Dead Sleep

“Now that I think about it, you’re right. This artist’s first paintings were more abstract, and they didn’t sell. What started the phenomenon were the ones where it was clear the women were Occidental, nude, and asleep or dead.”

Thalia sits with her mouth shut tight, as though she refuses to lower herself to discuss what makes her so angry.

“Tell me about Leon Gaines. What do you think about him?”

“Leon’s a pig. He’s always sniffing around, telling me what he’d like to do to me. He offered me five hundred dollars to model nude for him. I wouldn’t do it for ten thousand.”

“Would you model nude for Frank Smith for five hundred?”

“I’d model for Frank for free, but he only paints men.”

“What about Roger Wheaton?”

A strange smile touches her lips, an emblem of private thoughts that will not be shared. “Roger would never ask me to model for him. He’s still distant after two years. I think I intimidate him. Maybe he’s attracted to me and doesn’t want to cross some line, I don’t know. He’s a complex man, and I know he’s sick. He doesn’t talk about it, but I can read the pain in his face. Once I walked into his studio when he was buttoning his shirt, and his chest was covered with hemorrhages, from coughing. It’s in his lungs now, whatever it is. He feels something for me, but I don’t know what. He’s almost embarrassed around me. I think he may have seen some grad student’s paintings of me in the nude.”

“Does he know you’re gay?”

Thalia’s body stiffens, and her eyes go on alert. “Has the FBI been spying on me?”

“No. But the police have. You didn’t notice them?”

“I saw some cops watching the house. I thought they were narcs, staking out the two guys who live here.”

“No. They’ve only been on you for one day, though.”

She looks relieved.

“The FBI does want to know whether you’re gay or not. They do a lot of psychological profiling in these cases, and they feel that’s important.”

She purses her lips and looks at the coffee table between us, then raises her eyes to mine. “Do you think I’m gay?”

“Yes.”

She smiles and strokes the cat. “I’m strange. I don’t really fit anywhere. I have a sex drive like anyone else, but I don’t trust it. It betrays me. It makes me want to use sex to get noticed. So when I need someone, I go to women.”

“What about love and tenderness?”

“I have friends. Mostly women, but men too. Do you have a lot of friends?”

“Not really. I have colleagues, people who do what I do and understand the demands of my life. We share experiences, but it’s not, you know, the real thing. And I spend so much time traveling that it’s hard to make new friends. I have more ex-lovers than friends.”

She smiles with empathy. “Friends are hard to find when you’re forty. You really have to open yourself up to people, and that’s hard to do. If you have one or two friends left from childhood, you’re lucky.”

“I left the place I grew up, like you did. Do you have friends left back home?”

“One. She’s still down on the bayou. We talk on the phone sometimes, but I don’t go back to visit. Do you have any kids?”

“No. You?”

“I got pregnant once, when I was fifteen. By my cousin. I had an abortion. That was that.”

“Oh.” I feel my face growing hot. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s why I hate the place. My father abused me from the time I was ten, my cousin later. It really messed me up. I ran away when I was old enough, but it took me a long time to come to terms with it. I’ve never really gotten over it. I can’t have a man on top of me, no matter how much I might care for him. That’s why I choose women. It’s a safe harbor for me. I used to think that might change, but I don’t think it ever will.”

“I understand.”

She looks skeptical. “Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Were you sexually abused?”

“Not like that. Not by family. But…” I’m suddenly hyperconscious of Baxter and Lenz and Kaiser in the surveillance van, monitoring every word. I feel like a traitor, both to Thalia and to myself, and I want to yank off the transmitter I’m wearing. But if I did, Thalia couldn’t possibly understand.

“Take your time,” she says. “Would you like some tea?”

“I was raped,” I say softly, not quite believing the words as they fall from my mouth. “It was a long time ago.”

“Time doesn’t mean anything when it’s that.”

“You’re right.”

“Was it a friend?”

“No. I was in Honduras, during the war in El Salvador. I was just starting out, really. I’d been photographing this refugee camp with a couple of print reporters, and we got separated. They left without me, and I had to walk back to the town. This car came along and stopped for me. There were government soldiers in the car. Four of them, one an officer. They were polite and smiling. They said they’d take me into town. I was always really careful, but it was a long way back to town. I took the ride. A mile down the road, they turned off and drove me into the jungle. So far that no one could hear me screaming. I know, because I lost my voice that night.”

“It’s all right,” Thalia murmurs. “I’m here with you.”

“I know. But it’s not all right. It’s never gotten all right. I’m more ashamed of that than anything I’ve ever done.”

“You didn’t do anything, Jordan. What did you do? You accepted a ride from men who said they’d help you.”

Tears of anger and self-disgust sting my eyes. “I’m not talking about the rape. I’m talking about after. Before they started, they tied my hands behind my back. There was no way to fight, and it went on for hours. At some point during the night I passed out. At dawn I woke up with my arms numb but my hands free. I followed the tire tracks out to the road, then limped into town bleeding and crying. I didn’t tell a soul what they’d done. I thought I was so tough, but I didn’t have the nerve even to go to a hospital. I thought if the people I worked for found out what had happened, they’d pull me out of there before I knew what hit me. Not to protect me, but because they’d think I couldn’t handle myself. You know? I hate myself for that fear. I’ve been haunted ever since by the women who might have been raped after me because I didn’t report those men.”

Thalia slowly shakes her head. “There were probably women before you and women after. But it’s over now. You’ve punished yourself enough. Those soldiers are dead. If they’re not physically dead, their souls are. What matters is how you are now. That’s the only thing you can change.”

“I know that.”

“Your head knows it, but not your heart. That’s where you have to know it, Jordan.”

“I know. I try.”

“You’re afraid for your sister, aren’t you? Afraid she’ll have to go through something like that.”

“Or worse.”

“Okay, but look what you’re doing. You’re doing everything humanly possible to find her. More than any other relative of these women, I’ll bet.”

“I have to know, Thalia.”

“You will, honey. You’ll know.” She lifts the enormous cat and sets it on the floor, then walks over and pulls me to my feet. “Come in the kitchen. I’m going to make you some green tea.”

“I’m sorry I did this. You’re the first person I ever told that to, and I don’t know why I did. I don’t even know you.”

Thalia Laveau places both her hands on my shoulders and looks deep into my eyes. “You know what?”