by Lola Swain
The joke of Paul Kirschner was on the public, and most of all, his wife Katy who believed everything her husband told her. Paul Kirschner was the most immoral of all moralists ever to don a Brooks Brother’s suit.
He found early on that his rugby-player good looks and his charming manner gained him access to places many rational people would not allow strangers: their children.
Paul Kirschner kept a nice collection of pictures of teenage girls and boys on his private phone. A phone he used frequently to gain access to the most discrete escort services in New York. He had a definite flavor of escort he ordered: young and innocent-looking. The girls would have to be clean of makeup and pony-tailed; their vaginas would also have to be shaved or waxed completely. If, on a particularly naughty night, he felt like the company of a boy, he would order them similarly: young, fresh-faced and without pubic hair.
Spare the rod, spoil the child was Paul Kirschner’s favorite motto in the bedroom. So much so, that he frequently had to employ new recruits for his twisted games as the old ones refused to work with him any longer.
Katy Kirschner pretended she had no clue what her husband was up to in his spare time. She preferred to stuff down the niggling notion that there was something amiss in the land of her husband so as not to spoil the perfect world she created in her mind. Katy spent the majority of her day trying to figure out how not to anger her husband.
She sat for hours in the arm chair by the window overlooking Central Park and created lists in her head of things to do and say that were safe around Paul. Her goal was to endear him, but she knew, in that last compartment in her brain, a box that became ever smaller as her years with Paul wore on, the absolute truth. Paul never married her because he loved her. Katy knew that her wholesome prettiness, Aryan looks and impeccable breeding, was the perfect front for Paul.
She longed for the girlfriends she had in high school, the kind where she could discuss anything with, instead of the Park Avenue acquaintances she had now who only seemed to want to discuss other people’s problems. She would like to ask somebody, anyone really, what it meant that Paul only made love to her once per week and would only do so if she was flat on her stomach while he entered her roughly from behind. She finally got up the nerve to ask him one day during breakfast, after rehearsing her monolog for weeks.
“Darling, I want to ask you about sex,” Katy said as she poured Paul’s coffee.
“Sex? What about it?” Paul said and sighed.
He was more interested in the advertisement he was staring at in the personals about a new S&M club opening than what his twit of a wife was yammering about.
“Paul, please,” Katy said and pulled his newspaper down to expose his face. “I think we have a real problem.”
“Problem?” Paul said. “What are you going on about now?”
Paul yanked the paper out of Katy’s hand and threw it to the ground.
“First of all, I don’t think it’s particularly normal that we only make love once a week,” Katy said and looked down, unable to hold Paul’s angry stare.
“Once a week is normal!” Paul snapped. “What else? Come on, spit it out, I need to get to work.”
“Well, it’s the way we make love,” Katy said. “I’d like to look at your face. Wouldn’t you like to see my face while we do it?”
“Katy, we know what one another looks like. If you’d rather not make love any longer, a mean, if once a week takes too much out of your schedule, let me know now and we can work something out!” Paul said and stood up and threw his napkin on the table.
“No, Paul, that’s not what I’m saying,” Katy said and grabbed his arm.
“That’s just one of the problems, Katy,” Paul said as he yanked his arm from Katy’s grip. “You never know what you’re saying. Do you realize that there are people out there with problems? Real problems, Katy. Concrete problems that they are infected with, not shit they conjure up in their pathological minds just to irritate their husbands!”
“I’m saying I want to make love to you more, not less. It’s not that I don’t have enough time, darling. I have more than enough time and want you more,” Katy said as she dug her fingers into Paul’s arm.
Paul looked down at Katy’s hand and grimaced. He balled his hands into fists and wanted nothing more than to punch her in her pretty, whiney face. But he knew that he’d never get away with it so he vowed to order an especially submissive hooker with a magnificently high pain threshold that day so he could unleash his rage.
“That’s a problem too,” Paul said through clenched teeth as he stared at Katy’s hand. “You have much too much time on your hands, Katy. You know the other wives at least attempt to volunteer. You…what is it that you do all day? You’re certainly not busy taking cooking classes. And, Katy, if you don’t remove your hand from my arm right now, you are going to be very sorry.”
Katy released Paul’s arm and he looked down at her and smiled. She admonished herself for not following her script. She shouldn’t have touched him while she was begging him to touch her.
“Paul,” Katy said as she backed away from him, “I just want to find out…I mean, don’t you want to look at me? I know I’d like to look in your eyes some time while we make love.”
“Katy look, I have to get to work. Nothing is wrong. In fact, the ball is in your court. If you don’t like the way we make love, then we don’t have to make love any longer. It’s simple. Now, we have the Governor’s Ball tonight. Be ready to go by seven o’clock. I will get ready at the club.”
“Paul, please!” Katy said to his back as he walked out of the dining room.
Katy threw herself down on the dining room floor and cried.
“My voice got too shrilly,” she said as she punched herself in her thigh. “My voice always gets too shrilly. I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have waited until I practiced more.”
“Mrs. Kirschner?” a woman said. “Did you fall down?”
Katy swung around to find Rose, their maid, standing behind her.
“No, Rose,” Katy said as she swiped at the tears running down her face and turned her back, “I did not fall. Please, just leave me alone.”
Katy hated Rose in that way women hate other women they wish they were. Katy envied Rose’s freedom to be whomever she wanted. Rose was a young, beautiful Puerto Rican girl unencumbered by societal rules and facades. Katy observed Paul staring at Rose when he felt no one was watching.
Katy twisted back around and looked up at the stunning Rose with her wild, curly hair that always looked perfect and mocha-colored, smooth skin that always glowed.
Katy recalled an argument Paul and she had weeks ago when Katy told Paul that Rose was too familiar with them and that she needed to learn her place.
“Why, just last week,” Katy said to Paul that evening before bed, “she said me that she was told, by you, that she no longer had to wash the transom windows in the apartment. Well, I told her that you would never say such a thing and to get to work. She actually had a bit of a snit and pouted!”
“I did tell her she no longer had to wash the transom windows. We can hire someone for that,” Paul said and snapped his paper, which usually indicated a conversation was over.
“But we do hire someone for that, darling,” Katy said. “We hire Rose for that.”
“Well, we no longer hire Rose for that. Actually, since I pay for Rose, I hired her and I am telling you to find someone else to do that. Perhaps a real window washing company? I will not have our domestic falling off a ten-foot ladder because you are too lazy to open a fucking phone book and hire a professional. Good night!”
Katy remembered the rage she felt that Paul would be so nasty to her while caring about a stranger.
Perhaps Rose was the problem, Katy thought as she scratched at the parquet floor in the dining room.
“Rose, are you fucking my husband?” Katy said under her breath.
“Que?” Rose said as she walked toward Katy. “I did not unders
tand.”
“Are you,” Katy said as she stood from the floor and tried to raise her head higher than Rose’s, “fucking my husband?”
Katy felt intense anger as Rose’s face contorted in confusion. Katy believed Rose was mocking her.
“Que?” Rose said again.
“Que? Que?” Katy mimicked as her voice amped straight to shrill. “Is that all you can say? You sound like a fucking parrot! Oh, I’m sorry, papagayo!”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Kirschner,” Rose said as her voice shook, “I do not understand.”
“Yes, I get that!” Katy said as she walked past Rose and entered the hallway. “And go wash a fucking window or something!”
Katy ran upstairs and stood in front of his door, the room she dared not enter: Paul’s office.
She was sure she would find it locked, absolutely positive. Anyone, Rose included, was forbidden from entering Paul’s office. Katy was startled when the door knob turned freely and she opened the door to his domain.
Paul’s desk was the embodiment of Paul: hard, cold and powerful. He had the ornate mahogany piece shipped from Italy and it took seven men to move it to its place in his office.
Katy ran her fingertips across the edge of the desktop as she stared at Paul’s smooth, brown leather chair sitting behind his desk. Katy realized that the desk, despite the fact that no one was allowed to enter the office, was free from any dust or clutter. Paul’s entire office, in fact, was spotless.
“He cleans in here,” Katy said as she looked around the room. “The man who won’t lift a finger to help me, dusts.”
Katy’s heart pounded as she pictured herself taking an axe to the desk.
She walked around his desk and sat in his chair. She rested her head back against the cool leather and inhaled. The chair, like the room itself, smelled of Paul’s cologne. She put her hands on the copper pulls on the middle drawer and waited to be electrocuted.
She was sure the entire room was booby-trapped. But she didn’t care. She wanted to die.
The drawer opened as easily as the office door and she clamped her eyes shut and tried to calm her breath. She peeked down behind her half-closed lids as she held her breath and looked into the drawer.
And she saw…regular desk stuff. She had never been so happy to see pens, pencils and tape in her life.
“Silly,” she said as she pushed some of the pens around in the bottom of the drawer.
But her relief was short-lived. She knew there was something to be found.
Katy walked the tightrope between fooling herself into thinking she had the best of Paul to imagining the absolute worst all day, every day for three years since she and Paul moved to Manhattan.
On her better days, she convinced herself that everything was perfect and that Paul would not dare do anything that would blight their marriage. Even if he had the occasional transgression, she posited, it didn’t matter that much because he was, after all, married to her. Katy had the prize. And on those days, she felt a confidence that she didn’t feel when she swung at the other end of the continuum.
On her bad days, which were becoming more frequent, she ruminated and obsessed—in color.
Katy would lie on her bed and stare at the ceiling picturing the beautiful women Paul shared his best of times with. She pictured these women on a conveyor belt, with Paul sitting on his chair, as the gorgeous, naked models filed past him. In her head, Katy saw the list Paul made as he jotted down all their best attributes, weighing the options as he chose the one who would eventually replace her.
These days were Katy’s darkest and she tortured herself with the imagery of Paul and his new love having sex on the very bed she curled up on. Paul and his new paramour had wild, passionate sex…they fucked…until each passed out in a sweaty heap. In direct contrast, Katy and Paul’s real love-making consisted of nothing more than once-a-week, utilitarian sex. Maintenance sex, the boys in eighth grade called it.
Katy opened all six drawers in Paul’s desk and was having a full-blown panic attack by the time she finished rifling through the last drawer. She found nothing. Which made her even more convinced there was something to find. This was the first time she ever went through his things. Even though she’d stare at his phone for hours, wanting to go through it, she never did. And certainly not because she was concerned about the violation of his privacy. Katy never went through Paul’s things for no other reason than she was terrified about what she would find.
She closed all his drawers, careful to wipe any fingerprints from the glossy wood and stood from his chair and hung her head.
“Where is it, Paul?” she said and looked around the room. “Where do you keep your evidence?”
Katy formulated a half-witted plan in her head to get into his office at work. She walked toward the door and something caught her eye on the floor next to the radiator. The floor vent was a hair askew, but definitely askew enough to catch Katy’s eagle eye. She got down on her knees and stared through the scroll work in the wrought iron vent.
“There you are!” Katy said as if playing hide-and-go-seek with a child.
She took the grate off the vent opening and stared down at the gray metal box. Katy lifted the heavy box out of the opening and replaced the vent carefully. She noticed there was no lock on the box and took immediate offence.
“He thinks I’m too stupid to find it and didn’t need to bother with a lock,” she said as she held the box up to her face.
Katy stowed the box under her blouse and left Paul’s office and went to her bedroom and locked the door. She placed the box on the bed and sat beside it as she stared at it. For a moment, she wanted to put it back and admonished herself for even going into Paul’s office in the first place.
“Fudge it. You have to know,” Katy said and opened the box.
She cocked her head as she stared at the contents as if she was looking at a panda exhibit at the zoo. The deep metal box was filled to the rim with Polaroid pictures. She shuffled through the pictures like a deck of cards and each seemed to me more depraved than the one before. Pictures of young girls and boys…hundreds of pictures of young girls and boys…all naked. And just as she was ready to deceive herself again, just as she told herself that this was was exactly as if Paul was looking at magazines since he wasn’t in any of the photos, she came to a stack of pictures of him and the same young girls and boys all naked and in various sexual positions.
She stared at the people with Paul in the pictures. If she had to guess an age, she would say sixteen. They were all extremely beautiful and that in and of itself, caused Katy to fantasize, in great detail, about her suicide. In all of the pictures, the “actors” looked extremely distressed, however, Paul was exuberantly radiant.
Katy flung the pictures across the bed and rubbed her hands on her jeans as if they were covered in acid. She curled up in a ball on the bed and pushed the pictures further away with her foot as she began to sob. After sixty-five minutes, she looked at the clock and panicked because she had to get ready for the Governor’s Ball.
She thought about feigning a migraine, but she knew that Paul would not allow her to miss this event. She put the photos back in the box and placed the box in the bottom drawer of her nightstand under a stack of Metropolitan Living magazines and dragged herself into the bathroom to take a shower.
She sobbed the whole time she was in the shower. It did not occur to Katy that her depravity was as tragic as Paul’s. Katy Kirschner thought not about how undeniably young the kids were in the pictures with Paul, nor that they looked to be greatly pained. Katy only thought of how beautiful they each were and that they were better than her in Paul’s eyes.
After Luca told Lena the story of the Kirschners, she stared at him as the limo pulled up to the front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“Ah, look,” Luca said as he looked out the window, “they have the red carpet covering the steps. So much pageantry! Come on, out we go”
“Wait!” Lena said and grabbed Luca’
s arm.
Luca swung his legs back inside the limo and told the driver to wait for them.
“What is it?” he said as he turned to her.
“Did you say rape?”
“Um, I don’t know, did I?” Luca said as he scratched his chin and winked at her.
“I don’t know about this, Luca.”
“Know about what?”
“Well, I don’t know if I’m comfortable with this.”
“Did you hear me ask you if you’re comfortable with this, love?” Luca said as he ran his fingertips up and down Lena’s arm.
Lena bowed her head as she broke out into a billion goose-bumps under Luca’s touch. She was horrified over the things Luca said he would do as part of this mission. She was further horrified about the things she was told she would do as part of this mission.
“I know, it’s just—”
“It’s just nothing, Lena. This is not up for debate. Do you know what happens when you dismiss the Auto-Da-Fé?”
“I know, it’s not good.”
“Not good? Honey, that is putting it mildly. You have to get your head and your soul into this, Lena. The reign of terror that will come down on you if you do not go through with this mission, exactly as I have mapped out this mission, will be worse than how you perceive you will feel if you carry out your orders.”
“I just don’t feel like I can do this.”
“Then you better start feeling like you can do this, Lena,” Luca said as he turned and looked out the back window and sighed. “There is a pile-up of limousines behind us. We have to get out of the goddamned car!”
Luca reached out and grabbed Lena’s arm and she yanked it from his grip. He looked up at her with rage and shook his head.
“What are you doing?” he whispered.
“I need a minute,” Lena said and crossed her arms. “Just a minute, Luca.”