Chapter Nine Tapping a Crooked Vein #2
From that point on, when Epstein and Maxwell were in Florida, I was a daily presence at El Brillo Way.
Some days Epstein and I were alone in the massage room.
Other days Maxwell joined us; or another young woman, a brunette named Sarah Kellen, who was introduced to me as Epstein’s assistant.
Epstein liked to watch women together, so sometimes he ordered me to have sex with Maxwell or Kellen.
I had never had a sexual experience with a woman, but I soon found forced sex with women was less threatening than with men.
I didn’t look forward to it, but it was less intrusive and therefore less terrifying.
Little by little, I was welcomed into the sorority of Epstein’s girls.
One day, for example, Maxwell led me upstairs as usual, but then turned left, away from the massage room, to a yellow guest room where Emmy Tayler, Maxwell’s blond, blue-eyed personal assistant, stayed.
Tayler, a Brit whom Maxwell jokingly referred to as her “slave,” was already there, smoking a cigarette on the balcony.
By then I knew Epstein hated cigarettes.
Like drugs and alcohol, which he also shunned, he saw tobacco as a poison and forbade it in his house.
But here Tayler stood, puffing away, and Maxwell now joined her, lighting up and taking a long drag.
When the women offered me a cigarette, I took it, anxious to fit in.
I wasn’t much of a smoker, though, so I inhaled too deeply and started coughing.
“I guess you’re inexperienced,” Maxwell teased as she and Tayler giggled.
I don’t know what got into me, but when I caught my breath, I teased her right back.
“I’d rather be inexperienced,” I said, “than be an old lady with a chronic hack.” Maxwell wasn’t used to being challenged, but she could enjoy it if she had the last word.
“Touché,” she said, tapping her ash over the railing and onto the patio below.
Talking back to Maxwell was risky, but that day I must’ve threaded the needle perfectly, because for the next few minutes, she, Tayler, and I chatted and laughed like girlfriends playing hooky from school.
Then I excused myself to brush my teeth and douse myself in body spray to eliminate all traces of nicotine.
Epstein was waiting for me. There was work to do.
As I became a regular at Epstein’s house, it was difficult to avoid the demeaning nature of this transactional relationship.
Epstein took delight in explaining to me, for example, that he had painted his house pink because “I love pink. Pink is for pussy!” But so many of my connections to men had been humiliating that I think I saw this one as a challenge; maybe for once, I thought, I could make it work for me.
This only makes sense, of course, when you consider how little I’d grown up hoping for.
As Epstein used me to satisfy his perverse appetites, I rationalized that perhaps he might also help me to better myself.
If he and Maxwell made good on their promise to get me trained as a masseuse, perhaps that would set me on a path to freedom and prosperity. I told myself it was worth the gamble.
But then, probably two weeks after I’d met them, Epstein upped the ante.
I was upstairs, cleaning up after another “massage,” when Epstein told me to come to his office.
“How about you quit your job at Mar-a-Lago,” he said, “and work for me full time?” Unsure what to say, I admitted I was worn out from pulling double shifts each day—the first at the spa, the second at El Brillo Way.
Epstein nodded. He wanted to make things easier on me, he said.
But he had a few conditions. As his employee, I would be at his beck and call, day and night.
No exceptions. When he said, “Jump!” my response would have to be, “How high?” And another thing: I could no longer live in my parents’ trailer.
Seeing me come and go at all hours might make them suspicious, he said, and he didn’t want that.
He held out a wad of cash—probably $2,500.
“Use this,” he said, “to rent yourself an apartment.”
I was stunned. I’d never held that much money in my hand before.
I thanked him, even as a twinge of worry crept into my head.
By this point, I had seen dozens of girls coming and going from his house.
Many came once and never returned. If he got rid of them so quickly, would Epstein eventually throw me away too?
It felt foolish to rely on him for my livelihood.
Epstein must’ve sensed my qualms, though, because he walked around his desk, picked up a grainy photograph, and handed it to me.
The image had been taken from some distance, but it was unmistakably my little brother.
Skydy was walking away from the camera; I could see his backpack, and the outline of the side of his face.
I felt a stab of fear. Why did Epstein have a photo of the person I loved most in the world?
“We know where your brother goes to school,” Epstein said.
He let that sink in for a moment, then got to the point: “You must never tell a soul what goes on in this house.” He was smiling, but his threat was clear: should I ever be tempted to betray him and go to the authorities, he would hurt Skydy.
I stared at him. He stared back. “And I own the Palm Beach Police Department,” he said, “so they won’t do anything about it. ”
That threat was still rattling around in my head days later, when Epstein casually mentioned that he knew Eppinger—not well, he said, but they’d met once, at a party.
The news only confirmed my emerging understanding of how the world worked.
My approximately seventeen years on the planet had taught me that some grown men forced children to have sex with them and suffered no repercussions.
So the idea of Epstein and Eppinger socializing made perfect sense.
It was simply the way of things. I had no choice, I believed, but to accept that and make the best of it—for Skydy’s sake, if not my own.