sex.lies.murder.fame.

by Lolita Files

  Frightened, shaking, clothes tattered, knees skinned, suddenly alone, Beryl had made an instant decision right there at the hospital, even as she was still trying to process the fact that her parents were gone. Rather than be placed in foster care like her father, the sixteen-year-old had walked out of the hospital in Galena, the small town outside Columbus, Ohio, where she’d been raised, gone to the bus station, and gotten a ticket for as far away as she could with the money in her parents’ wallets, which were surrendered to her by the attending nurse. It was five hundred and sixty dollars, the bulk of it from her father’s freshly cashed payday check, which he never bothered to deposit in a bank. There was enough cash to get her to New York, a place she’d read about in books and magazines, a place where dreams were realized and destinies fulfilled. Someone at the Port Authority told her about the Harlem YMCA. Beryl didn’t know much about Harlem, but a cheap room was a cheap room. She had enough money to cover a two-week stay in one of the economy lodgings (she got an even cheaper rate by convincing them she was a student, despite not having any proof). She was also able to buy a change of clothes, basic toiletries, and food. There was no extended family back in Galena who would come looking for her. She was the end of the line. She was on her own. She’d gotten a copy of the Columbus Dispatch at a newsstand in New York and found a write-up about her parents’ deaths and the accident. There was no funeral. Beryl couldn’t afford it, and, as far as she knew, they didn’t have insurance. No one ever came back to claim their bodies from the hospital morgue. The nurses were puzzled by the emotionally rattled teenager who had arrived with the ambulance, taken her parents’ wallets, and disappeared.

  She considered surviving the car wreck as the intervention of fate. Ditto her arrival in Manhattan and getting a job (compliments of a fake ID) three days later, the following Monday, at a temp agency, which promptly placed her in a job at PaleFire, smack in the middle of the publishing world. She sought Ripkin’s services the same day, after reading about him in the Sunday Times. She convinced him to take her on despite the fact that, with her new low-paying temp job, she couldn’t afford his exorbitant hourly rate. Ripkin had been stricken by conscience and moral responsibility. Especially after she collapsed at his feet.

  “I think you’ve come to the wrong place,” he said. “We should get you the proper help. A young girl like you in a city like this with no home, no family. I know the head of Covenant House,” he said, reaching for the phone. “I’ll give them a call now and see if we can get you situa—”

  “But I’m not homeless,” Beryl said. “I have a room at the Y. I’ve only been in the city three days. I’m not some homeless street person. I have a plan for myself. And now that I have a job, I’m going to try to find somewhere permanent to live.”

  “I don’t think I can help you,” said Ripkin. “This is too much for you to take on. The cost of living alone will be more than you can handle. This is an expensive city. The last thing you need to be worrying about is trying to fix yourself so you’ll be right for a man. Perhaps in a few months when you’ve gotten settled you can give me a call and I’ll refer you to some state-funded clinics with staff psychiatrists who may be able to offer you affordable assistance.”

  “But Doctor, you’re the best. Please. I’ll work hard, I promise. I won’t take your help for granted. I just don’t want the kind of life my parents had. I never want what happened to them to happen to me.”

  Ripkin studied the girl. She was so young, so fragile, yet so determined. Even after having just cataplexied in front of him, she still mustered the confidence to further plead for his help.

  Something in him broke. The failed father. He could try again. It wasn’t the real thing, but he could offer her guidance. This little girl needing looking after. He would help. For starters, he took her on pro bono until she was able to pay.

  She was a star now in the industry. Half her life had been spent in the business. Her nonlinear ideas had proved a boon during a time when books were losing momentum. She was a pioneer in cross-marketing, going beyond what most editors did with her zeal for publicity and maximum exposure for her authors, never hesitating to capitalize on the high-level relationships she’d cultivated from Wall Street to Madison Avenue.

  And today, that day, a day that already had sentimental value to her for other reasons, she had received even more good news. She had blurted it to Ripkin the second she walked in the door.

  CarterHobbs was promoting her to a VP position, and although she would still be working at Kittell Press with Kitty Ellerman, there was the ultimate promise of her own imprint someday soon. But she wouldn’t be just any VP. She would be entering the ranks of the most elite editors, those who existed in a world where the salaries were not based on logic, but hype and buzz. Beryl was aswirl in buzz and CarterHobbs wanted to show her their level of faith. At the tender age of thirty-two, her pay had just been raised to an astronomical three hundred thousand dollars a year, plus profit-based bonuses.

  It might not have seemed like a lot to someone on Wall Street, but in Beryl’s world, she was living a dream.

  Half of her authors were the purveyors of what Ripkin considered a most insidious cancer: outrageous, fantastical tales of love and triumph —Sex and the City– type tonics—snake oil in print peddled to a generation of progressive women who should know better.

  It was the fairy tale on crack, books that weren’t content with just the traditional happy ending. These deadly works passed themselves off as authentic reflections of the real world, and rewarded their heroines with gorgeous, love-struck, deep-pocketed, commitment-hungry, jet-setting moguls/sex machines, blinding, multicarat flawless diamonds, haute couture ad infinitum, social status, beautiful Gerber babies who slept through the night, and high-powered careers that could be picked up and abandoned at will.

  It was sick stuff, he thought, all of it, much more dangerous than the standard romance fare filled with Victorian settings and stock characters most women were able to distinguish from truth. The books Beryl hawked were present-day, set in major metropolitan cities, and peopled with characters living ordinary lives that suddenly turned extraordinary. Balderdash. To believe in it was lunacy.

  Twice divorced, with three grown children (including that estranged daughter) and an immortal alimony, Ripkin was long over the allure of l’amour. It was a road to ruin that didn’t need to be prayed up and prepped for; it had a dastardly way of throwing itself under one’s feet. Yet Beryl, even as she helped shape the prose of her writers, bought into the dream lock, stock, proving herself, in Ripkin’s opinion, to be a greater fool than the readers of such dreck.

  “Suppose he’s not here,” he posed once. “What if your true love is somewhere else? What if there is no true love? Could you live with that?”

  “This is where fate brought me. He has to be here.”

  Ripkin decided not to delve into the flawed concept of fate. She could figure that one out on her own.

  It was by sheer luck that she wasn’t a virgin. Six months into her job at PaleFire, a guy from the mailroom came on to her at a company party. It was the first time anyone had ever shown interest in her. They did it at her place. The coworker tore her clothes away and was on her with a startling wildness.

  Beryl was so excited, so grateful and surprised by the attention, that she had a cataplexy in the middle of the act. Scared the fuck out of the poor guy on top. She had been thrashing beneath him, then suddenly went limp. Several scary seconds later, she was back, her thrashing renewed. The guy’s erection was deader than Latin. He fled naked from her bedroom, his clothes bundled under his arm. Beryl was so embarrassed, she never spoke to him again, taking great measures to avoid running into him. A month later, to her relief, the guy left the company.

  Other sexual encounters followed over the years, but they were sparse and more utilitarian in nature. Most were extreme cases for when she needed an adjustment, which wasn’t often as she was an exceptional masturbator. The medications had dimi
nished her sex drive by half. Having little interest in sex made it easy to wait for the One.

  Sixteen years later, and he still hadn’t shown up.

  She was stylish, with a painfully ordinary face. Except for the jarring smile. When someone saw her, sex was not the first, second, or fifth thing that came to mind. It was the nature of her aesthetic that caught the eye. The sublime elegance and attention to detail, the order. The sheen of her hair, each strand a curved note in an impeccable symphony. An exquisitely worn scarf. The deliberate turn of an expensive Italian heel. The gentle whiff of something citrus.

  Over the years, she had crafted everything about herself with great care. She was her own best product. Ripkin found it ironic that the same obsessive-compulsive behavior that had her lying on his couch once a week resulted in a magnificently engineered professional ascent.

  No one in her life knew of these sessions every Thursday at six. Beryl made no note of it anywhere, paid in cash, kept Ripkin’s phone numbers secure in her head, and never uttered his name outside the four walls of his office. Image was everything.

  She was good on the surface at socializing and had a rather charming way with people, despite what most wrote off as somewhat neurotic behavior. But she never let anyone get too deep. With the exception of Ripkin, she kept her guard up. It would only come down for the right man at the right time, and that time had yet to come.

  She could have found love long ago, thought Ripkin. Lesser women were doing it every day. Beryl was so exacting. Another sixteen years could pass and she’d still be waiting, morphing and remorphing every step of the way.

  “So you’ll never tell him about the narcolepsy?”

  “Of course not. Why do you keep asking me that? I’m not going to change my mind. The man I marry doesn’t need to know. The medicine has it under control, so there’s nothing to discuss.”

  “It’s been in three generations of your family. You could pass it on to your children. He has a right to know that.”

  “Narcolepsy’s not that big a deal anymore. It’s not like it’s hemophilia. Relax, Doctor. Relax. Narcolepsy’s not going to kill me.”

  This from a woman who had four dead relatives in her wake because no one in her family had acknowledged the condition. Ripkin shook his head.

  “Not telling him about it will cause you to worry about being discovered. That will only make your condition worse. Your obsessive-compulsive nature will be aggravated by having to operate with such—”

  She raised her head. Her eyes narrowed, a gesture she used sparingly for dramatic effect. He abandoned the issue. The girl was an idiot. A self-absorbed idiot. This was why he was not a good parent. He couldn’t brook foolishness. Not like this.

  He realized he was allowing himself to become too affected by his patients, even though he never showed it. Should he retire? This had become a charade. There were three other psychiatrists in his practice. He could transition his patients to them. The thought of no more droning, whining, nouveau riche brats was appealing, perhaps even necessary. Each week that Beryl came in and began her lament, his desire to shake her and scream “He’s not coming, you twit!” intensified. What happened when the day came where he said it aloud?

  Of course he would never do that, could never do that. His was the one profession where it was acceptable to attempt to fix something and get paid for sending it back home broken. What other job condoned such a thing? Week after week, month after month, year after year, the customers dragged their broken selves back for more nonfixing, paying the nonfixer each time, thus conditioning the nonfixer to continue nonfixing.

  This was the precise pattern of many of his peers—keeping patients broken, creating cadres of static, unnatural dependencies, just to make money. Ripkin wanted to believe he wasn’t like that. He had chosen this profession because he truly wanted to heal troubled minds. Especially patients like Beryl. He was supposed to be helping her, but the passing years had exhibited little change.

  “So I’m back up to a hundred crunches in the morning and a hundred at night,” she was saying now. “Do you think that’s too many? Maybe I need to stave off a little. Muscles have memory, you know.”

  “Beryl, have you ever heard the phrase ‘love comes when you least expect it’?”

  “Of course I have,” she said. “I’m an editor. I’ve heard every phrase in the book.” She smiled at her own pun. “But that doesn’t mean I should just sit around not doing anything. Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “You’ve achieved a great deal in your life.”

  “You say that like my life is over, after I just told you I got a big promotion today.”

  “That’s not how I meant it. You’re an…you’re…you’re an attractive woman.” He told himself it wasn’t a lie. She was attractively packaged, if not in the face. “You’re celebrated among your peers, one of the Who’s Who of Manhattan. At thirty-two. Thirty-two, Beryl. That’s quite an accomplishment. You must realize, of course, that any man would be fortunate to have you. It might sound clichéd, but it’s true. You need to recognize this.”

  After sixteen years of protracted whining, will you ever recognize this?

  “I know it,” she said with confidence. “Why are you talking like this? I’ve never had any self-esteem issues.”

  Ripkin’s face was blank.

  “What? Why are you looking at me like that? I don’t have self-esteem issues. Not real ones. Sure, I’m concerned about some things, who isn’t, and I try to be better. That’s self-improvement. But it’s not like I don’t believe in myself.”

  The Roy G. Biv array of hair colors. Old breasts. New breasts. Old breasts. Three noses. Her abs. Surely she wasn’t serious. Ripkin’s eyes met hers. Surely, tragically, unbelievably, she was.

  “Right,” he said. “Of course. Very well, then. Have you ever heard the phrase ‘sometimes you have to take the bull by the horns’?”

  “Yes, Dr. Ripkin. What’s your point?”

  “My point is this: it seems hardly likely that you are going to stop looking for love at every turn, which sends that first saying out the window…about it coming when you least expect it. You’re always expecting it. I doubt it could ever sneak up on you. So since you’re always looking, why not be aggressive about it? There are many reputable agencies in the city that offer exceptional matchmaking…”

  Beryl sat upright, jaws rigid, arctic-blue eyes icily trained on him.

  “Our time’s up, Dr. Ripkin.”

  He glanced at his watch.

  “My word. So it is.”

  He closed the notepad he was holding, took off his glasses, rubbed his temples with two fingers.

  “Oh,” Beryl said in an upbeat voice. “I almost forgot. I brought you something.”

  She reached into her oversized purse and pulled out a plant. She walked over to him and held it out. She flashed her specialty, the thousand-watt smile in the five-watt face, waiting for his reaction.

  “Why, look.” Ripkin was deadpan. “Another African violet.”

  “Sure is. I got it just for you.”

  “Your favorite flower. How delightful. You shouldn’t have.”

  “Don’t be silly. Of course I should. It’s for my favorite psychiatrist. Today’s our anniversary.” She placed the plant in his regretful hand along with a wad of cash for the day’s session, then made for the door, walking backward.

  “See you next Thursday, Doctor.”

  “Looking forward to it,” he muttered. “Why are you walking like that?”

  She stopped, her eyes wide with surprise.

  “Like what?”

  “You’re backing out of my office.” He glanced down at her feet. She tucked her left foot behind her right one.

  “Oh. No reason,” she said with a girlish giggle. “I guess I just wanted to look at you as I walked away.”

  “Of course.”

  He watched her back away like a crab, an awkward grin on her face. Who knew what she was trying to hide. He turne
d away to help ease her mysterious behavior. There was obviously something she didn’t want him to see.

  Ripkin waited until he heard the ding of the elevator as the doors opened and closed. He counted to twenty. He stared at the plant in his hand.

  “Once upon a time, I liked your kind.”

  The African violets were yet another manifestation of her anxious nature. Somehow, years ago, she’d gotten it into her head that since they were her personal favorite, giving them as gifts could be a definitive way of expressing her affection. Ripkin hadn’t addressed it with her because the flowers were just another of her many, many tics. He knew she gave him the African violet in spite of herself, perhaps fearing that if she stopped, he wouldn’t like her anymore.

  He heaved a series of deep breaths as he took the plant over to the windowsill and placed it alongside the thirteen other African violets Beryl had given him before.

  “Pretty soon there’ll be no room for me to make a decent leap. Guess I’ll just have to throw myself down the stairs.”

  He turned to find Beryl standing in the doorway staring at him.

  “I’ll never understand British humor,” she said. “Throw yourself down the stairs. Is that supposed to be funny?”

  “No, of course not. It was a joke for the plants. I talk to them from time to time.”