Wages of Sin (14 page)

Martin danced in the lap of an Austin restauranteur and his blond sidekick. “Come party with us,” they said.

She got in their car and rode with them to the restauranteur’s lakeside house. He showed her his dogs, his boat, his house, his bedroom. He kissed her in his bedroom. His blond friend walked in and started kissing her, too.

“I don’t feel good,” whined Martin. She wondered if she was going to be raped for a threesome. “I don’t feel good.”

Martin safely left the house.

In Ricks’s thinking, Martin was just “too into it,” thinking the customers were her friends, calling them to let them know what nights she was dancing.

Roxy Ricks hated stripping.
It breaks down your soul,
she thought.
It distorts your perception of men and sexual relationships. It’s dysfunctional. It’s a lower-level vibe that I don’t want to bring home.

“Eric,” Martin called as she and Todd Brunner were in the throes of sex.

Acting as though he didn’t hear, Brunner kept pushing his body against hers, until he climaxed. He rolled over, then looked back at Martin. “What did you say? Did you say what I think you said?”

“I. . . .” Eric had been Martin’s previous lover. She had been thinking about him, but not in sexual terms. She’d just been thinking about how weird she thought he was.

It wasn’t all that unusual for Martin to think about things other than sex while making love. Sometimes she just got bored.

 

 

Martin eventually took herself off antidepressants and stopped going to the psychiatrist. In 1993, while still living with Todd Brunner, she also stopped dancing.

She loved dancing, but she hated dancing topless, she claimed. She decided to concentrate on college. Her modus operandi had been to attend Austin Community College for a semester, drop out a semester. Attend. Drop out. Or drop half the classes.

But by July 1994, Martin had visions of modeling dancing in her head. That month Martin returned to the Yellow Rose to earn a quick $2,000 so that she could fly to California for a modeling contest. Overnight, she dreamed, she’d be a super rich super model.

Almost overnight Martin made the $2,000. In August she boarded a jet bound for Orange County, California, where she and 150 other girls with megamodel dreams checked into the Red Lion Hotel in Costa Mesa. The prize they fought for was the opportunity to model in a swimwear magazine.

Martin stood in the hotel lobby people watching. She’d been to San Francisco before, but never to Southern California. A dark, handsome man in a good suit walked up to her.

“Are you here to model?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, her Oklahoma accent thick.

“I’m a photographer. What’s your name?” Soon he asked her if she wanted to go to a club with him. “We can talk about taking some pictures.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, jumping at the chance.

They drove in his rent-a-car to a local nightclub. As music throbbed, as he bought her a few drinks, he asked her what pictures she had taken. “Would you show me your portfolio? I can come up to your room—”

“I’ll get my portfolio and bring it down to you in the lounge,” Stephanie answered.

They returned to the hotel.

“Oh, this is wonderful,” he said, flipping through her book.

Martin smiled. “I just got here, you know. And I don’t know much about what goes on. What kind of—are you gonna take pictures of us when we go to the beach or what, you know?”

The modeling contestants were scheduled for runway and beach photo sessions.

“I do videos,” he answered. “Adult videos.”

Stephanie Martin laughed. “Oh, no. That’s not what I came out here for.”

 

 

Martin returned to Texas, even more depressed. “They wanted tall, full-figured women,” she said. “I’m too short and too petite. And I’m not full-figured.” She laughed at herself.

“I’m not into modeling, anyway. It’s a joke. You have to pay your way until you suddenly make it big. And I realized I’m not really into it. I want to do something that matters. Modeling is fictitious to me, you know.” Martin laughed again.

She entered a contest to be photographed for the annual Yellow Rose calendar, an unpaid modeling job.

She was named one of the winners of the contest.

Mark Daughn, a judge for the contest and the calendar photographer, was a bit leery of using Martin since she was untried. But she showed up on time, and unlike many dancers, she showed up sober and rested. She easily climbed onto the pontoon boat that raced them across Lake Travis to the shoot.

It had rained that morning, and as they rushed across the lake, dark clouds were moving back in. They had to hurry. Three girls, the photographer, a videographer, and several more were on board. Daughn had an advertising mission. He wanted to turn the Rose from a blue-collar club into a white-collar one.

Martin was the prettiest girl there, and she wasn’t acting like a prima donna. Daughn eased her into the waters of Pace Bend Park and she took off her top. He floated his camera just above the water. Click. Stephanie Martin would be the cover shot for the 1995 Yellow Rose calendar.

Martin peered over her customer’s head and watched the center stage. Serena was dancing, and Martin couldn’t take her eyes off her. Martin almost couldn’t do the lap dance she was in the very midst of doing for watching Serena. She did one more tilt of her breasts near the customer’s face, let him whisper a touch to her thighs, then took his $20 and walked over to the bar. Her crush on Serena was costing Stephanie Martin a portion of her income.

When young, well-toned women swirled their naked breasts and bare bottoms right in front of her hazel eyes, Stephanie Martin couldn’t help but get turned on. Martin reached for a drink.

“Why don’t you come out and party with us tonight?” Amber walked up and touched Martin’s shoulder with a slow, light stroke. “On the boat. There’s a nice moon. Nice breeze. The light on the water. A few drinks . . . maybe . . .” She caressed Martin’s arm.

Stephanie Martin knew that what she had once thought was a simple party on a houseboat was really an orgy of girls. She glanced at her near empty drink. She toiled in her mind.
Maybe I should just get drunk and go.

She gaped at Serena.
She’s so beautiful. She has so much sex appeal. She can dance so good.
“No, thanks,” said Martin. “Todd’s waiting for me.”

She walked up to Yellow Rose customer Jon Noyes and began to dance in his lap.
Nice-looking,
thought Martin.
Stockbroker.
She recalled having met him a year or more earlier, taken a tour of his apartment, and pecked him on the cheek.

“Want to go to breakfast?” he asked. He was funny, and he tipped well.

She wondered if she wasn’t interested in sex with men, or simply not interested in sex with Todd. She got in her car and followed Noyes to breakfast, then got in his car and rode over to Lake Austin to look at his boat. It was three in the morning. He grabbed her and kissed her.

Martin pushed him away.
God,
she thought,
he might rape me.

He tried again to kiss her.

“Stop. Stop.” Martin wasn’t interested at all. “I didn’t come out here to have sex.”

They talked until Noyes took her back to her car.

 

 

By October, Martin was again enrolled at Austin Community College but still dancing at the Rose. It was a packed Friday night, and she glanced around the room, cigarette smoke choking the air. Martin didn’t notice. All she saw was the mesmerizing hazel-green eyes that lingered on her.

The man with the eyes motioned her over to his table. Softly, in the din of the music, he said, “Can I buy you a drink?”

Martin sat down as the customer kept his eyes steady on her eyes.

He asked her about herself . . . and he listened.

She asked him if she could dance.

“I’d really just like to listen to you,” he said, slipping her $50.

She insisted that she dance. Still gazing into her eyes, he lightly touched her shoulders and her hips, gentlemanly, assuredly.

“Tell me about you,” she begged.

“Oh, nothing. I work for the government.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s a very secret job.”

“What?”

He shook his head. “Let me get you another drink?” He signaled the waitress.

Martin talked him into drinking a B-52 with her. “Now tell me what you do,” she begged.

His beeper went off. He looked down. “Excuse me,” he said. “It’s Fred. I’ve gotta go make a phone call.”

He disappeared. Martin waited for him. He was worth waiting for. He was confident and comfortable, not macho.

He said he owned a ranch in Montana with 200 horses on it. He told her he traveled a lot. “Sometimes,” he said, “I have to kill for my country.”

She rubbed his thighs. She just wanted to watch him and listen to him talk. His voice was soothing. She sat in his lap.

“Why not give me your phone number?” he said.

“No,” she said, and told him about Brunner.

“I still want you to call me.” He scribbled down his phone number and pager number. Three or four hours after she first sat down with him, Will Busenburg left.

Martin wanted to call him, but she didn’t. She knew he’d be back. She counted up the money he’d spent on her—$300.

 

 

A week and a day later, Stephanie Martin spotted Will Busenburg across the room. He sat in the Rose with four guys, just a half hour from closing time. Martin walked up, smiling.

Busenburg turned to the men. “Okay, you can go now.”

They silently got up and left.

“How come, um, they all got up and left, you know?”

“They all owe me a favor.” His voice was deep. “I saved their lives on a job.”

She left with Busenburg.

Magnolia Cafe was a popular rustic Austin restaurant that served health-food nuts, junk-food junkies, yuppies, hippies, gays, and straights at every hour of the day and night.

“I love their gingerbread pancakes,” Martin exclaimed. It was about 3
A.M
. “And their black beans.”

A slacker-looking waitperson rushed up and flipped open an order pad.

“The ham and cheese omelette,” said Busenburg, “and I want cheese all over it.”

“That is so unhealthy,” Martin replied. “You do not need to put that cheese all over that omelette.” She knew she could sometimes be pushy. “It’s already in it.” She ordered the gingerbread pancakes.

Over their breakfast, Busenburg slowly said, “My father was a Green Beret who physically and sexually abused me.” Tears began to eke from his eyes. “When I was nine years old, he was abusing me, and I shot and killed him in self-defense.”

Martin gasped. She thought he looked, at that very moment, like he was reliving the event. “Why are you telling me this? You just met me.”

“Because you’re different,” he answered, gazing into her eyes. “You’re different. You’re the first girl I’ve met that I feel I can open up to.” He looked away. “After that, they put me in a boys’ home. It was so strict, but that’s where I learned my manners.”

Martin watched him. His posture was perfect and stiff, his manners perfect and precise.

“Then my mom and my sisters abandoned me because I killed my father. They really abandoned me after I went into the boys’ home. I always hated my mom because she let my father abuse me. I was suicidal for a year.” He started to stir the cheese in his omelette, then stopped.

“That was in Montana.” He stared out the window and into the night. “There was this man there. I called him my grandpa, but he wasn’t really. He just saw me at the home and thought I was a good worker. So he adopted me and took me on his ranch. He invented the orthopedic hip.”

Busenburg said he and his brother-in-law, due to the “grandpa’s” influence, started their own orthopedic company. That’s why Busenburg was in Austin, to oversee the company. In the basement of Intermedics Orthopedics, they planned their missions.

“He was in the CIA,” Busenburg said, still talking about his “grandpa.” “He’s the one who encouraged me to go into the Army. One day he saw me sharpshooting. He thought I was good at it and suggested that I practice it more. I did, and I worked my way up to Special Forces.”

The Special Forces eventually led to the CIA, where he earned his living making hits; $15,000 for an easy target, $25,000 for a tougher one, he told Martin.

Busenburg went silent as he stared out the window at a rotund, old oak tree.

“Will,” called Martin. “Will? What are you being so quiet for?”

“I just remembered something.” He sat silent again.

“What?”

He didn’t talk for the longest while, then finally uttered, “One time, on one of my missions, I had to sit up in the branches of a tree for hours, stalking my target before I had a chance to shoot him.”

“Really?” said Martin, breathless.

“That tree,” he gestured outside, “reminds me of the tree on that mission.”

“How do you do it?”

“I have a sixth sense . . . about other men. That’s why I’ve never gotten killed on my missions. I always know when someone’s there.” He looked directly into Stephanie Martin’s eyes. “I know when someone’s behind me. I know when someone is coming. I don’t have to hear them, I just know.”

Busenburg went silent again.

They walked out to his truck. “It’s new,” he said.

Martin admired his stereo system.

“I just had it put in.” He ducked into his truck and showed her his sawed-off shotgun.

Getting information out of Will Busenburg, she felt, was like squeezing a last dribble from a shampoo bottle, then trying to get that dribble to foam up good. He just waited for her to squeeze, she believed. He was slow, calm, secretive.
Passionate.

 

 

She wanted to see him again, and she couldn’t wait any longer, despite it being only a few days since their breakfast at Magnolia. Martin paged Busenburg. He didn’t answer. She paged him again, but he still didn’t answer. She called his phone and left a message.

An hour later, Busenburg strolled into the Rose. “I just got back from a mission,” he said.

They got into his truck and drove around Austin, first for something to eat, then easing their way into Round Rock. In the darkness, she showed him her parents’ neighborhood.

“Let me show you my houses.” He steered his pickup past his mother’s home. “I bought it for her.” He drove to Brushy Creek, an upper-middle-class neighborhood. He pointed to several homes with For Sale signs in the yards and told Martin he owned those houses and was selling them.

“Let’s go inside and look,” she said, excited.

“I don’t have the keys right now.” Busenburg reached over and touched her hair. She seemed so secure. He envied that. But he didn’t tell her that. He told her he owned a villa in France and a ranch in Montana.

He wondered about her—about her being with a boyfriend for three years, about her being out with him, Will Busenburg, someone she didn’t even know. He didn’t want to admit it, but he was a bit frightened of her.

He told her he had a roommate, a Navy SEAL, whom he had met in Somalia during Operation Desert Storm. “We both kind of helped each other out over there. We kind of saved each other’s lives.”

He talked more about his travels, describing in detail the beauty of the places, how he loved the mountains, the foods he ate. He told her he was twenty-five years old.

He maneuvered his truck back toward Austin, until the couple stopped by Town Lake, a downtown luxury of the Colorado River. The autumn moon shone on the waters. The air was crisp with a fresh north breeze, its winds caressing Stephanie’s skin. Will inhaled her sweetness.

It’s like she’s come into the world after being bathed in the waters of the gods,
he thought.

They sat down.

Her skin has eternally kept that sweet beautiful smell.
He watched her smile, the moon in her eyes, the light from her teeth. He watched and glared as others walked up. He wanted them to go away. He didn’t want the night to end.

Busenburg drove Martin back to her car. He curled his fingers through her hair and wondered if she was using him to get back at her boyfriend.

Long and sweet, she hugged him good night. He wanted to kiss her, but he feared that if he did, he’d never let her go. Martin let go and waved good night.

Busenburg looked up at the stars, fading with the sunrise, and he prayed. “I know You probably don’t remember me.” He told God his name. He reminded God that he’d had a rough life and done lots of “bad things.” But he asked God for a favor—to see Stephanie Martin a few more times. She made him feel alive, and that was a new feeling.

“What the hell is wrong with me?” he whispered. “I don’t even believe that shit anymore.” But his soul was still praying.

 

 

Will Busenburg thanked God days later as he sat in a Round Rock Chinese restaurant. The food stank, but that didn’t matter. Busenburg was once again fixed into the eyes of Stephanie Martin.
Amen.
His pager went off—his mother calling.
Shit.

The couple soon stood in Fran Wallen’s house, presenting her with a birthday cake.

Martin looked around the room. On the TV sat a photo of Will in a military uniform.

“That’s me when I was in the Army, Special Forces,” he said. “Not the CIA.”

They drove over to his Aubry Hills apartment. Chris Hatton was there playing Nintendo and drinking. To Martin, he looked depressed. She moved toward the back of the apartment and to Busenburg’s bedroom.

She thumbed through Busenburg’s collection of Anne Rice books. “I like her, too.” They both liked the musical group Enigma. He had Disney’s
The Lion King
video.

Will Busenburg seemed like everything Stephanie Martin had ever hoped for—the perfect mix of masculine and feminine. She kissed him.

Four dates and two weeks into October, Martin sat at the computer in the south Austin home she shared with Todd Brunner. Brunner eased up behind her, wrapped his arms around Martin, and slipped a spoonful of ice cream between her lips.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” she said, the ice cream still wet on her tongue.

“What?” said Brunner, readying the next bite.

“I’m leaving you tomorrow.” She saw Will in her mind and his dreamy hazel-green eyes that paid attention to her every move. “You know, I’ve been feeling so dependent on you, and I want to be independent. I want to get my own apartment and be alone for a while.”

“Oh, yeah, right, Stephanie,” said Brunner. “You’re leaving me.” His tone was mocking. “You’re gonna tell me tomorrow this is a joke.” Brunner set down the ice cream. “I’m going to bed.”

The following morning, he asked Martin, “You were joking last night, right?”

“No,” she said softly. “I’m really, uh, gonna move out.”