The Craigslist Murders - Brenda Cullerton [56]
“ ‘I want you to build her a bathroom that is 100% soundproof and smell-proof,’ he says. ‘If you don’t, we’re going to end up divorced.’ ”
“And how on earth do you do such a thing?” Pavel asked, poking, suspiciously, at his “pâté.”
“We installed a spring-loaded drop seal at the bottom of the door. You close the door, a little pin gets hit by the jam, and down drops the seal. I’d like to say they lived happily ever after, but the husband had an affair with the carpenter and the wife took off with her daughter’s personal trainer.”
Pavel looked perplexed. “The carpenter? Was a man?” he asked.
“Yeah, ends up the husband was gay.”
“Well, at least this story proves your clients are human, Charlotte.”
“Almost human,” she answered.
“So how do you deal with them?” Pavel asked, as he played with the little that was left of his pâté. “Most of the rich I have met here in America are not just wealthy, they are also beautiful and famous.”
Putting down her knife and fork, Charlotte stared into the distance. “A long time ago,” she said, “I empathized with very rich women. Having too much money, like being too beautiful, can be atrociously lonely.”
Pavel snorted.
“It’s true. Some of my clients … hell, lots of the women in this room, go for days touched only by people who are paid to touch them: hairdressers, personal trainers, masseurs, doctors. They never cook a meal, or wash a dish, or bathe a baby. They’ve forgotten there’s no such thing as easy money, Pavel. And they’re paying for it!”
Pavel squirmed in his chair. “Surely, there are worse problems than this, Charlotte?” he asked. “Should I pity them? These people you talk about are why we had a revolution in Russia. They are despicable, selfish. So again, I must ask you. How do you deal with them?”
Charlotte sat there, at a sudden loss for words. I murder them! She wanted to blurt out.
“I treat them fearlessly,” she said. “I make fun of them. I show them that I’m not the slightest bit intimated. Or at least that’s what I used to do when I was younger and stronger and less angry. And it worked like a charm,” Charlotte said, touching the tiny Eiffel Tower on her Craigslist bracelet and digging into her coconut paste pasta. “They were completely seduced.”
“Is this what you do with me?” Pavel asked, tasting his dish, and sitting back in his chair eyeing her.
“I don’t know enough about you to make fun of you,” she replied.
“What would you like to know?” he asked.
Do you kill people? flashed through her mind. “You scare me,” she said.
“I scare many people, Charlotte. It is a trick I use to survive. But you have no reason to feel that way.”
“Feeling has nothing to do with reason, Pavel. Surely, you realize that?”
“So what else do you feel about me?” he asked, taking a last delicate bite of his mushroom squash. She didn’t know a big man could be so delicate.
“Listen, this is a relationship about work,” she replied. “And I’m very rigid when it comes to my boundaries.” She could feel the flush of heat rising up her neck, thinking of her original plan to seduce and use him. “But I would like to know why your family is safer in Jersey.”
“Ahh, Yes!” said Pavel, pushing his plate away. “It must seem strange. But I am one of six men I know who boards the same Delta flight from Moscow every month. The answer to your question is simple: family makes me an easy target. And I cannot afford to put them at risk. What is it, you say? Better safe than sorry?”
“Yes! So how come they can’t live at the dacha? In the country?”
“I bought my house from the family of a man who was killed on a Moscow street corner. I was smart enough not to ask why. We Russians can be as pitiless to one another as we are to the earth we once cherished.”
As if to distract her, he reached down into his pocket and pulled out a color photograph. “This is the latest picture of the dacha,” he said, sliding it across the table.
Charlotte picked it up and exhaled. “Whew!” she said. “I bet astronauts can see your wall from space …”
“Russians love walls, Charlotte. When I move into my village,