Phoenix Falling

by Mary Jo Putney

  "Of course, by then she was hooked on drugs so maybe she simply didn't care that I was hopeless. Drugs are expensive, and there was only one way she could afford them. She had a pimp boyfriend called Rock. He supplied her with drugs, took her money, and beat her up. When I was seven, I think one of the drugs he supplied must have been contaminated or more potent than usual." He drew a ragged breath. "It killed her."

  "Did... did you find her body?" Rainey asked, her voice trembling.

  "I watched her die, and couldn't do a damned thing about it." He drank more whisky, thinking this was easier than he'd thought it would be, because he felt nothing. Nothing at all. "Rock came several hours later to beat her for not working. He was quite casual about finding her body. It probably wasn't the first time he'd lost one of his girls to drugs. He took care of everything very efficiently. I don't know where she was buried. There was no funeral service. She was just... gone." But not forgotten.

  "Did the pimp take you to the authorities so you could be put into foster care or whatever the English equivalent is?"

  "Rock was too sharp a businessman to waste an asset. I was a nice-looking boy, and there's a market for those. He explained that he'd take care of me, but because my mother owed him money, I had to work to pay off her debt. And he knocked me across the room to demonstrate what would happen if I didn't cooperate."

  Jamie had been terrified of the pimp, but the fear was less paralyzing than the knowledge that he was stupid and worthless, and deserved whatever punishment Rock chose to inflict. He'd been the perfect, obedient slave, never imagining his life could be any different.

  The first step in creating a slave was to break the will.

  "The family business." Silent tears ran down Rainey's face. "He forced you to be with pedophiles and perverts and God knows what."

  "It was the best training in the world for an actor. I learned how to cower in terror from johns who liked that, and how to be seductive. I learned how to pretend affection, and how to abuse those who wanted to be hurt. RADA was child's play by comparison."

  Rainey swallowed hard, imaginative enough to understand all that he wasn't saying. She'd never be able to think of him the same way again, which was perhaps best. "Did you live with Rock?" she asked.

  "He preferred to keep his private and business lives separate, so he set me up in a flat with a rotating list of his whores. They made sure I was fed and had clothing and took baths. Some of them were even rather kind."

  "How did you escape? Did you run away?"

  Rainey didn't—couldn't—understand how completely hollow Jamie Mackenzie had been. No will, no soul, no hope. Hollow people didn't run away. "As I got older, I realized that I was definitely straight, so it became harder and harder to pretend I was a passionate little hustler. One day when I was twelve, I snapped when I was with a German who came to London regularly on business. He liked playing rough. Instead of going along with it as usual, this time I provoked him. He beat me bloody. Enjoyed it so much that he left twice the usual fee."

  After the German left, young Jamie had lain weeping on the bed in the sleazy hotel room, racked with agony, and bitterly disappointed that he was still alive.

  Face ghostly pale, Rainey asked, "Then what?"

  "I was passive to the end. Another regular client, Trevor Scott-Wallace, was scheduled to come an hour after the German. He was a decent old duffer who'd always treated me kindly. The German had left the door unlocked, so Trevor came in and found me battered and bloody.

  "Being the responsible sort, he took me to a hospital instead of running away. I was delirious, and started babbling about my life." Jamie had pleaded for death, which had horrified Trevor most of all. "When he realized that I was basically a sex slave rather than a willing whore, he took me home and kept me, like a stray dog."

  "You were adopted by a pedophile?" Rainey's voice shook with revulsion.

  "It was... more complicated than that. Trevor was a professor of literature, a Shakespeare specialist with an international reputation. We never had a physical relationship. He paid for my time and watched me while he quoted poetry and masturbated. My role was to look enthusiastic and ardent."

  Rainey kept her composure despite the weirdness of what he was saying. "Was that better than having him touch you?"

  "A little. Enough so it was possible to live under the same roof. He told people I was a distant cousin with no other relatives, so he'd taken me in." He poured more Scotch. "Trevor and Charles were former lovers who'd stayed friends. Trevor was comfortably off but not rich, so it was Charles who paid for the surgery. He had the kind of offhand generosity that didn't think twice about spending tens of thousands of pounds for procedures that weren't covered by the National Health."

  Rainey pressed her hand to her mouth. "Surgery?"

  "The German had been very thorough. The broken bones of my face needed to be rebuilt, which is how I became the unutterably handsome Kenzie Scott." Bitterly he touched the faint, perfectly sculpted cleft in his chin, then traced one of his high, dramatic cheekbones. "This beautiful face the camera loves, the subject of countless gushing journalistic words, isn't mine. It's as much a lie as everything else in my life."

  "No wonder you have no vanity," she whispered.

  "How can I be vain about something that isn't mine?" The stranger's face had been his mask, and his shield against the world. People saw the chiseled, too-handsome-to-be-real features, not the hollow core.

  "Did... did Trevor make you continue to act out for his sexual fantasies?"

  "Luckily, he was wise and kind enough to realize how destructive that would be. Besides, even more than a lover, he wanted a son. Someone to love and be loved by." It was another role the young Jamie had learned well. And if simple filial love had been impossible, there had been genuine affection and profound gratitude. "He took care of me, and in return, I kept the secret of his pedophilia, since that would have disgusted most of his friends."

  "Secrets and lies." She closed her eyes for a moment "Did you lead a normal life after you recovered, or was it too late for that?"

  "There has never been anything 'normal' about my life." He finished his second scotch. "Trevor was appalled to learn he'd taken in an illiterate, but he was an educator, and realized fairly soon that I was dyslexic. One of his academic friends was a pioneer in the study of learning disabilities, so between them they created a private tutoring program that helped me overcome my weaknesses and learn to use my strengths."

  Trevor and Charles had been part of a circle of aging, highly cultured gay men. All had grown up in the days when homosexuals stayed deep in the closet, and they preferred to stay there even when society became more tolerant. The plastic surgeon, one of the best in Britain, had been part of the same circle. They'd delighted in giving their battered boy a perfect face.

  They'd probably thought they were doing him a favor.

  Living quietly at the edge of Trevor's life, listening to the talk of clever, well-educated men, young Jamie had learned how to behave. "I ended up with a patchy but decent education, and the ability to fake being well-bred. Trevor died just before I turned eighteen. Charles Winfield had been encouraging me to study acting. He pulled some strings to get me an audition to RADA. I was admitted, and with a little fudging of the records, Kenzie Scott was born."

  "How did you manage that?"

  He shrugged. "One of Trevor's friends was high up in the government security establishment, and I presume he knew where to find the best forgers. I'm not sure exactly what he did, but I ended up with a passport in the name Kenzie Scott, and RADA got records that satisfied the bureaucrats."

  "What an incredible story." Her brow furrowed. "That's why you think no one could connect you to your past—because you didn't grow up with the usual paper trail, and your appearance had altered enough so that no one who knew you as a child prostitute would recognize you now?"

  "Exactly. Nigel Stone, known as Ned, knew me then. A pity my eyes are a distinctive color. If they'd
been generic blue, he'd never have figured it out."

  "So there is a connection with Stone! Was he another hustler?"

  Kenzie thought back to the first time he'd seen that sneering face. "He was the son of Rock, my mother's pimp."

  "Rock—Stone. I see." Looking ill, Rainey asked, "Did his father force his own son into prostitution, too?"

  "No, even Rock wasn't that depraved. Or maybe he thought his son wasn't attractive enough to be worth selling. Ned lived with his mother, who was a couple of steps up the social scale, but sometimes Rock would use him to run errands—collecting money, delivering drugs, things like that. Ned was several years older than I, and mean to the bone. I think he felt some weird kind of sibling rivalry because he thought his father cared more for me than him, the real son. He might have been right—I was more valuable. Luckily, we saw each other very seldom, because he did his best to make my life miserable when he had the chance."

  "And once he guessed that Kenzie Scott was the boy he'd hated, he tried to destroy you," she whispered.

  "Not just tried." He closed his eyes, contemplating the shattered remnants of his life. "Succeeded."

  Chapter 32

  "But he hasn't," Rainey said, wanting to erase some of the bleakness from Kenzie's face. "While you were sleeping, I talked to Barb Rifkin and Marcus Gordon, and they're already taking steps to quash Nigel Stone's story. No one seems to believe there's a word of truth in it."

  "And yet there is. Ironic, isn't it?" He set aside his empty glass and rose to pace the small cabin, his balance unaffected by the amount of whisky he'd put away. "No matter how well they succeed, this kind of stain always lingers."

  He stopped by a vase of flowers secured in the center of a small table, his fingers drifting over the petals. "Movie stars are creatures spun from dreams and fantasy. Reality means nothing compared to how people think of us—and they'll never think of me the same way."

  She thought, aching, of the horrors he'd experienced. What incredible resilience he possessed, to have risen like a phoenix from the embers of a ruinous childhood. Now the phoenix was falling in flames once again. "Even if the stories linger, you have nothing to apologize for. You were a child. No one can blame you for what you were forced to do."

  "So the world can see me as a victim? Charming. I think I'd rather be considered a sinner."

  Kenzie played heroes. Sometimes his characters were larger than life, other times they were ordinary men who rose to the occasion and triumphed against terrible odds, but never were they helpless victims. That's why he'd had so much trouble playing John Randall. "I wish I'd known," Rainey said. "I'd never, ever have asked you to star in The Centurion."

  "My life as a pedophile's plaything isn't a subject one raises voluntarily. Even now, I couldn't speak of this if I weren't three-quarters drunk." He pulled a daisy from the vase and studied it intently. "But I thought you deserve to know, and I trust you not to tell anyone else."

  "As you wish." She swallowed, trying to ease her dry throat. "But maybe you should consider talking to someone else, like a really good therapist. Secrets fester."

  "Acting is therapy. To be any good at all, an actor must know himself well. Even the most neurotic of our breed have a deep understanding of what makes them tick." He was pacing again, the smooth, athletic movements masking his inner turmoil. "I know what happened to me, and the ways I've been permanently warped by my experiences. I doubt a therapist can tell me anything I haven't already thought of."

  "Therapy isn't talking for the sake of talking. The whole point is to find a way to heal the pain."

  His brows arched. "Did you ask a therapist to help sort out your problem childhood?"

  "You've got me there," she admitted. "There were times when I considered therapy. I know people who have benefited greatly by it. But for me, it seemed best to work through my problems in my own way."

  "You've done a good job of that. You're functioning, sane, especially by Tinseltown standards, and doing what you love, so I'd say your instincts were sound."

  He overestimated her. "Since we're being honest, why did you marry me in the first place? And why did you suddenly decide it had been a mistake after three years?"

  "When we met and clicked so well, I... I didn't want to let you go. Even though I knew marriage wouldn't work for me, I decided to hell with logic." He shrugged. "You've probably noticed that I spend a lot more time in my right brain than the left."

  "What went wrong?" she asked, fighting the tears that threatened to spill over. "I thought we were getting along well. Did you get bored?"

  "Remember that phone call where you raised the subject of children? Even though you tried to make a joke of it, I realized how much you wanted a baby. Until then, I'd thought you were as uninterested in having a family as I was, and probably for the same reasons. When I saw that I was wrong, I knew our marriage had to end."

  Her jaw dropped. Looking back, it was blindingly obvious. "So you succumbed to Angie Greene's bountiful charms."

  "You may not believe this, but I never had sex with her."

  She thought of her surprise visit to Crete, and the way Angie had been climbing all over him. "You're right, I have trouble believing that."

  "I was certainly considering it. She was more than willing, but I wasn't interested—it was you I was missing. You popped into my trailer just as I was trying to decide whether to go through with it. I knew an affair would end our marriage, but it was such a... a cruel, vulgar solution. When you showed up and jumped to the obvious conclusion, it was too good an opportunity to pass up. It also spared me from having to actually sleep with Angie. I was rather relieved."

  She didn't know whether to laugh or weep. "Why didn't you just come out and say you don't want children? I suspected that from your reaction, and after some soul searching I decided I could live without them. But you never gave me a choice. Did you think females are such hopeless breeding machines that I'd want a baby more than you?"

  He smiled without humor. "No, I thought you'd be loyal to our marriage—and live to regret it. By the time you left, it might be too late for you to have children."

  She stared at him. "So you decided to destroy our marriage for my own good? You arrogant bastard!"

  "That did sound arrogant," he agreed. "Tell me how wrong I was."

  She hesitated, furious but unable to say he'd been entirely wrong. "You were right that I wouldn't have divorced you over the issue of children, but leaving you was not inevitable. Isn't it possible we could have stayed together and lived reasonably happily ever after?"

  "In a marriage where neither of us once dared to say that we loved the other?" he said gently. "The end was just a matter of time."

  She was as shocked as if he'd slapped her. No, love was never mentioned. There had been occasions when they were at their closest that she'd come near to saying she loved him, but she couldn't bring herself to do it when she was unsure what he felt for her. She knew he liked and desired her, but she wasn't at all sure she was loved. "You... noticed," she managed to say.

  "I noticed. Though I'm hardly an expert on emotional intimacy, I understand that it's impossible without a willingness to be vulnerable. We let our barriers down with each other a little—you more than I. But we were both too wary to reveal much." He stopped pacing to regard her with compassionate eyes. "You're less damaged than I, Rainey, but you won't be able to overcome your fears and find the love you deserve unless you're with a man who's healthier and braver than I."

  She knotted herself into a fetal position, shaken by how well he understood her. He saw himself, and her, with no illusions. It had taken Sarah Masterson, fictional Victorian maiden, to make her recognize that she'd never fully committed to her marriage. Raine Marlowe, thoroughly modern woman, had always had one hand on the doorknob.

  Everything had changed in the tumultuous hours since they'd stepped out of Charles Winfield's memorial service. It was time to be brutally honest about what she wanted from Kenzie, and for herself.<
br />
  The answer to the first was blindingly clear: She wanted him with her always as lover and husband. Today he'd revealed more of himself than in the four years they'd known each other. Surely the fact that he'd acted out of concern for her showed a kind of love, even if he couldn't bring himself to say the words?

  As for her—she wanted to have the courage to make a commitment, no matter what the risks. She wanted to live life as passionately as Clementine, but with more wisdom. She wanted to be able to smash the defenses she'd hidden behind her whole life.

  That meant handing Kenzie her heart, even if he threw it right back at her. "I can't deny that I have fears, Kenzie, but I... I do love you. Enough to marry you even when I was sure it couldn't last. Enough, finally, to say so out loud."

  She uncoiled herself from her seat and crossed the cabin to him. "And I think that maybe you love me, too, because you did what you thought best for me even though you were wrong. If we love each other in our own battered, defensive way, isn't that a foundation for building a future?"

  "It's too late, Rainey." His voice was raw with anguish. "Maybe we could have continued indefinitely the way we did for three years with a relationship that was limited, but rewarding within those limits. Not now. The illusion that was Kenzie Scott has been shattered, and the pieces can't be put back together again."

  She placed one hand on his shoulder, her gaze searching. "Learning about your past hasn't changed how I feel, except that I love and respect you more than ever. The last weeks have been hard on both of us, but maybe now we have a chance to build the kind of marriage that will last for as long as we both shall live."

  In his eyes she saw despair, but also a terrible longing. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him.

  For an instant he responded, his hand sliding down her arm. She leaned into him, amazed at the power of a simple kiss when it was made with love. How could she have been willing to let him go without a fight? She felt her shields crumbling, her bruised spirit slowly opening to allow him in.