The Hazards of Hunting While Heartbroken

by Passananti, Mari

  “Well, not in so many words, but she said you’re the best. You aren’t about to prove her wrong, are you?”

  “It’s not so much about my ability at this stage as it is about Cutler’s pay scale. If they give Niles another $200,000, he’ll be more highly compensated than any other partner at his business level.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “It practically guarantees two things. No raise in the next couple of years. And a fair dose of resentment from the home grown lawyers who think it’s unfair the lateral makes more.”

  “I don’t give a hoot about their feelings!” Susie’s indignation is palpable even through the phone line. I wish I could feel her pain, but I can’t.

  “Susie, this move makes sense for Niles. Not just because it’s more money on day one. The Cutler firm has a stable of Fortune 100 clients that Niles can mine for business. Nobody in the firm does precisely what he does except a senior guy who’s retiring at year’s end. Niles will inherit those billings. His own book should grow exponentially over the next five years and his compensation will increase accordingly, well beyond the two hundred thousand you’re fighting for now. Quite frankly, I cannot imagine a more perfect career move for your husband.” I’m not sure where I’m pulling this from, but I think it sounds good.

  A gong clangs in the background. “That’s my masseuse,” she announces. “I have to dash, but just find the money, Zoë. Angela promised and I think you know I can’t have any additional stress with the baby making project underway. So just call when it’s all set, okay?”

  The line clicks and she’s gone before I can respond.

  “Zoë!” Carol booms behind me. I jump out of my chair. Not figuratively. I literally launch several inches into the air and land with such force that my chair wheels backward and almost plows down my boss.

  “Yes?” I can’t mask the fear in my voice.

  “That was fucking great. You have managed to learn something from me after all.”

  “Um, thanks, Carol.”

  “Where are we? Is he close?”

  “He’s there. His wife is putting on the brakes. She has no concept of the upside or the long term opportunity.”

  “They never do. If she’s like the rest of them, Susie Townsend doesn’t understand finance beyond using her Platinum Amex at Barney’s. She swipes the card, takes her purchases, and sends the bill to her husband’s office.”

  “Maybe I should tell her that after Niles spends a year or two at Cutler, she could get a Black card.”

  “Not a bad idea.” I’m shocked to receive this much positive (or at least non-negative) input from Carol. “Here’s what we’re going to do. They’re going to find him another $150,000. They’re going to pay it as a signing bonus so it doesn’t rock their compensation scale and ruffle feathers. Nobody needs to know except Niles and the compensation committee.”

  “I’ll call the firm right now and suggest it.” I spin towards my phone but Carol places a bejeweled hand on my shoulder.

  “No need. It’s all done. Sell it to Niles. Make sure he accepts. Today, preferably.” She turns to leave and spins back towards me to give me the closest thing she can muster to a compliment. “And Zoë. When you close this thing, remember to bill them on the signing bonus.”

  Wow. The fee on Niles’ signing bonus alone is as much as I’d make for placing a junior associate. Maybe I need to consider, seriously, whether my soulless, socially useless, took-it-because-I-couldn’t-think-of-anything-better job could turn into my career after all. Maybe I’ve got a talent for this profession. Maybe the lucky break I got when Angela sent Niles my way will catapult me into the upper echelon of headhunters. I could become one of the few must-know placement consultants in the city, instead of riding Carol’s custom-tailored coattails. Then everyone would stop criticizing.

  Like countless other Americans, I watch the former child porn actress tell her story to an overtly disgusted Barbara Walters during a nine o’clock special with limited commercial interruptions. The poor girl, identified only as Ekaterina, may have turned eighteen, but she could easily pass for four or five years younger than that. She has a dead look in her eyes and she’s way too thin. She tells Barbara Walters, in surprisingly good English, about how some man in Belgrade told her he could take her to the U.S. to work in a restaurant. Her parents are dead, and she needed the money, and the man was charming. She and two other girls, whose whereabouts remain unknown, realized something was very wrong when they landed not in San Francisco, as promised, but in Saigon, where he took their passports. He then handed them over to an overweight, brown-toothed Asian man. He herded them into a van that was labeled as a resort shuttle but smelled of cigar smoke. They spent two nights holed up under armed guard in a seedy apartment with broken plumbing, on the outskirts of the city. She never saw the charmer from Belgrade again. On the third evening her captors injected her with something that made her achy and groggy, and put her on what she believes was a chartered jet, along with three “very young looking” Asian girls. She realized they’d landed in Mexico when they were driven to the California border by yet another man. He pointed a gun at them and ordered them not to talk with the border guards. If questioned, they were supposed to say they were with a church group. Ekaterina thought surely the customs officers would notice something was amiss, but they rolled right into San Diego without so much as a second glance from anyone, because the men had procured fake U.S. passports for their human cargo.

  From there, Ekaterina doesn’t remember much about the rest of the trip. She says she thinks she was drugged again because the next thing she knew, she’d woken up groggy in another filthy, windowless apartment. Barbara Walters bats her eyelids rapidly and looks suitably disturbed. After the first commercial, Ekaterina recounts weeks of beatings, starvation rations and drugs, and her eyes become deader as she walks through the details. She’s not sure how long they held her captive before they forced her to start making the movies.

  The whole thing turns my stomach.

  Despite making the naïve and tragic mistake of trusting the man in Belgrade, the girl seems astute for her age. She knows her cooperation helped the authorities arrest the men directly responsible for hurting her and exploiting her, but she figures someone behind the scenes—someone more outwardly respectable—was financing the venture. And she also supposes that the European accomplices who trafficked her and her friends in the first place will probably get away with their crimes. So if by coming forward, even though it’s embarrassing, she can help stop the money from flowing to these people, she says it’s well worth it.

  Just when I’m wondering how Kevin can criticize my job when he’s the right hand man for a person supposedly involved in this scandal, Barbara Walters, as if trying to underscore my point, wraps up the segment by naming a few prominent men suspected of benefiting from the sales of the movies. Of course Councilman O’Malley’s name comes up. His attorney has sent a statement, insisting that the Councilman admits to “a passive investment in the legal adult entertainment industry.” He says his client, “like many New Yorkers, supports the rights of consenting adults to watch explicit films, but he does not condone the use of underage participants in any part of the production process. He urges his detractors to read his new initiative to prevent the exploitation of girls just like Ekaterina, and to prosecute the people responsible for committing such heinous acts.”

  I switch off the tube and get ready for bed. Oscar calls from Los Angeles as I’m settling under the covers with my book. He’s through security and he has some time to kill.

  “At least you’ll make your flight. I miss you.”

  “I miss you, too. My bed at the hotel was so cold and empty.”

  Something inside me gets all molten and gooey, but I steer my mind back on track. “Oscar, we really need to talk about the condo. I’m blown away by your generosity, but I can’t accept it. It’s way too much.”

  “Yes, you can, and I don’t want to talk about it
in public, okay? Did you see the hooker interview?”

  I ignore his abrupt segue and tell him I did.

  “Everyone is talking about it, even out here. That O’Malley has balls, saying he’s going to register most of the adult film industry as sex offenders when he invested in the stuff himself.”

  “That’s not what he said, and maybe he didn’t know his money was going to child porn. And if this scandal is what it takes to get a serious politician to talk about trafficking, then maybe it’s a good thing.”

  “He’s never going to get rid of prostitution. Or porn. There’s way too much demand, and it’s impossible to police because of the Internet.”

  “So you’re saying it’s okay because it’s everywhere? Isn’t that kind of backward?”

  “Don’t be so naïve, Zoë. Men are pigs, and there are always going to be girls who are happy to oblige them. Not everyone grows up in a safe little bubble in Wellesley, Massachusetts.”

  Ouch. That was harsher than necessary. What happened to the mushy Oscar I had on the phone two minutes ago? I take a breath and remind myself that he got up yesterday before four, flew to California, and did nothing but sit in meetings and traffic for two solid days and evenings. Plus he still has to face the red eye tonight. I decide to change the subject. “I can’t wait to see you,” I purr into the phone. If the little voice in my head could do so, she’d roll her eyes.

  A security announcement blares in the background. It drones on for what feels like an eternity about unattended packages. When it finally stops, Oscar’s voice has softened. “Sweet dreams. I’ll call you when I land.”

  He’s gone before I can say anything else. I turn off the bedside lamp and lie in the dark completely awake. I have to ask or I won’t sleep a wink. I sit up in bed, pull the covers up around me, turn the light back on and dial.

  “Hey again, beautiful.” He sounds pleasantly surprised, his tirade about my sheltered upbringing seemingly forgotten. “What’s up?”

  If I don’t just blurt it out, I’ll lose my nerve. “I met Olivia at the dinner. She was with that Trudy Bainbridge woman.”

  I hear Oscar draw a sharp breath. “And?”

  “Well, you said she went to live in Paris, and now she’s here, and she’s gorgeous and amazing...” my voice tapers off.

  “And you’re feeling insecure?”

  “Uh-huh.” I’m so ashamed. What was I thinking, starting this conversation?

  “Zoë, listen to me. I can’t keep her out of New York, but I can keep her out of my life. I have no desire to see her any more. I don’t even see friends we shared. She’s in my past. You’re my present. Okay?”

  “Do you miss her?” I cringe at myself. Obviously if he was pining for his former wife, he wouldn’t be buying me real estate or indulging this conversation.

  “Nope.” He says it with such unhesitating certainty that I feel myself start to relax. “Now why don’t you try to get some sleep? One of us should and it’s not looking good for me. I hate the damn red eye.”

  I toss and turn most of the night, despite his reassurances about our solidity as a couple. His cavalier attitude towards an issue I find upsetting makes me feel even more unsettled. Though I suppose he has a point about men being pigs and prostitution being unstoppable, the Ekaterina interview haunts me. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be junior high age, and desperate enough to sell yourself to complete strangers.

  Oscar calls when the red eye lands at LaGuardia, just after seven. I’m on my way out the door to the gym. He wants to know if he can swing by and take me out for an early breakfast. He’s already in the cab, approaching the midtown tunnel. I consult my watch: Not nearly enough time to get there, work out, get home and make myself presentable before he shows up. The tiny voice in my head mutters that I shouldn’t be so available all the time and that I ought to make better use of my health club membership. I silence it, reasoning that I haven’t seen Oscar since he lobbed the real estate bombshell at me. Besides, I’ve missed him. He’s only been gone two days, but it feels like a week. We’re still in that heady new relationship phase, where you spend countless hours making delicious discoveries about each other, and I can’t get enough of him. Plus, I feel sheepish about wearing my insecurity on my sleeve last night and I rationalize that it’s best to get past that as soon as possible. So I untie my sneakers, remove workout wear unsullied by sweat, and head for the shower, excited by the thought that he’ll be here in under an hour.

  I’m feeling very decadent sitting down to breakfast at eight-fifteen on a work day, with the handsomest man in the place, while all our fellow urbanites scurry in for coffee and bagels to go. The waitress, a tired Chinese woman with more gray hairs than black, and an unfortunate mole on her forehead, pours our coffee. She splashes some onto the Formica table and wipes it away without saying a word before whipping out her pad and asking, “Ready?”

  “So how does it feel to be a full-fledged homeowner?” Oscar asks with a smile, when the waitress retreats towards the kitchen with our order.

  “It doesn’t feel real.”

  He stirs an entire packet of sugar into his coffee but doesn’t say anything. Because the silence makes me nervous—yeah, I know it’s irrational—I rush to explain myself. “It’s like I said on the phone. I can’t believe how generous you’re being, but I can’t accept an apartment from you.”

  “Why not? I have the money and you need a place to live.”

  “If only it were that simple.” I reach across the table and put my hand on his.

  “Why isn’t it?” He looks genuinely confused. Could this possibly be normal in the elite socio-economic circles Oscar inhabits? No way. I know lots of very privileged people. Nobody buys real estate for non-family members. As if intentionally adding to my surprise, he says, “It’s not like I had to get a mortgage. Seriously, Zoë. I’m not stressing over it and neither should you. Manhattan real estate is one of the few sure things in the investment world.”

  Right. That doesn’t explain why he’d buy real estate for me, although it explains the speed of the transaction. He didn’t need to wait for financing. How on earth lucrative is life at Takamura Brothers?

  Instead of asking such a rude question, I tick off the responses I composed in my head at work yesterday. “It’s not that simple, because I can’t possibly repay you. I feel like I’m taking advantage. And it sort of makes me feel like a kept woman. You know, the kind who hardly ever leaves the boudoir and who wears garter belts and negligees all the time.”

  “That last part can be our little secret.” He smiles and something inside my chest softens. I can’t help it. After the ego-bruising Brendan debacle, it makes me happy that this hot, wealthy, successful guy wants me, for whatever reason. The waitress reappears and unceremoniously dumps two omelets in front of us. “Enjoy,” she orders in heavily accented English, before leaving us again.

  Oscar unloads a stunning quantity of Tabasco sauce on his breakfast. “I want you to be happy. I’ve got a decade on you in terms of age, so I have more resources than you do. I really don’t see why this is a problem.”

  I poke at my omelet with my fork. In my head, this conversation went differently, but now I realize, I didn’t hash out the logistics. He bought the place and now I can either live there on his charity (weird), foist rent on him (unlikely), or make a stink and insist he sell it or rent it to a real tenant (which would render me homeless and possibly single). Faced with this absence of anything resembling a plan, I decide to stall for time. “I guess I’m a bit floored. Nobody has ever done anything even remotely like this for me before. It’s taking a bit to digest.”

  Oscar glances around the restaurant. None of the harried customers are paying any attention to us. “I have a confession to make. I’ve put it off, because it’s not something I share with people, but I feel like we could have something real and you deserve to know.”

  I hold my breath and wait. He’s going to tell me something that will force me to end it. I wish
I could go back in time and prevent this conversation, because I’ve fallen for him and I don’t want the rug yanked out from under me.

  Oscar says, “You know how I said my parents died and I was raised by an aunt and uncle?”

  I nod. It’s an awful story. His parents died in a head on collision caused by a drunk driver. They were on their way home from a wedding. Oscar and his sister went to live with an older aunt and uncle who took them in out of obligation. He shared all this on our fourth or fifth date, when I asked about his family. He made it clear he didn’t like to talk about it. I can’t say I blame him.

  “I lied.” Oscar said. “And for that I apologize. The truth felt too embarrassing.”

  “You’re talking to the girl who failed to notice her fiancé was gay. For over a decade.”

  “This is worse. My parents belonged to the Fundamentalist branch of Mormons. You may have heard of my father, Warner Parks. He was all over the news a few years ago. He’s serving thirty years for sexual assault on a minor, polygamy and a bunch of lesser offenses. My mother was the second oldest of his four wives. She died giving birth to what would have been my ninth full sibling when I was eleven. When I was twelve, three of the elders came for me in the middle of the night and drove me to a campground near the Grand Canyon. They left me there with a canteen of water and a bag of trail mix.”

  I am speechless. I’ve read about this group in publications as diverse as National Geographic and Marie Claire, so I know they’re notorious for dumping their extra boys (it’s an ugly practice needed to sustain the multiple-wives-for-each-old-geezer thing), but I’ve never met anyone who’s even known anyone from that community. And evidently I’m dating a survivor of this cult.

  Oscar watches me digest the information for a moment before continuing. “I bounced through a couple of foster homes until I basically hit the lottery and landed with the headmaster of a private boys’ school in Scottsdale and his wife. They took me in and somehow sorted me out. They let me change my name. I was Luke before. I picked Oscar, because when I first arrived The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde was on the nightstand in what became my room, and no one from the FLDS was named that. Stupid, right?” He shakes his head. “But I guess it suits me as well as any other name. I had tutors for every subject. I played soccer. I managed to make a few friends, probably because I was such a goddamned novelty. Richard and June—those were their names—they helped me apply for the scholarship to the University of Colorado, which turned out to be my ticket to the life I have now.”