Afterwards, I leave. This, too, is a rule. I don’t stay. I don’t feign affection. The sex is as satisfying as anything is these days. I’ll return, not because of the sex, but because I like the way he craves me.
Two weeks later, Michael starts pressuring me to travel with him. Like everything, he’s expecting me to capitulate. He wants compliance, even though he tries to pretend he isn’t bored when he gets it. “I don’t leave the city,” I point out bluntly and firmly once my laughter and distractions fail to get him to drop the subject.
The problem with Michael is that as much as I dedicate myself to finding ways to keep him happy, the truth is that I do it all for my own happiness. Michael pleases me. His presence in my days, at my table and in my bed, sometimes makes me feel almost as if I could forego my pills—not that he knows about my reliance on the pills. Like the stories that explain my tattoos, the pills are as much of a secret as I can manage.
“We could turn it into a holiday,” Michael argues.
He’s done so well at not trying my boundaries that I am unprepared for the onslaught of arguments. On this, he’s not bending. I don’t know how to refuse both his request to travel and his pleas for my history. There is no way to give him an explanation and maintain my silence.
One of my rules the last three years is that I don’t leave New Orleans overnight. I haven’t left the area even once since I arrived. Sometimes, I might go over to Slidell or maybe as far as Baton Rouge for a day if I’m having a good spell, but New Orleans is where I feel safe. It’s where I sleep.
My doctors are both here. My jobs . . . the dozen or so that I’ve had . . . have all been in the city, mostly in the Quarter. There’s so much turnover that one more fucked up chick with a lot of short-term jobs isn’t shocking. I’m a hard worker when I keep my meds all straight.
But as the days pass, Michael keeps pressuring me. He offers me every temptation I would’ve wanted in my life before Reid.
“We could go to a show. Wouldn’t you like to see Broadway, Tess? Or the Met. There are just a few meetings I need to go to, and then you can come to dinner. Meet my agent.”
He reminds me of the life I knew before I defied my family and left. Shows and shopping, lovely meals and banal conversations, these were the pillars of life before I met Reid. Michael’s offers invite me into worlds I’ve avoided since I escaped. I figured Reid would look for me there.
Maybe he no longer searches for me. Maybe he never did.
I debate agreeing to the trip. It’s been years since I’ve been to Manhattan, but I didn’t know if I could pretend to be well that far from my city. Could I pretend to live that life for a few days in order to make Michael forget about the years I don’t want to remember?
“We’ll have a great time.”
The question isn’t going away, no matter how much I wish it would.
“It’s really not a good idea.”
“I don’t travel with women, Tess. You realize that, don’t you? I need to go, and I want you with me.”
Being made to feel special is my weakness, as it was with Reid, as it was with mother and her many lovers. So, I capitulate.
“I’ll come with you, Michael.”
Even as I agree, I fear that this is the biggest mistake I’ve made in years. But Michael makes me want things I haven’t dared to dream of. I want to be normal again, to have a life, to be well and whole. He holds the illusions I crave in front of my eyes, and in my secret heart, I am still Teresa wanting to be loved the way Reid once loved me--before things went so incredibly wrong.
Maybe the pills will be enough. I can double up for a few days, either enough to stay asleep or enough to stay awake. Hesitantly, I nod my head. I can’t make my tongue say the words, but I agree.
I’m leaving my city. . . for him. I’ll go to New York for a week. It's not what he most wants, but I have another plan, one he set into motion by hiding from himself. I see hints of who he is, and I think that this is my solution. If I give him what he doesn’t realize he needs, he might stop trying to get the thing I am loathe to surrender.
Michael is like a lot of men: he’s terrified of growing up. Commitments, marriage, kids, a house, they are the stuff of nightmares for him. I envy him a little that he knows so little of true nightmares, but if I envy him for that, I’ll have to envy a lot of other people too.
Tell a man he’s brilliant, fuck him like he’s the best there ever was, listen to him, and he’ll tell you how to own him.
I’m listening to Michael. I’ll be exactly the woman he needs. I can do that.
“Take me to New York.”
13
A Girl with No Past
At the time, I didn’t realize it. Edward was training me the way he’d train a dog. I was rewarded and punished. The methods might have been unusual, but the core of it was the same. Every decision I made was influenced by Edward. I missed classes when he wanted. I kneeled down in front of him in the shadows of a parking lot. I hadn’t slept in my apartment for at least a week.
Maybe I had a bit more of my mother in me than I thought. I shouldn’t need a man to make me feel valued. I didn’t want that, had left her world where marriage was about status and connections. I had no urge to preserve family connections or forge new ones.
“Do you trust me, Tessa?”
There wasn’t a true answer to that, not really, but I knew the right one to give. “I do.”
“Good girl.” He put his hand on the small of my back and steered me to one of the private rooms.
Inside the room, he tapped out a bit of cocaine, and I watched as he turned the small pile into a line. “You need you to relax.”
“I’m relaxed,” I lied.
“You can trust me. I’ll take care of you. That’s what we both want, isn’t it?”
He stood and kissed me. His kisses were unlike anything else; they were the kisses of a man who needed me. Edward, a man with money and power and danger, chose me.
“Do you want to make me happy?”
“I do.”
“Such a good woman.”
He demonstrated how to inhale the line of powder, and then he drew another one for me. He held my hair back over my shoulder as I bent down and inhaled. I felt it flood my system almost immediately.
Edward’s hands slid to my hips. “Keep me happy.”
“Yes, Edward.”
“You’ll never belong to anyone else the way you belong to me.”
From that day forward, I was his.
14
Juliana
My hands shake as I read his words. A letter from Darren that escaped the monitoring wound up in my stack of mail.
He’d sent it to someone else, who then sent it to me. If I’d known it was from him, I wouldn’t have opened it.
My Dear Sister,
I’m sorry that you have become caught in such danger. If Sophie was alive, she’d be worried. I pray for your safety. Some of the people inside these walls are evil. This killer is surely the same. Take comfort in the Lord, sister. I will continue to pray for you each day.