“You had a unique chance to observe her in the eleven months before she started stripping. Did anything happen that might have caused her to change like that? Did she confide any problems to you?”
“Detective, it’s an effort for me to make time for you, much less our counselors. My job here is to manage Transcendence House and raise money, a lot of it. I rarely get time to chit-chat with anyone here, though I personally interview all the counselors and guests. So I’m afraid I wasn’t aware of any issues.”
“But during your yearly retreat, you do have more time to interact, am I right?”
The priest didn’t miss a beat.
“The purpose of the retreat is reflection and spiritual renewal. I would have less time to interact.”
“You’re a busy man, Father.”
“Anything else, Detective?”
“Actually, there is something else.” McKenna took his time flipping to the right page in his notebook. He held up a photo. “Recognize this girl?”
Massey’s eyes narrowed. “No. No, I don’t.”
“She was a guest at Transcendence House two years ago. And she stayed for about two months. She goes by Sonia or Hannah, and she works in the same strip club as Olivia. Isn’t that odd?”
achel didn’t know what she was going to say when she walked through the entrance of the Pleasure Palace.
As she approached the building, her breathing became short and quick. Incense from Nation of Islam street vendors clashed with pork-filled Sabrette hot dogs sold by infidels. Outside a nude bar, a Catholic nun gave out pocket Bibles and spoke in an amplified voice over Sodom.
Rachel walked through the door of the sex emporium unchallenged. There were three platformed cash registers that were reminiscent of guard towers.
At the entrance, one paid for tokens, which allowed entry into one of the forty peep booths on the first floor. The walls were lined with porno DVDs, inflatable dolls, and sex toys. The dolls were packaged in cardboard boxes with cellophane windows. Their mouths were frozen in an extruded yawn that seemed even more artificial as it contrasted with the photo of the beautiful woman on the box.
A neon sign at the bottom of the staircase said, LIVE GIRLS UPSTAIRS. The corollary of that, of course, was DEAD GIRLS DOWNSTAIRS.
“Miss, can I see some ID, please,” said a big, pony-tailed Hispanic guy who came up behind her.
She took out her new driver’s license and held it up.
“Anything I can help you with?”
“Just looking.”
“You lookin’ for a job, the man’s upstairs.”
“No. Thanks.”
She walked toward the back where there was moaning and groaning coming from the movies in the peep booths that sounded more like human suffering than ecstasy. There was nothing down here but customers. She climbed the stairs.
The girls were dressed in lingerie and standing outside their booths. Some were beautiful enough to beg the question―what were they doing here? The prettier ones wore Brazilian tangas which left little to the imagination. Several could be overweight housewives. None of them fit Detective McKenna’s description of Sonia.
Men were in and out in three minutes, often still adjusting their pants as they made their exit. The lunch crowd was coming in―execs, yuppies, construction workers. Rachel hovered in front of a rack of sex toys, inspecting dildos and vibrators in their plastic packaging while watching the girls. It was dimly lit, affording just the right amount of anonymity. She stayed until she saw every girl come out of her booth. No Sonia. She realized she was the only girl in this place who wasn’t a sex worker, and all eyes were on her as she made her way down the stairs.
When she fled through the door, the eyes of passing men fell on her as though she were naked.
She needed someplace clean―a holy place―badly.
She put her hair up and changed back into sneakers. The A train took her to 190th and Overlook Terrace. From there, she took the Number Four bus to Fort Tryon Park, The Cloisters.
During a visit here long ago, she had caught a whiff of frankincense that had bonded with the cold, beautiful stones into an other-worldly structure that could exist only in memory. Through the years, she had not wanted to ruin that, and so never returned. The Cloisters were a sum that she kept in reserve for a time of need.
The entire structure of the Cloisters was brought here, stone by stone from Spain and France, yet it looked as native to the landscape as an outcropping of bedrock.
It consisted of architecture and art of several eras, arranged in roughly chronological order. Step through a portal and four-hundred years have elapsed. Gregorian chants played through evenly spaced speakers arranged along the courtyards, giving the effect of walking in a procession of friars.
Rachel entered the sepulchral monument of an ancient family. Adorning the caskets were effigies of knights in full armor, bearing shields pitted by time.
The great oak doors of the Langon Chapel were over twelve feet high and encased in iron strappings that lent them strength. Rachel marveled at the infinite array of cuts and gouges, attesting to the centuries of knife pommels, hammered edicts, and battering rams it had withstood. She raised two fingers, caliper-like, to measure its thickness.
“Excuse me, don’t touch.”
The guard had been watching her all along as she hovered too closely to the doors. Instantly, the serenity of the place was gone and she felt unclean. Don’t touch. The very words implied that the inanimate was exalted above the living. This was, after all, a museum, not a house of worship.
Rachel went on to see the tapestries and the glass-work from the gothic era, but the rebuke stayed with her and nothing was enjoyable after that. But she wasn’t quite ready to go home yet.
She called her best friend, Joules Kaplan, catching him before he left the city. He commuted to Cooper Union and usually left the city by three.
When she came up to him in Bryant Park, he was wearing earphones. She could hear the Kyrie of the Bach B-Minor Mass―remote and feeble to her, crystalline and palpable to him, like so many things they tried to share since they were three.
He was refining his paper on the Schwarzschild Radius. Rachel sat opposite him and spun his notes around. She had the unique privilege of free access to his innermost chicken scratches, which she felt would one day make history. She was about to tell him that, once, but in her new-found wisdom, she kept the compliment to herself.
The notes contained diagrams of event horizons and ring singularities. There was some text, but most of it was in tensor calculus and partial differential equations.
She never knew anyone who could do so many things simultaneously so well. As a high school freshman, he had published a paper on game theory in the Review of Mathematics. As a sophomore, he had designed a dexterity experiment that was conducted by an astronaut on a Space Shuttle spacewalk, one of ten experiments selected from the nation’s high schools. Then there was his second place in the Intel―a little paper he had put together in four months concerning the Schwarzschild Radius. He could take up, contribute to, and discard entire fields at will.
Joules removed the earphones.
“Any news?” he asked.
“Nothing. It’s bad. Really bad. I’m desperate, Joules.”
Joules extended his hand across the table. It fell short of Rachel’s. “You went to class?” he asked. She nodded.
“Good. You have to keep going. How many credits?”
“Eighteen. You?”
“Twenty-one. What are you taking?” he asked.
“Intro to Biomedical Engineering, Contemporary Civilization, Physics, Chem, Advanced Calc and Literature Humanities―LitHum. When I was looking through all those courses I wished I could have two more lives to take them all. And you?”
“Chem, Physics, Astronomy, Linear Algebra, Advanced Calc, Computer Design, Art History.”
“That’s a heavy load.”
“I want to get out in three years.”
“Y
ou’re a masochist. Cooper’s free, so what will that extra year buy you?”
“Not exactly free. Free tuition. Fees are on me.”
The breeze moved his blond forelock, dramatically, and Rachel thought of all the things she would like to say to him, but couldn’t. She took the easy way out.
“So explain to me for the eighth time what the Schwarzschild Radius is.”
Joules leaned forward as though only the sharing of abstractions could bring him closer to people.
“When a star about two or three times the size of our sun dies, it collapses until the entire mass of the star is concentrated at one point―a singularity―a black hole. As it’s collapsing, it becomes denser and its gravitational attraction increases until nothing can escape its surface. In the case of the Earth, the escape velocity is seventeen-thousand miles an hour. But when the gravitational attraction is billions of times greater, the escape velocity exceeds the speed of light. Nothing can travel faster than light, so nothing can escape the surface of such an object. When the collapsing star reaches that size where its gravitational attraction is so great that nothing, not even light can escape, it’s reached its Schwarzschild Radius.
“This has a number of consequences. A distance away from the center of the collapsed star, there’s a region called the photon sphere where gravity isn’t strong enough to pull light into the black hole, but strong enough to prevent it from escaping. Here, light orbits forever around the black hole.
“It also gives rise to the possibility of parallel universes where there could be other versions of ourselves living different versions of our lives. The mathematics of all this is sublime. That’s what I’m investigating. But you didn’t come here to fathom black holes.”
“It’s taken me over―Olivia. Do you know what I mean?”
“I know all about that.”
“Were you ever so obsessed with something that you knew was hurting you, but you stayed with it anyway?”
“Yes.”
“How did it hurt you, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Joules brushed his hair away from his face. “Regret. It’s probably the worst kind of hurt, aside from a crippling physical trauma. My mother was in the hospital for an emergency gall bladder surgery, and I didn’t want to take the time to go there because I was working on the math paper that I was submitting for publication. I ended up going after my father said a few things to me from which our relationship never really recovered. I regret that. The paper could have waited.”
“Did you ever do something knowing that it would hurt you?”
“I do it constantly by being alone all the time. But in my case, it’s as though I’m missing the nerve endings that are connected to loneliness. I just don’t feel bothered by being alone―the way you don’t feel your legs when you’re freezing to death. How can this not hurt you? What began as a preference for my own company became an overpowering desire to be alone. So much so that sometimes I walk along the halls at school and refuse to look anyone in the face for fear of having to make conversation.
“And I think it’s a special dispensation, this power to be alone. Think of all the things you could accomplish if you didn’t waste time with people, parties, marriage, kids. I don’t desire these things and I think that I’m blessed. I can go weeks without talking to anyone. I know this can’t be right.”
“Then why do you do it? Why don’t you try to socialize more?”
“The effort for me is exhausting. I know I do such a poor job of being a pal that I like myself more when I’m alone. I’m good at that.”
“You do a great job of being a pal.”
Joules’ torso edged away. They were no longer discussing the stars above.
“And what if we enter one of these parallel lives―back to the Schwarzschild Radius―can we ever come back?” said Rachel.
“I sense you’re at a crossroads.”
Rachel was taken aback by Joules’ perceptiveness. Though he wasn’t much of a participant in human affairs, he was a keen observer.
“What’s on your mind?” he continued.
“I can’t say right now, I may not go through with it. And if I do, it would be best if no one ever knew.”
t was the third time Rachel approached the Pleasure Palace.
She could do it. It would only be for one day. She told herself she could do this for one day and still be a good, decent person afterwards. But didn’t every girl in this place say that when they hesitated outside this entrance?
“Honey, do you mind?” a voice said behind her.
Rachel got out of her way. The Puerto Rican girl in a red miniskirt entered the Pleasure Palace as men nearby gave her a momentary glance.
Rachel walked to the street vendor and bought a Coke. She never drank soda, so she just stood there, holding the open can as though doing something.
Indecision was an unnatural state for her. What she was considering was bizarre beyond anything she had ever contemplated doing. Did Olivia pace along these same streets before changing herself forever? She’d been looking for something, too. Inside Rachel, opposing forces of equal strength vied for her judgment. If she walked away this instant, what would she do when she got home? If she walked in that door, would she be the same person tonight, or would she leave some part of herself behind? Would it be enough to tell herself that it was for a righteous cause?
Rachel walked in the door.
She was dressed in low-cut blue jeans from Olivia’s closet, a tube top, and red heels. Her thick dark hair framed the large O-shaped onyx earrings along the sides of her face. As she approached, the big, black bouncer behind the counter knew why she was there. When they were face to face, he turned away to listen to the rest of a story, making her wait.
“The old geezer walks in here three times a week to buy videos,” said the cashier. “He’s dyin’ of cancer and wants to see all the oriental action I got before he dies. ‘Magine that goal?”
“He better have it on fast forward,” said the other guy. Both men laughed. When the bouncer turned once again toward Rachel, his face was implacable.
“Who do I see about a job?” she said.
“Upstairs. Second door to your left. Mister Perlman.”
Rachel walked up the single flight of stairs and heard the unmistakable sound of human teeth snapping shut behind her.
Two girls in Danskins body suits were offering soft drinks to the arriving men while other girls stood outside their booths inviting customers in for a private show.
Rachel was the only one who had no role here. The girls entertained; the men gawked. They stared at Rachel, waiting for her to change into her costume.
Huge men, disproportionate to their menial task, stood with small pouches of tokens for the customers.
The second door to the right was closed. Now was the time to turn back. This was a sign that she wasn’t supposed to do this, that she had done enough and should go back to her dorm room and prepare for tomorrow’s lectures.
Nausea attacked her. How long had she been doing nothing in this place where everyone had a clear purpose? She almost asked one of the girls tending bar if the boss was in, in the hope that he wasn’t.
On Mr. Perlman’s door was a sign that said, DO NOT ENTER.
Rachel knocked.
There was no answer at first. The music was loud and could drown out a knock, a heartbeat, even a small scream. She knocked again.
Someone yelled something that couldn’t be understood.
When he opened the door, Rachel could see a black girl pulling up her body suit.
“Who do I see about a job?”
“Doing?” said Zoltan Perlman.
“Doing this. Out there.”
He asked his companion to turn down the stereo.
When he turned again to Rachel, the smile collapsed. This was his game face. “And you’ve done this before?” he asked.
“I did something like this.”
“Something like this. What’s something li
ke this?”
Rachel hadn’t expected an audience at this interview.
“I used to dance.”
“Okay. That’s valuable experience. Before we go any further, I need ID that says you’re eighteen.”
Rachel gave it to him. He glanced at it, then pulled a sheet of paper out of a drawer.
“Fill this out and wait for me in the room at the end of the hall.”
When she entered the room, she put her back to a wall. It was stark with a desk, a camera on a tripod, a place for processing.
She filled out the fields in the application. Name, social security number, age, preferred hours, references. She left that blank. Rachel already felt she was revealing too much information. But this was just the beginning. She sat there for twenty minutes, then Perlman and an Indian assistant came in the room and closed the door behind them.
“Let me have that ID again.” He made a photocopy of the driver’s license with no attempt at small talk while she waited. Perlman’s ample black hair was combed straight back with the strong smell of Vitalis to hold it in place. His long-sleeved shirt stretched over his muscular torso with the tension of angled tent stakes. It bore the Bugle Boy emblem and his trousers displayed the B.U.M. label. Without much inspection, one could see the Gucci logo on his leather shoes.
He put the ID on the desk and sat behind it. His assistant took a position behind the camera. There was nowhere for her to sit.
“Could you look into the camera and stand against the wall, Miss,” said the cameraman.
Rachel did so.
He took two pictures of her full face and two more profile shots. Rachel felt she was being booked for a crime she was about to commit.
“You know anything about this business? You know how it works?” said the owner. He lit a cigarette.
“Pretty much,” she said.
“Pretty much isn’t good enough. I want you to know exactly how I run my place. It’s a buck a day, plus you gotta tip the boys. I want payment at the end of every shift. No excuses.”
The Schwarzschild Radius Page 7