“Like you don’t fantasize and masturbate,” she would say, and wait for me to admit that I did.
“We can study for our test while we wait around across from the hotel,” I said.
“While we wait around? Really, Emmie,” she said, taking on that superior I’m more sophisticated look, “I don’t think we’ll be studying much in the street.”
“As long as it’s something,” I said.
“You just want your lie to seem like less,” she muttered, and shook her head, holding on to that arrogant look of superiority.
However, if I were pressed to answer, I would have to admit she was right. I knew anyone would think it was crazy to be so nervous about going a little more uptown and watching the entrance of a hotel to catch a glimpse of my notorious sister. I wasn’t going off to some friend’s house to smoke pot or something, and I wasn’t going off to have sex with a boy. Anyone else would laugh at my anxiety, but once I had made up my mind and committed to going, I could barely listen to my teachers in my classes or even to the other girls when we broke for lunch.
I could feel Chastity’s eyes on me all day. She was anticipating me changing my mind, and I knew how much of a disappointment it would be. Every chance she got when we were alone, she brought up my sister. I had to admit that some of the questions she asked I often asked myself, like how do you make love with any man just because he pays you? How do you get past the ugly, smelly ones?
“Does she close her eyes and imagine she’s with someone else? Does she have to pretend she likes them, enjoys them, even appreciates them? How does she prevent diseases, and does she ever worry a man will hurt her? How can she like herself after doing all this? Could she ever fall in love and have a family? Just have a real romance? Or has this life made it impossible?”
On the other hand, both of us admitted to believing that there was something exotic about being in an escort service.
“Does she really make a lot of money? Where does she go? Do they take her on expensive trips all over the world? Who buys her clothes and pays for her apartment? How often does she have to work, if you can call that work?”
These and other questions circled my head like gnats. Sometimes I wanted to put my hands over my ears and shout, “Stop!”
When we were in school, we’d whisper these questions to each other. Usually, we’d even whisper them when we were talking on the telephone. It was as if we believed my father had our phones tapped.
At least Chastity had been true to her word and not told anyone else about Roxy, and if we were talking about her in the girls’ room or outside the school and someone else came near us, she would clam up. I didn’t think it was just because she was being loyal and faithful to me. I think she would be jealous of anyone else sharing our secret. It gave her a sense of superiority over some of the girls who looked down on her. She knew about someone who was really into sex, so she had a way of knowing things the other girls would never know.
Many of the things she said and the questions she asked often embarrassed me, however. She had a copy of the Kama Sutra that she had gotten down in the Village. It had all sorts of drawings and photographs in it. If Papa ever knew I even looked at it, he would be as enraged at me as he had been with Roxy. Every time Chastity showed me something, she asked if Roxy would do this or that.
“I have no idea,” I told her. “How would I? You know as much about her now as I do.”
“I tried practicing this,” she would tell me, pointing to a sexual position. “Your sister probably knows all about this.”
I always changed the subject when she became that graphic, but today I was determined that Roxy would be the subject no matter what. I could feel the determination harden up in me. No more excuses, no more procrastination. Today is really the day, I thought.
As soon as the final bell rang, we looked at each other with anticipation and then walked out of the building. I tried to appear as natural and as normal as ever, even though my heart threatened to pound a hole out of my chest. Some of the girls wanted us to join them in the park and then maybe walk down to Bergdorf Goodman to annoy saleswomen with our questions about new styles and clothes we weren’t ever going to buy. I had my excuses ready. Chastity and I were going to my house to study and help my mother prepare a French dish for dinner, Terrine de Saumon aux Epinards-Riz. I could pronounce it perfectly, of course, which gave my fib authority. The story was that my mother was teaching us how to cook French food and make French pastries.
“What for? I’m having a maid and a cook when I get married,” Carol Lee Benson said. She had a way of widening her nostrils when she wanted to show us how special she thought she was.
“Ditto that,” Dawn Miller added. Dawn had a perpetually bored look on her face, no matter what we discussed, but that was her way of appearing cool and superior.
“It’s very educational, and besides, it’s fun,” Chastity piped up.
“Fun? French food should be a controlled substance for you. If you don’t lose twenty pounds, you’ll be hired as a blimp to advertise dog food,” Cathy Starling said, and they all laughed. Cathy loved being sarcastic.
When Chastity’s face blanched, her lips nearly disappeared.
Dawn grabbed my arm and pulled me closer to whisper. “If you don’t stop hanging out with Chubs there, you’ll never have a boyfriend in this school,” she said. “She’s like a male repellent.”
I pulled my arm out of her grasp. “We’ve got to go,” I said as sharply as Papa could, and we marched out of the building to the background of their laughter.
“They so immature,” Chastity offered in her own defense.
I knew how sensitive she was about her weight, but I also knew that she wasn’t doing much about it, and her parents weren’t helping by ignoring the situation. Only her younger sister, Faye, ever said anything, usually only when they had an argument.
We walked faster.
“I’m going on a diet soon,” Chastity finally added. She looked to me, and I nodded. “You probably thought they were right. You don’t have to pretend you don’t.”
“Stop it, Chas. Of course you should lose some weight. You’ll feel better about yourself. But there’s no reason for them to be so damn nasty just because we’re not doing what they want us to do when they want us to do it.”
“Right,” Chastity said. She looked relieved. However, when we passed the pastry shop, I saw the napoleons and tarts draw her attention like eye magnets.
“Keep walking,” I said. She laughed, but disappointment dripped from her lips.
When we reached the corner where the Hotel Beaux-Arts was, I stopped. I had gone by the hotel twice before but without pausing. I was practically in a run each time, not sure what terrified me more, the prospect of seeing Roxy or my father somehow finding out. I had time, however, to scout the area across from the hotel’s front entrance and knew that we could safely hang out by the bus stop.
I began to feel foolish almost as soon as we stopped there and focused on the front of Roxy’s hotel.
“I don’t know why I wanted us to do this. It’s dumb. It’s like waiting to catch a glimpse of a rock star.”
“Relax. We haven’t even been here a minute,” Chastity said.
“Even if we’re lucky and see her come out or go in, I can’t guarantee I’ll recognize her.”
“You will,” she said confidently.
I looked at her. Now that we were there and actually doing it, I wondered how this could be of any real excitement to her. Roxy wasn’t her long-lost sister. What did she really hope to get out of it? Did she fantasize, as I often had, that Roxy would see us standing there and call us to her? Would she take us to her apartment and tell us all about her escort experiences, revealing sexual exploits beyond anything either of us could imagine? Would she tell us things no mother or school nurse would ever tell us about our own bodies? Would she, as Chastity hoped, explain some of the things Chastity had shown me in her copy of the Kama Sutra? I’m sure Chastity
was dreaming that we would both become sophisticated women overnight, and there would be such an air of maturity about us that our girlfriends would gape at us with surprise and envy. No one would ever criticize her for being heavy again. Boys would see all of this in us and be very attracted.
And what about the men Roxy met? Were some of them famous and powerful? Would she have all sorts of inside stories to tell us? Did Chastity envision Roxy giving us some secret information or clever advice about men, something that would suddenly make us more attractive and interesting to the boys at school, especially the older boys?
Was this what excited her? All of this fantasy? Was I a victim of my imagination, too?
I opened my social-studies textbook.
“You’re not really going to start asking me questions about that social-studies stuff, are you?” Chastity asked, tweaking her nose as if the textbook stank.
“We’ll get bored quickly if we don’t do something else,” I warned.
“Not me. Besides, that stuff bores me. Wait. A taxi’s stopping in front of the hotel.”
I held my breath and watched the driver get out and go to the trunk of the car. The doorman rushed forward to greet whoever was stepping out of the cab. It turned out to be an elderly man with a cane. He wore a black suit and had thin gray hair growing in puffs along the sides of his head. I thought he must have been at Theodore Roosevelt’s inauguration. He looked that old. The taxi driver handed his luggage to the doorman.
Both of us felt deflated.
“At least we know it’s a real hotel,” Chastity said.
“Of course it’s a real hotel. Why? What else did you think it might be?”
She shrugged, but I realized that Chastity didn’t really believe my sister was some elegant and sophisticated escort. She was thinking like my father. She was thinking we would find nothing much more than a prostitute. Maybe we wouldn’t find someone who would hang out on one of the avenues hawking herself for business under the supervision of some pimp, but we would find a prostitute nevertheless.
I realized it was purely the kinky sexual aspect of all this that interested and fascinated Chastity after all. Learning how my sister became an escort and what her life was really like wasn’t important. She wanted to hear or see something purely pornographic. I suppose I couldn’t blame her. What else did she expect from me? Who else would have admitted to having a sister like mine and admit that she had been thrown out of our home and our family?
“Why did you finally decide to come up here today?” Chastity asked. “Why is today so special? Is it her birthday or something?”
“No. No special reason. I just did.”
She pulled in the right corner of her mouth so hard that it ballooned her cheek.
“I mean, what makes you think she would be going out this time of the day, anyway? Do you know something about her schedule or something? Did you find out something you never told me?”
I shook my head. What was I going to say? I had no reason for us to be there at that particular time except for the fact that it was when I could find a way to do it, a way to fool my father.
“You’re right,” she said after another few seconds. “This is dumb. We should come here at night sometime or maybe just before she would go out to dinner or something, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know. I guess this is silly. She could walk right by us without me knowing.”
“You don’t even have a relatively recent picture of her?”
“Nothing after she was fifteen or sixteen. Pictures of her when she was younger are buried in boxes in a closet.”
She nodded and thought. “Your sister must have done something awfully terrible to have her own parents throw her out when she was that young. What did she do, exactly? Did she get pregnant? Get caught stealing?”
“From what I know, it wasn’t just one thing but an accumulation of things.”
“Yeah,” Chastity said, but with disappointment. I knew she was hoping for some juicy story.
We both came to attention when a black limousine pulled up. The woman who stepped out was young and attractive, but she wasn’t Roxy.
“Not my sister,” I quickly said when Chastity looked at me.
“You sure? You just said you might not be able to recognize her.”
“I’m sure.”
We watched the woman enter the hotel. The doorman nearly fell over himself getting the door opened for her. Even from where we were standing, we could see how he lit up.
“Okay,” Chastity said after another ten minutes, during which I read some more of my social-studies unit. “This is very stupid. Let’s go.”
I had expected her to say that eventually, but not this quickly. The novelty of what we were doing was rapidly losing its hold on her attention, and I suspected that she had not stopped thinking about those napoleons and tarts we’d passed in the bakery window.
There was no weather threat to drive us away, either. The day itself had actually grown warmer as the afternoon grew older. I had heard there was an unusual warm front on the way. More people were out on the streets. Some of the men had taken off their jackets and walked with them folded over their arms. Women wore light clothing, many with no jackets and definitely no sweaters. Most of the small restaurants and cafés had their windows open. Those that could had tables and chairs out on the sidewalk.
“Another fifteen minutes, maybe,” I said.
“You want to stay longer?”
“I don’t know. I guess we can wait a little longer, since we came here anyway.”
Her face brightened with an idea. “Why can’t you just go in there and ask for her?”
“Are you nuts?”
“She won’t tell your father you were here, right? From what you’ve said, they haven’t spoken for years, so what’s the difference? C’mon. We’re wasting time, and at least we’ll know if she’s here now or not.”
“No, I can’t do that, Chastity.”
“Why not?”
“I guess we’ll just leave,” I said. I closed my book and put it into my book bag.
“What a drag this was,” she muttered. “I can’t believe how you wasted our time.”
Just as we started away, however, I saw Roxy come out of the hotel. I didn’t speak, but Chastity realized I had stopped short, and when she looked at me, she saw the expression on my face. She gazed at Roxy, too.
“Her?”
“Yes,” I said, my heart thumping. Would she see me? She didn’t even look our way. She turned and started down the avenue. She wore a dark blue beret and had her shoulder-length hair pinned on the sides but falling straight down the back of her neck. She was dressed in an elegant dark blue designer suit, the skirt about mid-calf and tight at her hips.
Although it had been so long since I had seen her and my recollections of her were understandably vague, studying her pictures in the closet whenever I could sneak in and the resemblance she had to Mama made it easy for me to recognize her instantly. Both of us had Mama’s petite facial features and Mama’s color hair. Her posture and her walk also reminded me of Mama. She was taller than I had expected her to be, but Papa was a tall man.
“Wow. She is beautiful,” Chastity said softly.
I almost didn’t hear her. Amazingly, I felt pride. For the moment, at least, I didn’t think of Roxy as being a woman for hire. She was instead this stunning young woman who walked with great self-confidence, looking forward and seemingly unaware of all the men who turned her way or passed her on the sidewalk but left their eyes behind.
“Let’s follow her,” Chastity suggested.
I paused. “Follow her?”
“Let’s see where she’s going. Maybe she’s going to meet a man. C’mon,” she said, speeding ahead.
“Wait.”
She stopped, her hands on her hips. “What? This is what we came here to do, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but . . . let’s stay far enough behind. I don’t want her to see me following her,” I said.
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She looked after Roxy. “We’re far enough now. C’mon.”
I joined her, and we crossed the street. Roxy was a good half-block ahead of us, but I was walking too slowly for Chastity.
“We’ll lose her if she turns or something,” she said.
I sped up, and a few minutes later, we saw Roxy cross the street and go into a boutique. I wanted to keep walking. Maybe this was enough for today, I thought, but Chastity stepped off the sidewalk and started across before I could say anything. I hurriedly followed her, and we approached the shop.
“We’ll just walk by and glance in,” Chastity said. She was really enjoying this. I almost didn’t matter. Again, before I could respond, she charged forward. I stepped up alongside her, realizing that I could use her body to block myself from view. When we reached the shop, even though I was very nervous about it, I looked in and saw that Roxy was looking over a dress the saleslady had handed her. We hesitated and saw Roxy go into a dressing room.
“I bet this place is very expensive,” Chastity said, remaining at the door.
“Let’s go before she sees us spying on her.”
“Wait. I want to see what she looks like in the dress.”
“But . . .”
“Stop worrying so much. She won’t see us. She certainly doesn’t expect you to be here, right?”
“Yes.”
“So let’s pretend we’re interested in what they have in the window. C’mon,” she urged when I hesitated.
I joined her, and we were able to look past the mannequins and see Roxy come out of the dressing room wearing a beautiful low-cut black evening dress. It seemed made for her, and when I looked closer in the window, I saw that the clothes in the shop were indeed fitted and made to order. I nodded at the sign to point it out to Chastity.
“Wow. That dress must cost thousands.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Probably.”
Roxy looked happy with it and went in to change back into her other clothes.
“Let’s cross the street before she comes out,” I said.