edged with madness.

  He let go.

  She straightened up, ignoring her fingers, even though, he thought, they must have been throbbing with pain.

  He wanted to tell her that he did love her. Had never stopped loving her. No matter what he did online—that was something else. But he knew it wouldn’t make any difference.

  “Can’t I do anything, Kira? Won’t you let me help you?”

  “Help? Your help?” She giggled. It was unexpected and totally out of context. A six-year-old’s glee escaping in the midst of a forty-five-year-old’s rant. “I’ll survive, but I don’t think you will. I don’t think they’ll find out that someone else logged into your account at those sites. I think they’ll find out you were connected from your own computer. Will that convince them that you were responsible for those women dying? Who knows? The press is on a rampage, Alan. They are all over these murders. They can’t let go of all the salacious details. It’s becoming a media sensation. Just imagine how they will jump all over you once your dirty little secret is out and your name is linked to the Web-cam murders. Your career will be over.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with those girls dying. You know that, don’t you?” He heard his own voice, pleading, begging the one person who had always been on his side to tell him that she still was. “Kira, you can’t think I’m capable of anything like this.”

  But to his astonishment and horror—because if she didn’t believe him, would anyone else?—she didn’t give him what he was asking for. She just stared at him, and for those few minutes he did not know if he would be able to ever breathe normally again.

  “Kira, do you really think I could have killed those girls?”

  “Of course not.”

  He started to breathe.

  “If I wasn’t your wife, I might even be able to convince them you’re not involved. But I am your wife. Isn’t that the ultimate irony? Even if I could prove it, no one would believe me.”

  And then Kira walked out of the room, leaving him sitting there at the table, listening to the kettle shrieking its song.

  Fifty-Five

  Blythe had brought two cappuccinos and two large black-and-whites to her appointment, so we sat across from each other at my desk, drinking the coffee and munching on the sweet cookies. I knew she was ambivalent about talking to me that day. The food and coffee was a distraction.

  “You didn’t want this to be a session today, did you?” I asked.

  “Why would you think that?” Blythe gave me the slightly mysterious smile that was unique to her: As her lips moved up in the corners, her eyes closed for just a moment. The viewer’s attention was, again, pulled from Blythe’s eyes to her mouth.

  “Is it true?”

  “Maybe, but how did
you…” She eyed the cookies and the drinks and thought it through. Then she smiled. She got it. “That was impressive.”

  “No, it’s good training. You have it. You’ll get there.”

  “I guess I’m going through a crisis of faith that I can do this job.”

  “Okay. Do you know why?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t suppose you’d just tell me why?”

  “No, I can’t. Even if I was sure I knew, which I’m not, it won’t help unless you get there yourself. You know that, Blythe. But I’ll help you get there. What’s happened in the past few weeks that’s set you back?”

  “The Web-cam girls, the ones who have been getting killed.”

  I nodded. “What else?”

  “There’s something else?”

  “How do you feel about what’s happening to the girls?”

  “There but for the grace of God…”

  “Right, but you stopped doing Web cast work months before all this started. Why is this affecting you so personally now?”

  She thought about it. She looked up at me. I wasn’t going to help her make the last leap. She had to do that herself. And then she did.

  “The interview with Stella Dobson.”

  I didn’t have to tell her she was right.

  “She was someone I looked up to, Dr. Snow. She went on a hunger strike for three weeks to protest that judge in Alabama who was trying to prevent a teenager from having an abortion unless she got her parent’s permission. When everyone else stopped talking about women’s rights, she talked louder. And now even though she’ll never know my real name, and even though I’ll disguise myself, it will still be me, meeting her.” She stopped talking and looked away from me. “How do you know when you’re doing the right thing?” Blythe asked.

  “With a patient?”