What I Did for Love

by Tessa Dane

  It had been a long time since I had used these disguises. Bredon had given up on them quickly, for his financial dealings made concealment unsuitable for a man who needed people’s trust. I could more easily escape notice, and had altered my appearance many times in the year after our parents’ deaths.

  We had taken other steps to avoid public notice. Bredon had used his governmental connections to get each of us a false federal identity card. We were John and Mary Cole, names so obvious as to be unnoticeable. Bredon did not want to risk getting us false passports, but the cards were acceptable substitutes when identification was required. And as John Cole he set up a post office box, and opened a bank account for each of us with a debit card and checking attached. Our bank statements would come to us separately at our post office box, and we each had a key to the box. I did not know how much this would help me in the future, but it was a fortunate decision.

  A message-only telephone line to which Bredon alone had access, was the contact he listed for the accounts. The social security numbers we used had belonged to our dead grandparents. As the “Coles”, each of us had savings, checking and a debit card. The signature cards and applications, obtained through Bredon’s own bank branch, were already signed. We had practiced old-fashioned cursive signatures, and made copies to remind ourselves of the way John and Mary Cole signed their names.

  Eventually the person at the bank who had opened the account would have forgotten about it. We counted on that, and by agreement, took turns using the checking accounts only once in a great while to cash a few hundred dollars, to avoid having the bank’s computers flag the accounts for inactivity. The slowly accumulating deposits made in cash were to provide for some possible future case when we needed to draw money quickly without also drawing attention to our real identities. We did all this to help us should an emergency occur, should we need money quickly to disappear from public view, to be left alone to lead our lives in privacy.

  For my meeting with Rand today, I would resume my post-bombing practice of disguising myself to avoid recognition and attention. With surveillance cameras everywhere, it was ever more difficult to hide from view. I would need time to make myself into a street kid of no distinction, and then get to Rand’s house using the subways. So I began early, first using a hand towel to remove the small dust that had accumulated in the closet. I just gave everything a quick swipe, including the vanity table, and began.

  I wound my long hair around my head, the wig cap snugly fitted over it, and then selected a wig that was a shag-pixie combination, a poorly-done haircut, in a washed-out blonde. A baseball cap and dark glasses would conceal my face, no makeup. I put little earrings on, tiny circles that could have been piercings. I snapped on the belt of an under-the-shirt pouch that would lie flat against my stomach, and hold my credit cards, I.D. and cash, and where I would also stow my apartment key. It had thin straps if I wanted to hang it around my neck, but for this disguise, I sat it low around my waist, its bottom half tucked into my panties. It was easily covered under a long-sleeved cotton shirt that fell straight to mid-hip. I pulled on department store jeans that were just a bit too large to show my figure and that were baggy at the knees. In the larger closet were molding strips, and a small hollow area behind one of them where I hid cash. I took several bills of various denominations to fold flat into my wallet, and more bills to put in one deep side pocket of my jeans. My tiny phone, with Rand’s number entered, went into the other pocket. My path downtown would be by subway, and I would buy a Metro Card using cash, to avoid any credit card record of my purchase. I pulled on white socks, and scuffed running shoes. The days were growing warmer though this year we had many unusually cool days and evenings, so I took a standard type of navy blue hoodie, zipped up but draped over my shoulders, its sleeves tied together over my chest. I had put on the plainest white cotton bra and panties. No perfume. I wondered, smiling grimly to myself, whether Rand would be repulsed my scruffy plainness.

  I decided to wear the dark glasses both outside and in the subways, making me even less wholesome a figure. I re-latched the closet and paced the apartment, getting myself used to the tightness of the wig cap, walking around to get used to wearing ill-fitting clothes. The trick, I had found, was to imagine another life, to create myself as a young person of no particular standing, a city child, with origins somewhere in the five boroughs, ordinary and unremarkable.

  When I slipped out the back doors of my apartment and building I already had a travel plan fixed in my mind. Taking the Number 1 train, I jumped off at 31st Street and went down the block to the St. Francis church, noted for its daily Breadline that fed so many. Downstairs in the church, at the Shrine of St. Anthony, I pushed a small offering into one of the alms boxes, and said another prayer to the Saint, that Bredon would find ethical investors and all the money he needed for his project. Back on the train, I went to 14th Street, big signs on the platform saying Union Square.

  Up on the streets again I walked to an F train, and down the steps to the train that said Coney Island, taking it to East Broadway. After that, I would walk as though aimlessly, in a circuitous route that wound toward Rand’s house. The sidewalks were more or less crowded, the ebb and flow of people thinning as I neared the luxury area of apartment buildings, an enclave of a neighborhood where almost no stores could be found, and the foot traffic considerably diminished as a result. This was unfortunate for my plans, so I looped around and came up the side street toward the gate. I clicked the speed number for Rand.

  “I’m a few yards away. Look for my baseball cap,” I said without a hello or any other words, and snapped the phone closed.

  I got to the gate, the street thankfully shaded by the buildings all around. Hearing the gate click, I slipped in very quickly. I moved rapidly out of sight of the street to the shielding trees and bushes and the flat stone path to Rand’s door, which clicked ajar at my approach.

  I knocked anyway, a few brief raps, and Rand pulled the door open, standing there squinting at me, caught between amusement and anger, his anger clearly winning. He stood back to let me enter, still no words between us. I felt the surge of attraction as I passed by him and went unasked to sit on the sofa where we had made love an age ago, a few days ago. The room was as beautiful as last time, fresh flowers, the air clean-smelling, everything clean and polished. Whoever tended this place was a treasure. I was trying to control my reaction to Rand, my desire mixed with my own anger, distracting myself by thinking about housekeeping, all to no avail.

  Rand sat on a chair in front of me, and I felt warm, my heart speeding up. I did not want to look directly at him.

  “Do take off those glasses, Dray,” he said in an acid tone.

  Oh, God, is anything ever easy?

  “And would you take off the wig?”

  I wanted to scream with my conflicted sadness and embarrassment. “It’s difficult to get it back on,” I answered, and sat without doing anything.

  Rand made a sound that was like a contemptuous snort, which felt like a blow. I felt close to tears, another surprise to me, I who had trained myself not to cry in front of anyone except Bredon, and only when we were sharing hours and memories. I sat there in too much misery to say anything.

  With a look of impatience, resettling himself into his chair, Rand said, “I am willing to bail your brother out.”

  “He doesn’t need ‘bailing out’,” I almost hissed. “From what I understand, he just needs you to keep your word in the capital agreement.”

  “In other words, keep my part of the bargain – even if it’s a bad bargain.”

  “I’m not crazy about the other partners either,” I said, “but once the project is launched, lots of others will be there to jump in and buy up your shares, and Bredon’s, and you’ll both be out. Even if you don’t make a profit – though I’m sure you will – you’ll break even.”

  He was taken aback. I don’t think he realized that I knew anything about that rather vicious financial world in which they
operated, and his eyes showed their grudging respect for what I had said.

  “It’s still a major risk,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you willing to make a bargain with me to go ahead with investing in this deal?”

  “In other words, a bargain so that you keep your bargain,” I retorted.

  “Bredon knew that I hadn’t made a final commitment. We agreed that I could opt out if I didn’t want to continue. He just assumed that I would go ahead, that his golden touch would work this time too. But this one is very tricky, Dray. It’s a major risk for me too.”

  His family was so rich, I doubted that he was telling the truth. But then I thought of the emergency that had torn us apart that first night. “Did you manage to pull that last set of irons out of the fire?” I asked.

  Again, his surprise that I knew what had summoned him on Monday night.

  “Yes. Everything is okay now.” He got up and went over to the fireplace, looking at the pieces on the mantle. “So that leaves our bargain, the one I’ll make with you, and that will give Bredon all the money he needs.”

  “And that is?”

  “You. Are you willing to sell yourself to me to save your brother?”

  “Sell myself!”

  “In a sense. I want five nights with you, five Friday nights into Saturday morning. My terms are simple: sex and other things, any way I want. And from you, total compliance, and total silence. From sundown to right before sunup each time.”

  “So, a whore. Bought with money that will close the deal with Bredon.”

  “Yes, a whore.” He looked at me so coldly I felt my stomach knot.

  “No.”

  “Then he’s done. His whole financial empire collapses.”

  I had other thoughts in my mind, but I did not correct him. I just looked at him. And I saw that he still wanted me, that the lovemaking we had done still had power over both of us. I thought, well, I want him anyway. I can take a man’s point of view: sex just for sex, sex that doesn’t mean anything. So I said, “I will bargain with you, but not on those terms.”

  “The bargain is your body for money.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you would do this for him,” Rand said, almost contemptuously. “You really love the guy. It sounds a bit unnatural.” He said it with the hardest, coldest tone of voice, making me more furious. How dare he, this arrogant bastard, and how could I have had such tenderness for him? My eyes must have been on fire, but I looked down, hiding my anger, deciding to match the cold and cutting knife his question was. He did not know this part of me. I could be as stony and unforgiving as he. I felt like Antigone who screamed at the man she loved, that her parents were dead, and could not give her another brother. But rather than answering him angrily, I looked at him with a bored expression.

  “You have older sisters, Rand. Did they use you as a sex toy? Is that why you are thinking such disgusting things about me and Bredon?” My comment startled and infuriated him, his color rising as he began to lift himself from his chair. I think he wanted to slap me.

  Then he stopped, shocked into stillness, realizing the affront he had thrown at me, and that this was the road to hatred. Something in him must have warned him off, although he was furious over my remark.

  “I shouldn’t have said that, Dray, I’m sorry.” His voice was shaky with a mixture of coldness and true apology. I just nodded and turned my head away from him, willing my own pounding anger to subside, and my heart to calm. Between desire and fury, I felt hot, I wanted to lash out, to scream, but I clamped my emotions down, and waited.

  I thought he would walk away, thinking, “Oh, well, I thought I’d give it a try.” Instead he said, “What would your terms be? Mind you, they would have to include the sexual part.” He shifted in his chair and gave me a cool stare. “Except for one thing. For some reason, unlike most men, I find the thought of a man’s penis in a woman’s mouth too disgusting for words. However, nothing else is off the table.”

  I was relieved more than I could believe. Stories of oral sex were like stories of last night’s television dramas among many of my college classmates, their boyfriends demanding and pleading for fellatio, and when positions were literally reversed, how inadequate the men often were in using their tongues to pleasure the women.

  “It doesn’t mean that I don’t get to taste you,” he said slyly, cynically.

  That didn’t bother me. Go for it, I thought. At least I would be spared some of the more nauseating accounts of boyfriends who insisted on trying, at least, to come in their girlfriends’ mouths.

  “Okay, I’ll make a bargain with you,” I said, coolly, as though I were not feeling dirtied, yet fascinated with the thought of having him, of sex with him, because being this close to him caused a heat in me that was like the ultimate sexual itch. My desire for him still had me stunned with its power. Fleetingly I wondered again at the strange suddenness of Monday’s ardor. Outwardly, I looked indifferent.

  “You want no talking. I’ll agree to that,” I told him calmly. Play-acting.

  “No sound,” he corrected. “No moan or groan or anything. Silence.” His eyes were cold, but amused. I wanted to smack him. I wanted to resume our interrupted night.

  “No sound.” I nodded, my expression conveying that I found the condition tedious. “Agreed. But one night, not five.” He shook his head no, vigorously, no, no, no.

  “Two nights, then,” I countered. “But that’s it.” And that really was my limit. I suspected he had many kinds of sex games in mind, and was not so stupid as to think it was going to be a time of valentine sweetness.

  “Two nights.” He nodded. “Agreed.”

  Ah, I thought, that’s what he intended anyway.

  “And you have to wear, and do, what I say, or what I tell you I want for each night,” he repeated in a cautioning tone.

  “Such as?”

  “No bra, no panties, no stockings. I’ll let you know what else. The second time too, you wear what I tell you to wear. And in between, some other things I may tell you to do before we meet for the second time.” He recited this in a hard voice. He had thought about it, I could hear. No hesitation, just condition after condition. I wondered what experiences he had had with other women, how “creative” his sexual encounters had been.

  Whatever, I thought.

  Now it was my turn.

  “I’m making one unbreakable condition,” I said. “Bredon must never know. Not ever. I swear, I will find a way to kill you if he ever finds out.”

  I said it very quietly and calmly, but although his eyes grew wide with shock and amusement, he simply said, “I believe you. I agree.”

  “Your word?”

  “My word.” He looked at me. “You put such store by that, by your word, and by mine?”

  “Yes. It’s absolute. My word is my word. I assume the same about you.”

  “Agreed,” he nodded, very serious now. Then he added, “And in case you don’t know what this bargain entails, some of it may be painful.”

  “I had assumed that,” I lied, praying that whatever he had in mind, he would not be carried away with making me suffer. I was also wondering whether he had been careful, having read so much about herpes and AIDS and STDs. Was I letting myself in for a lifetime of payback with controllable, but incurable diseases?

  “I assume this will be safe sex,” I said, again pretending indifference. I had finished my period right before we had made love on Monday. I did not want to become pregnant, but there was not time to get fitted for a diaphragm or get an IUD, and it took time for birth control patches or pills to work. Maybe the end of my period was tied to my lust. Nature is no fool, and desire rises when all is most ripe for pregnancy.

  He was watching me. He knew he had me on this one. “Oh, no,” he said, “not if you mean using condoms. No, this sex will be raw.” His tone was both cruel and lustful.

  Oh, God, I thought, steeling myself, continuing to pretend indifference as I nodded, as th
ough to say, “of course, that’s to be expected.” In my heart I did not believe he was fooled, but I did not care. My first concern was Bredon. I would take my chances, and deal with whatever the outcomes later.

  Now I had to make sure about the foundation of this whole preposterous agreement. “I have one last condition,” I said, “and that’s the condition for everything else.” I finally looked up at him, a serious, disinterested look. “Before the banks close on Friday, at least half of the money has to be wired into Bredon’s account. Once I see the confirmation, I’ll come here.”

  “How will you see the confirmation…?” he started to ask, but then realized that my brother must have given me every necessary code to access his accounts. “You’re very young to know so much about the financial world,” he said, maybe disappointed that I was not living in some stupid haze of ignorance about money. “You are eighteen, yes?” he added, half seriously, half rhetorically. But I took his question for what it really asked.

  “Yes.” I smiled my own cool smile. “Eighteen. Legal.”

  “I want to see you tomorrow night, our first night,” he said.

  “Yes, okay.” I nodded, cool, as though growing impatient. Time was growing short for Bredon. I would have said yes to this very night if that had been necessary. As it was, though, this brief delay gave me time. I had my own urgent preparations to make before tomorrow night.

  Slipping quickly out of Rand’s, I got back to a subway station and ran down the stairs onto the first train to Times Square. A fast ride and I was there, up the steps to the street, going into a large drug store, a chain with stores all over Manhattan. Making my way through the aisles to the pharmacy at the back, I pretended to be studying something next to the counter that held an extensive condom display. Hoping I would be able to use them despite Rand’s refusal, I pulled a box of three condoms from the peg. There were bigger boxes, holding more than twenty, there were colors and ridges and one had feathers on the bottom, clearly shown on the front of the box. A French tickler, I thought. Randy literature had its uses. I purchased the ribbed latex ones, thinking he would at least be intrigued and try, and besides, these were the only ones in the small three-piece box. They didn’t cost much more than a dollar each, though the last thing I wanted to do at that moment was comparison shop.