Jake & Mimi (9 page)

All my training is no match for this. Without ever moving, I’m to the breaking point, too, and then past it, my resolve done
in by the purity, the fury of her surrender, by the sight, at the last, of the tight red silk on her wrists. I’m just able
to set my feet and give a last, lifting thrust, her mouth finding my shoulder again as I pin her to the wall, letting the
last shocks burst inside her, shake her, then ripple away, and as they do, I accept her collapsing body as it leans into mine
and is finally, beautifully still. I hold her until I can trust my arms again and then raise her gently, letting her lift
her bound wrists clear of the hook, and then I set her, more gently still, on the folding chair, kneeling in front of her,
kissing her closed eyes as I brush the damp hair from her face, watching those eyes as I reach behind me and free her ankles
from my back, seeing them open, finally, as I pull her ruined blouse close around her. Open to my face, to the still hallway
around us, and to the realization, just breaking in them now, that the fuck of her life is over.

•     •     •

I step through the gate out onto the quiet sidewalk, the Brooklyn night tasting as clean and clear to me now as mountain air.
I can see, a block up, the neon lights of a bodega and I head for it, feeling the way I always do just after I leave them.
Emptied out. At peace. I could walk for miles, but it would be three rough ones, at least, to the Brooklyn Bridge and another
four from there, so I go to the old pay phone just outside the bodega and call the car service. Then I buy a tall, freezing
can of beer from the man of the place, who drops it into a paper bag and hands it over, and I cross the street with it and
sit down on the steps of a brownstone to wait for my ride.

The block is all brownstones, save one. Across the street from me sits a big yellow house straight out of a southern dream,
with latticed windows and topped by a small tower served by a curving set of stairs. A widow’s walk, I think they call it.
It’s easy to forget that this used to be a port town, that once Mrs. Captain could climb those stairs and look out over the
sea. I take a long sip of beer, lean back, and look up at the dark sky.

I’ve got buddies out of law school now, bringing down one twenty-five per, pre-bonus. Putting in hours that would shame a
farmer, true, lucky to stagger back to their posh pads by midnight or to make it twice a summer to the shares they rent in
the Hamptons. Still. Playing the game and winning. Getting ahead.

I’ve got others going the romance route. Been with their girls two, three years now, and the spark’s still there. Some of
them under the same roof, even. Sure, they switch channels when the wedding ads come on, and grit their teeth come Valentine’s
Day, but even so. Best friends and all the rest of it. Happy.

And if I had the chance to trade one of these nights for any part of their lives — forget it. Jesus, she was unbelievable.
Clear outside herself. And her finish… I take another sip of cold beer. Down the line I may pay the piper for these nights,
miss out on money, advancement — hell, on love — but at least I’ll know what I paid him for. The chance to feel, for a few
minutes, completely, electrically alive. To feel a rush that no amount of money, and no girlfriend, will ever give you.

The low lights of a limo turn the far corner and head up the block toward me. Diane Silio was incredible tonight. And two
weeks ago Melissa Clay was just as good. But as I look up into the dark sky, the face that comes into my mind is a new one.
The face of a girl I didn’t know before this morning. A girl with soft hair, gorgeous skin, and a body as tempting in her
work suit as any model in lingerie.

Mimi Lessing.

I know her type. I could never get near them up at school. She grew up in Larchmont, I’ll bet, or New Canaan. Riding lessons,
private school. Held herself apart from them, but even so, they shaped her. Thinks sex is a ballroom dance. Forget it, Jake.
A coworker with a ring on her finger and the last girl on earth who would ever have that side to her. Still. I felt something
this morning in the hall, and again tonight in the bar. And I saw something in her eyes when we talked, when she told me Diane
Silio was watching me.

The limo pulls to the curb in front of me. Through its open window I see the big arm of Rudy and then his sardonic smile as
he shakes his head and gestures with his thumb toward the back. I stand, finish off my beer, and walk down the steps, pausing
at the limo door to take in a last breath of spring night air, then climb inside.

Yes, there was something in her eyes. A look I’ve learned to spot in women.

Temptation.

I
gained entry to Miss Lessing’s private world on a workday morning a year ago.

At 8:30 I watched her descend into the subway at Eighty-sixth and Lexington. An hour later I caught the street door to her
walkup on Eighty-third and York as another tenant was leaving. I checked the apartment directory, stepped inside, and climbed
the stairs to the fourth floor. I stood for a few minutes in the deserted hallway, then walked to the door of apartment 4D.
I knelt in front of it. From my coat pocket I took out the white cloth in which I’d wrapped the tools I would need. I laid
the bundle on the hallway floor and spread it open.

Sunlight from the landing behind me streamed over my shoulder. I picked up the tension wrench and inserted it carefully into
the keyhole. Holding the wrench steady and applying firm counterclockwise pressure, I took the lifter pick and guided it,
too, into the hole. Then I lifted the pins of the lock one by one, until I’d brought them all to shear. After the last one
clicked softly, I drew out the lifter pick, took a slow breath, and turned the tension wrench. The lock gave cleanly. I pushed
on her apartment door, and it opened without a sound.

I stood up and stepped into her living room. It was not at all what I had expected from a woman of twenty-five. Surrounding
me were two solid walls of bookshelves. On them I could see complete sets of gold-embossed Shakespeare, Dickens, and Twain.
Above those shelves were framed pictures of family on one wall, and alone on the other a beautifully clean and elegant lithograph
of a horse in snow country.

I stepped into her bedroom. It was immaculate, the bed made, the suits in her closet discreetly tailored and tasteful. Lying
open on her nightstand was a hardcover book, open to
page 247
.
Van Gogh: His Life and His Art
.

I thought for a second that I might have entered the wrong apartment. But looking back at me from the bureau was Miss Lessing,
her beauty undimmed by a graduation cap and gown, her diploma held to her breast as she smiled into the camera. I walked to
the photo and ran my fingers along it, feeling an excitement rising in me as I had never known. I set about my delicate work.

The finest listening devices in the world were invented in Norway. Øres, they are called, after the Norwegian word for
ear
, and they can be purchased in either of two shops along Electric Row in Oslo. An Øre weighs five grams and is scarcely an
inch in circumference. The device itself is encased in porous plastic, no part of its wiring visible to the naked eye, even
on close inspection. If discovered, it looks like nothing; a piece of a curtain rod, maybe, or a part broken off a furniture
joint. You would throw it away without a second thought. Yet with a speck of adhesive this tiny lump can be attached to almost
anything; and once attached, it can pick up a sigh from ten feet away, a whisper from thirty. The Mossad have used them for
years.

My work required just ten minutes. In the kitchenette I took advantage of the quarter-inch gap between the stove and the cabinet,
securing one Øre, out of sight, to the side of the latter. A second I tucked into her telephone receiver. In the living room
I attached one to the bottom of the couch. In the bathroom one lies hidden in the top corner of her medicine cabinet. And
then I stepped again into her bedroom.

I walked to her bed and knelt beside it. I unscrewed the plastic plate of the electrical outlet, and with the aid of a hanger
I ran an Øre up until it was level with her mattress. I pressed it firmly to the inside wall. A quarter inch of plaster would
be no match for it, I knew. It would stay, silent and listening, not ten inches from her pillow.

The Øre transmits any sound it captures to its mother unit receiver, a black box the size of an electric shaver. This box
I positioned beneath the sill outside her bedroom window. It is visible only from across the way, and across the way is the
bare wall of another building. This mother unit, in turn, beams what it receives out into the air along a dedicated frequency:
a radio transmission, essentially. Its range is limited, no more than a mile, but that made no difference. It is only half
a mile from Miss Lessing’s windowsill to my own.

And on my sill sits my own mother unit, collecting input from its twin on Eighty-third Street and feeding that input through
cable wire into my stereo, where it is directed through my amplifier and so, magically, out my speakers.

Yes, I can sit in my living room at 1200 Sutton Place and listen to Miss Lessing. And listen efficiently, for each Øre in
her apartment can be controlled from mine, activated or shut off by electrical impulses sent through the mother units. Thus
I can follow her from room to room and not be held hostage to the sound of the dishwasher when in fact she has stepped into
the bath.

The industrious Øres burn themselves out quickly. Every three months I must slip back inside to plant fresh ones. Five hundred
dollars apiece, they are. Ten thousand dollars it has cost me to listen to Miss Lessing this past year. To hear her every
spoken word, to drift off each night to the sound of her gentle breathing.

Ten thousand dollars to reclaim what I thought I had lost forever.

W
e sin in the full knowledge that we are sinning.”

Father Ryan used to say that in confession when I was a girl, anytime I pretended not to know if a lie or a mean comment counted
as a sin.

It is nine o’clock Thursday night, and I sit with Jake Teller at the polished oak table in the conference room. Through the
open window come soft sounds from the street far below. We are alone in the firm.

“The final piece,” he says, handing me a page still warm from the printer. “Derivatives — a crib sheet.”

“Thanks,” I say. I three-hole-punch it and slide it into the presentation binder in front of me. I close the binder and look
over at him. “We’re done, aren’t we?”

Jake nods. “I’ll call for our rides.”

I stare down at the binder and take a quiet breath.
Play it safe, Mimi
. All I have to do is let Jake Teller call the car service, and our time together will be done. Six nights it’s taken us,
three of them late ones, but we’ve mastered the Brice account. Our report is ready for Mr. Stein, and because it’s ready,
my work with Jake Teller is finished. I’ll see him only in the hallways. In the daytime.

“Jake?”

He looks up, phone in hand. I try to imagine what my fiancé is doing this very second. At his desk at the magazine, leaning
over a sentence. Changing the passive voice to the active.

“You’ve been a huge help,” I say. “Can I buy you a drink?”

The night is cool and the streets busy as we walk down Lexington Avenue. I’m a fast walker, but even so, Jake slows his pace
for me. He is tall, an athlete, and I knew when he shook my hand in Mr. Stein’s office that he wasn’t like the other associates.
I’ve never had to “handle” any of the men in the firm. The partners are my father’s age, and they act it, and the other associates
are… lost in their work. They come to my desk with account questions and with nothing, ever, in their tone or eyes. Jake is
different. I shouldn’t be doing this.

We turn onto Thirty-ninth Street and walk east, and two blocks later we reach the Gangway Pub. Music and light spill out the
door as Jake holds it open for me. Earlier this evening Anne called me in the conference room, and I promised to meet her
here at ten o’clock. Just forty minutes from now. My out, if I should need one.