The First Cut (21 page)

She got herself the highest paying job she could find—a stripper at a classy gentlemen’s club. She brought down $2,000 on a good night. Private parties paid even more. It wasn’t the most respectable job. It was a long time before she told her parents. They didn’t like it at first until she told them how much she earned. And she never went home with the men. Ever.

The club manager said she needed a stage name. Pamela, her paternal grandmother’s name, didn’t cut it. The manager christened her Pussycat, and it stuck, even off the job. She wasn’t crazy about that, but this was just phase one of her plan. Plenty of time to reinvent herself again.

In her spare time, she attended trade school where she studied for a certificate in fashion design. She planned to become a top clothes designer and build her own fortune. Then she would marry a man equally wealthy, from her new social class. Prenups would be mandatory.

Then one of those shining moments occurred when all her hard work and luck intersected and fate was born. She met her future husband. She’d been invited with some of the other girls at the club to work a weekend stag party given in a huge, rustic cabin on Lake Arrowhead. The host was a club regular.

Pussycat made it clear that she was not a prostitute. She was there just to dance. As the first night wore on, most of the girls went off to the bedrooms with the men. Pussycat stuck to her guns and kept dancing. Eventually, she danced just for one man—John Lesley. When she declared the show over, he gave her a $1,000 tip and a kiss on the cheek. He uncorked a bottle of champagne and asked if she’d have a drink with him. She suspected he had more in mind, but they ended up talking for hours. She told him her whole life story. He listened attentively and was the perfect gentleman.

He was handsome and well-groomed. She liked impeccable grooming. She knew he was rich, a self-made man who owned a trendy nightclub in West Hollywood. He used to play in a band that had a couple of hits in the eighties. He found greater success as an entrepreneur. She also knew he was married to a well-known fashion model.

Pussycat had seen them in
Angelino,
a glossy magazine that consisted of photos of Los Angeles society on the town, ads for expensive jewelry and clothing, and a handful of articles squeezed between the ads that told about the latest and greatest trends. Pussycat studied
Angelino
and other magazines for wardrobe cues, behavior tips, and to evaluate the charities with which she’d eventually affiliate herself. Scanning those slick pages, she felt that familiar pain of being on the outside looking in.

Sipping champagne and talking to John Lesley that night in Lake Arrowhead, she didn’t for one minute believe he was interested in her beyond a weekend’s entertainment. She clearly wasn’t his type. His wife was willowy and elegant. Pussycat was shorter and had a figure best described as voluptuous. And she was a stripper. She wasn’t proud of her job, even though strippers and porn stars were the latest in celebrity arm candy. After she became a successful fashion designer, she would never mention her previous career or the name that went with it.

“I’m getting a divorce.”

His statement made her sit up from the sofa cushions where she’d been reclining.

“I’m ready for children and my wife is not. I know she has her career to consider, but a few months ago she threw a bombshell and told me she doesn’t ever want children. If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have married her.” He inched his fingers across the leather upholstery to touch hers. “How do you feel about children?”

She would later come to think of that first night as a job interview. He was looking for somebody vulnerable. Naïve. Insecure. Someone he could mold and control. He’d pressed her about her relationship with her family. What were her parents like? She’d told him her father was remote and hard on her. Nothing she did pleased him. Her mother was passive.

“Poor baby. That must have been tough.”

His eyes were kind. They always were. She believed the eyes were windows to the soul. She would learn his eyes couldn’t betray his soul because he didn’t have one.

A couple of years later, Pussycat had a chance meeting with his ex-wife at a charity fashion show where the ex was one of the models. Pussycat saw her catching a smoke on the terrace and introduced herself.

“I know who you are.” The ex angled her head back to blow a stream of smoke over her shoulder. She leveled chartreuse eyes at Pussycat. “So how do you like being married to the freak?” She darted her cigarette at a potted palm, dropping ash. “Don’t answer that. If anyone asks, the subject never came up. I’m forbidden to talk about him and I don’t want him suing my ass.”

By that time, Pussycat knew what the ex meant. Pussycat had been married to John Lesley for three years after a brief courtship. Their sex life had been active and anything but homespun. He’d started out slowly, easing her in, revealing both his true self and the depth of his perversions. There was a word for what he was doing: grooming. It was how child molesters lured their prey.

She’d never been a prude but he’d involved her in situations that she’d only seen in triple X porno movies. When scenarios exceeded her personal boundaries of both propriety and pain, he hired call girls for the dirty work. That was the power of money. Some women would debase themselves to get it.

By then, Pussycat was in too deep. If she left him, the prenup she’d signed would provide her a small income, but nothing near what she’d known. She could get by on it if she absolutely had to, but she didn’t have just herself to consider. He’d bought her parents and younger siblings a house in Claremont in a good neighborhood with excellent public schools. The house remained in his name. If she left him, her family would be on the street. Her two brothers were still in high school. Her father was on disability and her mother made little as a home-care provider.

It would be the end of her charitable work. She could still volunteer, but the perks of being a deep-pockets donor would evaporate.

And then there was Miss Tina. He’d lured her into that, too. Taken what had been a recreational drug for her and nurtured it into a full-blown addiction.

When Pussycat had gone to the charity fashion show the day she’d met his ex, he hadn’t yet tired of professional sex partners. Their games with them were rough, but Pussycat reconciled her ill feelings with the knowledge that the women were well paid. Some of them were regulars and knew full well what they were getting into. When she’d had her too brief exchange with the ex, Pussycat thought the other woman was referring to that already explored dark world. Pussycat by then had gotten used to it. Thought she understood its boundaries. That was before they’d met Officer Frankie Lynde.

Pussycat downed the tequila shot, slamming the glass on the bar with a bang that went unheard over the band’s noise. She followed up with a lime wedge, holding it between her front teeth as she turned to watch the dance floor. People weren’t really dancing but were swaying to the music, many dangling beer bottles by the necks between their fingers. The girls were cute and acted loose and tough. Pussycat knew that act and knew better. They shook their loose hair and waved their arms. None of them was a great beauty, but they had that California beach girl aura or were doing good imitations. Pussycat tried to pinpoint one she could peel away from her friends, like a lioness searching for the weaker members of the zebra herd. Better yet, she’d find someone who had come alone. He’d taught her how to hunt.

Hermosa Beach was a locals’ town. It wasn’t close to a freeway. The pier had no shops, restaurants, or carnival rides; it was simply a fishing pier. Other beach cities offered more to attract families and tourists. The beachfront businesses drew local teenagers and young singles, some of whom prided themselves on having never ventured east of the 405 freeway or worn long pants. The police department patrolled the beach on bicycles and wore shorts. Surfing was decent. There were no hot restaurants or clubs to entice L.A. scenesters to make the twenty-mile trek south. It was a real So Cal beach town.

Pussycat’s husband had suggested going to Orange County, but she had an L.A. County native’s natural aversion to the O.C. She didn’t know the layout of the freeways there. Everything looked too new, too shiny, and too Caucasian. It felt peculiar. She always felt lost there.

Her husband became angry. “We have to look outside L.A. Someplace where no one knows us.”

“Why do we have to look at all?”

“Don’t get cute with me, baby. You don’t even know how to begin to play that game.”

“How about Hermosa? I used to fish off the pier there with my dad when I was little. It fits, huh? We’re still catching and releasing, right?”

Since he’d made that promise to her, they’d done just that, he’d had raucous fun, she’d pretended to, and they’d sent the girl on her way. But she sensed a change brewing. She was used to that rising tension in him, underneath the surface, like a piano wire twisting tighter. The sexcapades used to calm that beast. Lull it to sleep. The girl last night had only taken the edge off. Something else was at work. Something new, awakened from the depths of his being. That soulless being. She feared the thing with Frankie had permanently changed him. There was no going back.

She ordered another shot, downing it as soon as the bartender set it in front of her. Guys around the bar hooted and clapped. She gave them one of her stage smiles and a slow pirouette before turning back to watch the dancers.

She used to tell herself she knew everything about her husband. But whenever she dared to be honest, she had to admit there were depths she could not penetrate. The many layers were revealing themselves now. Maybe he’d kept them hidden until he found and trained the perfect coconspirator and turned her into a drug addict. She’d not only walked right into his scheme, she’d grabbed hold with both hands.

She thought of what he had told her when he’d dropped her off tonight.

“Baby, haven’t I been the perfect gentleman, like I promised?” He smiled his charmer’s smile. That boyish man smile that made the VIP visitors to his club, the celebrities and socialites, feel like royalty. What a great guy. Isn’t he the best? Don’t you just love him?

Pussycat would like to say she could see through it, but she couldn’t. It was only through experience that she learned it was false. It was only because of Frankie Lynde’s blood and tears that she’d discovered the lie.

Thinking of Frankie made her eyes fill. She thought of something else.

“Hey, Red, buy you a drink?”

It took Pussycat a second to realize he was talking to her. When she turned in his direction, she caught her reflection in a wall covered in mirrored panes with gold vines. A happening relic from the 1970s. Pussycat nearly didn’t recognize herself. She was wearing an auburn wig with locks that brushed her shoulders. She’d disguised her blue eyes with contact lenses that had hypnotic spirals in them. Her attire matched that of the other women in the joint, but her scanty blouse revealed press-on tattoos of barbed wire encircling her arm and a rose atop the curve of her ample breast.

That was where he was now looking.

“I’m okay, thanks.”

He was one of the guys who had cheered her on earlier. “Come on. Don’t you like me? No pressure. Just friendly.”

He was kind of cute and she was already more than a little drunk and amped on meth.

“Wow. Crazy eyes.”

She batted her lids at him. “You are getting sleepy.”

“No shit. Tequila shooter?”

“Yeah. But I’m paying.”

“No can do.”

“I bet you can.” She peeled a twenty from the roll of bills stashed in the pocket of her low-rise jeans skirt and set it on the bar.

The bartender lined them up. The guy licked his wrist and sprinkled salt onto it from a shaker. Pussycat did the same. They clinked glasses, licked off the salt, and knocked them back. He gave a violent shake to his head before cramming a lime wedge in his mouth. She didn’t even blink. He smiled loosely at her. He was definitely a cutie, even with the veneer of beach grime.

“You got any women tied up in your basement?”

“Wha…?”

“Kidding.” She slapped the bar. “’Nother round.”

Boy was she in trouble. Big time. Her husband could kill her. She had no doubt he was capable of doing just that.

“You’re kind of crazy, you know that?”

She hissed air through her teeth. “You have no idea.”

“You’re cute.” He tickled her bare belly.

She didn’t stop him. He used to be her type, lanky and muscular with a nice, strong jaw and pretty eyes. She used to have a type before the first thing she started to look at in a man was his portfolio.

“You’re drunk.”

“Doesn’t matter. I know cute, drunk or sober.” He kept tickling her. “Woman with ink. She’s tatted up. I love it. Where does the rose go?” He drew his index finger down the fake rose tattoo until he reached the opening of her top. He pulled the fabric away, then bent his head to kiss the rise of her breast.

She ran her fingers through his hair that could use a wash. Grabbing his hair, she pulled up his head and planted her lips on his. It was an honest kiss. The first honest kiss she’d had since she’d met John Lesley. She and the beach guy had one agenda that neither one was hiding. She was hot for him and messed up enough and weary enough not to care about the consequences.

He smelled like booze, perspiration, and sea spray. His clothes were paint-splattered. He looked like he’d knocked off work and had come straight to the bar. He looked like he’d forgotten to shave that morning. In spite of all that, he seemed clean to her. Uncontaminated. Uncomplicated. She craved his simplicity. She needed it.

“Want to get out of here? My apartment is around the corner.”

She turned, too quickly. Her head spun. She held on to the bar to steady herself and noticed one of the televisions bolted to the ceiling. It was tuned to the eleven o’clock news. Another tube a few feet away was broadcasting the same thing. They were again showing that dumb artist’s rendering of her wearing the chauffeur’s outfit. It didn’t even look like her.