by Jess Bentley
The envelope stares at me.
I pick it up, run my fingers over the seam. My finger flirts with the folded paper, going into the opening. It gives way a little, and a little more. It becomes a challenge to unstick the fold without ripping the paper. Can I do it? I slowly, slowly pull one side from another. Ahh! A rip.
You’re just stalling, Jordan. Knock it off. It’s Kelsey’s voice, ringing out loud and clear in my head. Open the fucking envelope.
I take my knife and slide it into the crease and pull, and the envelope opens cleanly. I tap the paper out and open it, smoothing the paper on the table again.
Dear Jordan
If you’re reading this, I’m dead. I hope you never read this otherwise, because you’d kill me. The first thing I want to say is that I apologize. I don’t know what to tell you, but I hope that in some way giving you all the money I earned—and I’m using that word ‘earned’ loosely—basically all the money I have will ease the pain of the truth.
I swallow, hard. What the fuck Kelsey, what did you do?
I can see your face right now, and it’s killing me. You know I love you right? I do. I love you tons. But I have a secret.
You see, when I met Graham—you remember him, in high school—he gave me this idea, and I couldn’t get it out of my head. He said that if I just filmed myself at home and put it on the internet, that people would pay to follow me and see me just do normal things, and some not normal things, like shower and you know, stuff you do in your bedroom. Anyway I thought he was crazy, and I still do, but that was a really exciting idea for me.
So anyway, I didn’t want to do it myself, unless I knew it would work. So I decided to use you as my guinea pig. Don’t be mad! Please! At first, I just hid a small camera in your room, and I just streamed it for me. It was exciting to see you when you didn’t know I was there, and I realized the idea had potential.
Then I put a few more cameras in your room. And I made a website. I told a few people in the industry, and they passed the word along. It was a pay subscription. And I started pulling in money. More than you could ever imagine. So I did more. I put a camera in your bathroom, and a few more in your apartment, and more money started rolling in. I got pretty excited about it, and started investing, saving, and... spending.
Remember when I bought you those great shoes from Jimmy Choo? And you walked around your bedroom naked in those shoes? They paid for themselves a million times over. You might wonder why I bought you a few more pairs of shoes. Well that’s why.
Don’t kill me, Jordan! I know, I’m dead already. But don’t be mad. You’re famous! In certain circles, anyway. You’re a big star. And people love you. So I’m giving you all the money you made, and I’m giving you control of the site, so you can redirect the cash to yourself.
Of course, you can shut the whole thing down if you want to. But once you see how much money you can make, you might not want to. At least that’s what happened to me. I hope you understand. I feel really bad about it, but that’s why I’m giving you all this that’s left, and the info to make more.
One more thing. Your fans really get off on the idea that you don’t know they’re watching. So unless you want to lose a lot of fans, don’t change anything you do. Okay?
Have a great life, and do something fun with the money. Didn’t we always talk about going to Paris? You should do that.
Love, Kelsey
My heart is racing. I don’t know what to say, or what to do. I’m filled with terror, anger, rage. Oh my God, I’m going to puke. I push myself out of the booth and race to the bathroom, and I’m kneeling in front of the white porcelain, when the few bites of pie and the coffee I drank spill noisily into it.
My head is swimming. I grab some toilet paper and wipe my mouth, throw it in the bowl and flush. I stand up and stars float around my head. I grab the counter to steady myself. My face is white. I look ghoulish in this false light. My eyes are sunken and dark.
My chest is rising and falling rapidly, and I try to slow down my breathing. I don’t want to faint here in this bathroom. It’s disgusting for one thing. But at least it’s private, my brain reminds me.
Something you haven’t had for years. Privacy.
Holy shit.
Every moment I’ve been in my room, I’ve been watched. Not by one person, but potentially thousands. Hundreds of thousands. My face burns as I think of the embarrassing things I’ve done. Things we’ve all done when we thought we were alone. Images flash through my mind: I’m masturbating, crying out; I’m trying on clothes, pinching my fat roll, or oh God, in the bathroom, number two, my period. Showering. It’s horrifying. Why would people pay so much money to see that? And a quarter million has to be only the tip of the iceberg. Kelsey had lots of new clothes, lots of money when she needed it, and of course, her Karmann Ghia. That had to cost a lot. How could I have gone so long being a patsy to her schemes, and not even know it? Why would I put my trust so completely in another person and have them take complete and utter advantage of me?
Again I think of King.
It’s not him, it’s me. I’m the kind of person who attracts this. Who trusts too much, who believes what people tell them. I’m alone, I’m something to take advantage of. I don’t have anyone, and I never did.
I feel the urge to throw up again and as I turn to the stall, it’s already shooting out of my mouth. I’m projectile vomiting. Great.
The poor waitress.
It goes mostly in the toilet and I stab futilely at what didn’t with a balled up bit of toilet paper. My stomach churns like the bowl’s contents as I think of what on earth I should do now. I guess the feeling that I was separate from other people, that I couldn’t do anything without Kelsey was partly from other people and the way that they treated me. Who knows if any of them knew? Could my teachers have known? My classmates must have.
I remember someone calling me a slut, and I didn’t know why. But it must have been after I snuck my boyfriend of the time in my room and had sex with him. He mustn’t have known he was being watched, either. Unless he was in on it.
Now I don’t know if I can trust anyone. Why should I?
Is nobody trustworthy?
I’m the only one I can trust, maybe. But if I could really trust myself, I wouldn’t have ended up with R in that hotel room. I wouldn’t have let myself have a best friend betray me for my whole life.
Clearly I can’t even count on my own self when push comes to shove.
I wipe my face again. I have to go back out there, find out what the website is, see what I can learn about this. See if I can shut it down. Come to terms with the fact my whole life has changed. Nowhere is safe.
I wash my face in the diner bathroom sink, and look myself in the eyes once more. There’s something cold there that I haven’t seen before. Maybe something inside me is finally dead. Some, stupid, trusting and naive part of me is finally dead. And gone. I hope forever.
I shut the tap and grab some paper towels, running their rough texture over my skin. It doesn’t feel much better, but at least it’s private. Or at least I think so. I look around suspiciously, for cameras in the ceiling, in the soap dispenser, anywhere. Maybe nothing is private. Maybe privacy is an old, outdated concept.
Pulling the door open with a squeak, I walk slowly back to my table.
“You okay, hon?” the waitress asks. “Everything still good?” She’s suspicious. I wonder if she’s ever watched me. Does she know who I am?
“Fine, thanks,” I answer. “I’ll take that bill now,” I say.
“Sure thing,” she says, and the old register rings its totals and I hand her some money.
“Keep the change,” I say, and quickly stuff my things in my purse.
“Thanks,” she says. My stomach just rolls over and I leave, walking blindly out the door and into someone.
“Watch where you’re going,” he growls, and I tell him to “fuck off,” almost like a reflex. When he meets my eyes, I shiver. Does he know who I am to
o? Suddenly everyone’s an enemy. I pull my cardigan around myself tighter, scanning the street. The muscles in my face harden. There’s a street vendor, selling sunglasses across the way. The light’s almost ready to change, but I run out in the road, and make it across. I buy the biggest pair I can find and disappear into the subway. I grab a newspaper as well, to hide my face so that I can think things over anonymously. In New York City, one of the best places to hide is in plain sight.
I have no idea how to deal with this, who to ask, what to do. But I know only one person with the kind of money to hit the problem at its source.
14
Raleigh
The security screen flickers to life along with the door chime. Jordan's face is in the center, blurry and slightly distorted from the fisheye lens, but that can’t stop me from understanding what I am seeing.
She knows. She finally knows. And she’s come to me.
I palm the access buzzer and open the front door, waiting with my heart pounding in my chest. Finally the elevator doors slide open down the hall and I can hear her footsteps, coming closer in a rush.
She practically falls into my arms as she comes through the doorway, shuddering and shaking like a leaf.
"All right,” I murmur as I hold her close to me, folding my arms around her and trying to hold her so tight she can’t tremble anymore. But she flattens her palms against my chest and pushes herself away from me.
“It's all a lie,” she spits out. Her upper lip curls back in an animal snarl and her hand tremble up to her hair. She looks like she is on the verge of a mental break.
“What's a lie?” I ask as calmly as I can. “Just talk to me, Jordan. Everything will be all right.”
She takes a breath that choke in the back of her throat, then tries again.
“Let me get you a drink,” I suggest, pivoting toward my kitchen. In a few moments I press a glass of brandy into her hands and have maneuvered her to the leather sofa. She curls up in the corner with the snifter between her fingers, tucking her heels underneath her. She seems so small there, ensconced in the overstuffed cushions.
“Start at the beginning,” I suggest.
To her credit, she tells me everything. How Kelsey manipulated her, lied to her. How they had been such close friends until, apparently, the moment when Kelsey decided to make Jordan her secret business partner.
But through it all, I get the feeling that she is more upset about the state of their relationship than about the enormous betrayals that have been visited upon her. She seems both relieved and horrified to find that it wasn't her imagination: Kelsey really had withdrawn her affection from Jordan.
“It's like I was right all along,” she whispers, her voice haunted and awestruck. “All these years… I always felt watched. I never felt safe. And I always thought that Kelsey was hiding something from me. I'd ask her, and ask her, and she always denied it. But it's all true, don't you see?”
“I do see,” I agree. “Does that help you to feel better? To know that you were right all along?”
“No!” she scoffs. “It makes me feel worse. I wasted years living in a sort of fantasy. I was just a toy to her and really, I was a toy to everyone. It could be dozens of people, King. It could be thousands of people!”
I nod solemnly, trying just to listen to her. I already decided that whatever she wants to do, I will support her. I just need to wait for her to tell me what that is.
“And do you know what? She gave her parents nothing,” she exclaims. “I mean… what kind of person gives their parents nothing? That's so evil, I just don't even know—I mean, it's like she—”
She stops, flinching, her fingers pressed against her lips in horror.
Gently, I take her hand from her mouth and hold it between my hands.
“Jordan, I want you to listen to me,” I begin. “This is over now. What you need is a new start. You take whatever money she gave you —”
“—I don't want it!”
“All right, that's fine too. You don't have to take it. You can give it away. You can burn it and scatter the ashes on the river Seine in Paris.”
She takes a deep breath and lets it out through her nose. “I don't think this is a really good time to be making jokes,” she scolds me.
Finally seeing a break in the tension, I draw her fingers up to my mouth and press them against my lips.
“I'm not joking,” I inform her. “I don't joke about money.”
Though she doesn't want to, I can feel her relaxing. I am filled with such a sense of relief. I’m so happy to see her misery alleviated, even just a little bit.
“Let's go back to Paris,” I suggest. “Let's start a new life there, Jordan. You can put everything behind you.”
“I can't go back to Paris,” she whispers. “I don't know what I would do there. Everything is so complicated right now. What would I do?”
“You'd be with me,” I say, sliding closer to her. She lets me gather her into my arms, creeping up almost onto my lap and nestling against me. Her fingertips brush the skin of my chest absentmindedly and I want to laugh at how good that feels.
“Why would we do that?” she says in a small voice. I put one finger under her chin and tip her head back, waiting for her eyes to flicker up to meet mine. She blinks twice.
“Because I’m falling in love with you, Jordan, and I don't want to be anywhere if you're not there. We could build a life there. Just us. We could start again.”
It takes a moment for the words to register in her expression, and when they do, it's not what I want. Not at all.
She pulls farther away, sliding back to the corner of the couch and drawing her knees up protectively.
“Oh, King, I don't know,” she breathes, shaking her head tightly. “Everything is so… How can you say that? Falling in love? I mean —”
I hold my hands up. “It's all right,” I interrupt her. “It's okay. Calm down.”
“No, I'm the one who’s sorry!” she pleads. I can tell she really is sorry, but now I am wishing I had not said anything. “King, love is just so… I can't. I just can't!”
“Of course you can't,” I nod. My voice is insistent and confident, much more so than I'm really feeling. But she softens under my direction, waiting patiently for what I'll say next. “You don't have to love me, Jordan. Not yet. But you do need a fresh start. How about this... Don't spend Kelsey's money. Let's go back to Paris and find a new place, just for us. New furniture. New clothes. A brand new Jordan. How does that sound?”
She chews on her thumb knuckle thoughtfully. “Oh, I don't know,” she says in a small voice.
“You know.”
Her eyes meet mine and I hold her gaze, letting her search me for clues, letting her seek me out for comfort.
“All right,” she finally answers. “Let's go back to Paris.”
15
Jordan
I wasn't sure that I wanted to go back to Paris with R, but what else was I going to do? My life had never really been mine anyway, and so when it shattered, what was it? Pieces of something that wasn't even real?
He was right. I really had no choice but to start from scratch.
I didn't take me long to start to like it, to be honest. He found a beautiful apartment near the Eiffel Tower with parquet floors. It had a Juliet balcony where I could go out every morning and fling open the doors (French doors, of course) and greet the pigeons and the sound of traffic jams in the beautiful Parisian morning in my lacy nightgown, like a proper French mistress.
Nearly every day, it seemed like there were more pieces of furniture being delivered. I never even had to wish for anything. Everything just sort of appeared. The grand piano. The paintings. The bed so tall I had to step on a small ladder to get into it. Someone even picked out all the sheets and towels and linens and everything else. It was all just sort of done. I didn’t have to do anything.
And every day when R came back it felt strange, but I started to like it. I started to call it “home” in my head. I
waited for him to arrive. Tidying up in preparation, I got in the habit of making myself pretty as I anticipated his return.
Every day when King came home, he want to know what new furniture had arrived. I got to take him on a tour of the new Bavarian clock or enamelled Asian sideboard, or whatever. He'd act like he had never seen it before, though I figured he had probably picked it out. In any case, he always acted so pleased, so proud.
“Do you like it?” he asks me when the carved room divider arrives.
I try not to wrinkle my nose. It looks like one of those things prostitutes fling their clothes over when they change into their knickers in a Western.
“Well, do you like it?” I reply.
“Oh, ho, Little Girl,” he chuckles. He tugs the strap of my dress down and bites a tender line across the top of my shoulder. “I think that means you do not like it.”
“Well, it is your stuff. Is it really important that I like it?”
He pulls back, his features clouding briefly. “It's our stuff,” he corrects me.
“Is it?” I answer automatically, then wonder where that came from. “If it was our stuff, wouldn’t I be picking some of it out?”
“What would you like to pick out?” he counters.
I shrug, turning in a half circle and surveying the room. Actually, there isn't really a whole lot left to be done, is there?
“It's just that, you know, I wouldn't mind having a little more to do. Oh! Which reminds me. I’ve started to think about what I'd like to do with the money.”
He pivots behind me, running his hands down the front of my dress and hiking it up over my knees. I can feel he's already hard against my the small of my back and my body asks me to please shut up now, because there is something much more fun I could be doing with my mouth.
“What you are going to do with the money?” he growls as his hands wander over my hips and then cup my ass, squeezing firmly, pulling me open from behind.
