The Venus Fix by M. J. Rose Read Free Book Online Page B

next I was as normal as everyone else.”
    She settled back on the couch. “After all those years of being ashamed of how I looked, I can’t even describe what it was like not to have anyone stare at me anymore.”
    “Is there a connection between that and you going online? Inviting men to look at you?”
    “Isn’t that obvious?”
    “Yes, but I need you to articulate it.”
    “My exhibitionism is a fuck-you to everyone who ever looked at me crooked. It was proof to me that I wasn’t a freak anymore. Each time I went online and stood there in front of my computer and stared into the camera as if it was a lover’s eyes, I was testing reality, saying to myself, it’s true, I’m good enough to look at.”
    She used both hands to pull her hair up off her neck, twist it up, and then let go of it again.
    “But you wore a mask.”
    “It’s just like that.” Blythe pointed to the glass box that sat on my bookshelf. Inside was an iridescent blue butterfly, seemingly suspended in midair—one of the many butterfly artifacts I had. I’d been collecting them for years. Even the small terrace off my office was planted with bushes and flowers to attract butterflies in the summer.
    “My butterfly comes from Venice and is made of silk with a string that ties around the back.” She put her hands up to her face, her fingers splayed so that her eyes peeked through. “It comes down to my mouth. There are two holes in the wings. The only thing you can see of me, through the mask, is my eyes.”

Twelve
     
    D etective Perez walked into the office he shared with Noah Jordain to find his partner just starting to make a fresh pot of what everyone else in the department referred to as “Jordain’s mud,” but which Perez had come to enjoy.
    The office was standard fare, badly in need of a new coat of paint and a lot of new furniture, but the window looked out onto the street rather than a back alley or a brick wall like the rest of them.
    “You are not going to believe this,” Perez said as he sat down, put a wrinkled piece of paper on his desk and tried to smooth it out.
    “Try me, anyway,” Jordain said as he added a scoop of chicory to the freshly ground coffee.
    “Debra Kamel was poisoned,” Perez stated matter-of-factly.
    “Okay.” The second syllable was elongated by his southern accent. “We thought that was a possibility. What’s the surprise? The kind of poison? Does Gordon think it was self-administered?”
    “The poison is called atropine,” Perez read. “It’s one of a family of anticholinergic drugs—often referred to as the belladonnaalkaloids…easily absorbed from mucous membranes, skin, intestinal tract or lungs.” He looked up. “But in this case we’re talking the membranes. These drugs can be toxic, Gordon said, even in an otherwise safe dose. For instance, an individual who is having his eyes dilated at the ophthalmologist’s could end up in the cardiac unit. It’s happened.”
    “Eyes dilated? You’ve lost me. What does this have to do with her eyes?”
    “It doesn’t, I’m just giving you some background. That’s one of the basic uses of atropine. It also causes heart attacks. Oh, and get this—belladonna was historically used as a sexual stimulant.”
    “You threw that in for what, a little irony?”
    “You might think so, but I was thinking that if someone else did this to her maybe it was someone who had a bad sense of humor and used these alkaloids on her specifically because they’ve been known as stimulants going way back in time.”
    “Okay. So is that what happened to her? The toxic reaction was cardiac arrest?”
    “You know that’s cooked, don’t you?” Perez nodded at the coffee.
    “Forgot about it, I was so engrossed by your story.” Jordain turned, poured out two cups and handed one to his partner.
    Perez took a sip, then continued.
    “Basically what happened probably started with symptoms like dry mouth, high fever…” He consulted the sheet of paper