Whiter Than Snow

Lisa Maraventano

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

ISBN-13: 978-1541175938

“It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul,—
Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!—
It is the cause. Yet I’ll not shed her blood;
Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow,
And smooth as monumental alabaster.
Yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men.
Put out the light, and then put out the light;
If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,
I can again thy former light restore,
Should I repent me; but once put out thy light
Thou cunning’st pattern of excelling nature
I know not where is that Promethean heat
That can thy light relume. When I have pluck’d the rose,
I cannot give it vital growth again.”
Othello Act V, Scene II

“Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.”
Psalm 51:7

“Thank God for the rain which has helped wash away the garbage and the trash off the sidewalks.”
Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver

Blue

November 8, 2006

Bianca Winters couldn’t help herself. She kept glancing over at the woman who’d started working in her office last week. The woman was gorgeous, trim and tall, only a couple of years younger than Bianca’s forty. They both worked for the Department of Education enrolling students into New York’s public school system. Shea had transferred from the office on Staten Island to the Manhattan office where Bianca had worked for the last ten years.
Shea looked away from her computer screen and caught Bianca staring at her. Shea smiled while Bianca, fretful and embarrassed, got back to work. Bianca made a phone call about a referral to a school to find out whether the student had shown up. The back of her mind kept trying to figure out what was so interesting to her about Shea. Bianca thought it might be jealousy. Every day, she felt she was wilting like a cut flower, dying in front of her own eyes. She had never admitted how vain she was until aging became a reality. The loss of her beauty was staggering. It wasn’t that she had ever been a phenomenal, Helen of Troy-type beauty. But Bianca had been beautiful in the way that almost every woman once is. As her beauty faded, Bianca felt more and more adrift in a lonely sea. She had always hated the attention of strange men she passed; now it seemed like they rarely glanced at her. It was an odd and sad sensation. Something about Shea was so vital, strong and independent that Bianca couldn’t help envying her.
Shea was heading over to Bianca’s desk. “You want to get lunch today? I need help finding good places to eat.”
Bianca looked up and smiled. Shea was nearly six feet tall with frosted streaks in her short blond hair and ocean-blue eyes. “Sure, sounds good.”
“Noon?”
Bianca nodded, stage-struck, and pretended she was very busy working on the paper in front of her on her desk. The butterflies in her stomach were wreaking havoc. Her palms were sweaty. Get a grip, she told herself. It was crazy to have a physical reaction like this to Shea. That hadn’t happened in God knows how long, Bianca reflected. How long? Since Jason, maybe.
Jason was her husband. They had been married since 1987, nineteen years now. They had started dating in college and been married in June after graduation. Then they had a girl and a boy and lived happily ever after. For the most part. Their daughter Jessica was a freshman at Rhodes in Memphis and their son Andrew was a senior at Stuyvesant High School. He was finishing his college applications but was really hoping to go to Harvard. Jason worked for an investment bank. They had a three-bedroom three-bath apartment on Central Park West and 76th Street. They had moved to New York nearly eleven years ago when Jason had been transferred from the office in California. And Bianca had gotten a job here with the DOE.
Bianca spent the next ninety minutes shuffling papers on her desk and windows on her computer while contemplating where to go to lunch. She decided on Melba’s on 114th Street, eleven blocks south of the office. She was hooked on shrimp and grits. Finally, twelve o’clock rolled around and Shea and Bianca headed out the door to Morningside Avenue in the brisk November air. “How are you liking Manhattan? Big change from Staten Island?” Bianca asked.
“I love it, of course. You shouldn’t even bother with it unless you are at least a little bit in love with the crazy place. I think love covers a multitude of flaws.”
Bianca glanced sideways at Shea and shrugged. “Maybe. I thought it was ‘sins’ but I guess flaws works. Your place working out all right?”
“Not exactly. I realize I was naive about having a roommate. I think I am going to try to find my own place this weekend. Any chance you have a lead?”
“No, but I do know a broker and I could help you look if you want,” Bianca offered, feeling ridiculously ebullient about the prospect.
Shea held open the door of the restaurant so Bianca could enter. “That would be fantastic,” she enthused to the back of Bianca’s dark head. Bianca was barely five foot four and wonderfully curvy. She had brown eyes with thick black eyelashes and a full, sensual, red mouth. She’d worn braces for eighteen depressing months in high school but since then had beautiful, even teeth she kept whitened, giving her a perfect, wide smile. She used her smile often and freely to charm her way which worked very well. Bianca smiled at the hostess now and was seated with Shea at a small, round table by the window. Bianca ordered her favorite and Shea ordered fried chicken and waffles. Watching Shea devour them, Bianca wondered how it was possible for her to stay so in shape if she ate like that. Bianca usually only ate the steamed shrimp and two bites of grits and felt guilty if she snuck a third. Shea wiped her lips with her napkin and drank her seltzer. “I run,” she said.
Bianca looked quizzically at her and Shea clarified. “You were wondering how I could eat all that. I run. I’ve run the marathon four times. I missed it this year but plan to be in it next time. I ran fifteen miles yesterday. So I’m starving!” Shea laughed. “Or at least I was,” she amended.
“I’m so easy to read?” Bianca asked, suddenly alarmed.
“You’re not too hard,” Shea looked in her eyes. “I think I could figure you out.”
“I think I am insulted,” Bianca said, laughing as she stood and put her coat back on. Thanksgiving was in two weeks and the weather was growing colder every day.
“Please don’t be! I mean it as a compliment, I promise.” Shea was digging cash out of her wallet to pay the check. Bianca tried to contribute but Shea refused. “I invited you. My treat.”
The wind had picked up during the lunch hour and cut through their coats as they hurried up the blocks back to the office. Bianca struggled to get the door open and Shea leaned in to help. Out of breath and laughing once they were in the lobby, Shea reached her hand out to move some of Bianca’s long, curly brown hair from her face. “That’s one reason I like my hair short!” Shea joked, running her fingers through her own hair which settled neatly back into place.
“I like your hair,” Bianca answered. “I’ve never had the nerve to cut mine that short.”
“Really? It was easy for me. I always liked the look. But maybe you never should cut your hair. It is so pretty.”
“Thanks,” Bianca said as they stepped into the elevator and headed back to their office on the ninth floor. There were three other people in the elevator with them, one from their office and two from the floor above. Bianca felt a severing; lunch was over. The new connection, intimacy, friendship—whatever you wanted to call it—between them was paused as each separately returned to being herself. It wasn’t like they even needed to say goodbye because they were ten feet apart from each other at their desks. But the wall of professional decorum was up. Feeling strangely melancholy, Bianca entered data from the schools into students’ profiles throughout the afternoon and tried to imagine anything she might have to look forward to that evening. There was nothing going on. Andrew would lock himself in his room and Jason was out of town until Friday. The outlook was bleak. Involuntarily, she looked over to Shea. Shea seemed to immediately feel her eyes on her because she glanced from her monitor toward Bianca. The barest upturn at the corners of her mouth sent encouragement to Bianca, letting her know that she would make it through the day, that everything would be all right. Shea looked back at her screen and continued working. A shaft of sunlight came through the window and warmed Bianca as a sense of ease calmed her heart.

The weekend came and Bianca had talked to Orlando, her broker friend, about finding an apartment for Shea. He had set up some showings for Saturday. They were studios in Morningside Heights, mostly—something affordable. Shea liked the third one they saw. The partially-furnished apartment had an ornate working ceramic fireplace, arched doorways, a view of the Hudson River and a large alcove for the bed. The landlady was old-school, owner of the building and inclined to settle the matter quickly for cash. Shea was thrilled. As a favor, and because it didn’t cost him much, Orlando waived his fee which pleased both Shea and Bianca. They insisted on taking him and his partner Keith to dinner. It was a four-bottle dinner in a Chelsea supper club and everyone was in a celebratory mood. The singer was Keith’s client at his salon and kept joking about hair.
Bianca mentally contrasted this raucous scene to the dull cocktail party she’d been to last night with Jason after he returned to town. Today, he’d gone golfing and that usually meant dinner with the boys so she didn’t think he’d be home until midnight at least. She jolted back to the present moment as Orlando leaned over to give Keith a kiss when one of the singer’s jokes went too far and hurt his pride. Bianca glanced at Shea. Their eyes met. Then Orlando, holding Keith protectively to his side, yelled out a comeback that set the whole room laughing. “Touché, monsieur,” the singer said in his best Maurice Chevalier voice before launching into “Mimi.”
Shea shared a taxi with Bianca uptown after dinner. “I guess I’ll be moving tomorrow. Which is cool. But two moves in two weeks, ugh!”
“I can help if you want,” Bianca offered. “I’m not doing much tomorrow.”
“I already took up half your weekend. I shouldn’t take up the whole thing,” Shea politely objected.
“If you want, I can go by your place now and see how much there is to move.”
Shea tried to keep her voice neutral in response. “Sure.” She re-directed the cab from Central Park West to West 93rd street and hoped fervently her roommate wasn’t home. Shea was currently living in the basement bedroom of a townhouse owned by an eccentric geriatric potter. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, Shea explained to Bianca as she fumbled with the key to the outer door. Bianca huddled up near Shea to stay warm as the temperature dropped below freezing for the first time that year. Shea finally got the door open and led Bianca down the spiral iron staircase into the cold, slightly damp room below. Shea hung their coats on hooks by the door. “I don’t have much,” Shea said, pointing out the obvious in the sparsely furnished room. “I do, however, have a kettle and tea. Or would you rather a nightcap? Don’t know what I have as far as that goes…” Shea looked questioningly at Bianca.
Standing in the middle of the room, Bianca was nervously biting her ring-finger nail and looking wide-eyed at Shea. “Tea is fine.”
Shea turned abruptly and went to fill the kettle. Her heart was pounding, her head was light but there was no mistake. Bianca was flirting. She had been flirting all week. When Bianca had watched Orlando kiss Keith, she had licked her lower lip before looking over at Shea.
The water was hot. Shea poured it over the tea and let it steep. Concentrating on simple, everyday tasks like finding mugs and pouring from the teapot helped her settle her nerves and strengthen her resolve. Bianca was perched on the edge of the worn leather couch that had come with the place. “I think I made it too hot,” Shea said. “Do you want me to let it cool for a while?”
Bianca nodded.
It was very quiet in the room. Only the sound of the never-ending drip from the adjacent bath’s tap punctuated the silent moments as they went by. One cheap floor lamp illuminated the corner of the room where it stood. Shea leaned against the small kitchenette counter and folded her arms across her waist, studying Bianca, trying to decide what next. Making her choice, she stood up straight and spoke. “Come here.”
Bianca stood and walked across the room to stand in front of Shea. She looked up at her with her warm brown eyes and thick lashes. Shea bent her head and kissed Bianca’s full, soft mouth. It was such a soft, gut-melting, gentle and powerful kiss, Bianca’s knees got weak and she reached up to hold onto Shea. Shea folded Bianca into her arms and kept kissing her. Bianca hadn’t been kissed by a woman in many years, but it wasn’t her first time. In college, before she met Jason, Bianca had been in love with a girl. Her name was Amber. Bianca had been crazy in love with Amber. But Amber had not been crazy in love with her, so eventually they broke up and moved on with life. For Bianca, it had only been the one girl the one time in her life. The rest of her life, she had been with guys and for the last twenty years, only with Jason. Shea was different. Shea had lived a double life for a while, knowing she was gay but married to a man on Staten Island who did not. Eventually, recently, Shea had gotten divorced and moved to Manhattan, hoping to meet a woman and become part of a couple where she could be true to herself. Meeting Bianca seemed perfect. Shea found Bianca incredibly sexy, innocent and alluring at once. Shea broke off the kiss to lead Bianca to the couch. She pulled Bianca on top of her and tangled her hand in Bianca’s wild, dark hair. Their lips met again and they fell into that bottomless world of the endless kiss.
Shea turned and moved Bianca beneath her as they stretched out along the sofa. Shea kissed the long, delicate column of her neck and collarbone. Bianca felt liquid, dissolved into a new state of matter that could scarcely be contained by her skin. Shea’s mouth changed to the other collarbone, her hand moving onto Bianca’s breast through her shirt. The extreme arousal Bianca experienced eclipsed any thought of consequence or propriety. She hadn’t felt like this in ten years, at least. Her body craved this tenderness and exquisite handling.
Both heard the outer door opening upstairs and froze. No!, Bianca’s mind protested even while re-inhabiting her consciousness. She had been on a trip to the moon and did not want to come back. Shea gritted her teeth and tried to pull herself together. She was moving. Tomorrow.
“Hello down there?” a warbling voice called from above.
“Hi, Gerta, I’m here,” Shea called back, rolling her eyes at the ceiling and smiling wistfully at Bianca.
“With a gentleman caller?” Gerta inquired as they heard her heavy footsteps descend the staircase, whatever the answer may be.
“No, Gert. A friend from work.”
Gerta Smidt reached the basement gripping the bannister. She then patted her dyed auburn hair into place and rearranged the wrinkles on her face into the facsimile of a smile. Her red lipstick was smeared in multiple directions and her blue eyeshadow sparkled even in the low lighting. “How are you, dear? I’m Gerta.” Gerta was stoned out of her gourd from a night with her bohemian cohorts who had, like her, managed for decades to eke out livings as artists and potheads. In fact, what had drawn Gerta to pottery in the first place had been the ironic and comical link saying it was her trade to be a potter. Seventies humor. Now in her seventies, Gerta found marijuana to be quite as medicinal as she always had, never feeling better than when higher than the clouds.
Bianca stood while Shea offered Gerta the cup of tea, now rather cold, which she took with alacrity. Gerta then chattered about the heart-warming results of the mid-term election and the future of the world in general. Bianca began to make her excuses and gathered up her coat to leave. She felt like crying. And it wasn’t because of what they had done, but what they did not do. Breathing deeply, Bianca headed up the stairs. In another moment, Shea ran after her while Gerta sat with her cup of cold tea, raised eyebrows and a knowing smile. Pausing outside the door, Shea turned Bianca against the wall to shield her from the eyes of passersby. Shea kissed her again. “Can you come tomorrow?”
Bianca looked up with her brown eyes and nodded.
“Good. Good night.” Soft, full lips met once more. Bianca wanted to cling and be kissed again and again. But she pulled herself together, said good night and walked to the corner at Broadway and caught a cab home.
Anthony, the doorman, opened the taxi door for her once she reached home. Carlos, another doorman, opened the door. She walked across the shining marble floor past the gas fireplaces and flower arrangements. Shaun, the concierge, nodded as she walked past his tall desk to the elevator where Marvin, one of the elevator operators, took her to her floor. Turning left out of the elevator, she walked a few feet down the thickly-carpeted hallway to her front door and unlocked it. No one was home, she instantly knew. Although it was nearly midnight, the house was empty. Lights from the buildings across the street glowed outside the enormous windows. To verify she was correct, Bianca knocked on Andrew’s door. But no, he wasn’t there. She tried to remember what he’d said. That’s right, he was out with Lani tonight, a girl he’d been trying to go out with for a month. Bianca wondered when Jason would get home. Checking her phone, she realized he’d texted an hour ago he thought he was too drunk to come home. He was staying at a hotel near the club. Bianca wondered whether she should be concerned. Jason was not home a lot. Was he screwing around?
The thing was, he hadn’t been screwing her much these last ten years. And she was constantly trying. And he was trying. There just wasn’t a lot going on down there for him. He’d even been on pills to help. While he could get it up, it wasn’t the same. Sort of like screwing with a condom. That was one of the reasons they’d decided to get married, actually. Neither one of them liked using condoms so they got engaged instead. Ah, true love.
But Bianca and Jason did love each other. They had been madly in love once. It was only that life seemed to get in the way, whatever that meant. They had wanted kids and they had kids. But once they had kids, they had kids—in their bed, at their morning coffee, all day, every day. And they loved their kids. But sometimes it was hard to find time to be a couple. And then the kids had done this horrible, rotten thing called hitting puberty. They weren’t their kids anymore but these vaguely hostile people with their kids’ names and gangly, gorgeous bodies and bad attitudes. As parents, it was very disconcerting to suddenly live with strangers, especially when the kids had been your best friends and raisons d’etre. C’est la vie.
Through the years, somehow, sex had become not only one more chore to accomplish but a chore they passively avoided since it might be awkward, painful and embarrassing for both of them, like waxing. So she didn’t think Jason was screwing around. He could have been with Bianca whenever he wanted. She thought it must be that he had lost interest in sex. He was always good to her.
Bianca heard the key in the lock and Andrew came in. Bianca was needlessly afraid Andrew would be able to tell that she had done something wrong but telepathy did not run in their family. He had no more idea what she’d been up to tonight than she had about him. They both quickly took their secrets to their bedrooms where they could keep them private. Andrew’s was a simple secret: he’d kissed a girl he liked and hoped to do it again soon.
And, really, Bianca’s was the same.

Bianca tossed and turned through the night and woke up feeling more tired than when she went to bed. She also had a splitting headache and an overwhelming sense of discontent and frustration. It was nearly ten o’clock. She hadn’t set a time to be at Shea’s but rushed to get ready. Hurrying through the enormous marble lobby, Bianca came face-to-face with another woman resident hurrying through the lobby in the opposite direction. Apparently, neither of them intended to get out of the other’s way and ended up in a game of privileged chicken. Bianca happened to know that the other woman was the wife of one of the fading pop stars who lived in the building (there were three). But Bianca was the wife of a managing director at a large investment bank. And she didn’t feel like moving. It was a ridiculous stand off, Bianca knew, and the fifty foot wide lobby was certainly big enough for the both of them but Bianca didn’t care. She wasn’t moving. Behind her Tom Ford sunglasses and in her Michael Kors coat, she wasn’t budging out of the way of this Australian interloper. Finally, the other woman gave a derisive sweep with her hand, flung her hair over her shoulder and went around Bianca. It was a small, petty victory in a thirty-second encounter but it made Bianca feel better. One of the dayshift doormen hailed a taxi for Bianca and she rode in silence to West 93rd Street.
She couldn’t wait to see Shea. But she suddenly decided to make herself wait. She went to Starbuck’s and bought a coffee. She thought over what she wanted from the day. The standoff in the lobby still rankled. She had stood her ground because she was the wife of Jason Winters. Not for herself. Well, partly for herself. Partly because she didn’t feel like being nice. She didn't feel like doing anything but kissing Shea again. It had been more than twenty years since Amber. She was a mother, a bureaucrat, a wife, a card-carrying heterosexual capitalist. She had trapped herself by her own choices in a box, in a cell, in a life that didn't fit her anymore. Was this what a mid-life crisis felt like? Maybe. Maybe it was simply serendipitous circumstances that had brought Shea into her life. How had she felt two weeks ago, before Shea showed up?
Dead.
She had felt dead inside. A vast nothingness had grown up inside her without her realizing it. A line from her favorite teen angst movie echoed inside her as she sipped the coffee. “When you grow up, your heart dies.” That line had come to her a few times over the years and she had thought yes, that’s true, but that’s good. All the passion and zeal and fire of youth was too consuming. Bianca had felt too much, she thought, and had been burned and scarred by that fire many times. It was nice to be a little calmer, more mature, less temperamental. The violence of her emotions when she was young was hard not only for Bianca but for everyone around her. Her great fear when her daughter had been born was that she would be like Bianca. It was a tremendous relief that both Jessica and Andrew were so much more even-tempered than their mother.
Could she come back to life, older but wiser? Time to find out, Bianca decided as she threw the empty coffee cup away and headed outside. She rang the buzzer at Shea’s and was let in. Downstairs, Shea and Gerta were busy packing the few suitcases and boxes Shea had shown up with two weeks ago. Gerta had no hard feelings toward her brief tenant; she’d made two thousand dollars off her and already had another person lined up to take over the room.
Shea looked up from her packing as Bianca entered. The intensity of the look stopped Bianca mid-step and her breath caught. Then Shea smiled and resumed putting her clothes in the suitcase as she said, “Good morning, Bianca. Sleep all right?”
Bianca was still reeling. How long had it been since someone had looked at her the way Shea just had, as if she was the best thing that had ever happened in the world? Bianca’s vanity was quite satisfied. That was all she wanted, apparently. To be desired.
The wanting of the world. “The Lord is my shepherd/I shall not want.” I shall not be in want. In need. Poor. God will provide. The wanting of the world is a rejection of this trust. To want the thing you don’t have and not be content with what you do. The continual lust for more, wanting something else. Want is a Viking word for lack, need, desire. The other. More.
Bianca wanted to be wanted.
“How can I help?” she asked and was given the task of packing the books into boxes. She couldn’t have asked for a better job to get to know Shea. Bianca packed Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Mary Oliver and Voltaire into the box. Biographies of Maria Callas, Andrew Jackson, Louisa May Alcott, Ava Gardner and Benjamin Franklin. Histories of Spain, the Tudors, Ancient Romans and the Indus Valley. Novels by C. J. Cherryh, Robert Heinlein, Isabel Allende and Fannie Flagg. Books on finance and feminism, music theory and magic. In packing four boxes of books, Bianca had a three-dimensional map to the ideas which shaped Shea’s mind and she found it fascinating.
Finally, they were done. By two o’clock, things were unpacked in the new place on Riverside. Bianca had helped Shea make the bed with Shea’s white Italian sheets and down comforter. The landlady, proud of her building and its amenities, had left a fire laid in the grate of the beautiful hearth. As Bianca finished setting the books back up on the furnished shelf, Shea knelt and lit the tinder. The kindling was soon crackling and the smoke started rising in the chimney. “This is very nice,” Shea commented. “Quite cosy.”
She stood behind Bianca and put her arms around her, resting her chin on Bianca’s shoulder. Bianca leaned back into Shea and covered her hands with her own. “Thank you,” Shea said into her ear.
“For what?” Bianca asked, turning.
Shea searched Bianca’s eyes, her face. She reached up and smoothed Bianca’s hair back. “Everything.” The look of desire that came into her eyes before she kissed her etched onto Bianca’s memory. Bianca flooded with longing as Shea enfolded her in her arms and kissed her deeply.
They made their way to the bed, kissing and peeling clothes off each other. Shea kissed Bianca’s collarbone and neck, the tops of her breasts through her exquisite silver and black lace bra. Shea had on a white camisole and underwear but stopped Bianca from taking more off her yet by pinning her hands overhead and devouring her mouth as she crushed her into the mattress. Shea made love to Bianca with all the pent up desires of a decade. Bianca responded with equal intensity, as hungry to be savored as Shea was to taste. Bianca’s body wracked with spasms that catapulted her consciousness to outer space, or so she imagined. Only such extreme physical stimuli was powerful enough to disconnect her mind for the brief, glorious time of non-thought. As the waves subsided, Shea moved and pulled Bianca into her arms to rest against the headboard. She felt her relaxed and content against her. Shea gently stroked Bianca’s long, dark hair, breathing in her perfume. Bianca ran her fingertips lightly over the top of Shea’s hand as it held her.
“I figured you out.”
“Yes, you did,” Bianca laughed, remembering Shea’s prediction from lunch the other day. She turned suddenly and straddled Shea, kissing her and tasting herself. The river rolled on outside the window, the fire crackled in the hearth with Voltaire and company reserving judgment on this best of all possible worlds.

Bianca and Shea were lovers. Bianca hadn’t been anyone’s lover in so long it was like waking up in another person’s life. Bianca was practically giddy with joy on a daily basis. She hardly saw Jason and couldn’t care less. She barely checked in with him. She did not bring Shea to the house or have her around Andrew. She wondered how Thanksgiving would go, but it went beautifully. Bianca loved to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and thought she might have to choose between family and Shea then. But Andrew had wanted to watch it farther down Broadway with Lani and Jason was only going to be around for dinner. So Bianca and Shea had stood at the corner of 77th and Central Park West, holding hands in the tight crowd, watching the balloons and floats go by. Afterward, there was time for a trip back to Shea’s studio before the catered dinner would be on the Winters’ table at four. Jessica had asked to spend Thanksgiving with a friend of hers in Nashville, promising to come home for Christmas break. After dinner, Jason and Andrew made excuses for the evening so Bianca was once more free to go to Shea’s and bask in the firelight with pieces of pumpkin pie and hot apple cider.
Over the weeks, New York festooned itself with lights and wreaths and ornaments. The two women dined in low-lit restaurants garlanded with greenery and golden light. A good thing about having an affair with another woman, Bianca realized, was people were not that suspicious if you ran into someone you knew at a restaurant. Shea was a friend, a co-worker, new in town. That was true. No lying necessary. Work was becoming a problem. Bianca was so distracted and physically aware of Shea every moment she hardly got anything done. Shea laughed when she told her one Tuesday night in bed after making love. “Is that so?” Shea asked, nibbling Bianca’s neck.
“Yes! I’ve got that witch Theresa from the main office sending me nasty grams. I’ve got to get those applications entered by break.”
“You want me to help?” Shea had moved to Bianca’s nipple.
“I want you to…oh, I was going to stay stop being so freaking sexy but that’s ridiculous. I’d rather get fired,” Bianca panted as Shea continued her nibbling down Bianca’s body.
“Mm-hmm,” Shea agreed. “Good idea. Then you can get unemployment and lay around all day. Waiting for me to get home.”
“Here?”
“Mm-hmm. When you move in.” Shea had made it to her goal and the conversation dropped for a time.
Bianca thought about that comment in the following days. What was the future of this relationship? She hadn’t considered that at all before jumping into bed with Shea that lovely Sunday afternoon. And she had been blissfully happy since then in a way she hadn’t in many years. Her kids didn’t need her anymore, that was obvious. Her husband? She had barely seen Jason in the last month. He claimed he was working. And maybe the whole fucking economy would crash if he wasn’t there to hold it up like Atlas himself. Who knew? She had no idea what he did. She knew he had made tens of millions of dollars doing it in the last eighteen years, which was pretty amazing. Bianca didn’t consider herself particularly materialistic. But, then again, she hadn’t wanted for money or for any consumable good for most of her life. Her parents were upper-middle-class Californians living in Marin County. The last time she remembered feeling broke or poor had been her freshman year in college before convincing her parents to give her a bigger spending allowance. She had worked all of these years because she liked her work most of the time. She had wanted to do something with her Master’s degree in Education she’d gotten during the first years of their marriage while she was pregnant with Jessica and Jason was establishing himself. That hadn’t been a particularly easy time. But it had been fun, in a way. There was the challenge of seeing whether or not they would make it: finish the degree, get the career and family started. And they had. They were the kind of people who could. And did. Thus the money rolled in and the years rolled by and every one was better off.
But now, Bianca considered, now what? Was she in love with Shea? Would she want to give up her life on CPW and her security and status as Jason’s wife and become a full-time lesbian? Or was this just some mid-life crisis because she wasn’t getting it from Jason regularly and her sexual peak was passing? Did Bianca think cheating with Shea wasn’t really as bad as having an affair with a man? What would Jason think or do if he found out? Did she love Jason anymore? Surely she wasn’t with him simply for the money; she didn’t care about money, did she?
Bianca really couldn't believe she’d let six weeks pass before she asked herself any of these questions. It was actually a good testament to the power of denial. She wished she’d let a few more weeks slide by. As it was, Christmas was around the corner and that meant more time with family. Usually, Bianca cherished the precious days preparing. Shopping for the perfect gifts, trimming the tree, bringing in the food and drink to feast upon were rituals that meant love, right? Except, she wasn’t sure it did mean that anymore. All the years she had done those things, she had meant it. Every hour she’d spent orchestrating perfect Christmases had been purely motivated by the love she had for Jason, Jessica and Andrew. And she still loved them. But she had let them go this past year, also as an act of love. There is a time for everything and all things must pass. Was that what had happened? It was never meant to last forever?
The kids growing up was obviously natural. Painful, but natural. If Bianca could turn back the clock twelve or fifteen years, she gladly would. But that had not been the power given to her here on earth. The only power she had was to accept the inevitable and re-form her expectations to match the present moment.
Her cell phone rang. “Hello?” Bianca answered the call as she walked to the office after lunch. Shea was beside her. There were two more days before Christmas break.
It was Jessica. “Mom, guess what?”
“What, honey?”
Jessica sounded elated. “I was invited to Rome!”
“Rome?”
“Yes! My friend Francesca is studying here this year and she wants me to go home with her to Rome for Christmas!”
“Isn’t this short notice?”
“Yes, I know, but Mom, please!” Jessica sounded so happy that Bianca knew there was only one answer to give.
“Will you at least come through New York on your way?”
“I’ll try, Mom, but there is a nonstop from Chicago I was thinking of taking. Francesca already has her ticket.”
“Well, how about New Year’s?” Bianca really didn't know why she was pleading with her. It was actually much more convenient this way; it was simply habit, and expected by both of them.
“I promise to come to New York before break is over. But you know how much I want to study abroad and haven’t yet. This is my chance to spend the holidays with a lovely family. They live in a villa with olive trees and a vineyard less than an hour from the city. And you know how much I love Italy!”
“I know, honey. You always have. Remember the first time we went to Rome?”
“Not perfectly because I was only six. But I remember falling in love. I’ve been in love with it ever since.”
“So this is what you want for Christmas?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Good. Because I haven’t found the perfect thing for you yet.”
“Thank you so much! I miss you!”
“I miss you, too, honey,” Bianca told her daughter. But they both knew the truth: the missing was perennial now, of a mother/daughter time that was in the past. “Have fun! And call me!”
“I will, Mom, I promise.”
Bianca ended the call and turned to Shea, looking like she would cry. Shea wanted badly to hold her in her arms but couldn’t here on the street three blocks from work. “Jessica’s not coming?” Shea asked.
Bianca shook her head and Shea did hug her briefly. “I’m sorry.”
Bianca wiped a tear away and shook her head again. “It’s fine. Better, really. Now we can spend more time together because I am sure Andrew won’t care. He will probably sleep most of the days like he usually does when school is out.”
Shea took Bianca’s arm and they finished their walk to the office. They decorated for the office party the next day and went back to Shea’s studio for a couple of hours once work was over.
Sitting on the gray sofa with cups of tea and Segovia on the radio, Shea asked Bianca if she’d thought yet about talking to Jason. She knew it might not be time to ask, with Christmas next week. She was simply curious to know what was going on in Bianca’s mind about it.
Bianca took a long sip of her tea and thought about her answer. “I want to tell him. I think. What am I telling him?”
“You’re in love?” Shea asked hopefully. “I am.”
“You are?” Bianca whispered.
Shea nodded, looking more vulnerable than Bianca had ever seen her before. She set her teacup down and climbed into Shea’s lap. “Good. I do love you, Shea. Which I think you’ve known from the first day we met.”
Shea gently pushed Bianca off her and knelt by the small Christmas tree they’d put up last week. “Here. I can’t wait anymore.” Shea offered a small package to Bianca.
Wordlessly, Bianca took it and unwrapped the gold paper. In the jewelry box was a white gold necklace with a small, plain circle pendant. “It’s beautiful,” Bianca murmured. Shea helped her put it on. “Thank you.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t wait. I needed to give you something. For everything you give me.”
Bianca thought Shea was being silly but she was never silly so she didn’t say anything. Instead, Bianca accepted the gift with grace and gratitude that this was her life now. The future and past did not exist.

Christmas morning, Jason, Bianca and Andrew opened presents around the Christmas tree at nine o’clock with the sun streaming in through the windows and Andy Williams on the CD player. An assortment of fresh pastries had been delivered by the bakery and strong, hot coffee was ready in the carafe. Most of the gifts were clothes: a new sweater, scarf, tie, shirt. They had sworn to not give socks years ago. As usual, Jason bought Bianca a new kitchen appliance she would use maybe twice. This time it was something to make soda water. Bianca gave Jason a Roomba. Then came the expensive presents, usually from a jeweler. Bianca gave Jason a new watch and Jason had bought Bianca some earrings. Andrew was given a PlayStation 3 and some new games.
It was a very pleasant morning. They were all satisfied with their loot. After breakfast, Andrew went off to his room to set up his game system and Jason worked on charging the Roomba and fiddling around with the SodaStream. Bianca wore her new earrings, scarf and sweater and sipped her coffee. Jason was still a good-looking man. Hard to believe they had met twenty-one years ago this month. At a New Year’s Eve Party, 1985. They were both juniors in college then. God, that seemed like a lifetime ago. Bianca could remember herself in that exact moment before she met him. She could feel herself inside her skin as if time had just folded and she was back where she started. And then there he was: golden.
She’d always thought of him that way, her golden boy. His family had spent Christmas in Hawaii so he really was tan from the trip. His light brown hair had golden highlights from the tropical sunshine. He was six feet tall, trim and gorgeous. They were at a party in Tiburon. The parents were out of town and a couple hundred college kids had taken over the place. Everyone was drunk, of course. Especially Jason who’d just barfed in the azaleas while Bianca disdainfully observed him from the porch wall she was perched on.
He’d looked up at her sheepishly, rubbed the spit off his bottom lip and come over to talk to her. “Hey.”
“Are you kidding?”
“What?”
“You puke in the bushes and then try to pick me up?”  “I just said hey. How is that trying to pick you up?”
“So you’re not trying to pick me up?”
“Well, not if you’re going to reject me.”
“That is the most bullshit pussy answer I ever heard.”
“That’s creative swearing. I like it.”
“Oh, I haven’t even gotten fucking started yet.”
“Wanna beer?”
Bianca rolled her eyes. But then she hopped off her ledge and followed him to the keg. They had kissed at midnight. And screwed about two in the morning.
“You ever think about when we met?” Bianca said now as Jason handed her a glass of seltzer water he was very proud of.
“Uh, sure.” Jason sat down next to her at the dining table with his own fizzy glass. His hair was a little thinner and still light brown. He hadn’t been tan in a long time. His eyes were the same, a myopic golden brown mixed with forest green.
“You call your folks?”
“No. It’s only like seven in the morning there, remember?”
“Oh. Yeah. I forgot. You ever miss California?” she asked.
“God, no. Do you?”
“No. Not really. It was fun, though.”
“What? All the traffic?”
“I don’t know. Just being kids, I guess.”
“I guess.”
“Keg parties when rap was new.”
“You like your earrings?” This was Jason’s way of changing the subject.
“Yes, they’re lovely. Thanks again.”
“You’re welcome. Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas. You know what we should do? This bubbly water is reminding me of it.”
“What?”
“Let’s open the champagne early and drink it all day.”
“Sure, if you want.”  “I miss Jessica. She’s probably drinking prosecco by now.”
“Do you want to call her?”
“Yeah, in a minute. I feel like I haven’t talked to you much lately. It’s nice to catch up.”
Jason nodded and said nothing.
“Everything all right?” Bianca asked.
Jason really didn’t want to talk right now, Christmas morning. It would probably be one of the most asshole-things he would ever do if he told her now, and through the years he had done many, many asshole things, things she had no idea about. He remembered vividly the girl she’d been as well as she did. Sitting up there on her perch, looking down her pert nose at his weak, vomiting self and giving him a chance any way. He had always loved her for that.
He got up from the table and went to the fridge. He pulled the Baccarat glasses they’d gotten for their wedding from the cabinet and popped the cork off the Tattinger. One more day together wouldn’t hurt anything. And Tallie had given him until New Year’s Eve to break the news.

Tallie

Tallie was born on January 1, 1993 at the final stroke of midnight. She was the first baby of the year at Caddo Parish Hospital and earned her mother a five hundred dollar prize. That was the best thing she’d ever done, according to her momma. Ever since then, her daughter disappointed her.
Carrie, the mother, was no prize herself. She was an alcoholic manic-depressive who self-medicated and slept around. However, she had an amazing body put together in perfect proportions which men found irresistible. She hung out at a bar off I-20 called the Dip Stick and hooked up with the truckers who came in. Tallie’s father was one of these. Although Carrie didn’t know it, the father was actually a genius who had dropped out of MIT to drive trucks for a while. He had wanted to be on the open road. After a year of driving trucks, he’d developed some logistics software and sold it to Walmart where it revolutionized the way they managed their fleet.
But neither Carrie nor her daughter knew anything about that. To the world and her mother, the little girl with the dirty blonde pigtails was just one more unwanted poor kid in north Louisiana. Tallie knew that, too. But the thing was she existed. And she had to find some meaning and purpose to it.
The little girl’s name was not Tallie in these days. Her name was Sarah Brown. The best thing she had found in life so far was books. If she sat in a corner with a book, no one bothered her. Her mother didn’t scream at her, her brothers and sisters didn’t bother her, her teachers approved. Basically, it was a foolproof escape from the world she lived in. She didn't have many books when she was little. But then Sarah discovered she could buy bags of books at yard sales for a dollar, sometimes a quarter. Her mother went to yard sales every weekend. All week long, Sarah would keep her eyes peeled for dropped change and usually she had enough by the weekend to buy a bag of books.
The types of books found in these paper grocery bags in north Louisiana was mind-boggling. They were always dog-eared mass paperbacks. But there were romances and westerns by the dozens, true crime and mysteries, self-help and erotica, V. C. Andrews and Jackie Collins. Once she bought a bag of fifty celebrity biographies. She read about everyone from Princess Diana to Mae West, Katharine Hepburn to George Sand. The most literary bag Sarah ever bought was from a high school English teacher who was moving to New Orleans. The bag held Steinbeck and Faulkner, Tender is the Night and Truman Capote, Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams. By the summer she was twelve, Sarah had read Gone with the Wind, Helter Skelter, The Godfather, Stroker Ace, Catch Me if You Can, Lace, Valley of the Dolls, Hollywood Wives, War and Peace, East of Eden, The Grapes of Wrath, Lolita, As I Lay Dying, Absolom, Absolom!, A Separate Peace, The Catcher in the Rye, Penthouse Letters, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Jungle, The Great Gatsby, hundreds of Harlequin romances, Love’s Tender Fury, Native Son and Crime and Punishment. She’d read sci-fi series and westerns and mysteries, but Sarah preferred books with sex and romance in them. By that summer, Sarah’s body had developed. She was five foot three, one hundred and two pounds with 32 D breasts and a perfectly heart-shaped ass. She had piercing green eyes, clear skin and good teeth. She stole hair dye from the drug store on a regular basis and bleached her hair as platinum as Jean Harlow’s.
She had started listening to music the past year. Music had always been on her mother’s radio, of course, usually country music or maybe pop. But Sarah had bought a used Walkman and cassettes people were divesting themselves of at their yard sales. Sarah listened to the Beatles and Doors and Rolling Stones. The Kinks, the Animals, the Turtles, the Clash. Elvis, Johnny Cash, Nanci Griffith, Roy Orbison, the Bee Gees. She listened to Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan, Madonna and Bruce Springsteen. Sarah went to yard sales in the black neighborhood and came home with blues cassettes, Etta James, Miles Davis and books by Maya Angelou, Toni Morison and Walter Mosley.
This was Sarah’s education. She went to public school and made straight A’s. She had skipped a grade and was now the youngest in her class. She’d finished seventh grade the summer of 2005.
And that was the summer she became Tallie.
June in north Louisiana was hot as asphalt. Sarah liked to take a book and head to a shady spot by the river and hope for a breeze. It was better than being cooped up in the living room with the swamp cooler, Spongebob on the TV and her brothers and sisters arguing all day long.
She had an old Mexican blanket she’d bought at a yard sale, blue, yellow, red and green stripes with white fringe at the end. She had her Walkman, extra batteries and a strange book she wasn’t sure she liked yet: The Fountainhead. Listening to The Cure and reading the first hundred pages, instinctively slapping at ticks and flies that crawled on her, Sarah was feeling pretty good about life for the moment. The end was in sight. She wasn’t going to have to live with her mother the bitch much longer. She had never liked her siblings. She had an older brother and an older sister and a younger brother and a younger sister. They were all brats, dumb as rocks, mean and petty. The only other living creature Sarah had much affection for besides herself was her neighbor’s filthy little white dog that Sarah occasionally talked to through the fence. Sarah wasn’t going to stick around Louisiana much longer. She didn’t know where she was going or what she was going to do, but she could feel change coming.
Fallen twigs crackled underfoot. Sarah sat up and looked around. A boy came into view. “Oh, hey,” he said. “Didn’t know anyone was here.”  “It’s okay,” Sarah said. The boy was older than she was and very cute.
He happened to think she was quite pretty. “What’re you doing?”
“Just reading a book. Staying out of the house.”
“Really? Me too. I don’t like school but summer can be boring.”
“I just don’t like my brothers and sisters.”
“I hear that. I only have one older brother but he’s an asshole.” The boy smiled at her. “Luckily, he got a job at the grocery store and starts next week. Then I’ll get the house to myself.”
“That will be good,” Sarah smiled up at him. “Want to sit down?” She wiggled to make room for him.
The boy sat next to her. His name was Jed and he was going to be a sophomore, he told her. He had sandy brown hair that flopped over his forehead and brown eyes. Before long, they were kissing. Sarah had wanted to be kissed for a long time now. She had wanted to do more than that. So when Jed laid on top of her, she opened her legs and let him press against her.
He was a very good kisser, she thought. It wasn’t too wet or sloppy or hard. There was a gentle rhythm in his kisses that coaxed warmth all through her veins. She hoped she was doing it right. She hoped she would do everything right.
Jed started pulling at the hem of her T-shirt, wanting to take it off. She remembered the grimy secondhand bra she was wearing and froze. “Just a minute,” she whispered. “Close your eyes.” She reached up her back and undid the clasp. She slid one shoulder strap out of the sleeve and then the other and stashed the bra under the blanket. “Okay, you can open them now.”
Bemused, Jed smiled and then pulled off her shirt to see her perfect bare breasts with rosy nipples. “Oh, my God. You’re so beautiful,” he murmured before gently touching her. She shivered. She pulled his shirt off to reveal his pale, thin chest—not quite feeling the same reaction of awe that he had.
His hand moved along her thigh up inside her shorts, feeling for her sex. Now was the time to decide, she realized. Was he the one? Was this the time?
She’d hoped so from the moment she heard the leaves crackle behind her.
She moaned and opened her legs. His fingers pressed awkwardly toward her. “Can I take your shorts off?” He whispered in her ear then kissed her neck. She pulled them off herself. He looked at her reverently for a moment and then started unbuckling his pants. His penis was stiff and rather dark mauve, nestled in nearly black hair. She examined it thoroughly before reaching tentatively to touch it. Suddenly, white liquid spurted out of it.
“Oh, my God, I am sorry,” Jed said, embarrassed. “Just wait a minute. It’ll be okay.” Sarah didn’t know what he was talking about but she watched as his dick became flaccid. Then she really didn’t know what was happening because suddenly his head was between her legs and he was kissing the inside of her sex. “Holy shit,” she swore, clutching at his hair. She’d read about this but that was nothing compared to actually feeling it. He turned and was tapping his dick against her lips. She opened her mouth and tasted the salty, soft thing, careful not to scrape her teeth against it. In a minute, it was hard again and choking her. She gagged and writhed her head, spitting it out. He turned again and shoved it inside her. She screamed but it was cut off by his tongue thrust in her mouth. She loved the feel of both tongue and penis inside her, opened wide her legs and wrapped them around his butt as he fucked her. She had wanted this for so long it seemed. And it was better, and better, and better than she’d imagined. Finally, it was so good she had to scream out against his mouth as ripples of tremendous pleasure cascaded through her. Her nails clawed his bony back and he arched and thrust a huge, powerful thrust in her and came throbbing inside her.
Breathing raggedly, his head drooped against her shoulder as she continued squeezing his deflating penis with the muscles inside her. “What are you doing?” he asked. “You want more already?”
She smiled and nodded, tongue licking her lower lip. “Can you yet?”
“Pretty soon,” he promised and put his mouth to her pink nipple. His hand fastened to the other breast. Sarah realized he liked touching her boobs more than she liked it but she was content as she felt him grow hard again inside her. He began moving slowly within her. They fooled around all afternoon and promised to meet the next day.
The week after that, when his brother started working, Jed had the two-bedroom shotgun house on Oak Street to himself for a few hours every weekday. Sarah would show up there about nine in the morning and leave around three, fucked half a dozen times. She wondered about birth control. She had her period and enough knowledge to realize she could get pregnant as young as she was. She went to the free clinic and got a shot of Depo-Provera, no questions asked. Actually, the nurse who did it knew whose daughter she was and figured she better not ask any questions but simply get the girl protected. That Sarah was screwing her son did not cross her mind.
Several weeks passed in this fashion. Sarah finished reading The Fountainhead and then read Jed’s favorite books, The Crystal Cave series about Merlin and King Arthur. Sarah enjoyed them, reading between fucks. Jed was reading her recommendation Dune.
One day when Sarah came over, Jed’s brother answered the door. “What do you want?” he demanded. He was already eighteen but was just about to start senior year, held back before starting kindergarten years ago.
“Uh, I’m selling newspaper subscriptions. Wanna buy the Times-Picayune?” Sarah answered quickly.
“I know who you are. Come in.”
“Is Jed here?”
“Not yet. It’s okay. He told me about you. I’m Scott.”
“Yeah, he told me about you too. I’ll just come back later.” Sarah tried to back down the steps.
Scott played left tackle on the state semi-finalists high school football team. He grabbed Sarah’s arm and hauled her in the house. She was too startled to scream or run. And her interest was piqued about what might happen.
“So what did Jed tell you about me?” Scott asked, standing between her and the door. The living room was very dim after the bright July sunshine outdoors.
“He said you’re an asshole,” Sarah said matter-of-factly.
“You know what he said about you?” Scott said softly.
Sarah shook her head.
“He said you were a crazy-good piece of ass.”
“He wouldn’t say that.”
“Why? Aren’t you?”
Flustered, Sarah tried to think what to say. “It’s not that. I just don’t think he’d tell you such things.”
“Well, what you don’t know could fill a book. I want to teach you a little more than my brother has.”
“Where is Jed?” Sarah reached for the doorknob. Scott put a hand on the door.
“Don’t tell me you’re not a little curious? I know I’m better looking than that idiot brother of mine. And I’ve got a bigger dick.”
“You are a bigger dick, that’s for sure,” Sarah retorted.
“Good one. Here, see for yourself.” Scott opened his pants up and pulled out indeed a very large dick. Sarah licked her lip in spite of herself. “I told you so,” Scott said. “Now let’s go.”
“I’m not going to fuck you,” Sarah said.
“Sure you are.” He pulled his wallet out. “Jed said it was all right. It was the price he had to pay so I don’t tell Mom what he’s been up to. Now what’s your price? I get paid pretty good at the grocery store. This enough?” He held out fifty dollars.
Sarah wondered if that were true, that Jed had told his brother he could fuck her. And Scott did have a big dick. And fifty dollars would come in handy. And she was already here. She could feel herself getting wet. She reached for the money. “All right. Let’s go.”
Sarah almost hated herself afterward. But it had been fantastic. Scott was rough and powerful and somewhat cruel. But she came like a hurricane. And had fifty bucks in her back pocket. She decided not to hate herself, only him.
She hated Jed too and confronted him about what happened. “You don’t get to decide who fucks me, asshole!”
“I’m sorry, Sarah. He was going to tell Mom.”
“So what! What would she have done?”
“I don’t know. But—“ he stopped.
“But what?” Sarah demanded.
“I’d be embarrassed.”
Sarah’s eyes narrowed. “Why? Because she caught you with a girl? Or she caught you with me?”
Jed shrugged. “Both, maybe.”
“Because I’m trash.”
“Sarah, I don’t think you’re trash. I like you a lot. Maybe even love you—“
“That’s why you let your brother fuck me.”
“—but you know, the town, your mom—“
“I get it.” Sarah was furious and mortified. But she knew, however unfortunate it was, Jed was right. And if she stayed here, she’d end up exactly like her mom. As far as she knew, she could be starting off like her. It’s not like she ever sat and talked to her mom about how she ended up the truck stop slut.
School was supposed to start in a few weeks. But Sarah didn’t want to go. She knew the gossip would be all over school. Scott wasn’t the kind to keep his mouth shut. Sarah had to think. Where did she want to go? What did she want to do?
What did she like most? Sitting in white cotton shorts and big white sunglasses on a bench outside the drug store one hot afternoon, she drank a cold coca-cola in a green glass bottle that they sold out of their old-fashioned icebox. The clerk who worked there, the young man who looked the other way when she came in to steal her hair dye, had let her have the soda for free even though she’d offered to pay.
What did she like most? Her cheeks flushed when she thought of that conversation with Scotty, when he’d pulled his dick and wallet out. She’d liked that. Jesus, she was a born whore. Well, so be it. Jesus had hung out with whores and tax collectors. Maybe he wouldn't hate her in the long run.
But she had to get out of this place if it was the last thing she ever did, like the Animals’ song said.
Where to?
Where to?
Sounded like a cabbie. Maybe she should go there. To New York. Like Holly Golightly and a million girls before. But she wouldn’t end up on the street. She would find a way to Make It.
Money. She would need money, and good luck. Well, you can make the one and pray for the other, Sarah told herself. Meanwhile, Scott was waiting for her. He got off work at two-thirty and wanted to meet her behind the store before his football practice. She didn’t make him pay her every time. But maybe she would start.
She brought the bottle back into the drug store; they liked to recycle them. She flirted a little with the clerk. He was an ugly young man with a huge Adam’s apple and acne scarring his face. But he might come in useful again some day. Then she walked out the back door and down two blocks to the back of the grocery store. It was adjacent to a rather run down park with a basketball court, gazebo and a few picnic tables. Sarah waited for Scott at the table nearest the store.
“Hey,” Scott said as he came quickly toward her. He was taking off his name badge and running his fingers through his hair. “I only got a few minutes. Coach wants us there right at three. We don’t have time to go home. Let’s do it in the bathroom.”
“Scotty, come on that’s gross.”
“This old lady gave me a twenty dollar tip today. It’s yours if you come with me. Come on, I’m super horny.” He dragged on Sarah’s arm and led her over to the park restroom. There was only one stall per side but there was a foot of open space at the top. The lady who took her kid into the other bathroom to pee was furious they could hear two people having sex next door and called the cops.
When Scott and Sarah emerged a few minutes later, Officer Taylor was standing there with his arms crossed. His son was the leading wide receiver on Scott’s football team. “What you doing, Scotty?” the police officer asked.
“Nothing. She had something in her eye. I was getting it out for her.”
“It’s darker in there than out here.” The officer turned his attention to Sarah. “Miss? You up to anything in there?”
“No, sir. I had an eyelash in my eye, that’s all.”
“You sure? Scott, you’re eighteen, aren’t you? Wanna go to jail, son?”
“No, sir!” Scott replied.
“You’re gonna end up there if you mess around with—what?—a thirteen year old girl!” Officer Taylor was getting loud.
“We weren’t, I swear!” Scott denied.
Sarah was shaking her head. “We didn’t do anything like that,” she said in her best innocent-girl voice with green eyes wide. But she noticed the fear in Scott and in the officer as well. No one wanted to see him go down, get caught, his life ruined, not Scott, not the authority. She had the power here—and she was only twelve, not thirteen. “I gotta get going now, Officer. Is that all right?” She felt something starting to run down her leg.
“Momma’s waiting, huh, honey?” Officer Taylor said derisively.
Sarah’s mouth twitched. That pissed her off. Fuck him. She smiled sweetly and licked her bottom lip. “No, I just have another appointment.” She drawled the last word and then took off down the street.
Shit, she berated herself. I forgot to get my twenty dollars.
Sarah went back to her spot under the tree by the river. Only six weeks ago this was where she’d lost her virginity. But she felt like she had never been truly innocent. She hadn’t known what dick tasted like or how to get a guy to come by squeezing him inside her. But she’d never thought she was going to live in a fairy tale, happily ever after. That was not who she was, not her destiny.
She needed a new start, a new name, a new home. And then she would fulfill her destiny. She wanted to be like Madonna, she wanted to conquer the world. She was going to use her tits and ass and wits to do it like so many had before.
Who did she admire?
She thought about the different movie stars she’d read about, the characters from books. How about Tallulah for Tallulah Bankhead? Now there was a woman. Mae. For Mae West. Lula Mae was Holly’s original name. Tallulah Mae…Parker. For Dorothy Parker and because the richest family in this shitty town was named Parker. Why not?
Now she’d need a nickname. Tallie. Tally, meant to add up, keep score. Yep. That would be perfect.

Tallie spent the next three weeks scraping up every dollar she could. She took on a couple of other guys, the drug store clerk and a rich-boy teammate of Scott’s. Although he was a rich-boy in town, he was a complete dork and couldn’t get laid any other way. She tapped him for quite a bit. She also screwed the cop’s kid for free as a small act of revenge.
She plotted her escape. She read two fucked-up books to stay motivated: The Stranger and Death in Venice. She carried around her copy of East of Eden and memorized the parts about Cathy. She watched Taxi Driver and Midnight Cowboy for lessons on what not to do. She watched Bonnie and Clyde and Point Break. By August 5th, she had more than seven hundred dollars put together. She would commit her heists tonight and then catch the bus from Shreveport at ten pm.
Her heists were simple but brilliant, she felt. First, the clerk at the drug store liked to do it behind the counter after closing time and then always went to the bathroom. While he was in there, she planned to empty the cash register. He never took the deposit for the weekend until Saturday noon when the store closed. By then, she would be long gone. Secondly, her mother had cashed her government check yesterday, bought food and school supplies, paid the electricity and then stored the rest in her top drawer. Tallie was taking that. Lastly, the movie theater would have tons of cash tonight by nine-thirty pm. Tallie planned to rob the box office. Then she was stealing her mother’s car and driving to Shreveport. Her mother wouldn’t even notice until tomorrow because she would be at the bar and probably hook up with a trucker and wouldn’t need her car until morning. Tallie already had her bus ticket to Kansas City. Then she was taking the train.
Every thing went off perfectly. At nine-thirty Tallie waited last in line at the movies, standing behind a tall man and his date. As he turned to enter, Tallie pulled down the ski mask she wore and pointed a gun at the terrified teenager. The girl handed over all the money in the drawer before collapsing as Tallie walked calmly away with the money stuffed in her handbag. She put her mom’s gun back in the glove box and drove to Shreveport. She boarded the bus with the suitcase she’d stored in her mom’s trunk earlier this evening and waited. Once they were on the road and nothing had happened, Tallie made her way down the aisle and went to the lavatory. There she opened her purse and pulled out all the money she’d taken today and counted. Nine hundred from Mom. Eleven hundred twenty from the theater. Six forty-five from the drug store. She added that to her seven eighteen she had left. Three thousand, three hundred and eighty three. That was her stake. She left the bathroom and resumed her seat. Three more hours to KC. The train to New York left at eight. She thought about the future. Not the next few years. But the end game. She wasn’t going to New York to be a baby hooker and end up dead in a ditch. She was coming to play the game. And win.

Jason Winters had started watching porn almost on accident. Sure, he’d seen Playboy and Penthouse growing up. He’d had a few girlfriends. But he was a one-woman faithful man since he’d met Bianca.
After the kids, sex had been all right although less spontaneous and frequent. But he still loved Bianca. She was very sexy without knowing it. The way her body moved when she walked and the sound of her voice when she first came in the door was once enough to get him hard.
But then something happened.
With his job, he went back and forth to San Francisco quite often. He’d been out of town again. He and Bianca had talked on the phone and she had said something about wanting him to get home in a tone of voice that made him know what she was missing. He had gotten really hard at that. After saying goodbye to her, he turned on the television, hoping some baseball scores would take his mind off Bianca. The TV was tuned to an adult channel. On the screen before him were boobs bobbing up and down and an open mouth with long blond hair hanging in the woman’s face as a man was doing her from behind. Jason didn’t turn it off right away. He watched.
No one was in the room with him. He hadn’t tuned into the channel himself. He was a grown man. What difference did it make?
He watched for a while. He did some things to himself to relieve the pressure.
He watched a little more.
The next day he went about his job and put the images out of his mind. But when he walked into the hotel room that night, he turned the television on again. And never changed the channel.
And that was it.
He liked porn.
When he got home from that trip, he made love ferociously to his wife. The images from the movies he’d watched played through his head as he banged into her feeling like a stud, like one of the guys with the horse dicks in the movies. Bianca moaned and screamed and cried out and came like crazy.
“What’s gotten into you?” she asked afterward, blissfully content.
“I knew you missed me. I missed you too,” he told her.
“Mm. Well, you’ll have to go away and come back like that again,” she teased.
“You liked that?”
“Yeah,” she sighed, spooning her rear into him and drifting off to sleep.
Jason laid there with his arm around her. Once she was sleeping, he got up and went to his computer. He clicked around. There it was. Take the safe search off and it was everywhere. All kinds of stuff.
That had been the last night of somewhat normal sex between them. Ten years ago. Because as Jason sat there watching the laptop screen, his hand reached down and touched himself. This made him so hard he couldn’t resist. The addictive images created a powerful arousal only satisfied by self-gratification as he watched more of the same in a corrosive, endless loop.

If anyone asked her, Tallie was going to tell them she was traveling to see her dad. Kids traveled alone all the time to see their parents. But no one asked. She knew she would have a problem finding lodgings once she got to New York. It wasn’t like she could simply walk into a hotel and register at her age. One reason she had bought her train ticket was because the train arrived at eight in the morning on Sunday. That gave her about twelve hours before dark to find a place to stay. She didn’t want to end up in a burned out warehouse with a bunch of runaways. So she knew the clock was literally ticking when she arrived.
The long hours of the trip were perfect for her to consolidate in her mind the lessons she’d learned this summer. She never wrote things down because she didn’t want to leave any record of her thoughts. But after reading a book, she often sat and processed her thoughts about it. She liked to come up with some mnemonic device to bring the lessons back to mind like ancient bards must have used to remember their stories.
Sex. Well, she had learned a lot about that. But there was more. She’d learned from Jed about the fear of embarrassment. She’d learned from Scott—so much! But one thing was that the authorities didn’t want to see a boy like him take a fall. Her age gave her power because anything anyone did with her was illegal. She was illegal. That was kind of funny. Also, trash. Jed hadn’t wanted his mother (a lady) to know he was boning trash. She’d learned from the rich kid that he would happily pay for her attention; the same was true for the clerk. She was very beautiful and well out of their league if she’d been a nice girl, or even trash. They got her because they paid. Scotty had also taught her men like to do business and don’t mind treating sex with her as such. He’d also taught her things about herself she might have to hide. She would do things with him for free because she liked him. And that wasn’t going to get her anywhere.
So her goal was to find a man. A rich man. She would become his illegal habit, like a drug, and then use his fear of embarrassment. He would gladly pay for her attention if she didn’t expose him for what he was. Then she wouldn’t have to be a full-on whore. Just a one-man whore, a kept woman, she supposed. But she wanted more than that. She wanted the money. The real money only he had access to.
Tallie arrived in New York City on Sunday morning, August 6, 2005. She was twelve years old, beautiful, experienced, sexually precocious and determined to do what she had to do to get what she wanted from life. She had visualized the whole thing as she traveled to the city. Her ten-year goals were clear in her mind. How to get from here to there would be partially determined by her very important next move.
She needed a madam.
The first thing Tallie decided to spend money on was a decent bra. She went to Sak’s Fifth Avenue. On the top floor, the lingerie section fairly glittered with beautiful, delicate lace garments and silk nightgowns and stockings. Tallie felt transported to a different world. This was the gateway to the world she wanted to live in.
She was happy to find a sale rack from which she bought five bras and panties for two hundred dollars. While she was shopping, she noticed a beautiful young woman. She looked to be in her early twenties and was dressed all in pale pink, some exotic couture fabric Tallie couldn’t name. Organza? What was organza? She’d heard of that in one of her novels. Anyway, the woman looked very rich and well-maintained.
Tallie had left her suitcase which only contained clothes and books in a locker at the train station. She was holding her Sak’s bag. She also held her large purse with a change of clothes, all her money, her old Walkman, a few of her favorite cassettes and a couple of books in it. Her purse was tacky and ugly. She would have to buy a new one. Her dress was all right, only because she could wear a sack and look good in it. Today she wore a new ten-dollar Old Navy white sundress that made her look fresh and clean. She had washed her hair in the sink of the train station and it had dried in soft, pale platinum waves. Her clear young skin didn’t need any makeup but Tallie had put on pink lipgloss and a little mascara. She had perfectly arched eyebrows, high cheekbones and a short, straight nose. She had on tan sandals and her toenails looked good. She’d had the foresight to paint them Friday before she left. Her fingernails were bare but clean and shaped nicely. She wore no jewelry and had doused herself with a sample of Viktor & Rolf Flowerbomb.
Standing next to the beautiful woman, covering her ugly purse with the Sak’s bag, Tallie pretended to look at the bras next to the ones the lady was perusing.
“That’s pretty,” Tallie said as the woman pulled a hanger from the rack.
“You think?” The bra was pale blue and cream lace. The woman held it eye level and looked at it.
“I love it,” Tallie enthused.
The woman lowered the bra and looked at Tallie. She turned her head to the side and considered her. “Where are you from?” The woman’s own accent definitely wasn’t New York.
“Louisiana.”
“I thought so. I’m from Lafayette originally. But don’t tell anyone. I always say I’m from New Orleans if anyone asks. More exotic.”
Tallie smiled and took a chance. “How long have you lived here?”
“Oh, four years I guess. How about you?”
“I got here today.”
“My goodness! Welcome to New York,” the other lady smiled. “Are you visiting?”
“No, I moved here.”
The woman paused then and looked Tallie over thoroughly. She noticed the yard sale handbag and cheap sandals. Easy fixes. Otherwise, the girl was very lovely. “On your own?”
Tallie nodded. The test was coming.
“Are you an actress?” The woman asked as she put the bra back on the rack.
“No. Not exactly.” Tallie tested the other woman as well.
The other woman didn’t shy away. “You want to meet a friend of mine? She might have a place for you to stay if you are looking for one.”
“I’d love to,” Tallie smiled.
“I’m Cecilia,” the young woman introduced herself. They rode the elevator downstairs and the woman hailed a cab. On the short ride over, Cecilia asked Tallie a little more about herself—her age, her full name, her favorite things to do. They got out at Park Avenue and Fiftieth Street. Tallie’s eyes widened at her first sight of the famous street. Fifth Avenue had been impressive but Park Avenue was twice as wide and filled with enormous flowerbeds all through the middle. Cecilia led Tallie into the lobby of a hotel. “She always has brunch here on Sundays. I don’t think she will mind if we join her,” Cecilia promised. “But wait here while I go tell her about you.” She pointed at an upholstered club chair next to a potted palm.
Money, and good luck. Make the one and pray for the other, Tallie reminded herself as she sat up straight on the edge of the chair with her ankles primly crossed and tucked back. She was doing all right so far. She sat in the middle of the vast lobby and watched the wealthy of the world going to and fro. So busy, she noted. Chasing their tails, feeding their egos and scrambling over one another in a race to the top. Too busy to notice if they themselves were being manipulated.
Cecilia came back in a few minutes and brought Tallie to a table where two women sat with flutes of champagne. One was young and beautiful like Cecilia. The other was in her sixties with hawklike features and steel gray hair.
“I hear you would like to join us, Miss Tallulah Parker,” the elder woman stated. “Please do.”
“Here, take my seat,” the other woman offered, standing. The old lady nodded and Cecilia and the other woman left.
Tallie sat down awkwardly in the vacated chair. A waiter brought two plates of Eggs Benedict and set one in front of Tallie, apparently not even noticing a different girl was sitting there.
“Go ahead,” the lady waved her hand at Tallie’s plate.
“But—” Tallie stopped protesting at a sharp look from the woman. She ate the food. She’d never had Eggs Benedict before and found the rich sauce delicious but filling. She stopped eating after a few bites.
The other woman finished her plate and had the champagne glasses refilled. “My name is Allison Bannon. I am a madam.”
It was a simple statement yet one Allison had made a thousand times. If the girl’s eyes got wide and she bolted, so be it. But if the girl’s eyes narrowed and she smiled, even the tiniest bit, Allison knew she had a new girl.
Tallie grinned.
“Well, then,” Allison said as she lifted her champagne glass. “Cheers, darling.”
Tallie lifted her glass and toasted to her own good luck.

Jason had almost always hated himself, when it came right down to it. He would never admit it to anyone; he didn’t believe in therapy and kept most emotions under lock and key. But he had always hated himself because he knew he was the one thing he should not be: weak.
Strength was the religion of their family, strength and independence. His father had been military and his mother was very strict. Jason and his two brothers had been raised on an unvaried routine from the time they were infants. Mother planned meals and outings and after-school activities. Dad had retired from the military and then worked for Aerojet. The biggest variables in their lives had been sports teams’ victories and losses.
Jason and his brothers were permitted Saturday afternoons to hang out with their friends. Growing up in Walnut Creek, California, most kids were into some combination of skateboarding, surfing or smoking pot. His mother didn’t approve of any of those activities so she kept close tabs on the boys.
Jason had succeeded at getting into the Electrical Engineering program at Stanford and his parents were proud of him. But deep down, Jason knew he was weak. He pretended to be strong. He was very good at pretending that. A sick, rebellious part of Jason cherished his weakness even as he hated himself for it. It was his secret. He loved it.
So the porn habit fit nicely into his psyche, actually managed to fill a need he had, the need for a vice. Unfortunately, Jason hadn’t really thought through his choice of vice because Jason had really enjoyed sex, especially with Bianca, for a long time. For many years, Bianca herself had been his vice, his weakness. Deeply in love with her, he’d married her despite his mother’s disapproval.
He probably should have taken up drinking or smoking or gambling because in the years since he’d started watching porn, he had lost his ability to have normal sex. He only got aroused by pornography. And it wasn’t simply the Playboy channel anymore. He had started to watch some crazy stuff. And finally even that wasn’t getting him off.
He’d eventually gone to see some sex shows in North Beach on one of his SF trips. Live was much better. That helped him for some time. He didn't want to go to shows in New York though. Too small a town. He’d have to find some other way.
Then he ran into Allison.
He was having a martini at a hotel bar dreading going home one night. How Allison predicted he would become a client he never knew. Nevertheless, she struck up a conversation with him, very casual, about the markets and the weather and Fourth of July around the corner.
A beautiful woman came to meet Allison. Allison said goodbye and handed Jason her card. The beautiful woman smiled back over her shoulder alluringly as they left the bar. Jason looked down at the card and laughed.
It said “For a good time call—” and gave a phone number. It was so cheesy and so simple.
Jason carried the card around for a week. The next Friday morning, he called. Allison herself answered. Of course, she remembered him. What was the meaning of that card? he asked.
Come find out, she offered. She gave him an address on the East Side.
That night, Jason entered the townhouse and was escorted by another young woman into an office. It looked like any other home office, Jason mused, looking at the innocuous artwork on the wall. There were pictures of African animals: a gazelle, a giraffe, a lion, a baboon. Was he really in a brothel? Had he gone back in time? Lost his senses?
He started to rise to leave when Allison came in. She wore a charcoal gray suit and Prada eyeglasses, looking much like any of the businesswomen Jason saw on a daily basis.
“Hello, Jason. Nice to see you. Please, have a seat,” Allison offered coming to sit behind her desk. The surreal weirdness of it all had an interesting effect on Jason’s penis. A lovely girl came in, a different one than the ones before, and brought glasses of glacial water to them.
He eyed the girl as she departed. Allison got down to business.
“Jason, I am a madam.” His eyes narrowed. She proceeded. “I am here to help you. I would like for you to experience the utmost pleasure and satisfaction that you really need in life. What point is there to success if we can’t enjoy it?” She pulled out a pack of Nat Sherman’s from her drawer and offered him one. He shook his head. “Do you mind if I—“
“Not at all.”
She lit the cigarette and leaned back in her chair, looking mightily satisfied as the nicotine coursed through her veins. Strangely, the look of pleasure on the old lady’s face further aroused Jason.
“Now, Jason,” she continued. “You are a very handsome young man. I have a feeling you may never before have availed yourself of services similar to the type my business offers. Is that correct?” She took another drag before stubbing out the half-finished cigarette.
Jason nodded.
“Well, to begin, we offer two pathways. To do. Or to watch.”
Jason shifted in his chair. He knew who he was. He was definitely a watcher.

As July went by, Jason spent a lot of time at Allison’s. It was so good to be able to enjoy himself again. He spent hours watching girls with clients, girls alone, girls with other girls. Sometimes, he would sit in a room with a girl. One day, a lovely young woman wouldn’t take no for an answer. He was so aroused from watching her play with herself that he went ahead and fucked her. It was the first time he’d had sex with someone other than Bianca in nineteen and a half years. He didn’t burst into flame. His dick didn’t turn black and fall off. All in all, it had been quite delicious.
He had actually really liked it. In fact, he wanted to do it again, maybe with a different girl. It was strange to think he could have anyone he chose, all he had to do was say the word. Allison would give him whichever girl struck his fancy. Jason had been watching most of them for a while now. And while there were attractive things about each of them, there wasn’t anyone he found perfect. He wanted something different, something new, unpredictable, exciting, even wrong.
Then he saw Tallie.
Jason had been loitering at Allison’s through a Sunday afternoon as he had the last several weeks. He’d already watched one of the girls with a client through the one-way mirror. He was sitting in the living room talking to Jinx, the girl he’d been with yesterday, thinking about going upstairs with her. Allison brought Tallie in and took her into the office.
Tallie was perfect. She was tiny and delicate with long, platinum blond hair and a beautiful face. Her legs were thin and a mile long, her torso was compact and topped with big boobs. He wanted her.
Her age never crossed his mind.
Allison came out to say hello to Jason.
“Who was that you had with you?” he wanted to know.
Allison had been in this business for fifty years. She knew from the look he had on his face that she could make quite a profit off this girl. “Her name is Tallulah Parker. She is new in town.”
“Is that right?” Jason was salivating.
“Yes.” She could practically see the drool. “After I get her settled in, would you like to meet her?”
Jason nodded, dumbstruck. “Please.”
“All right. Give us a few minutes.”
Allison returned to her office. Tallie was standing at the window, looking out into the street. When she turned, the sunlight backlit her and gave her a halo. Allison laughed out loud.
“What’s funny?” Tallie asked.
“Me. You. Everything,” Allison said, getting a cigarette lit. “You remind me of myself a long, long time ago.”  “How is that?” Tallie wanted to know. She perched on the edge of Allsion’s desk and fiddled with a paperweight containing a fossilized scorpion.
“I knew exactly what I was doing, too.”
Tallie’s lips twitched. “And how did you do?”
“All right,” Allison gestured around the room. “I have this place. A few other real estate investments. Some money in the markets, of course.”
“Why don’t you retire?” Tallie asked.
Allison scoffed, “And do what? Knit? I keep working because I like it.”
“The thrill of it all,” Tallie leaned forward and looked into Allison’s dark brown eyes. Her cleavage was tantalizing, perfectly smooth, round and flawless.
“So let’s get down to business. If you work for me, you agree to a twelve-month contract. I provide more than adequate food and lodging—rather luxurious, in fact—and you get $10,000 cash in one year’s time.”
“Oh, where do I sign?” Tallie gushed.
Taken aback, Allison surprisedly asked, “Really?”
Laughing, Tallie replied, “No, of course not really! Come on, give me a break. I might be new but I am not stupid. You get two months and twenty percent. And don’t short me because I will find out.”
Allison shook her head. “I don’t think that will cover my overhead.”
“Bullshit. You probably own the building but even if you don’t rent can’t be more than four grand a month. If I don’t pull in ten thousand a week, you can bill me! But I will need receipts.”
“I never write anything down,” Allison argued. And it did seem to be true. There wasn’t a paper to be seen in this office. The scorpion paperweight sat directly on the desk.
“Me neither,” Tallie agreed.
They continued negotiations until both were vaguely satisfied by the arrangements.
“And now, the good news,” Allison told her protégé.
“What’s that?”
“Your first client awaits.”
Tallie rolled her eyes. If she’d known it would be this easy…“Lead the way.”
Allison brought Tallie to a bedroom on the third floor and then left. The room was grand, light and airy, as big as a living room in many apartments. Before long, Jason knocked.
“Tallulah?” he asked softly as he cracked open the door.
She opened it widely and smiled. “Please. Call me Tallie.”
Allison had chosen this room for its light. The girl looks like a fucking angel, she’d thought. This idiot will be hooked. But she’s got the devil inside, for sure.
Jason took one more look at Tallie as the sunlight illuminated her white cotton sundress and shadowed the nubile, perfect body beneath. He felt like he was about to pop. He was hooked indeed. “I’m Jason.”
“Nice to meet you.” The lilting tone of her Louisiana accent was very pleasing to him. She held out her hand, finding an excuse to make first contact. Jason seemed awkward and rather shy.
The delicate bones of her hand seemed easily crushable. God, she was beautiful, Jason thought. Perfect. It was lust at first sight. Tallie wrapped him around her finger that afternoon, bone by bone, sinew by sinew. She knew how to restore his abilities—no more watching for him. He was powerful again. He even found the fact that the source of his recovered virility was rooted in his weakness to be empowering. He didn’t want his legitimate marriage bed anymore, the daily compromises of age and reality. He loved this young, wild thing who’d tamed him. He idolized her.
Fucking Tallie made him feel young again. He knew she was young but he never asked her age. It wouldn’t have mattered. Nothing she said or did at this point would have stopped him from being hers. They spent nearly eighteen months together before he broke the news to Bianca.
Jason did not really notice what it was costing him. He honestly didn’t care. He was happy to give her anything he had. He didn’t want it anymore. He only wanted her.
Tallie told Allison she needed to be legal to simplify life. Allison helped Tallie buy a birth certificate. They hired two of Allison’s former girls to swear Tallie had been born at home eighteen years ago. One woman signed as the mother and one as a witness. Tallie used the birth certificate to get a social security number, driver’s license and passport. She was now officially Tallulah Mae Parker, born New Year’s Day 1988. Once she’d done that, Jason deposited a million dollars in a bank account for her.
Tallie stayed with Allison for the three months they’d agreed and then asked Jason to get her an apartment. He paid cash for a classic six on Park Avenue and put it in her name. By the time she reached her thirteenth birthday, Tallie was set for life. She had the apartment and cash. But she was just getting started.
Jason gave her independence to see if she would still want him but he had no way to fathom the depth of her greed. Although Tallie was pleased with her current situation, she was far from finished yet. She wanted to take everything. It was nothing personal against Jason. She liked Jason. Jason had helped her a lot. But she wanted everything—all that there was. Then she thought she might be satisfied.
Having had nothing, she was determined to move to the other extreme the world offered.
Sometimes, Tallie would talk to Jason about wanting to own the world. Owning a fair-sized chunk of it himself, Jason would scoff. “It’s not all that it’s cracked up to be, Tallie.”
“What isn’t?”
“Being rich. Having it all. I had it and repudiated it—for you.”
Tallie liked that he used words like “repudiate” she’d only come across in books. He’d gone to Stanford; he was very intelligent. Smiling and twisting a lock of his short hair around her index finger as they lay in bed, Tallie said, “Listen, I am only the product of my time. I am what the world made me.”
“That’s crap. Take responsibility. You made yourself.”
“I didn’t ask to be made. I woke up in a shitty world and tried to make it better for myself.”
“What about other people? Why didn’t you ever try to make it better for other people?”
“What did other people ever do for me? My own mother didn't like me. I didn’t have a father. My best friends were books. I never even had a dog.”
“Tallie, Jesus, let’s go get you a dog,” Jason said laughing and slapping her on her beautiful rear. “We can start with that and see if it awakens any human emotions.”
“Really? A puppy?” Tallie sat up, her pale gold hair streaming down over her naked breasts. Her green eyes lit up with excitement.
Jason rolled over and nipped at her waist. She was too delicious. “Sure. What kind do you want?” He pulled her back flat onto the bed and climbed on top of her.
In an hour, they were dressed and strolling along Lexington Avenue to the Sammy's Pet Shop. Tallie found a West Highland White Terrier that looked like the genteel version of the filthy neighbor dog she’d once been fond of. “He’s adorable!” she exclaimed, cuddling him to her. Jason was pleased even though the clerk thought Tallie was his daughter.
“You like him?” Jason asked. “Fine. What’s his name going to be?” Jason asked as he paid for the puppy and all of his accoutrements Tallie had piled up on the counter.
“Hm, I will need to think about that.” Tallie was giddy with the sensation she was feeling. It was like spring inside her even though it was a gloomy February day. Maybe she didn’t have many normal human emotions. Maybe the dog would be her outlet for them, as for many New Yorkers around her. Smiling, she held the puppy close to her. She was wearing a white belted wool coat with fur collar, a white cashmere hat and gloves. She looked so pure and lovely. Unbidden, an image of dark, damaged Bianca came to mind but he pushed it away. That was the past. Tallie was the future. Tallie was now.
As the months went by, Tallie kept up her friendship with Allison. Tallie felt like the older woman was the only person she could be herself with. One afternoon in May, Tallie stopped by with Rocky. She had named her puppy for the classic underdog, for the fighter. That is who she wanted beside her. Allison was in bed and the house was deserted except for the maid who let her in and showed her upstairs.
“What’s going on?” Tallie asked. She hadn't been here in a month.
“Remember when you asked me about retiring? The day we met?” Allison sat propped against some pillows in the dark bedroom.
Tallie set Rocky in an antique chair upholstered in pale green damask silk. Then she went to open the curtains and let in the light. Turning, she saw that Allison’s face was quite gray. “Sure. You giving up?” Tallie wanted to know.
“Heart.”
“Oh, dear. Going to get it fixed.”
Allison shrugged. “Why bother?”
Tallie walked to the bed and picked up a down pillow. She held it as if she was about to cover Allison’s face with it. “Yeah. Why bother? Why don’t I help you along?” She bent forward as Allison’s eyes filled with shock.
“Go ahead. Do it. I won’t struggle,” Allison offered meekly.
Tallie whacked her with the pillow instead. “Oh, please! That’s pathetic.” She picked up Rocky and put him in her lap as she sat down. “But it’s too easy for you and too hard to me. I might break a nail or something,” Tallie laughed.
“You’re a bitch.”
Rolling her eyes, Tallie smiled. “Good one. Like I didn’t know. Anyway, perk up, old lady. The docs can fix you right up.”
“I hate doctors.”
“Who gives a fuck? You like cemeteries?”
“Good point.”
“Do you know what they do to embalm you? They scrape out all your guts and then they—“
“All right, all right! I will go to the goddamn doctor. Jesus.”
“That’s better.” Tallie stroked the short, coarse fur on Rocky’s head as he stared fixedly at Allison. “You know, you are a relic. A thing from the past holding on. Time is your enemy. And you can’t stop time.”
“Thanks for the pep talk.”  “My point is, you gotta keep being you. I have to keep being me. That’s all there is to it. I should have plenty of time, but you never know. Time is never your ally, or your friend. Even for me. It keeps flowing like the East River out there.” Tallie waved her hand toward the window. “But.” She stopped, making sure Allison was paying attention.
“But what?” Allison was hoping there was some point to all this.
“But people have mastered the water for thousands of years, from the Phoenicians and Egyptians and Greeks to the English and Japanese and Polynesians. All over the world, people have built crafts of one kind or another to accomplish their purposes—whether for trade, exploration or war. If time is like water, we need a craft to master it.”
“Tallie, you been reading science fiction again? Or maybe existentialists? Russians?”
“No. I’ve just been thinking. And you know I never write anything down. You are my sounding board.”
“Great.”
“I’ve been thinking for me to get from here to the end of my time, what do I need to improve my craft?”
“You looking for advice?”
“You got any to give?”
“Of course. You don’t get to be my age without learning a thing or two.”
“The transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next is never efficient. So much gets lost every time.”
“Every time what?”
“Every time someone dies without passing on what they know. And yes, I have been reading some science fiction. This woman keeps cloning herself and raising herself and passing on her knowledge until she figures out what she wants to know.”
“Tallie, here’s my advice. Enjoy life.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s all of the wisdom I’ve got. Have fun. Now you and me, we might define fun a little differently than your average person. We were born different, that’s all. But there’s no shame in that. Our kind has been around since the dawn of time. It isn’t called the oldest profession for nothing.”
“Why is that? I mean, I like what I do.”
“I know. Me too. I always did. We like being in charge, even when they consider us their playthings. We know the difference.”
“You think Jesus will hate me?”
Allison threw back her head and laughed. “No, honey. I don’t. He’s not a big hater. I got one more piece of advice.”  “What’s that?”
“Dream up the most outrageous possible future for yourself and then ask for it. See what happens.”
“Why?”
“If I have learned nothing else during this life, I’ve learned that God has got a great sense of humor. Just look at baboons and their purple pricks.”

History
New Year’s Day 1986, Bianca woke up in the backseat of a BMW that smelled like Miller Genuine Draft and dirty socks. She didn’t have any pants on. Grimacing, she attempted movement and found that she was incredibly hungover. Turning her head cautiously, Bianca discovered a boy next to her. She wasn’t particularly surprised by this. She’d been sleeping around quite a bit since breaking up with Amber six months ago.
Bianca sighed deeply and started hunting around for her pack of cigarettes. She located the crumpled Camel box with a lighter and one bent cigarette inside it. Thank God she loved herself enough to leave that cigarette for herself in the morning. However, once lit, she only had about thirty minutes before she’d need to get a new pack.
She started hunting in her pockets for money. She found five dollars and a half-used Kleenex in her jacket pocket. All right, not the worst start to a day she ever had. She blew her nose on the other half of the Kleenex. She looked into the rearview mirror, spit on her forefinger and wiped the blurred mascara from under eyes. She ran her fingers through her dark curly hair and looked around for her pants.
The guy next to her stirred. He opened his eyes. “Hey.”
Suddenly, she remembered. He’d been puking in the bushes when they met. “Hey. You know where my pants are?”
Jason shifted and looked around. He felt underneath him. He pulled up a pair of light blue jeans from beneath. “These them?”
“Yeah, thanks,” she said as she took them from him. She did not bother with looking for her underwear.
Jason had on his pants but the fly was open. She caught a glimpse. Rolling her eyes and sucking down the last drag from her cigarette, she ground it out in the ashtray and straddled him. He slipped neatly inside her and clutched her rear. It didn’t last long.
“What was your name again?” she asked.
“Jason. Jason Winters.”
“If we got married, I’d be Bianca Winters. That’s kind of funny.”
“Do you want to get married?” he asked, still inside her.
“Fuck no!” Bianca laughed. “But I do want you to drive me to the store for some cigarettes.”
“You shouldn’t smoke, you know,” Jason said as she climbed off him and they both got their pants on right. “But I won’t stop you.”
“No fucking kidding, Jason,” Bianca said sweetly as she climbed into the passenger seat. They spent New Year’s Day together at Muir Beach. It was cold and windy and deserted. They found shelter in the rocks and fooled around a few more times, picnicked on the bread and cheese and Cokes they’d bought at the supermarket with her cigarettes and fell asleep for an hour. The sun was setting when they woke up.
“Well, it’s been fun, buddy boy,” Bianca said. “But I guess I should get back. Take me home?”
“Sure.”
He’d gotten her phone number but she forgot all about him in the following days. He hadn’t called her until school started back up. He knew his mother would not approve. She’d given him hell about staying out all night New Year’s.
Bianca was not home when he called her house. But her mother wasn’t disapproving at all and gave Jason her number for her dorm at UC Berkeley.
“Hello?” Bianca answered the phone. She was hoping it was the guy in her English class she’d given her number to this morning.
“Hi, it’s Jason.”
Was that his name? She thought it was Josh. “How’s it going? You start your paper yet?”
“What paper?”
Bianca paused. “The one she assigned this morning,” she said slowly. A light was dawning.
“This is Jason. From New Year’s?” Jason reminded her.
“Oh! Jason! Sorry…” Bianca trailed off.
“No, that’s fine. I know it’s been like a week.”
“Yeah.” She scratched her head and flopped back against her headboard. “So. Jason. How are you?” She had never thought to hear from this guy. “How’s Stanford?”
“Fine. Jesus, Bianca. I thought we had a good time.”
“We did!”
“You barely even remember me!”
“I remember you. Of course. I just thought it was someone else.”
“Have you slept with anyone else this week?”
“Really? You’re asking me that?”
“I’m coming up there.”
“You are being an idiot,” she stated firmly. But there was the tiniest bit of her that was flattered.
“Well, did you?”
“No. I didn’t. Did you?”
“No. I like you.”
“You hardly even know me!”
“I do, too. You curse like a sailor, look like Sophia Loren and taste like a peach once I get through the cigarettes.”
“Gross.”
“You’re the gross smoker.”
“Ugh. Stop griping already.” But suddenly, she wanted to see him. “So, are you coming up here?”
“Sure. I’ll be there in an hour. You figure out what we are doing when I get there.”
Bianca kicked her roommate out for a while when he got there. Afterward, they went to University Avenue and walked around. They stopped in at a show and listened to a band for a while. Then they walked up the hill to where they could see the lights from San Francisco.
“I want to live there one day,” Jason said. “Maybe on Clay Street. Right in the heart of the city.”  “You like city life? Me too. What’s your favorite city? Or the biggest city you’ve ever been to?” Bianca asked.
“I don’t know. LA’s the biggest, but not my favorite. I liked Honolulu.”
“That’s cool,” she moved closer against his chest and he put his arm around her as the fog started to roll in and obscure everything.
“Have you ever been to New York?”  “No. Have you?”
“No. Maybe we will go together one day,” Jason said, taking Bianca’s hand.
She doubted it. “Why don’t we make it to San Francisco first? You busy Saturday? We could meet over there and spend the day if you want.”
“Sounds good.”
They had spent the morning at the Academy of Arts and Sciences and wandering around Golden Gate Park. In the afternoon, they ate lunch and visited the little shops throughout the Haight. Bianca was in her element. Jason wasn’t so sure. There was a lot of incense and crystals and batik.
Sitting on a bench by the windmill looking out toward the ocean, Jason asked Bianca what she wanted to do with her life. She talked about hating living in fear every day, worrying that the bomb would drop. She wanted to work to change the future, to give peace a chance. Neither of them could know if they had much future then when the future was in the hands of moronic politicians and war-mongerers who profited off the military industrial complex. No one knew. Any day could be the last day, any minute the last minute; that was the reality of the time. “Maybe I will work in education so that our generation and the next one, if ever we get our chance to run the world, won’t fuck it up.”
“That sounds nice,” Jason said, holding her hand as the sun went down.
Bianca raised her eyebrows. “Nice. As in quaint? Silly, acceptable dreams for a woman?”
“That’s not what I meant,” he denied. But he had.
“Maybe I’ll go into politics then. Run for fucking President!”
Jason laughed. “You can’t. Your skeletons would all come out of the closet. And you swear too much.”
“How do you know I have skeletons?”
“Don’t you?”
She shrugged. “What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. Make money.”
“Is that what you are studying?”
“No. I’m studying electrical engineering. But I think I’ll go into finance. I won’t tell my folks until I’ve got a job.”
“You scared of them?” she teased.
“Terrified.” Jason leaned over to kiss her. He hadn’t kissed her all day. She tasted like an ashtray. But, in a minute, there was the peach. She climbed on his lap and he put his arms around her. She was deliciously sexy. The sun dropped into the waiting ocean like a copper penny in a slot. The light spilled over the edge of the world, danced on the water and faded away.
“Can I see you again?” Jason asked.
“What? We’re done now?” Bianca wondered, mystified and disappointed. She did like him. He brought out a physical reaction in her that was intense and extraordinary. The more they did it, the better it got.
“I hope not. But…I want to see you again. A lot. Often. Like, go out.”
“Are you trying to say you want me to be your girlfriend?”
Jason nodded.
“It’s only our second date!”
“Third, I’d say. Maybe even fourth if New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are separate events. I feel like they were.”
Laughing, Bianca shook her head and stood up. “Buy me some ice cream?”
“Whatever you want.”
“Lighten up, golden boy.” Bianca grabbed his hand and they set off toward the Video Cafe, a place she liked on Geary Street.

Jason and Bianca started dating. They spent nearly every weekend together. San Francisco was easy for both of them to get to so they often met there. Other times they would hike in the redwoods or go to the beach at Pacifica. Sometimes they would go to Carmel or Bodega Bay.
When they were camping in Big Sur one October weekend, Bianca ran into Amber. She hadn’t seen her in more than a year. Amber had cut her red hair into a short bob but otherwise looked the same. Bianca’s gut clenched. They stood face to face, Bianca coming out of the restroom, Amber heading in.
“Hi,” Amber said softly.
Bianca tried to smile but felt her face frozen in a mask of shock. Forcing herself to get a grip, she managed to say hello. Then she tried to keep going and move past her.
“How are you?” Amber asked. So Bianca had to stop and turn and try to make conversation with the girl who’d almost destroyed her. Bianca had prided herself on her hard heart all through high school and the beginning of college. Although she’d had boyfriends, she felt she used them as much as they used her or more. She didn’t want to fall in love. She shielded herself from it, not wanting to love anyone until she was ready to settle down—for fear of getting her heart broken.
Bianca knew herself. She knew that the first time she fell in love, it would be for life. Her heart was simply made that way. She knew therefore that if it did not work out her heart would never be whole and hers again. That’s what she had been afraid of. And exactly what had happened.
Bianca had not been expecting to fall in love with a girl. Hadn’t even crossed her mind.
Callous, charming Amber had not cared about any of that. She herself had had her heart broken years ago. Now she was out for a good time. She enjoyed seducing unwary girls into her way of life. She thought it was fun. So Bianca had actually become a problem. Since Bianca had fallen so hard for her, Amber tried. She tried to be a good girlfriend and decent human being and not break Bianca’s devoted heart. But in the end, Amber wasn’t made that way. She was a natural flirt. And there were just so many beautiful girls in the world.
“I’m fine,” Bianca answered rather more forcefully than she’d meant. She tried to moderate her voice. “Still at Berkeley. One more year.”
“That’s cool! I knew you could do it.” Bianca had nearly flunked one semester when she and Amber were falling apart. “I moved down to Santa Cruz. I think it suits me better.”
Bianca nodded and tried to walk away. Amber touched her arm and she froze. “You look great. Call me sometime,” Amber said. “Maybe we can get together. I’ll give you my number.”
“That’s okay,” Bianca said, feeling like she was going to throw up. It took all of her will power not to throw herself on her knees, wrap her arms around Amber’s legs and beg her to take her back. Bianca hated herself to the point of nausea for this. “I’m seeing someone. Don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Oh. Well, it was great to run into you, B. I miss you.”
Jesus, Amber, take it easy, for God’s sake! You almost killed me! “Yeah, you too. See ya,” Bianca said and walked with head high and shoulders back toward the campsite. Once there, she crawled inside the tent and bawled her eyes out, softly.
Jason had been at the showers and came back a half an hour later. Bianca had splashed cold water on her face, put on her sunglasses and sat smoking at the picnic table.
Bianca watched Jason as he walked toward the campsite. He was truly her golden boy. Although she’d fooled around with a bunch of guys since breaking up with Amber, Jason was the one who had brought a little bit of light back into her heart. There was a little, soft golden glow going on in there these days. For months, it had been black.
The morning sunlight filtered through the changing leaves and washed the world in gold. Sparkling particles caught in the shafts and created a glittering radiance around Jason as he came toward her. Freshly showered, in khaki shorts, forest green polo and Topsiders, he looked like sanctuary and security. She, on the other hand, in her black v-neck t-shirt with her wild, curly dark hair over her shoulders and the smoke circling her head, looked like sex and trouble.
“You okay?” Jason asked as he approached her.
Bianca nodded. “Ready to go?”
From the campground, they headed south on Highway One in Jason’s car. They found Sand Dollar Beach and spent hours lying in the sun and playing in the freezing water. After a while, Bianca stretched out on their blanket and went to sleep. She woke up with tears streaming down the sides of her face. Hastily, she wiped them away and looked around for her cigarettes.
Jason was watching her. She lit a Camel and took a drag. She exhaled. “What?” she asked him as he continued staring and not saying anything.
“You were crying.”
“So what? Bad dream, that’s it.”
Jason furrowed his brow. “That’s weird.”
“Why?”
“What were you dreaming about?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember. It was sad, that’s all. Something died.”
Frustrated, Jason stood. He looked west over the ocean. It was a perfect, glorious day in one of the most beautiful places on the planet. Why had she been crying? “Ready to head back?” he asked.
She should have been more perceptive. Unfortunately, she chose precisely the wrong time and place to tell Jason about Amber. He became insanely jealous and angry.
Bianca had never seen Jason angry before. His color changed, his neck and jawline mottled red. His cheek developed a twitch and he wouldn’t look at her. “So are you gay? Or bi, or whatever?” was the first thing he asked.
“No. I don’t think so. I only liked her. We were together about a year—”
“Longer than we’ve been—”  “But the last few months were terrible. She is definitely gay. She started screwing around all the time, so many different girls. I didn’t know I could debase myself like I did—I kept taking her back, over and over, until we had an almost ‘open’ relationship. That’s what it came down to, in order to be with her at all. Finally, she started liking this one girl and moved in with her. And we were over.”
Jason felt abused. He would never have expected this from Bianca in a million years. It wasn’t that he minded her being with a girl that much, except he did, but it was that she—who was a stone-cold bitch most of the time—had been so wildly in love she was still crying in her sleep about it.
“When was that?”
“Summer before last.”
“You never told me. Anything about this before.” He ground out his words in short, choppy phrases. “Why?”
Bianca shook her head and lit another cigarette. Shrugging, she asked, “Why would I?”
“Why? Because it’s important! It’s a huge part of who you are, what you’ve been through!”
“I don’t want to know about every girl you’ve been with. I didn’t think we needed to do that. What we are—who we are—is something new, something we create together. It isn’t shaped by all the crap from before. Is it?”
“Of course it is! Jesus, Bianca, I thought…” He didn’t finish.  “What?”
He took a deep breath. “I just thought I knew you, that’s all. I thought the one most salient fact I knew about you was that you were honest, and forthright. And here that’s been a lie this whole time.”
Bianca didn’t know what to say to that. She did know that he was an asshole who managed to hurt her when she was already hurting. Fuck that. She lit yet another cigarette and walked to the water’s edge. Love. Love sucked.
The little golden light in her heart flickered as the blackness tried to overwhelm it again. It had been a long, lonely time when her heart was black. She really didn’t want to go back to that. Bianca shut her eyes in the wind and tried to find the words to protect and preserve the flame.
Jason stood beside her and she opened her eyes. They watched the sun descend into the waiting city of golden and pink clouds. She couldn’t find any words. But she reached out and took his hand. He pulled her into his arms and kissed the top of her head.

Something changed between them after that weekend. They argued more and made love more fiercely. That part of their relationship continued to improve. They couldn’t get enough of each other. Their bodies craved each other constantly so that they could barely concentrate. Every two or three days, they had to see each other.
Jason’s parents noticed the mileage on his car and confronted him about it. He told them he was dating a girl at Berkeley. Although they weren’t thrilled about her, they couldn’t do much to stop him at this point. He was in love with her.
Jason would walk into her dorm room door with barely a hello and then clothes were off and he was inside her. Finally, afterward, they could focus and talk again. In fact, they were in exceptionally good moods and would joke and laugh the rest of the evening, finding everything hilarious.
Except condoms. That was getting old. AIDS was starting to get talked about so everyone knew they had to screw with condoms. Unless you were married. So one day, after a particularly hard absence and tremendous reunion, Bianca and Jason talked about not using condoms anymore. She already was on the pill. “Well, does this mean we’re engaged?” Jason asked.
“If anyone asks,” Bianca smiled. “Sure.”
“And when are we getting married?” Jason wanted to know. “If anyone asks.”
“After graduation, I guess. Third Saturday in June, very proper,” Bianca giggled.
“Sounds good.” Jason rolled her over on her back and pressed himself between her legs. “We’ll live happily ever after.”
“Of course,” she said, gasping as she felt him enter her.

The arguing was not as pleasant. The schism which began in Big Sur widened on a trip to Death Valley in April. It turned out neither of them liked the desert but they hadn’t known that till they got there. Both were irascible. The wasteland started her on a diatribe about nuclear war. Mad Max 3 and Red Dawn were popular then; so were Reaganomics and yuppie life. Jason got tired of her visions of apocalypse. He wanted to believe in the future. “Why can’t there be both?” he asked when she took a breath.
“Both what?”
“Peace and prosperity. Why do you think there has to be one or the other?”
She shut up for a while. “Well, in order to do that, we would have to make money off something other than war.”
“Yep.” Jason was focusing on his car’s temperature gauge. It kept trying to go into the red. “I think I need to pull over and let the car cool off again.” They sat on the side of the road. Neither one of them was the least bit in the mood to fool around for once. Bianca got out of the car and smoked, looking out at the sand and Joshua trees. She hadn’t known anything about them until a month ago. Now the best-selling album in the world was named for them, and they had been named as a symbol of prayerful hope. Was it possible? Would she get to live her life? Or would it end in a flash and a cloud of ash?
She flicked the end of her cigarette and watched the ash float away in the wind. Fuck it. Where the streets have no name…
“Jason?” she called to him through the open window.
“Yeah.”
“You want to get married for real?”
“I thought we were going to,” he stated.
“You did? I thought we were joking.”
“Nope.”
She smoked silently for a few minutes. “Okay. If the world doesn’t end and we can stand each other by then, let’s get married after graduation. I love you.”
“I love you, too, Bianca,” he called back through the window.

In spite of terrible arguments over anything and everything from politics to television shows, Jason and Bianca were married the third Saturday in June 1987. She walked down the aisle to the opening of The Joshua Tree. They went to Maui for their honeymoon and Jason started working at an investment bank in San Francisco while Bianca completed her Master’s in Education. True to his word to his wife, Jason looked to prosper off something other than war. Like many, he was drawn to the tech world. He found dozens of companies to invest in, companies whose products radically changed the world they lived in from one of fear of annihilation to fear of obsolescence.
First Jessica and then Andrew taught Jason and Bianca how to be parents. The shift of focus from themselves to others was natural and automatic. The kids came first. Jason and Bianca talked for hours about how they wanted their kids to turn out, how they should raise them to make that happen. As the Cold War ended and the world quickly demilitarized, Bianca began to believe she, her husband and her children might make it to the next millennium after all. Bianca quit smoking.
In the mid-nineties, by request Jason was transferred to New York. He and Bianca had both fallen in love with it on their first visit there Thanksgiving 1987. Bianca had always wanted to see the parade. He had always wanted to see the Knicks at Madison Square Garden. They went to a Ted Hughes poetry reading and a Bon Jovi concert. They saw the Phantom of the Opera and Mohammed Ali, Aida and the Rockefeller Center tree lighting. They thought it was the best time of their lives.
And really, it was.
Jason loved Bianca and stopped hating himself for a while. He thought she was strong enough for the both of them. Now that he was a grown man, a father and out of California, his mother’s hold on him finally lessened. If Jason ever felt weak, Bianca was there to shore him up.
Bianca gave herself away in the day to day. Her dreams of shaping the future distilled into the reality of working for the school system. It wasn’t a bad job—a little soul-sucking, like any job working for the government. Day by day, month by month, the years went by in turning seasons and passing fads. New York was never-changing in its timeless quest for the next new thing and the Winters family joined the crusade. Restaurants, schools, shoes, cars, clubs, sports—every social strata had its pinnacle like a multi-tiered cake with icing on the top.
Occasionally, Bianca would think back to the past and wonder what had happened. She had accepted her fate because she was scared of any other. She never wanted her heart broken again, she knew that. She was glad her doomsday prophesies had come to naught and that her children were growing up in the world of cell phones and cyberspace. It was pretty cool, actually. She enjoyed the prosperity they were living in as much as the peace. Both were imperfect: Iraq and 9/11 and terrorism existed alongside dot-com and housing bubbles. But they were better than she’d expected so she settled happily into her role as financier’s wife and all-around do-gooder.
As her looks faded and her breasts sank, she had somewhat less optimism. She missed having sex with Jason. But everything else in their life was so good that she felt unnecessarily greedy wanting more. Across the park, Tallie was blithely preparing to take all of it.

Late in the morning three days after Christmas 2006, Bianca was in the kitchen trying to use the SodaStream when Jason came in. She was surprised to hear the door opening and poked her head around the kitchen wall in time to see Jason enter with an odd look on his face.
“Hey,” Bianca said.
“Hey,” he echoed.
“Everything all right? Want some seltzer?”
Jason set his case down and moved to the dining table. “Sort of. We need to talk.” He waved away the glass she was handing him.
Her mouth went very dry but she couldn’t swallow. She set the glass on the walnut table and sat down. How had he found out? “Jason, I don’t know what to say.”  He looked at her slightly puzzled. “Don’t say anything. It’s not your fault.”
Now it was her turn to look at him quizzically. How wasn’t it her fault? she thought. But she kept her mouth shut.
Jason ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “The thing is, Bianca, as you know, our sex life has been bad for a really long time.”
Bianca inhaled sharply.
“And…well, it’s embarrassing to tell you but I’ve got to spit it out. A long time ago…” Well, maybe he didn’t have to tell her that part. The porn had nothing to do with Tallie. They were independent variables; one thing couldn’t possibly have to do with the other. He started again. “You know that for a long time now I’ve had a difficult time. I don’t really think it’s your fault.”
“Okay.”
“But…” Why couldn’t he say it? He looked quickly about their home. They’d lived in this apartment for eight years now. Every corner held memories, every item was a piece of the life they’d built together. But in the end, it was just stuff. There was more stuff waiting to be bought every day; the world ran on that.
“Jason, I…I don’t know what you’ve heard. I thought about telling you but I wasn’t sure it would be worth the heartache it would cause. Especially because I am not sure what the future is with her.”
Jason paused. The words floated on the surface of his brain, not making sense. Finally, they sank in. “What?” he asked, shocked.
“It just happened. I don’t know why, exactly. You said yourself our sex life hasn’t been great. But I swear I have not been with anyone else since we met. I haven’t been with a woman since Amber.”
“What the fuck?!” Jason jumped out of the chair. “Are you telling me you…” He grabbed handfuls of his hair and doubled over.
Bianca pressed her lips between her teeth. Wide-eyed, she waited for him to recover. “I’m sorry.”
Jason stood. He looked at her coldly, contemptuously. “You’re sorry, huh? Great.” He smiled an eerie smile. “You think you’re sorry. But you don’t know…”
“What?”
“I came here to tell you that I am leaving you, Bianca.”
“What?”
“Yes. I am leaving you. I have been fucking a teenage girl for the last eighteen months. I love her. In fact, I have quit my job, transferred most of my money to another country and I am moving. Right now.”
Bianca stared, speechless.
“As you know—although you may have forgotten in your complacency—we signed a pre-nuptial agreement at my mother’s insistence. Remember that?”
She had forgotten. But now she remembered the event clearly. His mother had never liked her much and had still disapproved at the time of their wedding. To pacify her, laughing about it, Bianca and Jason had agreed to the pre-nup.
“Since you have been working this whole time, I don’t owe you a goddamn thing. I was, however, feeling sentimental and slightly guilty to be honest—abandoning you for the younger, more beautiful, sexier woman. So I was going to leave you this apartment and its maintenance and a little settlement. But since you have been fucking a girl, I’m not giving you a goddamn cent!”
“Jason! Please, stop. This isn’t about the money—it never is!”
“I know it never is for you, sweetie pie. It never is for you because you skim off the cream and take whatever the fuck you want. Look at you! The bathrobe you’re wearing was a thousand dollars. Good luck, Bianca! You never hustled your ass to make what you spend.”
“You’re screwing a teenager—your daughter’s a teenager!”
“Trust me, Tallie is nothing like our daughter.”
“What about our son?”
“What about him? He’s almost eighteen, for God’s sake. He’ll be fine.”
“Jason—“ Bianca didn’t even know what she wanted to say. Her entire world had crumbled. She wanted to pick up a crumb and make sense of it. But she couldn’t. Every thought disintegrated immediately.
Jason screamed at her. “Maybe you’ve been gay this whole time! Maybe that’s why I turned to porn and hookers!”
“What?”
“Yeah. Did I forget to mention that? Tallie is a prostitute. Well, she was. Now she’s my mistress.”
“Oh, my God.”
Jason shrugged and went into the bedroom. He started throwing some things into suitcases, mainly clothes and toiletries. “She wants to go to France. So, au revoir.” Jason smiled bitterly. “I should have fucking known.”
Bianca was standing in the doorway, too shocked to think clearly. “What?” she whispered.
“A girl. I can’t fucking believe it.”
“What?” she repeated. It was all she could seem to say.
“I should have dumped you that day on the beach when I found out about Amber. I always knew in the back of my mind I should have. I knew I couldn’t trust you. I’m a fucking idiot.”
“Because of Amber?”
“Because you weren’t who I thought you were. Who I fell in love with was a figment of my imagination.”
“You? What about me? The guy I married wouldn’t screw teenage prostitutes!”
“You have no idea what the guy you married could do. I’ve made so many deals, I can’t tell if the other guy’s the devil or I am. I’m pretty sure I am.” Jason zipped up the suitcase with a sharp movement. “You know what? Fuck this. We’re done.” He barged past her through the door and headed to the foyer.
Bianca saw him walking away. She went after him by instinct. Her wide brown eyes pleaded with him.
“You know what I’ve always wanted to do, Bianca?” Jason asked with a sneer.
She shook her head, eyes brimming with tears.
He hauled off and slapped her across the face. She went pale with shock except where the red handprint burned. “I’ve always wanted to knock that self-righteous, dissatisfied, entitled, superior look right off your face.”
He left, slamming the door behind him.

Red
Jason wasn’t even sorry. He took a cab over to the East Side to Tallie’s place. She wasn’t home but he let himself in with his key. He sat on the sofa in the living room and waited. He hung his head in his hands and breathed.
Well, it was done now. For better or worse, richer or poorer.
He was glad he had slapped her. He wanted there to be a finality to the break, no doubt that it was finished.
He took a deep breath and lifted his head. He looked around the beautiful room decorated in cream and platinum. This place looked like Tallie. From the moment he’d met her, he’d had no regrets. It was as if his scarred conscience, his ability to discern right from wrong, evaporated in her presence. The fact was she was everything he hoped for. She embodied all of his hopes and fears, desires and insecurities. She was so young, much younger than he knew, but that counteracted his fears of aging and mortality. She was insatiable when they made love but content to simply be together if he couldn’t. But he found his impotence was vastly diminished. He could do it a lot.
She had been a prostitute. He had felt like a whore for years. The things he had done to amass his fortune were the etched scars on his conscience. People had lost livelihoods, millions, families, companies due to his manipulations through the years. He’d fucked over that guy, he’d fucked over that other guy. He had certainly fucked his way to the top. He knew it. He didn’t judge anyone for screwing the other guy and hoped he wouldn’t be judged. It was how the game was played. Now he had quit the game and was leaving the country.
Tallie’s proficiency in effacing his conscience and his capacity for regret was definitely an asset. He loved her for it.
His hopes were wrapped up in two words: second chance. He would start over with her in the south of France somewhere and live happily ever after. No one batted an eye if a wealthy middle-aged man showed up with a very young girlfriend—why wouldn’t he? It was the thing to do and had been for aeons. Look at Picasso, look at Vadim.
Maybe Jason would take up some bohemian, artistic lifestyle. But he doubted it. Any form of creativity had been exorcised by his mother a lifetime ago. His two brothers were the same. One was a nuclear physicist at China Lake Naval Station and the other one was a cardiologist. Jason might, however, buy a perfect car for the marvelous corniches and become a wine connoisseur. Truthfully, his only priority was keeping Tallie.
Tallie had been studying French with a private tutor for the past six months in preparation for this move. A year ago, Jason had asked her what she wanted to do with the rest of their lives. She had told him part of her plan. He was all for it.
He had slowly moved his money to Swiss and Bahamian bank accounts, divesting himself of any non-liquid holdings other than the CPW apartment. He had a listing agreement prepared with a broker in case Bianca had not wanted to keep it. Soon, he would be free of that place as well. He had turned in his resignation the day after Christmas. As expected, it was accepted immediately and not subject to any waiting period. He knew too much. It was better if his security access was terminated. He and Tallie had AirFrance Premier class tickets for New Year’s Day, her birthday. They would stay a week in Paris and then travel to Monte Carlo, working their way west along the coast until they found the town they wanted to take up residence in. It sounded like a fairy tale to both of them.
Tallie still believed in money as the way of making her dreams come true. She didn’t have much conscience, scarred or otherwise. All she had was the conviction that she deserved the best life had to offer after putting up with the worst. She did not love Jason. She had never experienced love for another human. Rocky had awoken some tender feelings; she thought she might not be unable to love. But Jason was a means to an end similar to the way her body was a means to an end. She was emotionally and mentally disconnected from both of them. They both served her mind and the desires of her heart.
Another way she used Jason was learning about investing from him. Apple was about to put out something revolutionary. She had taken a third of her money and invested it in Apple. She invested much less in other stocks she thought offered interesting products and services: digitally streaming movies, solar-powered air-conditioning, electric cars. She enjoyed waking up in the morning and checking on the markets, then checking on them again a couple of times through the day. Jason found this very amusing and delightful.
He loved taking her shopping. She was so beautiful any clothes looked good on her. She developed a simple, classic style, favoring French designers and anything white.
Jason perked up when he heard the front door opening. Tallie and Rocky came in from their walk in the park. “How did it go?” she asked him. She knew from his face he had told his wife.
Jason walked forward and wrapped Tallie in his arms, breathing in the scent of her silken hair. “It’s done.”
“You okay?” Tallie pulled away and looked in his eyes with her clear, stunning green ones. She was going to France, she thought happily.
“Fine. But you’ll never guess.” He told Tallie about Bianca’s affair.
“I’m sorry, Jason,” she said, trying not to laugh. She went to the bar and poured him a drink. She encouraged drinking. He was a mellow drunk who usually passed out quickly. That gave her time to herself.
Jason downed the Scotch in one gulp. “It’s fine. Fuck it. It’s better this way, actually. No regrets.”
“You don’t need to feel bad about a thing,” Tallie agreed, refilling his glass. “In fact, you need to feel good,” she flirted. She reached her hand between his legs and felt for his dick through his trousers. It was as soft as she knew it would be; the whiskey certainly wouldn’t help it. She was glad. She had no desire to have sex with him but wanted to flatter him a little. “Soon we will put all this behind us and live happily ever after.”
“You think that it’s possible?” Jason asked as he pulled her into his arms again. He rested his chin on her soft hair.
“I’m sure it is. Don’t all the fairy tales say so? And France is the land of fairy tales.”
A few weeks later, Tallie was convinced this was true. Jason and Tallie had landed in Paris and stayed at the Ritz. She had drunk champagne on the Eiffel Tower, eaten onion soup at a bistro in Montmartre, spent thousands on the Champs Élysées and stood before the Mona Lisa in the Louvre like every other tourist. Jason bought a Porsche convertible from the dealer on Rue Gros on the Right Bank north of the Île aux Cygnes. They drove out of the city to Versailles. After spending the night at Trianon Palace, they toured the chateaux of the Loire for a few days. Here indeed were fairy tale castles. The Chatueau d’Ussé is said to have inspired Charles Perrault, author of Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. Chaumont, Chenonceau, Chambord all inspired Tallie to persevere on her chosen course. Jason benefited from this with nights of sublime pleasure and carefree days driving the country roads and péages to Monaco. Tallie had no interest in gambling, a fool’s way with money. She had no interest in the adrenaline rush gamblers feel. Cold and calculating was the way to handle money and men. Tallie did allow several men to flirt seriously with her in case Jason needed any reminding of her desirability. She wanted him to be aware that she chose him, allowed him to have her. It was never the other way around.
Jason did not gamble. His pleasure was derived from one source: Tallie. She capitalized on his weakness and insecurity. Her failure to conform to moral virtue soothed him. She was vice incarnate. She existed and succeeded in the world quite well, with or without him, he knew. She was bad, and he loved her for this.
In the canopied bed in their hotel room one night, Jason was in a talkative mood. He had been thinking about this all day as they’d shopped, swam, dressed and dined. “You know why I love you, Tallie?” Jason asked as he played with a strand of her silken, platinum hair.
“My looks?”
“Of course. But there’s more.”
“Oh, really? My amazing personality then,” she said, turning against his shoulder to flash him a smile.
“Yes. It’s because you are real. You are who you are and I love you for it. All the awful, ugly parts of me, the shitty things I’ve done to get by—to succeed or simply to survive—seem fine when I am with you. I am not good enough to be perfect all the time. I am flawed. Greedy, vain, shallow and selfish—and I don’t want to feel so fucking bad about it. I want it to be okay to be those things because everybody else is out there hustling too.”
“I make you feel good about being a shitty person.”
“Yeah.”
“Because I am a shittier person?” Tallie’s smile was a veil.
“No, no, it’s not that,” Jason back-pedaled. “I think you a real person, authentic and true to yourself. In business, in life, I don’t want this vilification if I’m a little crappy to you—because you knew I was going to be crappy. And you will be shitty to me if I am weak or vulnerable. It’s a game, it’s a war.”
“Is that true?”
“Not for us! I only mean that stuck up, self-righteous, judgmental, elitist bitches who always think they know what’s best without ever getting their hands dirty doing any actual work shouldn’t be the ones calling the shots.”
“Oh, I agree,” Tallie said, turning to straddle him with her silken thighs. “Only someone who is willing to be a little dirty should end up in charge.”
Jason felt himself harden.
She ground her hips against him. “People don’t want to be spoon fed soft food their whole lives. Even when life isn’t hard, men want to be hard in order to fuck. Is that it?” she asked.
“That’s close enough,” Jason agreed as he entered her.
Afterward, Jason laid his head on her breast and she played with his fine hair. “Want me to tell you a story, Jason? Our talk before reminded me of it.”
“Sure, honey, if you want to.”
“You know I like reading. Well, one of the first books I fell in love had the stories of Br’er Rabbit.”
“Br’er Rabbit?”
“Yeah. You know, the one who was born in the briar patch? Well, this was my favorite story in that book. Once upon a time,” she began, “Br’er Possum was walking down the road, heading to the river. And as he was walking he came upon a hole. Being nosy, he poked his head in and saw Snake. Snake was a lowdown mean ole liar and Br’er Possum didn’t like or trust him one bit. But Snake was stuck there down in that dark hole with a brick on his back. ‘Hep me, Br’er Possum. Hep me,’ Snake hissed.
“‘I ain’t gone hep you, nossuh,’ Br’er Possum called down to Snake. ‘You’s a mean ole Snake and’ll bite me iffen I give you a chance.’   “‘Mebbe. Jiss mebbe. But hep me, Br’er Possum. Hep me get this brick offen my back.’
“Well, Br’er Possum couldn’t stand to see any creature so miserable. So he climbed up a tree, broke off a dead branch, dragged it over, poked it down into the hole and pushed the brick off Snake’s back. He got ready to head on down the road when he heard, ‘Hep me, Br’er Possum. Hep me.’
“Br’er Possum stopped where he was and went over to poke his nose back in the hole. ‘Now what?’ he asked Snake.
“‘I been stuck in this hole for days. Sides is too slick for me to slither up. Hep me get outta this hole, Br’er Possum.’
“‘Iffen I get you out that hole, Snake, you gone bite me.’
“‘Mebbe. Jiss mebbe. But hep me, Br’er Possum, hep me.’
“Well, Br’er Possum couldn’t stand that pitiful noise much longer. So he grabbed the branch, stuck it in the hole, picked up Snake and flung him into the high grass alongside the road. Just as he was moving on, Br’er Possum heard once more, ‘Hep me, Br’er Possum. Hep me.’
“Snake had slithered out of the grass and was lying in the middle of the road looking feeble.
“‘Now what you want, Snake? I done got the brick offen yore back and I done got you up outta that hole. What you need now?’
“‘I got so cold down in that hole. Can’t you pick me up and put me in yore pocket and warm me up some?’
“‘Snake, iffen I do that, yore gone bite me.’
“‘Mebbe. Jiss mebbe. But hep me, Brer Possum, hep me.’
“Br’er Possum looked over at Snake lying there pitiful in the middle of the dirt road. He did look cold and puny. So Br’er Possum agreed. Snake coiled himself up real tight and Br’er Possum stuck him in his pocket.
“Amblin' down the road awhile, Br’er Possum almost forgot about Snake he was so quiet and still in his pocket. When all of a sudden, Snake poked his head up out of the pocket and said, “Br’er Possum, I’m gone bite you.’
“Br’er Possum stopped in his tracks. ‘Snake! How come you is gone bite me? I knocked the brick offa yo’back and I pick you up out the hole.’
“‘Yassuh, an’ I thank you.’
“‘Then, you’s cold so I hep you some mo’ and put you in my pocket.’
“‘Yassuh, an’ agin I thank you.’
“‘So how come it is you gone bite me? Is that anyway to do someone who hep you out?’
“‘Br’er Possum, you knew I was a snake when you put me in your pocket.’”
Jason had dropped off to sleep long before Tallie got to the end of her story. But she felt justified. He had been warned.

They traveled along the Côte d’Azur to Cannes. Finding the town perfect, Tallie immediately decided this was where they should stop. They acquired a condo overlooking the sea and happily settled in. The end of winter passed in pale sunshine and deliciously expensive dinners. Shopping and the beach were the main daylight pastimes of most of the affluent population. When they felt adventurous, Jason and Tallie drove into the Provençal hills in search of the view of Mont Sainte-Victoire which Cézanne had painted many times. They went to vineyards and shops and markets in search of the perfect bottle of wine or perfume or olive oil. Sometimes, they spent a night or two in a hotel in the little towns they visited. As springtime came, the earth and sky warmed. More time was spent at the beach or by the pool. Tallie had started reading the legends of Charlemagne and In Search of Lost Time. She herself was passing time until she accomplished her goal.
Through this honeymoon phase, Jason existed in a state of euphoric bliss. He rarely saw her faults or the depravity he himself was party to by fucking a fourteen year old girl as often as he could. He only saw that she wanted it, this, him. She initiated sex much more often than he did. She served his every need, from ordering his breakfast and picking out his clothes to fixing him drinks, sucking his dick and telling him bedtime stories. What else could he want?
Every now and then, he saw her out there by the pool talking to some man or another. Once at the beach he had joined her after a nap and found her “wrestling” with a teenage boy she said she’d been playing frisbee with. As she waited for him at a nearby bar one night, he’d come in and seen a man in his thirties lean over and kiss Tallie’s cheek while handing her a card. She denied it was anything to worry about.
Jason became obsessed with pleasing her. He knew the likelihood of her staying with him forever was slim. But as the months passed and she was still there, he thought there might be a chance. They traveled together. They went to the United Kingdom and Japan. Tallie’s passport said she was twenty but really she had recently turned fifteen.
The thought was planted that he should give her all of his money. He didn’t really know where the thought came from—him, her or some other source. He could never recall when or how it happened. But it became an obsessive thought to him. He should give her all of his money. Then she would be his and he would be hers. When he looked back on it later, he wondered if she hypnotized him when he slept because it really made no sense. But in the summer of 2008, Jason decided to give Tallie all of the money he had at Credit Suisse. It was fifty-eight million dollars.
Jason and Tallie traveled to Geneva. She went through the process of opening an account which wasn’t much like the Bond movies. It was rather genteel and reassuring. Then Jason deposited his money into her account. And that was it.

The bitch needed out. Tallie awoke to the sun streaming in and dance music on her radio alarm. She felt like she would levitate. She’d done it. She was as fleet and golden as sunlight. As Tallie twirled around her room naked, Rocky watched her serenely from his pillowy bed. Her hair streamed behind her in a silvery curtain, the threads catching the light and creating a swirling halo as she danced.
All of that money…
All the money…
It was hers.
She shimmied her lissome body to the beat of hypnotic French electronica letting all thought evaporate, dissolved. She wanted to fuck. Who was around?
She called for room service and rather easily enticed the young waiter into her room. He boned nicely. She sat on top of his hard cock, bouncing up and down against his balls as his eyes were shut tight trying not to come too fast. She stopped for a moment and he opened his eyes. “How old are you?” she asked in French.
“Seventeen, mademoiselle,” he answered.
“Very nice.” She didn't continue the conversation. “Hold on,” she commanded. She sliced his nipple with her sharp fingernail and while he writhed from the pain she squeezed hard with her muscles and brought his cock deep inside her. She raked up the side of his ribcage with her razor like nails and felt his resistance build. Then she plunged her forefinger into his neck under his jaw while she bore down with her hips. He looked confused and slightly angry. She licked up his chest and ground her mouth against his. She bit his lip until she tasted blood. Then she popped off his dick, wet it with spit and sat her ass on it. She felt it sliding in and began to salivate uncontrollably. Slurping her drool back in, she squealed and clutched her breasts, pinching the nipples hard with her fingers. Her waiter finally understood. He turned her around and drove his dick hard into her, ruthlessly fucking her ass while her hand touched them both and finally she came barreling down, calling out as orgasmic ripples shuddered through both of them.
She paid him and told him to come back later, nearly coming again with the thrill of that simple transaction.
“Ah, Tallie, you are a bitch,” she murmured to herself as she sipped the champagne the boy had brought. Sitting on the terrace watching the light glitter on the surface of the lake, she was the queen of the world as she had always wanted to be. It hadn’t been all that hard, either. Three years after the bus ride to New York, Tallie had what she had dreamed up on the way.
Now what? Oh, she had more dreams. In time, she would go back to New York and establish herself properly. There is nothing more any Southern girl wants than to be a lady of fine distinction. Respected. Rich, of course. Powerful in a petty way. Yes, in a while she would head back. Never to Louisiana which would always by her birth identify her as trash. But New York was hers as long as she had beauty, brains and cash.
In the mean time, Tallie would burn through and fuck and take whatever she wanted with no remorse. There was nothing and nobody to stop her.
Jason was now dependent on her for his well-being. She had obsequiously flattered—coyly persuaded—indignantly pouted—aroused his jealousy: any viable tactic to manipulate his emotions and ego to serve her purpose. She had control of him physically as well through erections and ejaculations all timed to her will. But the masterstroke had not been hypnosis while he slept. He was fully conscious when he decided to give her power over him. Although it was what she wanted and the goal of her manipulations, giving her his money was indeed his idea. It had been his idea and his action, voluntary. He had realized he wasn’t worth fifty-eight million dollars. He was only worth what she let him have. This thought had reshaped itself into the action of giving her the money in order to keep her, in order to be valued by her at his true worth.
Whatever happened now was in her hands. He let go of the responsibility. Now he would become the passive recipient of whatever she allowed him. Of course, he had some money in the Bahamas but he had given her the vast majority of his accumulated wealth. He would sit back and allow her to run the show.
For months, it was fine. Tallie was more open in her flirting with other men. She was fucking lots of waiters when Jason wasn’t looking. She didn’t fuck him as often but he didn’t mind; she’d been wearing him out. She had decided to give him a year. He really wasn’t a bad guy. He was old, but there were lots of older men in Cannes. He was still in decent shape and good-looking if slightly melted around the edges.
Tallie relaxed in the sun, shopped, went to spas, found boys to fuck. She quit reading. She didn’t want to know any more. She had found the land of the lotus-eaters and was enjoying her fair share of the narcotic flower.
White
November 2016

“What did you think was going to happen?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think—about the future, about anything. I was possessed.” Jason smiled grimly as he sat at the bar in the Waldorf Astoria’s Peacock Alley, still disbelieving that this place was about to be closed up for three years.
“You were stupid.” At the bar, he had run into Tom Apton, a golfing buddy of his from the old days. Tom had heard about Jason and Tallie.
“I couldn’t resist her. I wouldn’t even try. I am still hooked on her. If she walked in here right now—”
“She won’t.”
“I know. I wish she would. I miss her every minute.”
“Maybe you should try heroin.” Tom laughed and waved at the bartender for another round.
Jason smiled. “I’ve thought about it. I stayed drunk for months after she left.”
“I’ve never been much for drinking for comfort. Seems so pathetic.”
Shrugging, Jason reached for his Scotch. “Yep, it is,” he said as he drank down the contents.
“Well, now what?” Tom said, slapping Jason’s back.
“No idea. I’m back in New York. No interest in going back into finance—even if I could land a job. I think I will just see what happens. Isn’t that what this town’s about? I’ve still got enough to get by for a while.”
“Well, bro, you need anything, let me know. Glad to see you.”
“Yeah, you too. You seen Bianca?”
“No, not for a long time. Five years maybe.”
“Oh,” Jason replied simply and clasped his friend’s shoulder. “Well, see you around.” Jason walked outside into the crisp autumn afternoon. After ten years, he had finally come back to the city. Once Tallie left him in the summer of 2009, Jason had moved to the Bahamas and turned into a parrothead, in continual search of his next drink. He’d given up porn and virtually all women. Every now and then he’d hook up with some middle-aged lady at a bar. But that was it. He hardly even cared about sex anymore. Too much damage over the years. He preferred fishing. Salt Life had cured him.
He really didn’t know what he was doing back here. Walking, Jason huddled into his new coat. It was the first time he’d been in the cold in ten years. A few snowflakes whirled through the gray sky, not sticking to anything. New York was the same as always—hurried, harried, maxed out. Jason had no interest in living that way anymore. “Life is hard. After all, it kills you,” was a quote by Katharine Hepburn he’d read recently. It was on a calendar at a little restaurant in Andros Town. He sailed over there on his boat occasionally, ate fried conch.
But that line had got him thinking. Both of his parents and his brothers were still alive. But Jason was over fifty now. People had been dropping dead left and right this year. Maybe it was time to make amends with his family before it was too late. His heart had been bothering him lately, seemed to be skipping every few beats. He woke up choking sometimes. He thought he might have sleep apnea but he wasn’t about to wear one of those masks. He didn’t really care.
Somehow the apathy of those lotus-eating years had never faded. As he had lived those days with Tallie in the south of France, he knew life wouldn’t get any better. He drove the corniches and drank the best wine. He ate at three Michelin star or better restaurants every evening and made love to his opiate princess at night. He knew it wouldn’t last but honestly it had lasted longer than he thought it would.
Tallie had told him they were through nearly four years to the day since they had met. She was even more beautiful, a flower in bloom at sixteen. He knew she was too smart and beautiful to stay with him forever. They were outside Notre Dame in Paris on a July evening. She had recently met an Italian movie star she found irresistible and they were going to live together. This was goodbye.
She walked across the plaza and met the young man who had been waiting for her in front of the church. They disappeared along the riverside while Jason watched from the cafe. That was it. Forever, part of him would be stuck in that moment.

Over the years, Bianca found herself trapped in the moment when Jason struck her. It wasn’t that it had hurt so badly. It was the shock. Self-righteous, dissatisfied, entitled, superior he’d called her. He wished he’d never married her because of the day on the beach, the day she’d revealed her heartbreak and he interpreted her as a liar.
The romance with Shea had died quickly. Bianca quit her job and drifted. She left the city for a while. Andrew had graduated early and moved to Seattle. Jessica had finished college and gotten a job in China. Both kids wanted to be as far from their parents as possible to escape the shame.
Eventually, Bianca moved back to New York. She got an apartment in the Bronx and rode the train to her job as office manager in an off-Broadway theater. Riding the train, she wondered at the poverty she witnessed daily. Shouldn’t we have figured this out by now? Why can’t the whole city be beautiful? So much suffering. She was grateful to be here at all but why wasn’t it better? In Manhattan, she loved noticing the details beaux-arts builders put in, so much more than absolutely necessary despite cost. Why?
Maybe the war and fear of war really set us back, she thought. For the people of her time, there was a sense of impending doom that nineteenth century and twenty-first century people didn't have. The twentieth century was a hundred years of war and looming death. Paranoid freaks, the kids call us now.
She worked at a big theater full of dynamic activity. The fun and eccentric people helped bring Bianca back to life. Pierced and tattooed, cursing, smoking, yelling, shit-kicking stagehands amused Bianca. They regarded her as “Mom” but inwardly she felt punk, defiant and angry and nihilistic. She started smoking again, her true love faithful in the warm pleasure it brought her. By now she couldn’t care less if it killed her. She’d lived more than she’d planned to.
Her tattoo was of a black heart. “When you grow up, your heart dies.” No fucking kidding. Bianca remained mystified about her two decades of marriage. How could it be possible to lie next to someone so duplicitous as a cheater? She had trolled the sites discussing cheating and was appalled at how common it all was. Maybe Bianca had grown entitled and self-righteous over the years. Smug. But she wasn’t a liar—was she?
She doubted herself. Constantly, remembrances of days gone by flitted randomly through her brain as she tried to make sense of life, or at least her life. Amber, Berkeley, hook ups, parents, beach trips, New York, babies, plays, office parties, concerts, restaurants, walks in the park, Shea, politics, celebrities, taxi rides, goldfish, dogs, songs, clothes, alcohol, classes—any memory that did not directly face Jason. She reconstructed her mind around him. But his presence was always there, the elephant in the room of her past, stomping around and crushing the fragile moments she treasured.
She had lied. She had lied to herself more than to anyone else. She—who had once been honest and forthright—had lived in constant denial of her identity. And it wasn’t sexual. It wasn’t gender-related. It wasn’t about ethnicity or race or class or age. She was the burning end of the cigarette, ignited hot fire turning to ash. She was being shaped in the divine forge, impurities burnt away by flame. Cooling a little, shape revealed, she was human.
Like any alchemist can testify, refining by fire unveils essence. During her years with Jason, Bianca had encapsulated herself with the trappings of the bourgeois life expected by her peers. When all along, she should have and did know better. When she thought back to those years, she could not help but regret the actions and omissions, feeling deep remorse. She should have recognized much of her professional purpose had originally been driven by fear. Growing up with the constant threat of nuclear annihilation had informed the majority of her career choices. This younger generation scoffed at this as ridiculous but it was true, and terrible. The fact that we were all still here was due to the miracles of compromise, reason, compassion and flat-out trust. The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them, Hemingway said. Suddenly, Bianca found herself in the midst of Twitterers and Snapchatters and realized she had become as obsolete as the ideology that had shaped her. When she removed fear of death, rejection, heartbreak and insecurity—all things she had faced and conquered—she was left with her cold, black heart and a wicked sense of humor. Fuck. It.
That was who she was.

Tallie pushed the stroller with the twins across Madison Avenue trying to get back to Park. It was a Sunday afternoon and she’d decided to take them to Central Park Zoo on the nanny’s day off. Allison and Scott were three now, results of her relationship with an outfielder for the Yankees. Tallie had been back in New York for five years. Currently, she was single as the ball player had become a little too possessive for her taste. She thought of Marilyn Monroe married to Joe DiMaggio who expected her to cook his spaghetti every night. In the long run, Joe had loved her—he had sent roses to Marilyn’s crypt until he died. Maybe Marilyn should have stayed with him and Tallie sometimes thought maybe she should have stayed with the twins’ father. But what was done was done.
Tallie regretted yelling at Scott earlier. He’d found a quarter by the sea lions and had bent to pick it up. Tallie screamed at him and yanked his arm. Hard. She hated herself for that. As she maneuvered the stroller back onto the sidewalk from the street, the truth sliced into her like a knife. No matter how far removed she was from those days, part of her was the little girl scrounging change off the streets to spend at yard sales. Pushing her gorge down, Tallie determinedly strode into her building and rode the elevator to the fifteenth floor. This penthouse apartment was the best place she’d lived so far, including the villa in Italy and the condo in France.
Rocky met her at the door with his genial greeting and then curled back up on his pillow in the pale autumn afternoon sunshine. She helped the kids take off their shoes and jackets and fixed them a snack. Thanking God for nap time, Tallie tucked in Scott and Allison and prayed they would both sleep for hours. She opened her sitter app and found someone to come tonight. She needed to de-domesticate for an evening.
Life stretched out ahead of her like an open road. She would never know that her father had craved the road to get his head on straight. What he’d found was monotony and trash. He’d made a fortune then founded a free private school in Gallup where he worked to this day with the local children.
Tallie was in the final phase she’d imagined for herself on the bus ride so many years ago. Even then, she had pictured herself as a mother, providing everything her beloved children could possibly want. She’d already made generous donations to and met several admission committee members of the school she wanted them to go to for kindergarten. Their pre-school had been arranged while she was still pregnant. Her closet was full of designer clothes, her bank account was full of cash. In a fit of good conscience, she’d even anonymously sent thousands to her mother and siblings and repaid the theater and drug store plus interest.
She sat down on the silk sofa and Rocky hopped onto her lap. Tallie grabbed his scruffy hair and buried her face against his little body. He had been the first to awaken her heart. Now she had these two beautiful, innocent babies she loved completely. And she was scared. She knew she didn’t know what she was doing and was very likely to screw it all up.
Sitting in her ivory and platinum decorated apartment, Tallie added up the price she’d paid to get where she was and reconciled it against all that she had gained. It was a wash. And maybe should never have happened at all.