The Pretty Woman Who Lived Next Door

by Preston Pairo

  She said, “He ended up paying me anyway. Five hundred Euros he left in a dresser drawer I didn’t find until the next day. And when I did, I was hurt, because I thought he liked me. I didn’t want him to pay me. I wanted him to like me. When Danique came home, I cried to her about it, and she said it’s better if you pretend it’s a date. She said if you talk, if you have dinner, if you go to the movies, that makes it less like you’re being paid to have sex. It makes it easier to do it however they want you to do it—ways you might not choose to do it or want to do it, because it’s something they like even though you don’t. She said sex becomes like going to a restaurant that’s his favorite not yours, or listening to music you don’t like that does something for him. But it’s just pretend. And when it ends, it’s over and you have your money. Danique said all relationships end.”

  Cara shifted positions against Miles, her hand resting against his chest where her head had been. She’d never told anyone about Amsterdam, having put away those memories as if they were no more real than scenes from a movie.

  “Danique asked if I’d like to work with her. She said her men would like that I was young and American. I thought about it a little while, and told her I’d do it. And I did—long enough to stay in Amsterdam through the summer, and when I went home, I finished school without needing any more student loans and paid off what I already owed. I told my parents I’d gotten a scholarship, because they’d been helping with some of my tuition. And that was the only part I ever felt wrong about—because they were proud of me getting that scholarship.” Cara paused, wanting Miles to say something, but he remained quiet. His hand that had been stroking her hair was now still between her shoulders. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “You sure?” She looked up at him, his features barely visible in the darkness. His eyes were open, although looking toward the ceiling, not at her. Did he want to leave? “Miles…?”

  #

  Sometimes, looking back, details become fuzzy and it’s unclear what happened first.

  Cara thought it had been Miles sweeping aside her hair to touch her neck, a caress that moved inside the collar of her robe, sliding it off her shoulders, down her arms to the bend of her elbow, then away from her breasts, which he fondled, his fingers gently circling her nipples.

  Or did she first touch his erection, brushing against it with her leg when she changed positions again?

  Cara wondered afterward, naked under the quilt next to Miles, whether she had seduced him. She had invited him over—no, wait, he’d asked if she wanted him to come. But she’d said yes. And met him at the door in a robe. Nothing sexy, but nothing on beneath it either. Though she hadn’t intended having sex with him, had she?

  She hadn’t been thinking about sex. Far from it, she’d spent the past hour in tears from a date—no, not a date, a job, a client—that had turned very nasty. Not physically, but emotionally. Although the man apologized, telling Cara he hadn’t meant what he’d said, his words continued to jackhammer her with shame, the way he’d groaned, “Yeah, suck it whore, suck it, you dirty whore.” She’d been on her knees in front of him, his big hand gripping her hair, not hurting her except with his words. She’d wanted to stop, but kept going, as if what he was saying was the truth: that she was a whore.

  Cara hadn’t told Miles that part. She’d just told him about Amsterdam, a time and place when she’d been young and single and anything sexual had seemed like exploration and learning. She did tell him she’d been having sex for money with those men who came to her house. And while part of her felt humiliation admitting that, there was a quieter part inside her that must have known—or at least suspected—it might turn him on.

  And yet Cara felt fairly sure Miles had seduced her. That he made the first move. She may have invited it or sent signals. She may have clutched him when he entered her house, gotten the quilt when he shivered from the cold. But how they ended up on the sofa was less clear in her mind—how he’d held her and the way he’d stroked her hair… Yes—he’d seduced her, hadn’t he? The way he was doing again now, easing himself back on top of her again. Kissing her again. Hard again.

  #

  Hours later, when light from the early-morning sun filtered softly into the living room, Cara awakened in Miles’ arms. His eyes were already open. His smile sweet.

  With loving inquisitiveness, she asked: “What was her name?”

  “Who?” Miles replied, caressing her.

  “Who taught you.”

  She’d known he wouldn’t tell her, just like she knew he wouldn’t tell anyone about what happened between them.

  But they’d still be found out.

  35.

  Friday at school, Miles thought of little other than Cara—the feel of her bare skin. He thought about her now, even while with Jennifer, seated at the end of a row of bleachers in the packed gymnasium, the Kensington High band playing the school fight song, heavy on percussion, trying to literally drum up enthusiasm to celebrate the launch of basketball season.

  When the band finished, cheerleaders high-kicked and the lights snapped out—darkness that lasted for a ten count, then a single spot landed hot on a long-haired student seated among a series of overturned plastic buckets he began attacking with his hands like a madman, smacking out a street-drumming staccato that brought most everyone to their feet, whooping, dancing, stomping—Jennifer included. But not Miles. He stood, but didn’t move.

  “You don’t dance?” Jennifer yelled to him over the rhythm.

  He shook his head.

  A second spot snapped on and caught Coach Harvich jogging to center court in a sharp-looking suit. The former college basketball star proceeded to introduce his starting line-up, each of whom was ushered onto the hardwood by a unique drum riff. Once the players were all in a line, the boys ripped off their cover-ups, revealing eye-jarring new uniforms that brought more cheers.

  The band joined the drummer, building a soundtrack for the team’s tightly-choreographed warm-up drill while spotlights swirled around them—athletic theater enunciated by power dunks from the team’s two stars, a captivating sight intended to provide distraction from the rally’s final act.

  It took the better part of two minutes before the cheering muted to a quiet murmur, then became an eerie silence as a solitary figure appeared at the opposite end of the court—someone lit by a single circle of pale light that grew gradually brighter as the basketball team receded into darkness.

  Jennifer muttered, “Look at this garbage.”

  Miles had been aware of movement at the dark end of the gym before that spotlight came on. He tended to look away from light to where it was still dark because he knew that distraction wasn’t just a ploy for magicians, it was also used in martial arts.

  A group of guys in the stands began to call: “Rusty…Rusty…Rusty!” But their voices fell silent once Bremmer’s pain became obvious—that without the walker he leaned into, taking six-inch steps, he would fall.

  Bremmer’s once powerful frame looked thirty pounds lighter, his body bent to one side, favoring a leg that dragged more than it strode. His football jersey hung on him as if taken from the closet of a much older brother.

  He only made it halfway to where the basketball team waited, his arms quivering, head down. When Coach Harvich started to move his players closer, Bremmer looked up and uttered a whispery, “I got it.” Slurred words that echoed hauntingly into the rafters where banners hung from the championships his teams had won.

  #

  Debra Vance heard someone begin to weep in the stands. Heard a single anonymous voice call: “Come on, Rusty. You can do it!” Heard the scrape of Bremmer’s foot across the polished hardwood. Heard the whisper of one of the basketball players: “Almost there, man. You got this.”

  This show had been orchestrated by Detective Delgado, who stood ten paces to Vance’s right, arms crossed, glaring into the stands. He wanted everyone to see what the boy looked like now—not hear rumors or
imagine it—but see firsthand what it took for him to simply walk.

  Tomorrow would mark six weeks since Rusty Bremmer was attacked. And Delgado’s investigation stood inert as a rock wall.

  Vance felt sorry for Bremmer, but that emotion was tempered by his history, which included his having punched Ben Shuman into unconsciousness and knocking out four of his teeth, injuries that had the much smaller boy scheduled for a series of painful oral surgeries. Debra Vance believed that Ben Shuman had been all but forgotten—the way little guys so often were.

  #

  The Kensington High basketball team dedicated its season to Rusty Bremmer and remained on the court with him once the assembly was over. Kids came out of the stands to gather around him. Girls hugged and kissed him. And Bremmer, in brief flashes, managed to look like his once-dominant self, glowering that bully’s expression, vowing he’d be back to kicking ass.

  Roberto Delgado remained in the gym just long enough to confirm that neither Miles Peterson nor Juan Arroyo made contact with Bremmer. Arroyo and his friends continued their refusal to talk to him, and the detective knew the culture of the Hispanic community: suspicious of law enforcement, often with good reason. How many times had he seen “routine questioning” evolve into immigration issues that had nothing to do with the initial investigation? And just because Delgado shared a Latino background didn’t make any difference; sometimes it made it worse—the involvement of a Hispanic policeman seen as a trick. Which sometimes it was.

  Frustrated, Delgado was heading for his car when he saw Peterson and Arroyo standing alongside Peterson’s truck. From the boys’ posture, Delgado would have wagered his pension—half of it anyway—that if he could hear what they were saying he could close his case.

  #

  Well out of earshot of Detective Delgado, what Juan said to Miles was: “We did a bad thing.”

  36.

  “So, are we getting one another Christmas presents?” Jennifer asked Miles—an assumption in the form of a question. She had her arm around him, peering into the window of a shop decorated for the holidays.

  The street was cold with the sun below the old rooftops. The sky blurred with pastel colors of purple and blue.

  Miles was trying to put Cara out of his mind. If Jennifer found out what happened, she’d be furious. The term “exclusive” had never come up between them, though it seemed implied. These Fridays together in Georgetown. Hanging out at school. The texts and phone calls. The sex. He asked Jennifer if she’d made a Christmas list of things she wanted.

  “Mm, a list? Well…I like that…and that…and that …” She pointed through the trendy shop’s front window at mannequins outfitted in stylish coats and sweaters. “ …and that-and-that-and-that.”

  Miles smiled. “So basically everything.”

  “I’m just kidding.” She turned toward him. “Get me whatever you want.” Her long blonde hair flowed out like silk beneath the turned-up cuff of a tartan-plaid ski cap.

  “Are you going to get me something?” Miles asked.

  “Well…have you been good?”

  “Mostly,” he said, thinking: Of all the days for her to ask—not just because of Cara, but because Juan had said, We did a bad thing. And while the translation of pronouns from Spanish to English was sometimes confused, Juan seemed to be including Miles as part of “we”—the group Miles now knew for certain had attacked Rusty Bremmer.

  “Mostly, mm…?” Jennifer weighed Miles’ reply. “Well, then, I guess Santa will have to check his mostly good list and get back to you.”

  “Fair enough,” Miles agreed. “What about you? Have you been good?”

  “You tell me. Am I good? Do you need a reminder?”

  They stopped and kissed in the middle of the crowded sidewalk—a definition of youth and beauty.

  #

  Two hours later, Miles drove inside the chain fence of the warehouse where Juan’s father kept his food trucks.

  Away from security lights aimed from the roof, Juan came out and stood alongside Miles. The shorter boy’s eyes were cast downward, gloved hands stuffed in the pockets of a heavy denim work coat splattered with suds and water.

  “In prison,” Miles told his friend, “there were guys inside because of their guilty conscience. Because they felt like they had to admit something they’d done. But ask them now—two, five, twenty years later—if they had it to do over…? Every one of them would keep quiet. Not say anything about whatever they did.”

  Juan kept his head down. “Just worry what God might do?”

  Miles didn’t answer.

  Still not looking at him, Juan asked: “You believe in God, Miles?”

  “Must be, right? I mean, how else did all these bad people get put on this planet if not to test the rest of us?”

  After a long, heavy silence, Juan asked: “You ever dream about the guy you killed? He ever come to you in dreams?”

  “No,” Miles lied. “But if it happens, I’ll know it’s a dream. It’s not real. It’s not the guy actually still alive in my head. It’s just a dream.”

  More silence.

  Miles said, “You can’t undo what happened. You can only focus on what you do next.”

  Juan offered the slightest nod—a response Miles knew was not a definitive answer, not really an answer at all, but a reaction. Even if Juan came to terms with his conscience, there were four others who might not do the same.

  Back in Florida, Miles’ lawyer once said, “The thing about American courts is they jail innocent people every day without feeling any guilt, without a lick of consideration of their own wrongdoings. And get away with it because people have this really reckless need for an ending. Even if it’s a bad ending. Which is all a trial is: it’s the ending. It’s not justice—it’s just a finish. Only you don’t get to actually see the first parts—Acts One and Two. You only get Act Three—no more than a bad reality show told through witnesses.” The lawyer, in his squeaky office-store chair, with sunshine streaming through opened plantation shutters behind him, had drawn air quotes around the word, witnesses. “Witnesses who often have an ax to grind or feel prejudice against the defendant. So when they swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, they’re being set up to fail. There has yet to be a trial where everyone has told the truth—even people who think they’ve told it. Which means, Miles, that one of the last places on earth you want to find yourself is being the defendant in a criminal trial. Because what you did and the testimony about it are never the same. Never. It’s just what someone has packaged to give people an ending. That closure stuff is bullshit.”

  Now, Miles said to Juan: “As much as you might think it, you never say again, We did a bad thing.”

  37.

  “Have you seen much of Cara this week?” Back from another business trip, George sat with Miles at the dining room table, sharing more of the carry-out Thai food that had become their favorite.

  “She seems fine,” Miles said.

  “How about Ian? Any change there?”

  “The same, I think.”

  “Hopefully that gets moving soon. Maybe the Irish run a better court system.” George was being unusually optimistic, upbeat from a successful week at work.

  Their conversation lapsed into silence, overtaken by the soft clink of stainless forks on inexpensive plates as they finished their food, although Miles imagined they were both thinking about Cara.

  Twenty minutes later, Miles was cleaning up dinner when Cara’s car pulled into her driveway.

  His dad, seated on the living room sofa, said: “Looks like Cara’s home.”

  Miles turned off the water and tried to listen through the closed window whether one car door closed or two. Whether Cara was alone or with “another date,” as his father would think of it.

  Five minutes later, their landline rang.

  George answered with a cheerful, “Hey, we were just talking about you.” Then, even happier, “No, no, not at all. We’d be glad to see you. Come on over.
”

  #

  Seeing Cara, Miles felt a nearly overwhelming urge to touch her—the way it used to be when Amanda came into the restaurant where he worked, and because it had been a place where people knew her and her husband, they’d had to pretend they were strangers.

  “Hello, Miles.” Cara’s greeting was warm, neighborly, but no more. Amanda used to speak to him the same way in public. But maybe Cara had bottled away last night as history not to be repeated. They hadn’t spoken since, or exchanged texts or emails.

  “Cara brought desert,” his father announced. “Your favorite, too,” he said, extending the made-up story he’d trotted out the night Cara first came to their house.

  The three of them ate cheesecake and talked in the living room. George sat at one end of the sofa; Cara sat at the other, wearing a loose grey sweater and stretch pants.

  Miles, in jeans and a long-sleeve t-shirt, took the arm chair that was the worst coordinating piece of the room’s mismatched furniture. He stretched out his legs, barefooted even on a cold night.

  Cara and his father shared work stories. George did not mention Miles’ mother. Cara left out how she was sleeping with strangers for money.