Chapter One

 

The Seduction Code

by

Sandra LeBrown

 

Chapter One

 

The part where I try to get started writing this damned book.

 

I never knew what a contented a life I lived until that day fame determined it would sit down upon me.  I have never looked for attention.  I wasn’t even a flashy dresser.  Never the Escada type, like some of the women I’ve known.  I always wore conservative cloths, like St John Knits, complementing my traditional personality.  Simple winter shades at that, to synchronize my tones.  And believe me, I could afford Escada with the money my late husband made … but, like I said, I was not flashy by nature. 

The wheel of fate didn’t fancy leaving me to my private pleasures though.  So chance caught me, crushed me and I never saw my celebrity coming.  Fame didn’t arrive like a Christian Scientist, ringing the doorbell and asking politely to come in.  No, fame backed up to me like a dump truck full of sand with a broken warning bell.  Never a beep, beep, beep from fate, and by the time it tilted the bed of the truck and started pouring the sands of notoriety around my feet it was too late. It was up to my knees before I realized what was happening.  Stuck. 

But anyway, here I am now, and this is the first chapter of this book, the place where I‘m obliged to introduce myself, I suppose … tell you what this book is about … tell you something about the people in this book and the crazy twist and turns that have turned out to be my life.

First of all, my name is Sandra LeBrown, or as you may know me, Casanova’s Killer.  I have never written a book for “mass” consumption and never thought I would. If you know anything about my story through the various media outlets, you probably know I have written two academic books concerning historical sociological issues.  You can still buy them; the publisher I understand has reissued them.  Anyway, for most of my life I was known as an academic who was interested in the how of human history, I was not a criminal.

My life was dull, by media standards, until the day that I killed the man who “discovered” the seduction code.  I say he “discovered” the code, but what I really mean is that he stole it from a dead man like a common thief.  But, I’m getting ahead of myself.  I do that often, tear ahead to the conclusion before the story has even begun.  I suppose the publisher will have an editor or ghostwriter clear up those errors.  Anyway, where should I begin?

Once, late 1989 to be exact, while living in Manhattan, I came to know three intriguing people, each with a secret.  Since I am the only one who knows the intimate details, and because I have plenty of time to put them in writing, I have agreed to place pen to paper.  Also, I now know that I am very bad at keeping secrets.  I never realized how bad I was at keeping secrets until quite recently in fact.  This is rather odd, you might think, that a woman of fifty so odd years would not know these little things about herself.  But no, that is not how my life seems to be working out.  There are, in fact, quite a few things that I am just now learning about myself. 

I have taken a number of liberties with this “project” (as if one’s life should be referred to as a project).  I have created fictional characters to help me tell part of the story.  I have changed the names of some real people.  And I, like most good historians, have changed the truth when it has gotten in the way of a good yarn.  

If I had written this story during the last few months … that is, when the events were happening… I would have written a much different tale then the one I am writing today.   Your heart and your memories have a way of changing when given the distance of time and space.  You begin to question whether certain facts ever happened, or what your feelings were like at the time, for I did not write this piece as journal entries and so, like the good social historian I try to be, I am attempting to reconstruct the heart of the story:  My story. 

When I started writing several weeks ago (this is my fifth attempt) I tried to scrupulously document and verify every fact (the best I could do from captivity anyway).  After months of this work I threw my hands up in despair realizing that I would never have the time or resources to produce that type of clinical accuracy I was attempting.  In fact, I remember the day not that long ago when I was sitting at the little writing desk they have provided me, and I was trying to verify the date that I broke through my husbands password security on his computer to get to his personal records and emails, when I said to myself, Damn it, no one is going to care if you did not get the exact day that you did this, or found out that.  This is my life, not some clinical subject I was writing about, so why should I have to document every single day and fact?  If I missed some piece of information WHO COULD POSSIBLY KNOW OR CARE? 

After I calmed down with a few soothing breathes, and rubbed the stiffness out of my shoulders, I saw that I had come to a breakthrough.  I had arrived at that place where people believed that the only person that can be the real expect on a particular life is indeed the person that went through the process.  This is totally opposite of scientific “objective” thought by the way, but there you are, and this was where I was now.  I said to myself, well, you can do one of two things … you can stop now, if that is your intention, or you can continue writing more from the self (something rather against what scientist or pseudo scientist like myself are trained to do).  So, I took a deep breath, had a sip of the serviceable coffee that they provide for me here at the “institution” (where I am being kept for my mental well-being) and I started again; from the heart this time.  You alone are the expert on what happens to you, I decided, either that, or you are that worst person to tell the story due to “emotional intervention”. 

            And still there is part of me that refuses to let go of the rigorous crosschecking and detailing an historian goes through.  That is one reason I haven’t started the story yet, this damned internal battle.  Sometimes I wonder if I ever will begin, because I feel like I have to keep explaining everything to you, the reader, so that you will respect and trust me as “the expert”.  But then again, we come back to the question of who can be greatest expert on a person’s life and here I am: Full circle. 

            I certainly now feel that I am the greatest expert on Sandra LeBrown and if you can’t trust that, well, I don’t know what to say.  What are you going to say anyway, “That never happened … It didn’t happen that way?”

            So let’s really start now.  I am loathed to do so because of the facts of this beginning, but to get to the start I must return us to one of the saddest and most despairing time of my life.  We must return to the day that my husband was murdered, and how that fact changed my life forever. 

Advertisement