24 Hours

“Good as new. I’m telling you, you’ve got to chill.” She barked a laugh that gave the lie to the classic beauty of her face. “You gotta chill, Will!” she sang out, delighted by the rhyme. “You’re going to give yourself a stroke.”

He turned back to the window. Cheryl’s reassurances didn’t mesh with the voice on the other end of the phone. There was hatred in Hickey’s voice, a resentment so deep that Will could not see it stopping short of the maximum pain it could inflict. Yet in the other cases, it had. If Cheryl and Hickey could be believed.

“You want me to help you calm down?” Cheryl asked.

He looked at her reflection in the window. She had taken a brush from her purse and was pulling it through her blond hair. “How?” he asked. “Drugs?”

“I told you, I’m clean now. But I can chill you out. Whatever, you know. Back rub?”

“No, thanks.”

“Front rub?”

He turned to her, unsure he had heard correctly. She stopped brushing her hair.

“It’s no big deal,” she said. “You’ll sleep like a baby. All guys do.”

“Are you kidding?”

She smiled knowingly. “Don’t worry. Wifey won’t ever know about it.”

“I said no, okay? Jesus.”

“I was just trying to help you relax. I know you’re upset.”

“What’s the deal here, Cheryl? Is sex the only way you know how to relate to men?”

She turned to the television, her lower lip pooched out like an angry child’s. “Not quite, Oprah.”

“A while ago you gave me your sob story about how terrible it was to be a whore. Now you’re acting like one.”

“Hey, I was just trying to make this easier on you.”

“Do you make the same offer to all your victims?”

The word “victim” didn’t sit well with her. “I saw you looking at me during the speech, and I knew you were interested.”

“Bullshit.”

She cut her eyes at him, and they held a disturbing knowledge. “My mistake, I guess. What do I know? I’m just a dumb stripper, right?” She picked up the remote and flipped through some channels, finally settling on the Home Shopping Network.

Will turned back to the window. As he searched for the tiny lights of the freighter, he saw movement in the reflection of the room. Focusing on it, he saw Cheryl remove her bra. He didn’t turn, but he saw her settle deeper on the pillows and begin slowly stroking her breasts. He tried to watch the freighter, but he couldn’t concentrate. It was absurd. This woman had helped kidnap his daughter; now she was coming on to him as if they’d just met in the casino downstairs. Cheryl moaned softly, drawing his eyes to her reflection again. Her movements were impossible to ignore.

“Why are you doing that?”

“To show you you’re no different than the rest. And that it’s okay.”

“Put your bra back on.”

She didn’t stop moving her hands. “You’re saying that, but you’d rather I left it off.”

“Put it back on, Cheryl.”

“They look good, don’t they?”

He turned toward the bed at last. “If you like implants.”

She laughed. “Sure they’re implants. But they’re good. Not like the local junk you see around here. Joey flew me out to L.A. to have it done, when I was a featured dancer. I got the same doctor that did Demi. He said mine looked just as good.” She cupped them in her palms. “Just as good.”

They did look like perfect male fantasies, but they did not look natural. As a doctor, Will had seen more breasts than he cared to think about, and Cheryl’s Penthouse-style showpieces had almost nothing in common with the female form in its natural state.

“Cover yourself,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“I don’t care what you do.” He turned back to the window.

“Why don’t you at least face the truth about something, Will?”

It wasn’t the first time she had used his Christian name, but he still didn’t like it. “What?”

“When you were first giving your speech, and you saw me down there watching you, you were fantasizing about me.”

“You’re wrong.”

“You can’t lie about that. You checked me out from head to toe. Then you stared at my panties when I uncrossed my legs.”

“You made them too obvious to ignore.”

“But you were interested. A lot more interested than you were in your speech. And if it wasn’t for the reason we’re in this room together now, we might be here for another reason.”

“You’re wrong,” he said again, annoyed by the accuracy of her instincts.

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

“What I saw in your face tonight I’ve seen in lots of guys’ faces. Decent guys, I mean. I know you. For a few years now, you’ve been wishing you had someone like me to sleep with. You love your wife, you wouldn’t trade her for anything, but she just doesn’t do it for you. She doesn’t understand what you need. How you need it, and how often. Nothing, really. She’s making a nest, adding twigs, thinking about the little chickadees. You’re helping with the nest, but you miss hunting.”

“Where’d you get that? Cosmo?”

“I don’t remember. But it’s on the money, isn’t it?”

He turned back to the bed, where Cheryl was enacting a fifteen-year-old boy’s dream of paradise. “This isn’t going to happen. You don’t want sex. And you don’t want to ‘relax’ me. What you really want is to somehow make me culpable in what you’re doing.”