Uptown Thief

by Aya De León

  Marisol saw Raul in her peripheral vision. Nalissa had a hand on his arm and her head tossed back. Her unnaturally red curls bounced with her laughter.

  Marisol willed herself to focus on what Serena was saying about their latest grant, as the clinic’s front door opened and a young transgender woman entered.

  “Clara!” Serena ran to her. Clara wore a pair of flip-flops and a Dora the Explorer blanket around her full breasts and narrow-hipped body. She wore blond hair extensions down to her butt. Her long, bare legs were smooth and hairless, and her toes were polished pink. Her face was in full makeup, and there were tear streaks down her cheeks.

  “You okay, miss?” Raul asked, extracting himself from Nalissa.

  “My tía put me out for bringing dates to the apartment,” Clara said to Serena. “Bitch threw me out in the snow.”

  “Oh honey—” Serena began.

  “She came home early,” Clara said, shivering. “And we was going at it on the couch. I’m naked under this shit.”

  Marisol put her blazer on Clara, pulling her close to warm her.

  “Such a fucking hypocrite,” Clara said. “How’d she think we was paying the renta?”

  “That jacket isn’t thick enough,” Raul said, stepping closer. He pulled off his hoodie. As he lifted up the sweatshirt, it tugged up his undershirt, showing off the muscles in his abdomen.

  Marisol could hear Nalissa’s audible intake of breath.

  “Here you go, miss,” Raul said to Clara.

  “Ooh, chivalry is alive,” Clara said. “Thanks for the flash, papi. That warmed me up even more.” She ran her hand along Raul’s six-pack.

  Raul blushed and yanked down the bottom of his white, ribbed undershirt.

  Marisol felt light-headed. “Let me get you some hot tea, nena,” she said. “We also have emergency blankets.”

  In the back room, Marisol put the kettle on and crossed to the supply closet. She flipped on the light.

  Raul appeared in the hallway. “I had to get outta there,” he said. “I’m not used to—am I blushing?”

  “It was sweet to give her your sweatshirt,” Marisol said.

  Raul crossed the hallway. The lights were dim, a cost-saving measure, as the hall was illuminated by windows during the day.

  “That girl . . . ?” Raul fumbled.

  “. . . that young woman is transgender,” Marisol said.

  Raul nodded. “It’s good for me working here. Learning new things.”

  Marisol walked into the alcove where they kept emergency equipment, and Raul followed.

  The overhead bulb flashed, then burned out.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Marisol mumbled.

  “I’ll use my phone,” Raul said.

  “Good idea.” Marisol pulled out hers, too, and they searched for the blankets by the glow of the screens.

  The emergency corner of the supply closet was small, and she could feel his bicep touching her shoulder, exposed by the sleeveless silk blouse.

  “Here it is,” Raul said.

  Marisol turned as he leaned over to hand her something. Their noses collided, and her cheek brushed the light stubble on his jaw.

  She jerked back, dropping her phone. It fell facedown, obscuring the light.

  “Sorry,” Raul said.

  “Not your fault,” she said as they looked for the phone. They crawled around, bumping into each other. The moving on all fours, the darkness, the exposed skin. She wanted to jump on him and rip off their clothes so she could press against that smooth chest and those hard abs. She wanted to top him, take him, on a pile of torn silk and white cotton.

  “Is that it over there?” Raul asked.

  Marisol blinked. The phone had fallen onto some paper napkins on a bottom shelf.

  “Got it.” She scooped it up.

  “Why don’t you take the blanket back to Clara?” she said. “I just found a replacement light bulb.”

  “I can help screw it in,” Raul said. “Isn’t it a little high for you?”

  “Then I’ll go.” She handed him the bulb and took the blanket. “Gracias.”

  She hurried down the hallway to the loud whistling of the teakettle.

  * * *

  Marisol locked her office door. How was she supposed to function with Raul under the same roof all day?

  She had no idea what to do with these feelings. She couldn’t get away from him. She couldn’t fuck him. She couldn’t concentrate.

  She flipped through the mail on her desk. Several tax information statements sobered her. Nothing sexy about the IRS.

  She opened the statements and checked them against her records. When she plugged the figures into the tax software, the clinic came out owing $23,000.

  What? She rechecked her math. April would bring a $23,000 tax bill on top of the mortgage and other monthly expenses? How could she pay that?

  When Marisol had opened the escort service, she swore to Eva, on her mother’s grave, that she would find a way to launder the money and pay taxes.

  It was simple to declare escort payments as donations. The clients got the services, plus a tax write-off. She paid the escorts as consultants. And there was a clear money trail from the “donor” to the clinic. She kept a small client list of wealthy men who were very discreet—Thug Woofer was the exception. According to the contract, the girls were entertainers, and the sex was off the books. No client was gonna blow the scheme by telling his accountant: “Don’t deduct that, it was for hookers.” They took the write-off, and they kept their mouths shut.

  The tough part was accounting for the heist money, because the funds had no legitimate origin. She disguised some of it as cash payments for clinic services, but since they served mostly low-income clients, a sudden, massive amount of cash income would be a red flag. She deposited a few hundred dollars of stolen cash every week along with the crumpled one- and five-dollar bills they got in the donation buckets. But she needed to launder tens of thousands to keep up with expenses—and now there was this tax bill.

  What she needed was a big heist. A multimillion-dollar payoff that she could keep in an offshore account. So instead of scrambling all day for cash to keep the clinic doors open, she could turn over daily management to Tyesha. Then she could focus on setting up the laundering operation that would make it all legit.

  Marisol was double-checking her figures when her intercom buzzed.

  “Yes, Serena?”

  “Jeremy VanDyke on line one.”

  Marisol’s heart began to pound as she picked up. “Mr. VanDyke,” Marisol said. “So glad—”

  “This is his assistant,” a woman’s voice said. “Hold please.”

  Five minutes later, the billionaire came on the line.

  “Marisol,” he said. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  “Jeremy. So lovely to hear from you. Thank you again for your generous donation.”

  “My pleasure,” he said. “Your innovation is amazing. You applied some of my strategies in ways no one else could have dreamed up. So impressive.”

  “Okay, Jeremy,” she said. “You know it’s rocking my world that the most successful man in the country finds my financial innovations impressive.”

  “I understand you have some brilliant strategies that involve offering private services as thank-you gifts,” he said.

  “Our donors are incredibly generous,” she said. “We like to offer generous tokens of our appreciation.”

  “I want in,” he said.

  “You’re selecting our agency for your foundation?” she asked.

  “Unfortunately not,” he said. “The foundation had already made this round of selections.”

  “I understand,” Marisol said, although she felt let down. “Thank you so much for taking the time to tell me personally.”

  “I’d like to personally experience your financial strategy,” he said. “To see it in action.”

  “You mean, a site visit?” Marisol asked.

  VanDyke chuckled. “Not
exactly. Rather that I’d like to make a donation and get my personal thank-you gift.”

  In a measured voice she said, “I’m not sure what you’re referring to, Mr. VanDyke.”

  “I understand from a colleague that he got a lovely thank-you gift from one of the young women in your employ.”

  So VanDyke had heard about their tax break/escort hustle and wanted in on it. No date for Marisol and no pet charity project. She swallowed her disappointment, and shifted into her madam role.

  “As a businessman,” Marisol said, “I’m sure you can understand that I’m not in a position to give out any information about young women who work for me. Especially if I have no idea who is authorizing the information request.”

  “Of course,” VanDyke said. He named a state senator, one of their best clients. “He’s a close friend and suggested that I contact you.”

  Marisol exhaled. “Well, that’s different,” she said. “We always like to help friends of friends.”

  She set up an appointment for him to meet the girls in a few days—Thursday evening—then signed off.

  Eva stuck her head in the office. “Is it true that VanDyke called?”

  Marisol motioned for her to shut the door. “The asshole wants an escort.”

  “What a letdown,” Eva said.

  It was. With VanDyke, she had imagined red carpets, meeting major world movers, and stepping into powerful circles on the arm of a man who could open any door. But then Marisol contrasted that thought with her morning in the supply room with Raul. She’d never been so overwhelmed with sexual yearning—VanDyke certainly didn’t have that effect on her.

  “I don’t know,” Marisol said. “Maybe VanDyke himself wasn’t sexy, but his power was.”

  As she spoke, the light bulb overhead blew out. Marisol looked up at Eva. “Not a word,” she said and went to get a replacement bulb.

  * * *

  Later that night, in Washington Heights, Marisol met a Colombian guy. He loved to dance. At the hotel, he turned the clock radio to a salsa station and moved his hips in the rhythm of the song. It infuriated Marisol. He had a faraway smile on his face, and his shoulders swayed as if he’d rather be on a dance floor.

  “I need to be on top,” she said in Spanish.

  “Bueno,” he said.

  She towered over him, thrusting her hips so hard he had to fold his elbows above him to protect his head from banging into the headboard.

  Her aggression didn’t bother him. He smiled up at her and murmured along with the salsa romántica lyrics:

  Nuestro amor, el amor unico, unico, tú eres mi mundo . . .

  She rolled off him. “Turn off that damn music,” she said.

  He shrugged his broad, brown shoulders and complied, but she still couldn’t get the feeling she needed. He moved in the same rhythm—the beat clearly still playing in his head. She tried having him move behind her, as well as sitting in the chair.

  He went along with everything, stayed hard, didn’t complain.

  She wanted him to argue, lose his temper, insist. She wanted some kind of resistance. Finally, she climbed on top and rode him fast.

  “Slow down,” he told her in Spanish. “I’m getting too close. What about your pleasure?”

  Marisol couldn’t articulate her frustration. She couldn’t tell him he had been too agreeable, too deep in the music. She couldn’t find the feeling that she was taking him—

  “Controlling him.” Eva’s voice leaped into her mind.

  She rode him harder, thrusting her hips to push away the thought, the tears that threatened the back of her eyes.

  He gasped beneath her, and in the moment when he lay back, eyes closed, neck exposed, she caught the thread of her own orgasm, and rode him past the moment when he began to soften, to a climax of her own.

  He pulled out and disposed of the condom in the bathroom. By the time he came back, she was halfway dressed.

  He looked surprised, but caught the hint. He dressed and headed out the door with a formal, “Buenas noches.”

  She stripped her clothes off again and lay in bed. Marisol didn’t feel her usual sense of relief, but slowly she fell asleep.

  An hour later, she awoke from a suffocating nightmare.

  “Just a dream . . .” she told herself.

  She pulled the covers tight around her. She turned on the television, paced around the room for a while, and decided to go find a drink.

  Walking up and down the dark and quiet streets, she was spoiling for a fight. But no one spoke to her except the convenience store clerk when she bought the bottle of wine.

  Back in the hotel, she drank it all and watched an old episode of The Bionic Woman.

  The dream she passed out into was a version of her recurring nightmare. Her uncle’s cramped Lower East Side apartment, her sister across the room. Marisol not asleep anymore. Never asleep after she heard her uncle come home. The beige wallpaper and suffocating brown marble carpet. Dank. In spite of her scrubbing, the smell of mildew and bad plumbing hovered just beneath a chemical rose scent from the 99 Cent Store’s all-purpose cleaner.

  Eventually at night, her exhaustion would eclipse her will to stay awake. Then the terror at the sound of the front door opening. She felt overwhelming desperation to run, to hide under the bed, to climb out onto the fire escape before he came into the room. But then he’d find Cristina and she was too little. She couldn’t handle it. In the dream there was always the smell and the feeling of her body crushed under a familiar hated heaviness. But in this particular version of the nightmare, her fifteen-year-old legs moved in slow motion, the Bionic Woman soundtrack making all the right noises of superstrength, but not able to push him off. Usually she would have woken up at this point in the dream, but the booze did its own part to hold her down, and the dream eventually morphed into a forest scene where she had to save Cristina from a huge, ferocious bear. Just as she had locked her sister safely in a cabin, she found herself standing in a green botanical garden with the hulking figure of Jerry the pimp.

  * * *

  Marisol woke up feeling slightly sick to her stomach. Not just from the hangover, but it was an anxious nausea, like she was forgetting something important. The tangle of the dream came back to her. The forest. Jerry. Worrying about her sister. She hadn’t been to the botanical garden in twenty years. Since high school.

  In the quiet Harlem hotel room, Marisol felt a jolt of recognition as she recalled—over twenty years earlier—meeting Jerry for the first time.

  Chapter 12

  The memory took her back to high school. The knot in her stomach had started around 2 p.m., when their biology teacher led them out of the botanical garden toward the subway.

  The school day was when she could relax and laugh with her friend Gladys. On bad days—like if she’d been to the hospital the night before—the school nurse would usually let her doze on a cot. Field trips were the best. She could lose herself in the change of routine.

  After ten minutes of walking through the Bronx, they were on a wide street, passing a corner bodega and a check-cashing place. Gladys had worn a short dress with platform shoes, and she complained that her feet hurt.

  “Trade shoes with me?” She begged for a chance to wear Marisol’s sneakers. “Please. Just back to the train?”

  “No way, tonta,” Marisol said. “You’re the one tryna look cute for these stupid boys, not me.”

  “Don’t be such a bitch,” Gladys said, gesturing to Marisol’s oversized button-down shirt and jeans. “With your tetas and nalgas you can wear a fucking tent and these boys are all over you. Some of us gotta try a little harder.”

  “I wouldn’t mind if Marisol tried a little harder,” one boy said. “I wouldn’t mind if she made it a little harder.” He rubbed his crotch.

  “Por qué?” Marisol asked. “So I could be like, ‘I don’t feel nothing. Oh wait. It’s kinda like being poked with a toothpick.’”

  “Fuck you, puta. I got something for you.” He raised a mi
ddle finger at her.

  Marisol flipped him the bird right back. “Fuck you?” she said, then retracted her middle finger and extended her pinkie. “Isn’t this more scientifically accurate?”

  A few of the kids cracked up.

  “Mr. De Guzman,” the teacher said sternly. “Please join me at the front of the line or get detention.” He turned to Marisol. “And Miss Rivera, you might focus more on scientific accuracy on your next test.”

  Gladys laughed and threw an arm around Marisol. “You told De Guzman’s skinny ass.”

  As they arrived at the subway station, however, the laugh evaporated in Marisol’s throat. There was some problem with the train.

  “Hey, guys,” the teacher called. “We’ll have to walk to another station. I’ll have the secretary call to tell your parents we’ll be late.”

  No.

  Not with Cristina at home, letting herself in with her key around three thirty, and her uncle getting off work at five thirty. The field trip was already a risk getting her home around five. He sometimes came home early.

  Marisol hustled up to the front of the line. “I can’t be late,” she told the teacher. “I gotta take care of my little sister.”

  De Guzman grabbed her ass, and she elbowed him hard in the ribs, but didn’t turn around.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” the teacher said. “It’s not like I have a car.”

  “Can you loan me cab fare?”

  “To the Lower East Side?” he asked. “At rush hour? Do you know what that costs?”

  “I don’t care,” she said. “I’ll pay you back.”

  “I don’t have that kind of cash, Miss Rivera. Please get back in line.”

  An SUV went by, blasting hip-hop, and a guy leaned out of the passenger side, making a kissing sound in their direction.

  Marisol went back to Gladys. “Gimme those platforms,” she said.

  As the two girls traded shoes, they fell to the end of the line. Then Marisol pulled out her ponytail holder, and shook out her hair. She tied the oversized shirt around her narrow waist and undid several buttons.

  “Eso!” said one of the boys. “Finally, Marisol showing what she got. Ass for days!”

  “Can you please get your fat nalgas outta my boyfriend’s face?” the girl on his arm asked.