Heaven’s Gate
95 The Rest of the Story
“Are you sure you want Brian here while you tell me your story?” the shrink asked. I had a lot of respect for the guy. He got me through a tough part of my life after the shooting. He tells it straight. Not always what you want to hear, but I’d seen him for two years and trusted him. He helped put tools in my kit.
“Yes. He should hear what I say. But I can’t look at him while I tell you. If he could sit back there so I can’t see him, please,” Jessica said. I moved around behind where she was sitting and sat in a comfortable armchair in the corner. Jessica turned so she couldn’t see me.
“Where would you like to start?”
“I was supposed to be in the World Trade Center on the morning of September eleventh. I chose not to go because I needed to go to a doctor instead.”
“Why?”
“I was raped.”
“That must create some conflicting emotions for you.” Jessica nodded her head. “Do you want to start at the beginning?” Another nod.
“When I was growing up, there was a wonderful boy who lived next door to me and I loved him with all my heart. He was little, and younger than me by about a year and a half. But he had the sweetest disposition in the world. My brother was a bully and I tried to protect my neighbor from him. His sister was a bit of a bully, too. I wasn’t always successful protecting him, so I recruited help.” Jessica told the therapist all about how we grew up and that she’d loved me since the day she met me, but she thought she was too old for me. She carefully avoided using my name as she spoke, keeping me as ‘her neighbor boy.’ She’d once told a fellow third grader that I was her boyfriend and her classmate laughed because I was just a baby. The story progressed through the years and Jessica made it sound like her whole life revolved around me. I didn’t remember it the same way, but I was the little kid.
“He took my cherry one summer night before I went away to modeling school. We didn’t have intercourse. He broke my hymen with his finger. I wanted him to do it. I thought that even if we could never make love, he’d still be my first.” I remembered that night. I smiled. I’d been so ignorant at twelve that I was going to run and tell my mom because I’d injured Jessica.
“When I was fourteen, I started modeling professionally and at fifteen, I left home and school to pursue my career. My mother went with me as my chaperone, but we were introduced to Conrad Dole, an attorney who was making a name for himself by negotiating very good contracts for his clients. He became my manager. He was also irresistibly handsome, seductive, and fifteen years older than me. I was very confused. My body was working overtime. My hormones were raging. I got my mother to take me home for New Year’s Eve and I met my neighbor boy in the hayloft, determined that this time I would have the man I loved. But he had made a promise to the people I set up to help and protect him. Only now he was their protector and he wouldn’t break his promise to them and make love to me. I was proud of him and ashamed of myself. I went to my next shoot and let Conrad seduce me.” She hung her head. I wanted to rush to her and hold her, but a glance from the counselor told me my job was to stay put and listen.
“Did that satisfy your urges?”
“No. It hurt. I felt dirty and disgusted. I told him never again. And he told me my ass was his. I convinced my mother to find me a female bodyguard and kept her with me around the clock. Oh, he saw me in the changing rooms often enough. As my manager he claimed he owned my body and my look. But he never touched me again. She would have killed him. I decided I didn’t want any other boy to touch me. Sometimes over the next seven years, I’d have women lovers, but I was saving myself for him—my neighbor boy. Occasionally, my bodyguard Amy and I helped each other along, but just as two frustrated friends. I loved her dearly and I know she loved me, but not in exactly that way. We both knew we were meant to have a man.”
“Did Conrad leave you alone?”
“I became quite a bitch. Sometimes, I even flaunted my body at him and made sure he knew I was off limits. I rode him mercilessly about my contracts and he responded by making me a high-paid model. I wanted him to know that he was mine, not the other way around. The more brutally I treated him, the harder a negotiator he was for my contracts. Of course, we both got rich and he handled my investments, too. In some ways, it was like being married but without the sex.”
“That continued for seven years? What happened?”
“I was very successful and as a result, some men’s magazine put a bounty out for pictures of me naked. Conrad told me that if anyone got such a picture my career would be over. If my sponsors didn’t cancel me, he’d bankrupt me. I’d always been careful, but I became paranoid. As the bounty increased, I became even more of a recluse. I lost weight. I was taking pills to calm my nerves. Prozac. I was living under a constant threat with only Amy between me and disgrace. So, I decided to go back to the one person I knew who could protect me. My neighbor boy was all grown up now. I knew he was the one person who would never let anything bad happen to me. He’d already proven that.”
“Did he let you down?”
“No. He’s never let anyone down. He reworked my entire image. Conrad wasn’t happy. Conrad had made me remote and inaccessible. My neighbor boy made me a public figure who was always approachable. Gradually, the bounty dropped off and I was less newsworthy. Until the story of my gay boyfriend broke. The tabloids had a field day with that, but he even strategized a way to turn it to my advantage and Adam and I became even more popular as a couple and as models because everyone knew he was gay and I still loved him. There were still one or two stalkers, but they got nothing.”
“Life was good.”
“Well, my neighbor boy and I had a little falling out. You see, we made love.”
“That must have been your dream come true at last.”
“It was wonderful. More wonderful than I ever imagined possible. But I went off the deep end. I somehow expected that once he made love to me, he’d leave his other girlfriends, his home, even his degree plans and television show to be with me. And when he didn’t… wouldn’t… respond the way Conrad did, I found myself shrinking back into the person I’d become. Not very nice except when I was in public. Until that awful day I heard he’d been shot. I knew then that I had to be near him… be available to him when he wanted me.”
She continued to ramble on about building a house next door, having to travel but reaching the point where she could retire from modeling, but how Conrad had convinced her to stay active by owning part of an agency and training other models.
“A few months ago, Conrad told me we needed to take the agency public. IPOs are a popular way of getting rich. I told him I would talk it over with my partners in Paris. That’s when he told me not to bother because he’d bought their majority share and was my business partner now. He got the upper hand and I went from being ready to sever all ties to him to having him as a business partner. I went along with the idea and informed the broker that on the day we went public, I wanted all my shares put up for sale. He would no longer be my partner.”
“Something went wrong, though?” the therapist prompted when she hesitated.
“Two weeks before the IPO a sleazy magazine published an entire portfolio of naked pictures of me going back fifteen years. When Conrad called me with the news, he said it was obvious my bodyguard had gotten tired of babysitting and decided to cash in her investment. I couldn’t believe Amy would do such a thing to me. But the evidence was right there in my hands. I fired her on the spot and got very drunk. I’d been betrayed by the person I was closest to.”
“Did you feel vulnerable?”
“Vulnerable. Abused. Betrayed. Raped. No. Not raped. That came later.”
“Is that something you want to talk about?”
“It’s the reason I’m here. Literally. I ended up having to go to New York for the IPO without my bodyguard and without my neighbor boy. His father died. I was so sad. I wanted to go be with him, but he had others to comfort him and I was supposed to be in New York for a reception the Monday night before the stock went public Tuesday morning. I don’t drink much usually, except that one day. I had my glass of champagne and met our broker and his staff who were orchestrating the event. I met several large investors who had already given the brokerage bids for the stock. Toward the end of the party, Conrad drugged my drink. I only remember having been too wobbly to make it out of the party alone and he very kindly and gently escorted me back to my hotel. That was all I remembered.”
“You are sure it was Conrad who drugged you?” Jessica nodded.
“He woke me up Tuesday morning with a text message at 8:28. I was sore… down there… and couldn’t understand where I was or why. I grabbed my phone and found he had sent me a text message with a picture of my vagina running with his come. The message told me I was his now and to get my fucking ass to the brokerage or he’d see these pictures got published with the others. It was him all along.”
“But you didn’t go.”
“My neighbor boy taught me that I should stand up for myself, even if it was embarrassing. Even if he published the pictures, I decided I would bring him down. One of the original photos was while I was still sixteen. I could get him for child porn, rape, assault. I could take everything from him. So instead of going to the brokerage, I went to the hospital. It was only a couple of blocks away. I told them I’d been drugged and raped and needed a rape kit and blood test. Then the world went crazy. Someone crashed planes into the World Trade Center where I was supposed to be meeting. People were flooding into the hospital. I had to move to let an injured firefighter have my bed in the emergency room. I just sat in the waiting room all day, watching crying people come and go. Listening to stories. Seeing the filthy dust in the air. Watching the horrifying news on television.” Jessica was sobbing and I couldn’t bear it. I moved but the therapist shook his head. He handed her a drink of water that she gulped down.
“I… left, sometime that night. It was too late to get evidence of drugs or semen, I thought. And no one was available to do a rape kit anyway. So many people died. So many were injured. What policeman could be bothered to take my statement? What doctor would leave a rescuer to suffer with inhalation of the noxious gasses and dust to deal with a stupid thing like my vagina having been fucked. I could see them look at me thinking that it probably happened to me all the time. There was a detour to get back to my hotel. I got lost. There were no cabs running in that area. I wandered into a cheap hotel and paid for a room with my credit card. I stayed there in bed for three days. Hiding. Covering my head with a pillow trying to block out the images that kept playing in my head and the voice that kept screaming ‘You should be dead!’ I would be dead… if I hadn’t been raped.”
Jessica rocked back and forth, back and forth. She constantly muttered, “I shouldn’t have been raped. If I hadn’t been raped, I’d be dead. I shouldn’t have fired Amy. If I hadn’t fired Amy, I’d be dead. Brian’s father shouldn’t have died. If he hadn’t died, we’d both be dead. How can I live if it is only bad things that saved my life?”
I’d been hit hard with survivor’s guilt and PTSD after the shooting. I never mentioned it anymore, but sometimes I still had nightmares—unable to save my loved ones from danger. Beating myself up over not saving Jessica triggered them again. I think if I was honest with myself, the PTSD would be the reason I quit XX/XY on television. Hosting the show was built around my having been the Sorority Row Hero. I relived it constantly.
Now I was just a simple baker. I had a date on television one night a week and cooked a nice dinner with my girlfriend. Yes, I went to the office most afternoons because I was on the board of directors and had responsibilities, but that was just a job. I could focus the bulk of my time on being at peace and being with my children.
Jessica had watched her death on television and knew that she was only alive because of a series of unfortunate events, as Lemony Snicket would say. Cassie had read the first six books of the series aloud to the older children in school and we were all anxiously awaiting volume seven. The Baudelaires’ unfortunate events didn’t hold a candle to Jessica’s. She was confused and depressed. The doctor prescribed a low dose anti-depressant to get her through the rough part, but set up appointments for Jessica to meet with him twice a week for the foreseeable future. I didn’t think I’d be invited to all of them. In fact, I didn’t figure I’d be invited back. Jessica had told him what she wanted me to hear but couldn’t tell me.
I drove her home, but before I opened the car door she grabbed my hand.
“Brian,” she whispered hoarsely. “I don’t think I’ll live if I’m pregnant.”
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