Trading Up (56 page)

“Oh yes, Rasheed,” she said mischievously. “Many.”

“Do tell, Janey,” Sallie said, her mouth half full of fish. “Are you planning to grow breasts?”

“What is
breasts
?” Irina asked.

And now, very faintly, Janey was sure that she heard the sound of the Lazer.

Holding the magazine over her head to shield her eyes, a sleek gray dinghy rounded the point of the harbor, piloted by a tall blond man. From a distance, most of the crew, who were either Australian or English, looked exactly alike with their slim bodies and blond hair, but Ian was taller than the rest, and she was sure it was he. Her heart beat rapidly as the boat swung into the harbor and passed the café; jumping out of her seat she ran to the edge of the dock and waved. He acknowledged her with a large grin and steered the boat to the pier in the center of the town.

She returned to her seat, nervously fiddling with the diamond bracelet on her wrist. How had this happened? She was desperately in love with him—when she wasn’t contriving ways to brush against him she spent her time fantasizing about having sex with him, about escaping the yacht and having a life together. And yet, in the seven days she’d been on the yacht, she hadn’t had more than half a minute alone with him. But even in those brief thirty seconds, she was sure that she saw depths of great understanding in him, that he saw who she really was.

He tied up the Lazer and began making his way toward her. She had fallen in love with him that first night on the yacht, when, shaking with fear, she had run into him on the deck on her way to dinner. “They’re going to sell us into white slavery,” she hissed angrily. He was so taken aback by her comment that he’d laughed 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:24 PM Page 300

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out loud. “Tell you what,” he said. “If they do, I’ll protect you. I promise to be the highest bidder.” Then he had laughed again and shaken his head in amused disbelief. The incident had become a running joke with them—when Janey saw him, she’d say, “I hope you’re saving your money.” And he’d respond, “It’s all in the mat-tress,” and wink at her.

He was nearly at the café when he suddenly turned into a white building with an official-looking brass plaque on the door, which was the customs office.

She took another sip of her Coke and willed her heart to stop beating. He would come to her—he had to. He had seen her, and as she was a “guest” on the yacht he would have to at least acknowledge her and say hello. But immediately her mind began spinning fantasies. He would take her back to the yacht, and with Rasheed gone, maybe she could sneak into his cabin. Sallie had said there were cameras in every room, but perhaps that didn’t extend to the crew; she couldn’t imagine Ian tolerating a camera in his room. He was so beautiful and wise . . .

Fifteen minutes later he emerged from the customs office, and with a wave of his hand approached her table. “How were the Turkish newspapers?” he asked.

“Oh, I found I couldn’t read Turkish after all,” she said airily.

“Well, the good news is that we leave for Monaco this afternoon. You ever been to Monaco?”

“No, but maybe Rasheed will want to put me off the yacht.”

“I don’t think so,” Ian said, cocking his head to one side. “He seems to really like you.”

“It’s probably my poker playing . . . Do we have to go back to the yacht right away?”

“I’ll let you finish your Coke,” he said.

“Then I’m going to finish it very slowly,” she said, looking up at him and smiling. She loved it when he took a commanding tone of voice with her. It made her feel like a child who has just been assured that everything is going to be all right.

“Why don’t you have one, too?” she asked innocently.

“Because,” he said, leaning over the table, “it wouldn’t do for us to be seen together.”

“We can go in the back.”

“Now that would be even worse. They’d think we were hiding.”

“Are they watching us?”

“ ’Course,” he said, in a tone of voice that might or might not have been joking.

“See that man over there?” he asked, indicating a heavy-set man with a shaved head.

“You ever seen him before?”

“No-o-o-o-o.”

“He’s on the yacht. He’s one of Rasheed’s bodyguards.” 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:24 PM Page 301

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“I don’t care!”

“Oh Lord, Janey,” Ian sighed. “Don’t you know what they do to women who commit adultery in their country? They toss them into an empty swimming pool and throw stones at them until they’re dead.” Janey gasped and looked in horror at the man with the shaved head, who was busy trying to kick a cat that had wandered too close.

“I don’t believe you,” she said.

He shrugged. “Maybe I’ll have a Coke after all.” He went to the bar and returned with a bottle and an empty glass, and sat down across from her, carefully moving his chair back from the table. “We’ll talk about Monaco,” he said.

“I don’t want to talk about Monaco.”

“You’ll love it,” he said, taking a sip of Coke from the bottle. “Great shopping.

And then there’s the casinos.”

Janey rested her elbows on the table and leaned toward him. “I don’t care about shopping. I could care less about clothes. Or this bracelet!” she said, shaking her wrist.

His eyes narrowed as he took another sip from the bottle. “All of you girls care about clothes. And money.”

“Ian,” she said softly. “I’m in love with you.” She had never told a man she was in love with him and had never expected to.

But the situation was so unreal that the words had simply slipped out of her mouth.

It was a relief to say them. If they were in love, it made the reality of her position romantic as opposed to sordid. It would become nothing more than a funny incident they would tell their children . . .

He looked away, and when he turned back he said, “What are you doing on the yacht, Janey?”

“I don’t
know
. . .”

“From the minute I saw you, I asked myself, ‘What the hell is
she
doing here?’

Which isn’t to say that I don’t understand why most of these women come on board. But you, Janey,” he said, shaking his head. “You don’t need to do this. Sure, you’re beautiful. But you’re smart. You’ve got something going on in your head.

Why don’t you go back to the States and become a doctor . . .”

“A
doctor
?”

“Does anybody know where you are?”

“I told you, I was practically kidnapped . . .”

“Would anyone care?”

“Of course. My family . . .”

“Most of the girls who come on the yacht don’t have anyone who would care or notice that they were gone.”

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“Ian,” she said, nervously fiddling with the bracelet. “What are
you
doing on the yacht?”

“You ought to get off in Monaco,” he said. “It’ll be easy to leave there. Go back to your family.”

“I saw him doing an arms deal.”

Ian carefully put the near-empty bottle of Coke on the table. He stood up slowly. “I’m going to pretend that I never heard that. And you’re going to pretend that you never said it.”

“Ian,” she whispered. “If I get off the yacht in Monaco, will you come with me?

Can we be together?”

He laughed, breaking the tension. “We’d better get back to the yacht.”

“But could we?” she demanded. “I know you’re crazy about me. I’ve seen the way you look at me . . .”

“Have you?” he said with a funny, perplexed air. “Then I suppose I’d best make sure I don’t look at you that way again.”

But she didn’t get off the yacht in Monaco.

Instead, she became consumed with the idea of playing a dangerous game—of being the center of her own drama—and with the foolishness of a schoolgirl, she convinced herself that she couldn’t bear to be away from Ian. She was sure he secretly wanted her, especially as he hadn’t denied it, and she did her best to make him jealous: Day after day, she’d return to the boat laden with bags from Dior and Christian Lacroix, making sure to catch his eye from where he was stationed on the poop deck. “What are you doing, Janey?” he’d ask, brushing past her.

“It’s not so bad,” she’d shrug.

“Not so bad on the outside, maybe, but we both know what it’s really about, don’t we?”

“I’m in love with you, Ian,” she’d whisper and sigh.

Of course, she had to hide her true feelings from Rasheed. But wasn’t that part of the fun? The deception made her feel alive; it heightened her senses so that every moment felt like a particularly rich scene in a film. In Monte Carlo, she dressed up in long gowns to accompany Rasheed to the casino. There were always men watching her, staring at her, attempting to speak with her, and with the arrogance of youth she finally
knew
that she was beautiful, and thanked God for having been made so, unable to imagine a worse fate than being ugly.

But one night she got a little shock.

She was with Rasheed and a group of women at the nightclub Jimmy’s; making her way to the ladies’ room, a man suddenly came up to her and pushed her against the wall. Breathing alcoholic fumes into her face, he sneered, “You must be awfully good if you’re with Rasheed. I hear he has only the
best
. . .” 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:24 PM Page 303

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She pushed him away in disgust, and ran into the powder room. With a shaking hand, she opened her Chanel bag and took out her Pussy Pink lipstick, applying a comforting daub. She was shocked; the South of France was filled with women like her, beautiful young women with no visible means of support, and it being France, no one questioned their presence. It couldn’t be that obvious, she thought, glancing over at two attractive young women who were clearly American. Their clothing, she noted, wasn’t nearly as expensive as hers, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw the two girls take in her appearance and then whisper something.

She turned in fury, daring them to question her. “Well?” she demanded. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” one of the girls shrugged. But as they passed by, she heard the other one whisper,
“Puta,”
the Italian word for whore, under her breath.

For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. She took a step back and stared at herself in the mirror in horror. So it was obvious then, what she had become. She was wearing an expensive Thierry Mugler gown with a gold Chanel cuff at her wrist.

She had thought she looked elegant, but she now saw that she was clad in the finery of a prostitute, and she wanted to rip the dress from her body. But then reason took over. Beautiful clothes and jewelry were so expensive, and she wanted beautiful things to decorate her body . . . And there was no other way to get them except to use her body and her beauty in exchange. And how was that so different from women like Kim, she wondered defiantly, who married a rich man to pay for their houses and $20,000 window treatments? The only real difference was that they were married and she wasn’t . . .

And she went back to the yacht in a huff.

She ran into Ian in the salon—he was straightening up in anticipation of the party that would undoubtedly take place there later.

“Oh, Ian,” she cried. “Some awful girls . . .” And Ian, seeing her face and guessing at what had happened, shook his head.

“There’s an old saying, Janey,” he said. “Beware what you consume, lest your appetite grow by what it feeds on.”

And then somehow, July turned into August. And in August, it all came crashing down.

She was with Rasheed and two other girls (there were always other women coming and going on the yacht, and Janey had learned to do her best to ignore them, making it a point to not even remember their names) and they were in Cannes, walking along the boulevard de la Croisette on their way to the beach restaurant at the Carlton. Janey was wearing a sleeveless Ungaro dress with high, padded shoulders; her hair was pulled back into a bun and she had a heavy Chanel pearl necklace around her neck. The group was talking about a party they’d been to 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:24 PM Page 304

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the night before at a wealthy American widow’s villa, when suddenly she felt someone grab her arm, and a disturbingly familiar male voice cried out, “Janey?” She stopped. And then, almost in slow motion, the rest of the little group came to a halt and turned, staring in curiosity at the bearded young man in the khaki shorts and rough suede Birkenstock sandals with a heavy backpack slung over his shoulders.

It was her brother, Pete.

A pretty young woman with long dark hair and a distinct resemblance to Ali MacGraw stood open-mouthed a few feet away. She was Pete’s girlfriend, Anna, the girl he’d been dating through high school and college. She took a step forward.

“Janey?” she asked.

Pete looked from Janey to the girls to Rasheed. A look of shocked disgust crossed his face as his fingers dug into her arm and he shouted, “What the
hell
. . . ?” A soft rain had begun to fall on the Place Vendôme. Janey looked up; she ought to get going, find a taxi and meet Mimi at Dior. The rain would ruin her hair and her expensive clothing; Mimi would be wondering what had happened to her. But she didn’t care. The pain of remembering made her insides feel as if she were filled with broken glass, and the cool, light rain came almost as a relief.

It had taken two days to get off the yacht. Ian had told her that she had to wait, let Rasheed come around to the idea himself. Propriety dictated that it should be his suggestion, and besides, she wanted her money.

Finally, on the third morning she was once again summoned into the office.

Just as before, the Arab man was seated behind the desk. “Mr. Rasheed thanks you for your company, but thinks it best if you now leave. You will find your bags packed and waiting for you at the end of the gangplank. A car will take you wherever you wish to go.” And then he had handed her a small, hard-sided Louis Vuitton case.

“Mr. Rasheed wishes you to have this as a token of his appreciation. It is suggested that you leave immediately.”