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  We’re guided to a table for two on an angle of the veranda at the back of the house. A candle glows in a tall glass vase on the tabletop. The maitre d’ settles me in a chair, uncorks the wine, pours a sip in the glass beside my plate, and waits with seeming anxiety while I swirl it in my mouth and nod. He fills my glass and Phil’s, sets the bottle on the table, and leaves us. We’re alone.

  The veranda opens on a steep treed hillside. The dark ocean lies below. Waves curl in white moustaches as their lips slide over the rocky shore. Their sighing is muffled by the trees.

  Phil watches me take it all in. I sip wine and try to collect myself. He says, “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

  Is the ocean breeze raising goose bumps on my arms and legs, or am I reacting to his line? And if it’s a line, why can’t I read his desires? Being with a man whose sex thoughts are hidden makes me feel naked inside.

  I’m still wondering how to end the silence when the maitre d′ hurries out with a shawl. I let him wrap it around my shoulders. A waiter lays plates of sushi in front of us.

  When did I last eat an actual meal? Day before yesterday, a chicken wrap for lunch at a deli near the law office. I told them to hold the mayo.

  My raw fish is gone in a few bites. Phil nibbles his and watches me, always my face. The cool air makes my nipples show. I pull the shawl over my tits. His eyes don’t follow the movements of my hands.

  I say, “This is better than the sushi I tried in Japan.”

  He asks, “What were you doing there?”

  I say, “Law firm business.” I find myself wanting to entertain him with the story of how the firm sent me to Tokyo to clean up a misunderstanding involving the CEO of one of our corporate clients and an offended geisha.

  My training clamps my mouth. The tale of the CEO and the geisha drew laughs around the conference table when I reported to the partners after the trip, but to repeat it to anyone outside the firm would be a heretical breach of confidence. I don’t work there anymore. But once a lawyer…

  What if this night is a setup? Our clients often made enemies with fantastic resources. Could Phil be working for some bitter corporate rival who arranged the whole sequence, right down to the suggestive sushi, all to make me talk about the geisha scandal?

  The information might be juicy enough to knock my former client, the geisha-grabbing CEO, off his perch. His company might falter. His competitors would feast on the disarray. Jobs lost, futures altered, all because Laurie Deloit didn’t keep her mouth shut.

  Phil leaves a polite morsel of fish on his plate and puts down his chopsticks. Nothing in his manner suggests my insecurities played on my face. I look down the hillside at the shore. The night has darkened. The lips of foam have lost their color.

  I told myself I wanted this guy to be a dope, so the halves he left me in would be rejoined. But those distracted eyes keep working on me. I’m floating in two pieces, barely connected and poorly sorted, Laurie Deloit and Raven, alike as day and night.

  The waiter brings dinner plates laden with tuna fillets and pasta in cream sauce. Scents rise, ginger from the fish and garlic from the pasta. My insides water.

  I say, “Whatever you plan to discuss, let’s do it on full stomachs.”

  Phil nods, grins sideways, and fills my wine glass.

  The tuna is crusted on the outside and a barely warm deep red on the inside. My first bite leaves a series of flavors. The pasta offsets the delicate fish with a sweet, buttery heaviness.

  The maître d’ brings a party of three couples to a table around a corner of the veranda. One of the couples is gay, two nice looking guys who don’t shy from displaying their affection for one another with touches and looks. The breeze, the rustling trees, and the turn of the veranda make their words indistinct. Their conversation is filled with laughter.

  My plate and the wine bottle empty. At least my stomach is settled, though the rest of me feels ready to fly in two directions. I ate faster than Phil. While he finishes, I nurse the last of my wine.

  The two women from the other table nod at us on their way to the powder room. They’re California tanned and dressed in thin, flowing skirts and blouses and bits of jewelry. Under their cordiality their eyes look wary, as if I might wiggle over and steal their men while they’re peeing.

  I go back to wondering why I’m not picking up any reactions from Phil. Though he’s fucked me from inventive angles while others watched through glass walls, I don’t feel him feeding his fantasies on these memories. I think he wants to see the Laurie Deloit side of me, more than the Raven side. Fuck him. Only half of me is for sale, and nobody gets access to the other half.

  I slip the shawl down my shoulders, baring the tops of my arms under the short sleeves of the silk t-shirt, and exposing my tits. The warmth of the shawl didn’t relax my nipples entirely, and my bra is too thin to mask them. They make hard bumps under the silk. Good. I want to know I’m not a person who dreams of roses and everlasting love.

  The women from the next table take in my act on their way back from the john, and hurry past. They join in the laughter of their companions. Their men rise to do the ceremony of assisting with their chairs.

  I can read the sex thoughts of the two guys who aren’t gay. One wants me on his lap with my hands tied behind my back. The other imagines me under the table, sucking his cock while he makes small talk with his date. They’re trying not to let their eyes stray toward me while their women are watching.

  Phil pats his lips with a napkin, drinks, and asks, “Ever wanted to be rich?”

  I say, “I’m not doing badly.”

  He says, “I mean fabulously rich. Do anything rich.” He takes another drink. “Anything.”

  Relief floods me. The butterflies in my belly go to sleep. This is a business meeting. Whatever the guy is up to, it concerns money. No wonder I couldn’t read any sex in him.

  I ask, “And what you suggest is?” I try to keep the question light. Inside, my relief at learning we aren’t considering involvement or affection is beginning to droop. I hate this sense of disappointment. My answer to myself is to shift in the chair and thrust my tits in Phil’s direction. It’s Raven’s way of handing him her business card.

  His eyebrows rise, but the rest of his face stays straight. He says, “I represent a certain man. An extraordinarily rich man who has acquired everything worth owning. He pays me to find those few treasures he doesn’t already possess.”

  He’s asking me to whore for a better class of hotshot. The idea piques my interest, and gives me a clear road down which I can gallop away from the nasty, heartbreaking romantic fantasies Phil Still started to stir in me.

  I feel good knowing he didn’t spend his own money when he bid for me while I posed on the fender of the red car in the Torch Lounge. I was an item on his expense account.

  The waiter asks if we’d care for dessert. I shake my head. The pasta in butter sauce will take a day’s starving to burn off, without the extra load of four-layer chocolate cake.

  I swallow the last of my wine. Raven’s wild smile grow across Laurie Deliot’s face. I ask, “And I’m one of those invaluable things?”

  His grin tilts. He says, “Of course.”

  I ask, “Where’s your boss?”

  He says, “A plane is waiting.”

  Chapter Twelve Arriving

  My journey ends in the middle of a tropical ocean. The helicopter descends toward sparkling Mediterranean waters and hovers over a helipad at the stern of an oceangoing yacht.

  The big boat and every visible accessory are white, including the aircraft I’m sitting in, the uniform of the pilot, the rubber rafts that circle at a distance, bouncing over light waves, and the guards riding in them. Their rifles are black.

  My left leg is shaking. Why am I doing this? Seattle Young, for all its air of wildness, is secure. People are always watching.

  Once, a hotshot in the glass rooms backhanded his whore across the face. The fucking in all the rooms stopped. Whores a
nd hotshots together, we all stared at the guy. He tried to pretend he wasn’t an asshole, kneeling by the woman he’d knocked to the floor and seeming concerned.

  Two burly bartenders from the sports lounge handed the hotshot his clothes and escorted him from the building. A masseuse from the shower room checked the whore. As she left leaning on his arm, she raised her fist above her head. Hotshots and whores all cheered, and went back to fucking.

  What I’m doing now seems more dangerous. This boat is all alone on a big sea. I don’t know who my hotshot is, or if I’m selling myself to a man or a woman. I can’t leave until they let me.

  I force my leg to stop shaking. Through the glass bubble of the cockpit I watch the helicopter’s skids come to rest atop the white-on-white skin of the landing pad.

  The risk is worth it. At the end of this encounter, I will be one rich superwhore. I stick a big smile on my face.

  Phil Still waits at the edge of the helipad. The wash from the rotors ruffles his hair. A crewman dressed in white from his hat to his shoes ducks to anchor the helicopter to the pad. The pilot signals that I can unbuckle. I haven’t seen the eyes behind his dark sunglasses. Over the fading engine noise, he says, “Have a nice day.”

  I bet I will.

  Phil is dressed whitely. His tan looks nice against his polo shirt. He offers a hand to steady me on the three steps from the helipad to the deck. In the shoes I’m wearing, I need the help.

  The boat barely rocks, though the ocean around us is unsettled. My tall-heeled whore platforms make me wobble.

  Phil says, “Welcome to the Adventuress.”

  I say, “Nobody told me to wear white.”

  He looks me over. I’m in the thinnest and skimpiest blue shorts and red top for sale in the boutiques of Athens on the stopover they gave me to shop, primp, and catch up on my beauty sleep. The bag hanging from my shoulder is full of makeup, perfumes, lotions, flavored douches, and lingerie.

  I boarded the jet Phil took me to at a private airport. I’ve been pampered halfway across the world. Phil took a different plane. He said he’d meet me at the destination, but he didn’t say where. The sleek corporate jet, white inside and out, was for me alone.

  When I snuck a look behind the door in the back of the passenger cabin, I found a medical emergency room—gurney, scary machines, white cabinets and all.

  My suite at the gilded hotel in Athens was crowded with fresh flowers, all white. The credit card waiting for me in a white envelope at the hotel bedside covered the cost of the designer originals packed in the four pieces of leather luggage the yacht crewman is lugging up a gangway to the top deck.

  On the jet I found a white-covered book titled Welcome to the Adventuress. The book described the boat. I know where to find the outdoor pool, the indoor pool, the spa, the casino, the gym, the salon, and the bedrooms.

  The book said the boat has two master suites and an open-air bar on the top deck. That’s where the guy with my luggage is headed. I follow him. Phil stays beside me.

  Despite his easy grin, Phil looks strained. I suppose beauty sleep wasn’t part of his travel experience. Or maybe he’s conflicted over handing this particular treasure over to his acquisitive employer? Tough toodles, Phil. I didn’t make you the slightest of promises.

  My luggage goes through the doorway of a master suite. I follow. The crewman puts down the bags in a neat row on the thick white carpet, touches the brim of his cap, nods, and leaves. He’s a handsome, olive-skinned young man with a two-day beard.

  The sunlight comes through portholes instead of windows, and the floor is faintly rocking. Otherwise, I might be in the nicest hotel room I’ve ever occupied. A maid starts unpacking my things. White dresses and sheer, sweeping, white nightgowns go on the closet racks. Wherever I shopped in Athens, all the clothes the shop clerks suggested for me were white.

  Phil stops at the doorway. I tell him, “Come in while I freshen up.”

  He says, “I’ll wait,” and steps back.

  The freshening doesn’t take long. I’m curious to meet the guy who paid for me. In the vanity mirror, Laurie Deloit’s face fills with Raven’s eyes.

  The john has its own sitting room, gilded chairs with white cushions and round side tables with gilded legs and white marble tops. A woman holding a makeup case waits there. She’s attractive enough to work the sports lounge at Seattle Young, or possibly the Torch Lounge. Would she hold up in the glass rooms?

  She takes bottles and brushes from the makeup case and arranges them on one of the tables. Above them she tapes a picture. It’s me, my faced disguised with black feather patterns.

  I ask, “He wants my face painted?”

  She nods.

  I say, “But all your bottles are white. I’ll look like a dove.”

  She says, “A white raven.”

  Chapter Thirteen The Buyer

  White down to my nails. Painted white feathers surround my lips and eyes. Real ones hang from my ears and the choker around my neck. The gown the maid brought me isn’t one I charged to my new hotshot’s credit card in an Athens shop. It’s a replica of the costume I wear for the Torch Lounge, but white.

  The slits run higher, inches above my hip bone. The neckline plunges far below my navel. The back scoops halfway down my ass. Keeping the slinky material on my body requires careful posture. The slightest shrug will send it slithering around my feet. Every sway of my movements reveals parts of me that my underwear would cover if I was wearing any.

  I emerge from my cabin in a cloud of fresh perfume. Phil is leaning on the deck rail outside my door, face pensive, arms crossed, head shaded by the white-striped awning, back warmed by the sun.

  He says, “He’s ready.”

  It’s a man. I say, “Take me to him.”

  I’d figured on walking no further than the master suite next to mine, but Phil leads me down a companion way. He doesn’t offer his hand. This is tricky. In my white heels, taller than the ones I wear at Seattle Young, I can barely manage the steps. The maid follows me and catches the shoulder straps whenever my dress try to fall off.

  We pass the crewman who carried my bags to my suite and one of his buddies. The look in their eyes tells me I’m a sight they’ll never forget.

  Phil opens the door to a cabin on the deck below, stands aside, and says, “Good luck.” His smile bends under the strain of whatever he’s feeling. The maid stops beside him. I enter alone. The door closes behind me.

  Three more steps to negotiate, curving glass ones with a brass rail like the spiral stair at Seattle Young. They tell me I’m on display. I keep my eyes straight ahead, my shoulders back, and my smile wide. My feet find the steps. My hand wants to grab the rail. I make it slide lightly over the brass.

  The same show tunes Toussaint plays at the Torch Lounge come from a white grand piano. No one sits at it, but the keys move. The short backlit bar makes dark silhouettes of the bottles and glasses arrayed on glass shelves, and of the topless bartender. She’s my makeup artist, in a white derby hat and a white bow tie. Her tits are dainty.

  In the center of a dance floor roomy enough for one couple, a barstool waits for me under a red-lit chandelier. It’s the same height as the fender of the car where I display myself for the bidders at Seattle Young. The top if it is slick-looking red leather. My gaze falls on it with relief. It’s the first un-white object I’ve seen on this boat.

  I take my place on the stool. The rungs where my feet find a hold are high enough to lift my knees and make my dress slip away from my legs. I lift my chin, shove out my boobs, and wait. The piano keeps playing. I wonder how long I can hold this pose without falling off the stool or getting a cramp.

  A curtain of white beads covers the entry to a short arched passageway. The space beyond is brightly lit. I know what’s waiting. A glass room.

  “You are lovely.” The voice is weak and hoarse. I turn toward it. The movement makes a strap fall from my shoulder and exposes my left boob. There’s not a man standing where I expect to see
one. I look down. He’s in a wheelchair.

  He gives me a struggling smile. His withered neck leans to the side, leaving his head propped against a metal brace. One of his hands rests on the controls of the chair. He motors closer to me. His other hand trembles a he touches my leg. Many men’s hands have done the same. This one seems to shake more from palsy than excitement.

  I guess his age as ninety or over.

  He says, “Once I bid less for a Monet than I’m paying for twenty-four hours with you.”

  I ask, “Did you buy the painting?”

  He says, “I did.”

  I bend a leg toward him. My dress parts to reveal my cunt. The engagement ring pierced in my labia captures the red gleam of the chandelier above my head. I guide the hotshot’s shaking hand up my thigh. I ask, “Did the Monet feel this good?”

  He asks, “What am I to do with you, Raven?”

  I slide off the stool. The other strap leaves my shoulder. The dress falls around my feet. I’m naked. The eyes in his immobile head travel me slowly. I’m still holding his hand. I press it to my cunt, which was expertly waxed this morning in an Athens spa. His trembling fingers don’t try to delve me.

  A beeping noise from a white box atop his wheelchair speeds up. A point of light zigzags across a monitor, leaving a streak of sharp peaks and valleys. Behind the chair, a few steps away in a shadowed recess beside the bar, a nurse in a white uniform watches anxiously. Maybe I’m supposed to fuck her. But it’s him she’s watching.

  I tell my hotshot, “You’re making me feel good.” It’s a lie I know how to tell. The shaking of his hand lessens. The beeping slows.

  I ask, “Will you take me to the glass room?”

  We move together toward the beaded curtain, him with one hand on my ass and the other on the controls to his chair. I play my finger over the sparse streaks of black-dyed hair plastered to his skull. His mottled skin looks cold, but he’s as warm as any living man.

  There are two glass rooms. One is furnished with a bed. The other is equipped with a white table filled with medicine bottles and an IV stand with a bag of some potent liquid hanging ready. An etched glass nameplate on the transparent door to the bedroom says Raven.