Last Woman Standing

“Like massage therapist.”

“Right. You should see all the garbage they let slip through the cracks. You know they don’t even do background checks? They don’t advertise that, but it’s been in the news. People just don’t care enough to stop using it.” She laughed. “If they knew how few runners actually make a living at it, they’d care. I mean, how do you trust someone who just turns up at your door and says she’s a massage therapist when she’s only making, like, twenty bucks for a two-hour massage?”

“Yeesh.” I made better money hawking hand-stamped stationery at Laurel’s.

“Well, to be fair, I programmed an auto-bidder to make sure I got the run, which drove the price down. Usually female runners make more because there’s a higher demand for them. Imagine that.” She rolled her eyes, then shrugged. “Anyway, it was no big deal getting in with the camera. After that, Neely did the rest.”

I replayed the ghastly intimacy of it, the greedy expression on his face, his hairy flesh looking somehow more naked for being half covered by the robe. “It’s perfect,” I agreed. “But what if you’d actually had to do the massage? And what if he’d—tried something else?” Now that I was talking about someone else’s safety rather than my own, I suddenly realized what it was that had paralyzed me in the back of the SUV that day. It was the inarticulable fear that if I made the wrong move, or any move at all, the situation would turn from mere humiliation into something else entirely.

But Amanda was shaking her head. “He was too impatient to sit through a massage. You know the water he gave me? I’m ninety percent sure he put something in it. I didn’t taste it, of course, but it smelled funny. I think part of the game is some kind of sedative. Just to get you a little woozy, so you don’t move as fast. He’s a total coward.”

I felt a surge of nausea, and bile rose in my throat. The smoothie with the chalky aftertaste. I had been so sure Jason and I had the same bug, but I never threw up, just got dizzy and slept for twelve hours afterward. Amanda didn’t say anything, but from the way she was looking at me, I could tell she’d already had the thought, probably when I first told her the story. I took a moment to catch my breath. So I’d been roofied in addition to being . . . whatever you called what he’d done to me.

“So where are we going to post it?” I said finally.

“Post what?”

“The video. Or do we send it to a news site anonymously? Or what about those comedy forums you mentioned? Let him be the butt of the joke, for once.”

“We’re not showing anyone this video, Dana.”

I stared. “But—isn’t that the whole point? Show the world? Show everyone what he really is?”

“It’s worth way more to us hanging over his head.”

“Blackmail?” I stood up, and my voice rose, just as it had when Amanda had followed me out of the comedy club. I hated losing control, and talking about Neely, even thinking about him, brought me too close to the edge. “Are you doing this for money? Because I don’t want his money. I don’t want anything from him. All I care about is that it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

“It won’t,” she said. “Trust me. Neely doesn’t know who we are, but he knows we have this video. We know everything about him, and we can get to him at any time. That’s why he turned tail and ran back to L.A. I’ve got ways of knowing what he’s up to, though—not limited to Runnr, by the way.” She looked pleased with herself. “Besides, I think I got my message across. After this, he’s going to be too para noid to pull his signature move on anyone for a long time.”

“But why not just release it?”

She looked at me pityingly. “Out in the world, the video is falsifiable. His PR reps will make up stories, spin it for the press. And in the meantime, since we’ll have done all the damage we can do, he won’t be afraid of us anymore. He’ll hire investigators to find us. Trust me, you don’t want that. You don’t want to be the lone woman standing up against a celebrity with an accusation like that.”

“But there’s proof,” I said, losing steam.

“If it ever went to court, they’d find a way to get the video thrown out. That’s what rich people have expensive lawyers for.” She shrugged. “But nobody enjoys spending their money that way, and nobody wants the publicity. As long as we keep our fingers hovering over the button, he’s going to do everything in his power to keep us from going nuclear.”

There was a moment of silence as I processed this. “Okay, so we don’t go nuclear,” I said. “Even though—I wouldn’t be in it alone, right? If something went wrong.”

“No. You wouldn’t. If it came down to it, I’d be right there beside you, in court or anywhere else. I promise.”

I sat back down on the sofa and took a long, warming swallow of wine.

“So,” she said, tapping her fingers together with excitement. “Are you ready?”

“Ready for what?”

“It’s your turn.”

“Ha-ha,” I said, after a long pause.

“I got your back,” she prompted, her voice level. “Now you get mine.”

“Funny joke.” But I knew she wasn’t joking.

“I’ve got a name for you.”

I was starting to panic. “I never asked you to go after Neely, Amanda.”

She gave me a long look, and the excitement slowly drained from her face. By the time she turned toward the window, her gray-green eyes had gone perfectly flat and opaque. For a moment I thought she might cry.

Instead she got up from the sofa, opened a glass door, and stepped out onto the balcony.

She didn’t ask me to follow, but after a few uncomfortable minutes passed, I did. I found her sipping her wine and staring out into the night sky, which had cleared of clouds and was now glittering with stars. To the right, far down, I could just see the Congress Avenue Bridge, a garland of streetlights over the dark river. I stepped toward her and looked up at her profile, lit from below by the balcony lights. No wonder she kept getting auditions. Her cheekbones could’ve won an Academy Award all by themselves.

“Great wine,” I said. “Really, uh, jammy.” I took an overly enthusiastic sip and choked.

“Look, you don’t have to do it,” she said wearily. “Obviously, you don’t have to do anything. When we were talking the other night, I just thought—” She stopped abruptly. I opened my mouth to reply, but she started again, more forcefully this time. “I thought we understood each other. But if you think I enjoyed watching Aaron Neely jerk off in that hotel room—if you think I got off on playing his victim, even for a minute—”

I felt stricken. “Of course I don’t think that.”

“He’s a huge guy. Like you said, he could have turned on me any time. It wasn’t exactly fun.”

“I know,” I said. “And I can’t thank you enough.”

“Not nearly enough,” she said, whirling on me. “But I didn’t do it just for you, Dana. You never see the big picture, do you? You don’t read the forums or listen to the stories, so you don’t get it. The problem is so much bigger than what happened to you. These guys do the same thing, over and over again, until somebody finally stands up to them. You have to find a way to hurt them more than they can hurt you.”

I took it in silently. I’d said that what mattered to me was that it wouldn’t happen to anyone else. But what had brought me over to Amanda’s apartment tonight? What had filled me with joy on the bridge with Kim earlier today? Wasn’t it just that Neely wasn’t my problem anymore?

“Anyway, you got what you wanted,” Amanda said, as if she could read my guilty thoughts. “Buy me a drink sometime, I guess.”

“What do you want me to do?” I said, exasperated. “Go find your ex-boyfriend and get revenge? He’s kind of far away, isn’t he? Believe me, if I could be in Los Angeles right now, I already would be.”

“If he lived in Austin, you’d do it?” she said, looking out over the city.

“Probably,” I said. Then, struck by a sudden impulse to firm up the lie: “Yes. Yes, I would.”

“Doug Branchik, my old boss from Runnr.” She took another sip. “He lives here now.”

“In Austin?”

Amanda uncurled her index finger from around the bowl of the glass of wine and slowly extended her arm. “There. He lives right there.”

6 (#ulink_87a9ad85-f03f-5776-ac23-50e8b913f874)

What?” I said, ducking instinctively. “Where?”

“Across the street. The balcony with the orange deck chairs.”