by JP Delaney
Not this part.
Inside, the apartment is a shithole. Black candles line the walls, beneath mounted animal skulls and ripped heavy-metal posters. A battered bass guitar leans in one corner. The room stinks of stale cannabis smoke.
“For Christ’s sake,” I say, looking around. “Really?”
“It cost a lot of money to make the place look this bad,” Frank says mildly. He picks up a skull on which a candle has been mounted. “Perhaps she did go a little over the top.”
I’ve just spotted a glass tank in one corner. Something silver-gray slithers against the glass. “Is that a snake?”
Frank nods. “Apparently, that is the kind of thing the kind of person you are would have.”
I sigh, reach for my bag.
“And just so you know, Claire. The whole place is wired for video. We’ll only turn the system on when we have to. But we’ll be testing it sometimes. You’ll have privacy in the bathroom. Everywhere else, bear in mind you could be on camera.”
“Where will you be?”
“In the apartment directly below.”
“Won’t Mrs. Durban mind that you aren’t at home?”
“There’s no Mrs. Durban,” he says gruffly. “Leastways, there is, but she’s living with some guy who makes artisanal wedding cakes now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Frank. Was it—”
“And this is your wire,” he continues, talking over me as he hands me an ugly necklace with a large perforated pendant. “Wear it whenever you’re not in the apartment. It’s a geolocator, too, so we can track you.”
“Help me, will you?” I say meekly, turning around for him to fasten it.
I can hear his breathing, the hoarseness of a big man’s lungs, as his fingers struggle with the tiny clasp. When it’s done he steps back. “And you should choose a safe word. Something you wouldn’t ordinarily say.”
“How about…Constantinople?”
“Why that?”
I shrug. “It was somewhere I always dreamed of running away to as a kid. I thought it sounded exotic.”
He nods. “Constantinople…Okay. But don’t use it unless you’re certain. The moment you say that word, we bust in and take him down. There’s no going back after that.”
The necklace feels heavy against my chest. Suddenly I feel scared. I’m just an actress. I wanted to stand on a stage and have people applaud. How did I get into this?
But then I think of the green card waiting for me at the end of it. It’s only a job. A job with different rules to what you usually do, sure. But the same skills, the same process.
“Try not to worry.” Frank says it quietly, as if he’s read my mind. “And try not to think about the bad stuff too much. Remember, we’ll be close by. Our number one priority is that you’re safe.”
* * *
—
And lastly, the finishing touch.
“This will really help?” Frank asks as the stylist’s scissors flash in front of my eyes. “Making her look more like his wife?”
“I don’t know, Frank,” Kathryn says. “No one does. Hardly anyone’s done an operation like this.”
“Whether it helps Patrick isn’t the point,” I say as the clumps of hair tumble around me. “This is what we do, Frank. This is how we prepare.”
I stare at the woman in the mirror. And I feel excitement gripping my guts, the terror and euphoria of a performance that’s about to begin.
Tomorrow. I’m approaching Patrick tomorrow. Kathryn’s decided I’m ready.
Showtime.
26
INT. THE APARTMENT KITCHEN—NIGHT
It’s past midnight. I sit at the kitchen counter, drinking. Half the bottle is already gone. I’m wearing a loose top, my legs bare.
I run my fingers through my new, shorter haircut. It feels different, like I’m already someone else. But maybe that’s the alcohol.
A little unsteadily, I go and kneel in front of one of the tiny cameras.
ME
I didn’t take your advice, Frank. I started to think about it. And now I’m getting scared.
INT. APARTMENT BELOW—CONTINUOUS
Frank’s watching me on a monitor. I know he is.
ME
But all I have to do is say my magic word and you’ll come running. That’s right, isn’t it? Detective Frank to the rescue.
I get up. My head’s out of shot now. Only my bare legs remain in the frame.
ME
I know you’re there, Frank. Watching me. Thanks for the Only when I have to speech but…I know what men are like, remember?
My top drops onto the floor.
ME
I’m going to bed now, Frank. You can watch over me if you want. My knight in shining armor. I’d quite like that, actually.
Turning my back to the camera, I walk away. Downstairs, Frank exhales slowly.
27
INT. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LECTURE ROOM—DAY
PATRICK FOGLER
We cannot hope to understand Baudelaire if we try to judge his attitudes, and particularly his attitudes to women, by the standards of the present. “Moi, je dis: la volupté unique et supréme de l’amour gît dans la certitude de faire le mal”—“For me, the unique and supreme pleasure of sex lies in the possibility of doing evil.” For Baudelaire, women are not simply individuals. They are idealized representatives of their gender; symbols, of both perfection made flesh, and the impossibility, in this corrupt world, of perfection proving to be anything more than a momentary illusion.
We debated a bunch of different ways to approach him. But in the end Kathryn decided to keep it simple. His weekly lectures. The NYPD has a whole department dedicated to setting up fake identities. The ID card they’ve given me has my name and photo on, but now I’m a student at Columbia.
I sit at the back, not taking notes, my whole body craned forward. Spellbound.
PATRICK
This conflict was apparent in Baudelaire’s life, as well as his poetry. You may remember the famous letter of rejection he sent to the Vénus Blanche, in which he said—
For the first time since he began speaking, twenty minutes ago, he consults his notes.
PATRICK
“You see, my dear, a few days ago you were a goddess: so noble, so inviolable. And now you are a woman…I have a horror of passion, because I know too well the abominations into which it can tempt me.”
I’m not the only person who’s enthralled, I realize. Every student in the room is riveted.
PATRICK
For Baudelaire, sex is not a physical itch. It’s a metaphysical yearning. Not some mindless aerobic exercise, but a connection, however fleeting, with the terrible dark mysteries of the universe. Like all mystics, he is of course doomed to disappointment. The achievement—the heroism—lies in the attempt. Questions?
A student near the front raises her hand, and he nods at her.
PATRICK
Megan.
MEGAN
You’re saying he treats women as sexual objects, to be manipulated and despised. By putting him on the syllabus, aren’t you giving this guy a platform for misogyny?
He deals with her point courteously and methodically—that it is not only those we approve of we should study, but those we disagree with too; that for all his personal faults, Baudelaire was an innovator who brought a new dimension to the arts. T. S. Eliot, for example, cited him as one of his greatest influences, and even incorporated fragments of Les Fleurs du Mal into The Waste Land.
PATRICK
Without Les Fleurs du Mal there would have been no Decadence, without Decadence, no Modernism, and without Modernism, no us. We study Baudelaire not because of his morals, but because of his genius. Are there any more questions?
There aren�
�t. The students close their laptops and clatter out, joking with one another. Patrick sorts his notes together.
Hesitantly, one of the students approaches him.
ME
Professor Fogler?
I’m using the same midwestern accent I used last time we met. I hope.
If he recognizes me, he doesn’t show it. His expression is one of professional politeness. But again I’m startled by the amusement deep in his mint-green eyes.
PATRICK
Yes?
ME
I just wanted to say, thank you so much.
I show him his copy of Les Fleurs du Mal.
ME
You won’t remember, but you loaned me this. I started reading it…and I got so intrigued, I decided to take your class.
PATRICK
Intrigued about Baudelaire?
He pronounces the name with the faintest hint of an accent. Bod’lair.
ME
Partly…and partly about our conversation. What you said.
“Be direct,” Kathryn had told me. “He’ll appreciate that. He’s not looking for an ordinary woman. You have to stand out.”
PATRICK
I do recall you, as it happens. But not everything we talked about. I was a little distracted around that time.
“So we tackle the issue of Stella’s death up front. You saw it on the news. It doesn’t bother you. Maybe it even excites you a little.”
ME
I know. It was in all the papers. And I saw you on TV.
PATRICK
Celebrity of a kind, I suppose.
ME
I keep thinking about what you told me—how Baudelaire would send those poems to his White Venus. I wonder if he thought they’d shock her. Or whether he guessed that at some level she’d welcome the intimacy he was offering—being allowed, little by little, into his darkest fantasies.
“He’ll be bored and irritated by sympathizers and grief junkies. If he did kill Stella, he wants a different adventure now. Something to celebrate his newfound freedom.”
PATRICK
“What the White Venus knew.” That would be an interesting subject for a dissertation, actually. One that probably couldn’t be written by a man, though.
ME
Perhaps I should write it.
PATRICK
Why not? Anyway, it was nice talking to you.
Inside, I’m shaking. The whole operation depends on the next few seconds. And a proposal that, last time I tried it, led to me getting rebuffed.
But he had a wife then. And I am someone else.
ME
Could we talk about it some more? Over a coffee, maybe?
He hesitates, glances at the door. Then—
PATRICK
All right. But not here. Before it was the Maison Française this building was an asylum for wealthy lunatics, and sometimes I think it still is. Let’s go somewhere off-campus.
INT. NEARBY SURVEILLANCE VAN—DAY
Frank and Kathryn are listening through headphones.
FRANK
It’s going to work. It’s really going to work.
KATHRYN LATHAM
We’ll see.
INT. NEW YORK BASEMENT BAR—DAY
It’s a warm, sunny evening, but he takes me to a dimly lit basement bar on Amsterdam Avenue. Candles in glass jars flicker on the tables. We’re the only people down here. Does he not want to be seen with me, perhaps? Is he covering his tracks, trying to make sure no one connects the two of us, later?
I push the thought out of my head. I’m my character now; that other, more confident, more impulsive Claire, not the terrified acting student who sat through Kathryn’s grisly presentations.
We sit in a quiet corner, talking.
ME
…that desire to push the limits, to go beyond the everyday hypocrisy and complacency of the average bourgeois. Sure, people pretend to be shocked by what he wrote. But really, they’re just scared—scared by their own conventionality.
“Naïve, to appeal to his sense of control. Damaged, to appeal to his predatory instincts…” But something else as well, something all my own: a passionate, intellectual fervor, an almost adolescent excitement with ideas that says: I fall in love with brains, not bodies. Your brain? Why not?
PATRICK
A lot of people say things like that. They don’t really mean them.
ME
I’m not most people.
INT. NEARBY SURVEILLANCE VAN—CONTINUOUS
Kathryn nods. Not bad.
INT. BASEMENT BAR—LATER
PATRICK
…People think Baudelaire wrote about decadence. Really, he wrote about trust.
ME
How so?
PATRICK
Trusting another human being with the very worst things inside your head—there’s no leap in the dark more terrifying.
ME
I like being terrified.
Patrick smiles, as if at a child’s presumption. Undeterred, I hold his gaze. And something gives—
PATRICK
Let’s see. Give me your hand.
“Some things we can predict, even plan for. But mostly it will just be you and him, playing whatever games he chooses to play.”
Taking my hand, Patrick places it on the glass jar with the candle in, so my palm is directly over the flame.
PATRICK
One of my students showed me this game. Whatever happens, you mustn’t take your hand away.
ME
It’ll burn me.
Already I can feel the flame gnawing at my skin.
PATRICK
No—the flame will die from lack of oxygen before it can cause any damage. I promise.
He puts his hand over mine, pressing down lightly—not forcing me, just feeling the trembling of my own hand as I try to leave it in position, even though every instinct and nerve ending is screaming at me to pull away.
PATRICK
It’s not easy, trusting someone, is it?
I have played trust games many, many times before—they’re a staple of actors’ warm-ups. But none like this. I stare at the flame. It’s a long, jagged fingernail, a talon jabbing at my hand. The pain turns from mere discomfort into something that makes me want to throw my head back and howl, a circle of needles burrowing deep into my skin, a mounting crescendo of agony. My eyes water. I can feel my flesh liquefying, bubbling, like crackling on a roast—
Abruptly, the flame gutters. An instant later, it goes out.
PATRICK
(surprised)
You trusted me. Thank you.
I snatch my hand back. There’s a red disk, like a hickey, across my palm. But no blisters.
I put it to my mouth and suck the sting away. The pain was mostly in my head, I realize.
ME
I hardly know you.
PATRICK
That’s what makes it interesting, isn’t it? Where do you live?
ME
East Harlem.
PATRICK
Shall we go there?
ME
What for?
PATRICK
To fuck, of course. Isn’t that what this is about?
ME
If you like.
INT. NEARBY SURVEILLANCE VAN—CONTINUOUS
Frank turns to Kathryn, alarmed.
FRANK
We haven’t planned for this. What if it gets physical?
KATHRYN LATHAM
(calmly)
It’s already physical.
FRANK
Jesus!<
br />
He fiddles with the controls.
INT. BASEMENT BAR—CONTINUOUS
ME
We could have—what did you call it earlier?—mindless aerobic sex, and then forget we ever met each other. Or…
PATRICK
Or?
ME
We could keep talking.
Patrick smiles.
PATRICK
Very well. Let’s talk.
INT. NEARBY SURVEILLANCE VAN—CONTINUOUS
Frank sighs with relief. Kathryn just shrugs and turns her attention back to her notepad.