overlooking the lake. The driver carried their bags to the lobby, and the doorman put them into the elevator and transported them to the apartment on the top floor. Carl put her two suitcases in the guest bedroom and said, “You can have the closets and bathroom in here to yourself. When you’re undressed, come into our bedroom.”
After two weeks Tanya thought to make a telephone call to the office of the dean of students and let them know she wanted a leave of absence. The next day she went to the university in a taxi, found the boy outside the student union who had sold her the fake driver’s license she’d used to get served in bars, and ordered identification in the name Tanya Starling.
She wanted to be the perfect mistress, but it took her some time to realize what Carl expected her to be and to do. She went about it with the discipline she had been taught in the beauty pageant competitions when she was a child, and the determination that had gotten her to college. She used the pocket money Carl gave her to buy custom-mixed makeup, and had the store’s experts teach her the latest looks and application techniques. As soon as Carl left each morning, she entered the home gym he had installed in the apartment, and exercised. She studied the articles in women’s magazines about how she should look and what she should wear, and what men liked in female behavior but didn’t necessarily know they liked, and how to improve her skin, hair, nails, body, and small talk.
In the evenings when she went to parties and dinners with Carl, she closely observed the other women. Some were attorneys or clients, but most of them were wives or girlfriends of very successful men. They were all a few years older than Tanya, and very elegant and poised. She studied manners and personality traits that she envied, and took them for herself.
From the beginning, some of the men Carl knew would find ways to be alone with her for a moment and try to interest her in meeting them somewhere without Carl. She was extremely careful to be unremittingly loyal to Carl, but never derisive or threatening to the suitors. She understood instinctively that making enemies of Carl’s friends and colleagues could only lead to trouble for her. As she got better at her new vocation, she gained knowledge of what men were really thinking and feeling. She saw that they might have complex minds full of information she was not capable of understanding, but in their dealings with women, they were no more able to think beyond the mere prospect of sex than Tim had been.
Carl dressed her expensively, took her to wonderful places, and treated her as his protegee. His conversation taught her things—which paintings in a gallery were the best, which wines were the right ones to serve, which writers were the ones to read, which orchestras were the ones to hear.
Carl was a recreational talker, a man whose own voice enchanted him so much that for him speech was like singing. As soon as he was home each evening, drinking the martini she had mixed for him, he told her anecdotes about what he had done all day and what he had thought, and shrewdly analyzed the people he had seen. They were all minor players in his personal story, which was essentially comic, because he always triumphed.
He taught her how much to tip various people who provided services, and to remember that it was wise to tip the most when the service was still in doubt, not afterward, in gratitude for something she already had. Once, when Carl needed to leave her alone for a few days, he opened a drawer in the bedroom and showed her where the gun was.
He picked it up, then said, “It’s loaded, see?” He moved the cylinder to the side to show her the bullets in the holes, then flipped it back. “It’s smart to consider all of them loaded, but this one always is. If somebody knows I’m gone and thinks that makes it a good time to break in, you hold it like this, arms extended in front of you, and pull the trigger. Fire three or four times. It’s a .357 magnum, so I guarantee it will stop him. It’s got a bit of a kick, so hold on.”
“You mean it’s legal to kill someone because he’s trying to break in?”
“It’s not murder if he breaks into your apartment and tries to harm you. If he’s still outside in the hall when you shoot him, drag the body inside before you call the cops.” Then he added, “And if he’s not dead, shoot him again, in the head. If they live, they sue.”
For nearly nine years, she lived with Carl Nelson and learned from him. In return, she was even-tempered and companionable. She was aware that his attraction to her was sexual, so she cultivated the attraction. His manner in bed was much like his conversation. He was affable and he wanted to charm her and be the one directing the proceedings, teaching her things he thought she would like. All she really had to do to please him was to be available and submissive, willing to be impressed.
Just before Tanya’s twenty-eighth birthday, Carl Nelson came home from his office early. He didn’t sit where he usually did, on the couch where she had been waiting for him. He sat instead in the chair across from her. He said, “I’m finished with the Zoellner case. I’m going to Europe for a while.”
She said, “Wonderful. Should I call to make arrangements with the travel agent?”
“No, thank you. They’ve already handled that at the office.”
She understood then, from the way he said it. He was going. She was not. She controlled herself as well as she could. “You deserve a break. When will you be back?”
“In about a year. I’m taking a sabbatical. I’ll be doing some work while I’m over there, handling some things for regular clients.”
“You’re taking a secretary, aren’t you?”
He nodded. “Mia is going with me.”
She had seen Mia at his office. Mia was nineteen years old and already a failed model. She was taller than Tanya—taller even than Carl—and she had striking green eyes. She was Tanya Starling’s replacement.
Tanya stood up and said, “Excuse me, Carl. This is hard for me.” She went into their bedroom, crawled onto the bed, and cried. She stayed there for a long time. Then she heard noises. It was Carl in the big walk-in closet. There were sounds of hangers scraping sideways along the pole, and drawers opening and closing.
Tanya went into the bathroom, spent a few minutes fixing her hair and makeup, then stepped into Carl’s closet. She said, “Packing? You’re leaving that soon?”
“My flight is at ten tomorrow.”
She could feel herself beginning to lose control. Tears were coming, and her knees felt weak. She said, “I’ll have my stuff out of the apartment as soon as I can. I think the doorman will let me leave a few things with him while I find a place.”
“There’s no reason to do anything like that, Tanya. In fact, I’ve been counting on you to stay here while I’m gone.”
“For the whole year?” Maybe he was going to have the secretary for a while and then come back to her. Men loved variety. That was okay. Her mind was already accommodating itself to the idea. Maybe he would even send for her.
“Sure. It will give you the time to figure out what you would like to do with your life, and get a start on it. You’re smart, beautiful, and you should be doing something. Maybe real estate, or decorating. Take some time and think it over. And your staying here gives me somebody I know I can trust to care for the place and keep an eye on it. I’ll have the office pay the bills and send you an allowance.”
“Sure.” The word
She considered taking Carl’s pistol out of its drawer and shooting him. She considered simply slipping the loaded gun into his suitcase, so he would be arrested at Heathrow or De Gaulle or wherever he was flying to. But then she detected a contradictory impulse. She stopped being angry because she wanted him to stay. She began to be impatient for him to leave.
She spent some minutes exploring feelings she had not acknowledged before. She was humiliated, hurt, shocked, but now she realized that her situation was not so simple. She had been exploited, certainly, for her sexual attractiveness and her docility. In return, she had been educated, entertained, and pampered for nine years. The part that she was astounded and ashamed about was that she had not anticipated this moment or prepared herself for it.
Carl’s ability to appreciate women was limited to girls of about eighteen. He found them interesting only during this phase of their lives. His was an entirely sexual addiction, but it wasn’t because they were at their best. The exercised, massaged, and rested Tanya Starling looked much better, even younger, than the lonely, sad, frightened Charlene Buckner had, and she was more adventurous. And Tanya had seen Mia, who was going to take her place. Mia was pretty, but not prettier than Tanya. The attraction was that she was the right age: Tanya no
