Free Ed King by David Guterson Page B

Dark.” She told him her name, because she liked him and wanted to, but more because she thought he might take on her visa problems free of charge. He did take them on, this well-toned repeat client with broad shoulders and a slim waist, who was given to gasping, “Diane … Fucking … Priceless … Burroughs!” when his big moment arrived. Soon, with the right papers in hand, Diane got a driver’s license and a long-term visa.
    There were problems, of course, with this manner of living, like worrying about arrest for solicitation, and concern about getting pregnantagain. Then there were the clients who seemed like potential murderers or, less frightening but more common, clients with sexual difficulties. There were men with ghastly halitosis, men whose proclivities were pathetic or onerous, and, worst of all, men who went too far despite her firmly articulated prohibitions, inflicting pains that weren’t artfully constrained or merely of the moment—injuries, sometimes, of the kind you limped home with and then recovered from with bed rest and ointment. Which wasn’t so bad, the days off and the unanswered telephone, the books, naps, TV shows, and American-cheddar tuna melts, the luxurious baths, the towel wrapped around the head, the robe and slippers, the indulgent home manicures—in sum, the life of a B-movie starlet. During these interludes, though, Diane felt lonely. Wallowing in the wounds of high-end prostitution, she remembered her son, wondered about his welfare, and regretted her decision to abandon him.
    Diane moved into a new apartment, significantly more posh and with a view of the Willamette, and traded in her car for one more daring. She also made some updates to her wardrobe, not because she needed to, but because shopping was fun—shopping, crossword puzzles, dime-store novels, television, and desserts filled her days, just as needy men filled her nights. She bought Junior Miss light pajama sets in both black and pink, carried them in her bag, and sometimes emerged from a hotel bathroom with one or the other on, and, with her ponytail tightly banded and her face freshly scrubbed, purred, “I was naughty and got my other PJs dirty.” It was fair to say that playing Candy Dark was satisfying, since it included turning men around and exploiting them whenever possible.
    Diane took a vindictive delight, too, in Walter Cousins’s payoff packets, which now always arrived with an accompanying note wishing her and “the baby” well, or with an inquiry about visiting her when next he was in Portland. She never answered these. She tossed them in the trash. Sometimes, in the grip of melancholy, she drove past the Tudor in Eastmoreland where she’d left her son, slowing so as to hurt herself, once again, by drumming up the disconsolate feeling of leaving him on the stoop. Sometimes she parked outside the Boys and Girls Aid Society of Oregon Home—actually three cottages, quite charming, on Southeast Powell Boulevard—for no reason other than to share her baby’s world: the grounds he knew, just visible through a gate, the trees, gardens, squirrels, and calling birds he was becoming aware of as he grew. Or maybenot, since by now he could have been adopted. She hoped that, if so, he was somewhere wonderful. She hoped he’d landed in the proper sort of family, with a mother who served good suppers every night and a father who tucked him in and read him stories. These homey images comforted Diane. She was entirely for them, for every middle-class convention, for all the stock concepts of sound child-rearing. It pleased her to think that at least one Burroughs might escape the impoverished fate of her clan. Hurrah for Baby Doe, slung from that impossible English mess as if from a catapult. He would soar, she constantly hoped and prayed, while following an American arc.
    In the summer of 1970, a client took Candy Dark to a soirée at the Riverside Golf and Country Club. Along the way, in a hired car, he