Icarus

compulsive about it and I'm sure there are fairly obvious psychological reasons for it, but I don't really care. I stay in there and just scald myself until the hot water starts to go. Sometimes if I take a bath, I can stay in there two or three hours. Now, I'll be with you in a minute. Really and truly a minute.'

This time she was as good as her word. When she came out of her bedroom, she was wearing a black lightweight skirt and a black T-shirt. No shoes or socks. Her hair was brushed but still wet. He thought she looked exquisite. Very young and very fresh and very, very desirable.

'I know what you're thinking,' she said as they sat in the living room sipping the white wine she'd brought out. And for a moment he felt guilty. But then she finished: 'My apartment surprised you.'

'A little.'

'Well, most of the girls at the club really are what you think they are. Most of them are fairly shallow and not all that bright. They all tell you that they don't do drugs and that they don't sleep with the customers for money. But most of them do. Or if they don't yet, they will.'

'But not you.'

'For most of them, this is it. This is their career. They'll make a bunch of money and hopefully they'll meet a guy and then they'll quit. Or else they'll keep doing this until they're way too old. For me this is a means to an end.'

'What's the end?'

'Money. Other than that I'm not so sure. I thought actress for a while. But I'm starting to think I don't have what it takes. But that's all right. I'm in school now. Hofstra. Psych major. I graduate in one year.'

'So you're twenty-one?'

'Twenty.'

'How old were you when you started dancing?'

'Sixteen. But I looked eighteen and they didn't check. Now I'm twenty and I look sixteen and everybody checks.'

'Doesn't it worry you?' he asked, surprised that he wanted to talk about her personal life. 'That you might start doing what the other girls do?'

'Sure,' she said. 'I'd be dumb not to worry about it. I can feel it happening, too. It's weird, but what can you do? I try to keep some perspective but it's hard.'

'I can imagine.'

'Can you?'

'No,' he said. 'Maybe not.'

'You mind if I make myself a sandwich? I'm starving.' She jumped up, disappeared back into the kitchen, and returned a minute later with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a small plate. 'You want one?' she asked. 'Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude.'

'No. Go ahead.'

He watched her eat and he could see his list, the list he'd made about Kid, in a vision right in front of his eyes. The Entertainer, it said. Eats with her mouth open. And there she was, chewing away, that lopsided mouth open just a crack too much while she ate.

'A few weeks ago, I was at a party,' she said when she was two thirds of the way through her sandwich. 'A real party. Kids. College friends. None of them has any idea what I do.'

'None of them?'

'Nope,' she said. 'It's not the kind of thing you can just drop into a conversation. Anyway, it was very weird. I was having a perfectly good time. It was a little dull, you know, like they thought smoking dope and drinking was as cool as it gets, but it was fine. And a couple of the guys were really hitting on me. Talking to me, trying to get me to go out with them; one of them invited me to see Beck at the Meadowlands. And that night I got a little scared because the whole time they were talking to me I kept thinking, this isn't right, they should be paying me to talk to them. I get twenty bucks every five or ten minutes, minimum, just to talk. That's weird, huh, that I thought that?'

'Not so weird,' he said. 'But you're right. Scary.'

'I'll tell you something else weird. Last year my mother had a stroke.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Well, it wasn't so terrible. I mean, it was a stroke but she was okay. She needed some rehab, though, really could have used a private nurse or something to help her, but she couldn't afford it. Well, I could afford it. Easy. Only I couldn't give her the money 'cause she doesn't know what I do, either. She thinks I'm a waitress, and how the hell would a college-girl waitress have an extra ten thousand dollars for a private nurse?'

'So what'd you do?'

'Nothing. I kept quiet. Let her fend for herself. And before you say, 'Oh, that's so sad,' and 'Why do you do it?' it really isn't so sad. My mom's a lunatic and a serious bitch, and I do it because I'm twenty years old and I can afford to rent this apartment and I've got over seventy-five thousand dollars in mutual funds and in five years I think I'll have ten times that.' She finished the sandwich now, chomping down on the last sticky corner. 'You can read the rest in my autobiography. Which I'm going to write one of these days. What do you want to know about Kid?'

She had brought him back around to the reason he was here and suddenly he wasn't all that sure what he wanted to know. It was distracting, listening to her chatter away. He was tired. And now one of her bare legs was curled up under the other and he could barely turn away from looking at it.

'Just tell me about him,' he said, trying to focus. 'I thought I knew him like he was my own son. Now I'm not so sure.'

'He could be a real son of a bitch sometimes. Did you know that?'

'I never really experienced it. But I suppose I could see it in him.'

'Not at heart, though. At heart he wasn't a son of a bitch at all.' She took a sip of wine and rubbed her tongue around her mouth. She still had bits of peanut butter stuck up in there somewhere. 'I cared about him. Really and truly. In my own way. I knew he was seeing other women, too – he never lied, which I liked. But that was Kid. He was a taker. He took me, I have to say. I loaned the bastard five thousand dollars right before he died. Never paid me back a nickel.'

'Did he tell you what the money was for?' Jack asked, surprised.

'He said it was for tuition. That they wouldn't let him graduate unless he paid up. But I didn't believe him. It just sounded like he really needed the money.'

'Did he say how he was going to pay you back?'

'Sure.' She grinned. 'He said he was gonna get the money from you.' She poured herself a bit more wine, still working her tongue around her gums. 'You know what Kid liked best?' she asked now.

Jack shook his head. Her voice had changed just a little. It was subtle but seductive and he felt the small hairs on the back of his neck start to tingle.

'He liked me to dance for him. Here in this apartment. A private dance.'

Jack knew he looked awkward. He wasn't comfortable suddenly and it showed. But Leslee grinned again, as if she was enjoying his discomfort.

'You're rich,' she said. 'You're really rich.'

He didn't say anything. She was grinning like crazy now. She stood up and went to her CD player. Put on a CD, R.E.M., Automatic For The People, not too loud. Michael Stipe's melancholy voice seemed to echo through the apartment.

'You want me to dance for you?' she asked. He realized she was very close to him. She had managed to slide over on the couch so she was less than a foot away. 'You want to have a little private dance, just you and me?'

Jack shook his head. 'No. I don't think so.'

'Are you shy?'

'No.'

'Are you married?'

Jack closed his eyes. Left them shut for what felt like a long time. 'I feel married,' he said.

'Most men feel married,' Leslee told him. 'I make them feel unmarried.'

She was right next to him now. One leg curled over his and she was on his lap, facing him, her mouth maybe an inch from his. She was barely moving but he could feel her grinding herself into his crotch. And he could see her