The Schwarzschild Radius (22 page)

“Here we are,” he said, pulling it out of its original box. Rather than hand it to Rachel, he plugged it in for her.

“Low heat or high?” he asked, blowing her hair for her.

“Low is fine. I can manage.” She took the blower from his hand and stroked it the length of her long hair while Sartorius sat not four feet away watching.

“Do you like it out here in the open country?” he asked.

“I’ve been out here before. Nice fish tank. Doesn’t look like there would be anyone here to take care of them.”

“Oh, I have cleaning people here regularly. They handle it. So tell me about yourself, Rachel.”

“There isn’t much to tell. I work with Sonia in the city.”

“The Pleasure Palace?”

“Uh huh. I just started this week.”

“And what were you doing before that?”

“I was staying at a shelter in the city. Transcendence House.”

“I see. So did you bring any fancy underwear for your show tonight?”

Not exactly an Albert Schweitzer segue
, thought Rachel. “I have some stuff.” She was hiding her face behind her hair as she dried it, hoping he would get the message that she’d like to do this in private.

“You know, I’m sure I have some outfits I can give you. My wife bought a lot of things she never wore. I didn’t have the heart to throw them out. You must be a size two.”

“That’s right,” she said, creeped out at the thought of wearing a dead woman’s lingerie.

“I have a keen eye for these things. Relax, Rachel. You seem really nervous.”

“I am really nervous. I’m not used to working in other people’s homes. Just the booth.”

“Well, you have nothing to concern yourself with. Let me take your pulse.”

He reached over and put his fingers on her wrist while looking at his watch. She still held the brush.

“Your heart is racing. Calm down. You’re among friends.” He no longer measured her heart, just held her hand.

“You seem pretty young to be working at the Pleasure Palace.”

“I have ID.”

“And how old are you really?”

“Is that a problem?”

“Oh, it’s no problem whatsoever with me. I just need to know how old you are.”

“Fourteen.” Rachel pulled her hand away. “I better dry this hair or it’ll frizz up.”

He seemed pleased with the answer, but his brow furrowed at the rebuff. At that moment, Rachel realized the power of her sexuality. She had something indescribably desirable to this man, something alluring enough that it crushed this doctor’s power to heal, leaving intact only his cold, accurate talent to observe.

Sonia entered the bedroom wrapped in a towel.

“Just what I’m looking for. You done with that?” she said.

“In a bit.”

“Well, girls, let’s get on with the performance. I’d like you to come out one at a time. You first, Sonia,” instructed the doctor. “I’ll get some music going. Descend the stairs slowly, but make sure your hair is completely dry.”

Rachel looked at Sonia and her face said everything.

“It’s two-hundred bucks. Just remember that,” whispered Sonia once the doctor was gone.

“Why did you give him my real name?”

“Oh, shit. I slipped up. No big deal.”

“It is a big deal. That’s my name. I don’t want him to have it. That makes me feel like dirt, that he said my name.”

The girls prepared in silence.

Sonia looked in the mirror. “I’m worth a thousand. This outfit is hot.” She pulled down the dragon print tapestry bustier to reveal more breast. The matching red thong was tiny. She took a pair of spike heels out of her bag and put them on.

“See you,” said Sonia and left.

Rachel sat on the bed and listened to the performance downstairs as she tried to calm herself down.

A medley of seventies love songs played.

“Tell me what to do, Daddy. I don’t know what to do,” she heard Sonia say.

Sartorius gave her precise instructions. Which hand to use, which finger, how fast. Point your toes, sweetheart. Excellent. Good girl. Rachel felt sick. She sat there, hugging herself as she waited for her turn. Now Sartorius was asking Sonia about Rachel. She couldn’t hear what.

Footsteps echoed on the stairs. She dreaded this moment.

“You’re on, kid,” said Sonia. “You look hot in that.”

Rachel was trying to tuck her pubes behind the tiny thong. She gave the other girl a look of desperation.

“Hey, take it easy. It’s the same as the Palace, only nicer. Go on, he’s waiting.”

Rachel came down the spiral staircase, the kind she had seen in her dreams where she was dressed as a bride. Not this.

“Sonia’s a tough act to follow, but give it your best,” said the client.

Rachel pushed a smile to the surface. The saxophone demanded more than that. She started.

She decided to get it over with. She took off the bra and twirled it around a few times, then tossed it at Sartorius.

Now the doctor’s face lit up. “Good,” he said.

She slipped off the bottom and threw it on the couch.

“Could you lie down, please,” said the doctor. It sounded like he was about to take out a speculum. She complied.

“Do you know what floor work is, Rachel?” She nodded with her head against the carpet.

“I’m going to give you some instructions and I need you to follow them precisely. Your tip depends on it. Understood?”

“Okay.”

“Say ‘yes, sir.’”

“Yes, sir.”

The requests gradually became orders. He had to correct her repeatedly, like a music teacher, and she repeated the moves again and again until done to his satisfaction.

“Very good. You need some work, but you have a lot of potential.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Come here and sit next to me. No, don’t dress.”

Rachel noticed that she had lost her self-consciousness. It had become a source of power.

“You’re really pretty, Rachel. Why are you forcing a smile? You haven’t had a real smile since you got here.”

“I guess I’m just nervous.”

“Why? You have nothing to be afraid of.”

“I’m just new to all this, people’s homes and all.”

“I understand. I’d like you to come back, but I need you to relax and be more playful. We’re all here to have fun, after all. Do you mind if I kiss you? On the forehead?” His lips traveled down her neck and it was all she could take. She craned her neck upward as if trying to break the surface of a pool.

“Do you want to get dressed?”

“Yes, sir. I do.” That seemed to take Sartorius to another level.

She struggled free and picked up the clothes.

“Wait,” he said. “This is yours. You did well.” He handed her three hundred dollar bills.

“Thank you, sir,” she said. “I appreciate that.”

“Now you can get dressed.”

She paused at the top of the stairs to put on the panties before entering the room.

“How’d it go?” asked Sonia.

Rachel said nothing.

Sartorius appeared at the door. “Sonia.”

“I’ll see you later, kid,” said Sonia.

“And what are you going to do now?” he asked Rachel.

“Would you mind if I read one of your books downstairs?”

“Read. Just don’t touch anything.”

Even in a rich man’s house the walls could be painfully thin. Rachel sat in Dr. Sartorius’s living room which was directly below the bedroom and could hear every grunt and blasphemy going on upstairs. The contempt in the man’s voice when he said ‘don’t touch anything’ killed her―the arrogance that denied others the right to touch, yet gave him license to fondle everything. Rachel hoped she didn’t hate all men before she learned to love one.

Yesterday, she was at the Forty Second Street Library and stroked Patience and Fortitude―the lions which guard the entrance. Those were precisely the qualities she was running out of as this charade went on. At what point would she tell Sonia that she’s not really on the streets? Was that a betrayal? She’d never betrayed anyone. Rachel had to remember what she was really here for: to find Olivia.

There was plenty to touch. Aside from medical books, there were many others about fly-fishing and skeet shooting and sporting clays. There was a catalog of rare shotguns from Sotheby’s. The man was eclectic all right. Rachel searched through every drawer and cabinet. In one she found cognac that was dated 1921, never opened. Proceeding to the closets, she went through every pocket of every piece of clothing.

The doctor was a meticulous man. Everything was neat and categorized. National Geographics with National Geographics. American Journals of Medicine with American Journals of Medicine. The grass and shrubbery outside were maintained with clinical attention. The house spotless. The fish, colorful and happy. It was as if this exaggerated outer order was needed to counterbalance an unseen derailment.

The house was immense. Rachel proceeded from one room to the next, rifling through drawers, opening coffee tables, sticking her hand down sofa seats. There had to be an office and she prayed it was downstairs. She wandered barefoot until she found the study. There was a PC under the desk, powered on. She quickly reached into her pocket and removed the flash drive.

It was dark back there. Damn, she should have brought a flashlight. In order to be sure she was plugging the drive into an active port, she followed the mouse cord to the chassis and pulled it out. After some work, the flash drive went in. She stopped breathing and listened to the sounds on the second floor. There was nothing. One minute. God, hurry. Kneeling in the darkness, she would have no excuse if he walked in on her. Two minutes finally passed and she pulled out the flash drive and held her finger on the USB port in order to guide the mouse cable back in. Done. She put the plastic cap back on the flash drive and slipped it in her pocket. Silently, she padded out the study, then downstairs to the guest bedroom.

She locked the door of the bedroom and put the drive back in her knapsack, tying it to an inside loop by its lanyard. Back to those college notebooks. There were twelve of them with every page dated and the subject of each lecture underlined. Everything organized and ordered.

Around the beginning of his third year, she noticed a change. Subtle at first, then more marked. He was seeing a girl called Layla. At first, the remarks were filled with the joys of incipient love. Her gestures when she used a fork in a restaurant, the loveliness of her skin, the joy of her company. A few weeks later, the comments became more clinical. Her body parts were described in precise detail, every mole and dimple. He devoted two pages to describing her private parts and the sounds she made during intercourse. Her oral technique was analyzed. There was mention of photos taken of her in bed. Her last name never came up. It was just Layla. Petite brunette with narrow hips and upturned nose. No mention of whether she was a fellow student or where they had met. After a while, her name was no longer mentioned; she was “the specimen.” The foreplay now consisted of clinical examinations conducted with Sartorius fully dressed and the specimen lying on a table, not a bed. There were detailed descriptions and drawings of her body cavities, the inside of her mouth, the strength of her PC muscles. It began to resemble Da Vinci’s notebooks, the writer’s voice detached and objective.

Then one note marked the end of the relationship and Layla was not seen again:
Layla is gone.

artorius dropped them off at the train station later that evening. Rachel rode in the back and saw him constantly looking at her in the rear view mirror.
What would he be writing in the margins tonight?