Butterfield Institute - 01 - The Halo Effect (3 page)

How could this woman, who ran a successful twenty-firstcentury brothel, who teased and tortured and pleasured men to the tune of two thousand dollars a session, look so innocent and vulnerable?

“Cleo?”

“Yes?” She had been so deep in thought she couldn’t remember what I had asked her.

“You said that this man thinks that you might be in danger. Have you been threatened?”

“No. Nothing has happened, not yet. But he’s afraid of what will happen when word gets out about the book.”

“Has the deal been announced?”

She shook her head but didn’t say anything. The clock on my desk ticked, making a slight but distinct sound as each second passed. We were running out of time, but I didn’t want her to leave before she answered me.

“I really am in love,” she said.

“You say that as if you have to convince me of your feelings.”

“Maybe…maybe I have to convince myself.”

“Why?”

“Because how can I love someone but not be able to make love to him?”

“And you can’t?” This was an important revelation, and I watched her carefully as she composed herself and then answered.

She shook her head. Once. Twice. And then a third time. Finally she began to speak. “No. No matter how hard I try. I can’t do the simplest things with him. How can I feel the way I do about him and not be able to go down on him without gagging? He puts one hand on my breast and I freeze. He kisses me and I get sick to my stomach. You know, even though I’m getting paid to do it, I still like sex. Always have. It’s what I do. How can I not be able to do it with the one guy who really matters to me?”

Her tears caught in the reflection of the sun in her eyes. Cleo even cried in a lovely way: her eyes didn’t get red; she didn’t scrunch up her face. Her lips quivered and a small sob escaped from her lips. “I’m really confused.”

She had just told me more about herself in the past fifteen minutes than she had in all the days and weeks that she had been coming to see me. I nodded. “I know.”

“Do you think this is what I’m really here to talk to you about? Not how I want to please people. Not the book, but what is wrong between this man and me.” She shook her head vehemently. “Is that what happens in therapy? People come to you for one thing and find out something completely different is bothering them?”

“It might look like that, but everything is connected in some way. However, figuring that out isn’t your job right now. You should just feel free to tell me what’s on your mind. Whether it seems connected or not.”

She didn’t say anything.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“How he’d feel if he knew that I had just told you all that. He’s sort of private.”

“Cleo, is there a reason you won’t use his name?”

“Occupational hazard. I never use men’s real names. To protect their privacy. I just give everyone nicknames.”

“But you said he’s not a client.”

“No. No, he’s not.”

“If you were to give him a nickname, what would it be?”

She laughed. “I’ve given him a few nicknames.”

“Okay. What one comes to mind first?”

“Caesar.”

I must have arched my eyebrows, because she laughed. “Do you think it’s silly?”

“No, but I’m curious. Why Caesar?”

“The real Caesar was so commanding and powerful. Did you see the movie? His passion for Cleopatra was so allencompassing. It just reminds me of how he is.”

“Is he understanding about your sexual conflicts with him?”

She nodded. “No. Yes. Well, intellectually yes. He understands that I am having some sort of resistance to doing what he wants me to do to him—what I want to do to him—and confusing it with what I do with my clients….” She broke off, close to breaking down again.

I’ve been a therapist for ten years, a sex therapist at the Butterfield Institute for five of them, and have had more than fifty long-term patients. One thing I’ve learned is that if we are sensitive to our patients, if we listen to what they say as well as to what they don’t say, they reveal all the clues we are going to need to help them in the first five to eight weeks of therapy. It can take an infinite amount of time to move the pieces around until they lock into place and present us with a whole picture, but we get the clues early on. I was getting them now.

Cleo’s head was bowed. Her eyes were lowered. Her body remained quite still. I didn’t know if she was crying again, but clearly she was distressed. I looked away for just a second, toward the windows and the balcony outside my office—the narrow terrace that is just wide enough for me to stand on and sip a cup of coffee as I watch the pedestrians and traffic on the street below. Beyond that are two lovely trees, one magnolia and the other dogwood, that filter the strong summer light as it spills into my office, sending shadows dancing across the wall and the art deco rug.

Cleo started speaking while my head was turned.

“Caesar seems more worried about the book than about our sex life. He doesn’t understand why my sense of accomplishment at having written the book isn’t enough. He thinks I should burn it now that I’ve gotten it ‘out of my system,’ as he says. He’s afraid that one of the men I am writing about might try to get back at me. Oh, it’s just so ridiculous.” Her eyes filled up again. “I’m afraid he’s going to give me an ultimatum over this. Over a book!”

The minute hand on the small silver clock on the table by my chair swooshed forward. It was ten-forty-five. The session was technically over. But I didn’t mind giving her a few more minutes.

She was twisting the emerald ring on her finger, twirling it around so that every few seconds the stone caught the light, sending reflections to the wall, then disappearing just as quickly.

“Has he read the book?” I asked her.

“No. No one has. Not yet.”

“Because there’s something in it that you don’t want Caesar to know?” I guessed.

She nodded. “I haven’t lied to him about what I do. I just haven’t gone into the kind of detail the book does. Caesar thinks that for the last couple of years I’ve been behind a desk
sending out the girls. And I have been doing that. But I’ve also been doing some calls myself.”

“You told him you stopped?”

“He thinks I stopped about a year ago. I didn’t. I still have a half-dozen regular clients I’ve been taking care of for a long time. I know these guys. I have…hell…I have a
relationship
with them.”

“Cleo, I’m not sure that I understand. Does Caesar know you are still going to bed with other men?”

“Well, see that’s the thing. Technically I’m not. I don’t have what you’d call regular sex with most of them.”

“Regular sex?” I laughed. “I don’t make judgments, but there is no such thing as regular or irregular sex, as far as I’m concerned.”

“See, that’s why I like you. We’re on the same side in all this. The logical side. The side that doesn’t make sex into some religious experience that saves souls or plummets you into hell.”

The clock chimed and the bell-like sound drew her attention. “I guess my time is up?”

I nodded.

“Just one more sec?”

I nodded again

She reached down and pulled out the Tiffany shopping bag she had brought with her. I’d noticed it when she walked in but hadn’t thought much about it.

From inside, she extracted a bulky manila envelope, which she held in her hand for a few seconds and caressed as if it was a velvet pillow, or a man’s thigh.

“I printed this out for you. Like I said, no one has seen the whole thing yet or even knows I finished it. It’s my first draft. I still have a lot of work to do. Not to mention better disguising the guys I write about…” She smiled. “But I really want you to read it.”

“Does Caesar know you’re giving it to me?”

“No.” She stood up.

Even though she was getting ready to go, I didn’t want her to miss what I thought might be a moment of insight for her.

“Does keeping that from him make you feel good or bad?”

Her head tilted to the side and a half smile played on her lips. “Good. And bad.” She sighed. “But here’s the thing. If we are going to talk about whether I can really go through with publishing this book, you have to read it. I mean, if I do publish it, I need to be able to give Caesar a really good reason I still sleep with clients. I want to publish my book, but I don’t want to lose him in the process. So…”

She took the last step to the leather chair where I sat.

Holding out my hands, I took the package from her.

It wasn’t light and somehow that surprised me. Everything about Cleo Thane was. From the lilting voice to the blond hair to the pastel-colored clothes she favored—so different from the almost all-black uniform most of us New Yorkers wear—to her pale gray eyes and barely pink lips. Even her perfume, which reminded me of spring and had a base note of lilacs, was light.

There was nothing heavy or dark or ominous about the woman who handed me her confession.

Nothing except for what was actually in that envelope: all the secrets she hadn’t yet told me or anyone else, but that would, in the end, be like the pins a collector uses to secure butterflies to a board after he has captured and killed them.

A
fter Cleo left my office I pushed the play button on my answering machine, and while the morning’s messages repeated, I walked to the window, opened the door to the balcony, stepped out and looked down.

The first message was from my divorce lawyer, telling me that the papers had been signed by the judge and my divorce was final. We’d expected it to happen that day, but there was always a chance that the paperwork would be delayed.

I rubbed my fingers against the gritty stone surface of the balustrade. I was conflicted about having ended my marriage. Yes, it was the right thing to do and I would have championed this divorce if it were for any of my patients. But, despite our problems, I had liked the calm of my life with Mitch. That we had wound up at a place where there was a lack of passion hadn’t been a surprise to me. Many marriages wind up lusterless. But it depressed my husband and he couldn’t live with it. Ex-husband, I reminded myself.

The next message, from an insurance company, droned on while the sun disappeared behind a cloud and peeked back out. It was early June, and the scent of the climbing rose that wound through the railing and up the side of the brownstone perfumed the air. I leaned over, looked down.

Below me on the street, Cleo emerged, stood in front of the building and lit a cigarette, her gold lighter flashing in the sun.

Cleo worried me.

No one who did what she did for a living, who had been with so many men, who had made money having sex with lonely—or worse, with disturbed or sexually addicted—men could remain as untouched and blasé as she appeared.

Despite how long it had taken for us to get to the heart of her problem, I didn’t feel manipulated. I didn’t see any deception. I didn’t feel—in that intuitive way a therapist sometimes has—that she had been holding back. She just needed more time to open up. So then, what didn’t I trust?

My own preconceived notions of what someone who did what she did for a living must feel?

I had other patients who were prostitutes. None, however, who had their own businesses or got paid what Cleo did.

One day a week I did my duty and visited women behind bars to counsel them so that when they were released they would stay off the street. And pigs can fly and there is a Santa Claus. But occasionally I did help. And for that one patient a year who didn’t go back to where she’d just come from, I could give up fifty-two days.

Cleo had never even been near a prison. And to look at her, you would believe that. With her lustrous hair, refined clothes and shining eyes, she presented a very pretty picture. I knew better than to assign personality traits based on appearances. But there was a real guilelessness about her. Were her defence
mechanisms so strong that she simply did not allow the reality of her life to bruise her?

Or was she disturbed in a deeper way? How buried were the fissures and flaws? How long would it take us, working together, pulling and pushing, to find them? Was she just an excellent actress playing one role with her clients, another with me? I didn’t think so, and I knew a little about actresses. My mother had been one. Not a very famous one, though. She never became a bright star, except for a short time in one little girl’s eyes.

My machine beeped and another message started.

“Dr. Stone, this is Officer Tom Dignazio from the Twentyfourth Precinct,” the somber voice said. I stiffened. This was the last message, the one I had ignored while Cleo had been in my office.

“Someone who we believe was a patient of yours has been found. A young girl you were seeing earlier this year when she was in prison. I’m afraid she’s been murdered. And we need you to identify the body.”

He rattled off his phone number and requested I call him as soon as possible.

The body?

Which one of those girls I’d been seeing was now just
the body?
I knew I would call him back, but not yet. Not that fast. I was too stunned.

Below me, Cleo was still standing on the stoop smoking her cigarette. Two men, walking east from Madison Avenue, slowed just a little as they approached, watching her standing there in the street having her cigarette. She must have smiled at them—her back was to me—because one of the guys’ faces lit up as if he’d been anointed. The other just stared. It would have been rude if his expression hadn’t been filled with admiration. They passed her. Then one turned back for a last look.

Cleo took one more puff and threw the cigarette down on the sidewalk, stamping it out with that high-heeled shoe that showed just enough toe cleavage, then she started to walk west, away from me. Just as I was about to turn back to my office, I noticed a third man in the shadows of the building across the street, a bulky briefcase by his foot. He gripped an umbrella with a shining silver handle despite the sunny day.

Clearly, he was watching Cleo.

He stood, unmoving, just watching until she was almost to the corner, and then he began walking in her direction. He moved as if mesmerized, as if pulled forward by her.