Projection (3 page)

Chapter 2

Darkness captures Boston by 5:00
P.M.
during winter.  I was happy for it.  The intensity of the guilt I felt dropped each day with the sun, as if the eye of the universe had closed, and my lie was lost in the blackness blanketing the whole city.

I walked into my Chelsea loft and hit the
PLAYBACK
button on my answering machine.

"Eleven new messages," the woman on the computer chip said.  "Message one.  Received today at 9:40
A.M.
"

"Dr. Clevenger, this is Dr. Roger Drake at McLean Hospital.  I've been seeing a woman in the outpatient department here.  She's in her fifties.  A very serious major depression that isn't responding to treatment.  I've tried her on a number of antidepressants and mood stabilizers.  If anything, her condition is worsening.  A colleague of mine tells me he referred a complicated patient of his to you for psychotherapy a few years back with rather spectacular results.  I heard the same from a friend over at Mass. General.  They both say when all else fails, you're the man to call—"

I hit the
STOP
button.  "The man to call," I repeated out loud.  Not anymore.

I picked up the receiver and dialed the Executive Sweet escort service.  Clamping down on my other addictions had intensified my appetite for sex.  I had called Executive about once a week during the three months I'd lived in the apartment, always swearing to myself it would be the last time.

"Yes," a gruff voice said.

"I wondered who might be available tonight."

"Where are you?"

"Chelsea."

"Hotel Stanley?"

"I'm at home."

"Where's that?"

"One Winnisimmet Street.  Eighth floor."

"Name?"

"Clevenger."

"Number?"

"884-1804."

"Call you right back."

I knew the guy was dialing directory assistance to make sure I was for real, not just getting my jollies by having him send a girl to some vacant building in my line of sight.  The phone rang in thirty seconds.  I picked up.  "Clevenger," I said.

"You alone, or with friends?" the man asked.

"Alone."

"It's one hundred eighty the hour, cash, two hundred fifty on a  major credit card.  I can have a girl there in twenty minutes."

"Who's available?"

"I have a twenty-nine-year-old Japanese.  Big chest.  I've got a black girl, very young, maybe nineteen."

I'd met both of them.  "Who else?"

"If you can wait about an hour I've got a twenty-three-year-old blonde.  Not huge upstairs, but very pretty.  Built like a greyhound.  You know, she could model.  That type."

"I'll take the blonde."

The standard disclaimer was next.  "You understand this is a nonsexual service."

"Of course."

"She'll be there in one hour."

I hung up.  I would have predicted that coming face-to-face with the immorality of hiring troubled women to get me off would make me want to stop.  But what actually made me want to stop was the way the girls treated me — with a mechanical politeness that left me feeling the full weight of my solitude.  Maybe I had myself to blame for that; I always chose a different girl, lest I become attached to any one of them.

I walked to the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows and looked out at Chelsea's countless rowhouses, triple deckers, factories, the occasional smokestack.  My eyes traveled the length of the Tobin Bridge as it arced into Boston, its steel skeleton still choked with commuters, their headlights a centipede against the charcoal sky.  Rachel Lloyd, the fourth and last murder victim, the only woman I had ever truly loved, had had the same view out her windows, two buildings away.  I wondered whether the silent procession of lights was one of the things she had cherished about this tiny, fierce city.

I knew some of the other reasons she had chosen Chelsea as her home.  It was a cheap enough place to live, but that wasn't part of it; working as a stripper had given her enough money to hide out in a quiet suburb had she wanted to.  She relished the nakedness of the place, the fact that Chelsea's two square miles churned with the unbridled energies of people on the edge, ravenous people desperate for more than what they had.  It is a city in which English has been a second language since 1848 when the Irish, speaking Gaelic, arrived to work themselves and drink themselves near death in factories owned by the Protestant gentry.  Russian Jews escaping anti-Semitism were next, speaking Yiddish.  Italians followed.  Then Poles.  Then Puerto Ricans and Vietnamese and Cambodians and El Salvadorans and Guatemalans and so on and so on and so on, all the way to Serbs fleeing Bosnia.  It is a city that has burned nearly to the ground twice — first in 1908, then in 1973.  The streets are incendiary.  The people wear their pain on their sleeves and in their faces.  And Rachel trusted pain much more than she trusted pleasure.  It felt more honest and familiar to her, because she had been in so much pain herself.

I had never bared my soul to a woman before, certainly not to Kathy (who I happened to be living with at the time), but Rachel's suffering and the fact that she was in touch with it had made me feel safe telling her anything.  I felt a little better once I moved to Chelsea, close to the memory of her.

It was a full hour before I heard a knock on the iron door.  The excitement of a prostitute on my threshold was even less intense than the anticipation of having her there.  Regret seized me.  I said nothing.

"Hey.  Anyone home?"  The voice was young.  A few moments passed.  "Jesus."  A heavy sigh.  Then, a little louder and a little desperate:  "Hello?"

I figured she was probably a single mother with a heroin habit to feed.  The fact that she sounded upset being stood up by a john saddened me and made me feel connected to her.  I shook my head.  "Coming," I said.

"Already?"

The joke instantly dissolved my maiden-in-distress fantasy.  But I kept walking toward the door.  Because I needed the sex.  Like I needed the dark.  It could help cover up the anguish I had seen in Trevor Lucas’ face as he cried out my name.  I reached into my pocket to feel for my roll of twenties, flipped open the latch and slid the door a foot along its track.

She looked her age, which meant she looked half of mine.  She was about five feet five, with light brown (not blonde) shoulder-length hair and chestnut eyes — eyes that reminded me of Rachel's.  Her white wool coat, soiled along the seams and the collar, was wrapped tightly around her.  "I'm Ginger," she smiled.  Her teeth were perfect, which surprised me.  Every other girl from the service had had something crooked or broken.

"Call me Clove," I said.  "Might as well both use aliases."

"We're all set, then?"

The deal with Executive included the right to call everything off before anything started.  I stepped aside, and she squeezed past me.

I closed the door, walked to the couch and took the twenties out of my pocket.  I counted ten of them into a fan pattern on the seat cushion.  Giving her the money wasn't allowed because a cop would use that hand-to-hand exchange as evidence of solicitation.  I sat down next to the cash and watched as she took off her coat and started to walk around.  She was dressed in blue jeans and a black stretch top that showed off her tight body.  I knew I could see it anytime I wanted to, feel it on demand, move inside it at my leisure.  My pulse quickened.  Control over such intimacies — petty, bought and paid for though they are — is intoxicating to  a man who, like me, felt unloved and unsafe as a boy.

"This place is huge," she said.  "What was it before?"

"A pasta factory."

"You don't keep much in here."

The couch was the only piece of furniture in the loft other than my bed.  "I just moved myself in."

"A lot of guys have big houses in Brookline or Marblehead for the family and then a place where they go for... dates."

I had sold my Victorian overlooking Preston beach in Marblehead to pay back taxes and gambling debts and stop pretending to be more substantial than I felt inside.  My only family was a mother who had written me off as a hopeless addict.  "I don't have any other place," I said.

"Oh."  She looked confused.

"What?"

"Are you a struggling actor or a model or something?"

That was the first direct question about my life an escort had asked me.  I wasn't ready to be direct myself.  "Just struggling," I said.

She walked over to a framed quote I'd hung on the wall.  "Beat means rawness of the nerves," she read.  "It is a state of mind from which all unessentials have been stripped.  To be beat is to be at the bottom of your personality, looking up."  She turned to me.  "You feel beat?"

"Pretty much."

"It's going around."

"You want to talk about it?"

"No thanks."

"Fair enough.  We don't have to talk at all."

My beeper went off.  I recognized the number as the
Lynn Daily Evening Item
.  There'd been a time I had paid a couple reporters there to page me with breaking news on a serial rape case I was working.  But that was over a year ago.  I figured Calvin Sanger was at his desk late and had a few more questions for me.  "No comment," I muttered.

"Huh?" Ginger said.

"Nothing."

"You have to get that?"

"No."

She shrugged.  "I heard about a dancer from the Lynx Club who lived in one of these places."

My throat tightened.

"She got killed."

I didn't want to talk about Rachel, especially her murder.  I wanted to be with her, to hold her and touch her hair.  "Why don't you come over here?" I said.

"I don't do anything anal," she said in that mechanical tone I hated.  "Light spanking is allowed, but nothing that can leave marks.  No going down on me.  No water sports.  And we'll be using my condoms."

"Great."  I could be mechanical, too.  "Take off your clothes, starting with your top," I told her.  "Slowly."

She nodded at the windows behind her.  "Wouldn't you rather use the bed?"

"No.  I wouldn't."

She tensed up, which told me she wasn't as used to the business as her monologue on ground rules had suggested.  That excited me.  She laid her coat down, then slowly took off her top and her bra.  Her nipples were erect.  I felt myself getting hard.

"It's cold in here," she said.

I pointed at her pants.

She looked down and away from herself as she took off her shoes, unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans and stepped out of them.  She was wearing white panties.

I stayed silent.

"You don't want to go to the bed?"

"No."

"You're only my fourth customer ever, believe it or not."  She bent over slightly as she slid the panties down her legs and off.  When she stood up she crossed her forearms and laced her fingers together in front of her groin.  She shrugged.  "What now?"

Part of me wanted
what now
to be her lying on her back in front of me, touching herself until she came, then turning around so I could spank her.  But I thought I saw her eyes start to fill up.  Rachel's eyes.  My throat felt even tighter.  "Let's get into bed so I can hold you," I managed.  "That's it.  That's all I want."

I followed her to the bed, an antique four-poster made of mahogany.  It was the only piece of furniture from Marblehead I hadn't sold.  She lay down on the olive green, velvet comforter, watching me with wide eyes as I sat on the edge of the mattress, facing her.  I ran my fingers lightly down her cheek, along her neck, between her breasts and over the firm rises and falls of her abdomen.  Waves of nearly invisible, soft hairs stood on end, then faded back into place.  She closed her eyes as my fingers kissed the warm, wet skin between her legs and glided down her thigh to her knee.  Then she hooked one finger inside the waist of my jeans, which was enough to make me sigh.  I lay on my back next to her.  Without a word, she rolled flush to me and rested her head on my chest.  And then I closed my eyes.

*            *            *

The phone woke me.  I glanced at my watch and saw we had slept through more than half the hour I had paid for.  I eased away from Ginger and grabbed the cordless off the floor.  "Clove," I said.

Ginger laughed.

"
Who?
  I'm calling for Frank Clevenger," Emma Hancock half-shouted.

Sirens blared in the background.  I propped myself on one arm.  "It's me, Emma."

"Sorry.  I didn't hear you right.  I need you to meet me at Lynn State Hospital," she said.  "Right away."

"What happened?"

"Lucas went berserk.  He's taken hostages."

I had to concentrate to breathe.  "Hostages?  How the hell...?"

More sirens.  "I'll fill you in when you get here."  She hung up.

I jumped up and started pulling on my boots.  "I've got to go," I said.

Ginger reached for the blanket at the foot of the bed and drew it over herself.  She sat against the headboard.  "What was that about hostages?"

I grabbed my coat off the couch.

"Are you a cop?" she asked.

"no."  I wanted to leave it at that, but she hadn't moved to get dressed.  I picked her jeans and panties off the floor.  "I'm a psychiatrist," I said.  "I work with the police."

"A psychiatrist?"

I brought her clothes to the bed and held them out.  "I have to get going."  Even with my mind rushing through images of Lucas barricaded on the locked unit, I noticed how soft her panties felt in my hand.

She took the clothes from me.  "Can I wait here for you?"

"Probably not a good idea."

She stood up, still wrapped in the blanket.  "Probably not.  I don't think I've had a good idea yet."

I started toward the door, but turned around.  I cannot keep my distance from troubled people.  "Don't you have other appointments?" I asked.

"Look, it was a stupid thing for me to ask.  If you want to find me again, I'm staying at the Lynn Y.  My name's Cynthia.  Cynthia Baxter."

"Frank Clevenger."  I had a dozen more questions, but no time to ask them and nothing much in the apartment worth stealing.  I looked into her eyes, searching for danger.  I didn't sense any — not that I had been even a fair judge of danger in the past.  And I couldn't know what my miscalculation would cost me this time.  "Stay, if you want," I told her.  "Sounds like we're both due for a good idea."