Trading Up (57 page)

She left the office clutching the case in her hands. She passed through the salon and out onto the deck, where she’d had that first fateful lunch six weeks before. She could see her bags neatly stacked next to the trunk of a black Mercedes with tinted windows; the driver, another Arab, stood outside. She looked around wildly for Ian. He had to know she was leaving. Was he going to let her go without saying good-bye?

As she reached the gangplank, she held back for a moment. The August sun was already unbearably hot and for a moment she felt dizzy. And then he was by her side, gently taking her arm. “Do you need help, Miss Wilcox?” he asked.

“Oh yes!” she cried, looking meaningfully into his eyes.

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“Be careful,” he said, glancing toward the Arab.

There were so many things she wanted to say to him, and no time. She felt tears welling up in her eyes, and suddenly, she was exhausted. How had she ever become so tired? “Ian . . . ,” she said.

“I’m glad you’re going, Janey. It’s about time.” They reached the end of the gangplank and stepped onto the cement dock. “Are these all your bags?” he asked, in an official-sounding voice. Janey looked at her bags in confusion. She had no idea . . . There were four Louis Vuitton suitcases in all, stacked one on top of the other like the luggage of some very glamorous movie star.

She thought she was going to cry again, so she opened her purse and took out a pair of dark glasses. The Arab man put the suitcases in the trunk.

“Ian . . .”

“Yes, Miss Wilcox?”

She didn’t know what she wanted to say. He took a step back from the car as the Arab opened the door. She looked back at him, and then, taking three quick steps toward him, said, “Why
are
you on the yacht?” He looked at her and sadly shook his head. “The same reason you were, Janey.

Money.”

“But . . .”

“I’ve got an ex-wife and a child to support in Australia.” She breathed a sigh of relief. Why, he might have been married. “Will I ever see you again?”

“I don’t know.”

“Say you love me, Ian. Please. Because I still love you.” His smile was filled with sorrow, and for a second, he reached out and pushed the sunglasses up on her nose. “You’d better go now. And don’t cry. Remember, big girls don’t cry.” Then he reached out and shook her hand. “Good-bye, Miss Wilcox.

Have a pleasant trip.”

As soon as she got into the car and it slowly pulled away, she started crying for real, the tears running down her cheeks underneath her sunglasses. And then, after a few minutes, she remembered the small Louis Vuitton case, sitting on the seat next to her. Glancing at the driver, she quickly placed the case on her lap and gin-gerly sprung the lock.

She cautiously opened the lid, and then, viewing the contents, sat back against the seat, her heart pounding. She immediately forgot all about Ian, forgot all about everything in fact, except for the bundles and bundles of thousand-dollar bills stacked inside. All she could think over and over again was that she had done it—

somehow she had done
it
. And while she wasn’t exactly sure what “it” was, she knew that it certainly felt good . . .

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As the car moved slowly through the traffic on the boulevard, and then turned up into the hills, she surreptitiously counted the money. It was all there, every penny—her “fee” plus her poker winnings . . . Why, with this money, she didn’t
have
to go back. She was free! She could go anywhere she wanted in the world, do anything she wanted—she could live in Tahiti and write a book. Yes, and why not?

She’d always had a vague idea of writing a book, of becoming a famous novelist . . .

People would come up to her and tell her that she’d changed their lives with her words . . .

She must tell the driver to turn around right now and go to the airport. At the airport, she would choose a destination that suited her fancy, get on the plane, and disappear, completely free from everything . . . But for some reason, due to fear and guilt perhaps, she didn’t. And so the car drove up into the hills, past gas stations and supermarkets and furniture stores, and finally stopped in front of the youth hostel, a run-down building with peeling blue paint that she imagined was crawling with lice . . .

Her brother and his girlfriend were seated at the café next door, drinking coffee. As the car pulled up, Pete stood up and frowned. The driver opened the door and Janey got out. She was wearing an expensive Lacroix outfit with high heels, and was suddenly conscious of how ridiculous she looked. As the driver unloaded the bags, Pete said, “Jesus. Do you think you have enough luggage?”

“I’m not backpacking,” Janey snapped.

“I spoke to Mom. She says she wants us to come home right away. She wants us to leave from Nice airport and not go into Paris. She wired me the money for the tickets.”

“I have my own money,” Janey said.

Jesus! The money. She was going to have to hide it in her suitcases. Wasn’t there something on the customs form that said you couldn’t bring more than $20,000 in currency into the country? What if she got caught and went to jail? She felt dizzy.

“The plane leaves at three o’clock. So we’d better get going.”

“Can I go to the bathroom?”

Pete rolled his eyes as Janey dragged her suitcases, one by one, into the toilette.

It was a typical French toilet—basically a hole in a cement floor over which you were supposed to squat, but at least it was empty. With shaking hands, she split up the bundles and transferred the money to the bottom of each suitcase, counting it again just to make sure. It was all still there—$100,000 in brand-new thousand-dollar bills.

They took a taxi to the airport. Crammed into the backseat of the cheap car, 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:24 PM Page 307

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Pete turned to her, and in a low voice that threatened to boil over into fury, said,

“You could have been killed, you know? Nobody knew
where
you were—Mom was about to call the French police.”

“I was fine,” Janey said wearily. “I
look
fine, don’t I?”

“You look like a . . .”

“What!”

“Take it easy on her, hon. She’s just a kid,” Anna said kindly.

“She
was
just a kid! She isn’t anymore . . .”

“What do you care?” Janey said. “It doesn’t affect
your
precious life.”

“It’s going to kill Mom. Kill her. Does that mean anything to you? Do you ever think about anybody besides yourself?”

“So don’t tell her.”

“I think we’re beyond that now,” Pete snarled.

Janey paid for the taxi, and after that, they hardly spoke again.

Both her parents picked them up at Logan Airport. Her mother took in her clothing and her suitcases, her mouth disappearing into a tight line. The next day she took her to the doctor.

The diagnosis was mononucleosis. Her mother said she was lucky she didn’t have syphilis. In the car on the way back to the house, her mother suddenly pulled over to the side of the road. “I must know, Janey,” she said. Janey looked at her mother and felt all her old fears from her childhood bubbling to the surface. She knew her mother had never liked her; every conversation they’d ever had seemed to consist of her mother’s making disparaging comments about her, and her trying to defend herself. Her mother flipped down the visor of her red Oldsmobile and began applying lipstick. “Did you sleep with him?” she asked.

“Who?” Janey said.

“You’re such a stupid girl.”

“Who, Mother? Say his name.”

“That . . . Rasheed person.” She turned to Janey and hissed, “He’s a criminal.”

“How do you know?”

“You are so stupid. How did I get such a stupid daughter? What did I do wrong?”

She started up the car and pulled back onto the street, but she wasn’t finished.

“Did you ever think about me and your father? Everyone at the club . . .”

“Fine!” Janey shouted. “I’ll leave. I’ll go somewhere and disappear. You never have to see me again. You can pretend I don’t exist.”

“And now you’re sick.”

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“I’ll kill myself.”

“Don’t be an idiot!” her mother screamed. Jerkily steering the car into their driveway, she said, “I always knew this would happen. I warned you. Men take advantage of girls who are not beautiful . . .”

“I was with him because I
am
beautiful,” she screamed, jumping out of the car and slamming the door. “And you can’t stand it, Mother. You just can’t stand it that you’re not the prettiest anymore!”

Janey spent the next two months lying in the single bed in her old room. She felt like Alice in Wonderland, where everything had mysteriously shrunk and she’d grown larger; at times she felt like she was going to blow up and the whole house would explode around her. Her mother signed her up for community college, and Janey, made mute by shame, didn’t even protest.

But eventually, she gained strength, bolstered, perhaps, by the fact that she had $100,000 hidden behind an old dollhouse in her closet. As she lay in her childhood bedroom that fall, she thought that she could erase the past and start over—after all, she was young, and when you were nineteen years old, you didn’t need to be scarred by anything. But somehow, the seed had been planted and taken hold—or perhaps the seed had always been there, waiting for the right combination of elements to germinate, and somehow the seed had had a life of its own and had driven her on and on.

Four months later, she saw Ian again. She was back in New York, living in the apartment she still rented, and one night she got a phone call.

She picked up the phone, and an unfamiliar male voice said, “Janey! I can’t believe it. I’ve been trying to track you down for days!”

“Who is this?” she asked coldly.

“Don’t you recognize my voice? Guess.”

“I can’t.”

“It’s Ian. Ian Carmichael. I’m in New York . . .” They agreed to meet at a bar around the corner from her apartment. She hadn’t stopped thinking about him, but when he walked in, she wondered why. Her heart turned cold: Taken out of his natural environment she suddenly saw that everything about him was wrong. In the glaring, unforgiving light of New York he seemed about as sophisticated as a midwestern tourist—his sweater was acrylic, and his black leather boots, which he proudly displayed, having just purchased them on Third Avenue, were unbearably ugly. They each drank three shots of tequila as Janey desperately tried to summon up the feelings she’d had for him that summer, but it was no use. She’d thought his teeth a dazzling white—now she saw that they were yellow and chipped. His eyes—those blue eyes that she’d gazed into so long-18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:24 PM Page 309

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ingly—were too close together and he’d cropped his luxurious blond hair so that attention was drawn to his nose. He explained that he was in New York for two weeks ordering some equipment for the
Mamouda
, and he kept commenting over and over again that he couldn’t believe he was actually seeing her. When he took her hand, her instinct was to draw it away.

The inevitable moment arrived and she took him back to her apartment. He kissed her standing in front of the fireplace, but his probing tongue made her want to scream. She had waited so long for this moment—what was wrong with her?

They began to make love, and Janey prayed that the passion from the summer before would come back to her, but it didn’t. When he licked her between her legs she only found it annoying, and she prayed that he would fuck her so it would end.

Finally, he did, but she felt so passionless she kept her eyes open, and at last he said,

“I’m going to come. Is that okay?”

“Yes,” she sighed. “Please do.”

He finished and lay on top of her. Then with a little sigh and a shake of his head, he pushed himself off the bed and began putting on his clothes.

“Where are you going?” Janey asked.

“I’m going. That’s all.”

“But I don’t understand.”

“You understand okay.”

“But I . . .”

“Look, Janey,” he said, pulling his sweater over his head. “Don’t say you love me, because you don’t.”

“How do you
know
?”

He sat down on the edge of the bed. “You were never in love with me, Janey.

Can’t you see that?”

She opened her mouth to protest but he silenced her with his hand. “It was just some fantasy you made up in your head. To keep yourself from going insane. ’Cause if you ever bothered to think about what you were
really
doing . . .”

“I
did
love you!” Janey insisted. She sat up and gathered the sheet around her.

He stood up. “You’re a cold girl. You’re too cold to love anyone.” The words struck her like a blow. She gasped and fell back against the wall, but he turned and walked out of the room. Forgoing the sheet, she ran after him. “How
dare
you say that? It’s not true!” But he wasn’t having it. He opened the door, and turning back to her, she saw that his face was filled with hatred. “You’re like a black widow,” he said. He walked out and started down the stairs.

“Ian,
wait
. . .”

“A black widow spider,” he muttered to himself, going down the stairs.

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She shut the door and fell against it, sobbing. Why was this always happening to her? Why didn’t anyone understand . . . ?

But in a few minutes, her tears had dried up, and she went to the mirror. She stared at herself for a long time, and then began laughing hysterically. It was a joke, really, to be so beautiful—a miracle. People stopped her on the street to tell her she was beautiful; men craned their necks out of passing cars. Two months before, at the beginning of October, fate had intervened and the Eileen Ford agency had called her. A catalog company wanted to book her for a month, and within two days she’d moved back to New York. There was no more talk from her mother about community college; indeed, her mother had driven her to the Amtrak station in Boston and, giving her a reluctant smile, had kissed her on each cheek. “Try to call once in a while,” she’d said.