Cutter agreed, but it took him a while.He didn’t enjoy the photo session the next morning.Too many people were there—the photographer and his assistants, a clothes person, a hair person, a makeup person, Verrana and Shorb and half a dozen of their associates—all looking at him.For the private person he was, it was unnerving.Moreover, he didn’t like having to wear strange clothes or have his hair fiddled with or his nose powdered.He felt like a fool on parade.
But he did like the photographer.He was a straight sort of guy who talked quietly as he worked.He sensedCutter’s awkwardness and dealt with it in subtle ways that made an uncomfortable situation bearable.
So that was one good point.The other was the sum of money Cutter was offered to spend a year working exclusively as the man in the Girard Jondier suit.John Torvall, an agent whom Hillary contacted when it became clear how excited Verrana and Shorb were with the preliminary prints, negotiated a contract that made it well worth Cutter’s while to put up with embarrassment and discomfort.
So there he sat, studying his bank statement, indulging in dreams.He already had his own apartment, taken immediately after he signed the contract, and although it was small, it had everything he needed.It wasn’t far from Hillary’s, but even if it had been, he’d have seen her often.He liked her.He was grateful to her.And she was still his link to Pam.
He knew that Pam had graduated from high school, that she had spent the summer in Europe, and that she was studying at the Museum School in Boston.Classes would have started the week before.He thought of calling; she was rooming with two other art students, Hillary said, and he was sure she had the number.But he didn’t call for the same reason he didn’t fly up to Boston to visit.He didn’t trust what John would do if he found out.
Occasionally he wondered whether things might be different now that Pam was eighteen and he was gainfully employed in New York.All he had to do at those times was finger the raised ridges on his back, and he knew he couldn’t take the chance.Not with a man as prone to violence as John.In the nightmares he still had about the beating, two things always stood out: thefirst were the sounds John had made with each blow, the grunting that had been almost sexual, and, in that, obscene; the second were the last words John had said, muttered in his ear in a venomous voice.
If I can’t have her, you sure as hell can’t either.
The words haunted him.He tried to think back, to remember anything Pam might have said or done to hint that John had molested her, but there was nothing.It was a good thing.If John ever abused her sexually, he would strangle the man.Literally.Even if he ended up in prison.
There were, though, other ways to handle him, and those were the ones Cutter most fantasized about when he considered the money collecting in his bank account.He let his mind wander two years, three years, four and five down the road.If during each of those years his income remained steady, and if he lived simply and banked every spare cent, he would have a substantial amount of money amassed.If he invested that money, the amount would grow even more substantial.The greater it was, the more power he would have, and the more power he had, the better a position he would be in to get back at John.He didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do.He had wild visions of riding in on a black charger and stealing the St.George Company, but things didn’t happen that way, he knew.
Still, Cutter would do something.John was going to live to regret what he’d done.
While Cutter’s dreams were broad and sweeping, Hillary was attuned to the smaller satisfactions of life.“I’m going to show John the ad,” she announced.It was lateSeptember.Cutter’s face was in every classy magazine on the stands.
“Don’t.”
“Why not?”
“He’ll wonder how you knew to look.”
“No, he won’t.I read fashion magazines all the time.”
“Don’t, anyway.”
“But I’d think you’d want him to know.”
They were eating breakfast, danish and coffee to go, on a bench on the east side of Central Park.Cutter set his coffee on a worn wood plank.“It’s enough that I know for now.There’s satisfaction in that.Don’t worry.People talk.He’ll find out.Maybe he’ll choke on his caviar in the middle of some important party.”
“Shhhh.”
Cutter gave her a dry look.“He’d wish the same on me.
Hillary didn’t argue.“What about Pam?I talk to her every few weeks.I see her when I’m in Boston.”
He already knew that.Like a starving man begging for crumbs, he grilled Hillary on every detail of those visits.
“She asks, Cutter.She asks if I’ve heard anything about you.I feel lousy not telling, and it’s not even so much because we’re friends.She thinks about you a lot.She worries.It’s only a matter of time before she sees those pictures.She’ll be hurt.”
“She won’t recognize me.I look completely different.”
“It would take a lot more than shorter hair and fancy clothes to disguise you from Pam.She’ll know it’s you the instant she sees one of those ads.Let me tell her.Prepare her.Better still, you tell her.Give her a call.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“John forbid me to do it.”
“Screw John.”
“That’s your job.”
