"What happened?"
"Remember the new black girl I told you about?"
"Sooky?"
Tracy nodded. "She was over at the St. Moritz hitting up on a Jap. He had all the signs-diamond ring, Rolex, solid-gold lighter, the whole bit. So, comes time to go upstairs, Sooky's slobbering. Guy looks like Mr. Bucks. In the elevator she's already tasting the score, maybe thinking how she can screw Diana out of most of it." Tracy laughed.
"I know what's coming." Gelsey stepped out of the stream of hot water, started to soap up.
"Do you, now?"
"He was a plant. He worked for the hotel."
Tracy gazed at her through the spray. "How come you're so smart?" "You said it was a lulu. Anyway, the guy sounded too good to be true."
"Sometimes you'll meet a Mr. Bucks like that."
Gelsey gazed back. "Sure. Like Kirstin did, remember? Remember what that cost her?"
Tracy turned away. "I'll never forget."
"Diana wants you never to forget. That was the point of the exercise.
After that night I knew I had to quit. It was either fight or flight, so I flew." Gelsey stepped back under the showerhead and stood still, allowing the spray to rinse away the soap. "What happened with Sooky?
The house dick bust her?" She looked down at the foam swirling around her feet.
Tracy nodded. "He found her KO kit, took her in, but first Sooky called Diana from the hotel. Diana called Thatcher. Thatcher met Sooky at Central Booking. He got her out that night, which was too bad for Sooky because Diana was totally pissed. Thatcher gets a grand and a half for a night call like that, so soon as Sooky shows up at the apartment, Diana starts slapping her around. ' slut!
Cunt!" You know how crazy she gets. Then she fined her Thatcher's fee.
Which means Sooky'll be working free the next two weeks."
After they dried off, dressed and groomed themselves, they went downstairs to the snack bar for lunch. The place, low-ceilinged with a sleek, sterile look, was crowded, filled with healthy-looking young people, most dressed in workout clothes or sweats.
There were mirrors down there, too, behind the service counter and along the wall opposite the windows. Mirrors to pose before. Mirrors to admire oneself in. Mirrors to check out a stranger's butt. Mirrors everywhere-mirrors and reflections. Sometimes Gelsey thought she would scream if she saw one more cheap, stupid mirror.
"How long're you going to stay with her, Tracy?" Tracy picked a piece of watercress out of her salad. "I wish I could quit," she said without looking up.
"Do it! Walk out. Adi6s."
"Sure. Then what?" Tracy gestured toward a girl in an apron taking an order at another table. "Waitress? Bank teller? Squirt toilet water at old ladies in Lord amp; Taylor? There're all sorts of shitty jobs." Tracy shook her head. ', Gelsey, I don't have anywhere else to go."
"Ever think about going back to school?"
"You mean college?" Tracy bugged her eyes. "First I'd have to get my equivalency. Meantime, who'd pay the rent?"
Gelsey stared at her avocado. She had no answer for Tracy. "Listen to what you're saying. You're saying you're trapped. "
"Damn right!" Tracy's eyes turned fierce. "You just don't get it, do you?"
"Oh, I get it."
"Uh-uh, no, you don't. Because you've got another career. You go after marks just for fun. And you own your own place, too." Tracy arched her eyebrows. "Wherever it happens to be.'? She stared into Gelsey's eyes.
"I'll know when you've accepted me, Gelsey-when you ask me over for a drink."
Gelsey acknowledged Tracy's hurt. "I'm sorry about that. I told you, I've got problems."
"Who doesn't? But you gotta admit it's a barrier. We're supposed to be friends. But I don't rate enough to know your phone number or even your address."
"It's not a question of how you rate."
"What is it, then? Personal privacy? Screw that! ' I got none. Diana's on my back about everything, controlling everything. Like we all belong to her. Like we're all her… you know, slaves."
"Well-?"
Tracy finished off her fruit juice. "Think I don't know it? You were one, too, before you ran away. So, how's it feel to be free, girl?
Lucky you!"
"Try it sometime. You'll like it," Gelsey said gently.
They parted on the street. Traffic was heavy on upper Broadway. Gelsey saw bits of herself reflected in chrome parts on rapidly passing cars.
"Same time next Friday?" Tracy asked.
Gelsey nodded. "It's fun to work out with you."
"Except for the gripe session afterwards, right?" Tracy beamed, then glanced at her watch. "Shit! I'm late. Diana'll kill me." The two young women embraced.
"Take care," Gelsey said, and then, after Tracy flagged a cab: "Score big! Good luck!"
Mirrors: There were so many on Broadway, Gelsey couldn't have avoided them if she'd tried. They surrounded shop windows, or, narrow and vertical, were set in the panels between stores. Stainless surfaces, hubcaps, buildings with skins made of metal or glass-sometimes the whole man-made world seemed to consist of reflections and fleeting surfaces.
Nature, too, provided mirrors-puddles, lakes, pools of still water.
Gelsey knew there was hardly a place on earth where one could not turn and find a double of oneself.
Mirrors: at times they seemed to swallow her being, suck her deep into their world of reverse. She knew she should regard them as her friends, for they offered her a place to hide. She recognized that they could be her enemies, too. The things she saw in them were frightening, terrifying sometimes.
Dr. Zimmerman's office was in a Victorian brownstone on a shady, quiet street between Columbus and Central Park West. Gelsey walked there from the health club, ever watchful, wary of running into someone she might have hit on in a bar.
That was the risk she ran whenever she ventured into Manhattan-not robbery or rape, but recognition by a mark. Her wigs provided some disguise, but there were men, she knew, who would never forget her eyes.
A confrontation with one could be disastrous. Whenever she walked the streets she was on her guard.
There were two buttons marked "Zimmerman" on the panel. The upper one rang in the doctor's residence; the lower one alerted him in his ground-floor consulting room. She pressed the. lower one then waited, nervous, hand poised on the doorknob, because Dr. Zimmerman had a singular response to entreaties to enter his domain. He would first ring back fast, so quickly a visitor would barely have time to push open the door. Then, after several seconds (maddeningly, the interval varied), he would send forth a second, longer peal, which would echo in the visitor's ears long after entry.
Gelsey always tried to make it in on the first buzz, but she rarely succeeded. This bell game, as she thought of it, was a strange little quirk on the doctor's part that either irritated her or warmed her heart, depending on her mood.
"Hello, Gelsey!" Dr. Zimmerman spoke her name even before he craned his head into the little waiting room. Today he was feeling affable; sometimes his greeting was more restrained.
Gelsey rose and followed him into his office. She detested the waiting room, with its bland wallpaper and disheveled magazines, some of which she'd seen grow ragged over the year she'd been in treatment. But she hated the room most for the tawdry dime-store mirror on its wall, provided, she supposed, for patients who needed to compose themselves after particularly intense sessions of psychotherapy.
Dr. Zimmerman's office, however, was something else, an extraordinary world. Gelsey loved it on account of his collection of artifacts of primitive cultures mounted on the walls. African ritual objects made of wood and copper; Oceanian fetish items; Native American headdresses; an array of African and South Sea island masks. "Totem and taboo, mirrors of the unconscious self-that's what they're all about," Dr. Z would say, sweeping his arm expansively, his gray goatee wiggling.