The Price: My Rise and Fall As Natalia, New York's #1 Escort
Page 24
We arrived at the Manhattan courthouse, driving straight down into a caged-in parking lot, tucked in between all the Centre Sreet buildings belonging to the city. We were taken to holding cells to wait for our cases to be called. Women came and went. A bus left, returning most of the prisoners to Rikers before lunch. I waited. I ate a few bites of a stale sandwich. They finally called me to the courtroom, and I was led down the hall in handcuffs.
I scanned the room. I didn’t want to let the small phalanx of reporters who had gathered see the fear in my eyes, but I wanted so badly to see a familiar friendly face. And there they were: Morgan and Ron! They were sitting by the front door looking really serious. I mouthed a thanks, and they gave a quick wave and encouraging smiles.
I turned to look ahead and face the judge. The bailiff came over to tell me that my lawyer hadn’t shown up. The judge asked me if I’d communicated with my lawyer. I said I didn’t know why he wasn’t there. Justice waits for no one, apparently. The judge set my next appearance for the Thursday after next. I felt myself trembling inside. My greatest fears were coming true. My lawyer had abandoned me. I faced the same fate as Jason. I couldn’t make bail either. We were both going to be held until our trials.
It sunk in that I needed to brace myself for the long haul. I remembered hearing Hulbert tell me he expected to get a sentence of three to five years. We’d been charged with the same things: money laundering and promoting prostitution. All I wanted to know was what was going to happen. More than anything else, the uncertainty was killing me. I was theoretically months, a year, or even longer away from a trial.
As I was being escorted back to the holding cell, I started crying. I couldn’t stop. It wasn’t the hysterical crying that I’d done when I’d first been put in cuffs in the courtroom and taken to Rikers. This was different; I could breathe; I could think. I was perfectly aware of my situation, and that’s what was so devastating. The two C.O.s guarding the holding cells didn’t lock me in right away. They sat me down in a chair. One of them looked at me tenderly and said, “Let it out. You gotta let it out. Just cry baby.”
So I did. I cried my fucking heart out.
When I started to come out of it, she said to me, “Don’t you worry, God will take care of you.”
She gave me a few napkins. I wiped my face and used my sleeve. It felt soft against my skin. I’d take any compassion I could get at this point.
Do you think God could be my lawyer? I asked myself—because mine had disappeared.
The bus ride back to Rikers felt like it took forever. I looked out the window, watching all the free people whiz by in their shiny cars.
When I saw Angelica and Jennifer at dinner, they could sense that I didn’t want to talk about it. If you come back from court, it usually means it didn’t go well.
* * *
Two weeks into my island vacation, Morgan told me that my mom was finally coming to see me. I started crying. I was so happy, but I also knew she couldn’t help me. She couldn’t put her house up to make my bail because it was in another country. I had no idea what to expect from her. I hadn’t spoken with her since before my arrest. She didn’t know about my tooth or my psych-ward stay. All she had to go on was what she’d read in the papers.
My mom arrived at Rikers on Canadian Thanksgiving. I was taken into a stark, grey room, and told to strip naked. They stuck their hands into my body. It was awful and humiliating, but I didn’t care at that point. I was going to see my mother, and that was all that mattered. I changed into a grey jumpsuit and walked into the visiting area.
She ran toward me and reached to hug me.
“No touching!” bellowed a nasty, bull-dyke guard.
We sheepishly sat down on brightly colored chairs opposite each other with a round, blue plastic table between us. Before she could get anything out, she started crying uncontrollably. I felt a stab of pain, but hardened by Rikers, no tears came. She pulled herself together and went into “let’s talk” crisis mode. I thought we could focus on how to get me out of there. I talked about my case, and how I needed a new lawyer who could get up to speed on the details of the evidence against me.
She listened, but when she spoke, I grew infuriated.
She got all haughty and said, “Well, I need to know where you want your life to go.”
I just stared at her. Go? I wanted to go anywhere that wasn’t Rikers.
She said, “You can either go to rehab or stay here. I would rather see you here than on the streets of New York.”
Was she insane?
I tried to explain to her how hard this place was, that every other person had Hep or AIDS and that any second I could easily get beaten to death. I was a little white girl from Canada in one of the most notorious inner-city jails in America. This wasn’t therapy. This was hell.
I was so pissed off by her ultimatum that I stood up and started to walk out of the visiting room.
The C.O. raised her eyebrows as though to say, “You staying or going?”
I closed my eyes, turned around and sat back down. As furious as I was, I couldn’t leave my mom alone in that room. I calmed down and tried to change my tone. I started explaining what was going on legally again, trying to get her up to date with the details of my case. With my lawyer AWOL, I needed all the help I could get.
She started to get really emotional again. I could see that she was so overwhelmed and in so much pain, she had hit an emotional brick wall. She felt helpless. I was her child, and I was in trouble. My heart broke. I knew what she’d been trying to do before. She’d been trying to be tough, to be the stand-in father, but the reality was she was as lost as I was. Finally, I took charge and told her about the one person who could potentially help—my former vocal coach, Michael.
She finally listened and agreed to get in touch with him.
She told me she was going to come back and see me the next day. She would bring me some more clothes and things from my apartment. I promised to call her on Morgan’s phone.
I asked her about Morgan. She said she was waiting in the parking lot. That seemed weird. Why hadn’t she come in to see me?
My mom explained. At the security gate, they’d taken a swab of the inside of Morgan’s handbag, it had registered positive for cocaine, and she’d been turned away.
Great, I thought. Just another thing to add stress to my mother’s life: the only friend of mine she felt remotely comfortable with was potentially now another problem, someone else to distrust.
“Does Morgan do drugs?” Her voice was shaking.
What do I do? Just tell the truth.
I remembered what the detectives at the 7th Precinct had told me that day en route to my arraignment: the only people you can trust are your family. They are the ones who will be there for you during this.
“Yes, Morgan does drugs.”
My mom looked like she was going to pass out.
“But she barely does. She doesn’t like them.”
I asked what type of purse Morgan was carrying. My mom described my black leather D&G purse with silver zippers, and I saw an out.
“That’s my purse. It’s lucky she didn’t get in trouble. It would have been all my fault because I’ve put coke in that purse before.”
I needed my mom to trust Morgan. I needed one friend on my side that my mom would listen to.
The next day, mom was supposed to be back, but instead of my mother, in walks Morgan. I was happy to see her, but confused.
“Your mom went home.”
I felt tears well up.
“We talked and decided she would go see your new lawyer this morning, then take the bus home, and I would come see you.”6
I guess she couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t blame her.
* * *
My mom kept her word and got in touch with Michael. He’d given me voice lessons in my theater days and had been intrigued by all of the crazy stories from my pre-New York Confidential nightclubbing days. When he heard I was in jail, he contacted m
y lawyers, and we started talking on the phone every day. My lawyer told me he thought Michael might post my bail. My lawyer outlined his plan. He would convince the D.A. to lower the amount from $250,000 to a more reasonable $50,000, and then Michael would go to a bondsman and get a $5,000 bond.
It worked. Michael was able to get the bond. My bail was reduced, and the court issued my release papers.
Looking back, I suspect the original bail was probably nothing more than a test to see if I had a hidden stash somewhere. Why else would the judge issue it more than three months after my initial arrest? Why would I run if I hadn’t run before? After a few weeks of hell at Rikers they conceded that I probably wasn’t lying about my financial situation. I was as broke as I said I was.
No one ever bailed Jason out. That makes me really sad. I don’t know if he deserved to spend the time he did in jail. I do know he should be kept away from everyone’s daughters.
After twenty-six days behind bars, I was set loose. I got dropped off at the gates at the end of the bridge and jumped into one of the many cabs lined up for the return trip over the River Styx. As we crossed the 59th Street Bridge, I asked the driver to put on 103.5 FM, one of the stations that always plays upbeat dance music. He adjusted the dial and, like a sign, a song came on. The chorus goes: “I’m free, to do what I want, any old time. I said I’m free, to do what I want, any old time.”
“Love me, hold me. Love me, hold me. ‘Cause I’m free.”
I smiled for the first time in a month and stuck my head out the window as we sailed toward Manhattan, that magical island that had swallowed me up whole and then spat me out.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
COMING HOME
In the weeks following my release from Rikers, I’d lost my apartment, was staying with random friends, and everyone was tip-toeing around me, wondering what would become of “Natalia.” They were all expecting me to go back to heroin. Once a junkie, always a junkie, right? But I never did it again; I never wanted to have to relive the detox, but more importantly, I wasn’t ready to give up, and I had an underlying need to prove everyone else wrong. I just went back to my old friend coke.
One day I checked an old email account. I had a message from my ex, Paul. Only it wasn’t from Paul—it was from his dad and stepmom. This is what it said:
hello nat!!
just want to sadly inform you on the passing of paul on dec…
funeral will be held at-26 mulberry st. january 2nd at 3 o’clock pm till 9
lv bill and mary
Paul was dead. I had missed the funeral. I called one of his fraternity brothers from MIT. He told me that Paul died of a heroin overdose at his apartment off Fulton Street just after Christmas. I broke. Paul is always on my mind.
I was lost in a drug binge when I got the call. It was my mom.
“Nat,” she said, “I have breast cancer.”
My already deflated faith in the future was crushed that much more.
“What do you mean?”
She didn’t answer. I could hear her crying. Tears shot into my eyes. They spilled over and dripped loudly onto the carpet. I was sitting cross-legged, slouching forward, my head close to the floor, the phone pressed to my ear. I blinked and felt more heavy drops fall out. My throat was closed, and I couldn’t get any words out for a few minutes.
I had no apartment, no income, few friends, and I was freebasing an eight ball a day (that’s a lot). Now my mom was sick with cancer. Everything that could have gone wrong in my life, had—all at the same time. And it seemed the same was true for my mother.
“What did they say?” I finally asked.
My mom breathed and gave me the good news. “I have to have surgery, but a lumpectomy, not a mastectomy and then either chemo and radiation or just radiation. The oncologist told me she thinks I won’t have to have chemo.”
“Wow, okay, so that’s okay.” I said.
I was still reeling from the initial shock, but my mind was processing what she was telling me, and it really sounded like a best-case scenario, considering the alternatives.
My mom is a very proud woman. She never wants to be a burden to anyone. But I could hear the fear in her voice. For the first time I could remember, she confided in me.
“I’m just so scared.” And then she broke, and for the third time in my life, I heard my mother cry—hard, deep crying. The first had been when her brother, my uncle, died when I was a little girl, and the second had been when she saw me at Rikers. I looked up at the ceiling. This was real. I knew the fear she was going through, and she was going through it not knowing if her daughter was going to die before her. We could both be dead in months.
“Mom, why is this happening? Why are all these bad things happening?” I was crying hard.
My mom didn’t have an answer. And she couldn’t console me. We just cried together, and the wall between us started melting away with each passing minute.
I matched the leap she had taken and told her that we would get well together. I would get myself healthy if she would.
I made her promise to me over and over again that she would be strong and come through this. I talked about how we had so many things to do together, that we needed each other.
She told me she wanted to come and see me before she started her treatment. Her first procedure, surgery to remove the tumor, was in two weeks. I told her to hold on for a minute. I put down my cell phone and walked over to my friend, Dane, with whom I was staying on the Upper East Side. Dartmouth educated, brilliant physicist dad, big-time psychiatrist mom, and yet he was really chemically imbalanced. He had become my latest party friend; someone who was letting me stay with him without any strings attached.
I told him my mom was sick and coming to New York to see me. Would it be okay if she stayed in the spare room?
He exhaled a big cloud of freebase smoke and nodded his head, “Of course, absolutely.”
Our eyes met, and then we both looked out across his dirty, paraphernalia-filled apartment. We had our work cut out for us. It was a long railroad apartment and, as I walked the long hall back to the office and my cell phone, I looked back at Dane and saw him popping some pills, probably Lithium. Or Wellbutrin. Or Xanax. He got prescriptions for them all from his mom.
“Mom, it’s totally cool. You can stay here,” I said.
She couldn’t afford a last-minute plane ticket, so she told me she was going to take the bus from Montreal. She’d be arriving at seven-thirty Saturday morning. I choked up. I felt so pathetic. All of those buckets of cash I had made, and I couldn’t even afford to buy her a plane ticket. I probably had fifteen pairs of shoes that cost as much.
I gave her Dane’s address and told her to take a cab. It would only cost about six dollars. I wanted to meet her when she arrived, but I didn’t want to promise something I couldn’t deliver and leave her waiting for me. The thought of being anywhere other than passed out on a couch at seven-thirty in the morning was too daunting at that point.
It was Monday, and I had less than a week to get myself presentable. I gave Dane the news that my mom had breast cancer. He asked me how bad it was, and I told him I didn’t know for sure, but it sounded like they caught it really early. I told him I was going to have to make some changes. He surprised me by telling me that he really wasn’t happy with his life either, that we could finish the drugs we had, go to sleep, wake up tomorrow and work on getting healthy. I had heard that story before. Few people really mean it. I don’t know why, but I thought Dane was telling me the truth. Either way, I knew this was judgment day for me. I would do whatever it took to keep my promise to my mother.
We slept and sweated for the next day and a half. When I woke up, my body was aching, and my stomach was screaming for food, but I had no appetite. Even the thought of food made my stomach erupt. Dane kept his promise, and for the two days before my mom’s arrival we cleaned the house. It was metaphorical and therapeutic all at once. He did the kitchen and bathroom (he insisted, it was his house and mo
stly his mess). I did all the other rooms: vacuuming, cleaning the windows and changing the linens. It actually looked really nice in the end, and I was proud of what we’d done. It was a good start.
My mom arrived, and we went to a diner on the corner for breakfast. We sat and talked for a few hours. We only had two days together, and I knew there was a lot of ground to cover. It was now April, and I hadn’t seen her since Christmas. She knew I was still getting high, and I carefully told her that I was detoxed and determined to stay that way. I could see the hope in her eyes, and I tried to reassure her in every way I could that this was it.
“Nat, I’m just so scared. I’ve heard you say that so many times before.”
I needed to help her understand that this time was different. I took her to meet Mia, a highly respected life coach. Mia had been leaving me messages since November, when I’d been released from Rikers: “Natalia, I really want to help you. Don’t worry about money, just come see me.” And so right before my mom arrived, I went for my first session. Mia is an angel.
I confided in my mom that Mia had told me, “You were on the cover of a magazine by the age of twenty-five. You are capable of achieving whatever you want.”
I explained how I was going to work out some way to start earning money and resolve some of my problems.
What choice did I have? In about a week, my mom was going to be in surgery to remove a tumor from her breast. I was not a monster. I was still full of love for her, for our family, hell, for all of humanity. My addictions hadn’t taken that away from me.
She told me they had confirmed that they had caught the cancer very early and that after her surgery she would start treatment. I knew she was so scared I was going to die, that we were both going to go too soon. I reminded her of my five-year-old self, the stubborn little girl who wouldn’t ever let anyone tie her shoes for her.
“I feel like I don’t even know you anymore,” she said.
“Mom, the only thing I ever failed at was one French class and that’s because I had to be there at eight in the morning. Failure is not an option for me. I’m still that person, and I love you, and this is more important than anything else.”