by M. J. Rose
Nina had paid the driver and was waiting for change. “Stella owns this place, along with a group of other feminists she roped into contributing. It was supposed to be turned into a women’s center to aid sex workers. There was a zoning problem, but when she told me to meet her here today, I assumed it had been resolved and she’d had the building renovated. I guess not.”
I stepped out of the cab, navigating the piles of soot-covered snow. That’s when I realized that it hadn’t snowed in more than twelve hours. The sky was still overcast but maybe the siege was over.
Nina joined me on the sidewalk and stood with me, staring up at the marquee and the salacious neon figure of a busty woman, sitting with her legs crossed, forming the P in Playpen. Some of the neon tubes were broken but you could tell she had blond hair, red lips, pink arms and legs and large pink breasts. I could imagine how it once looked, all lit up, its glaring colors shining down at the men walking by, beckoning.
Nina pulled open the front door.
The lobby was dark, and once the door closed behind us it was almost pitch black inside. The air smelled stale and there was a top note of something that I couldn’t quite identify with my stuffed nose.
From somewhere above us, I heard the soft cooing of a pigeon. How many birds had found their way inside over the years? How many rats?
Once my eyes adjusted, I noticed a thin strip of light coming from under double doors, next to what must have originally been the candy and soda concession. That was where Alan had said the X-rated videos and magazines were sold when he’d been here as a teenager. I sensed the ghosts of those men, careful as they walked into the theater, afraid that they might be seen, gulping nervously, feeling the sweat on their palms, wishing they could stay away, already knowing they would be back the next day, or the one after that.
“It will only take a second for me to tell her I brought someone with me. I’ll be right back, okay?”
I nodded.
Nina opened the door. The light that came through was weak and flickering. And then she disappeared inside.
Eighty-Nine
It took Perez and Jordain an hour to look through the lists of people who had requested items from the library or checked out books during the three days in question.
They weren’t just looking for Alan’s name. They were looking for Kira Rushkoff’s, too. And they were also looking for any name that appeared on all three days.
“Here’s one,” Perez said, pointing. “Familiar, too, but I don’t know why.”
Perez watched his partner’s face running the name through his computer-like brain, searching for the connection. Jordain never let him down. He wasn’t as good as some detectives were with hunches, but he more than made up for it with his uncanny ability to absorb everything connected to everyone involved with a case. He only had to see a name once and he never forgot it.
“Something to do with Alan Leightman’s wife, Kira Rushkoff. Wait, let me think.” Jordain frowned.
Perez waited.
Thirty seconds later, Jordain remembered. “Got it. A civil court case. Last year. In all the papers. Big-time computer hacking of an online porn company. Damn it, Perez. It was Global. All the women who worked for the company got e-mail telling them their boss was exploiting them and that they needed to revolt. Rushkoff defended the slime who owned—” He stopped talking.
The expression on his face was at once elated and chagrined. “Fuck,” he growled.
“What?”
“We need to find Ms. Stella Dobson right now.”
“Why?”
Jordain was rushing to the car, not even bothering to button his coat. With the windchill it was ten degrees below zero; he didn’t even notice.
Ninety
Before the door shut completely behind Nina, I stuck out my boot to keep it from closing. There wasn’t enough space for me to see much: Nina’s back, a section of theater seats, an empty patch of old wooden floor, the edge of a threadbare carpet.
“Stella? What’s going on?” Nina sounded disturbed. Something was wrong. What was it?
“It’s all right. It’s all right” came a brittle voice.
Long dark shadows flickered on the wall to Nina’s right.
“Stella, what are you doing? I don’t understand.”
“It meant a lot to me that you called today.” The emphasis on her last word was strong.
“Today?”
“I thought you knew what today was.”
Nina didn’t answer right away. She must have been trying to figure out what day it was. When she finally answered, her voice was laced with grief. “Oh, Stella, I’m sorry. Today would have been Simone’s birthday.”
“Her eighteenth birthday. Look…”
I heard paper rattling, then Stella’s voice: “I got her favorite cake. We’ll light the candle soon. I’ll make a wish for her. You’ll have some cake, won’t you? You always came to her parties when she was little. You were always a good friend to me. You can be my witness.”
I pushed my foot forward another half an inch and made the opening just a little bit bigger. What was wrong in there?
“Yes, of course. I’d love some cake. But, Stella, why don’t you come down off the stage and sit with me, and we can talk first. Why don’t we let—”
“I don’t need to talk.”
I didn’t care what Nina had said. Or how fragile Stella might be. They say you can smell trouble. I didn’t know what scent I was sniffing, but I knew it was dangerous.
As quietly as I could, I nudged the door farther open.
There was a creak. I froze. I was so still I could feel my own heart beating. My teeth started to chatter. I had to bite down on my cheek to stop them. Leaning forward, I looked into the room.
Nina was standing to the right of the block of theater seats staring up at the stage, where Stella stood looking down at her old friend. It was very dark inside. The stage was lit with only one dim, bare bulb that cast everything in a sallow light.
There didn’t seem to be anything wrong after all. Just a distraught woman standing alone in a darkened theater.
And then Stella took a step forward and I could see what her body had been blocking.
Ninety-One
“She’s not home and she’s not at her office. But she’s got an appointment there in an hour which she hasn’t called to cancel,” Butler reported to Jordain a few minutes later, over the speaker phone in his car.
“What about her cell phone?”
“Her assistant won’t give it to me without a subpoena. Want me to work on that from here?”
“Where’s the assistant?”
“In the office—1 Washington Square Park North.”
“We’re still in the neighborhood—we’ll go over there and get it ourselves. What does Dobson teach?” Jordain asked as he swung the car around and headed back south.
“Don’t you know who she is?”
“Yes, she’s a feminist. Noisy one. I just asked what she teaches.”
“Women’s studies. She’s more than just a noisy feminist. She’s a brilliant writer who—”
“You ever read her, Butler?” Perez interrupted.
“Is this a real question, or are you giving me shit?”
“Real question. Quick, we need to know as much as you can tell us. What’s happened to her recently? What makes her angry? What’s she been fighting lately.”
“Her daughter died last June. Overdose.”
“Accidental?” Perez asked.
“So the report says, but that’s based on Dobson’s statement. A few months before that, she lost a large civil court case and was fined six hundred thousand dollars—”
“We’re here. Is there anything else I need to know?” Perez picked up the phone and stayed on it while he got out of the car and followed Jordain down the street toward Dobson’s office.
“I’m reading…wait…yes…shit…the lawsuit’s a little close for comfort,” Butler said. “Dobson hired a computer genius to
hack into Global Communication’s database. She got the e-mail addresses of all the women who worked for them and wrote offering to help them find legitimate work.”
“We know that. Stay close by. I’ll let you know if we need any backup.”
“Perez, you know the lawyer who handled the case for the porn company was Alan Leightman’s wife, Kira Rushkoff? That means…”
But he’d already hung up on her.
Ninety-Two
A laptop and a birthday cake sat on a small table in the middle of the stage. The cake was small, frosted with what looked like white buttercream, edged with pink roses, with one pink candle sticking up in the center.
Blythe, wearing a blue butterfly mask, sat two feet from the table. Her wrists were tied together behind her back. Her ankles were tied together beneath the chair. There was a gag in her mouth.
“What is Blythe doing here?” Nina asked.
“She’s here for the party, like you are.”
“Did Blythe know Simone?”
“No. But Simone knew Blythe. She and her poor friend found Blythe online. She taught these two innocents all she knew. While I was doing everything I could to make sure my daughter grew up to be strong and sure of herself, she was sitting in her bedroom surfing the Internet, learning how to be a slut from a slut like this. I loved her. I loved her so much. And this is what she did. That’s what we’ve raised, Nina. You and me…all of us…despite our efforts and our understanding and our rebelling and our screaming and our marching and getting arrested…we wound up raising a generation of daughters who are so desperate for men’s attention that they are willing to debase themselves. Do you know what they did? My daughter and her friend? They turned themselves into New York City Web-cam girls.”
Stella had moved to the very edge of the stage and stood staring down at Nina.
“You have it wrong,” Nina said, her voice soothing. “It’s not the fault of the girls like Blythe. Blythe is a victim, too. She’s someone we need to help. Come down, sit here with me, we can talk about how we can help these women. We’ve spent our whole lives trying to help. We can’t give up yet.” Nina held her hand up to Stella, offering her support. Her faith took my breath away. She actually believed she could talk her down. Oh, God, I hoped she was right. I was scared for her. And for Blythe.
“You think you can help?” Stella gave a short, ugly laugh. “Think back to when we started. What’s changed? It’s only gotten worse, hasn’t it? Women are more subservient. More accommodating. Men are more abusive than they have ever been. Millions of them involved with pornography now. And what do they want? Women who perform. Who demand nothing. Who accept less than nothing.”
I needed to sneeze, but I knew that if I did Stella would realize I was there. And that was dangerous. It hurt to hold it in, but after a few seconds the urge passed.
“Nina, she dressed up like a whore. She and her friend pretended they were lesbians to titillate those boys. They filmed themselves and sent it to the boys, and the boys sent it all over the school. And you know what? Simone didn’t care. She loved it. She was thrilled. She had never been happier. She thought they wanted her. I tried to explain to her that what she was doing was only making them want her breasts. Her vagina. Her as a fantasy. As an image. Not to talk to her or share with her or understand her or help her or have her help them, but to have her to masturbate to.
“And you know what she said in her note? She blamed me. She said I only loved her when she agreed to be one kind of daughter. She said I only wanted women to be powerful if they were going to be my kind of powerful—women who didn’t need men—who could raise a child without a man, who would rather be single than subservient.
“She was my baby. She didn’t think I loved her. Do you know why? Because of these women who are not women, these women who have fangs and claws. She said I was angry with her because she didn’t meet my political objectives.
“I watched that movie and I hated her, hated my daughter. I hated her and hated her—until I realized it was all these other women who were to blame. I loved Simone right. I did. I loved her and wanted her to be a woman who had self-esteem and never went on crazy diets and never needed to wear lipstick or to dress to please a man, and she said that I never loved her right.”
The whole time she was ranting, Stella was holding something and nervously, anxiously, shifting it from one hand to the next.
The smell I’d noticed when I first came into the theater was stronger here, but I just couldn’t tell what it was. It was so rare that I couldn’t identify an odor. But my cold was throwing off my sense of smell. But I couldn’t worry about that. I had to listen to Stella. I had to keep my eye on Nina. I had to watch out for Blythe. I had to figure out what to do.
“What happened to Simone couldn’t go unpunished, don’t you see that? What these bitch witch women do has repercussions. Someone has to show them.”
“Simone didn’t die of an accidental overdose, did she?”
“What does that have to do with it? This is about the women who taught Simone how to be a whore. Who poisoned her.” Her voice finally cracked, but her expression remained defiant. “Do you understand? While I was fighting to save girls like this, my own daughter was becoming one. So I hired someone to hack that porn site’s servers. Everyone thought I cared about getting caught. That I cared about that trial. I didn’t lose. That was a joke. They all thought I lost. No. I won. I needed to get to the girls. I needed to tell them they were throwing their potential away. I didn’t lose. That cunt Rushkoff lost. I found out her husband was watching those girls. He used a pseudonym online, but I had the credit card records. Finding him there, now that was sweet. That was something I could use.”
Stella laughed. Whatever disaster she’d planned was close to coming to fruition and she was becoming more agitated. Meanwhile, the smell was growing in intensity. I could see that she’d stopped to sniff the air, too. Then she smiled again.
“She didn’t know her own precious husband was one of the men who couldn’t stay away. Judge fucking Alan Leightman. Paying to watch the same sluts who were ruining Simone. He’s in jail. You know that? He’s paying for his sins now. For his and his wife’s sins. He’s my little joke on her. He turned himself in. Can you imagine?”
“None of this will bring Simone back,” Nina said.
“No, but it will take me to Simone. I’ll go to her offering revenge. She will forgive me then.”
I needed to call the police and get them here. But how could I do that without making a sound? Either I backed out and hoped that I could do it quietly enough not to alert Stella, or I tried to dial from where I was.
But how could I say anything without her knowing I was there? Would 911 respond if I didn’t talk? No, they couldn’t. This wasn’t a land line; they wouldn’t know where I was. I was going to have to back out and shut the door. But I couldn’t do that until Stella turned around. I couldn’t risk her seeing me and panicking.
“Stella, I know how upset you are. I can’t imagine how horrible it is when your daughter takes her own life. But Blythe didn’t have anything to do with Simone killing herself,” Nina said, trying to reason with her old friend.
“She debased herself for those boys, and still they didn’t care. They passed the file around and all watched it, and they still didn’t want her. When I found out, I did everything I could to make her understand. I wanted to help her cleanse herself. But…but…she didn’t listen to me. All she wanted was one of those boys to put his prick in her mouth. That was all that mattered, and if she couldn’t have that…”
She was on the verge of losing control. I could see it in her eyes.
“No more explaining. No more. I’m tired. This was all I wanted. To give her this present for her birthday. Every one of those girls she copied has been punished, each of them poisoned by the very act that poisoned Simone. She’s the last one….” Stella nodded toward Blythe.
“Now it’s time to wish my baby happy birthday. Will you
sing with me, Nina? Sing. Happy birthday to you—” Her cracked voice was off key.
Nina didn’t join in.
“You have to sing with me.”
I had seen people break before but it never lost its horror. Stella was angry now. Her eyes were on fire. She fumbled with the thing in her hand. It fell. She bent over to pick it up.
Now I could see what it was.
A box of matches.
Of course, she had to light the candle on the cake.
I don’t remember putting it all together.
One second I couldn’t tell what the smell was, the next I could suddenly breathe clearly and knew what it was. There was no time think about what needed to be done. Even calling out to Nina wouldn’t have accomplished anything. It would have taken me too long to explain.
In one long, slow motion, Stella moved her right foot forward, then her left. She was only two steps away from Blythe and the table and the cake. I saw the tremor in the hand that held the matchbox and heard the sound of the wooden sticks hitting each other so loudly it was as if it had been magnified a hundred times.
I ran forward, taking the steps to the stage two at a time. In my peripheral vision, I saw Nina standing with her mouth in a small astonished O.
Stella had opened the box. She shook out a match. It fell to the floor. She looked at it. Bent to pick it up. Retrieved it. Stood. Held the match to strike it.
I reached her, running right into her, knocking the box and the match out of her hands.
Shocked, she didn’t focus on me but looked down at the spilled matches.
“I have to do this. She is the last one. I promised Simone. I have to do this. Get away.” She pushed me with enormous force. I wasn’t prepared and I felt myself falling, fought to find my balance.
“Nina!” I shouted. “The theater is full of gas. She has matches. She wants to blow the place up. Get out. Call the police.”
