She peddled, and she lied, and she plied, and she seduced with a falsity that seemed so obvious to me it’s a wonder that anyone falls for it. Can’t men see she is just playing with them? Didn’t you realize the damage, the ravage, the travesty that is enacted, pulled off, executed by these women who are not women but are instead this other thing?
There was nothing innocent about the way she died except that she didn’t suspect it and that was my own sweet surprise. She just performed as usual, twisting her little toy up high into her vagina without guessing that there was anything different about it. Not an idea in her head that it would be her last night and that her minions, her army, her horde out there, alone in the dark, watching her, imagining that she was performing lust just for them, were seeing her for the last time. For the last time might be one of the saddest phrases I’ve ever written, don’t you think? For the last time…no, not there, I will not go there and not play that misery game where I try to remember the last time I felt your arms around me. You do not remember something you do not expect to lose. Lose. Life. Lost life. Her life lost. It wasn’t an easy end for her, you know, it wasn’t a sweet sleep death or a drifting but a jerking, painful sickening full of shit and stink and vomit and sweat death. Toward the end there was none of that vile purple lipstick left on her lips. And her hair wasn’t all wavy and soft and pretty anymore. She was not that lovely woman who was not a woman anymore, anyway. Not lovely. Lovely. Love.
You see how much I love you, don’t you? This worst thing I could do is the best thing I will ever do-prove to you what you are to me. I don’t feel any relief or happiness, but there is satisfaction and there is biblical justice and there is rightness. I don’t care if I am ever forgiven for this. Until you have lost someone you love you can’t understand how crippling emotional pain can be. And, oh, how I love you.
I didn’t think I was going to be able to watch her die, and certainly it wasn’t easy for me. It made me remember too much. But when the time came, I had to do it, because this I did for you.
Tuesday Seventeen days remaining
Eleven
Her eyes sparkled and there were snowflakes melting in her thick lashes. You always noticed her eyes first. They were a very light green, the color of a new spring leaf. But it was the way she looked at you, from under those lashes, in a surprisingly innocent and sensual way, that you remembered. It was incongruous. But then so much about Blythe was.
“God, it’s freezing outside,” she said as she dropped her leather backpack on the floor. Around her shoulders and flowing behind was an old-fashioned, green velvet cape. She unhooked it and took it off, revealing a pair of black trousers, a white tuxedo shirt and what looked like a real leopard vest, but I couldn’t be sure. A devotée of eclectic vintage clothing stores, Blythe put outfits together the way an artist mixes colors.
After draping her cape on the coat stand in the corner of my office, she sat down on the couch. Her movements were lithe and lovely.
“Is it okay if we don’t talk about my patients today? I need some help. I had a serious setback this week-it’s really affecting me badly,” Blythe said. Her voice was soft and sounded the way a rose petal feels. The sensuality subtle but unmistakable.
Blythe was a getting her Ph.D. in psychology at Columbia University and was specializing in sex therapy. It was not an unusual choice given her own problems. All too often we find that therapists are best at helping those whose problems somehow mirror their own. All psychologists starting out are supervised. Nina had liked Blythe enough to hire her to work in the clinic-a free service we run for a dozen or so patients who can’t pay our prices-and asked Simon Weiss, one of my closest friends and the senior therapist at the institute, to be her supervisor.
Simon had met with her once.
The next day he asked me out to lunch. After one session, he recognized that he was not the right therapist for Blythe. He was a forty-year-old man with a shaky marriage, and, despite his best efforts, he found Blythe provocative. When I saw her, I wasn’t surprised. After I heard what her issues were, I understood completely.
“What happened?” I asked.
Blythe squeezed her right hand with her left and her skin went white under the pressure. What she was doing was clearly painful. She repeated the action, and every time she did, I fought the urge to reach out and separate her hands.
“Blythe, it’s not going to help to punish yourself.”
“Punish?”
I nodded at her hands. She looked down. “I didn’t even know I was doing that.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I feel so helpless. I’ll be fine and then something will happen, just out of the blue, and I’ll feel like I’m in its grip all over again. I’ll want to go back online.”
“What happened this time?”
“A really well-known feminist e-mailed me. Someone I’ve looked up to my whole life. She’s writing a book about women who become sex workers in order to put themselves through school-how they cope with it, what it does to their social lives, how it changes or doesn’t affect their self-esteem. She wants to interview me for the book.”
“How did she find you? I thought you weren’t doing Webcam performances anymore.”
“I haven’t for five, six months. Apparently she saw me back then. My profile said I was a student. She’d kept my e-mail address, she said. The site gave out addresses that were forwarded to our personal e-mail. Anyway, she gave me her phone number and asked me to call.”
“How do you feel about that?”
Blythe clasped her hands together again, this time even more tightly. “I’m not sure. There are all kinds of reasons I want to do it. And all sorts of reasons I don’t. Just…just talking about talking about it…going back into that mind-set just a little while…” She shook her head and her blond curls fell in her face. She didn’t push them away. Why not? Her hair was clearly in her eyes. It should have bothered her.
“Blythe, when you were online, how did it feel to know that all those men were looking at you?”
“I wore a mask.” She clasped and then unclasped her hands again.
“A mask? Why? Didn’t you want them to see you?”
She lowered her head.
“Blythe?”
“I didn’t want to be recognized. There probably wasn’t much chance of that, but sometimes there are coincidences. Can you imagine if one of my professors…or another student-” She broke off and sat there looking down at her hands.
Blythe reminded me of the pre-Raphaelite painting on the cover of a book I had read about adolescent girls. The painter depicted Hamlet’s poor drowned Ophelia in a river, her hands by her sides, her hair floating around her shoulders; the only color in her pale face was her still-red lips.
“Do you still have the mask?”
She nodded.
“Have you worn it since you stopped going online?”
“Not until last night. I took it out after I spoke to her. Took it out and put it on and looked in the mirror for a long time and tried to see myself the way all those men must have seen me. After a few seconds, it was like I was looking at a stranger. As if I’d separated from myself.”
She curled her fingers into tight fists and frowned.
“What are you thinking? You look upset.”
Anger twisted her mouth.
“What is it?”
“What’s wrong with how I look?”
“Nothing.”
“You said I look upset. What does that mean? How does my face look?” Blythe’s anger excited me. We were getting somewhere.
“You seem to be upset about something. I can see it on your face.” I repeated the words that I thought had sparked her reaction.
She shook her head. “What’s wrong with your face? What’s wrong with your eyes? Why do you look different?” She was saying it all in a fake singsong voice and was clearly in distress.