“I know. It’s just, I don’t really know what you want me to do, Trixie. Maybe you’ll actually have to make a respectable living for a while as an accountant. I mean, you are good at it. You know everything there is to know about balancing the books.”
“Or making them appear to balance even if they don’t,” Trixie said, like she was remembering something that happened a long time ago. “And by the way,” she said, “thanks for not judging.”
“Huh?”
“‘A respectable living,’ I believe you said. That I might want to consider one, for a while.”
“Trixie, don’t try to guilt-trip me. You operate outside the law. Like most places, Oakwood has laws against prostitu—”
Trixie jabbed a finger at me. “I am not a hooker, Zack. I do not fuck these men. They don’t get so much as a handjob from me.” She became very serious. “I do not cross that line. I provide them an entertaining, fantasy-like environment.”
“Okay, but you might have a difficult time persuading the authorities of that.”
Trixie shook her head in frustration, then leaned forward in her leather chair, which drew me in as well.
“What I was thinking,” she said, “was that you could talk to him.”
“What?”
“Just, you know, have a little conversation with him. You’re a reporter with a big city newspaper. He probably wants to get on at a place like the Metropolitan. You could tell him no one gives a shit about two-bit stories like this, that if he really wants to make the jump to the big time, he needs to go after city hall. Politicians on the take, bad cops, that kind of thing. Not some woman trying to make a living.”
“Trixie,” I said. “Look, you’re my friend. I’d help you any way I can. But you can’t ask me to do this. I can’t, as a reporter for one paper, try to talk a reporter for another paper out of doing his job. I can’t begin to count the number of ethical violations. There’s just no way, I can’t, I’m sorry, I really am.”
She looked into my eyes. “I thought you’d be willing to help me.”
“I don’t want you to be in trouble, but what you’re asking me to do could get me in trouble at the Metropolitan, where, evidently, the boss already has it in for me. Imagine if he heard I was trying to persuade some community newspaper columnist not to write about a dominatrix.”
Trixie said nothing. Something caught her eye, and she looked to the front of the Starbucks. A leather-jacketed guy with a heavy beard and sunglasses strolled in. Outside, I could see a big motorcycle, a Harley-Davidson or something like that with raised handlebars, parked up close to the door.
Trixie shrunk back into the chair, turned and looked away.
“What?” I said. “What is it? You know that guy.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then what’s the problem? It’s just some biker or biker wannabe. He’s not bothering anyone.”
“It’s nothing. You know what, Zack, don’t worry about anything.” Her voice had turned snippy. “I’ll just handle my own problems myself.”
She was trying to make me feel guilty, so I decided to repeat what I thought was sound advice.
“Really, just lay low,” I said. “This Martin Benson guy will finally go on to something else, and then you can get back to doing what it is that you do.”
Trixie, her shoulder still turned to the front of the coffee shop, folded up the clipping and shoved it down into her purse. The biker already had his coffee in hand and was heading out the front door. “There, he’s gone,” I said.
Trixie relaxed, but only slightly. She slung the strap of her purse over her shoulder.
“You do not understand, Zack. I cannot have my picture in the newspaper. Not any newspaper. Not even a piece of asswipe like the Suburban. They may be small, but they still have an online edition too, you know. They run my picture and it’s all over the Internet.”
“I can’t imagine anyone outside of Oakwood is reading the Suburban online,” I said, trying to calm her.
“I can’t take that chance. I can’t have my mug shot showing up anyplace.”
“Mug shot?” I said. “Why do you call your own picture a mug shot?”
Trixie blinked. “Figure of speech,” she said.
He would come in to see her at night, supposedly to tuck her in.
But Miranda, with some tips from her older sister, Claire, figured out a way to deal with this. She would tuck the covers in as tightly as possible on both sides, then crawl atop the bed and slide under the sheet and bedspread from the top.