Exposed (3 page)

For at least one more minute.

Becky said there was a video of my “sluttiness” being shared in the sorority house where she had just come from, and that Matt had set up a movie camera before the party and was thinking about selling the “film” or movie to a company on the Internet.

I was pretty nice to Becky as she said this, nonchalant even, but inside I began to implode. Before I left the table I got Becky to tell me the name of the girl she said had the video, then I went upstairs and screamed into my pillow, trying not to throw up.

After a half-hour, and because if I didn’t do something I would have gone crazy, I called Grandmama. I hoped and prayed this would be one of the times she heard the phone and would decide to answer.

“Allo?” came the voice in the accent I knew and loved.

“Hi, Grandmama. It’s Jessica.”

“Yes, of course, Sweet Jessi. Who else would it be?”

Dearest Grandmama. Always tied to the earth and sounding perplexed that every one else flew around inside of assumptions made of soap bubbles. She was so certain even of who might be on the phone.

“Grandmama, someone is trying to hurt me. Two someones, in fact. I don’t know what to do.”

“How long you know these someones?” she asked. “They are close to you?”

“No, I don’t really know them. I just met them.”

“How can you be hurt by someone you not know?” she asked, her question with an edge of incredulity.

“It’s a little complicated,” I said, and she knew, as she always did, that I didn’t want to go into details.

“If you don’t know them, then they don’t know you, is true?” she asked.

“No, they don’t know me, either.”

“Then it is not really you they are trying to hurt. It is something inside of them they try to give to or take from.”

“But it will hurt me,” I said.

“Then you must put ‘you’ into what they are doing. Who ‘you’ are must be put into what they think, what they feel. Perhaps, like in backgammon, is time to double their consequences?”

It took a minute for that to sink in, and we both let it. Then I said, “I love you, Grandmama.”

“In this minute you love that I give you a boat when water is cold, I think,” she said. “But I love you, Jessica. This is enough.”

She could be so dismissive at times I wanted to scream, but she was right, too, and at this moment I had a boat to row.

When I showed up at the sorority house, the girl who opened the door showed me right to the room of the girl who had the video.

Details are not really necessary, but by the time I walked out, I had left behind some memorable promises and tucked the video in my back pocket. It was given to me;
I
didn’t steal it.

From there I went to the frat house. The boys who had not blacked out and remembered the night before were glad to see me. I laughed and joked and went right to Matt’s room, as if invited for an encore.

I told Matt I wanted the original film and any other photos.

“You know Jess, I don’t think I can do that,” he said with a smirk I’d not seen on his face the night before. “That’s my property. I
t
was taken in my room, and it might have some value.”

“You set me up right from the beginning, didn’t you?”

“Actually, I didn’t know it would be you. I hoped it would be somebody, and you were the prettiest girl here last night who was not attached.”

“So you intended to film whoever you could seduce, and then sell it?” He nodded. My mind began to churn. I lied and said I was a freshman, had graduated from high school early, applied for early enrollment and was only sixteen. He grunted with doubt so I reached into my jeans pocket as if to get my ID, telling him I would keep my finger over my real name so he wouldn’t know who sent him to jail.

“That’s okay,” he said waving his hands, assured by my willingness. That shook him up a little.

I asked if he knew how many years in jail he’d get for rape and abuse and furnishing alcohol to a minor and everything short of kidnapping and slavery, but I might have thrown those in there too.

“And I’ve got witnesses who can show how you pinned me down, held my hands over my head with one hand while you pawed me with the other.”

“You liked that!” he said.

“You’d need to prove it, and I don’t think what a drunk sixteen-year-old likes or doesn’t like is really relevant,” I said.

I also suggested that I came from a town where loggers beat on fishermen and fishermen beat on loggers, and they all did that just for fun. I said every one of them was a good friend of mine, he could just imagine, and they would enjoy nothing more than defending our little town’s honor.

“As strong as you are, these guys haul crab pots and set chokers for a living. They are every bit as strong as you, but none of them are as pretty as you and would love nothing more than to mess up that face of yours. Whatever time in jail they’d spend would just be part of who they are, a story for when they got out and sat down at the bar.

“By the way, as to selling the tape? I don’t know how much money you think you’d get, but I don’t remember signing a modeling contract. If a sixteen-year-old can sign a contract. And I don’t think you got one from my legal guardian, though we can ask.”

I gave him reason to be nice to me, too, and when I was done, he thought it was all his idea to give me the video before I walked out his door.

On my way home, I crushed the video cassette and the copy from Sorority Girl and tossed them into a trash bin along the running path next to the creek that ambled through the campus toward town. Once on the main avenue of town, I stopped and bought myself a chamomile tea, something Grandmama especially liked.

It wasn’t a celebration of victory. More than anything, that cup of tea was raised to the peace of mind that came from acknowledging I’m no victim. Just because we are women doesn’t mean we’re entitled to always be handled with gloves made from the skin of baby lambs.

To those that think so, Grandmama would purse her lips, blow a thin stream of air between them, and shrug. She didn’t bother much with unnecessary words.

On the other hand, people
attempting
to demean me, or profit from me, or revile me for something even as they get off on it, at first frightened me horribly, then made me very angry, then gave me resolve.

Talk about the value of a college education.

• • • •

Everybody said I would make a good lawyer. So law school was a default choice — more of a “why not?” rather than a “why.”

Life is like that sometimes, taking us down some surprising paths. Like the reason for writing this book, for instance.

I was glad to move on. I went to law school (a rather well-known one). I enjoyed the law far more than I thought I would. Most of it, anyway. I liked breaking issues down, looking at what was real, solving the puzzles.

I enjoyed the boys who were becoming men, too. And like every pretty woman in law school, I “had” a couple of professors. But for all their brains and education, they weren’t that different from the boys in college, or other men. Only the vocabulary was different.

On more than one occasion, I had to inform them that by planting their penis, they had not planted a flag. That my sleeping with them once, or twice, or even a half-dozen times, did not mean I had conveyed property rights. There was always some sort of trauma drama until I made it clear I was no longer interested.

Until I met Mark, another student.

Yes, that’s his real name too. Mark Love. You can look him up, and you can try to find out more, but he won’t talk to you. For a lot of reasons. In fact, if you mention my name to him, he’ll probably turn and walk away.

We had fun together. Mark is very, very smart, and quite handsome. And unlike nearly all of the others, he was not only fantastic in bed, but out of bed he was able to listen. He treated me with respect. It wasn’t just that he had a presence;
he
was
present. Ready to be serious, or ready to laugh, but always in the moment and
not
replaying old reactions to other places or times.We had both been athletes in high school, but Mark also played baseball in college, on scholarship, whereas
I
was more of a dilettante.

I’d kept up with running from my track days in high school, but since I could not compete with the “real” athletes in college, it was just a hobby. I did a few marathons, more to have a personal goal than to set any sort of record.

Mark went on casual bike rides of a hundred or so miles, but I never liked the feeling of being out of control and bikes go too fast for me. I liked my solitary running, where I could completely control the pace. But when we were each done, we were able to share the endorphins.

Even though Mark and I were always attracted to each other, we were also cautious in ways that were very similar. We dated, broke up, fooled around with others, talked it through, got back together.

When Mark passed the bar with stunningly high scores (mine were not as high, but I’m still pretty proud of them), he was recruited by a few of the best law firms in the country. He liked Seattle, though, and it didn’t take long for him to get an office with a view of Puget Sound.

True to form, I didn’t really have a clue where I was going with my degree. I was on my fourth interview and actually beginning to get a little desperate. I wasn’t living with Mark, as
we
were in one of our breakup periods. I was staying with some friends from college.

My fourth interview was with a managing partner whose name is not Anthony Stevens, but that’s what I am going to call him. His firm is not named Stevens and Brown, PC, but that’s what I am going to call it.

“Do you have a passion for criminal law?” Tony asked me.

“That depends on whether I’d need one to get a job.”

He laughed. “Let’s have lunch today,” he said. So I cancelled on friends I’d been planning to meet, and Tony and I went to lunch.

There’s a nice little restaurant in the Pike Place Market, Place Pigale. You have to walk outside the market along a narrow walk toward the water to get there, but if you get a table the food is worth it, and the view is spectacular. We ordered the salmon cake special. Tony ordered a martini.

“You want one?” he asked. I said no, thanks, and ordered a green tea.

“I’m thinking about redeploying assets,” Tony said. I waited for him to explain, but he didn’t, so I played along. “What does that mean, exactly?” I said.

Later I learned Tony liked to make you ask. It’s a power thing with him.

“I think there’s an under-appreciated opportunity in defending the right clients in the criminal system. You might be the right lawyer to do that,” he said.

His idea was that young women sometimes get into trouble. Young women relate better to other young women than they do to old men, or young men, for that matter, who are either trying to control them or fuck them, he said.

“Most men are jerks. And the most dangerous ones are the ones who say they are trying to help you, that they know what’s best for you, that they will take care of you.”

“Even you?” I asked. I just couldn’t resist, since we’d already started this relationship with a certain amount of candor.

“Even me,” he said. “Maybe especially me, since by acknowledging it I may seem to be different than the others. I’m not. I just present differently.”

But most importantly for Tony, young women often have people willing to pay their legal bills. He thought the combination of a law firm with a solid name and a bright young female lawyer (his words) working exclusively on behalf of women caught in “the system” could attract enough of those women and their benefactors to make a decent profit.

It was a job, and I needed a job. It also sounded like it could be fun. He offered a salary. I said yes, even after Tony, on his third martini, ran his ankle along mine under the table, and put his hand on my arm a few too many times. He was true to his word.

I had enough experience not to flinch. Some would say I might have missed an opportunity. Others, I’m sure, thought I took the opportunity. Tony had a reputation. With staff, with women in the building, probably with most of downtown Seattle.

Tony was very good-looking, even though quite a bit older than me. Quite a bit. That can sometimes be a turn-on, but he wasn’t the type that turned me on. I’ll get to that. Though I didn’t flinch, I also didn’t take him up on his suggestion we go back to his place across from the office to “have coffee and work out the details.”

At first I thought criminal law would be romantic. Trust me, it’s not. To begin with, your clients are usually criminals. Say what you will. Secondly, most criminals don’t really have that much in the way of brains. Or they would not have been criminals. Again, say what you will.

But we were selective, with the girl’s source of funds always the first consideration. Often the “source of funds” was surprising, and Tony could go to some amazing lengths to conceal who was paying the bill, even as he tied the man paying the bill to a legal retainer.

Sometimes I wanted to take a case because “this girl really needs us.” Tony always overruled me.