I expected Sara to live in a two-story apartment building surrounded by acres of asphalt. Instead I found myself pulling into the underground garage of a skyrise overlooking Buffalo Bayou. Murky as a day-old cup of coffee in which the milk has gone bad, Buffalo Bayou winds through the heart of Houston. I rode the elevator to the twelfth floor and knocked on her door.
Sara ushered me into a living area larger than the wood-frame house I’d grown up in. A tiled island separated the kitchen from the living area, where a slab of glass balanced atop four concrete balls served as a coffee table. A painting of an all-black jazz band hung over the fireplace. Two ceramic masks, rhinestones swirling around the eyes, hung beside it.
Sara led me to a box leaning against one wall, industrial staples gleaming from an open flap. One of the staples drew blood as I reached in and pulled out a thirty-page instruction booklet. I lifted the sealed end of the box and pieces of wood and bags of screws slid onto the floor.
“Have you eaten?”
“No.” Was that an invitation?
As I got to work, the smell of garlic bread reminded me of the meals I’d eaten at Vance’s home. Lorraine put garlic in everything except her cheesecake.
The clouds had turned purple, giving the sky a bruised look, when Sara called me to the table. Two leafy green salads, topped with tomatoes and pine nuts, and two plates of tortellini dusted with parmesan lured me to sit down. Sara held up a bottle of Pinot Grigio. “If I serve this with dinner, is that thing going to morph into a computer desk?”
I looked over my shoulder at the half-finished entertainment center. “Let’s drink it and find out.”
Ten minutes into our meal, Sara asked how long I’d been out of work.
I tried to remember what I’d written on my application. “Two months.”
“You’re not really a maintenance man, are you, Nick?”
The wine in my mouth turned to vinegar. “Why would you say that?”
“Jessica told me. I wouldn’t have brought it up, but I need help.”
“You’re being harassed, too?”
“I wish it were that simple. Several years ago I was in a car accident that left my face badly deformed. The nurses told me I was lucky to be alive, but I didn’t feel lucky. A week after I got out of the hospital, a child in a grocery store took one look at me and burst into tears. I quit college. I figured no one would ever hire me, just like no man would ever again ask me out.”
As Sara spoke, I studied her face but detected no scars, other than a faint track left by a couple of stitches between her nose and her upper lip.
“A friend of a friend told me about this agency that will send you to a private hospital and spa they call the Body Shop. They do plastic surgery, cosmetic dentistry, body sculpting, anything you want. Then you work it off afterwards, the way indentured servants used to work off their passage.”
I recalled an older client of mine who’d traveled to Guadalajara for a face-lift and tummy tuck. A plastic surgeon there catered to Americans who couldn’t afford cosmetic surgery back home.
Sara continued, “They’re the ones who got me my job. Last week they ordered me to start gathering information for them about Surplex: its bank routing and account numbers, the names of its creditors...”
“Identity theft.”
“I don’t want to do it, but I don’t know how to get out of it. Someone told me that one girl who threatened to report what was going on was found dead afterwards in a house fire.”
I topped off Sara’s wineglass and mine. “Let me think about it.”
I was still thinking two hours later when I tightened the last screw on the entertainment center. Sara had already changed into a pair of paisley print pajamas and was curled up on the couch watching Letterman.
“Finished.” I tossed the screwdriver into my toolbox.
Sara rose and wrote me a check. “How about a nightcap?”
“Sure.” I took a seat on the couch, while she poured brandy into two snifters. She handed me one, then sat down beside me. The brandy went down smooth as a freshly iced skating rink. “Remy Martin?”
Sara smiled. “I like a man who knows his brandy.”
“What else do you like?”
She drew circles on my shoulder with the tip of her index finger. “Lots of things.”
I gestured towards the entertainment center. “I’m good with my hands.”
“With your tools, too, I bet.”
I took another swallow of brandy and followed her to the bedroom.
Close to midnight, Sara climbed out of bed, pulled on a Bourbon Street T-shirt, and crossed the room to her armoire. By the muted light of a bedside lamp she had draped with a burgundy scarf, I watched her stand on tiptoe, reach up towards a piece of equipment, and press a button. I expected the blues, filtering through the speakers, to go off, but the saxophone continued its throaty lament. Turning away from the armoire, Sara lit a cigarette. Smoke curled out of her mouth as she looked out at the night sky.
A few minutes later, she stubbed out the cigarette and turned to me. “You still don’t recognize me, do you?”
Had we met before? Over a drunken weekend in a drunken town? I shook my head.
“I’m Jessica.”
Vance’s Jessica?
“The new and improved Jessica, as my father sees it. He was always embarrassed by the way I looked. He never said so, but I knew. When I finished college he sent me to a makeover specialist. He said a front-office appearance would help me land the right job. I kept telling him I wanted to start my own business, that I didn’t want to work for someone else, but he wouldn’t listen.”
I sat up, my back supported by the wrought-iron headboard, and studied her face. Her eyes and mouth could be Jessica’s, but I would never have recognized them beneath the silken blond hair, punctuated by a now-perfect nose. The doughy cheeks and the second chin were gone, replaced by clearly defined cheekbones and a tapered neck.
“So there was no Body Shop? No agency turning girls into indentured servants?”
“There was a body shop, all right, a spa in the middle of the Arizona desert with plastic surgeons on staff. You could say I’m indentured to my father.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were Jessica?”
“All through high school, I had this wild crush on you. If you’d known I was Vance Sancetti’s daughter, you’d never have slept with me. I remember, once there was this father-daughter dance at my school. Dad was in Mexico on business and Mom said I should ask you to escort me. You said you had a prior commitment, but I knew the real reason you wouldn’t go was that I wasn’t pretty enough. It’s funny how differently you acted when you saw me at Surplex.”
What had I done? Vance had hired me to protect his daughter from the big bad corporate wolf. Instead I’d huffed and I’d puffed and I’d...
“What about this supervisor who’s been harassing you?”
“An innocent flirtation. I was hoping that if I told my dad I was being mistreated at Surplex, he’d loan me the money I need to start my own business. I want to open an ice-cream parlor in the French Quarter. La Dolce Vita. I’ll serve parfaits layered with syrups made from Kahlua, amaretto, and peach schnapps. But Dad says he’s already invested enough in me, that the time has come for me to pay him back.”
“Pay him back?” Surely Vance would never feature his own daughter in one of his films.
Jessica sat on the edge of the bed and dug her heels into the carpet. “There’s this man, Enrique, who lives in Monterrey. His father is a close friend of my dad’s. They import olive oil into Mexico and Enrique wants to expand into the states. I went out with him a few times, as a favor to my dad. Now he wants to marry me. I don’t believe he’s in love with me, but marrying an American citizen would make it a lot easier for him to live and do business in the U.S.”