Chapter Three
Isis’s front porch is as rundown as ever.
The wind chime clinks pathetically in the night air. The lights are on, warm squares of golden light fighting off the darkness. I pull my keys from the ignition and grab the still-warm lasagna from the backseat. Mrs. Blake’s decorated the front door with a Christmas wreath and a string of white lights. I smooth my hair and knock twice. The mottled glass on either side of the door has been repaired since that bastard broke it, but seeing it still makes my throat twist.
Mrs. Blake answers in a sweater and yoga pants. She looks happier and more clear-eyed than my previous visits.
“Jack!” She opens the door. “Come in, quick! You must be freezing.”
I step into the warmth of the hall, and she takes my coat and fusses over the lasagna.
“Did you make this yourself? It smells lovely. It must’ve been time-consuming!”
“Not extremely difficult. Just some meat and sauce.”
“Nonsense. I can’t make a good lasagna to save my life. Thank you so much.”
“Eat it while it’s still warm.”
She laughs. “I will. Let’s sit in the kitchen. Do you want a piece?”
I ignore the gnawing in my stomach. “I already ate.”
“Well, have some juice at least. Or do you want soda? I could make you some hot eggnog!”
“Water would be fine.”
She makes a tsk noise that sounds so familiar. Isis does the same thing, in the same tone, when she’s disappointed in something. Mrs. Blake fills a glass, slides it to me, and dishes herself a portion of the lasagna. We sit at the table and I watch her eat. Her wrists are thinner than I remember last time.
“Have you been eating?” I ask softly. Mrs. Blake shrugs.
“Oh, you know. Things at the museum are so hectic lately. I don’t cook as much as I should.”
“You forget.”
She smiles sheepishly. “Yes. Isis is so good about that—she always packs me lunches and puts them in the car so I won’t forget them in the morning.”
Her eyes light up as she takes another bite.
“You really are a wonderful cook, Jack. This is amazing. Thank you.”
“It’s the least I could do.”
“No, no. You didn’t have to do this at all. The visits, the food, all of it. I’m…I’m very grateful. You’ve helped us so much.”
I clench my fist under the table. “I haven’t helped at all.”
“Without you—” Mrs. Blake inhales, like what she’s about to say requires more air, more life force. “Without you, Leo would have—”
“I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t save Isis in time,” I snap. “She got hurt because I wasn’t fast enough. I failed.”
The last two words ring in the near-empty, dim kitchen.
“I failed,” I say, stronger this time. “And she forgot me because of my failure.”
“She didn’t— Jack, no. That’s not it at all.”
Yes. It is. It’s my punishment. And I’ll take it. It has been a long time coming, after all.
I stand and go into the hall, pulling on my coat. Mrs. Blake nervously follows.
“I didn’t mean— I’m sorry. You don’t have to leave,” she says.
“I have work.”
She doesn’t know what work. She just knows I have to leave. And she knows it’s an excuse as much as I do.
“All right then. Drive safely.”
Before I get a foot out the door, Mrs. Blake grabs my coat sleeve. I turn my head over my shoulder, and she murmurs softly, sympathy glowing from her eyes with near-uncomfortable warmth.
“You’re always welcome in this house, Jack.”
I’m quiet. Mrs. Blake reaches up and hugs me. I quell the urge to push her away. Her arms are gentle. For a moment, she feels like my own mother. I’m the first to step away. I always am.
“I should go,” I say. She nods.
“Will you be there? At the trial?”
“I’ll try. I don’t know if they’ll let me in the courthouse. I’ll ask my mother’s lawyer.”
Mrs. Blake watches me go from her doorway. There’s no fear in her eyes—not anymore. Not like the fear I saw that day. She didn’t try to stop me or the bat. She let it happen. Maybe she feels guilty she let me beat Leo nearly to death. It’s useless to tell her she couldn’t have stopped me anyway. The thing in me—the thing that’s lusted for blood and anguish and justice since that night in middle school—could not have been stopped. It had been starved for too long, and the bars of its ice cage melted too thin by an idiotic, annoying girl.
It will not happen again.
I get in the car, start it, and pull away from the curb.
The beast will not come out again. I will restrain it next time. That’s what I’ve told myself since that night in middle school. I promised it would never happen. But it did. And I couldn’t control it. I’d nearly beaten a man to death because of it.
He deserved it.
I was as terrified as he was.
I shake my head and merge onto the highway. The beast will have to wait. The fear will have to wait.
Blanche Morailles, on the other hand, cannot be kept waiting.
Few women on this earth are as intimidating as Blanche Morailles. She’s a frightening combination of chilly poise, svelte cheekbones, and a wickedly sharp smile. It gives her a disarming presence, always cloaked in dramatic, floor-sweeping velvet coats. No one knows her real age—countless beauticians she no doubt pays by the bucket keep her looking younger than she really is. Blanche is the daughter of a French ambassador. She isn’t cheap enough to resort to Botox, so the fine lines around her eyes tell the story of a woman in her late forties. Perhaps fifty-two. But that’s pushing it.
I spot her perfect dark-haired coif over a dozen typical heads of Ohio dishwater blond, and weave around the tables. De l’Ange is a prestigious restaurant, and the one I used to work in before it was bought out and taken over by a new staff and crew.
I slide into the seat opposite Blanche. She sips ice water and twists her amethyst ring around her finger, raising one eyebrow to indicate she acknowledges my presence.
“Feels familiar, doesn’t it?” she asks, her voice rich and strong, with the barest French accent.
“The opposite,” I correct. “I’m an alien in this place now.”
“You’ve only been away a year. Less than that.”
“A year and one month.”
She sips her water again, pauses as if thinking, calculating, and then she nods. “So it has. I should’ve known better than to test your memory.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Blanche smiles. For all her upkeep on her face, she’s rarely touched her teeth—they remain slightly crooked.
“It means I know you’re far smarter than the average man, Jack. And the above-average man. In fact, you are smarter than most men. This is a compliment, I assure you. Almost every man I’ve met is an idiot in some way. But not you.”
“Does my intelligence concern you?” I ask. The waiter offers me bread, but I refuse it.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” Blanche tries to change the subject.
“No. Does my intelligence concern you?”
She sighs. “Yes. It concerns me. Every personality of a working member of the Rose Club concerns me. I have not gotten this far—I have not become the best simply by ignoring the strengths and weaknesses of those I hire. I use them appropriately.”
There’s a long pause. The waiters bustle about and bring Blanche a lobster pasta. She thanks them in French and begins picking at it delicately.
“I’m sure you already know what I’m going to say, Jack. In fact, we both know what I’m about to say. And you also know I’m going to say this thing only because I know what you’re going to ask. That’s why you set up a meeting with me, is it not? To ask me something.”
I nod. She smiles and folds her hands.
“Then ask.”
“But I already know the answer.”
“Ask anyway.”
It’s a command, not a request. My eyes dart around the room. Blanche doesn’t have bodyguards, but her manservant Frasier is constantly at her side, and in his own quiet way he is every bit as protective as a bodyguard. I spot him eating at a table to our left by himself. His dark tailored suit hides his slight yet powerful frame. I’ve seen Frasier deal with the more unsavory clients of the Rose Club when Blanche feels the need to send a message to the escort community at large. It isn’t pretty. I don’t know Blanche and Frasier’s story. No one does. All we know is Frasier handles the business Blanche is too ladylike to touch.
I turn back to Blanche. I’m not afraid of Frasier, but now that I know his eyes are on me, I feel less brave.
“I only need two more weeks of payment. Then I want out.”
Blanche looks down into her dish and smiles. “This is what I was afraid of. The smart ones always know when to leave. Usually they are not as handsome as you, my dear, and thus earn less. So I feel more inclined to let them go.”
“You aren’t ‘letting’ me go. I am leaving of my own volition in two weeks.”
Blanche’s expression turns steely, a frown carving her face. I see Frasier straighten in his seat out of the corner of my eye.
“You seem to have forgotten our agreement, Jack,” she says.
“Our agreement was you get me the clients to earn myself sixty thousand dollars. And I did. I earned more than double that, considering you take sixty percent.”
“And you’d earn a lot more, if you stayed. You turned eighteen recently, right? You could start making enough for yourself. Real money.”
“I don’t need the money.” I can barely contain my sneer.
“Oh, I know. Full scholarship to Harvard. Read all about it in the local newspaper. You certainly are going places. With or without me.”
I’m quiet. Blanche flicks some hair away from her face, expectant.
“Thank you,” I say finally. “For working with me. I learned a lot.”
“I’m sure you did.”
“On the fourteenth, our agreement is over. I’m hoping you’ll be amicable about this.”
“Of course I will, Jack. I’m a businesswoman. I’m simply lamenting the fact that you and I won’t be able to build more together.”
She looks down at her phone as it buzzes. A shadow crosses her face for a moment, but a faint smile replaces it as she looks back up at me.
“You know, you’re right. It is time you left. You’re much too good to be stuck in little old Ohio forever. You’ll do well at Harvard, I’m sure.”
She extends a hand to me. Everything in me screams not to trust it. It’s too sudden. The shift in her mood was instantaneous—that text message must have said something about me. Or maybe I’m paranoid. Maybe it wasn’t about me at all. Maybe it was another Rose Club business deal going smoothly and netting her a lot of money. That’s much more likely.
“Why the sudden pleasantries?” I ask.
Blanche laughs. “Oh, Jack. Always so suspicious. Don’t worry. Honestly, don’t. I knew you wouldn’t be an escort for much longer with me. That’s bittersweet, assuredly. But I did mention, didn’t I? When we first met? What did I say again? You have that stellar memory, surely you can tell me my exact words.”
The moment comes flooding back. I’d just turned seventeen. We were sitting in Blanche’s car, a silver Rolls-Royce or something else stupidly showy. I’d just gotten off shift at De l’Ange when Blanche stopped me in the alley as I was throwing away the day’s trash and asked to give me a ride home. I don’t know why I went with her, but she reeked of money, and money was all that was on my mind since I’d found out just a few days before how much Sophia’s surgery would cost. I went hoping some of her wealth would rub off on me, maybe. I was desperate. And she could smell that like a fox downwind of a rabbit’s den.
We talked. She proposed I join her Rose Club. She told me what it meant and what I’d have to do. There was no trickery or secrets. She was very honest and up-front, and I was prepared to do whatever it took to get the money for Sophia. And when we were done, when I’d agreed to it and signed the contract, she’d snapped her Louis Vuitton handbag closed and smiled at me.
“This club isn’t just a way to provide people with luxury experiences, Jack. You benefit from it with more than just money. You meet politicians. Their daughters. Their wives. You meet stockbrokers and dot-com billionaires who have daughters. You meet the movers and the shakers of the world. You become connected. It’s a web that spreads far and wide, and you’ve just become a single string of it.”
Coming back to the present, I recite the words to Blanche. She claps her hands softly.
“Very good. A single string. That’s what you are. Even if you leave the web, the web will never truly leave you.”
I narrow my eyes. “What does that mean?”
“You’re smart enough to know what it means.”
She makes a motion for Frasier, and he gets up and pulls out her chair. She stands, and he smoothly puts her coat over her shoulders. Blanche pulls her gloves on one finger at a time.
“In two weeks, our contract is over,” she says. “The payments will proceed as usual until that time.”
“I suppose this is good-bye, then?” I ask. Blanche flashes one last smile at me.
“No, Jack. I’m certain you and I will meet again.”
I watch her go. My phone buzzing tears my attention away from her figure. It’s a call from a blocked number. I answer.
“Jack? It’s Naomi—”
She doesn’t have to say anything more.
“I’ll be there in ten,” I say and then hang up.