The Venus Fix (21 page)

He needed to tell her about Alan Leightman.

If nothing else, she could be in danger.

M
y cooking class started at seven and I just made it. The building on Houston Street was lit up and glowing in the snow, which was still falling and had been falling, it now seemed, forever.

Inside the Culinary Institute, I hung up my coat and rushed into the classroom.

Until Dulcie had gotten the role of Mary Lennox, I never would have signed up for this, but since she was at the theater until ten-fifteen five nights a week, I had the time—and God knows I needed the help.

“Tonight we are going to work with some basic sauces,” Sarah Neery, the chef and teacher, said once we were all assembled.

As soon as she started talking about a basic roux, my mind started to wander. The truth was I was as much a disaster in the class as I was at home. After three weeks, I was slowly realizing that I really wasn’t interested in cooking. It was only eating that interested me.

I whisked the melting butter as I poured in the flour. Whisked more. It was turning golden. That was good. Then the golden turned caramel. And then the caramel color darkened
even more. I whisked faster. The mess had turned almost black. Great, I was burning it.

“Morgan, you’re not supposed to let the roux go that dark. Why don’t you try again? This time stop when it turns a nice, warm light brown.”

Light brown? Dark brown? How fast did it turn? Why was I doing this?

Noah was waiting for me in his car in front of the school when the class was over.

“I burned the butter,” I told him once I got inside the car. “And not once. I burned the butter twice. No, not the butter— I burned the roux.”

He reached over and brushed snow off my cheeks and then kissed me softly on the lips. “You’re freezing.” He put his arms around me and kissed me again. For a few seconds, I let go of everything and lived inside his arms.

“Not anymore,” I said when we finally broke apart.

“So if you burned the roux you must be hungry. I haven’t eaten yet but I have some shrimp Creole in the refrigerator.”

“Could we go out? Somewhere nearby?”

He gave me a sidelong glance but didn’t ask me to explain why I didn’t want to go to his apartment. I wasn’t sure what I would have said. I only knew I needed to be in a neutral place. I was afraid that Alan Leightman’s name was going to come up. Afraid of how I was going to avoid talking about him if it did. At least in a restaurant, I could get up, go to the ladies’ room—there were distractions I could use.

Five minutes later we were ensconced in a booth in a small, dark restaurant called Lucky Strike. Noah knew it was one of my favorites—a French bistro that served fries almost as good as what you could get in Paris.

We both ordered dirty martinis, which arrived quickly, and Noah held his glass up to mine in a silent toast.

“I need to talk to you,” he said after we’d each taken our first sip. “About Alan Leightman.”

I didn’t say anything and hoped that my face wasn’t showing any reaction. “What?”

“You’re good at this, Morgan, but you don’t have to pretend. I know he’s your patient. It’s not a question. I have to tell you about Leightman. You don’t have to say anything. Just listen. The man may be a killer. We don’t have enough on him yet to arrest him, but we’re working on it, and in the meantime, I’m worried about you.”

I fingered the stem of the glass. “I appreciate that, but I’m fine. I’m not in danger.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

I made a face at him. I’d been sure of my ability to judge people in the past and had not always been right. “I knew you were going to say that,” I said.

“I’m becoming predictable?”

“Only about this one thing.”

“Well, I am worried about you. Do you understand how powerful he is? If you know something that could help us convict Alan Leightman—”

“I can’t have this conversation with you. I can’t even sit here.”

“Yes. You can. You can sit here and listen. You can help me save your life.”

“That’s overly dramatic.”

“No, Morgan. No. It’s not. And if you won’t take this seriously, I’m going to talk to Nina about it.”

I laughed. “Going over my head? Like I’m a bad little girl? She’s the last person who would take your side.”

“No, not like you are a bad little girl, but like you are a stubborn woman who isn’t being as cautious as she should be.”

The tension swirled around our heads. In the time we’d
known each other—in the past seven months—we had come to this place before, and we had not navigated it well.

“I know. Professional ethics. I know. Our principles represent a line neither of us can cross. We admire each other for respecting the line until it gets in the way. Every damn time.” He was angry. At me. At us.

I heard a small sigh escape my lips. “I had hoped we wouldn’t get here again.”

“So did I.”

The waiter arrived and we ordered without even having to look at the menu. French fries and mussels in white wine for both of us.

After the waiter left, I took a deep breath. “Dulcie still hasn’t come home….”

His eyes registered immediate worry and his reaction made me feel a wave of emotion that I wasn’t prepared for. “She’s decided I’m the devil incarnate. Mitch thinks this is about more than the audition, that it’s her way of punishing me for the divorce—”

“But you didn’t instigate the divorce—”

“I know, but it’s easier for her to blame me….” I took another swallow of the salty vodka. “Mitch thinks we should try again. He’s convinced that—”

“Try again?” he interrupted. “As in, the two of you try as a couple again?”

I nodded.

He was waiting for me to say something. To tell him how silly an idea it was. I could tell; I knew him that well.

I started to, because I knew it was. Because I knew how I felt about him. But what if Mitch was right? What if we did owe Dulcie one more try?

Noah fished an olive out of his drink with his fingers and ate it. “So since I’m always Mr. Nice Guy, I should understand
this and step back and offer you my best wishes.” His voice was tinged with iciness.

“Noah—”

I’d thought nothing could scare me as much as Dulcie’s disappearance the other night, and probably nothing could. But the expression on Noah’s face was ripping at my heart, leaving ragged edges that I knew were going to hurt me for days. For weeks. Maybe forever. I couldn’t do this.

“Noah—”

“No. Don’t interrupt me. Let me say this, and when I’m done you can talk. We’ll take turns. We’ll pretend we are utterly civilized and sophisticated even though what I feel like doing now is getting up out of my seat, taking you by the shoulders, and shaking you until your brains rattle back into place. So can you—you who always has something to say and who loves to control everything—be quiet long enough to let me talk?”

He didn’t understand. I needed to explain. To stop him before—

Before I could answer, the waiter arrived with our food. The iridescent black shells glistening in their fragrant broth should have been tantalizing, but suddenly I wasn’t the slightest bit hungry. Noah, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be affected, and popped a steaming mussel in his mouth.

“I don’t want to go backward, Noah.”

“With me? With Mitch? What do you want, Morgan?”

I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I didn’t want to break any promises. I didn’t want my daughter to become a stranger. I missed Dulcie so much my eyes hurt when I got home at night and I couldn’t see her, my arms ached at not being able to hug her before she went to bed.

I played with the mussels, tried to eat a few, and then gave up.

When he was halfway done with his food, he pushed his plate away, took a long, slow drink, sat back in his seat and said: “I can’t believe we’re here again. But we are. Listen, I’m not a hard-ass, Morgan. I understand that this fight with Dulcie is torturing you and that you’ll do anything to make it right again. I’m not even going to suggest that if you do get back with your ex-husband that it won’t help your relationship with Dulcie get better. Because I don’t know that. It might. It just might.”

He stopped to drink what was left of his martini and then waved the waiter over and ordered another for each of us, even though I hadn’t finished mine.

I started to say something but he put up his hand. “I don’t have a lot more to say, so if you can, I’d appreciate it if you could continue not interrupting me till I’m done.”

I didn’t want to. I hated seeing him in any kind of pain. But this was so complicated. There were too many questions on the table, along with all the forks and spoons and knives.

“You should see your face. This is hurting you like hell. Well, it’s hurting me like hell, too. But you know what? It’s too complicated. So let me make it easy.” He smiled sarcastically. “Go do whatever it is you think you have to do. But understand, I don’t believe for one goddamn second that you are really doing this because it will solve everything between you and Dulcie. She’s thirteen, she has to rebel. She has to argue. She has to want things you can’t give her. It’s a rite of passage for both of you. Hell, you know that. You are a goddamn shrink. That’s why you know you wouldn’t be going back to Mitch for any of the right reasons, but because it’s the path of least resistance. It’s goddamn easier.”

This was a mess. Like the stupid roux. It had gone from golden to burnt and I hadn’t even known where along the way I’d screwed it up. Reaching down, I grabbed my bag off the
floor, prepared to leave. I couldn’t quite see where I was going because of the stupid tears. I wanted to hold Noah and tell him how I felt about him. Instead I said, “You can’t know what my reasons are. The presumption behind everything you just said is astounding.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that the couple next to us were listening. It was too late to care.

“You’d be right if I was wrong. But I’m not wrong.” Noah shook his head. “I’m not the one who you want to hear this from, but I’m the one who is sitting here and I’m the one who is crazy about you and I’m the poor fucker who is going to lose out here. What you’re doing is wrong. It’s not that it’s wrong for me, or Dulcie, or Mitch. It’s wrong for you, Morgan.”

T
he apartment was not only empty but it was cold. Too cold. It wasn’t until I went into the den that I found out why. When I’d left in the morning, in a hurry to meet Alan Leightman early, I’d forgotten that the window was cracked open from the night before, and now there was a small pile of snow on the carpet.

For some reason this, of everything that had happened, overwhelmed me. I shut the window, then kicked at the mess with my bare foot, not caring that it was freezing or that it was wet or that I was only making a bigger mess. Snow did not belong inside. It was an intrusion in my home.

Down on my knees, I rubbed at it, freezing my fingers until it melted and the rug wicked it up.

After that I took a bath, went into the kitchen and made some tea. I picked up the phone and dialed Mitch’s number so I could talk to Dulcie, but I hung up before it connected. Instead I punched in Nina’s number. She wasn’t home either and I didn’t bother leaving a message.

It was quiet in the house and I kept hearing Noah’s words in my head. I didn’t want to think about what he’d said. He
didn’t know me that well. He had no idea what he was talking about. I had been married to Mitch for fourteen years. It had been good with him. With us. It would be again. Dulcie would have her family back. It was a happy ending.

No. It wasn’t a happy ending. It was a happy beginning. That was even better. A new start.

Then why did I feel as if I were in mourning?

Thursday
Eight days remaining

D
earest,

One more candle has been lit to commemorate one more death. One more step closer to full retribution and one act closer to fulfilling my promise to you. There are only eight days left and then I’ll be done with the fun and the blood and the guts and the gore and nothing will matter because you are still gone.

I am so tired. Tired from being careful and from keeping track. I have so much to do, to monitor, to control. There are a million details, just like the millions of men out there addicted to Internet porn. Addicted to watching women, women who are not women. I pity the men who come up against them and, more than the men, I pity the boys who have had their first sex on screen. Watched virtual women undulate and whisper to them and them alone long before they’d ever approach a real young woman. All during their developing years, the Web lifts its shirt and flashes these spoiled boys the prettiest breasts and tightest vaginas and never ever asks them to give anything back. Not a word, not a thought, not compassion and not
caring, no, none of those, just a credit card number that their parents give them, or they steal.

No one, not therapists, not lawyers, not teachers, not parents, has the experience or the knowledge to deal with our troubled children because they are a mutation—the first generation who have been suckled by twenty-four-hour, easily accessible and practically free instant gratification. Twenty-four-hour poison.

The more I watch what you watched, the more sacred this quest, the more critical these rituals and important this cleansing. We need to burn every one of them at the stake until there are none left to tempt, lure, entice, bait and seduce. To set the devil’s examples that young women follow into hell.

It was frightening to watch that girl cutting herself and watch the razor blade slice open her skin and see the blood rise so quickly to the surface and to think you once watched her cutting, too. This time she made fourteen cuts until her skin was ribboned with thin, sad lines of blood.

When she was done cutting the computer did not go black and she didn’t realize what was happening. She never went for the phone and no one came to her aid.