Social Misconduct Page 13

  “Okay,” said Wayne. “But I was kind of enjoying my drink.”

  “I might have some wine in my office,” she said.

  He gave her a warm smile. Grrr.

  They looked at me like I was an afterthought.

  47

  I snuggle up to Adam, who is snoring peacefully, and take stock of my situation.

  I decide that I should completely stop thinking about getting a lawyer to clear my name. The more I think about it, the more I realize I would never be able to do that.

  I had been planning to get someplace safe for a few days, so that I could consider my options, but I realize now that giving myself up is not one of those options. I could deal with jail, maybe, but not the public humiliation, and I don’t want to ever see the video of the station platform.

  So that means that I have to turn my back on everybody I have ever known, which will really suck for my mom and Francis and a few other friends, but I don’t have any choice.

  Good-bye, Mom. Good-bye, Francis.

  I have an okay plan. It has two parts: (1) Get Farther from New York, and (2) Continue to Avoid the Police.

  I am one step ahead of them. I would like to be two steps ahead of them, then three, then ten. I should be able to do this, but I have to think really clearly and not make any mistakes.

  Take no chances.

  I make an inventory of my assets:

  One jean jacket.

  One black dress.

  One pair of flip-flops.

  One pair of dirty jeans.

  Assorted disgusting underwear.

  Toiletries.

  One chef’s knife.

  One notebook.

  Four roofies.

  $524.

  Adam, happily for me, has just been to a bank machine. He has twenty twenty-dollar bills in his wallet.

  Well, he used to.

  I need to get on the highway, get in a vehicle heading north, and, hopefully, get one more step ahead of my pursuers.

  I decide that I won’t take Adam’s car—likely one of the black SUVs in the hotel’s parking lot. I could just wander around the lot, beeping the unlock button until it lights up and drive off. It would be great to cruise along in style, but if I steal his car, he will have to report it.

  If I just leave him as he is, he won’t go to the police. He won’t remember what happened, might not even know for sure he’s been roofied.

  Drank too much. Took girl to room. She’s gone.

  No need to mention it to the police, or the wife.

  48

  I stewed all evening.

  Well, I popped two Ambiens and drank red wine and monitored social media and stewed.

  I didn’t like the way that Wayne and Jess became such fast friends.

  That was all I needed, to have my supersuccessful big sister scoop up my crush. It ate at me.

  We’d been tight when we were small, when we used to have our little adventures in the woods, but after she hit puberty, she dropped me for friends her age, which hurt my feelings. And then there was the stuff with Dad.

  I think I resented her, and Mom, for not being there for me when I needed someone to protect me. When I eventually realized that what had been happening was wrong, and Miss Busy started acting out, how could it not have been crystal clear to everyone that something was wrong with Candace? Except there wasn’t anything wrong with Candace. There was something wrong with Dad.

  Now Jess was helping me like she helped me deal with the Gary issue. I was grateful to her then, but it felt like she wanted me to be even more grateful, and I was already getting that feeling again.

  And her overfamiliarity with Wayne rankled.

  It was not a productive evening. I didn’t feel like I was in the right state of mind to tackle the huge image-repair job that I faced, not if I wanted to drink a bottle of cheap red wine, which I felt was a more important priority.

  Before too much of the wine was gone, I emailed Francis, promised to catch up soon, and called Mom, which was not easy.

  “Oh, honey,” she said. “How are you?”

  “Good, Mom! I’m sorry I haven’t called. I’ve been busy with my new job.”

  “But Jess told me that you’re not going to stay there because of that . . . picture.”

  “That hasn’t been decided yet. Everything is still kind of up in the air.”

  Are lawyers supposed to share information without permission from their clients? I didn’t think so. I had no idea what Jess thought she was doing, except that she was trying to help, by making decisions—like what to tell Mom—that should have been up to me. I understood the impulse—she wanted to help—but it was by no means clear that her judgment was better than mine. I hadn’t wanted to tell Mom about this hacking business until it was over. Much less of a worry for her.

  “I think it might be better if you get out of that place,” Mom said. “I mean, it sounds like a nightmare. My poor Candy.”

  She started to cry. I could tell she was confused and hurt by the whole topless selfie thing, and I kept having to explain to her that I was hacked, which she didn’t really understand, and then she’d cry some more and I’d cry along with her, and she’d ask more questions and get confused again and I sort of got a little mad at her and then she cried and so did I and I really wanted to get off the phone.

  My mom is a sweet person, but she was always a homebody, ignoring the world beyond Newtown, busy raising Jess and me, looking after Dad, while he took the train in to fight insurance dragons and bring home the paycheck.

  When Dad had a massive heart attack three years ago, she was suddenly his nurse, and she did a great job, although not great enough to stop the second massive heart attack, which killed him a year later. Meat kills.

  Since then she’s been kind of, I don’t know, cut off. Both Jess and I are busy trying to make lives for ourselves in the city and Mom doesn’t get what that means, which makes it hard to share much about our lives, which is what she wants.

  So the good conversations end up being about her, talking through her days, with her volunteer activities, walks with friends, health worries, house maintenance concerns, and all kinds of other stuff that is basically everything I don’t want my life to be about.

  Anyway, Mom wanted me to go home and stay with her for a while, until Jess helped me get to the bottom of the whole thing, which was not happening.

  “I can’t,” I said. “I have a job that’s actually going really well in a lot of ways. Did I tell you about Cheese of the Month? I’m making sales. I’m good at this and I want to keep doing it.”

  “But, honey, it sounds like a terrible place to work. I want you to get out of there. Either they’re harassing you or . . .”

  “Or what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I felt like I was twelve again, when Jess and I were at each other’s throats, and everything was so bad. I started to get upset.

  “What did Jess tell you?”

  “She said you can’t figure out yet who has been doing these terrible things to you. I wish you’d come down here for a while, even a few days, until you’re feeling yourself.”

  “I am myself. It’s just a thing I have to deal with so that I can move on with my career and my life. Don’t worry so much. It’s not helping.”

  I wanted to kill myself.

  I actually thought about that seriously for a while after I finally managed to get off the phone. I could just end it all. I would leave a note. I drank more wine and thought about what the note would say.

  I could thank Jess and say I hoped she’d be happy with Wayne. I wouldn’t mention whether it was ethical for a lawyer steal her client’s crush.

  I got myself in quite a state. I was absolutely convinced that Jess and Wayne were going to end up kissing on her desk, beginning a romance that would inevitably end in marriage. I couldn’t bear the thought of being the scorned little sister.

  I even thought about going to Jess’s place over in Jersey. I had her spar
e keys. I could sneak in to see if she was home yet, hide in the bushes out front and watch for her. I didn’t do it but I seriously thought about it.

  Instead, I opened a second bottle of wine.

  49

  Adam starts to stir at about 4:00 a.m., and I decide I’d better leave before he wakes up.

  I collect all my stuff, put on my jean jacket, give Adam a kiss on the cheek, and take the elevator downstairs. I slip past the reception desk and stop in front of the hotel to orient myself. I don’t want to go wandering around in the dark looking for the highway, and I can’t ask for directions from the desk clerk.

  As I stand there, a young black woman comes outside, startling me. She lights her cigarette even before she gets outside. She has dyed blond hair, high heels, short skirt, low-cut top. Sex worker.

  “Hey, girl, what’s happening?” she says.

  “Hey, not much.”

  “Getting paid?”

  I laugh.

  “I might be.”

  “You trapping here, girl?”

  I don’t know what to say. Trapping. Does that mean turning tricks?

  “I might be.”

  “You must know, girl,” she says. “I’m trapping and I know it. I’m not one of these hos pretends she’s a veterinarian.”

  I laugh.

  “I came up with a guy from the city. Now we’re done and I’m headed home.”

  “Girlfriend experience?” she asks.

  “Yeah. I only have a few clients. I’m going to school.”

  “Only diploma I got is in ho-ology. You could make real money you hit it full-time, girl. Nice-looking white girl. My man is coming to get me. He sort you out. Get you making big dollars, girl.”

  Suddenly I don’t like talking to her.

  “That’s all right. Thanks, though.”

  God. I sounded like I was greeting someone at a PTA meeting.

  “He fix you up, girl. No problem. You want to get your smoke on? Where’s your driver at?”

  I am trapped. I have no driver. I have nothing to say. Fuck.

  “Actually. I’m going to go back in and wait for him. He’ll text when he’s here. Nice talking to you.”

  She stares at me as I go back inside.

  Fuck.

  I decide to pretend that I’m going back to the room and instead go out another exit. There has to be one. I walk through the lobby and find the back exit, which goes to a parking lot with railroad tracks running along the back. I head for the tracks.

  As I cross the lot, I hear a car. A black SUV with tinted windows pulls around the corner and stops in an empty spot between me and the tracks.

  When I pass it, the window of the passenger side rolls down.

  “Girl!”

  I turn. It’s the sex worker.

  “There you are,” she says. “Your driver a no-show? Come on. We give you a ride.”

  I smile and shake my head.

  “I’m great,” I say, feeling stupid with my fake smile. I start moving again. “Thanks all the same.”

  The SUV honks its horn. I stop and turn. The woman has her head and arm out the window. She’s beckoning to me.

  “Girl, come on,” she says. “Don’t be foolish. You attracting attention. Trying to give the police a reason to fuck with us?”

  I wave at her and turn and walk faster toward the tracks.

  She shouts after me.

  “Where your driver at, bitch? Ho need a driver.”

  On the right, the railroad tracks go past a football field and a dark parking lot. On the left, they cross a highway overpass, with a chain-link fence on the sides, likely to stop the local losers from dropping cinder blocks and malt liquor bottles on passing cars. Beyond the bridge, I can see an expressway. I step onto the crunchy oversized gravel of the railbed and head that way, with a purposeful stride, a stride that says, I hope, Don’t fuck with me. I am not a victim.

  50

  I woke up hungover and feeling emotionally vulnerable.

  Jess had emailed me to tell me we had a meeting at 10:00 a.m. at SoSol. She said everything went well with Wayne, which didn’t make me feel better. I was now sure she had fucked him, or at least made out with him.

  Probably she was smarter than me and waited for a certain number of dates before giving up the goods. She and her friends all read The Rules when they were in law school and used to talk about the husband-getting tips it contained.

  I was doomed, I was sure, to the lonely life of a resentful lovelorn sister.

  Still in bed, I checked my phone. I had several emails from Wayne’s friend Lenora, all very keen.

  She wanted to talk to me! She couldn’t believe what I’d been through! It was totally a cautionary tale that young women should know about! She lived near me in Brooklyn and was having a coffee at the Black Brick. Could I come down now?

  I had a quick shower and went to meet her.

  I liked her right away. She was like a nicer version of me, except with tattoos and piercings. She even had red hair. I thought the two of us looked funny sipping our lattes side by side, because we look so much alike. Not like you would get us mixed up but that we were obviously both examples of a type. Redhead Brooklyn hipster girl.

  She told me about her career, which started with a journalism degree from Columbia, where she did a long feature on rape culture, exposing campus sex assaults and inaction by university administrators. Shitty investigations. Bad trials. Rape kits that never got processed. She freelanced for a year, working on similar stories, before Pandora noticed that she was delivering half their traffic and hired her.

  She described how she got sex-assault victims to open up and told me some enraging stories that she couldn’t run because the details were impossible to prove to the satisfaction of editors and lawyers.

  I realized with a jolt that I’d read some of her stories.

  By the time she got around to trying to convince me to give her an interview, it was unnecessary.

  “Stop,” I said. “I’m ready. I believe you’ll do your best to look out for me. Let’s just do it.”

  She smiled and took my hands in hers, promised she would do that, and took out her recorder.

  I spun out my story, telling her about the Twitter and Facebook posts and the awful messages. It was easy to talk about the slut-shaming social media reaction, and she seemed pleased with what I had to say about that.

  I talked about how I had to figure out how to live with this invasion of privacy, which was profound and damaging, but not fatal. I said that in many ways that meant I was like any number of people in society—women, people of color, LBGTQI—who had to try to remain optimistic and keep moving forward although they faced personal experiences of oppression.

  We both thought that was pretty good.

  She got me to talk about my reaction to the postings and the texts and then wanted to know the details—dates and times and so on. I told her I couldn’t be as sure as I wanted about some stuff because my phone had been wiped. When I lifted it to show her, I noticed that the notification notice said I had 128 text messages waiting for me. Oh oh.

  I opened it up.

  Oh fuck. I showed the screen to Lenora.

  She gasped.

  One after another, 128 messages from the same unknown number, all identical.

  Hey.

  Hey.

  Hey.

  “Just like the last time,” I said.

  “That’s him?”

  “That’s him.”

  I scrolled back. The first message was different from the others.

  Hey, roastie. Check your Twitter.

  Oh God. I felt like I was going to vomit. Lenora and I looked at each other.

  Then the phone rang, startling us both. It was Jess.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Candace? You need to shut down your Twitter and Facebook accounts right now. Do it right now. K? Then we’ll talk.”

  51

  As the sun starts coming up, I am running flat out acr
oss the highway from the railway tracks to the other side, where there’s a garbage-strewn gravel shoulder. I run because when the cars and trucks come around the corner they’re moving fast, scaring me, and I don’t want to get hit. What the fuck am I doing?

  I really want to find a donut shop, have some hash browns, coffee, and orange juice, but there’s nothing in front of me but more road. I could easily get hit here. The trucks are so close to me that I feel the air turbulence from them as they pass. The shoulder is narrow and the embankment is steep, so I’m stuck. I walk quickly, scared and cold.

  I’m thinking about trying to climb down from the expressway into the scrub woods at the bottom of the hill when a black SUV pulls up in front of me, blocking my path, and the driver’s door opens and suddenly a huge black man is standing in front of me, with his arm against the door.

  “There you are,” he says. “Little hiking ho.”

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Hold up,” he says. “Let’s chat for a minute.”

  I have no choice.

  “You like walking?” he says. “How come you got nobody looking out for you?”

  “I’m all right. I don’t need any help.”

  “You trapping in Scranton you might need somebody’s help. You not in Vegas here, girl.”

  He smiles. He has a closely trimmed beard, looks like he’s in his forties. He’s dark, tall and muscular, wearing a tight, expensive-looking sweater that clings to his chest. His brown eyes are on me.

  “I’m not trapping in Scranton. Just passing through.”

  “Yeah? Where you going?”

  I feel like I have to answer him.

  “Back to the city,” I say. “Back to school.”

  He looks me up and down. It feels like he’s assessing me like a product.

  “Maybe you is. Why don’t we go sit down, chat about it? Go through the drive-through, get some Mickey D’s, go back to my place, have a little chat?”

  “Thanks but I’m tired and I just want to get back home.”

  “How you going to do that? Where’s your driver? Where’s your phone? I can get you a driver.”