The Girl She Used to Be

by David Cristofano

  I giggle, longer than I normally would at such a comment, and I can’t stop smiling.

  Caffeine wins again.

  “You seem like a decent guy to me, Jonathan.”

  He shakes his head a little. “I’ve never really had to work hard at anything in my life. I’m trying to work hard, though. I want to be fair and honest.” He rubs his nose and sighs. “It would mean so much more if the cash I was throwing around was money I’d earned from being a talented chef or a successful restaurateur. Or even if I’d legitimately won it at the track. I mean, most of my income does come from above-board sources, but the other money poisons the whole wad. Do I smell sausage?”

  I slide in front of the room-service tray coquettishly. “I took the liberty. Sorry.”

  “No, good move. We won’t have time to eat before your spa appointments anyway.”

  “Appointments. I have more than one?”

  He smiles and says, “Today is all about you, Melody.”

  I smirk. “What do you mean, today?”

  He moves toward me, like he’s going to plant one on me, but he just pats me on the shoulder a few times and says, “Today, as in all day. You’re getting the works: massage, facial, hair, manicure, pedicure, some sort of upper-echelon skin treatment, and a couple of things I didn’t really understand and probably cannot pronounce correctly.”

  I stare at him blankly. “So, I’ll be done around…”

  “Dinnertime.”

  I bridge the distance between us, stand on my toes, and throw my arms around his neck. I close my eyes and gently, carefully press my lips to his, hold them there for three seconds, then move my mouth to his ears and whisper, “Thank you, Jonathan. Something this wonderful could only come from the money you earned.”

  As I hug him, I feel my robe fall open; I keep my arms around his neck anyway. The cool air hits my body and my skin comes alive with goose bumps. Piloerection has become a regular part of my life. I hear Jonathan gulp as he carefully reaches down to my waist—and I mean carefully; his hands never brush my skin—and takes the ends of my robe and deftly places them together. I release him and we both watch as he slowly ties the belt.

  When we pull apart our eyes are locked on one another.

  Jonathan presses his lips together like he’s savoring the taste of me. Then, after a moment, he says, “I’m picking up a hollandaise.”

  I squint. “And to think I let you in my room at such an unscrupulous hour.”

  “Worst of all, it tastes like those bastards used tarragon vinegar instead of fresh lemon. In a hollandaise? If one of my chefs did that, he’d be at the bottom of the East River. You want me to have the chef eliminated?”

  “Drawn and quartered.”

  “Eh, my horses are at the stable. But if you let me borrow your spoon, I can file it into a shiv.”

  Our smiles fade a little. His self-deprecation is humorous, but it’s hard to ignore the obvious references; a person can only disparage or undervalue himself so far without the truth getting in the way. He looks away and sighs. I am about to ask the question he knows I am about to ask.

  “Have you ever killed anyone?”

  Jonathan looks around the room like it’s bugged, like this has all been one big setup. Then he leans toward me and says loudly, “No.”

  I grab his shirt in an amateurishly seductive manner and say, “You mean, I would’ve been your first?”

  He sighs and touches my hand. “That was the plan.”

  I look up at him and smile. “Well, if you keep treating me this way, you may end up being my first, too.”

  Thinking out loud may have finally done me in.

  He drops my hand and backs up a step as though I’d just told him I was fourteen years old.

  “You mean, you’re a…”

  I sigh and give in; there’s really no point in trying to pretend I didn’t say it. “Yes, a virgin, Jonathan. What’s the matter, you’ve never killed a virgin?”

  “I told you I’m not gonna kill you.”

  “It was a euphemism. Would you prefer I use the term deflower?”

  “How is this possible?”

  “What do you mean? You think there’s some right of passage that occurs when you’re a teenager? I kept my legs closed, Jonathan.”

  He scratches his neck. “How old are you?”

  “Depends on what persona you want me to use. If I use Linda Simms, I’m about to turn thirty. If I use Shelly Jones, I’m a spry twenty-four.” He waits me out. I tilt my head a little and sigh. “I’m twenty-six.”

  Jonathan sits on the sofa near the window. “And you never… you never found someone you loved enough?”

  I sit across from him on the bed and tuck my legs under me and cover myself with the robe. “I’d love to say I was being morally responsible, but the truth is I never allowed myself to get close to anyone—physically or emotionally. There was just too much risk.”

  He bites his lip as he considers my comment. Eventually, he asks, “Risk for whom?”

  For everyone should be my answer, but I get lost in a memory and I’m not sure how much time has lapsed but Jonathan never snaps me out of it. I stare at the pattern in the carpet and my eyes become unfocused. Rather than trying to explain my purity, I let the memory flow from my mind to his ears.

  Softly, like I’m trying to keep it between the two of us, I tell him how, when I was a teenager, I thought I’d found the love of my life—like, I suppose, most kids do around that age. Mine was a boy named Brian Basinger, an athletic, pockmarked lad with electric eyes and tight blond curls that I would twist whenever he would kiss me. He was funny and cute and smart and for whatever reason he seemed to like being with me. We’d go to the movies and eat junk food and take long walks and talk about our futures and what we wanted to be, mostly because I’d never really mastered the art of talking about a false past.

  One night, Brian and I were snuggling in the basement of my home in Powhatan, North Carolina, a third of the way through Silence of the Lambs. I’d grown to love scary movies, not because I was some fan of the genre as much as it gave me a valid excuse to jump into Brian’s arms. Around the time Clarice and Hannibal were getting down to the nitty-gritty, I heard a rumbling upstairs, a looming malignity, and my instinct was much like a Kansan sensing a twister not far afield. I immediately went cold and clammy, and I closed my eyes and buried my head in Brian’s chest. And I remember how he put his arms around me as though he wanted to protect me—but he could only safeguard me from the characters in the movie; he could never protect me from what was coming.

  Then came the stomping of booted feet, the loud voices, the frantic vibrations of things being moved around, the now unmistakable music of people in a hurry. I buried myself in Brian, deeper and deeper, praying that what was coming would go away. Though, just as certain as I was, you too know what was coming.

  The feds.

  Many miles and days later, I found out that someone had left a message on our answering machine stating we’d all be dead in twenty-four hours. They say it sounded like a kid calling from a pay phone and that it was probably a prank, a horrible coincidence, but they could not and would not take the chance.

  But that night I kept the faith, holding on to Brian with all my might, eyes closed, praying silently. The movie was raging on while men shuffled quickly down the steps to our basement. I pulled my face from Brian’s chest and watched him. His eyes were locked on the television, totally engrossed in the picture.

  He turned to me and said, “I hate this part.”

  And as the marshals pushed open the door to our rec room, I stared back at Brian and said, “I hate this part too.”

  Brian had no idea who my family really was. I kept my arms around him, latching on with all my strength, but the marshals just kept yelling, saying we had to go now. I hugged him with everything I had in me, but the marshals must have been through this before and they grabbed my body and pulled me off Brian. He tried to hold on to me, too, but the marshals p
ushed him back. Brian was just screaming at me, “Terry, Terry—what’s going on? What’s happening?” And as one of the marshals picked me up and threw me over his shoulder all I could answer was, “I love you, Brian. I love you.”

  Brian Basinger was never a part of my life again.

  Jonathan and I sit in silence for a moment, then he says, “Literally pulled from the arms of your lover.”

  “Within the same minute I was yanked from Brian’s grip, I was tossed in the back of a Chevy Impala and I watched our home disappear through the rear window.” I sit up and play with the belt of my robe. “I still wonder to this day what must have run through his mind, watching my family scramble out the back door, being driven away by the Marshals Service, leaving him at our house and no one else, all the lights on, back door wide open, television still blaring Clarice and Hannibal. I always wondered if Brian took in our pet bird and kept him from starving to death.”

  “So,” Jonathan says as he walks over and sits next to me on the bed, “you never tried to find Brian after that? Never tried to call him?”

  “No. I mean, I wanted to, but… I figured it was pointless. It would be a brief, awkward conversation, mostly just an explanation, and then he would move on with his life and I would move on with my life. My lives.”

  I clutch the robe to my chest and lie back on the bed.

  “Does that answer your question? I never saw a reason to love, Jonathan, because it meant that one day I would either leave someone behind or take him with me and put him in equal danger.” I laugh a little. “Besides, how betrayed do you think my lover would be once he found I had lied to him about who I really was for all of our days together? It’s a real mess. I’ve thought about this for years and years, and as far as I can tell there’s no loophole.”

  Jonathan gets up and walks to the window but merely looks down at the floor. “I’m sorry, Melody.”

  “For?”

  “Everything. For every single moment of suffering and heartache you’ve been through—because it all comes back to my family. If I had a father who did something legitimate with his life, we wouldn’t be here.”

  I turn my head to catch his eye, but he’s still staring at the floor. “True, but… you realize we never would’ve met if your dad hadn’t gutted that guy at Vincent’s—and, of course, if they hadn’t sent you to knock me off.”

  He finally spins around. “Well, regardless of why we’re here now, I’m happy to say that my first memory of you is that little girl with bouncing curls who held her mother’s hand on the sidewalk in front of Vincent’s.” He comes over and kneels on the floor and rests his arms on the bed. “I’m glad I got to see your innocence—even if it was just for a few seconds—and that you were once happy and at peace.”

  I smile. “I don’t think I’ll ever be at peace again, Jonathan. I mean, what are we doing? Where are we going? I’m not exactly at peace with meeting the people who want me dead.” I laugh a little. “But I’m happy now… oddly, because of you.” I reach out and touch his hand.

  He looks down, then quickly turns his head to the clock. “Well, if you think you’re happy now,” he says, “just wait till you’ve had a full day of being pampered! We better get moving.”

  It’s as though the mere mention of my lifelong abstinence has convinced him my body will explode if he tries to explore it. Little does he know that I am the New World.

  I catch up with Jonathan in the hall after a few minutes. I perused the bags he left in my room but I did not have time to start removing all the tags and labels from the clothes, so I put on my worn jeans, a new T-shirt, and the green sweater, which, at this point, is more about feeling good than looking good.

  We take the elevator down to the second floor and he presents me to the ladies at the front of the spa like he’s bringing in a foreign diplomat. When the ladies see him, they’re all smiles and coo “Good morning, Jonathan” as though they’ve known him all his life, but I understand it’s probably an even mixture of his looks and charm and a mighty fistful of dollars.

  The spa is chic and warm and smells of sweet chemicals. One of the clerks takes me by the arm like I’m some long-lost friend and Jonathan follows a few steps behind. She asks me whether I’ve been here before and I tell her I’ve never been anywhere even remotely spa-like and she assures me the experience will be memorable. She has me sit in a room with an elegant though noisy waterfall in the corner, soft classical music playing, and plush seating. She points to a buffet of food across the room: breads, yogurts, cheeses, pastries, and an assortment of fresh fruit that keep my attention while she goes on and on about what they are going to do to me and how I am going to be transformed and how they will create a new me and all I can think is “I want the original me, not another new me” and “Do people really eat star fruit?”

  She leaves and I watch Jonathan examine the food. “Ever eat carambola?”

  I stand and walk to his side. “I was just thinking about that. No, never had one.”

  “Well, don’t start with any of these; they’re too green. They’ll be horribly sour.” He walks a few steps. “This pineapple, on the other hand, must have been cut just moments ago; it hasn’t oxidized at all.” He picks up a chunk and places it to his lips and he sort of kisses it instead of taking a bite.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m checking the acidity. Amazing.” He places it in his mouth and moves it around like a taste of wine. “This you must try. Sweeter than sugar. Only God could make something this perfect.”

  He picks up a piece, carefully selecting one that will not be too big for my mouth, and brings it to my lips. I keep my eyes on his and when he puts the wet fruit in my mouth, I bite down on his fingers a little and suck. He slowly lowers his hand and I chew slowly and smile, my lips still wet. “Well, you were right about that.”

  He is about to say something when the masseur and one of the clerks come in to get me for my massage. We all walk out, and when we get to the massage room, everyone looks at Jonathan like he needs to leave.

  “What,” he says.

  “Sir,” the clerk says, “she’ll be getting her massage now.”

  Jonathan peeks into the room and studies the masseur; in comparison, he really is Little Johnny. And from the look on his face, it seems he might’ve been expecting a woman.

  “He’s gonna… do the… thing?”

  “Yes, sir,” the clerk answers.

  Jonathan turns to me and whispers, “You have to take off your clothes?”

  I smile and whisper back, “I think that makes it easier.”

  “Well,” he says in full voice, “as your bodyguard, I need to stay by your side today and guard your… body. Literally.”

  “Jonathan,” the clerk says, suddenly dropping the sir, “she’ll be fine in our care.”

  “But even better in mine.” And he walks in.

  The masseur laughs and nods to the clerk that it’s okay. “Why don’t you disrobe and put this towel around you and I’ll be back in a moment.” He pats me gently on the back a few times and squeezes my shoulder, as though it should signal my getting used to his hands on my flesh.

  The door closes and Jonathan sits in a chair and covers his face with his hands. I take off my jeans and my sweater and my shirt and my bra and drape the towel around me, and as I reach up under the towel and pull my panties off, the sound of the fabric sliding against my legs makes Jonathan’s Adam’s apple bob a few times.

  “Okay,” I say, “it’s safe.”

  He cracks his fingers a little, peeks, then drops his hands. “Great,” he says, casually crossing his legs.

  I slowly crawl atop the table and lie on my stomach, pull the towel to my waist and put my arms above me. I can feel my chest slightly spilling to the sides. I turn my head to face him. The look on his face is sweet and distinctly red; he is a cherry Life Saver.

  Jonathan’s voice jumps a little as he says, “Maybe I should wait outside.”

  I frown like a chi
ld. “But how will you guard my body?”

  “Huh, yeah, true. How could I… yeah.” He fumbles around his pockets and I can tell by the way he’s feeling himself up that he’s trying to find his cigarettes. He reaches under his sweater and removes a small box and taps it a few times like he’s going to pull out a smoke. But instead he opens the lid, clumsily, like he has yet to master some new routine, and taps a small white tablet into his mouth.

  I laugh. “Is that Nicorette?”

  He noshes it like a dog chewing a bone and he gets this sad look on his face, like he recently buried a close friend. “What can I say? You make me want to be a better man.”

  I lose my smile. “Are you serious? You stopped smoking for me? But… I never asked.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t have to.”

  The surrender of an addiction might be the noblest of all gifts. “You… you really are full of surprises.” I look away. “I mean, we don’t really know how much time we’re going to have together.”

  “Which makes it even more important that I stop now, you know?”

  We stare at each other.

  His chewing slows.

  And so it happens again, another moment where I have forgotten where I am and who I am with. I am not a kid who sneaked out of her parents’ house one night to make out with her boyfriend. I am on the run in the wrong direction with the wrong guy. Yet he’s giving me gifts, physical and emotional, that I don’t fully understand. And for some reason I want him, and certainly need him. So around I go, back to being the kid, and now I want the physicality that marries the emotion. The clock is ticking, yes?

  “Have you ever given a woman a massage before?” I ask. Jonathan adjusts his glasses. I close my eyes and say, “Come here.”

  He clears his throat. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean stand up, take steps in my direction, and stop when you reach the table.”

  He hesitates, but does as I have asked.

  I raise my arms even higher and say, “Now, place your hands on the small of my back.” My sexual inexperience brings a glint of anxiety, but Jonathan’s determination to preserve my virginity actually relaxes me, allows me to be uninhibited—and, ironically, allows me to pursue him.