The tour always ended up in a motel room where he would suck dick. One guy fell in love with him when he was ten and was able to smuggle him back to Arizona in the trunk of his car. He lived with the man for three years, attending school in Tucson and perfecting his English. Finally, Child Protective Services got wind of what was going on and sent his benefactor to prison for twelve years. Beltran went to stay in foster care and, although he wasn’t sexually abused, he got beaten left and right. He finally ran away and got back to Mexico. By then, he was thirteen and ready to work for one of the cartels as a smuggler or lookout. They exploited his ability to speak English and kept sending him over the border with a backpack full of drugs. After four years of crossing the Sonoran Desert and getting chased and shot at by Border Patrol, he joined the Mexican Army.
Once Beltran had left the military, there were few prospects. There was some small-time dope dealing at the border, then he saw some Chicano high school boys driving seventy thousand dollar cars and found out they killed for money. Antonio made friends with these buttonboys and asked them to subcontract some work to him. Being generous, they had assigned him the job of wiping out a distributor who had insulted their boss across the border. Antonio capped the man in a workman-like manner as he pulled into his driveway. He had to kill the woman who was with him, too, but he didn’t get more money. If he had been a Zeta, he would have commanded nine or ten times the fee. They were specially trained by U.S. Special Forces and Israelis. But he was working his way up the ladder of respectability.
The car slowed as it passed a state trooper. Beltran had to start lining up multiple jobs to make these trips cost-effective. After this job, he might stay and sightsee.
He’d never been to New York.
achel had two assignments: the first three chapters of Plato’s Republic and stripping for Dr. Sartorius.
On the train to Long Island, fear overwhelmed Rachel as she sensed the thing she was pursuing drawing closer. She was horrified at the thought that one of these perverts had been watching her house, obsessed with Olivia. He might have also observed Rachel. He would know her, but she wouldn’t know him.
Sonia flipped through the messages on her phone. She had about three dozen steady clients who were forever texting their love to her.
“Did you know that more people are killed annually by donkeys than in air crashes?” She pressed the advance button on the cell phone. “A pig’s orgasm lasts thirty minutes. Christ, can you imagine? This is how I got most of my education. I only made it to seventh grade.”
“Why’s that?”
“Where I come from, no one gets past eighth grade. I’m Amish.”
“Get outta town.”
“No, really.”
“With the buggies and baking? Where?”
“Intercourse, Pennsylvania. Go ahead. Laugh.”
“So what brought you here?”
“We were a big family. Fourteen of us living in one house. A big house with a barn. I had an uncle who would take me into a room every day and rape me.”
“Did you say anything to anyone?”
“You have to understand that things are very strict in an Old Order Amish household. You just don’t go accusing someone of rape and sodomy, especially if you’re nine years old. So this went on for four years until one day I told my mother. She told me to shush. Women don’t have a lot to say in that society. I finally got up enough nerve to tell my father, and he whipped me for lying.”
“Don’t they have elders or something?”
“When I was thirteen, I went to the bishop after a prayer meeting and told him. He told me to wait where I was and I saw him conference with the elders. Well, the conclusion of all this was that they told my father and he whipped me again. Pretty soon people were avoiding me and stopped talking to me. Even under my own roof. This was more fucked up than getting raped every day. And this uncle, Lemuel, wouldn’t even look at me at meals like he was building up for all the attention he was going to give me later. Then, no matter how hard I tried to stay in a room with people, he’d call me away for chores. This is in a place where if you wear your hat crooked, you get disciplined. If you use an electric saw instead of a hand saw, the course of your life can be changed. Once a boy was going to marry his girl and someone brought up the matter that he was seen using a neighbor’s electric saw, and the bishop wouldn’t let them marry.”
“So what did you do?”
“So I made up my mind that I wanted Lemuel dead. I prayed for this, but it wasn’t answered. Every Saturday morning a Mennonite friend would come over and cut wood for the family. He could use a chainsaw since he was Mennonite. But I knew that Uncle Lemuel secretly loved to operate that saw. The only time I saw him grin was when he made that sawdust fly. It was to the point where my uncle was doing all the work.
“In a grocery store, I had once heard a radio story that some tree-rights activists were driving spikes into redwoods to keep the loggers from cutting them down. What happens is that when the logs are processed and cut, the saw blade hits the steel spike and shatters. Sometimes it kills. I found some rusted ten-penny nails and banged them into four or five logs that were in the next day’s stack of firewood.
“Sure enough, when the chainsaw arrived the next day, Uncle Lemuel started cutting. I heard the scream because the saw stopped and I could see him running around the yard trying to hold the two halves of his face together. The Mennonite friend put him in his truck and drove him to a hospital where they managed to save his life. He was out a week later with a mark across his face that looked like something God had made. He couldn’t work for a long time and others had to do his planting. But even though he couldn’t plant corn, he had a hatred growing in him. They had taken the nails out of the fire wood and concluded that because they were rusted, they were probably there for a long time. But he knew it was me, and I knew that it was only a matter of time before he was going to do something to me. I wasn’t going to let him rape me with that face of his. The face I had given him. And he was getting better and better. I took fifty dollars out of the jar and went to the train station. The teller thought it was strange to see a fourteen-year-old Amish girl traveling alone, but he had no way of confirming my story. Amish people don’t have phones. I’ve been on the streets ever since.”
“And these clients don’t scare you? A lot of the men at the Palace scare me.”
“They don’t pretend to be something to me that they’re not. I can handle a transaction―I get that.”
“What about this doctor? He’s a pedophile too?” asked Rachel.
The other girl nodded. “Lost his wife three years ago. He did the daddy/daughter role playing with her all the time. Now he doesn’t have to role play.”
“You’ve slept with him?”
“I sleep with all my clients.”
“And―you don’t mind me asking…”
“Ask.”
“You play his daughter?”
“He loves it. I drive him crazy and that gets me off―the power I have over them.”
“Did you start out just dancing for them?”
“Everyone starts out like that. Then you give head. Then sex. It’s a natural progression.”
“So I guess I’m on my way.”
“No one forces you. You just wake up one morning and decide to go all the way. It’s a lot more money; why give it away to some jerk whose going to have a good time for a few months, then stop calling? You’ve got to look out for yourself.”
“You’re not scared going to the homes of these men? I am.”
“My clients are all pillars of society with a lot to lose if they got in trouble with the law. They’re businessmen and doctors, not killers.”
Dr. Willard Sartorius opened the back door and ushered them inside before any greetings were exchanged.
“There’s a bucket of wings on the table. Potato salad and corn. Help yourselves,” he said without asking Rachel’s name.
He was a large man, over six-foot-thr
ee with massive shoulders and legs and a Buddha’s belly. Rachel had always been intrigued by the dignity which the title medical doctor conferred. She saw this point played out in the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest when several escaped mental patients are, one by one, introduced as doctors. As the camera pans to each, their blank stares and disheveled hair exude learning. Here again, Rachel saw this phenomenon at work as the surgeon’s inelegant paunch and bald head evoked power, not plainness.
“Excuse me,” he said and exited the kitchen.
“This is some house, huh?” said Sonia. “It could be on MTV Cribs. It’s got fireplaces in the bedrooms and a game room downstairs.”
The doctor was elusive. When he wanted Sonia, he poked his head into the kitchen and said, “See you for a moment?” He knew beforehand that Sonia was bringing a friend, so there could be no surprises here. He seemed extremely self-conscious about what he was doing.
After dinner, the girls took showers. Rachel was instructed to use the guest bathroom in the basement. It was large and lined with white Italian marble, yet there wasn’t a bar of soap or bottle of shampoo in sight. Rachel closed the door, but it wouldn’t lock. She hung her knapsack on the door hook, then let the water run. As the mirror began to mist, she undressed.
Fortunately, she had brought her own soap. The hot water felt so good on her back as she massaged her feet and legs. After putting on a change of clothes, she went in search of a blow-dryer. She checked some linen closets and shelves. There was a constant droning sound that had been there all the while, and she finally located its source. It was the water pump of a huge aquarium. The two-hundred-fifty gallon tank was populated with exotic fish that Rachel had never seen, and she felt even farther from home as she shared these depths.
She opened the closets one by one. The musty smell of old possessions enveloped her. Here was a gift graveyard, a place where all the unwanted and unusable Christmas presents and birthday notions of the last twenty years had gathered. Everything here was new, but old. She inspected the cheap ashtrays and picture frames doled out at weddings that never saw their intended use.
She found old notebooks, meticulously arranged in boxes from Sartorius’s medical school days. Rachel went through them and came to know a twenty-four-year old med student better than she wanted to.
He had been a prolific margin writer. Alongside the lectures on anomalous pulmonary venous return and ischemic heart disease was exhaustive commentary on the breasts of female students and the examinations he would like to conduct on them.
As the semesters went by, the comments became more graphic, more self-revelatory. Sartorius related the autopsy of a young girl in what began as clinical observation. Suddenly he wrote of the girl’s beautiful white, untanned skin and firm breasts that he so loved. He wrote of his excitement even as her body was being cut open, of her undiminished attractiveness. The words now spilled beyond the narrow column alongside the page. It was as though the thin blue margin that had separated the sane from the psychotic had given way. Then, in the darkest sentences of all, he described how he had returned to the body later that evening and had done things to it.
achel wanted to vomit.
She wanted to run out of here, to rid herself of these men, to end the pursuit and get back to her life. As she darted to the top of the stairs, she ran into Sartorius.
“Find everything?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“What were you doing down there so long? The shower stopped thirty minutes ago.”
“I was looking for a blow dryer.”
“Are you all right?”
“Where’s Sonia?”
“Upstairs in the shower,” said the doctor, not yielding the way.
“I―I need a blow-dryer. Do you have one?”
“My ex-wife had one. Come with me.” He led her upstairs to his bedroom. Rachel could hear the shower going.
“Rachel is such a Biblical name,” he said in the bedroom. Already Rachel felt violated. Why had Sonia given him her real name? Rachel couldn’t think of anything to tie in with that, so she kept working on her hair with the towel.
He appeared to be looking for the dryer, but Rachel believed that there was nothing in this immense house that was beyond his cognizance.
“Here we are,” he said, pulling it out of its original box. Rather than hand it to Rachel, he plugged it in for her.
“Low heat or high?” he asked, blowing her hair for her.
“Low is fine. I can manage.” She took the blower from his hand and stroked it the length of her long hair while Sartorius sat not four feet away watching.
“Do you like it out here in the open country?” he asked.
“I’ve been out here before. Nice fish tank. Doesn’t look like there would be anyone here to take care of them.”
“Oh, I have cleaning people here regularly. They handle it. So tell me about yourself, Rachel.”
“There isn’t much to tell. I work with Sonia in the city.”
“The Pleasure Palace?”
“Uh huh. I just started this week.”
“And what were you doing before that?”
“I was staying at a shelter in the city. Transcendence House.”
“I see. So did you bring any fancy underwear for your show tonight?”
Not exactly an Albert Schweitzer segue, thought Rachel. “I have some stuff.” She was hiding her face behind her hair as she dried it, hoping he would get the message that she’d like to do this in private.
“You know, I’m sure I have some outfits I can give you. My wife bought a lot of things she never wore. I didn’t have the heart to throw them out. You must be a size two.”
“That’s right,” she said, creeped out at the thought of wearing a dead woman’s lingerie.
“I have a keen eye for these things. Relax, Rachel. You seem really nervous.”
“I am really nervous. I’m not used to working in other people’s homes. Just the booth.”
“Well, you have nothing to concern yourself with. Let me take your pulse.”
He reached over and put his fingers on her wrist while looking at his watch. She still held the brush.
“Your heart is racing. Calm down. You’re among friends.” He no longer measured her heart, just held her hand.
“You seem pretty young to be working at the Pleasure Palace.”
“I have ID.”
“And how old are you really?”
“Is that a problem?”
“Oh, it’s no problem whatsoever with me. I just need to know how old you are.”
“Fourteen.” Rachel pulled her hand away. “I better dry this hair or it’ll frizz up.”
He seemed pleased with the answer, but his brow furrowed at the rebuff. At that moment, Rachel realized the power of her sexuality. She had something indescribably desirable to this man, something alluring enough that it crushed this doctor’s power to heal, leaving intact only his cold, accurate talent to observe.
Sonia entered the bedroom wrapped in a towel.
“Just what I’m looking for. You done with that?” she said.
“In a bit.”
“Well, girls, let’s get on with the performance. I’d like you to come out one at a time. You first, Sonia,” instructed the doctor. “I’ll get some music going. Descend the stairs slowly, but make sure your hair is completely dry.”
Rachel looked at Sonia and her face said everything.
“It’s two-hundred bucks. Just remember that,” whispered Sonia once the doctor was gone.
“Why did you give him my real name?”
“Oh, shit. I slipped up. No big deal.”
“It is a big deal. That’s my name. I don’t want him to have it. That makes me feel like dirt, that he said my name.”
The girls prepared in silence.
Sonia looked in the mirror. “I’m worth a thousand. This outfit is hot.” She pulled down the dragon print tapestry bustier to reveal more breast. The matching red thong was tiny. Sh
e took a pair of spike heels out of her bag and put them on.
“See you,” said Sonia and left.
Rachel sat on the bed and listened to the performance downstairs as she tried to calm herself down.
A medley of seventies love songs played.
“Tell me what to do, Daddy. I don’t know what to do,” she heard Sonia say.
Sartorius gave her precise instructions. Which hand to use, which finger, how fast. Point your toes, sweetheart. Excellent. Good girl. Rachel felt sick. She sat there, hugging herself as she waited for her turn. Now Sartorius was asking Sonia about Rachel. She couldn’t hear what.
Footsteps echoed on the stairs. She dreaded this moment.
“You’re on, kid,” said Sonia. “You look hot in that.”
Rachel was trying to tuck her pubes behind the tiny thong. She gave the other girl a look of desperation.
“Hey, take it easy. It’s the same as the Palace, only nicer. Go on, he’s waiting.”
Rachel came down the spiral staircase, the kind she had seen in her dreams where she was dressed as a bride. Not this.
“Sonia’s a tough act to follow, but give it your best,” said the client.
Rachel pushed a smile to the surface. The saxophone demanded more than that. She started.
She decided to get it over with. She took off the bra and twirled it around a few times, then tossed it at Sartorius.
Now the doctor’s face lit up. “Good,” he said.
She slipped off the bottom and threw it on the couch.
“Could you lie down, please,” said the doctor. It sounded like he was about to take out a speculum. She complied.
“Do you know what floor work is, Rachel?” She nodded with her head against the carpet.
“I’m going to give you some instructions and I need you to follow them precisely. Your tip depends on it. Understood?”
“Okay.”
“Say ‘yes, sir.’”
“Yes, sir.”
The Schwarzschild Radius Page 11
