Fatal Conceit (14 page)

Not long into the party, Lee introduced her to an Israeli businessman named Ariel Shimon. He was short, fiftyish, with silver taking
over his jet-black hair at the temples, but trim, charming, intelligent, and dressed impeccably in a tailored Armani suit. He was immediately taken with her, especially the parts of her below her chin; his eyes drifted to her cleavage as they spoke and lingered there like tourists at an art gallery. It wasn't long before he was making suggestive remarks and obviously trying to get her drunk, which the more she got, the more she laughed at his jokes and innuendoes.

After about an hour of this, Jenna saw him talking to Lee over by the bar. They were both watching her before he turned to order drinks. Lee walked over with a knowing smile on her lips. “So how are things going with Ariel?”

“Other than he hasn't looked above my breasts since we first shook hands and seems to like making a lot of bedroom jokes, I'm having fun. He's a hoot,” Blair replied with a laugh. She looked around the crowded room. “Boy, you weren't kidding when you said there were going to be a lot of important people here.”

“Yes, and Ariel's one of them.” She turned and nodded toward the bar, where the man of the moment was staring back at them with a drink in each hand. “You know he's worth a few gazillion, something to do with Israeli defense contracts, and he contributes a lot of money to political action committees whenever Rod asks.” She paused and winked. “He's also pretty good looking.”

“And old enough to be my dad.”

“A very rich, very handsome dad, if you ask me. Besides, Rod's thirty years older than me and as long as he hasn't been drinking too much, he's a better lover than most of the boys I've dated,” Lee said. She hesitated, then reached out and touched Jenna's arm. “Ariel's going to be in town for a couple of weeks and would like to date you.”

“I think he's married,” Blair pointed out.

Lee scoffed. “To some boring professor of archeology in Tel Aviv. That's a long ways from New York.”

“So what do you mean he wants to ‘date' me? I take it you mean the sort of date that ends up in bed.”

Her friend giggled. “It could be fun, and it would be profitable. Some people I know are willing to pay you five thousand dollars a week to keep Ariel happy while he's here.”

Blair's jaw dropped. “These ‘people' are going to pay me five thousand dollars a week to ‘date' a filthy rich Israeli businessman? I believe that's called prostitution.”

“Oh, come on, Jenna, tell me those aspiring actor losers you meet aren't expecting sex for buying you a slice of pizza and a beer.”

“It's not guaranteed, and not many of them succeed,” Blair said. She was smiling, but then she frowned. “This is why you invited me, isn't it?”

“Call it an opportunity, Jenna,” Lee replied. “You need money. Ariel needs someone to show him the sights, in and out of bed. And these people I mentioned are willing to pay for it.”

“These people, what do they want in return?” Blair asked suspiciously.

“Nothing much. They mostly want Ariel to have a good time. But they'd also like information. They'd be interested in anything he might have to say about Israeli-American relations, the president, the Israeli government, his business. Anything that comes up, no pun intended.”

Lee giggled at her own joke, but Blair wasn't smiling anymore. “This just keeps getting better. You want me to sleep with a big campaign donor
and
spy on him?” She shook her head. “I can't do that.”

Patting her on the shoulder, Lee said, “Give it some thought. You'd be helping yourself and helping your country.”

“Helping my country?”

“Yes,” Lee replied, completely serious now. “It's a dangerous world and the more information people like the men in this room, like my boyfriend, Rod, can get, the better they are able to make good decisions to protect the rest of us.”

“That's quite the speech,” Blair said. “But why does Ariel want
me? There are a lot of beautiful women in this room, and a million more in the city.”

Lee shrugged. “He chose you. Guys like him don't always go for the supermodels. If all they wanted was a beautiful whore in bed, they could buy that anytime. You've got a nice butt, great ta-tas, and a pretty face, and guys like him also want somebody they can jog with in Central Park or play a game of tennis with, and then go dancing at Club 21 before hopping in the sack at the end of the day.”

Blair laughed. “Wow, you've really given this some thought,” she said. She hugged her friend. “Thanks, but I got an early morning. I'm going to catch a cab.”

Lee looked disappointed, but then smiled. “Well, think about it, would you? It'd be a fun couple of weeks and pay your rent for a few months.”

“Yeah, sure, I'll think about it,” Blair had replied, never intending to give it another thought. When she left, she looked over her shoulder and saw Lee talking to the Israeli. He looked angry, but when she gave him a little wave, he smiled slightly and waved back.

The next day she arrived home from work tired and sweaty to discover she'd been sent three dozen long-stemmed red roses. “Who'd you sleep with?” one of her roommates asked. “I hope you got the lead role.”

“I have no idea,” she'd replied. Then she read the card: “Thanks for the conversation and your charming company. I'd love to see you again. Ariel.”

A half hour later, her cell phone rang. Caller ID didn't say who it was from so she didn't answer it until the third time whoever it was called her back. It was Ariel Shimon. He wanted to take her out to dinner. “Please,” he begged. “I don't know anyone in this great big city, and I hate eating alone. Pretty please. I'll take you right home afterward, no hanky panky. I promise.”

So she agreed. He picked her up in a stretch limousine an hour
later and took her to dinner at Asiate. After a bottle of Armand de Brignac champagne, two bottles of Grgich Hills Cabernet, and a dinner of stuffed lobster tails, asparagus, and the most melt-in-your-mouth crème brûlée she'd ever tasted, Jenna was feeling no pain. And Shimon had been a perfect gentleman, only lightly caressing her bustline with his eyes from time to time, but otherwise keeping her entertained with funny or fascinating stories about Israel. She didn't see the bill for the dinner, much less the limo, but she was sure that it was more than she made in a month. She was half-considering whether to take him to bed for his efforts, but he took her straight home as he'd promised and stopped at a pleasant but not overpowering kiss before asking if she'd see him again the next night.

In fact, Blair didn't sleep with him until the third date. They'd gone dancing at S.O.B.'s and he certainly hadn't moved like any fifty-year-old she knew. And no young men her own age had his charm or flair. She learned that he'd been in the Israeli army and had been decorated for heroism; he had two young boys he loved very much, but he didn't talk much about his wife other than to describe her as “distant and cold.” At the end of the evening when he asked if she wanted to see his suite at the Plaza, she said yes.

Ariel turned out to be as good a lover as he was a dancer and a soldier. Heroic, in fact. At the end of the first week of their affair, Blair got a call from Lee. “I hear you and Ariel are hitting it off,” she said. “That's great!”

“Where'd you get that from?”

“He talks to my boyfriend all the time,” Lee said. “Political stuff mostly, I think, although they go into Rod's office for it, and I don't hear much. But he did tell me that he really likes you.”

“That's nice,” Blair said, feeling a warm glow. “I like him, too.”

“You'll like him even more when you check your bank account,” Lee said. “And don't worry, you don't even have to report it to the IRS. It's taken care of.”

“What? What are you talking about?” Blair asked. She was sitting
at her computer so she got online as they talked and logged in to her bank account. “Oh, my God. There's five thousand dollars in there that wasn't there this morning!”

Lee laughed. “Did you think I was lying?”

“How'd you get my bank account?”

“Oh, ve haf vays, dahling,” Lee said, and laughed again. “Really? I mean, look who we're talking about here. Rod's an important guy; he tells me that all the time.”

A chill ran down Blair's spine.
They can get into my bank account?
But she was also realizing what the money would mean to paying the rent that month.
And putting a little away for law school,
she thought. Then her conscience spoke up. “No, really. I can't accept this. I'm having a good time with Ariel, and he's already spent a fortune taking me out.”

“He can afford to take you to dinner in Paris if that's what he wants, and the five thousand dollars isn't even his money,” Lee assured her. “At least not directly. It's worth it to some people that Ariel is happy with you. He's been really easy to deal with, Rod says. Think of it as being paid as a goodwill ambassador between our countries.”

These “people” meaning Rod,
Blair thought. “Ambassador . . . new word for ‘escort,' but I can use the money.”

“That's the spirit,” Lee said. “Now, have you given any thought to what I said about letting me know the sorts of things he talks about?”

“You mean like, ‘oooh do that again'?” Blair replied sarcastically.

“No, silly. But anything else?”

This is the payback.
“Well, he was talking about the Israeli government considering buying fighters from France . . .”

So having sex for money, and reporting what her lover talked about over dinner or after a bout in bed, began. Two weeks and two more paydays later, Ariel presented her with a diamond-studded tennis bracelet worth at least as much as what had been transferred into her bank account.

“I'm going home tomorrow, my love,” he said as they had drinks at the Pegu Club.

Blair felt a pang of disappointment. She'd grown to like Ariel, and she was sad to see it end. “So will I get to see you the next time you're in New York?” she asked.

Shimon smiled and touched her cheek, but then he shook his head. “It's better to keep these things short and sweet,” he said. “Otherwise one person or the other forms an attachment that is simply impossible. In Israel I am a respected businessman with a wife and two children and possibly politics in my future. I cannot risk having my enemies discover I have a mistress. So this is good-bye. It's been fun.”

It was all Blair could do not to cry, at least not until he'd dropped her off at her apartment. She understood their affair was a temporary thing, but he'd been so cold and made her feel so cheap. She sobbed all night, but then in the morning felt better about the whole thing, especially when she looked in her bank account and discovered an additional five thousand dollars she hadn't expected.

“A bonus for good work,” Lee explained later that day. “Rod is very very pleased with you. You'll go far.”

Blair learned what Lee meant by going far the next time she was invited to another glamorous party and introduced to another lonely, rich, and important man who was visiting New York City. At first, still stung by Shimon's callousness, she resisted, but then she shrugged.
We're using each other,
she thought.
I use him for the money; he uses me for my body. We both get what we want.

Over the next several years, there'd been a dozen such men. Each time it had been easier to accept the money, and she no longer cried when they left. She even let herself believe it a little bit when Lee would babble on about how her information was helping the men who advised the president. A year earlier, she'd started law school and moved into a nice two-bedroom apartment in the Chelsea district that she shared with another law student.
I'll do this until I get through school,
she told herself as each man wined, dined, and bedded her before leaving.

Then three months ago, Lee had called to invite her to her apartment. “Rod wants to talk to you,” she said.

When Blair arrived at the apartment, she found that her friend was gone but Fauhomme was there.
“I wanted us to have a little private chat,”
he said as he fixed himself a drink at the bar. “Get you anything?”

“An India Pale Ale if you have it,” Blair said.

Fauhomme raised an eyebrow. “I wouldn't have pegged you for an IPA type,” he said as he opened the refrigerator and got out a bottle.

Blair held out her hand. “No? What type would you have pegged me for?” She didn't like the man, who'd grown fatter since she'd seen him at the first party. She knew he was a son of a bitch who liked to slap Lee around and verbally abuse her. Her friend had recently confided that the cruelty was getting worse, but she was mostly worried that he was thinking about getting rid of her. “He thinks I'm stupid because I could give a shit about politics, and because I'm nice. But I'm not stupid and I see things and hear things.” The other woman's pretty face contorted into an angry mask. “And he better not fuck with me, or I'll nail his fat ass.” Then she'd started to cry.

Fauhomme shrugged. “I hear you have expensive tastes.”

“Sometimes I prefer a vodka martini, Grey Goose, shaved ice, very dry,” Blair said. “But nothing like a good ol' IPA on a hot June day.”

“To each their own,” he said, raising his glass in a toast. “But as I was saying, I wanted to talk to you privately about a very important matter. First, I want to thank you for all you've done to help us keep our important visitors . . . um . . . happy. Your . . . efforts . . . have not gone unnoticed by people at the very highest levels. It may not seem like it to you but you are performing a great service to your country.”