Laura Lippman - Baltimore Noir

You see, that’s why my sites make so much money, even though they’re non-nude. It’s all the power of imagination, seeing how far we’ll go, always expecting, hoping, dreaming they’ll catch a glimpse of something we didn’t mean to show. That’s why they’ll love you, Tania, with your shyness and reserve and hints of something more. Oh, great. Perfect.

Now lean back. Wait, let me adjust the pillow. Good. Now arch your back. More. Excellent! You’re so toned… do they have a gym for young Jewesses down Park Heights way? Okay, roll this way a little and look over your shoulder at us. Play with your necklace. Great. Lips apart, teeth just barely showing. Eyes open wider-we want that half-innocent, half-whore look. What, they didn’t teach you that at the yeshiva? Doesn’t matter, it comes natural to you. Good. Good. Good!

As Tania got off the bed, Gary stepped close and kissed her on the mouth. A quick kiss, done almost before she could react, leaving behind the impression of his soft lips and the smell of his sweat and the salamander sensation of his tongue.

“Don’t do that!” she said, but he had already turned away and was back at work. Rummaging through the larger of his bags, he pulled out something white and lacy.

He came back toward her. “This next,” he said, holding out the nightgown. “Give everyone a look at those lovely long legs of yours.”

“I don’t know,” she said. Her voice was hoarse.

Something set in his face, a tightening of skin around his eyes. But when he spoke he sounded just the same. “Oh, sweetie,” he said, “don’t start getting all Red State on me now. It’s just a nightgown. I’m not making you wear a thong or a see-through or anything like that, yet. I know you’re new, which is why I didn’t bring anything too… too much But you have to work with me, Tania, you have to meet me partway. You can’t expect to show nothing, you know?”

His words washing over her.

The opportunity provided by liminal moments is that they give you the chance to shed the skin of your past life, and be reborn,” the rabbi had said. “The danger is that you may leave your old existence behind, but be unable to find your way into a new one. Then you can be lost forever.

Gary dropped the nightgown on the bed, reached down, and yanked her turtleneck out of the waistband of her pants. She felt the goosebumps rise on her newly exposed skin.

“No!” she said. Then, more quietly, “I’ll change in the bathroom.”

“Okay.” He smiled, rubbed the back of his hand against her belly. “Take your bra off, but leave your panties on,” he instructed her. “We’ll give them something to dream about!”

Her face looked simultaneously chilled and feverish in the blue fluorescent light of the bathroom, her hair tangled under the headband, a vein pulsing in her forehead. Did the members find such discomfort sexy? She thought they did. That’s why they liked Jane, the girl who never smiled, who looked like she was posing against her will.

Tania’s eyes traced the scattering of birthmarks on her chest above her bra, the small scar on her belly, the extra flesh above her hips. Already her body didn’t seem to belong to her. Already she was studying it as if she were one of them.

She hung the lacy white nightgown on a hook and took a closer look at it. At most, it would come down only to midthigh. Gary was no doubt planning future ones to be shorter still, to reveal even more.

Turning away from the mirror’s accusing gaze, she reached back, unhooked her bra, and put it down on the counter beside the turtleneck. Unzipped her jeans, pulled them down and off, folded them, and placed them on the counter as well. Took the nightgown off the hook.

She was dropping it over her head when the door swung open and Gary came in. The whites of his eyes had a yellowish sheen and his lips were very red. As she stood there, frozen, he closed the door, raised the camera, and started shooting, the repeated clicking of the shutter like a bird pecking at her skull.

“Get out!” Her voice emerged as little more than a whisper. She struggled to slide the nightgown on, but the hem got twisted around her neck. “Turn off the camera!”

He focused below her waist, the camera clicking. “You have too much hair,” he said. “Our members don’t like so much hair. You’ll have to shave.”

Suddenly the camera was on the counter and he was close to her, so close that she could smell his sweat. One hand rested on her hip while the other moved, searched, probed, further down. “Let me shave you,” he said into her ear. “I love to photograph my girls as I shave them. It’s the most intimate thing-”

“No!” She twisted away from him, stumbled toward the door. But before she could get it open, he grabbed her shoulder, spun her around, and hit her.

Not in the face, not where it might leave a mark during the next shoot. In the stomach. She fell back, her head slamming against the wall. And then he was up against her, his fingernail scratching her flesh as he yanked at her panties, his wet, confident voice apologizing, begging, muttering incantations that she no longer wished to make sense of.

She’d waited long enough. It was time to reenter her life.

She brought her right knee up, felt it slam into something hard and something soft. The breath whistled out of Gary like he’d sprung a leak, and then he was rolling on the floor, grasping himself, moaning and cursing, his red face suddenly white with shock and pain.

Tania stood over him. Men are amazing, she thought, rubbing the back of her head. All you have to do is keep your mouth shut, nod at everything they say, blush a little, and they assume you’re whatever they want you to be. A runaway, a slut, a victim, a whore.

The one thing they never seem to expect is for you to fight back.

She untangled the nightgown and pulled it down, the soft cotton brushing against her skin. Then she stepped over the writhing, gasping Gary and walked out of the bathroom. Found her bag. Reached inside and pulled out the pistol, the.22 she’d had for three years and knew how to use.

She returned to the bathroom, stood near the door, waited for Gary to notice her. When his eyes finally stopped watering and he saw the gun, he grew very quiet and still, even as his hands continued to clutch his groin.

“Didn’t anyone ever teach you,” she said to him, “that when a girl says stop, she means stop?”

He stared up at her, startled by the sound of her true voice. Then he took a deep breath, another, made a nodding motion with his head. “You’re right,” he said, filled with contrition. “I’m sorry, Tania. I lost control. It won’t happen again. I don’t know what came over me. I thought you wouldn’t mind. I thought you understood. My mistake. My terrible mistake. It’s just that you’re so beautiful, so gorgeous… I mean, look at yourself! Just look. Any man would have-but I know I shouldn’t. I know, I know, I’m so sorry, it was like…”

She glanced at the mirror, saw no great beauty, just a tall girl with strong arms and long legs and lots of hair down below. Then she squatted beside Gary and put the gun to his head.

“If you apologize one more time-” she said. “In fact, if you say one more word before I tell you to, I will shoot you.”

He opened his mouth, closed it again, kept quiet. At last he was learning to listen.

In the sudden silence she heard a thud, a knocking sound, a muffled curse, another thud.

Finally.

“Don’t move,” she said to Gary. “Don’t speak.” She stood, looked at the gun, back at him. “You don’t know me well enough to know whether I’ll use this or not.”

She walked across the room to the front door, swung it open just as the man on the other side was hurling himself against it again. He came in fast, catlike, somehow keeping his balance in his heavy leather boots, his wiry hair a mess, his eyes wild beneath his tangled eyebrows. Staring at her, then scanning the room, his gaze resting briefly on Gary lying on the bathroom floor before coming back to her. His sharp-featured face turning murderous as he saw the streaks of blood on the nightgown.