Tampa (21 page)

Though the lawyer was a concession on behalf of Ford’s
family—he’d represent me during the trial and also through a speedy divorce—he wasn’t free: I had to make a public apology that both glorified my husband and portrayed my grief and shame over hurting such a good man. If I could manage to weep, the attorney explained, Ford’s family would give me a bonus of roughly $15,000 for personal expenses during the trial to do with as I wished. “You can keep your car,” he said succinctly. I was in awe of the fact that no matter how radically the muscles around his mouth moved as he enunciated, his stolid mustache didn’t once squirm; it seemed not to be attached to his face so much as constantly hovering a half inch in front of it. “They’ll have all your possessions in the home packaged and moved to a studio apartment that will be paid for until your trial if they deem your set bail is reasonable and decide to pay. If your bail is exorbitant, these items will be moved to a paid storage facility until your release. In exchange for these conditions, you will agree to never publicly speak ill of Ford Price, nor imply that he was responsible, either directly or indirectly, for your actions. Do you
accept
these terms?”

My mind was swimming at the immediate plummet of
socio-economic
class I’d just sustained—having never planned on
getting
caught, I certainly hadn’t put much thought into the adultery clause of our prenuptial agreement. But I knew I didn’t have time
to mourn financial affairs at present; more important was staying out of jail, away from the cloying paws of stinking adult women. “What do they mean, ‘reasonable’?” I asked. “What’s the most they’ll pay?”

He was honest. “Henry didn’t tell me.” A check of his watch
revealed
that it was now past two o’clock in the morning.

“I didn’t think the news would travel so quickly,” I muttered. Was the situation with Ford now hopeless? Perhaps his hearty
reserves
of denial were still pliable; if it was media attention he was so concerned about, maybe after the trial we could move overseas. In my head I fashioned a fantasy where Ford wanted desperately to come save me but his family was forbidding it. Was it so
implausible
that Ford might be able to come to a peaceful acceptance of my more inconvenient cravings, just as I had in deciding to live with him and agreeing to play the part of wife? “Did you see Ford
tonight
?” I asked. “Did he ask about me?”

The attorney, who went by Dennis but whose actual first name was Maximilian, stared at me blankly. “I only spoke to Henry.”

I’d never had much of a relationship with Ford’s father. The first time I met him, he was polite until we had a moment alone. Then he stared at my body as though he was making a scrutinized inspection of something he’d custom-ordered. “You know,” he’d said, “I’ve built a sixty-million-dollar company from the ground up and I still don’t have a trophy wife—you’ve met Margery. Ford can barely wipe his own ass and he’s got you on his arm.” He’d shaken his head, then removed a cigar from his pocket, licked around its end in an obscene way. His enormous pink tongue had looked like some invertebrate coming out of a shell.

I directed my attention back to Dennis. Though I hardly looked
my best, I wanted him to care very personally whether or not my case succeeded. Taking his hands into my own—a move he found awkward; his fingers went limp and he stared down at them,
spreading
his fingers willfully apart as though he was testing out a
prosthetic
for the very first time—I stressed that I could not go to prison. The thought of having to do the things I’d done with Ford and Buck all over again with gruff women, but this time for nothing—no
payoff
of getting to live in luxury or gain increased access to pubescent sons—was too sickening to bear. Instead I’d have to perform
morbid
sexual acts just to avoid getting beaten up, or to get beaten up less. Not to mention that the environment would serve as a pressure cooker, mercilessly aging me; I’d emerge from lockup malnourished and sickly, with brittle hair, gray skin and fully pleated crow’s-feet around my eyes. For the first time in my life I wondered if I could be capable of suicide. “I’d be an unfair target,” I pointed out to him. “People who look like me don’t go to jail.” I realized that for once I wasn’t just attempting to be a bewildered younger woman
looking
toward an older man for guidance; I was truly frightened and needed his help.

“You are unusually attractive.” His voice had a tone of robotic assessment that made me wonder if his mustache was in fact a
life-like
series of tiny brown wires. “I can argue your appearance might put you at risk for increased sexual violence. You’re safe tonight; you’ll be alone in a holding cell until your bail hearing tomorrow morning.”

“No!” I gripped his arm with great force, as though the door might burst open any moment with a hurricane-force wind sent to deliver me to my cell. I imagined lying down on the hard cot and eventually masturbating, despite my best interests, in order to feel
something besides terminal fear. Guards would walk by and shine their flashlights on my moving pelvis; surrounding inmates would see it all and yell out promises to quell my urges through a series of impending rapes.

Dennis let out a long sigh and opened his briefcase. He brought out not a tape recorder or legal notepad but a bottle of what I
assumed
were stimulant pills; he popped two without water and moved his neck from side to side to crack it. “If you want to do this now, have at it, I guess.” The Prices were paying by the hour; I
suppose
he was willing to be patient.

We spoke until
morning, by which point Dennis’s eyes seemed to have widened and set with a gelatin of wariness. Although every window inside the consultation room was firmly shut, by the time I finished telling my version of events, his hair looked blown back slightly at the roots.

“All right,” he said. Two crescent moons of perspiration,
admirable
in their convergent symmetry, had appeared beneath the
underarms
of his blue button-up shirt. “We can do this.” He clicked his pen as though to begin writing, but soon clicked it again,
deciding
against it, and set it back down on the table. “Though it probably would’ve been better if I hadn’t heard over half of that.” This was almost enough to make me laugh—all in all, I’d barely told him anything scandalous. “I recommend you get a shower in before the bail hearing,” he advised. A few trace smears of Boyd’s blood upon my collarbone were visible above the zipper of my
orange
jumpsuit; Dennis stood and pointed at them. “The kid’s okay, by the way. Boyd. Needed a lot of stitches and bled like hell. He’s
all right but his mom’s already stirring up shit with the media.” Though I’d never even seen a picture of her, I imagined her to be a thin, fierce woman whose affinity for cardigans and other modest clothing took precedence over Florida’s warm climate. Would she hold a Bible beneath her arm when she spoke to the cameras?

Having been in
custody all night, I had no idea of how fast my story had spread in just sixteen hours. The bail hearing was packed with journalists and photographers who called out my name
immediately
after the proceedings and flashed cameras as they barked questions. Overall the attention felt more adoring than judgmental; they relished the audacity and vanity of my defense. “Your Honor,” my attorney began, “my client’s looks would make her a particularly susceptible target for sexual violence and harassment in prison. She’s too beautiful to be in the general population of jail.” There was a hushed chorus of shock from the packed room of reporters; their whooshed inhale was the sound made just before a match thrown on a pool of gasoline erupted in flame. The prosecution had a
logical
rebuttal—they argued we’re not a society whose penal system has a sliding scale based on attractiveness. But whether the judge agreed with my attorney, took into account my previously stainless record (for all the times I’d been pulled over, I’d never once actually received a speeding ticket, even before marrying Ford) or just
confirmed
from my personal banking statements that I didn’t have the monetary resources to flee (I knew without ever testing them that none of my credit cards would work any longer), he agreed I could be on house arrest until the trial.

I was charged with six counts of lewd and lascivious battery
against two minors—a laughably small amount given the
number
of times I’d been with Jack and Boyd, but apparently what the prosecution felt they could prove beyond doubt. Though the DA’s office made it known to my attorney that according to Jack’s
version
of events I should have been charged with attempted
manslaughter
for chasing after Jack with a knife, they only flirted with actually trying to make a case. Dennis and I met with the DA a few days after my bail hearing to discuss a possible additional
indictment
, and it was clear their evidence was scarce.

“This implication that my client was seeking Jack Patrick out in order to commit a violent stabbing—well.” My attorney rubbed his hand across his mustache and the corners of his lips several times, as though the allegation was a piece of cake he’d just eaten that had deposited crumbs all over his mouth. “We know for a fact, and Mr. Manning’s account of events supports this, that Jack attacked him in a fit of rage and possibly homicidal agitation. How much of a leap of faith is it that my client felt threatened by him as well? When he ran from the room, isn’t it likely she thought he was going to go retrieve a gun from his father’s bedroom? That he himself was going to get a knife and come back to attack her or lie in wait for her somewhere else? Of course my client grabbed a knife and ran. She was so
terrified
and frightened for her life, she didn’t even feel like she had time to put clothes on first.” He placed a hand onto mine and turned to me. “I bet you could cry just thinking about it, couldn’t you?”

I nodded. The detectives had their heads tilted slightly askance, examining each microexpression I made for traces of guilt. “I could,” I said quietly.

“Don’t blame you one bit,” my attorney bellowed. Then, looking back at the detectives, he repeated himself. “I don’t blame her.” 

While my attorney continued to play up the fear I’d felt that evening, I thought about how I probably wouldn’t have actually killed Jack even if I’d caught up to him. Not unless he’d made some sort of aggressive move—lunged at me, grabbed at the knife—or had been entirely unreasonable in conversation and forced me to take preventative action. I’d only wanted to make him see the
benefits
of storytelling. He could’ve gone back and tended to Boyd until I gathered my things from the house. Then, after I’d left, he could’ve called an ambulance and spoken an innocent-enough tale: that he and Boyd were friends who’d been play-wrestling and the head injury was an accident. I believe that Boyd would’ve been conscious enough to understand the tale and go along with it, or at least commit the scenario to memory before blacking out.

The detective exhaled and traced his finger along the table in large circles. “You know,” he said, “Jack tells us you were banging his father, too.” The other detective lifted a coffee cup to his mouth and spat a clump of chewing tobacco inside. I realized I’d begun to hold my breath with fear that he was about to continue—to relay Jack’s accusation that I’d purposefully let his father die so that my shameful secret would die with him. This could open a whole new mess of legal charges, vastly complicate our defense and the public’s perception, and even cause Dennis to drop the case if he felt too put off by the surprise or guessed that others were likely in store. But apparently the past few months of despondent copulation I’d had with Jack were paying off: he hadn’t passed this information on. Jack himself felt too implicated in it all—he’d been too much a part of the process of having done nothing in Buck’s last hour of need. He’d also continued to sleep with me after I’d made sure Buck couldn’t be saved. 

My attorney’s head pivoted subtly from side to side, considering. “If that were true, it would seem to go toward establishing the fact that my client is a troubled young woman desperately searching for love. Not the ‘ravenous pedophile’ the DA has been referring to her as in media interviews.” I couldn’t help but give Dennis a delighted smile—having his nimble mind on my side was truly an advantage.

The second detective spat into his cup again with more force. “Or she could just be a ravenous pedophile
and
a whore,” he said. The commencement of name-calling meant our burden of defense had been met—they weren’t going to bring any additional spurious charges beyond the sex crimes.

“With that, gentlemen, I believe we’re done for the day.” My attorney stood and I followed; the second detective stared at me as we walked past. His eyes took in the details of my body with a
conflicted
gaze that I knew well: even having seen all the facts of the case, he still wanted me. He wanted me despite knowing what that meant about him.

The months before my trial were spent alone on house arrest
in a shoddy Tampa apartment; it had wheezing air-conditioning and low-quality gray carpet that I refused to walk on barefoot. Droves of pear-shaped soccer moms set up camp on the sidewalk across the street and picketed day and night with homemade
posters
declaring me to be a sick child molester who deserved life in prison. I could only imagine their husbands were happy my case had given these beastly women a new hobby that got them out of the house.

Yelling and shaking signs, they became workers in a protest economy whose currency was appreciative car honks; any time they received the blaring horn-tap of a supporter, the women’s beefy arms would raise up and they’d high-five one another. Of course none of them actually looked fearful about anything, least of all me. It was quite the opposite—in my trial they’d found a sense of purpose that rendered them giddy and energized. On weekend nights when their numbers were greatest they’d often deliver
choral
group chants into a feedback-ridden microphone, “Teachers not touchers” being one of the more popular. There were never any men among the group, though occasionally some of the mothers did see fit to bring their young children along to practice the
valuable
life skill of standing on the side of the road with indignation.
My house arrest stipulations allowed for court-approved
prescheduled
excursions to purchase food but I most often ordered in, and once it became apparent to the onlookers just where a given food order was headed, they’d incorporate the employee into their calls and protestations. “Are you over eighteen?” they’d yell to a
bewildered
pizza deliveryman. “You’re not safe unless you are!”

After a decade of hiding my urges, I’ll admit it wasn’t easy to come to terms with the fact that my preference had been publicly outed. It was as though in merely following my own desire I’d been catapulted far beyond the intended lands of pleasure into a realm of punishment. By some trick of the mind, several times a day I would nearly forget what had transpired—that everyone knew, that my face was plastered across newspapers nationwide—but then with all the panic of the initial realization, recent events would flood back to me until my thoughts wandered again and the cycle repeated itself for a whiplashed sensation of déjà vu. It made me recall a particular seasick feeling of my youth: I’d once had a spirited bus driver who liked to come over the PA system whenever a sizable piece of
low-processed
roadkill emerged in her path, usually an armadillo, that was going to cause her to rapidly decelerate. “Huh
ho
!” she’d yell, and we’d brace our tiny arms against the seats. The force’s weight was always greater than expected; it always gave me the real fear, as I slid against my will closer and closer to the green vinyl of the seat-back in front of me, that I might continue forward and hurtle into the air.

Ford had once expressed a similar sentiment to me after being hit with a Taser gun at work during a training exercise: he’d been incredulous at how unable he was to ready himself, mentally or physically, for the pain. “I know you don’t have balls,” he’d told
me, “but imagine having them, then imagine them being struck by lightning and a hammer at the same time.” Ford always was one to ask the impossible from others, both often and casually.

“So I’m seeing everybody get hit and fall onto a mat, right?” he’d continued. “One by one. Like Noah’s ark except we didn’t even get a partner.”

He’d raised his brow at this point, as if to say,
I’ll let that heady biblical reference settle into your brain for a moment while I chug down this beer.
I’d crossed my legs, widened my eyes and leaned in,
nodding
in faux amazement.

“Anyway,” he’d continued, “watching all these tasings, I’m
getting
sort of tense, right? Because when they’re hit guys are
screaming
. Really huge guys—Bill even pissed himself.”

“You mentioned testicles,” I’d reminded him. “Were they
directing
the gun at your testicles?”

“No,” he’d clarified. “Course not. That’s just the best
description
of how it felt … shit
hurts
.”

At the time, it had struck me that this was a somewhat
intelligent
perception on Ford’s behalf—how arousal and pain share certain breakers on the switchboard of the central nervous system—even if he couldn’t quite parse the reasoning behind his word choice. All the anguish and fear surrounding the upcoming trial seemed to have settled into my nipples; they’d begun to
spontaneously
harden on the hour in the hopes they might be utilized as channels of release like in the past. If only I could be allowed a few minutes of Boyd teasing them with the sharp prongs of his orthodontia. As I supposed our criminal justice system knew,
withholding
an orgasm brought about by a second party was a hearty rattrap for pessimism indeed. It was a type of torture, only
having
myself for sexual stimulation: I could predict everything I was about to do.

According to the news, I wasn’t the only one in confinement. Jack received six months in a juvenile detention center for his attack on Boyd. In moments of clarity, I was willing to admit to myself that I shouldn’t have taken another boy to his father’s house. But Jack also could’ve saved us all a great deal of agony if he’d simply had the consideration to call before dropping by.

Though personal effects
in the same drawers as my hidden stashes of prescription pills did get boxed and delivered to me, none of my medications or high-end facial-contouring creams made the journey; this was no doubt an intentional fuck-you on Ford’s behalf. I often spent entire days drinking cough syrup and scouring the television stations for boys in Jack and Boyd’s age range, their
images
blurry and voices echoey, to join me in dreams as I nodded off to sleep. I still hadn’t spoken personally with Ford since the incident. I couldn’t deny this disappointed me for a variety of reasons. I
certainly
still held the hope that he might forgive me—that we could go back to our routine like normal. Now knowing the secret life I’d have to lead in the hours away from home, Ford could negotiate for greater benefits—I’d be willing to meet a more robust monthly sexual quota with him in return for letting bygones be bygones, and I could once again have access to luxury. But if not—if we were over forever and there was no hope of gaining him and his money back—Ford was the one arena where my having been caught was a victory; now he finally knew that in our own private battle, I had bested him. Despite his needling pockets of doubt, he had more or
less believed the whole time that I was his distant and mercurial wife, not an actress whose talents were cultivated to hide a sexual aberration.

I needed to play a part for the jurors, too. In order to appear as palatable as possible to them, Dennis wanted me to look as close in age to Boyd and Jack as I could. I often stood in front of the studio apartment’s dimly lit vanity mirror and practiced my courtroom
expressions
: doe-eyed and frequently surprised, often shocked; seldom blinking but with exaggerated motion when I did.

Additionally, I worked to produce an overwhelmed and
apprehensive
shakiness in response to any loud stimuli, my moist lips puckered and hopeful with nervous hesitation. I also practiced speaking in a somewhat higher and softer voice. “When they came on to me,” I breathed, pursing the corners of my mouth as though it was a difficult confession, “the attention was nice. For whatever reason I felt so isolated.” At this point I would nod imperceptibly in order to seem like I was admitting the truth to myself before
speaking
it. “It sounds pathetic,” I would continue, beginning a reflective stare off into the distance, “but I think all I really was looking for in Jack and Boyd was a friend.”

Dennis was meanwhile losing no time launching a battle of public opinion. When I watched him on the news, my heart would leap with a sort of near-patriotism; never before had I felt such pride in my country as I did now in considering its justice system. There he was, immaculately dressed and persuasive on my behalf, simply in return for an exchange of money! The impeccable linear
geometry
of his mustache made him appear unilaterally calm on camera, never moving or changing formation.

“My client is guilty of nothing more than poor judgment,” he’d
often repeat. “Details about the alleged sexual misconduct will come to light that paint a far different picture than what the
prosecution
is claiming.” He knew we’d never be able to win over the soccer moms, but for those who might be open-minded enough to accept it, he began to lay the foundations of a commonsense defense: I was young and good-looking, and adolescent boys would want to sleep with me. On one talk show, he sat with the
commentator
while a picture from my early college modeling days appeared behind them on a large screen—I was bikini clad, lounging on the hood of a sports car, my blond hair fanned back in the wind. “If you were a teenage male,” the commentator began, pointing a leering finger back at the photo, “would you call a sexual experience with her abuse?”

Dennis did a purposefully bad job of restraining a smile and cleared his throat. “I think that’s a fair question to ask in terms of this case,” he answered.

Though droves of shock jocks and sensational newsmagazines offered lucrative sums for phone interviews or to bring their
cameras
inside my apartment for a sit-down chat, my attorney worried it might interfere with his construction of my Pollyanna image. “You’re very sexy,” he explained, “but what I want the jury to see is that you’re not necessarily aware of it.” His secretary brought the clothing I’d wear to the proceedings over to my apartment for a fitting—jumper-style dresses, Mary Jane shoes with a low heel—and went over the rules for makeup.

“Pretend you’re going on a date and have to walk past your
conservative
father to get to the door,” she said. “Transparent peach blush, a hint of neutral lip gloss. The one thing we’ll play up is your eyes. Very clean eyeliner, super-thin lines. The mascara is so
important
.”
It’s ironic to note that her own makeup looked like that of a prospective showgirl who was escorting until her big break came. “It has to be fresh. If your mascara clumps on you, at this trial, it’s like, ‘She’s guilty.’ You know what I’m saying? You can only use the lightest kiss of it. But that tiny amount will also make all the
difference
in the world.”

Given the reason
for their interest, when the trial finally rolled around I thought I would find the reporters unappetizing. But after weeks of being sequestered, it was nice to be outside and have
photographers
vying for me to look at them. For the most part they were persistent but not cruel—what they wanted most was for me to give them a coquettish smile, which of course I couldn’t do;
instead
I worked on seeming uncomfortable with attention of any sort. I clung to my attorney and acted as though I had never before been aboveground: never seen a camera or even other people before, never heard my name said aloud.

I have to confess that in the courtroom that first day, even though I truly wanted to pay attention, I caught no more than five words of the opening arguments. Instead I was creating fantasies that incorporated the prison environment instead of ignoring it: they involved the new holding cell I’d be taken to that evening. The image that immediately came to mind was being woken from sleep by the approach of a horde of famished, emaciated young men—orphans, perhaps, in tattered clothing with
Oliver Twist
accents
who approached the bars of my cell and began sticking every erotic appendage they had in between—in my mind I could see them lining up to form a row of erect penises in various stages
of growth. Their groping hands would reach forward on arms extended out to where the shoulder’s bulk strained between the metal, their tongues wriggling and searching from eager mouths, as though they viewed me as a food source. How delightful it would be to make my way down their queue, giving each a
different
treatment: sometimes bending down to suck as the fingers of multiple owners greedily fought to cram inside me, other times turning around to be penetrated while my neck received the
frenzied
licks of deer tasting salt. At one point I was able to look up and return to the courtroom proceedings when I noticed the
prosecutor
, a man named Delany, pointing at me with a villainous, outstretched finger: I peered over at the jury with a hurt look on my face that insisted Delany and I had once been best friends but now he’d turned into a terrible gossip. I, on the other hand, sitting silently, had taken the high road.

I soon found that my actual holding cell did not fit the
specifications
of my daydream. Its entrance was a solid reinforced door that had a rectangular slot for a food tray to enter. This opening was not of a preferable height nor angle for a budding youth’s penis to reach inside, a design flaw that had the effect of
irrationally
increasing my panic: my hands protectively reached down and held my crotch as I realized how long my obligatory stint of sexual castration might last. Rather than sleeping, I sat in the dark for some time after lights-out and wondered how many months I could reasonably go without any adolescent physical contact, not even the ability to give a shoulder squeeze or a lower-back pat. Prior to arrest, my record on the outside had been perhaps six or seven weeks—though such a drought was heavily supplemented by porn—before I’d go indulge in a flirtatious conversation in the
cereal aisle of the grocery store or hit the mall and at least have the visceral pleasure of being close to adolescent males. Even these tame encounters powered up a source of electricity inside me, whether or not our bodies ever touched when we spoke or walked past one another in a crowded store. More than the sexual attacks and harassment I was sure would come, I’d never be able to make it in prison for this reason alone; there’d be no oxygen for the
affliction
that burned inside me.