She’d found it surprising, at first, that this had not become well known beyond the walls of this place, but having now spent time here, she understood. Pritkin liked to offer some of his more influential friends the fringe benefits that came with knowing him, with being part of his club of influencers. Young, shapely fringe benefits.
Membership has its privileges.
And once those friends had partaken of the pleasures here, the last thing they wanted to do was blab about it. They didn’t want to put themselves at risk of exposure. But they did more than that for good ol’ Jeremy. They ran interference for him, protected him.
Like that old fart of a judge.
Eeewwww.
And the girls who’d been through here kept quiet, too. From what Nicky’d been told, several had leveraged the connections made here to go on to better things. Hotel management, personal assistants to CEOs, internships for political types in Washington. At least, those were the ones Roberta liked to talk about. Nicky’d also heard gossip about at least one who’d become a junkie and ended up on the streets of Newark, and another who just, well, one day she was there and one day she was gone. No one ever heard another thing about her.
Nicky felt badly that she had disappointed Jeremy by raising, with a couple of the other girls here, the issue about whether what went on here was, you know, right. True, Jeremy had been good to her in many ways. He’d pulled strings to get her enrolled in a local high school even though she had no roots in the community, no family in the Big Apple.
In the beginning, Nicky thought he’d done this out of the goodness of his heart, but it wasn’t long before he was asking her to invite friends to the brownstone. Young girls who might need a hand up, a little financial assistance, were willing to learn about the “service industry.” The services, Nicky soon realized, more often than not included keeping Mr. Pritkin and his wealthy, male friends entertained behind closed doors.
Jeremy made it clear she needed to find just the right girls. At first, she’d thought that meant pretty. And of course, Jeremy did want her recruits to be attractive. But what he really was implying was girls who were vulnerable. Girls from low-income households, one-parent families. Girls not connected to people with any kind of pull or influence. Girls with no one to turn to for support. Girls who would be amenable to the needs of Jeremy and his acolytes in return for a life that was better than the one they currently had.
Runaways, for example, like Nicky.
She’d left her Norfolk home seven months earlier. Her mom had found a new boyfriend — the fourth in twelve months — and this one had moved in with them. If there was any good news, it was that this guy wasn’t an ass-grabber or anything. He left Nicky alone where that was concerned. But he ordered her around like he was her goddamn father. Pick up your room, clean the house, make dinner. Do your homework. Turn down the TV. Stop being on your phone all the time. Take those buds out of your ears.
Nicky complained to her mother, but that got her nowhere. “He’s taking an interest,” her mom said.
The previous summer, hanging out at Virginia Beach, Nicky became fast friends with a girl from Brooklyn who was on vacation with her family. Nicky even got to know the parents in the week that they were there. Super laid-back. The dad was an artist, the mother a music producer. Artsy types. Nicky hit it off with them.
“If you ever come to New York...”
So Nicky went to New York. Got in touch with her friend from Brooklyn. Bunked in with them for a week.
Then two.
The parents finally went, “Uh, you moving in?”
Her friend pleaded her case. There was trouble at home. Could Nicky stay a little longer? The parents said okay. And then, when it looked as though their patience was wearing thin, one of their daughter’s friends told Nicky she knew of a rich guy in Manhattan who was looking for some help and maybe she should go check him out?
And now, here she was.
At school, Nicky found it difficult paying attention. How did you focus on algebra and chemistry when one of the richest men in the country was pissed off with you because you weren’t crazy about giving hand jobs to UN officials, B-list actors, and museum board members? If only her teachers knew what was troubling her, the things she had on her mind. What an idiot she was, confiding in one of the other girls that she was coming around to the conclusion that Pritkin was kind of a sicko, that the things that went on in this fancy New York brownstone were very, very wrong. Against the law, even.
“What law?” asked her friend, who wanted everyone to call her Winona, like the actress, even though her real name was Barb.
“I don’t know, exactly,” Nicky said. “Pervert laws.”
Nicky said it would be creepy enough, the stuff Jeremy asked them to do. But when he pushed them to do it with his friends, these other important people, didn’t that kind of cross a line?
Winona was not convinced. “He treats us good,” she said. “You think you’d get this kind of money working at Arby’s? Anytime I need some cash, he gives it to me. And look at the people we get to meet! You know that director? Who was here last week? He told me I could be an actress. That I had what he called the look. He’s going to keep me in mind, case anything comes up that I might be good for.”
“He’s feeding you a line of bullshit.”
“I don’t think so. Look at me.” Winona tipped her head back, turned her face to the light. “Come on, check me out.”
“Maybe.”
“And the thing is, Mr. Pritkin is very special. He’s not like regular people, so the regular rules don’t apply to him.”
Nicky had heard all this before, and not only from Winona. Jeremy enjoyed talking about how he had been born with a superior genetic makeup. Just as some people could develop genetic diseases, there were others who could develop superior genetic characteristics. People like Michelangelo or Einstein or Gershwin or Lincoln. Gifted people.
Jeremy believed himself to be one of them, and allowances had to be made for particularly gifted people. The standard rules were not applicable.
“What makes him so special?” Nicky asked.
“Uh, look around?” Winona said. “This house? The people he knows? The things he’s done for them? You think an ordinary person could do all that?” Winona shook her head disapprovingly. “You better not be thinking of telling on Mr. Pritkin. That’d be really stupid. If you don’t like it here, leave. No one’s forcing you to stay. But don’t mess it up for the rest of us.”
After Jeremy had his little sit-down with Nicky, reminding her of her place in the power structure, she knew it was Winona who’d ratted her out.
Now Winona would be in his good books. Nicky needed to get back in there, too. What else was she going to do? She would tell him she’d made a mistake, that she was grateful for the lifestyle he’d given her.
Not that she really was sorry. But sometimes, there was shit you had to do to get by. This was one of those times. She knew that what Jeremy had said was true. She was a nothing. He had rich and powerful friends. If she ever decided to speak out, no one would believe her. Or if they did, they wouldn’t care.
Nicky had a plan. She would sneak up to his office — one time, when he’d had her accompany him up there, she had spotted the four-digit code he entered to unlock the door — and wait for him inside the Winnebago. Surprise him. Wear her highest heels. Jeremy had a thing about high heels, insisting all the women who worked in the house wear them. Like it was a Playboy club, said one of the kitchen staff, with Hugh Hefner in charge.
Nicky had no idea who Hugh Hefner was.