Lloyd’s Angel: Heartbreak
April 2003
“Room service!” chirped the perky coed. She stood beside the bed, holding a loaded tray, and displaying her cleavage to good effect. That was easy, since her outfit would make an NFL cheerleader look prim. I didn’t know how she avoided freezing.
I groaned and thought about going back to sleep, but the smell of Eggs Benedict had gotten my stomach growling. “He’s your brother,” I mumbled at the mop of silver-blonde hair on the pillow beside me.
“He’s your partner,” Alex tartly rejoined, rolling over. “Just leave it on the bed, Denise; we’ll let your evil master know you did a good job.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Parker! Have a great day!” She skipped out of the room, and we heard the front door open and close a minute later.
“Why did I go into business with Danny, again?” I groused, and sat up. I’d been asking the question for decades, so my wife just ignored me. When I’d found out my “wedding present” was an ownership interest in Home Run, I’d been appalled; I’d also felt personally responsible both for Danny’s mindset and the welfare of some of the girls—Susan among them—he’d engaged. It felt comfortable now, but the oddity got to me every time I stopped and actually thought about it.
Beside me, Alex reached for her reading glasses. “Forty-one years. Can you believe it?”
“God, I’m a lucky bastard.”
“Yes, you are,” she laughed, and reached for her plate.
It wasn’t our anniversary, but rather the anniversary of the day we’d decided to marry. We’d gone back to the old Madison hotel every year until it had closed in the early nineties, but now we just stayed home. Danny, bless his twisted little heart, felt we needed “hotel ambiance” and never failed to provide his take on room service. It was a mystery how he’d deduced the menu, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn he’d hired the Madison’s old chef to prepare it.
A man of surprising depths was my brother-in-law, as long as he could work in a scantily-clad girl and make a buck off it. Denise was a case in point.
We’d found her in a shelter for battered women, bruised from the working over her pimp had given her, and climbing the walls in need for her heroin fix. My artistry didn’t extend to curing physical addiction, but it was child’s play to blunt the psychological craving and adjust the emotional baggage that had gotten her to that point.
She wasn’t one of the “service personnel;” Danny’s unwritten agreement with the cops was that he didn’t take outcall jobs, and he was scrupulous about sending somebody from the bar staff on these occasions. Frankly, I thought he was more scared of Alex than the vice squad.
Still, peculiar though it might seem, we sent a lot of our rescues his way. Danny was always in need of attractive support staff who weren’t put off by the shenanigans at the club, and a word from Alex or me was all the background check he needed. Like the others before her, Denise had a steady job, a good support system, and when she got her GED later that year, she’d be poised to move on to even bigger and better opportunities. It was one of the things that let me live with myself.
Alex sighed and set the book review aside, still unread. Sometimes we made love in the morning, but this didn’t look like one of those days. “Hold me,” was all she said.
That was easy enough to do, and remarkably pleasant. Alex had just turned 65, but although she’d never had a facelift or Botox, she’d kept her figure; I thought the silver in her hair just made her more elegantly beautiful. I scooted closer, and then surprised her by hoisting her into my lap so she lay against my chest. My hand found her breast beneath the silk negligee, no longer as high and firm as in her youth, but still precious to me.
“I’m damn lucky you married me,” I repeated, more somberly.
“So am I,” Alex whispered, conforming her body to mine with the ease of long practice.
I knew she was thinking of Jonathan. After she’d broken off their engagement, he’d surprised nearly everyone by marrying Connie; she’d been showing at our wedding and their daughter had been born a scandalously short time afterwards. Their marriage had survived years of compulsive serial cheating on both sides—Connie had even worked for Danny for a while—but it hadn’t survived the downturn in the ‘70s when Jonathan lost his job. The daughter had left for college and never looked back, and Connie had moved to Florida. She and Alex still exchanged cards and occasional phone calls, but their lives had moved in different directions.
It was a comfortable existence, and the work distracted both of us from the terrible loss of Lloyd Jr. and so many others on 9/11. We’d had him late, and with our hopes for a daughter-in-law and grandchildren dashed, we poured our energies into the surrogate children from the ruin of the real world in memory of the child of our bodies.
Alex stirred momentarily to life. “We should go in.”
That meant it was bad. The work we did with the shelters was somewhere between outreach and a hobby; the job that paid the bills was the Edward and Patricia Sullivan Memorial Center for Clinical Psychology, of which Dr. Alexandra Parker, M.D., Ph.D. was the founding staff member. Yeah, when Danny thought they weren’t rich, it really meant my in-laws hadn’t intended to squander their wealth on themselves or their children. Public works, on the other hand...
I was on staff, too, but in a lower-key role. It was almost funny the way medical doctors treated the “fake” doctors like me, but I didn’t take their disdain too seriously. Most people probably thought I was just there as a sop to humor Alex, which was fine with us since I could never have explained what exactly it was I did do. She could spout enough psycho-babble to snow anybody who got curious, and do it with a straight face.
Consequently, the most challenging work happened on Sundays, when fewer bystanders were around to worry about. It went without saying that none of the patients Alex asked me to consult on were there for a vacation retreat.
“Tell me about it?” I asked, curious.
“I’d rather not,” Alex replied, surprising me. “I’d like to get your opinion without prejudicing it first.”
I couldn’t remember another time she’d said that. Part of me wondered what could be that bad, but another part of me looked forward to the chance to do something more interesting than reforming another crack whore. There were only so many seriously fucked-up head cases out there, after all.
“Shower first? I’d hate for people to think you kept me around just for the sex.” I nuzzled her tousled hair and squeezed her breast suggestively.
Alex laughed, as I’d hoped, and rolled off of me. “You’re pretty good, for an old man. Do you think you can catch me?”
I laughed too as I chased her fetching silk-clad ass into the bathroom.
I was still admiring it, now clad in seasonably-appropriate wool slacks and obligatory white monogrammed lab coat, as we made the short walk from Alex’s reserved spot into the Center. We nodded politely to the guard and the few other staffers we saw, all of whom were appropriately awed to be in presence of Alexandra the Great. I’d never told her about the nickname, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t learned it.
We ended up in the secure ward, which wasn’t a total surprise, but ruled out a few things. Alex checked us in at the control desk, and I ambled over to room 1. It had an attached viewing area, and I knew we’d need it for this case. I looked through the glass cutout in the door.
The occupant was a looker. She sat on the bed, naked, rocking back and forth, and stared at the wall in front of her. She had preposterously large breasts, capped by wide areolae and erect nipples, a wasp waist, and shoulder-length dirty blonde hair that might have looked attractive if it had been brushed. Jarringly, her face was made up like one of Danny’s girls. I guessed her to be in her late twenties, more or less.
“Where did you find her?” I asked Alex, who was standing beside me.
“No cheating,” she said, without a trace of humor in her voice. “Let’s visit, first.” She unlocked the door and we entered the room.
The girl tumbled onto her knees on the floor with an agility that surprised me. She faced us with her breasts cupped in her hands and her face aimed at our feet.
“Good afternoon,” Alex said in her most gentle voice, “do you remember me? This is Dr. Parker.”
“Call me Lloyd,” I told her.
“Let me serve you, Lloyd,” she responded, proffering her breasts. Her voice was remarkably cultured.
She was a puzzle. “Um, can you stand up and tell me your name?” I asked, since Alex was remaining silent.
The girl rose gracefully until she was balanced on the balls of her feet. “My name is Torrid Passion, Lloyd.”
Even Danny didn’t have that perverse a sense of humor. “Can you just stand flat-footed, Torrid? I don’t want you to fall and hurt yourself.”
She looked nervous and gingerly lowered her heels, but the strain was apparent and she swayed more than she had before.
“That’s a good girl, Tori,” Alex cut in, “you can sit like a lady now.”
The girl—Torrid, Tori, whatever—looked at me first, then sat on the bed, knees together and aimed slightly to one side. She was the very picture of a prim young woman, except her chest was still thrust out and she seemed totally heedless of her nudity.
I looked past her bare skin to the tangle of her mind. It was twisted, not unlike a bonsai tree, in ways I’d never seen or even imagined.
Alex asked, “Have you ever heard of a Janet Mueller?”
“No,” Tori answered flatly.
“Thank you for your time, Tori,” Alex smiled warmly, but it didn’t make much impact.
“It was my pleasure to serve you, Lloyd,” Tori told me as we made our escape.
“Jesus Fucking Christ, Alex,” I burst out once the door was closed behind us, “where did you find that girl?”
She dragged me into the observation room, where we couldn’t be overheard. “Just tell me first,” Alex begged, “did someone—like you—do that?”
I hugged her close, suddenly understanding the source of her tension and unease. “No, love, I don’t think there’s an evil mind controller out there; her mind doesn’t look like that. Just some incredibly sick and twisted bastard with too much time on his hands. Did they get him?”
Alex relaxed in my arms and laughed humorlessly. “I doubt it. They picked her up in an INS raid following a tip about illegal domestic servants; can you believe it? It sounds like he bought her from someone else.”
“How long?” I wondered, opening the blinds so I could gaze through the one-way glass. Tori was sitting curled up on the bed, rocking, again.
“She went missing in her freshman year of college, back in ‘94,” Alex reported. “Janet Mueller is her real name, but she only responds to ‘Torrid Passion’ or ‘Tori’. They identified her from dental records.” She pulled a photo from the folder in her hand and passed it to me.
I could see the physical resemblance, but the younger girl smiling from the picture didn’t look like the life-size Barbie doll rocking on the bed.
“It’s worse than you can see,” Alex stated in a flat tone, and I realized she was as angry as I’d ever seen her. “She stands the way she does because her tendons have been shortened to the point her heels can’t reach the floor. The makeup on her face is permanent, tattooed on.” She let out a shuddering breath. “Obviously her breasts have been enlarged, although she doesn’t have implants. And she was lactating up until last week, although her tubes are tied and Dr. Fisher estimates the surgery was performed at least several years ago.”
“Inside—well, you probably know better than I. She won’t wear clothes, ignores other women if there’s a man in the room, and is ready ‘to serve’ —by name—every male orderly she’s seen.” Alex’s voice had risen to an angry snarl.
“Damnit, nobody deserves this! Janet has parents and a brother; we can’t show them this! Please tell me you can fix her, Lloyd. Let us give them back a woman, not a toy.”
“Of course we will,” I assured her. It would be the most complicated thing I’d ever tried, but we—to be honest, I—was the reason the Sullivan Center was developing a grass-roots reputation for delivering with cases other places wouldn’t even try. “Just give me a few minutes to study her, and calm yourself down. I don’t promise miracles, but we’ll do right by her. Trust me on this, Alex.”
“I always have,” she smiled, already looking less stressed. “Take your time, and I’ll see if the ward nurses have anything new to add.”
I reversed a chair and sat down, propping my arms on the back and staring at Janet. I let my eyes go out of focus and looked with my mind’s eye, studying again the strands of her consciousness bent awry. The damage to her psyche was obvious, but the means of repairing it were less evident.
Parts of the crystalline lattice were faded nearly to oblivion from disuse, fenced off by tangled knots of presumably learned behaviors. I was always at my best reinforcing existing urges, so the trick would be to bypass the tangles. More than forty years of effort had yet to establish any correlation between what I saw and actual behavioral or intellectual centers, so I couldn’t know in advance what was important and what could be left for later or ignored.
Alex had thoughtfully left Janet’s file, and I thumbed through it. The new stuff didn’t interest me, and the background data was scanty. Just another California girl, thinking about maybe going into law, a few friends at school, a maybe-boyfriend. Living a normal life, a bad week, and then gone without a trace—until now. She’d probably spent more of her adult life as Tori than Janet. What could I hang my hat on?
It had to be her name. The unknown perpetrator obviously had gone out of his way to eliminate it, because it was too bound up with her identity and who she was, but he didn’t have my abilities and could only go at it second-hand. If we could get at her name, we’d have broken the back of the master knot and the rest would follow. Worst case, I’d just imprint it— something I was getting better at—and rely on her own subconscious to make the connection.
I opened my eyes and stretched, aware of the familiar glow at my back.
“Ready?” Alex asked.
“Yeah,” I answered. “Keep asking about her name. Janet Mueller. The rest is too vague to work with for now, I think. We can do a second session later if we need it. It’ll be tricky.”
“I thought so. Here, I brought you some aspirin and a cup of water.”
I gulped them down and stood up. “What did I do to deserve you?” I asked Alex rhetorically, kissing her on the forehead.
She pulled my head down for a quick, but proper, kiss. “The same things you always do. Be careful, Lloyd, please?” We exchanged warm smiles before she left the room.
I turned around and sat down again. This time I was able to watch without distractions as the door opened and Janet tumbled to her knees on the floor again. She seemed to relax slightly when she saw Alex was alone.
“Hi, Janet, it’s Alexandra again. I thought we could sit together on the bed and have a girl talk.”
The girl remained motionless on the floor, staring mulishly at my wife’s feet.
I closed my eyes and focused my attention outward. “Janet Mueller,” I whispered quietly, feeling the way my mouth moved and the sound of the individual syllables in my ears. I fixated on the picture of the younger girl, the feel and sound of the name that went with her, and pressed it all at her. Nothing happened, yet, but I wasn’t expecting a quick fix— not after nearly nine years. I kept up a steady pressure, regulated my breath, and kept watching for signs of movement amidst the tangle of her mind.
“Janet Mueller. It’s a pretty name, don’t you think?” Alex asked, keeping up a light banter. “Did you have friends? What did they call you? Janet, or maybe just Jan?”
“I do not have friends. My name is Torrid Passion. Master called me Tori when he was pleased, but I have not served him for many days. He will punish me.” There was a pause. “He will punish you too, for wearing clothes like a man. You should undress.” There was another pause, and my mental antennae quivered. “I could help you hide them; you have been kind and I would not like to see you beaten.”
“Thank you, Janet, but I’m just fine. Your master is a very bad man, and he will be locked away for a very very long time. You will never see him again. You do not have a master. Janet Mueller has parents, and a brother. Wouldn’t you like to see them again, Janet, and hug them?”
One of the knots was trembling ever so slightly. I grinned and pressed harder, ignoring the onset of the headache; it would be worth it.
“Other doctors told me that,” the girl whispered hesitantly.
“What, honey? Your name? Janet Mueller? Can you say it yourself? It’s such a beautiful name, Janet. I imagine it would sound like music, hearing you say it.”
“Janet. Mueller.” The emotional overtones suggested she expected to be beaten any second.
The resistance was starting to fade, enough that I felt confident enough to open my eyes while still pushing. I would have given anything not to see what happened next.
“That’s right, Janet Mueller,” Alex agreed cheerfully. Both of them were perched on the edge of the bed. “Do you think you could write it?” It was a clever idea that I’d overlooked, as usual, but when Alex withdrew the fat ergonomic pen from her coat pocket, Janet reacted like it was a cattle prod.
“NO!” she shrieked, bouncing to her feet.
“It’s just a pen,” Alex reassured her, holding it out for inspection and starting to stand.
“Noooo, don’t punish me!“ In a frenzy, Janet lashed out and I watched, helplessly, as my wife toppled backwards, off balance, and bounced her head off the bed frame before sprawling on the floor.
I ran like a madman, screaming for a trauma team, but I could already see parts of Alex’s mind dimming and becoming insubstantial before I skidded to my knees in the spreading pool of her blood and urged her to hold on. I was having trouble seeing through my tears, people were shouting at me, and the naked girl on the floor near me was screaming “My name is Torrid Passion, don’t punish me!” over and over at the top of her lungs.
“Damnit, your name is Janet Mueller!“ I screamed with every bit of rage and fear and loss that was coursing through my body.
She froze, shocked silent, and then curled into a fetal position. “I want my mother,” Janet sobbed brokenly.
I wanted my wife but, unlike Janet, I knew I wasn’t going to get my wish.
Alexandra’s body lingered on for more than two years before she finally stopped breathing on the day of my seventieth birthday. I spent every day of that living hell holding vigil beside her, trying vainly to restore something that was already gone forever. I should have told the hospital to pull the plug and end the farce, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it and foreclose any possibility of a miracle.
Even the false hope of an animated Alex-less body was denied me. I turned my back on the Center and Home Run. It was Alexandra I cared about, and if I couldn’t save her, I wasn’t fit to help anybody.
The friends and acquaintances were the worst. They couldn’t see what I did, and if the machines said she maybe wasn’t brain dead, then there was still hope. I knew better, but had to pretend to be hopeful and optimistic; I could recite stories about people awakening from comas in my sleep. Connie visited once, and they told me Janet had been there too, when I wasn’t around. The stream of visitors grew smaller, and more morose, until it was just Danny and myself.
He’d brought a small cupcake with two candles in the shape of a “7” and “0” squeezed on top, but the cardiac alarm went off before we got to it. It must have cost him dearly, but Danny held me while I bawled my guts out like a baby before they finally wheeled her away.
We spread her ashes in the winter-bare flower garden in front of the Center, near her parents’. They already had a different name painted on the curb in her parking spot. I felt old beyond my years, and used up.
I tried to go back to the house, but it was filled with memories of our life together. I spent Thanksgiving sitting at an empty table, looking at the empty seat that belonged to Alex and the woven placemats Lloyd Jr. had made one year at camp. The can of chili beans was like ashes in my mouth. I knew I couldn’t do it any longer.
The realtor thought I was crazy, but I sold the house and everything in it and found a small apartment on the other side of town. I filled it in a one-day shopping spree at the clearance center, and settled in to hibernate.
Danny wouldn’t let me. “Hibernate, my ass! You came here to die, Lloyd, and I think it’s a pretty piss-poor plan. Think of a better one, okay?” He’d be back a week or so later. “Do you think Alexandra would be impressed by this?” He kept it up all winter.
Finally, he got to me in the spring. “Look, Lloyd, I could really use your help at the club. It hasn’t been the same without you.” It belatedly occurred to me that the entire affair had to have been hard on him too, and he’d had to deal with his business the entire time—even if it was a little nontraditional. I suspected he was just feeding me lines until he found one that worked, but the result was the same.
There were a few old girls, who treated me like a grandfather, and a bunch of new ones, who treated me like a dinosaur, and Danny must have told them I was made of spun glass or something. We made our way through the welcoming crowd, and Danny showed me into the remodeled office he’d set aside for me.
“So, what’s the catch?” I asked, as I tried out the leather chair. It was pretty comfortable.
“No catch,” Danny assured me. It was when he looked the most innocent that I was most on my guard. “Just camp here for a few hours each night. Get out of your Cave of Atonement regularly, okay?” The concern in his voice softened the barb. “Maybe fix problems, once in a while.”
The office was quiet; it could have used a little music, to make it more welcoming. I supposed I could spring for a CD player or something. “Come on, Danny. What kind of problems?”
“Little stuff.” He shrugged defensively. “Some of the new girls, they aren’t the same. They get a little rowdy, or there’s a misunderstanding. You know. Heck, you’re the psych major—I just know how to make money.”
“Go bullshit somebody who doesn’t know you, Danny,” I laughed. It had been a long time since I’d done that, and it felt good. “Yeah, okay, I’ll do it. But you’d better throw in a clothing allowance unless you want to see me wearing sweats all the time.”
“Done!” he cried, offering a handshake to seal the bargain. It was all a sop, anyway; we hadn’t discussed money and I had a one-third interest in the club already. I realized I was willing to let him win one, and rejoin the human race.
Things settled down pretty quickly. Matters weren’t as bad as Danny had suggested, and practical experience and a little gravitas were sufficient to do the job without resorting to any of my tricks. I’d sworn off them, anyway. Women, too, which the girls somehow figured out quickly enough without anything ever being said.
I liked to look as much as the next guy, but most of them could have been my granddaughters, and besides, I’d promised Alexandra. Maybe she hadn’t meant it to last in the event I’d been so careless as to let her die without me, but I was going to take it that way. If it was just fear of being hurt again, well, it was the same difference.
By the time summer rolled around, I was comfortably ensconced and thinking about getting a day job. I’d recovered enough to find sitting around my apartment boring; God help me if I watched any daytime TV. Also, frankly, Home Run didn’t by its nature draw the cream of society and I was itching to be around normal people for a change.
The brainstorm came when I was walking at the mall and caught sight of this overweight guy in a security uniform confronting some kid. I told myself I could do the job as well as he, and get paid for walking around the mall, to boot.
Danny had trouble taking the idea seriously when I broached it to him. “You’re yanking my chain, right? Jesus, Lloyd, why don’t you go teach at the University? You could look at the coeds and be only slightly overqualified instead of grossly overqualified. A brain-dead monkey could do that job!” He flinched. “Ah, sorry about that.”
I waved off the apology. “I feel like a brain-dead monkey. Look, can you help me, or not?”
Of course, the interview he sent me out for wasn’t at that mall. It wasn’t even at the upscale mall out in the ‘burbs. It was at the high-class flagship department store that anchored the upscale mall. If I’d really been dependent on a wage, I’d probably have had to work a month to buy a shirt in that place.
It was clear when I walked into the interview that I already had the job. Danny obviously had lots of friends in high places. “So, you do plainclothes work?” the interviewer asked, apparently intent on checking off boxes as quickly as possible.
“Yeah,” I answered. I had to give Danny credit; I wouldn’t even have to wear one of those stupid uniforms.
“You know how to deal with people? Customer service?” He looked at me with a little concern. “Customer relations are very important here. You gotta handle the guests nicely.”
I thought about telling him I had a Ph.D. in organizational psychology, a couple decades in counseling and practice, and effectively was the customer service manager for an illegal brothel. I settled for smiling and telling him, “Yeah, I know how to get along and play nice with others.”
He didn’t look all that reassured, but stuck with the script. “Well, then, welcome aboard, Mr. Parker! My admin will give you the forms and get you set up for new hire training. Can you start next week?”
That was the start of two modestly enjoyable years that accomplished nothing much beyond keeping me moving, fit, and busy enough to have little time to brood. Perhaps I was just marking time, waiting for my life to change—if so, I didn’t recognize the change when it happened.