And When She Was Good (22 page)

“Val doesn't know about Scott. Remember? He doesn't know how much I have to lose. And he doesn't know I'm getting out. When I tell him that, he might become fearful that I'll turn against him.”

“So don't tell him.” Tom doesn't know how often she sees Val, how intertwined he is in her life. Or does he? Maybe Tom knows more than she realizes. She thinks back to the last time they stood here, how they spoke of Shelley's death, then thought to be a suicide, and he told her to be careful. Has he known all along about her murder? Did he know that Shelley was one of Val's girls and not tell Heloise?

The outstanding player on Scott's team, a gorgeous Ethiopian boy adopted just two years ago, intercepts a flying ball with his head, knocks it to the ground, and snares it under his foot, then begins flying toward the goal, now in control. Heloise knows how the ball feels—under someone's foot, moving forward swiftly, but with no control over what's going to happen to her.

T
UESDAY,
N
OVEMBER
15

T
his time
Sophie comes to her. Heloise sets up the meeting in the new Four Seasons Hotel,
in the so-called Harbor East neighborhood. She has often done business in this
neighborhood, because it is, to quote another poem that her librarian friend
taught her years ago, a place where executives would never tamper. They like to
play here in the evenings, try out the restaurants, but during the day the area
is far removed from their part of Baltimore, in style if not actual miles. Their
colleagues sit at the Center Club, whose name once made sense. Light and Pratt
Streets were the city's nexus for many years. But now the view from that lofty
private club, while still beautiful, is a little emptier. Harborplace, which
kick-started the city's renaissance, is losing tenants; even the stalwart
Phillips has moved east along the water. USF&G is gone, as is the big
brokerage firm that once sat above The Gallery. The action has moved, too, as
evidenced by the Four Seasons. If Heloise intended to keep going in the
business, she would try to cultivate some contacts here. She likes the name of
the restaurant, Wit & Wisdom, which is depicted as a fox and an owl. She
hopes to corner the market on both commodities in this meeting.

Sophie tries not to look impressed by her
surroundings when she arrives to find Heloise waiting for her. It's not always a
sign of weakness to be the one who waits, especially if one is on the phone and
halfway through a lovely appetizer. Not that Heloise requires a midafternoon
snack of bison tartare, but it's all about appearances. She is dressed in the
same suit she wore to meet with Paul. It flatters her.

Sophie, on the other hand, has a small stain on her
blouse and looks a little rumpled. She also has a runny nose and a twitch. How
had Heloise missed the telltale signs? Val never would have, she has to admit.
He was onto Bettina the moment she started to go down that road. Sophie has
probably been a full-fledged addict for at least two years.

“Traffic was horrible,” Sophie says, and perhaps
she's sincere. She thinks her payoff is coming; she's motivated.

“It gets worse and worse,” Heloise says, loving the
banality of their chatter, in no hurry at all to get down to brass tacks,
whereas Sophie is impatient, crazed to know what she's going to get. “Would you
like tea? A glass of wine? Something to eat?”

“A glass of wine would be great. Red, to warm the
bones. It's not that it's cold out, but it's so damp.”

Heloise places the order for Sophie, then says,
“Can you drink while on Trizivir?” She knows the answer. She knows the answer to
most of the questions she plans to ask today.

“What?” Sophie says.

“I mean, I assume so, but I wasn't sure. Are you
allowed to drink, or does it interfere with your medication?”

“Oh. One drink is okay. It won't kill me.” She
rallies, skilled liar that she is. “I'd be lucky if alcohol was all I had to
worry about.”

“I suppose that's true.” Heloise looks grave,
concerned. “Do you have your paperwork together?”

“What paperwork? You didn't say anything about
paperwork.”

No, she hadn't. “I didn't? I've been so scattered,
what with all I have to do. I thought I told you to bring your medical
records.”

“Why would I bring you my medical records?”

“Just to be complete. I want to know exactly where
you are, in terms of your diagnosis, before I finalize your severance
package.”

“Severance package?” Sophie smiles, getting it,
thinking
she's getting it. “Yeah, that's what it
is, isn't it? My golden parachute.”

“People live a long time now with HIV, Sophie. No
matter what I do, I don't think I can leave you fixed for life.”

“Still, it would be nice to have something.”

“Yes, yes, it would. But, as you know, I've always
run WFEN like the business it is. There will be an official separation package.
You will sign documents absolving me of liability going forward, agreeing not to
ask me for money again.”

Sophie grins, so sure of the upper hand. She
probably thinks that Heloise has already forgotten about the medical
records.

“Sure, have it your way.” Thinking, no doubt, as
all blackmailers think, that there will always be more money, that she can come
back to the well as soon as she's dry. Not that Sophie's playing a truly long
con. Drug addicts don't have the attention span to do that. If it comes down to
it, Sophie probably doesn't have the work ethic necessary to file the paperwork
for workers' comp, even if she did have the required documentation. She's lazy.
How did she get past Heloise for all these months? Everyone makes mistakes, and
this is Heloise's only disastrous hire, but it still galls. She was blinded by
her own envy of the girl, this polished New Yorker who had everything that
Heloise wanted—and valued none of it. Unlike the other girls, she didn't even
have a pressing financial need for the job. She just wanted to know her worth,
her value.

“I'm serious, Sophie. This is a onetime offer. Once
we reach our terms, that's it. You can't come back. For one thing, there won't
be a WFEN anymore. I'm disbanding it.”

“To do what?”

Ah, that vexing question again. “I have some irons
in the fire. But the thing is, the business will be gone, its assets—of which
there are almost none—dissipated.”

“Okay, whatever. You know, I didn't say I would
entertain counteroffers. I was pretty specific about what I wanted.”

“Yes, you were. But I'm a businesswoman. I can't
help myself—I have to counter.”

She takes out a piece of a paper and writes
carefully. Sophie seems to get more excited with each pen stroke. After all, the
more pen strokes, the higher the offer, right? Heloise passes the paper across
the table, neatly folded, and sips her tea happily while Sophie reads it.

“What is this bullshit?”

The note says:

Zero
.

“I don't think you have HIV,” Heloise says. “You
lied. You just didn't want to work anymore. Probably because you have a drug
problem and that's time-consuming. I know. I used to live with an addict. It's a
demanding life that forces you to quit working, even though it's only through
working that you can afford the drugs. It's very paradoxical. I once heard a man
say that being a drug addict was the hardest job in America, and you're not
really cut out for hard work.”

“I do too have AIDS. HIV. You can't prove that I
don't.”

“I don't have to. You have to prove that you
do.
Look, I've done the research—you'd have trouble
suing me even if you were HIV-positive. Infected workers in the porn industry
haven't been able to sue successfully for workers' compensation.” Heloise
doesn't actually know if this is true, only that she couldn't find any examples.
“If you're not . . . well, I guess that's good news, right? A classic
case of good news and bad news. Good news: You're disease-free. Bad news:
There's no payoff for that. If anything, I should sue you. For the cost of drugs
you never bought, for the clients I lost.”

“I am too,” Sophie says. She sounds like a little
kid, but then—she always sounded like a little kid. Petulant, caring only for
her needs.

“If that's true, I am sincerely sorry. But I need
to see your medical records.”

“You say that like it's easy.” The girl's mind is
racing, she's probably trying to figure out a way to fake her diagnosis. Steal
someone else's paper, get a friend to fake being her doctor and confide in
Heloise, privacy laws be damned.

“My hunch is that it will be impossible,” Heloise
says, all seriousness now. “Really, Sophie—why?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why did you do this?”

“I didn't do anything. I'm the one who's sick from
working for you.” Still grasping, committed to her bit.

“If you needed money, if you had come to me—”

“Right.” Sophie's tone is bitter, and it shames
Heloise. She's correct—Heloise would have been loath to help out anyone
financially, and she never would have given her anything if Sophie had been
honest. A ride to rehab is all she would have offered.

She tries, “You have a problem.”

“You have a problem.” Sophie says this in a very
childlike, you-are-rubber-I-am-glue way. But she has a follow-up. “I can still
tell. I can still make things bad for you.”

“Very soon there will be nothing to tell.”

“Doesn't change what you've been.”

“No, but it hurts others. Lots of others. Why do
that to them, just to get at me?”

“Because I want money. How dim can you be, you
stupid cunt?”

The word carries. People look up from their drinks.
Heloise tries to keep her face impassive.

“There's not going to be any money. I'm sorry. When
I thought you had HIV, I felt I had an obligation to help you. And I did. But I
don't think you have the virus, and I'm not going to help you anymore unless you
prove me wrong.”

“I'll tell your son.”

Now it's Heloise's turn to say, “What?”

“Leo told me. You have a kid.”

Accountants just know too fucking much about a
person. How she wishes now that she had never claimed Scott as a dependent.

“Don't go there,” Heloise says, knowing that the
phrase is tired and threadbare, but it's also precise, literally and
figuratively. She will kill Sophie if she tries to come to her house. “Don't
talk about him.”

“I'll talk about whatever the fuck I want to talk
about, you hypocrite of a whore. You have a son. Give me money or I'll find him
and tell him who his mommy is and what she does.”

Heloise fights down a rage so virulent that it
feels like the legacy of Hector Lewis. She wants to slap this girl or shake her.
But she doesn't. She wills the anger to stop clouding her brain and says, “No
you won't. You're too lazy.”

“What?”

“You're too lazy except when it comes to getting
whatever your drug of choice is. I'm going to guess coke, but it could be meth.
I don't care. I do know that you don't have the initiative to get off your ass
and do something that complicated. You could barely be bothered to get here on
time today, and you thought you were going to get a nice little payoff.”

“Leo will do it for me.”

“Not after he finds out that you conned him, too,
played on his sympathies. By the way, he'll probably want to have sex with you
now, if he hasn't already.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“You can't afford it, Sophie. I get more per hour
than my employees do.”

Sophie bolts her wine.

“That's the last thing I'll ever buy you.”

“We'll see,” Sophie says, standing. “You don't get
to call all the shots. You always thought you did. You thought you were so
grand, so above us. You're nothing but a pimp in better clothes, luring girls in
with your ads and your promises and your I'm-so-enlightened bullshit. And the
health insurance, which wasn't worth shit. We didn't even have a prescription
plan. I got root canal, and the painkillers were like seventy-five dollars. What
if I had gotten really sick, needed a hard-core chronic prescription?”

Ah, so that was the source of her brainstorm—and
maybe the beginning of her problem.

“I can help you find a rehab,” Heloise says. “I do
think I owe you that. Some girls—they start to use to get through, although it
doesn't really enhance their performance, which is probably why you started
booking less. I will help you get clean, get back into school.”

“I don't need to go to rehab.”

“Okay,” Heloise says. “Okay.”

“You're gonna pay me. You're gonna pay me or wish
you had. I'll find you.”

Heloise sips her tea complacently. Sophie doesn't
even know her full name. The checks are signed by Audrey, who is WFEN's
comptroller. Yes, Leo knows her address, but she's pretty sure that Leo will
want nothing to do with Sophie after Heloise talks to him.

She pulls out three twenties, starts to leave them
on the table, thinks better of it, and signals the waiter over. No fiend worth
her salt would pass up cash.

“I'm going to find you,” Sophie repeats, quietly
this time.

“I've really got to go, Sophie. Let me know if you
change your mind and you want help. That I will provide. But I'm not giving you
any more cash. I feel bad that I didn't figure this out sooner, because I think
I could have helped you if I'd understood everything.”

“Help me? You destroyed me.”

The words lodge like fishhooks. Heloise still feels
them thirty-five minutes later as she turns in to her street. Could she? Did
she? It was never her intention to ruin anyone. She was only offering girls the
same life she had fashioned for herself.

Her mother, she realizes, could make the same
rationalization. Not that her mother is given to much rationalization. She
hasn't called or written since Heloise visited her. She pleaded her case and let
it go. She has a lot more dignity than Sophie.

Heloise had thought, heading out today, that she
would return home triumphant. Instead she feels like a boxer who has won on a
technicality. She's got the belt, she's got the money, but she's bruised and
battered and can barely see. She almost trips over the package on her doorstep,
a white-paper ghost tented over a beautiful pot of narcissus.

The flowers are from Terry, who has been calling
her for days. She can't see him, though, not now. She has tried to explain that
to him, but her sudden decision to cut him off makes no sense to him. How can
it? It baffles her, too. All she can do is hope that he will still be interested
in a few months when her reinvention is complete. But she's pretty sure that's
too much to ask.