He turned to her, unsure he had heard correctly. She stopped brushing her hair.
“It’s no big deal,” she said. “You’ll sleep like a baby. All guys do.”
“Are you kidding?”
She smiled knowingly. “Don’t worry. Wifey won’t ever know about it.”
“I said no, okay? Jesus.”
“I was just trying to help you relax. I know you’re upset.”
“What’s the deal here, Cheryl? Is sex the only way you know how to relate to men?”
She turned to the television, her lower lip pooched out like an angry child’s. “Not quite, Oprah.”
“A while ago you gave me your sob story about how terrible it was to be a whore. Now you’re acting like one.”
“Hey, I was just trying to make this easier on you.”
“Do you make the same offer to all your victims?”
The word “victim” didn’t sit well with her. “I saw you looking at me during the speech, and I knew you were interested.”
“Bullshit.”
She cut her eyes at him, and they held a disturbing knowledge. “My mistake, I guess. What do I know? I’m just a dumb stripper, right?” She picked up the remote and flipped through some channels, finally settling on the Home Shopping Network.
Will turned back to the window. As he searched for the tiny lights of the freighter, he saw movement in the reflection of the room. Focusing on it, he saw Cheryl remove her bra. He didn’t turn, but he saw her settle deeper on the pillows and begin slowly stroking her breasts. He tried to watch the freighter, but he couldn’t concentrate. It was absurd. This woman had helped kidnap his daughter; now she was coming on to him as if they’d just met in the casino downstairs. Cheryl moaned softly, drawing his eyes to her reflection again. Her movements were impossible to ignore.
“Why are you doing that?”
“To show you you’re no different than the rest. And that it’s okay.”
“Put your bra back on.”
She didn’t stop moving her hands. “You’re saying that, but you’d rather I left it off.”
“Put it back on, Cheryl.”
“They look good, don’t they?”
He turned toward the bed at last. “If you like implants.”
She laughed. “Sure they’re implants. But they’re good. Not like the local junk you see around here. Joey flew me out to L.A. to have it done, when I was a featured dancer. I got the same doctor that did Demi. He said mine looked just as good.” She cupped them in her palms. “Just as good.”
They did look like perfect male fantasies, but they did not look natural. As a doctor, Will had seen more breasts than he cared to think about, and Cheryl’s Penthouse-style showpieces had almost nothing in common with the female form in its natural state.
“Cover yourself,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“I don’t care what you do.” He turned back to the window.
“Why don’t you at least face the truth about something, Will?”
It wasn’t the first time she had used his Christian name, but he still didn’t like it. “What?”
“When you were first giving your speech, and you saw me down there watching you, you were fantasizing about me.”
“You’re wrong.”
“You can’t lie about that. You checked me out from head to toe. Then you stared at my panties when I uncrossed my legs.”
“You made them too obvious to ignore.”
“But you were interested. A lot more interested than you were in your speech. And if it wasn’t for the reason we’re in this room together now, we might be here for another reason.”
“You’re wrong,” he said again, annoyed by the accuracy of her instincts.
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
“What I saw in your face tonight I’ve seen in lots of guys’ faces. Decent guys, I mean. I know you. For a few years now, you’ve been wishing you had someone like me to sleep with. You love your wife, you wouldn’t trade her for anything, but she just doesn’t do it for you. She doesn’t understand what you need. How you need it, and how often. Nothing, really. She’s making a nest, adding twigs, thinking about the little chickadees. You’re helping with the nest, but you miss hunting.”
“Where’d you get that? Cosmo?”
“I don’t remember. But it’s on the money, isn’t it?”
He turned back to the bed, where Cheryl was enacting a fifteen-year-old boy’s dream of paradise. “This isn’t going to happen. You don’t want sex. And you don’t want to ‘relax’ me. What you really want is to somehow make me culpable in what you’re doing.”
“What’s culpable?” She looked genuinely confused.
“You want to make me part of this. To involve me, to pull me down to your level, so that what you’re doing doesn’t seem so horrible. But it is horrible. And you know it.”
Cheryl jerked the bra up over her breasts and stared at the television.
He turned and laid his palms flat on the window-pane. The thick glass was cool from the air conditioner, but he knew there was a warm wind blowing outside. Cool compared to the stagnant air hanging over the scrub and stunted pines growing inland from the beach, but warm compared to the frigid air in the casino suite.
“We never finished our conversation from before,” Cheryl said.
“What are you talking about?”
“When you asked how I wound up doing this. Kidnapping kids.”
“You told me your story.”
“I left out a few things.” She looked the way Abby did when she was trying to conceal some surprise. “After Joey made me stop being a featured dancer, he put me back into Jackson. New Orleans and Jackson. Sometimes the club down in Hattiesburg, but that was down-market. Mostly college kids, lining up to get off in their pants.”
“You should go on Howard Stern.”
“Maybe I should. But you should listen to me, Doc. There’s a lesson here for you.”
“I’m on pins and needles.”
“Joey put me back in the clubs, but not really to dance. He started coming in every night I was on, but not to watch me. He came to talk to the people. The owners, the bouncers, the customers. He bought rounds for everybody. Bought them sofa dances. Pretty soon he got a handle on who was coming in there. And it would blow your mind, Doc. Lawyers, doctors, stockbrokers, aldermen. Ministers, for Christ’s sake. Ministers sneaking in there to get a sofa dance. What a crazy kick. Anyway, Joey got a handle on all these guys. And then we started up a little business on the side.”
“What business was that?”
“Blackmail. These guys got addicted to me, see? I mean, I may not like doing it, but I can give a sofa dance. I took those guys places they’d never even dreamed about. They’re dropping fifty bucks a pop for three minutes, and happy as pigs in slop. Pretty soon they’re offering lots more and asking if I do any after-hours dancing.” She wrinkled her nose. “Dancing, right? So, to the right ones-the rich, married ones-I said, Sure, honey. And I let them take me to a motel after work. A motel run by a guy who was tight with Joey, who had special cameras set up in a certain room. Once we got inside that room, I got those guys to do things they would die before they let their wives or bosses see. They left there with their minds blown and their lives in Joey’s pocket. And you know something? I never felt sorry for them. Not once. Every one of those bastards left his wife and kids at home to come into that club. They took me back to that room to screw me senseless, not giving a damn if I lived or died after. Every one of them begged me to do it without a condom, and most of them wanted… God, I don’t even want to think about it. And these were pillars of the community, you know? So, when you stand there acting like you’re
