Читать книгу Full Service Blonde - Megan Edwards - Страница 11

Chapter 3

When word got out later that day that I was planning to head into the desert with Victoria McKimber, everyone immediately began treating me like a third-grade Girl Scout. It was bad enough that David started spouting safety rules, but at least he had some experience as a journalist. It was Daniel’s response that really irked me. Daniel, a botanist studying how the distribution of mistletoe supports the theory of continental drift, knew nothing about journalism, and he had never set foot in Nevada. But that didn’t stop him from feeling perfectly entitled to micromanage me by e-mail:

Copper, it can’t be a good idea to go places with someone like her, and especially not to some weird cult site out in the desert. You worry me, babe. Please don’t go.

Sierra wasn’t nearly that polite at dinner.

“You’re insane,” she said. “Michael, talk some sense into her.”

“Sierra’s right,” he said. “This isn’t Disneyland, baby sister, and Ms. McKimber isn’t a storybook character.”

Damn, he annoys me when he puts on his big brother act. He’s only twelve years older than I am, but he’s worse than my dad. It doesn’t help that he’s also an Episcopal priest. He still had his clergyman clothes on.

“I often work with streetwalkers every day at St. Andrew’s,” he went on. “If you want to know what their lives are like, just spend some time with me there. You’re more than welcome.”

“Victoria’s not a streetwalker,” I said. “She’s an activist. She wants to improve the status of sex workers.”

It didn’t help. Sierra was still upset, and Michael kept right on expressing concern in a patronizing sort of way. Not that it mattered. I was going to the New Moon Ceremony at the Sekhmet Temple the next night, and to hell with all of them.

:: :: ::

Tuesday, December 13

Michael tried to talk me out of going to the temple again before I left for work.

“Sierra’s genuinely worried,” he said, “and so am I. You’re not in New Canaan anymore, Copper.”

“I’m not twelve, either.”

When I got to The Light, it was obvious David had been talking. Everyone in the place seemed to know my plans for the evening. It made things especially tough when I tried to eat in the lunchroom at noon.

“You don’t need pointers from an over-the-hill pro, sweetie,” Ed Bramlett said. “You should be giving her lessons. And I can’t believe you’re going out to howl at the moon with a bunch of ball-busting dykes.”

How did he keep getting away with that vulgar sexist crap? At least Norton Katz was there. He’s a dapper older guy who writes a column about celebrity sightings, and he’s amassed a large and loyal following of spies who keep him informed by phone or e-mail whenever a newsworthy person appears in a public place. If Jennifer Lopez leaves a lousy tip in this town, Norton knows within fifteen minutes.

“I met Victoria McKimber once,” Norton said. “She was representing American Beauty at a fundraiser for Door of Hope at Caesars Palace. That lady really knows how to work a room. I wasn’t there three minutes before she was chatting me up. And it got her what she wanted, too. That was the first time she made my column.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Oh, I’d have to check. Off the top of my head, I’d say two years, maybe three. I hadn’t given her a thought until I caught The Morning Show on Monday. Recognized her the minute I saw her, even with all the extra hair and—”

“Nutcracker tits,” Ed said, and that’s when I left.

At least being back in my cube gave me a good chance to do some research. A few clicks and I learned that the Sekhmet Temple of Goddess Spirituality was built by a woman who wanted to get pregnant. On a trip to Egypt, she promised the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet that she’d build her a temple in exchange for a little fertility magic. Sekhmet obliged within a month, granting the first of three daughters, but it wasn’t until decades later that the woman kept her end of the bargain. She eventually organized a female work crew and built a stucco-covered straw-bale sanctuary on a patch of desert not far from the Nevada Test Site.

Why anyone would ask Sekhmet for help having babies, I can’t figure out. The stories about her make her sound more like a monster than a baby-loving fertility goddess. When Ra, her Sun God father, sent her to punish human evil-doers, Sekhmet used her supernatural strength to rip the humans to shreds. The massacre was so huge and bloody that it shocked even Ra, who wasn’t exactly nonviolent himself. A quick thinker, he filled a vat the size of Lake Nasser with beer and dyed it red to look like blood. Sekhmet drank so much she passed out, and the destruction of mankind was averted. I don’t know much about Egyptian religion, but this does not strike me as appropriate behavior for a goddess of sweet motherhood.

As I walked out to the Max that evening, I suddenly remembered that “new moon” would more appropriately be called “no moon.” It was going to be as dark as deep space as soon as I left the neon radiance of Las Vegas, and not much warmer. I was glad I had grabbed my ski jacket on my way out the door.

It had come as a big surprise to me that winter is actually cold in southern Nevada. When I arrived last May, I laughed at all the chimneys, figuring they’d been built for looks by homesick New Englanders. Now that I’ve nearly broken my neck a couple of times slipping on patches of ice created by errant sprinklers, I know better. And even though the portable electric heater in my apartment is powerful enough to keep me from freezing, I’m grateful that Sierra and Michael don’t mind sharing their fireplace once in a while.

I slid behind the steering wheel, snapped on my seat belt, and fought off a sudden attack of nerves. Why had Victoria invited me? What happens at a ceremony honoring a deity of mass destruction—in the dark? I checked my cell phone. It was fully charged. My gas tank was full, and as I turned the key in the ignition, I made up my mind to take David’s advice. I’d be doing the driving out to Indian Springs.

I arrived at the Silverado with a minute or two to spare and waited at a table in the coffee shop. When the waitress showed up, I ordered coffee. As I sat there, I almost hoped Victoria would stand me up. I was still a little uneasy about driving into the darkness with her.

Whenever I have doubts about whether I should do something a little adventurous, I think about my Aunt Melanie. Back in the middle sixties, when she nineteen or twenty, she spent a heavily chaperoned summer in England with a group from her college.

The day before she flew home from London was a Sunday. Auntie Melanie wanted to visit St. Paul’s one last time. Another girl said she’d go with her, and the chaperones decided to let them. At the last minute, the other girl decided not to go.

“But it was my last chance,” Auntie Melanie said. “I was already dressed in my hat and gloves.”

So, breaking all the rules, she hailed a cab and went on her own. After the service, she stepped out in front of the cathedral. As she stood there hoping a taxi would appear, a young man approached her.

“He was in his twenties, and he was wearing a dark blue three-piece suit,” she said. “He bowed slightly and asked me if he could be of service. Well, my first reaction was to step away. This was exactly the reason we had chaperones—to keep us safe from men with bad intentions.” She would always chuckle at this point.

“But he kept talking politely while I kept looking around for a cab. He realized I was an American after I spoke a few words. ‘A flower of the colonies,’ he called me, and we both laughed. We chatted some more. I was about to ask directions to the Underground when he said, ‘I know this is terribly forward of me, but would you do me the honor of accompanying me to a garden party this afternoon?’”

Auntie Melanie thought for a moment. The young man seemed decent, and his manners were perfect. She had a hundred dollars in travelers’ cheques in her handbag and two ten-pound notes tucked into her bra. When I was a kid, I never let her leave out that part of the story.

“I had money in case I needed to get a ride back to London,” she would tell me, “but I still should have said no.”

“Then why did you go?” I would always ask. I could answer the question myself, but I loved hearing her say the words.

“I seized the opportunity!” When I was little, she would grab me and hold me tight. “It was too precious to let it get away!”

And oh, was it ever. Christopher Drummond drove Auntie Melanie to a palatial manor in Windsor in his shiny green Jaguar E-Type.

“With the top down,” Auntie Melanie said. “It was a beautiful day, and he loaned me his college scarf.”

All this would have made my aunt’s story more than enough to enchant me, but there was more. At the party, Christopher Drummond introduced my aunt to Princess Margaret!

“Oh, she was beautiful!” my aunt would say. “And she was wearing the most glamorous pink straw hat. I was so glad I was dressed for church, and that I had learned how to curtsey.”

And then she would show me how to curtsey, “because you just never know when you might need to.”

While curtseying was not a skill I’d be likely to need at the New Moon Ceremony, I reminded myself about the other lesson from my aunt’s story. Spending a few hours with a prostitute at a cult site in the desert was an opportunity I might never have again.

Just then I saw her, over near the roulette table. She was dressed all in black spandex except for a wide silver belt cinched tight around her waist. Two women were talking to her, and a guy in a cowboy hat. Oh, my God. She was signing autographs.

“Copper!” Victoria said as soon as she saw me. “I’m so glad you could make it!” She sat down, reached across the table, and patted my hand.

“Would you like some coffee?” I asked, “Or do we need to get going?”

“I’m fine,” she said, “but finish yours. We’ve got plenty of time.”

I took a sip and watched her as she pulled a little mirror out of her huge shoulder bag and checked her makeup.

“The Sekhmet Temple’s my church,” she said, putting the mirror away and zipping her bag up. “I don’t get out there very often, but it’s always there for me. Supportive, nonjudgmental. I grew up Catholic, but …” she paused and smiled. “Let’s just say I’m even less salvageable than Mary Magdalene.”

“Thank you for inviting me,” I said. “I’m still pretty new in town, and—”

“It’s totally my pleasure, Copper,” Victoria said. “I was hoping we could talk some more. I wanted to … ” She hesitated as I took my last swallow of coffee. “Maybe we should get going. We can talk while we drive.”

“Oh—” I paused. “I’d like to drive, if you don’t mind. I’ve got my laptop in my car, and‍—‍”

Much to my relief, Victoria agreed immediately.

“But there’s some stuff in my car I need to take along,” she said. So after I’d paid for my coffee, we took a detour by her blue Taurus. She pulled a cardboard box full of files from its trunk, and we loaded it into the Max. Following her directions, I headed north on Interstate 15 and then out into the desert on Highway 95. On the way, Victoria did most of the talking, filling me in on more of her views about women, sex workers, prostitution laws, and the “misogynistic double standards pervading our entire socio-political landscape.”

She really talked like that. It was weird to hear that kind of dialogue coming from a platinum-blonde prostitute who sold lipsticks, and I was surprised to find I agreed with her more than I disagreed. I’ve never understood why people keep trying to make laws about what consenting adults do in private, and it seems to me that governments would be better off regulating and taxing prostitution than wasting money trying to stamp it out. Victoria still struck me as an exhibitionistic media hound, but I found myself admiring her courage. She was standing up to the bigwigs at American Beauty and to their high-powered lawyers, and she was standing on principle. The owner of the Beavertail wanted her to shut up, too.

“I knew I was setting myself up for a public lynching when I went to Albuquerque for the regional pageant,” Victoria said. “But I also figured it was my big chance to really—finally—make a difference. You shouldn’t have to keep it a secret if you’re a sex worker. You should be able to tell people and feel proud that you’re in a profession that helps people. It’s kind of like teaching, or nursing.” I could see her looking at me in my peripheral vision, seeing what I thought of this argument and calculating what she would say next.

“And even if you do nothing more than provide pleasure and entertainment,” she went on, “what’s so bad about that? Isn’t that what actors do, and singers? How come only prostitutes get treated like lepers?”

I said nothing, but my mind was whirling. I didn’t know whether I agreed with Victoria’s reasoning, but I didn’t want to argue with her. I just wanted her to keep talking.

“Sometimes I think it’s hopeless,” Victoria said, “and these days I worry a lot about my husband and my son. Richard—that’s my husband—he totally has my back, but he’s a private kind of guy, and now he avoids going outside the house or answering the phone. And we’re both worried about our son—”

Victoria paused. We both sat silent for a few seconds. I could tell Victoria was struggling with what to say next.

“Copper, I’ve got to finish what I started. Otherwise—well, what did I do any of this for? Meeting you was a sign. You showed up unexpectedly, like a spirit guide or—” She stopped herself. “I’m sorry. That’s just what the Crone Witch would say.”

The Crone Witch? Who—or what—was that? Where was this conversation going? Maybe my family and coworkers were right. I had no business heading out into the desert with—

“What I mean is, you came on your own time yesterday,” Victoria said. “You must really be interested in the issues.”

“I am,” I said slowly, buying myself time while I considered what to say next. “But I don’t know if—”

“Is David your boyfriend?”

“What? No!”

“Well, he likes you. That’s pretty obvious.”

I could feel a blush creeping up my cheeks, and I hoped it didn’t show in the dark.

“He’s just a colleague,” I said. “We went to the same college.”

“I wish you were writing the story,” Victoria said.

“David’s an excellent writer. He’ll do a good job.”

“He’s a guy. Even my husband doesn’t always understand.”

God, how could her husband ever understand? I wondered. I just couldn’t get my head around the idea of multiple sex partners. I’ve never bought into the “save yourself for marriage” credo, but I’ve always been a serial monogamist. So, pretty much, have my friends. It’s always been kind of an unwritten rule that you don’t warm the sheets with a new flame until you’ve shown the old one the door. It’s a mix of morality, self-image, and fear of disease, I think. It’s bad karma to cheat, unpleasant to be labeled a slut, and getting herpes is an obvious downer. But here was Victoria, a married mother, sharing her assets with all comers. Her marriage seemed to be intact, and she didn’t seem the least bit worried about being damned to hell or any other dire moral consequence. I was dying to know more about what went on inside her head, but I didn’t feel comfortable enough to ask, at least not yet.

“Everybody always says men can separate sex from love with no trouble,” Victoria said, “but that’s not what they do at all. They just divide women into two categories. The ones they can take home to Mama, and the ones they can’t.”

And which are you? I wondered. Does your husband’s mama know what you do?

“Do you believe in love?” I asked.

Victoria was silent a moment before she answered.

“No. I don’t believe in love.”

Well, that explains how you do your job, I thought.

“Do you believe in toothaches?” she asked.

“What?” I glanced at her. “I don’t think pain is something you believe in. It just happens.”

“That’s how I feel about love. It isn’t a matter of belief. It shows up and—eats you alive.”

We were both silent a moment.

“Everything I do, I do for love,” Victoria said. “I do it for my husband and my kid, but the world thinks I do it for money.” She laughed. “Actually, they’re right. I ‘do it’ for money.”

“It’s a business,” I said, trying to keep her talking without injecting my own views into the conversation.

“Yes. It’s a business. And I care about my clients the same way a lawyer or a doctor cares. I don’t take them home with me, but I care.”

“Who are they?” I asked.

“Your dad, your uncle, your brother.”

My brother. I sincerely doubted it. My dad? Never!

“So—ordinary guys.”

“And some not so ordinary. I just spent a few weeks teaching a half-paralyzed bull rider how to have sex again. His fiancée sent me flowers.”

She shrugged.

“And some are disgusting, frankly. Smelly, perverted, violent—you name it. But talk to a public defender sometime. They get bad guys for clients, too. It doesn’t make their work less valuable.”

“What about romance?” I said. “Do you believe in that?”

“Of course. What would life be without wine and roses?”

I didn’t say anything.

“The only real difference between a traditional date and a date at a brothel is honesty.”

She paused, but I still didn’t have anything to say.

“Think about it, Copper,” she said. “A guy buys you dinner and a movie. He’s expecting sex in exchange, right?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“No maybe about it. He does. But he never knows if he’s going to get it, and that’s why so many guys like brothels. No games. You pay to play, and everybody gets lucky. And let me tell you, I get a lot more than food and a flick for a f—for my services.”

I found myself resisting her logic. I hadn’t worked out a coherent argument, but I knew there was more to dating than negotiating for sex. My relationship with Daniel certainly had a lot more to it. We’d hammered it out on many levels, and we were even beginning to think in the long term.

“Here’s the turnoff,” Victoria said. “Make a left.”

The night was as black as I had predicted when we parked in a dirt lot near the highway. I followed Victoria up a sloping path, straining to see well enough to avoid running into a cactus or stepping on a snake. Then, as we crested the low hill, there it was, lighting up the desert for at least a hundred yards in every direction.

The Sekhmet Temple is a small, gazebo-like structure that looks like it’s made of adobe. It has four archways open to the four directions, and the roof is a lattice dome formed out of curved copper piping. The fire blazing in the central hearth turned the interior bright gold, and the flames cast long, dancing shadows across the sand outside.

Outside the temple and not too far away, another fire was burning in a pit. This one had a big cauldron suspended over it, and a woman in a purple cape was stirring its contents with a long wooden stick. More women were sitting on logs. One or two sported similar long cloaks, but the others were dressed more like Victoria and me, in jeans and jackets.

One of the women stood up immediately when she saw us. She was tall, and the word that popped into my head was “stunning.” She had long, straight, bleached blonde hair and a model’s body. Her leather jacket was unzipped, and two perfect globes pushed out a V-necked ribbed sweater underneath it. Her skintight jeans were low enough to expose her navel, which was practically at my eye level. It was pierced with a diamond stud.

“Good,” she said. “You made it.”

“Hi, Heather,” Victoria said. “This is Copper.”

Heather surprised me with a fast hug instead of a handshake. She was wearing the same musky perfume Victoria had on.

“Heather’s my other business partner,” Victoria said. “We met at the Beavertail some years back, and now Heather’s our CFO.”

“She makes it sound so corporate,” Heather said, “but yeah, I’m the bean counter. Math and money have always been my strong suits.”

And here I was thinking her looks were her major asset.

Just then, two more women appeared, both swathed in black cloaks. One was young and dark haired, and the other, silver-headed and sixtyish, was smoking a cigar and leaning on a cane.

“It’s the Crone Witch,” Victoria whispered, “and that’s Moon Raven with her. Her apprentice.”

The Crone Witch! She was a real person, and she looked like a grandmother. Somehow that helped me relax a little. The Crone Witch hobbled over to an upended log that had been sawn into a sort of chair. Moon Raven helped her settle into it and relit her cigar.

“So,” the Crone Witch said after a thoughtful puff, “I see we have a visitor.”

I was surprised to find out that the Crone Witch was a chatty extrovert. Her real name was Paula, and she was originally from Norwalk, Connecticut. That gave us a few things in common, like her niece went to New Canaan High School a few years before me and had Mr. McNabb for biology.

The only thing Egyptian about the New Moon Ceremony was the big black fiberglass statue of Sekhmet standing against one wall of the temple. Everything else reminded me of the year my college roommate dabbled in witchcraft, which she insisted the rest of us call “Wicca.” Annie spent nearly two semesters collecting odd-smelling herbs in baby food jars and murmuring, “So mote it be.” She asked me along to ceremonies a number of times, but I never went. It always seemed too silly.

Now I think maybe I should have swallowed my pride. I loved the Crone Witch’s ritual from the beginning, when she threw down her cane and galloped around the outside of the temple “casting the circle.” The rest of us, ringing the hearth inside, held hands and listened to her feral incantations answer the bark of a distant coyote.

At St. Mark’s in New Canaan, religion followed a boring old script in a book. It was pleasant in a Shakespearean sort of way, but the only real spontaneity I can remember is when people told Pope jokes at coffee hour. Even at the tender age of twelve, when I knelt in front of the bishop for my confirmation, I had the sneaking suspicion that the Episcopal Church was just a politically correct social club for wealthy white people in designer clothes.

But out there in the desert, holding hands with a hooker while a witch darted by outside, I suddenly realized what I had been longing for when I read fairy tales and Tolkien, which is what I did all the time growing up. I wanted something more dangerous than an extra-large slug of communion wine. I wanted wildness. I wanted a true feeling of connection with the divine, and shouldn’t that be a little scary? The fierce lion-headed goddess was beginning to make sense to me. If I’m going to have a deity on my side, she might as well have fangs.

Not that the rest of the ceremony had anything to do with violence. It was warm and personal, in fact. We held hands. We repeated the Crone Witch’s affirmations for energy, creativity, and neighborly love. At one point, we faced each person in turn and shouted her name three times.

“Victoria! Victoria! Victoria!”

I was really jealous of that name. It sounds so powerful—in a totally different way from mine.

“Copper! Copper! Copper!”

I don’t hate my name, and I dearly loved the great-aunt who had it before me. It’s just that everyone always cracks jokes about how I should have gone into law enforcement. Fortunately, the Crone Witch said you can call yourself whatever you want, and if I ever go to her temple again, I’m going to pick a name that doesn’t sound like a cry for help when you shout it.

At the end of the ceremony, the Crone Witch announced it was time to cackle.

“Yes, I said cackle,” she repeated when she noticed my surprise. “Long and loud. Let the goddess cackle through you.”

As the hyena-like hoots and squawks of a dozen women rose through the open roof of the Sekhmet Temple, I couldn’t help thinking that Ed Bramlett hadn’t been too far off the mark. On the other hand, I couldn’t help admiring a religion that requires its worshippers to laugh.

When the rites were complete, and after we’d sampled the lentil soup that had been simmering in the big pot over the fire outside, I followed Victoria and Heather back to the parking area, where Heather stopped by a black pickup and unlocked the door.

“It was nice to meet you, Copper,” she said. “Thank you so much for helping Victoria.”

As soon as we climbed back into the Max, I turned to Victoria.

“I’m sorry,” she said before I could get a word out. “Heather assumed I’d already asked you.”

“Asked me what?” I said as Victoria leaned between the seats and pulled her cardboard box forward.

“I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with this box tonight,” she said, pulling out a fat manila folder and opening it on her lap. It was overflowing with newspaper clippings and Xeroxed pages.

“What is it?” I said.

“Pretty much everything that’s happened since my husband wrote that winning essay,” Victoria said. “That got me my first TV interview, and it’s been a whirlwind ever since I won the local pageant. Copies of all the newspaper stories, web pages, threatening letters, memos, some tapes, my notes, my lawyer’s notes … ” She sighed. “I’ve got a battle royale ahead of me. American Beauty has an army of attorneys determined to shut me up, and they’ve got publicists telling their side of the story. It’s David and Goliath, and sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it.” She stuffed the file back into the box and looked at me. “A big part of me wanted to lug all this stuff up the hill and chuck it into the fire.”

“You mean just give up?” I said.

“Yeah, and get on with my life. Take care of my family. This is really hard on them, and it’s not their battle.” She paused and looked at me again. Our eyes met. “I think if I hadn’t met you, I really would have burned the box.”

“What do I have to do with it?”

“You’re a journalist, you’re a woman, and I think you might care,” Victoria said. “If I give you my files, will you tell my story?”

I stared at Victoria. If I hadn’t been so surprised, I would have cackled.