Текст книги "Cam Girl"

Автор книги: Leah Raeder

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“You don’t give up on someone you love. I learned that from you.”

The meanness in me rose, and I let it loose.

“All you learned from me,” I said, “is how to be a fucking doormat.”

Her eyes glossed with tears. If she started crying I was going to cry, too, because I didn’t mean this. I hated hurting her. But I couldn’t do this again. Not when I still hadn’t put all the pieces of me back together.

To my surprise, she said, “Fuck you.”

Then she started laughing, that sweet voice turning bitter.

“Vada, you’re so full of it. You lash out when you’re hurt and scared. I know you. You didn’t become some total stranger just because you’re camming. And this?” She pressed her palm to the center of my chest. “This is probably the hardest your heart’s beaten in months. The most alive you’ve felt.”

I swatted her hand away, but she grabbed my wrist.

“You’re right. I can be a doormat sometimes.” Ellis leaned close enough that I could feel her breath. “But at least I’m not a coward.”

I was weak. I was weak and I touched her, because my hands were shaking so hard I thought my bones would crack, that I’d crumble inside. They snapped to her shoulders. Before I could stop myself I shoved her to the cabin wall, knocking her breathless. She grasped the neck of my shirt but I held her down.

“It’s so fucking easy for you,” I hissed into her face. “You know exactly who you are. Exactly who you want.”

“It’s not that simple.”

I thumped her shoulders against the wall. “Who the fuck do you think you are, calling me a coward? Because I don’t fit into some neat category? This relationship has always been easy for you. You never struggled with it.”

“You don’t know what I struggled with.”

“Not this. And I hated it. I hated how disappointed you were when I got scared. I hated the way people assumed things about me. Sometimes I even hated you, too.”

Air rushed through her bared teeth and she twisted my collar, pulled my face closer, and I knew it was going to happen again, just like that night.

Then Dane was in the doorway, giving a time-out whistle.

“Hey,” he said. “No blood on my carpet. I just had it steamed.”

We stumbled away from each other. My limbs tingled, numb with adrenaline.

Ellis hung her head, glanced at Dane, then whirled around and left us in the cabin.

“What the hell was that?” he said.

I smoothed my shirt and gave him a dry smile. “Just catching up.”

Incoming video call from BigDeezy.

ACCEPT.

“Hi, baby.”

BigDeezy: clothes off

Okay then. All business.

I took them off dutifully, but without rushing. Tossed my hair, slid my palms up my chest to cup my breasts and massage them. “What should I call you, Big?”

BigDeezy: Mark

“Hi, Mark.” For a second I thought of that B movie The Room and tried not to snicker. “Are you feeling naughty tonight?”

BigDeezy: get on your hands and knees

BigDeezy: ass to the camera

He knew what he wanted.

I positioned myself, glancing back over my shoulder. Ran a hand over my butt and gave a light slap. On-screen I looked like every generic tan piece of ass ever, a pink slit of pussy, anonymous. Interchangeable.

BigDeezy: jiggle it

BigDeezy: faster

BigDeezy: put a tie on

BigDeezy: pull it from behind

BigDeezy: moan

BigDeezy: louder

Camming was usually more complex than this. Men wanted to get off, obviously, but if they only wanted to get off there was an Internet full of free porn out there. What camming offered was companionship. A dialogue. Interaction. Even if it was illusory, it fulfilled some social need.

Men like Mark didn’t want companionship, though. They wanted a living doll. Something to pose and fuck and discard. It was more a power fantasy for him than an erotic one.

These strictly pornographic sessions depressed me. Mark was never impolite, but he was utterly impersonal. It was a relief when the chat ended.

My next request popped up immediately.

Incoming video call from RicanLover.

Any ethnic reference in a username gave me pause. Clients were usually respectful, even appreciative. Once a guy paid to chat in Spanish for an hour and told me about his extended family in San Juan. He called me Boricua and said I was a dusk flower blooming. He paid me to get him off, too, of course, but it was nice, unexpected, that little wire of human connection, a bright filament threading across the digital void.

But sometimes they just wanted an outlet for their darkness.

I could always cut the session short if it was some creep.

ACCEPT.

The client wasn’t one, but two guys. They’d paid to transmit video to me. Broad chests in lettered hoodies. Frat bros, both grinning in a dimly lit bedroom. One clutched a can of PBR.

“Hi guys,” I said. “Two for one. Lucky me.”

They chuckled, nudging each other. They mumbled, but their mic didn’t pick it up clearly. Their eyes shone.

I could see they’d need some coaxing.

“You boys look excited.” I ran a hand over the bra I’d put back on. “I love sexy college men. Do you want to double-team me?”

“You speak English?” Beer Can said.

A hitch in my pulse. Don’t judge yet. “Yes.”

“Cool. So do we.”

They laughed again.

Bad vibes.

I scrutinized the room. Pinup posters. Red Sox pennant. University of Massachusetts sweater hanging on the back of a chair.

Bingo.

I smiled. “So you guys go to UMass? That’s cool. Do you have friends at Harvard? MIT?”

“Hey,” Beer Can said, leaning forward, “we’re not paying you to talk.”

The other guy—Lacoste, I mentally dubbed him, spotting his polo collar—jostled his friend. “Sorry,” he said to me. “He’s been drinking. We’d like a show, okay?”

I played up the striptease, feeling them out, but they were quiet now, respectful. Off came the bra. When I squeezed my breasts together and groaned, Beer Can took a long sip. His eyes stared over the rim, mesmerized.

Lacoste smiled. “You’re fucking hot.”

“Caliente,” Beer Can said, and giggled.

Lacoste elbowed him. “Hey . . . Morgan. I was wondering something.”

“What’s that, baby?”

“Do you have, like, other outfits?”

“I’ve got plenty. What are you looking for?”

“Like a . . . maid’s outfit.”

Beer Can snorted.

“A French maid?” I said cautiously.

“Sure, whatever.”

“Yeah, I’ve got one of those. You boys mind hanging on a minute? I’ll play something to get you warmed up.”

They nodded, all grins.

I launched a video clip for them—me deep-throating a dildo—and went to my wardrobe. By the time the clip ended I was dressed in a white-laced black babydoll and knee-high stockings, sitting on the bed.

“Oh, fuck yeah,” Lacoste said. “Damn, that’s hot.”

I struck poses—bending over to the floor, rubbing an imaginary speck of dirt off the bedpost—and let myself zone out, feeling as if the costume did the work for me. Like it was the body, not me. Every now and then I touched the bracelet on my wrist like a lucky charm.

“Hey . . . Morgan.”

Lacoste perched on the edge of his seat, watching me avidly. Beer Can sprawled back spread-legged, his erection jutting against his track pants.

“Yeah, baby?”

“I was wondering if you could . . . man, this is going to sound weird.” Lacoste cleared his throat.

“Go ahead. You can ask me anything.”

“It’s kind of personal.”

“No judgment here.”

“All right. When I was a kid, growing up, my parents had a maid. Named Luisa.” He shifted in his chair. “She was hot. Really hot. I used to fantasize about her.”

I looked at him encouragingly.

“Can I call you Luisa?”

“Sure.”

“Cool. So like . . . I used to jerk off to you, Luisa. In my bedroom. While you were downstairs vacuuming.”

I leaned over and ran a palm across the mattress as if pushing a vacuum.

“Fuck yeah. Just like that.” Lacoste sucked air through his teeth. “I’d squirt in my socks, right before you did the laundry. So it would get on your hands.”

“Naughty boy.” I rubbed a hand between my thighs.

Lacoste began to rock in his chair, as if touching himself. Beer Can watched me silently.

“Luisa?” Lacoste said.

“Yeah, baby?”

“Would you like to come . . . clean my house? And watch me jerk off?”

God, some men. “Sure. I’d like that.”

“Yeah?” Lacoste rocked faster. “Would you watch me jerk off into a sock?”

“Sure, baby.”

“You would?”

“Of course.”

“And then would you let me slap you in the face with it? Could I slap you in the face with my come-filled sock, you spic whore?”

Lacoste leaned back from the laptop and snapped a sock at the screen. Beer Can burst into high-pitched laughter.

Red.

I saw actual, literal red.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I grabbed the laptop, wishing it were him. “Huh? This is what gets you off, spewing racist shit at a woman?”

“Woman?” Lacoste said. “Woman? Do you see a woman?”

“Nah,” Beer Can said. “Just an island monkey sticking her ass up to get fucked.”

“God, look at her face,” Lacoste said.

“You pathetic sacks of shit.” Run up the clock. Pay me to rant at you, dumb fucks. “You’re a joke. Fucking privileged white boys, intimidated by women. You think I haven’t heard shit like this before? Get the fuck off my planet.”

“Whoa, whoa,” Lacoste said. “Calm down, mamacita. Or we’ll come over there and calm you down. You like getting double-teamed, right?”

“In the real world, you could never touch a woman like me.”

“In the real world, I pay sluts like you to do what I want.”

“You think paying me gives you the right to spew this fucking garbage? You think you can buy a license to abuse a human being? You’re the fucking cancer in this world. Entitled little shits like you.”

“Where do you live, Luisa? I’ll pay you to suck my dick. No lie.” He pulled out a money clip, a fat wad of bills. “Then you can wash my socks.”

“You’re paying me right now to make an ass of yourself.”

Beer Can smirked. “We can find you.”

“No, you can’t, you fucking troglodyte.”

“We’re tracing you right now. We’re coming for you, Luisa.”

DISCONNECT.

I sat back on the bed, fuming.

There was no danger of being found. Before I started camming, Frankie coached me on safety and anonymity. No identifying objects in the room. No sports team or college memorabilia. Never mention any place you’ve gone to school or worked. And on the off chance someone might recognize me on the street, I had a region ban in place. No one in the state of Maine could view my cam.

There was no physical danger. Only psychological.

The first rule of camming, Frankie said, was to protect yourself. Always be safe. You are the product, the service, the whole business. Value it. Value your time, yourself. Don’t compromise for a few extra bucks. They were never worth it in the long run.

But I always learned things the hard way.

Each stroke of the oars painted silver moonlight across the ocean. My mouth was salty from brine and my own sweat. Hair in wet coils like kelp. Dip, pull, lift. As long as I kept rowing, the pain couldn’t settle. Be a moving target.

I hit a sandbar, the skiff wedging firmly into place, and jumped out. My shoes filled with seawater. Plenty of starlight to see by, and a shim of moon.

His house was the highest on the hill. Well after midnight, it still radiated gold and warmth into the island dark. I leaned against a tree trunk, watching.

Max was restless. He never stayed in a room longer than half an hour. Often he paced, or played musical chairs with himself, as if, like me, he couldn’t stay long in one position before the pain grew unbearable.

But tonight I watched, and watched, and saw nothing. All the lights were on, hurricane lamps on the porch, candles in a bedroom. Not once did his silhouette cross them.

A disturbing thought entered my head.

If he was lying in a warm bath with his veins open or swaying from a garage rafter, I’d be the only person in the world who’d know.

I hiked uphill.

The house was hedged with bushes, grass grown wild. I waded through a sea of spines and thorns. Garage door open, nothing inside but boxes, the remains of eighteen birthdays and Christmases. Max spent hours touching the dumbbells, the electric guitar, things coated with dust and the oil of his son’s skin. I knew that ritual. I kept a duffel bag full of Elle’s old T-shirts, heady with camphor from vaping. I could close my eyes and inhale and feel the warmth of her body again, a breath away from mine.

He wasn’t anywhere on the first floor. Open rooms paneled with white wood, empty save for candle-thrown shadows. I tried the rear door. Unlocked.

I froze at the crack of a branch.

The yard swam with dark but a shape moved against it, a deeper darkness.

“Looking for me?”

He walked into the corona of light. Still scruffy, thinner now than when we first met, tanned. Frayed tee, salt-bleached jeans. Something glinted at his side.

I waited, motionless, as he came up the steps.

“Max,” I said tensely.

We both looked at his hand. At the gun that hung there, as if forgotten.

“Oh.”

He checked the safety and tucked it into his jeans. I exhaled. Max patted my good arm.

“You look beat. Want a beer?”

“God, yes.”

I waited on the porch, sprawling in an Adirondack chair frosted with mold. At my feet rusted garden tools lay abandoned. Weeds crept through the wood slats. This place was a graveyard.

Max brought two bottles of Shipyard and took the chair beside mine. We clinked and drank.

“Thanks for not shooting me,” I said.

He rolled his shoulders. “Sorry about that.”

“Didn’t know you were into guns.”

“It’s for home defense.” He took a long sip, staring out into the trees. “The police just returned it. They had it in an evidence locker.”

I swirled my bottle, frowning.

“I went out to shoot, but couldn’t bring myself to fire. It’s the last thing he touched.”

We glanced at each other. The name drifted between us, unspoken.

Ryan.

All this time I’d spent avoiding Ellis, I’d been growing close to Max Vandermeer.

He didn’t work anymore. He lived on savings, passed time tinkering with his yacht or pacing the house, wearing the wood floors velvety. I caught hints of his old life. Blueprints for boats. Samples of fiberglass and metal. Shipbuilding engineer. He’d made enough money to own a mansion on a summer tourist island. Once there was a woman in the house, and I’d rowed away without a word. I never saw her there again. The Ex-Girlfriend.

My psychiatrist had wanted me to process my losses, to heal. I didn’t want to process anything. I’d kept my eyes closed and my wounds open and dumped my shrink. Max was my therapist now, and I was his.

He told me about the islands: how Peaks, where he lived, used to have theaters and hotels lining the gaslit boardwalk, until one by one the buildings burned down. In World War II it became a military bunker, with a huge gun battery built to shoot down enemy ships. But the guns were never fired and then they were taken apart, and in the decades since, the island had edged back toward wildness.

Like you, I thought, studying him. His beard was all gold and bronze brambles, his skin sun-chapped, rough. Sometimes when I looked at him I remembered a man bringing birthday presents when I was little. A dash of blond hair, an elusive, slinky laugh. A silhouette in the door, always leaving.

I wondered if Max still glanced up when a shadow fell across the floor and thought, before he remembered, Ryan.

“Ever feel like he’s still here?” I said.

“Every day.”

I flexed my bad hand. My phantom hand, I thought sometimes. There but not really. Like Elle was still here, but not really. Not part of me anymore.

“Do you talk to him?” I balanced the beer on my knee. Rowing wrecked my dexterity for the day. “Sometimes I talk to her. Out loud, like a crazy person.”

“That’s not crazy.”

“It is when I answer for her.”

He eyed me, concerned. “Something happen?”

“She’s back. She got a job where I work.” I kicked a foot against the railing. “It’s like a dream and a nightmare both come true. Every night I’ve prayed for this, and when it happens the first thing I feel is resentment. Anger, honestly. There’s something wrong with me.”

“It’s not wrong. You can miss someone without missing the way they hurt you.”

“Did Ryan hurt you?”

He took another sip.

“What did he do, Max?”

“Signed up for the Marines. Despite all my pleading and begging. You’d never know it from the trophies, but he hated playing ball. Could’ve had his pick of minor league teams. He threw it away to get shot at in the desert.”

“Why?”

“Destructive impulse.” Max was watching me now. “Sometimes people set themselves up to be hurt by a situation, instead of hurting themselves directly. To absolve the blame.”

I peered into my bottle. “If he really wanted to be a marine, you should’ve supported him. Even if you didn’t believe it was for the best.”

“I couldn’t support my son throwing his life away.”

“You sound like my mom.”

“Then your mom loves you.”

I put the bottle down, hard. “Part of loving someone is wanting them to be happy, even if it hurts you.”

“You’re right. You’re right, of course. I suppose that means I was a bad father.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

He drained his beer.

“Max, I didn’t say you were a bad father.”

Now his eyes held a too-bright luster. Shit.

He stood and so did I.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

He flung the screen door open. And I did something I’d never had the balls to do.

Followed him in.

“Wait. Max.”

He strode through the house and I chased and when he stopped suddenly in a dark hall, we collided. His arms locked around me. My back touched the wall.

“Wait,” I said again, in a different tone.

Warm breath on my face, beery. He was much stronger than he looked and I smelled the sea on him, salt water and sun-wrought sweat. I’d hugged him before but it was always brief and reserved. Not like this. I breathed fast, my chest touching his. Heat seeped into my skin. And crazily, I felt something. Something I should not be feeling for this man.

“Let me go,” I said.

He took a step back. “I’m sorry. I thought—maybe I’m not ready for this.”

Talking about Ryan, I thought, or this?

No. This was not happening.

I turned and fingers grazed my shoulder blade. I stood there not breathing as his hand ran lightly up my neck and cupped the nape.

It was so strange, I realized. He was the first man who’d touched me this way since Raoul. And that was years ago. Entire years of my life.

“Max,” I whispered. “What are you doing?”

His hand fell. A candle flickered somewhere, skimmed the edges of our faces with fire.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’m not thinking straight.”

“It’s okay. I’m not, either.” I shifted my weight, uncomfortable. “We’re both emotional right now. And slightly drunk.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you. I know you prefer women.”

I cringed. “What? No.”

“You and Ellis—”

“That’s nothing. It’s just . . . it’s whatever.” Now I felt totally off-kilter. “Look, I should get going. Let’s not make this weird.”

I didn’t want to think about this. The way it felt to be touched by a man.

Max watched me walk toward the kitchen. His eyes were different on me now. Not fatherly.

When I reached the door he said, “Hold on. Please.”

He stepped into another room, returned with a folio. Flipped through papers. I watched the muscle curl and knot in his arms and made myself look away.

“This might not be the best time, but I wanted to go over this with you. You had a chance to look at these yet?”

“At what?”

He laid the folio on the table. “The black box reports. From the cars.”

My eyes went to the papers, then back to his face, slowly. “No. Why would I? Why are you?”

“Got a lot of spare time. And a lot of need for closure.” He shrugged. “It gives me a reason to stay sober. But there’s something off.”

“What?”

Max gazed at the table. “If you tell me, I won’t hold it against you. I promise you that.”

Shit.

“Tell you what?”

“Who was driving your car.”

“I was, Max. Like I told the police.”

“That’s what you said.” He tapped a sheet. “But these say something else.”

Our eyes met. The air between us pulsed like an invisible heart.

“I’ve never lied to you,” I said.

“I believe you, Vada. But I don’t believe you’ve told me the whole truth.”

This was my chance. The window would never be this open.

If you tell me, I won’t hold it against you.

Except Elle was back, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to throw everything away now.

“I have to go.”

“Vada—”

“See you around.”

I stepped onto the porch. Let the screen door slam, took the steps in one leap. When my shoes hit the dirt I started jogging, and by the time I reached the road, it was a full-out run.