Femme Fatale and other stories

by Laura Lippman

  “You want to see me naked?” she asked.

  Bryon nodded.

  “Just … see?”

  “That’s how we start, usually. Slow like. Everyone has his or her own comfort zone.”

  “And the video—is that for your eyes only?”

  “I told you, I’m an independent filmmaker. Direct to video. A growing market.”

  “People pay?”

  Another shy nod. “It’s sort of a … niche within the industry.”

  “Niche.”

  “It’s my niche,” he said. “It’s what I like. I make other films about, um, things I don’t like so much. But I love watching truly seasoned women teach young men about life.”

  “And you’d pay for this?”

  “Of course.”

  “How much?”

  “Some. Enough.”

  “Just to look? Just to see me, as I am?”

  “A little for that. More for … more.”

  “How much?” Mona repeated. She was keen to know her worth.

  He came around from behind the camera, retrieved a laminated card from the drawer in the vanity table, then sat on the bed and patted the space next to him. Why laminated? Mona decided not to think about that. She moved to the bed and studied the card, not unlike the menu of services and prices at a spa. She could do that. And that. Not that, but definitely that and that. The fact was, she had done most of these things, quite happily.

  “Let me make you a star, Mona.”

  “Are you my leading man?”

  “Our target demographic prefers to see younger men with the women. I just need to get some film of you to take to my partner so he’ll underwrite it. I have a very well-connected financial backer.”

  “Who?”

  “Oh, I’ll never say. He’s very discreet. Anyway, he likes to know that the actresses are … up to the challenges of their roles. Usually a striptease will do, a little, um, self-stimulation. But it’s always good to have extra footage. I make a lot of films, but these are the ones I like best. The ones I watch.”

  “Well, then,” Mona said, unbuttoning her blouse. “Let’s get busy.”

  FETISH, MONA SAID TO HERSELF as she shopped in the Giant. Fetish, she thought as she retrieved her mail from the communal boxes in the lobby. I am a fetish. This was the word that Bryon used to describe her “work,” which, two months after their first meeting, comprised four short films. She had recoiled at the word at first, feeling it marked her as a freak, something from a sideshow. “Niche” had been so much nicer. But Bryon assured her that the customers who bought her videos were profoundly affected by her performance. There was no irony, no belittling. She was not the butt of the joke, she was the object of their, um, affection.

  “Different people like different things,” he said to her in Starbucks one afternoon. She was feeling a little odd, as she always did when a film was completed. It was so strange to spend an afternoon having sex and not be taken shopping afterward, just given a cashier’s check. “Our cultural definitions of sexuality are simply too narrow.”

  “But your other films, the other tastes you serve”—Mona by now had familiarized herself with Bryon’s catalog, which included the usual whips and chains, but also a surprisingly successful series of films that featured obese women sitting on balloons—“they’re sick.”

  “There you go, being judgmental,” Bryon said. “Children is wrong, I’ll give you that. Because children can’t consent. Everything else is fair game.”

  “Animals can’t consent.”

  “I don’t do animals, either. Adults and inanimate objects, that’s my credo.”

  It was an odd conversation to be having in her Starbucks at the LeisureWorld Plaza, that much was sure. Mona looked around nervously, but no one was paying attention. The other customers probably thought Mona and Bryon were a mother and son, although she didn’t think she looked old enough to be Bryon’s mother.

  “By the way”—Byron produced a small stack of envelopes—“we’ve gotten some letters for you.”

  “Letters?”

  “Fan mail. Your public.”

  “I’m not sure I want to read them.”

  “That’s up to you. Whatever you do—don’t make the mistake of responding to them, okay? The less they know about Sexy Sadie, the better. Keep the mystery.” He left her alone with her public.

  Keep the mystery. Mona liked that phrase. It could be her credo, to borrow Bryon’s word. Then she began to think about the mysteries that Bryon was keeping. If she had already received—she stopped to count, touching the envelopes gingerly—eleven pieces of fan mail, then how many fans must she have? If eleven people wrote, then hundreds—no, thousands—must watch and enjoy what she did.

  So why was she getting paid by the job, with no percentage, no profit-sharing? God willing, her health assured, she could really build on this new career. After all, they actually had to make her look older, dressing her in dowdy dresses, advising her to make her voice sound more quavery than it was. Bryon had the equipment, Bryon had the distribution—but only Mona had Mona. How replaceable was she?

  “FORGET IT,” BRYON SAID when she broached the topic on the set a few weeks later. “I was up-front with you from the start. I pay you by the act. By the piece, if you will. No participation. You signed a contract, remember?”

  Gone was the rapt deference from that first day at Starbucks. True, Mona had long ago figured out that it was an act, but she had thought there was a germ of authenticity in it, a genuine respect for her looks and presence. How long had Bryon been stalking her? she wondered now. Had he approached her because of her almost lavender eyes, or because she looked vulnerable and lonely? Easy, as they used to say.

  “But I have fans,” she said. “People who like me, specifically. That ought to be worth a renegotiation.”

  “You think so? Then sue me in Montgomery County courts. Your neighbors in LeisureWorld will probably love reading about that in the suburban edition of the Washington Post.”

  “I’ll quit,” she said.

  “Go ahead,” Bryon said. “You think you’re the only lonely old lady who needs a little attention? I’ll put the wig and the dress on some other old bag. My films, my company, my concept.”

  “Some concept,” Mona said, trying not to let him see how much the words hurt. So she was just a lonely old lady to him, a mark. “I sit in a room, a young man rings my doorbell, I end up having sex with him. So far, it’s been a UPS man, a delivery boy for a florist, a delivery boy for the Chinese restaurant, and a young Mormon on a bicycle. What’s next, a Jehovah’s Witness peddling the Watchtower?”

  “That’s not bad,” Bryon said, pausing to write a quick note to himself. “Look, this is the deal. I pay you by the act. You don’t want to do it, you don’t have to. I’m always scouting new talent. Maybe I’ll find an Alzheimer’s patient, who won’t be able to remember from one day to the next what she did, much less try to hold me up for a raise. You old bitches are a dime a dozen.”

  It was the “old bitches” part that hurt.

  WHEN MONA’S SECOND HUSBAND’S FORTUNE had proved to be largely smoke and mirrors, she had learned to be more careful about picking her subsequent husbands. That was in the pre-Internet days, when determining a person’s personal fortune was much more labor-intensive. She was pleased to find out from a helpful librarian how easy it was now to compile what was once known as a Dun and Bradstreet on someone, how to track down the silent partner in Bryon White’s LLC.

  Within a day, she was having lunch with Bernard Weinman, a dignified gentleman about her own age. He hadn’t wanted to meet with her, but as Mona detailed sweetly what she knew about Bernie’s legitimate business interests—more information gleaned with the assistance of the nice young librarian—and his large contributions to a local synagogue, he decided they could meet after all. He chose a quiet French restaurant in Bethesda, and when he ordered white wine with lunch, Mona followed suit.

  “I have a lot of investments,
” he said. “I’m not hands-on.”

  “Still, I can’t imagine you want someone indiscreet working for you.”

  “Indiscreet?”

  “How do you think I tracked you down? Bryon talks. A lot.”

  Bernie Weinman bent over his onion soup, spilling a little on his tie. But it was a lovely tie, expensive and well made. For this lunch meeting, he wore a black suit and crisp white shirt with large gold cuff links.

  “Bryon’s very good at … what he does. His mail-order business is so steady it’s almost like an annuity. I get a very good return on my money, and I’ve never heard of him invoking my name.”

  “Well, he did. All I did was make some suggestions about how to”—Mona groped for the odd business terms she had heard on television—“how to grow your business, and he got very short with me, said you had no interest in doing things differently. And when I asked if I might speak to you, he got very angry, threatened to expose me. If he would blackmail me, a middle-class widow with no real money, imagine what he might do to you.”

  “Bryon knows me well enough not to try that,” Bernie Weinman said. After a morning at the Olney branch of the Montgomery County Public Library, Mona knew him pretty well, too. She knew the rumors that had surrounded the early part of his career, the alleged but never proven ties to the numbers runner up in Baltimore. Bernie Weinman had built his fortune from corner liquor stores in Washington, D.C., which eventually became the basis for his chain of party-supply stores. But he had clearly never lost his taste for the recession-proof businesses that had given him his start—liquor, gambling, prostitution. All he had done was live long enough and give away enough money that people were willing to forget his past. Apparently, the going price of redemption in Montgomery County was five million dollars to the capital fund at one’s synagogue.

  “Does Bryon know you so well that he wouldn’t risk keeping two sets of books?”

  “What?”

  “I know what I get paid. I know how cheaply the product is made and produced, and I know how many units are moved. He’s cheating you.”

  “He wouldn’t.”

  “He would—and brag about it, too. He said you were a stupid old man who was no longer on top of his game.”

  “He said that?”

  “He said much worse.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I c-c-can’t,” Mona whispered, looking shyly into her salade niçoise as if she had not made four adult films under the moniker “Sexy Sadie.”

  “Paraphrase.”

  “He said … he said there was no film in the world that could, um, incite you. That you were … starchless.”

  “That little SOB.”

  “He laughs at you, behind your back. He practically brags about how he’s ripping you off. I’ve put myself in harm’s way, just talking to you, but I couldn’t let this go on.”

  “I’ll straighten him out—”

  “No! Because he’ll know it was me and he’ll—he’s threatened me, Bernie.” This first use of his name was a calculated choice. “He says no one will miss me and I suppose he’s right.”

  “You don’t have any children?”

  “Just stepchildren, and I’m afraid they’re not very kind to me. It was hard for them, their father remarrying, even though he had been a widower for years.” Divorced for two years, and Mona had been the central reason, but the kids wouldn’t have liked her under any circumstances. “No, no one would miss me. Except my fans.”

  She let the subject go then, directing the conversation to Bernie and his accomplishments, the legitimate ones. She asked questions whose answers she knew perfectly well, touched his arm when he decided they needed another bottle of wine, and, although she drank only one glass to his every two, declared herself unfit to drive home. She was going to take a taxi, but Bernie insisted on driving her, and accompanying her to the condo door, to make sure she was fine, and then into her bedroom, where he further assessed her fineness. He was okay, not at all starchless, somewhere between a sturdy baguette and a loaf of Wonder bread. She’d had worse. True, he felt odd, after the series of hard-bodied young men that Bryon had hired for her. But this, at least, did not fall under the category of fetish. He was seventy-three and she was sixty-eight-passing-for-sixty-one. This was normal. This was love.

  Bryon White was never seen again. He simply disappeared, and there was no one who mourned him or even really noticed. And while Bernie Weinman was happily married, he had strong opinions about how his new mistress should spend her time. Mona took over the business but had to retire from performing, at least officially, although she sometimes auditioned the young men, just to be sure. Give Bryon credit, Mona thought, now that she had to scout the coffee shops and grocery stores, recruiting the new talent. It was harder than it looked and Bryon’s instincts had been unerring, especially when it came to Mona. She really was a wonderful actress.

  WHAT HE NEEDED

  My husband’s first wife almost spent him into bankruptcy. Twice. I am a little hazy about the details, as was he. I don’t think it was a real bankruptcy, with court filings and ominous codes on his credit history. Credit was almost too easy for us to get. The experience may have depleted his savings, for he didn’t have much in the bank when we married. But whatever happened, it scared him badly, and he was determined it would never happen again.

  To that end, he was strict about the way we spent money in our household, second-guessing my purchases, making up rules about what we could buy. Books, for example. The rule was that I must read ten of the unread books in the house—and there were, I confess, many unread books in the house—before I could bring a new one home. We had similar rules about compact discs (“Sing a song from the last one you bought,” he bellowed at me once) and shoes (“How many pairs of black shoes does one woman need?”). It was not, however, a two-way street. The things he wanted proved to be necessities—defensible, sensible purchases. A treadmill, a digital camera, a DVD player and, of course, the DVDs to go with it. Lots of Westerns and wars.

  But now I sound like him, sour and grudging. The irony was, we both made good money. More correctly, he made decent money, as a freelance technical writer, and I made great money, editing a loathsome city magazine, the kind that tells you where to get the best food/doctors/lawyers/private schools/flowers/chocolates/real estate. It wasn’t journalism, it was marketing. That’s why they had to pay so well.

  Because I spent my days instructing others how to dispose of their income, I seldom shopped recreationally. I didn’t even live in the city whose wares I touted, but in a strange little suburb just outside the limits. Marion was an unexpectedly pretty place, hidden in the triangle created by three major highways. It should have been loud. It wasn’t. It was quiet, almost eerily so, except when the train came through. Our house was a Victorian, pale green, restored by the previous owners. It needed nothing, which seemed like a blessing at first but gradually became unsettling. Houses were supposed to swallow up time and money and effort, but ours never required anything. We were childless, although we had a dog. When my husband found the house and insisted we move from the city, I had consoled myself by thinking the new place would absorb the energy I never got to put into raising a family. But its only demand came on the first of the month, when I wrote the mortgage check.

  One day last January, I came home and tossed a bag on the kitchen table. White, with a black-blue logo, it was from the local bookstore. Christmas was past, no one’s birthday was on the calendar. I had no excuse for buying a book. I hadn’t read anything in weeks, much less the required ten. Which is not to say I always obeyed the rules. I broke them all the time but was careful to conceal this fact, smuggling in purchases in the folds of my leather tote, letting them blend with what we already owned until they took on a protective coloring. “This sweater? I’ve had it forever.” “That book? Oh, it was a freebie, came to the office by mistake.”

  But on this particular January day, I came through the kitchen door after dark, let t
he dog leave footprints over my winter white wool coat, and threw the bag down so it landed with a noticeable smacking sound. My husband, who was preparing dinner, walked over to the table and opened the bag. It contained a first novel, plump and mushy with feeling. I steeled myself for his response, which could range anywhere from snide to volcanic. I was prepared to tell him it was collectible, that this first edition would be worth quite a bit if the writer lived up to the ridiculous amounts of praise heaped on him.

  But all my husband said was, “That looks good,” and went back to his sauce.

  Over the next few weeks, I brought more things home. CDs, which I didn’t even bother to remove from their silky plastic wrapping. More books. A new winter coat, a red one with a black velvet collar and suede gloves to match. Moss green high heels, a silk scarf. He approved of everything, challenged nothing. He began to think of other things we could buy, things we could share. Season tickets to the opera? Sure. A new rug for the dining room? Why not. Built-in bookshelves? Of course.

  One night in bed he asked: “Are you happy?”

  “I’m not unhappy.”

  “That’s what you always say.”

  True.

  “Why can’t you talk to me?”

  “Because when I tell you what I feel or what I’m thinking, you tell me I’m wrong. You tell me I don’t know my own mind. I’d rather not talk at all than hear that.”

  “You don’t know what you want.”

  This was true.

  “You were a mess when I met you.”

  This was not.

  “Everything you’ve accomplished is because of me.”

  “But,” I pointed out, “I haven’t actually accomplished anything.”

  “Are you going to leave me?”

  I gave the most honest answer I dared. “I don’t know yet.”

  He threw himself out of bed and ran downstairs. I went after him, found him in the kitchen, pouring bourbon into a stout glass of smoky amber. He had not approved of those glasses when I bought them, but he used them all the time. He finished his drink in two gulps, poured another. I got a bottle of white wine from the refrigerator and sat with him.