Fiction
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Good Guys
(Another of my Louis Redmond stories, from the Onteora Canon. Sexually, supermen come in two flavors: those whose sex lives are never discussed, and those who seem to be deep in the flesh whenever they’re not actively engaged in saving the world. It never seems to occur to their creators that there’s an Undistributed Middle to be explored.
“Good Guys” is part of my novel Chosen One.)
"You asked Louis Redmond out?" The furrows on Katie Guynemer's forehead threatened to crack her foundation makeup.
Celeste Holmgren nodded. "For Friday evening."
"And he said yes?"
Celeste looked from side to side, to see if anyone else in the cafeteria were listening. "Yes, he did." After he got over being thunderstruck. "Why?"
Katie shook her head in disbelief. Her long brown curls rippled like willow branches in a breeze. "Silly, the man is unapproachable. There are women here who are afraid even to speak to him...men, too."
Well, I approached him and lived to talk about it. "Why? Does he eat babies for breakfast or something?"
Katie's face did something that was part smile and part grimace. "No, but...Silly, you've only been here a few months. Have you ever heard the way they talk about him? He's practically a god here."
Celeste sat back in the hard plastic chair, the second half of her tuna on rye forgotten. If Katie were trying to warn her off Louis, she'd picked a strange way to do it. Still, Celeste wanted any information she could get. She was too new to Onteora Aviation to disregard any source of information about her colleagues in engineering, even if it ultimately reduced to gossip. Katie, secretary to special projects director Roger Morrison for the past six years, was a potential gold mine.
"I was at a meeting with him and Allan Reardon last Friday about the new radar system." She kept her tone casual. "He's impressive. He said very little, but you could tell he never misses anything. He shut Reardon down a couple of times with just a few words. I got the feeling he could have whatever he wants around here."
Katie giggled. "You don't know the half of it, Silly. Reardon's only got that job because Louis doesn't want it."
"Huh?"
"Louis Redmond is the uncrowned king of the engineering division." Katie shivered. "Team leaders have gotten into fights in the hallways over who's going to get him next. He picks his own projects. You know Rolf Svenson?"
"The Simulations group leader? Louis used to report to him, didn't he?"
Katie nodded. "A couple of years back, Allan asked Rolf whether he needed seven or eight people for the Dazzler lab. Rolf said thanks, he'd just take Louis. Allan laughed and said no, he didn't want to overstaff the project!"
Well, I already knew he was good.
"Is he a good guy?"
Katie's animation disappeared. She fidgeted with a saltcellar. "He doesn't socialize with anyone here, Silly. Well, maybe a little with Rolf. When he's here, he's all business."
"Maybe that's why people are afraid of him."
Katie stared at the saltcellar. Around them, the early-lunch crowd was thinning as Onteora Aviation's employees discarded their leavings and returned to their desks.
"Is there more, Katie?"
The secretary nodded but kept her eyes lowered. Celeste waited.
"Do you know the medical park on Fullerton Boulevard, just outside the city?"
Better than I want to. "Sure, why?"
"He spends a lot of his free time there, Silly. Carrying a big sign."
Celeste's hand rose to her mouth. "Oh."
Their conversation petered out. A few minutes later they parted company and headed for their desks.
Alex Wolfson intercepted Celeste in the corridor. She smiled briefly, held down her irritation, and made to continue on.
"Celeste, are you ever going to --"
She slipped past him and walked as quickly as she could. "Not now, Alex."
"But --"
She resisted the urge to run. "I have a lot to do."
"Celeste!" It was near to a scream, and it halted her. She turned and reluctantly met Alex's gaze. The tall, husky engineer was trembling. His eyes were brimming and his hands were clenched white at his sides. "Why won't you talk to me?"
What would the point be? "It's over, Alex. It didn't work. Give yourself a little time to get used to it. Now let me be." She turned again and hurried on, willfully deaf to the sobs from behind her.
At her desk, Celeste checked her E-mail and found seventeen messages, all from Alex. She read the first one, grimaced, and deleted the rest without opening them.
From the moment Celeste opened her townhouse door to find him in a dark blue suit and brilliantly polished Oxfords, Louis was the soul of courtesy. Yet before they'd reached the restaurant, it was clear that he wasn't socially well traveled. He hesitated over little decisions, like whether to offer her his arm, or whether to order for them both. She took the lead several times, where a more worldly man would not have needed the assistance. He didn't appear to resent it but rather to appreciate it, and it charmed her.
The restaurant was Continental and beautiful, dinner was delicious, and their small talk was unforced and plentiful.
When he'd finished his dessert, he leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together over his midsection. He wore a look of acuity. "So why me?"
She nearly dropped her coffee cup. "Why not you?" Is this where you open your closet and take me on a guided tour of the skeletons?
He shrugged. "I don't know. I'm just not used to female attention, I guess."
She grinned. "We can fix that. Are you having a good time?"
"Yes, very."
"Good. That's the point, in case it whizzed past you."
He chuckled and relaxed. "Software people spend too much time with their computers. After a few years we lose our ability to talk to flesh-and-bloods."
"You haven't had a problem so far."
"That's to your credit, Celeste."
Her face warmed. "Thank you." Their waiter placed the check at Louis's left hand. He laid a credit card on it without looking at it. The waiter whisked it away.
"Eaten here a lot?"
He shook his head. "No, this is the first time. Why?"
Her eyes roamed the restaurant. The decor looked like the work of a major artist. The furnishings and dining appurtenances were of the highest quality. Most of the guests were formally attired. She wished she'd gotten a peek at their bill.
"Where do you usually take your first dates?"
His face went slack for a moment, and she wondered if she might have offended him. Before she could withdraw the question or change the subject, he said "I haven't dated in a long time, Celeste."
How long? And why?
"How did you choose this place?"
He shrugged, his composure apparently restored. "It has a good reputation." The waiter returned with Louis's card and a credit slip. He signed the slip, pocketed the card, and rose. "Shall we go?"
At her door, it was she who was hesitant. He was attractive and powerfully appealing, though he was neither conventionally masculine nor socially assured. He'd been a most pleasant and attentive companion. Yet an imperative inner voice told her that to invite him in would be an error.
He relieved her by taking her hand in a soft clasp and murmuring, "Thank you for a wonderful evening, I'll see you Monday at the office." He glided off into the darkness before she could decide whether to offer him a goodnight kiss.
There were twenty-three messages on her answering machine, all from Alex.
When Celeste arrived at work Monday morning, Katie was on her before the door had closed. "So how did it go?"
Celeste grinned. "We had a very nice time. Join me for lunch and you'll get the gory details."
The secretary looked as if she might explode. "Wild horses couldn't keep me away, babe. Don't forget me."
Celeste's E-mail was jammed with messages from Alex. She deleted them all unread and concentrated on her work. Noon's arrival was brought to her attention by Katie's impatient cough from her cubicle entrance. She grabbed her handbag and followed the secretary through the gray fabric maze to the plant cafeteria.
They'd consumed a large fraction of their chef's salads when Katie said, "Well? Am I going to have to torture it out of you?"
Celeste chuckled. "You know, when I told you about it last week, you got me all revved up. Had me expecting something ominous. It was just nice, Katie. He's a nice guy. A little inexperienced, but very good to be with, and that's about it."
Katie's eyes narrowed. "How was he in bed?"
Celeste gagged on her mouthful of lettuce. "For Christ's sake, Katie, he was so reserved and proper I was afraid even to kiss him goodnight."
The secretary snorted. "Well, then we'll have to wait to find out how he does on that part of the test."
Test? "Katie, it was just a date. I liked him, I enjoyed myself, but we might never have another one."
Katie's mouth fell open. She searched Celeste's face as if she were looking for evidence of demonic possession.
"Silly, how old are you?"
"I'll be thirty-two next month. So?"
"Come with me." Katie wiped her mouth and rose. Celeste followed her to the secretary's desk outside Allan Reardon's office. Katie went to the departmental files, twirled a combination lock and yanked open a drawer. She riffled briefly among the folders, extracted one and opened it on her desk.
"There. See that?"
Celeste looked down at her own name, personnel grade and salary.
"That's you. Now see this?" She flipped through the pages and stopped at Louis Redmond's. Celeste became uneasy.
"I don't think I'm supposed to see this."
"C'mon, where's the harm? Have a look."
Louis was a few months younger than Celeste, and made nearly twice her salary. The company had offered him a contract in perpetuity the year before, with a no-terminations clause. He'd turned it down.
"After thirty, it's not 'just a date' any more, girlfriend. It's a test. There are three parts: the wallet test, the friends and family test, and the bed test. If he passes the wallet test, two out of three is good enough. If he passes all three, you grab him and fight off the competition with a whip and a chair if you have to. I'd say Louis passes the wallet test, wouldn't you? Now look at this." Katie flipped to her own file entry. "That's me."
Celeste peered reluctantly at Kathleen Guynemer's personnel sheet. Katie was thirty-nine years old, single, and made about sixty percent of what Celeste did.
"After I got divorced and started dating again, I was all raw nerves for a while." The secretary's voice had roughened. "I tried to relax by telling myself it was just for fun. This is what that got me. It's a test, Silly. Don't earn your nickname...the way I did."
It was Wednesday before Celeste bumped into Louis again. He immediately asked if she'd like to have dinner with him again that coming Friday. She agreed without hesitation.
The E-mail notes from Alex continued to pour into her computer. She deleted them unopened. At least there were no more in-person entreaties.
Thursday night, forty-nine days after her last encounter with Alex, she bought a home pregnancy test kit and used it. The dark ring at the bottom of the little tube was distinct and unmistakable.
"What did you think of the movie?" Celeste pulled Louis's arm against her and walked closely alongside him.
He shrugged. "I'm not big on tearjerkers. It was pretty decent entertainment, but I have a feeling they distorted the facts of his life a bit."
"Whose? C. S. Lewis's?"
He nodded. "I have a hard time matching the character in the movie with the things he wrote."
"You've read his books?"
"All of them."
He unlocked the passenger door of his pickup truck and helped her into it. Even with his assistance, her stiletto heels made it a challenge.
When they were in motion, she asked, "Do you have any favorite hobbies?"
"Hm? No, I read a lot, that's about it."
"So, how do you pass the time when you're not at work? Just reading?"
He guided the truck through the gate of her townhouse complex, wheeled into a convenient parking place, and killed the engine. "Well, I do a few other things, but nothing you'd call exciting."
I've got to know before this gets any more serious.
Trying to sound casual and failing completely, she said, "Any causes?"
He turned and looked at her without speaking, then let himself out of the truck and went around to her side to help her out. She took his arm again as they began the walk to her door.
"If you were to take Route 231 through the city, turn south onto Fullerton Boulevard, and stay on it for about half a mile, you'd come to a light industrial area. On the southern edge there's a medical park, just a few one-story buildings that share a parking lot. Most Saturdays when the weather is good, you'd find me standing at the entrance with a sign that says 'Pregnant? Please talk to me first.' "
Katie was right.
"Operation Rescue, Louis?"
He shook his head as they mounted the short flight of concrete steps that stood before her door. "No, I don't much care for that bunch. When they're there, I'm not. This is just me, and sometimes another fellow who feels the way I do."
Instead of unlocking her door at once, she turned to face him. He stood with his hands clasped before him. She could read nothing from his face in the dim moonlight.
"And how is that?"
He looked down briefly. "That abortion is a horrible thing. That it should be a last resort, to save a mother's life, not a first to spare her some inconvenience. That most women who have abortions wouldn't, if they knew how they'd feel afterward." He said it calmly, no strain apparent.
"Are you a Catholic by any chance, Louis?"
He stood a little straighter. "Not by chance, Celeste. By mature choice, and by the grace of God."
Something in the words flicked her on the raw. Scorn poured into her voice. "I see. And of course that 'grace' gives you the right to interfere in the mature choices of women you've never met?"
His eyes flared wide. "I interfere in no one's choices, Miss Holmgren. I force myself on no one. I present information and alternatives. Sometimes it seems as if the rest of society is practically shoving women into abortion clinics, rushing them in with no chance to check other options or think about what they're doing. I don't block the doors. I stand beside them with an offer of assistance. If that be interference, make the most of it."
He started away, then faced her again. "By the way, you might have the wrong idea about something else as well. I'm not opposed to abortion because I'm a Catholic. Being opposed to abortion is part of what qualifies me to be a Catholic. Give that a spin on your mental merry-go-round and see where it gets off. Thanks for your company this evening. I'll see you at the office next week."
He strode off into the darkness before she could reclaim her voice.
The week was a slow one. The flood of unwanted E-mail from Alex continued, but it was a minor thing compared to the sadness Celeste felt over the contretemps with Louis. She'd grown genuinely fond of him, and had begun to toy with possibilities.
The few times she saw Louis in passing, he was reserved but courteous. After one such encounter near Katie's desk, the secretary quizzed Celeste about "how it's going with the two of you," and Celeste changed the subject.
Thursday afternoon, she called the clinic on Fullerton Boulevard and asked for an appointment. The receptionist told her to come by at nine AM on Monday. The girl's voice was so cheerful that she might have been making appointments for manicures, rather than for the termination of pregnancies.
Celeste immediately told her supervisor she wouldn't be in the following Monday, hurried back to her cubicle, and tried not to think about it any further. She didn't succeed.
On Monday morning Celeste bathed and groomed herself with particular care, as if to emphasize to herself that what she was about to do to the unwelcome guest in her womb had nothing to do with the rest of her. She drove mechanically through the city to the medical park, taking no notice of anything she saw along the way. When she saw the Operation Rescue activists at the entrance to the parking lot, each one brandishing a garish placard with an angry slogan, she hunched her shoulders and drove quickly past.
The clinic was clean and briskly professional. From the moment she presented herself at the front desk, the clinicians tried their best to make the whole affair an exercise in routine procedure. No doubt it was routine for them. But she was unprepared for the sense of failure, of emptiness, that followed her out the clinic door and back to her townhouse. She spent the rest of the day blotting tears and counting regrets.
The next morning, she arrived at her cubicle to find Alex there.
"What do you want?" She set her handbag down as he rose from her guest chair.
He looked down on her ominously from his six foot, four inch height. His face was a thundercloud about to erupt. "I saw you at the abortion clinic yesterday."
Her blood froze.
"Whose child was it, Celeste? Was it mine?"
She straightened and stared him full in the eyes. "It was mine, Alex. That's all you need to know. Now get out."
She turned to seat herself in her desk chair, but he clamped an outsized hand on her shoulder and roughly whirled her about. Terror lanced through her at the sight of the madness in his eyes.
"You killed my child, and you haven't even got the guts to admit to it," he whispered. He moved forward slowly, and she retreated until the backs of her thighs were pressed against the edge of her desk. "I've been begging you to let me speak to you for more than a month, and you haven't had the time to respond, but this you had plenty of time for. Making room for somebody else's bastard, maybe?"
She panicked, swung openhanded at his face and connected solidly. As he staggered backward, she tried to bolt past him, and failed. He shoved her back against her desk with a sweep of one arm and raised the other to strike her. She closed her eyes and whimpered, arms raised against the imminent blow.
It did not fall. Instead there was a sound of scuffling and a crash. When she opened her eyes, she found Alex on his back in the corridor. Louis stood between them.
Alex roared and hurled himself at the smaller man. Louis did something blurrily fast with hands and feet, and Alex crashed onto his back again, even more noisily. Before Alex could rise a second time, Louis grabbed a handful of his shirtfront and tossed him ten feet down the corridor with a flick of his arm.
Louis sauntered to where Alex Wolfson lay, hoisted and tossed him down the corridor a second time, and a third. Every other engineer on the floor stood watching.
"That's so you won't think it was some kind of trick."
The older man lay supine, looking up at Louis in obvious fear.
"I want you to imagine an invisible shield, Alex. A shield that nothing can penetrate. The harder you ram into that shield, the harder it bounces you back. Imagine that shield wrapped around this lady, and imagine it getting very angry with you. If you want to keep all your teeth, you'd better not make that shield any angrier. Now get back to your desk before I kick you there."
Alex picked himself up slowly, his eyes riveted to Louis's face. Just before he turned away, his gaze flicked toward Celeste, and Louis spoke again.
"That shield will always be on the job, Alex. Get moving."
Wolfson fled.
"Are you okay?"
Celeste nodded. "Are you going to get in trouble over this?"
Louis grinned. "Management here shows me a certain deference. Let me know if he bothers you again."
"Is there anything you're not good at?"
The grin soured. "Writing begging letters. Changing the subject. Holding my tongue. Never mind that. What's Alex's problem?"
Celeste pressed her joined hands down in her lap and closed her eyes briefly.
"We went out a few times, just after I joined the company. At first he seemed like a good guy, even if he was a little old for me. He seemed flattered that I was willing to be seen with him. But mostly I was just lonely, and it didn't get better, and eventually I made the mistake of sleeping with him."
She paused to allow him to react, but he continued to listen without expression.
"It didn't work out, but he got needy, wouldn't leave me alone. I told him I didn't want to see him any more, and then it really got bad. Piles of E-mail. Phone calls at midnight. Stuff left on my stoop. I guess he saw me yesterday at...at the clinic."
The blood drained from Louis's face. He half-fell into her guest chair as he searched for words.
"You had an abortion?"
She nodded and forced back her tears. "He must have been there with the Operation Rescue people."
Louis shook his head. "Not Alex."
"What makes you so sure?"
"You don't need to hear about it. Was it his baby?"
She wanted to say anything else, but under the power of his gaze the truth forced its way out of her. "Yes."
Louis looked away. He murmured "I thought, maybe just this once," and then trailed off completely.
In that moment, Celeste saw her decision, the circumstances around it, and its consequences woven into a single tapestry of sorrow that wound about her like a burial shroud. She could not shake herself free.
"Would it have been better for me to bear a child, Louis? Would it have been better for me to abandon my career and become a single mother on welfare? Or perhaps I should have married a man I didn't even like, so the baby would have a father at the expense of his mother's happiness?"
Louis sat in silence for a long time, eyes on the floor.
"There were other options, Celeste. I might have offered you one."
Her mouth dropped open. All her anger and pain were shocked out of her.
"You're not serious."
He rose without speaking, grinned wanly at her and made to leave. She surged out of her chair and grabbed his hand.
"Louis, I've been kicking myself around the block for the way I spoke to you on our last date. I'm sorrier than I can say. If I ever meant anything in my life, I mean this now. I want you to know that it's not too late for us to try again."
A spasm blended from innumerable emotions crossed Louis Redmond's face. What it left behind was the purest desolation.
"Yes, it is."
He squeezed her hand one last time and departed.
Saturday, April 23, 2005
Sisters
(I really can’t say where this one “came from,” except that I loved the idea of it the moment it occurred to me. Perhaps I should try to get more sleep.
Gentle erotica set in Manhattan. As with “A New Look,” it’s about a desire that’s not merely unfulfilled, but unfulfillable.)
Marie closed the apartment door behind her and locked it carefully. One could never be too careful in New York, even in a secured luxury highrise like hers. Security guards had been known to pinch things, after all.
She considered her options for the afternoon as her elevator descended. Her white silk blouse, knee length black velvet skirt and matching jacket, her black high heeled pumps and her glove leather handbag suggested that she was on her way to some high profile destination, perhaps a society party. She’d labored nearly an hour over her makeup. Yet she’d had no particular destination in mind.
It was free time: an afternoon without cares, a time simply to enjoy being a woman of leisure. There was precious little leisure in Marie’s life. It took determination to carve out time for her own enjoyment.
Perhaps she would shop. A stroll along Fifth Avenue would be pleasant in the crisp autumn air, and it had been a long while since she had been to the Charles Jourdan store. Suddenly a new pair of shoes seemed like just the ticket.
Much to Marie’s surprise, the store was empty except for herself and a lone saleswoman. Jourdan was the city’s premiere ladies’ shoe store. On the occasions of her previous visits it had never been empty, nor had female sales help been in evidence.
The saleswoman looked up from her reading. She was a petite blonde in a severely cut navy blue suit and very high heeled slingbacks. Her makeup was as elegant and perfect as Marie’s own. She approached with a hand extended. Automatically, Marie took the proffered hand. The small fingers were soft and warm beneath hers.
“Good afternoon. So nice to see you. What may I show you today?”
The saleswoman’s fingers lingered against Marie’s.
“I noticed three styles in your window that I’d like to try on. Shall we have a look?” Marie felt her color rising, and her heart rate increasing.
The saleswoman’s eyes locked onto Marie’s. There was a special focus in them, a narrowing of concentration. Despite her small stature and slight frame, she radiated the confidence of a hunter. She smiled.
“Of course.”
When they had returned from the window, the saleswoman went to the back of the store for the selections, and Marie seated herself to wait. She was acutely conscious of her reaction to the young woman, and even more conscious of the woman’s unusual focus on her. It might have been only that, except for the two of them, the store was empty, a condition a Jourdan employee would find unusual at the least, but Marie couldn’t quite believe it. Some elemental current flowed between them. It had been there since their hands first touched.
The saleswoman returned with not three but four boxes. Rather than handing them over to Marie as expected, she dropped to one knee and opened one of the boxes herself. It proved to contain a pair of black D’Orsay ankle straps, shoes Marie had not asked to see. When she had removed the packing material from the shoes, the saleswoman looked up at Marie and said simply, “I thought you might like to try these as well.”
Without preliminary she reached for Marie’s right ankle and slipped off her pump. Again there was that suggestion of a caress, and a disturbing warmth from the hand that cradled Marie’s ankle.
The D’Orsay slipped smoothly onto Marie’s foot. The saleswoman took care to angle it so that Marie’s toes would not be compressed suddenly by the shoe’s pointed toe. As the saleswoman fastened the ankle strap, Marie spread her toes carefully, shaping the toe of the shoe properly to her foot. As always, it brought a unique sense of luxury.
The left shoe followed. When both were on, the saleswoman allowed one hand to slide up Marie’s calf. It sent a thrill through her that she could barely conceal. However innocent her actions might be, the saleswoman was sensuality personified, and she was not troubling to hide it from Marie.
Marie raised her head and found the saleswoman’s bright blue eyes fixed upon her own. She could not look away.
“What’s your name?” The saleswoman’s voice was gently husky.
“Marie.”
“Marie, my name is Anne. You have beautiful legs.” The hand moved gently along her calf, gliding smoothly over the nylon stocking.
It was more than Marie was prepared for. She began to tremble. Not trusting herself to speak, she stood and walked slowly down the length of the room. She became acutely conscious of the sway of her hips, and of the elaborate way she turned before walking back to her seat.
“Thank you very much. I’ll want these as well. If you have any other suggestions, I’ll certainly be pleased to see them.”
Anne’s pleased smile was full of knowledge.
“Shall we try the next pair?”
Marie smiled in return. A curious glow had filled her chest. Undoubtedly it showed on her face, but she found that she didn’t care.
“Of course.”
At the end, it was quite late, and there were, not three or four, but seven boxes of shoes at the register. All were of the highest quality and style. All suited her perfectly. The total was over two thousand dollars.
Marie didn’t care. It had been an afternoon she would never forget. Inexplicably, no one else had entered the store from the moment Marie had arrived. She and Anne had enjoyed unexpected privacy.
Though nine inches shorter and perhaps fifty pounds lighter than Marie, Anne had been in all ways the leader of their dance. She had taken charge of Marie from their first handclasp. Beneath all her courtesy and solicitude was a river of seductress’s energy, a sensuous intent she did not trouble to disguise. Marie had surrendered to it before she knew it was there.
Marie knew they would look good together. Anne’s petite blonde beauty contrasted sharply with Marie’s Mediterranean coloring and Valkyrie build. She knew they would be good together. No other human being had affected her like this in all her years. But her afternoon was over, evening was upon them, and like it or not she had to go.
She presented her credit card and completed the transaction in silence. As she began to gather up her purchases, Anne spoke once more.
“I hope I can count on seeing you again?”
The surge of lust was almost too much for Marie. Her color rose and her knees tried to buckle. She clutched the edge of the counter, hoping Anne didn’t see.
If only Anne had said “we,” as a salesperson should, she could have wrapped her departure in enough wit and ambiguity to allow a graceful withdrawal. But Anne had given her no room in which to maneuver.
“I’d like that.”
Anne extended her hand once more, and Marie could do nothing but take it. The small fingers were still soft and warm. The current of desire that circulated between them was as strong as ever.
“Good night.”
Marie nodded and made for the door as quickly as she could without breaking a heel or forsaking all dignity.
Marie was about a block from her highrise, moving swiftly through the evening gloom, when the mugger struck. He came at her from behind and slammed her against the wall of a building with one hand while brandishing a huge knife directly before her eyes with the other. Her packages went flying, scattered widely about the sidewalk.
“Not a sound, bitch, or I’ll cut you. Drop the purse.”
Breath caught in her chest, eyes riveted to the glittering blade, she squirmed to allow her purse strap to slide from her shoulder. As tall as she was, he loomed large over her, completely blocking her view of the street. But when he squatted to seize her handbag, a small blonde miracle stood revealed behind him, holding a chromed automatic in a Weaver grip.
“Yo, scumbag.”
The mugger whirled, knife raised to threaten or to fend, and immediately saw the gun. His knife came down a few inches. Anne didn’t twitch.
“Drop it, or I’ll put one in your eye.”
Marie was still too frightened to move. She could see the mugger trying to weigh the probabilities. What were the odds that a tiny woman like Anne, dressed as elegantly as she was, would be carrying a loaded gun, and would possess both the will and the skill to use it?
Apparently the mugger stretched Anne’s patience a bit too thin, for she demonstrated her qualifications with a bullet through his knife hand. He screamed, dropped the knife, and fell to his knees, clutching the wounded hand to his chest.
She gave him about five seconds to come to terms with his agony.
“You want to live, boy, you better run.”
He looked up at her with genuine fear. An instant later he was streaking down the street, dripping blood. His knife remained on the sidewalk where he had dropped it.
Anne watched the mugger’s receding form for a moment before pocketing her automatic and retrieving his discarded weapon. Marie was dumbfounded when Anne laid the hilt of the knife in her hand.
“Maybe you should keep this as a memento. This neighborhood’s not safe any more.”
Marie gaped in horror at the thing, and threw it at a nearby sewer grate. It clanked dully against the bars, slipped between them and disappeared with a dull splash. It took her a moment to find her voice. “What are you doing here?”
Anne’s face colored. “I, uh, live near here. What about you?”
Marie shook her head. “No, about a… no, down the street a way.”
Anne nodded, and in the most businesslike fashion imaginable began to gather up Marie’s packages. When she had retrieved them all, she handed them to the taller woman as if they were presents.
“You should have taken a taxi, you know.”
Marie nodded. “I can never thank you enough.”
Anne smiled gently. “Forget it. I would have done the same for anyone. Especially for a sister.” She paused and looked away. “Most especially for you.”
“Sister?” Marie whispered.
“Women,” Anne said. “All of us. Predators home in on the helpless, you know. Some of them would kill you for your shoes.” She grinned. “You’d hate that. But we don’t have to let them.”
She took the gun from her pocket again and weighed it in her hand. “In the middle ages, a knight had to take an oath to do justice and protect the helpless before he was given his sword. It doesn’t say that on the pistol permit application, but maybe it ought to.”
Marie held back her tears by main force. Anne seemed to come to a decision of her own.
“Just tell me I’ll see you again.”
Marie could barely speak. “Yes. At the store.”
Anne’s smile became radiant. Without another word, she turned and walked into the darkness, the click of her heels against the sidewalk resounding unusually in the evening silence. Marie watched her disappear before turning and hurrying home.
Marie looked about her apartment briefly, noted that all was as she had left it, and headed straight for the bedroom. She dropped her burdens directly onto the bed and sat at its foot, struggling to recover from the experiences of the day.
She had lied to Anne, and now must pay the price. There was only one price that could redeem her lie. Marie knew she could never trust herself to meet Anne again; the small blonde woman was too appealing, and much too strong.
Slowly and with great care, Marie lifted off her luxuriant black wig to reveal the completely bald pate beneath. She set it gently upon the wigholder at the corner of her dresser, then sat again on the bed and regarded it awhile in silence.
Marie was good, Marie was beautiful, Marie was a joy to be, but she would have to cease. She would have to become only Martin again, until the tiny beauty who had come to her rescue had forgotten her and moved on to someone else.
When he had undressed and removed his makeup, he slid directly into bed, jostling shoe boxes out of the way, and turned off the light.
Friday, April 08, 2005
Mistakes
(An Onteora County morality play. Some will be revulsed by the subject. Others will say I’ve been unkind. Choose according to your tastes.)
“Why did you do it?”
Carolyn McIlhone, nee Carolyn Pahliavsky, half-smiled and trailed her beautifully sculpted nails over the upper surfaces of Ashley Forslund’s full, perfectly tanned breasts. “He’s loaded. Is there a better reason?”
Ashley looked askance at her lover.
No, but there isn’t a more common one.
“How do you put up with it, Carolyn? Money’s nice, but you’re paying a price it grosses me out to think about.”
The older woman stiffened. She sat up in the bed, her expression severe.
“Where did you and I meet, dear?”
Ashley shrugged. “Albrecht’s Perfumes Cove.”
Carolyn nodded. “The year before I met Mike, I was turned away at the entrance to Albrecht’s by a security guard.” She drew her head high and smiled thinly. “I’d have thought you enjoyed all this as much as I do. We could do it in a packing crate behind the supermarket I used to work in, if you prefer?”
Carolyn switched on her bedside lamp, and the opulence of the bedroom suite sprang into vivid, insistent reality. The beauty of the room was undeniable. Paneled in mahogany, outfitted with furniture of classically simple design executed in cherry and maple. A teal deep pile carpet that made Ashley want to roll around on it whenever she entered the room. An attached bathroom of porcelain and marble splendor to rival any temple. A redstone fireplace accented with brass and glass. Ashley, who had lived with wealth all her short life, had never seen a room as successful as this one.
Carolyn always led her straight to the bed.
She wouldn’t even let me use the bathroom if she could figure out a way to do it gracefully.
Ashley knew better than to say so. Ashley knew better than to say much of anything. The sole scion to the fabulously wealthy Forslund family had learned discretion at an early age.
Carolyn’s face remained severe. “Have you decided you have a problem with it?”
It was a moment Ashley’s mother would have called “a bad time to be a twenty-two year old.”
“Carolyn, you know I love you, right?”
The older woman said nothing. Her expression did not change.
“When you love someone, you want her to be happy. All the time, not just when you’re there to do something about it yourself.” Ashley sat up and tentatively embraced her lover. Carolyn’s body, so recently hot with passion, had gone as stiff and cold as her face. “And I’m not here that much.”
The rigidity seeped out of the older woman. Her arms rose to return the embrace, and her chin descended to rest on Ashley’s shoulder. Ashley felt the beginnings of relief.
“Happiness isn’t sold at bargain counters, dear. The price has always been higher than I expected. But if you won’t pay, you’re a hypocrite, and if you can’t pay, you’re a failure.”
Ashley squeezed her lover gently. “Where is he tonight?”
“Probably out with his friends, drinking.”
“Most wives wouldn’t be as happy as you are about that.”
Carolyn snorted a laugh. “He drinks because of me, dear.”
“Because he’s angry with you?”
“No, because I encourage him to.”
Carolyn pressed Ashley down on her back and settled herself over her lover in a way that put an end to the conversation.
Mike McIlhone’s reflection stared at him from the mirror at the back of the bar. He stared back, unseeing. The private investigator’s report sat at his elbow, its pages fluttering in the mild current from the ceiling fan.
“Mike?”
He looked up into Joyce Donati’s wide brown eyes.
“You sure you wouldn’t like something a little stronger than ginger ale?”
He smiled wanly. “Be a bad idea, Joycie.”
“I just hate to drink alone, that’s all.” She glanced down at the weak Scotch and soda she’d nursed for more than an hour.
“Well, you could join me in a ginger ale.”
“A bartender that drinks ginger ale? Oh, what the hell.” The tall, slender woman dumped the contents of the glass into the bar sink and refilled it with ginger ale from the multi-tap. “There. Don’t tell any of my other regulars, though.”
“Deal.” He clinked his glass against hers, and they grinned. The Black Grape was empty but for the two of them. It always was, either when he arrived or shortly after. She couldn’t remember another customer ever arriving, once he was there.
“How come you never got married, Joycie?”
She shrugged. “Never got an offer that sounded all that good.”
Mike looked up at the bartender in disbelief. “You’re kidding, right?”
Joyce shook her head.
“The men in this town ain’t got enough red blood in ‘em.”
The bartender grinned. “Thanks, Mike. It’s more me than them. I’ve known a lot of guys. Almost all of ‘em were decent, hardworking sorts. They just wanted wives and kids. I had fantasies that didn’t stop there.”
“Hey, babe, chin up. You aren’t in the ground yet.”
She grinned lopsidedly. “I’m not young any more.”
“Get off it. I know women who’d kill to look half as good as you.”
“Yeah, maybe. But I turned thirty-five last month. I’m not going to be having kids at thirty-five. Not fair.”
“To you?”
“To them.”
“Oh.” He let his gaze settle to the bar.
Joyce’s index finger tapped the PI’s report at his elbow. “Bad news?”
“Depends how you read it. It explains a lot, anyway.”
Joyce ran a wet rag over the bar in a random pattern. “You know, most bartenders only do this because they don’t have enough diplomas to be shrinks.”
Mike sat back in his chair and stared at her. Her face reddened.
“Never mind, I shouldn’t be such a nosy broad anyway.” She started to turn away.
“Hey, wait.”
She stopped and faced him, her expression unreadable.
“Can you keep it to yourself?”
“Look, if you don’t want to tell me—”
He shook his head. “It’s not that, Joycie. I just don’t want it to get around.” He toyed with his glass. “I don’t mind you knowing.”
She looked into his eyes for a long moment. “Of course, a lot of bartenders do this because they like sex too much to be priests.”
He barked a laugh. “That include you?”
“Yeah.”
He shoved the PI’s report across the bar to her. “Read it.”
She fumbled for her glasses.
Joyce refolded the report and slid it back to Mike.
“I’m sorry, Mike. I don’t know what else to say.”
The stubby little construction magnate nodded and tucked the sheaf of papers into his inside jacket pocket.
“Thanks, babe. I wish to God I knew what I ought to do.” He knocked back the dregs of his ginger ale and squinted into the empty glass. “What the hell, the night’s still young. How about another?”
She refilled his glass and waved away his money. “This one’s on me. Matter of fact, I think I’ll be joining you.” She smirked and refilled her own glass. “Goes down too easy. You’re gonna put a new monkey on my back, you mick wood-slinger.”
He grinned and toasted her. “You wop broads are easy to hook. A couple of ginger ales and you’re up on a table wearing a lampshade and singing The Star Spangled Banner.”
“Yeah, tell me about it. You got any idea what to do?”
His grin disappeared. “Aside from come in here, get senseless on ginger ale, and whine to you about it?”
“Well, I don’t mind, but I was thinking of how to fix it.”
“You don’t fix something like this, Joycie.” He turned away.
As she watched the clouds of pain pass over her friend’s countenance, Joyce Donati felt her mouth go dry. “Yeah, I guess not. Do you love her, Mike?”
His green eyes engaged hers again. A bolt of sorrow passed through her, sorrow for the lot of a fine man any decent woman would have been proud to call her own.
“I sure as hell did, when I married her. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was. Then I started to notice stuff. Took a while.”
She held her tongue with an effort. He traced invisibly on the surface of the bar with a finger.
“You’ve never met her, Joycie. When I was courting her, she was the classiest, most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. The photographer asked if he could keep copies of our wedding shots. Even the priest stammered when he looked at her.”
The broad shoulders had begun to quake.
“The wedding night wasn’t so hot, but I figured we just needed a little practice. I mean, I’m not that young myself. I tried hard, though. It just never came together for us. Then she started being unavailable, and wanting her own bedroom, and complaining about not feeling good but never wanting to see a doctor, and telling me I should get out more, and find some friends who like the stuff I like.”
Teardrops splashed against the polished bar surface.
“I never guessed, Joycie. I prob’ly didn’t want to know.”
She started to reach for him, stopped herself.
“I can’t think why I went to that Goddamned PI. I still don’t want to know.” He dropped his face into his calloused hands and sobbed quietly.
Joyce Donati circled the bar, locked the door, and turned off the neon OPEN sign. She went to Mike McIlhone and pulled him into her arms, to rock him and soothe him as she might a desolated child.
Ashley was too sensible to park her car anywhere near the McIlhones’ home. Instead, she walked the six blocks to the nearest convenience store and called a cab from its pay phone. It meant she couldn’t wear heels when she visited Carolyn, but that wasn’t that much of a sacrifice.
How much of a mistake am I making?
As dear as Carolyn was to her, Ashley’s sense of a disaster in progress had become very strong. She knew Carolyn better than Carolyn knew herself. Carolyn wasn’t as smart as she thought.
Is there any way I could get caught in the crash?
Carolyn was confident that, no matter what anyone discovered, there’d be no divorce. Mike was too Catholic, and much too stubborn. Ashley hoped she was right about that. She didn’t fancy the thought of being named co-respondent in a divorce action. That sort of thing wouldn’t go over well among her set. Especially not if it involved a member of the scorned nouveau-riche.
Especially not if it involved muff-diving a woman who’d been living in a cold-water flat and packing bags at the supermarket until she managed to catch the eye of one of the nouveau-riche.
I should talk to Mom’s lawyers, find out if there’s any potential liability to me or the family.
At the convenience store, she found the phone already in use by a nondescript man talking in a low voice. She leaned back against the wall of the store and waited.
When he hung up and turned to go, his eyes lit on her and drew to a focus. He was in his late middle years, a little taller than average, with a husky build, drab brown eyes, and brown hair shot with gray. His face was expressionless. It had a rigidity to it that suggested that its neutrality was cultured, attained by long and diligent practice.
Ashley was certain she’d seen him before, not once but several times.
His eyes stayed on her for perhaps two seconds before swerving away. He stepped out of the store without a backward glance, walked briskly to a nondescript gray sedan, and drove off.
Ashley lifted the handset and cradled it. As certain as she was that she’d seen him before, she was even more certain that he’d seen her, that he knew her, perhaps very well.
He doesn’t look like any of Mom’s friends.
She thumbed in her change and punched in the special code that causes the phone to redial the last number dialed there. The phone rang only once before she heard the click of an answering machine at the far end. A cheerful, ringingly clear female voice began to speak.
“Hello, this is McIlhone Construction. Our office hours are from nine AM to six PM, Monday through Friday, and from nine AM to noon on Saturdays. Please leave your name and number, and we’ll return your call as soon as possible. Thank you.”
The prompting beep startled her into hanging up immediately.
A nondescript man whom she’d seen nearby more than once, who appeared to recognize her and not to want to show it, had called Mike McIlhone’s office well outside of anyone’s office hours.
She scrabbled in her bag for more change and called the local cab company. By the time the cab arrived, she’d almost gotten her shakes under control.
“We have to talk, Cal.”
Carolyn looked up at her husband in irritation. “I’ve asked you not to call me that.”
Mike nodded. “Okay. Sorry.”
She’d hoped to be up and out of the house, doing some serious shopping, before her husband could unglue his eyelids. She preferred to breakfast alone in the little nook he’d built for her. It was all light woods and Spanish inlays, with a large bay window that made it bright and cheerful regardless of the weather. Perversely, he’d been downstairs, lying in wait for her in her favorite place, fresh Danish and coffee at the ready.
At least he’d allowed her to finish her first cup of the day in peace and quiet.
“What is it, Michael? There’s a lot on my agenda today.”
He sat back in his chair and studied her without troubling to conceal it. She wasn’t sure whether to be angry or afraid.
“I know about the Forslund girl.”
Her insides leaped, but she limited her external response to a single slightly raised eyebrow, no more.
“Oh? Is that so?”
He nodded again. “Yup. Nice girl, from what I’ve been told. Doesn’t matter. I think I understand, now.”
She tried to put just the right touch of dismissal into her voice. “How nice for you.”
“Warren’s going to file this morning. Are we going to agree on the property split, or are we going to duke it out?”
A vacuum seemed to have eaten Carolyn McIlhone’s stomach.
“Are you quite sure you know what you’re doing, Michael?”
“Nope. Doesn’t matter, I’m going to do it anyway.”
A twitch began in her face. “This could hardly be good for your reputation and social position.”
“Be worse for yours. But that wasn’t what you were counting on, was it?”
She said nothing.
“I talked to Father Schliemann last week. He doesn’t like this annulment on demand stuff any better than I do, but he thinks I’ve got a good case. You lied to me, Cal. You lied when you took your vows. You’ve been doing what you do a lot longer than the year you’ve been playing with Ashley Forslund, or the three years you’ve been with me. I’ve got just about every kind of evidence I can use. And I’m done with you.”
He looked out the window at the smooth, verdant expanse of their back lawn. “You did it for the money, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I guess I understand. I’m not a prize package, and you had to have some reason. You can have a quarter million if you agree not to contest.”
She was ready to explode with outrage. He actually thought he was being generous.
“How kind of you, Michael. Are you sure you can afford it?”
He gazed at her steadily and in silence.
“I severely doubt that a judge will agree with your assessment. There’s a little concept of ‘living in the manner accustomed.’ ”
“I know. If you want to fight it out in court, we can do it that way. I don’t think you really want to do that, Cal. I’ve got more cards than I can play.”
Carolyn rose from the breakfast table and stared down at her husband with all the contempt she could muster.
“You will find,” she said, “that there are higher and lower cards in this game. And I think you will also find that the cards you hold are of the lower variety. Thanks to you and your money, I’ve made a lot of new friends. Friends with position, and influence. Friends I think will be only too glad to assist me.”
He nodded without speaking. She turned and stalked from the room.
“Good morning, Forslund residence.”
“May I speak with Ashley Forslund, please?”
“May I tell her who’s asking for her, Madame?”
“Certainly. This is Carolyn McIlhone.”
“One moment, Madame, I’ll see if she’s free.”
Carolyn waited in growing anxiety, pressing the handset to her ear with bruising force. Mike, for all his plebeian origins and tastes, was no fool. Did he have an angle on this that she hadn’t seen yet? Was it possible that an angle even existed?
“Hi, Carolyn, what’s up?”
“Ashley, Mike knows. He’s divorcing me.”
A long silence. “Oh.”
“He’s being most unreasonable about the money part of it. I’m going to need a lawyer, dear. Do you suppose your mother would be willing to introduce me to hers?”
“I guess I could ask. You don’t have one of your own?”
“No, I’ve never needed one.”
Another silence. “Well, I haven’t seen her yet today, but I expect to later. Can I call you back?” Ashley paused. “Will you be home?”
“Of course. Where else…” Carolyn stopped herself. “I’ll be home. Just give me a call today, when you can.” She breathed deeply. “You don’t have to worry that this will change anything else, dear. We’ll see each other again soon, I promise.”
“Okay. Bye.”
“Good-bye.”
Carolyn waited by the telephone the whole day.
Mike, thank God, had been sensible enough to leave the house for the day. She wouldn’t have been able to endure even a glancing contact with him. His stolidity had been so unaffected by her assumed hauteur that she couldn’t bear to remember it.
She hadn’t had time enough to solidify her new persona. What a pity he hadn’t stayed ignorant just a year or two longer.
The phone refused to ring.
She became afraid to leave it for any reason. The afternoon gave way to evening, and evening to night. She tortured her back muscles and her bladder, at last completely unwilling to step away from it even for a moment, but it would not ring.
At nine PM, Mike returned from wherever. He glanced at her and ascended the stairs to his bedroom without a word. It was almost enough to make her scream.
Her patience snapped. She picked up the handset and dialed the Forslund mansion. When the majordomo answered, she demanded to speak to Ashley in a voice that would brook no refusal.
Ashley was a while in coming to the phone.
“Hello, Carolyn.”
“Hello, dear, did you talk to your mother for me?”
“Well, uh, no, I haven’t.”
“What? Why not?”
“I can’t figure out how to put it, Carolyn. I mean, who do I say you are?”
“Well—!”
“I can’t just go up to her and say, ‘Hey, Mom, I’ve got this married lover who needs a divorce lawyer, and she asked me to talk to you about it,’ can I? But what else could I say? Who are you, to be involved with me? I don’t want the third degree from her, Carolyn. Especially not about something like this. I’d be hearing about it for months. You’ve got to find yourself a lawyer some other way.”
Carolyn McIlhone was speechless.
“Anyway, I’m sorry I couldn’t help. See you soon, I hope. Bye.”
The connection broke before Carolyn could recover her voice.
Over the next three days, Carolyn called eighty-seven people. About half were people she knew personally and thought of as friends or close to it. The rest were tangential associations from parties at the country club or events she’d attended in connection with Mike’s business. Seventy of them refused to accept the call. The other seventeen told her, in tones of artificial regret or half-concealed amusement, that they were terribly sorry, but there was nothing they could do to help. By the end of the third day, she was wild with fear.
She rose from the armchair that flanked the antique rotary telephone she’d prized and stalked about the sitting room like a caged beast, not noticing any of its features even when she barked her shins against them.
She was going to fall back into the gutter. She’d clawed and struggled her whole life, to make it to a position she was going to lose entirely.
It was unendurable, but there was no help for it. Certainly there’d be none from the people she’d thought of as “her set.” That had become too clear.
She had to prevent the divorce.
How?
Mike could certainly force the issue. There was no question that, unless she secured superior legal assistance, he’d carry the day. But no such assistance was available to her.
Could she undermine his will? Could she somehow persuade him back into her embrace?
She was amazed that she wasn’t overcome with revulsion at the idea. Whether it meant she was stronger than she thought, or weaker, was not a question she cared to contemplate.
“McIlhone Construction.”
“May I speak to Mr. McIlhone, please? This is his wife.” The words tried to stick in Carolyn’s throat.
“Hello?”
“Mike? Mike, it’s…Cal.”
“I know. How are you?”
“Mike, I’d like for us to talk. Are you free at any time today? I’ll meet you there, if you like.”
She waited in agony.
“How about lunch at Grucci’s Gardens, Carolyn? Noon?”
She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth. “I’ll see you there. Bye, Mike.”
“Bye, Carolyn.”
She returned the handset to its cradle and gave way to tears.
He was there and seated when she arrived. He’d gotten them the table she’d always liked best, at the back of the raised ring around the center pit. Blood rushed into her face as she seated herself across from him.
“I’ve already ordered. Should be here in a few minutes.”
“Coq au vin?”
He nodded. “What’s up, Carolyn?”
She opened her mouth to speak, closed it again.
I’ve already misjudged him twice. I mustn’t do it again.
“Mike, I’ve been a great fool. I want to apologize to you, and to ask if you can find it in you to forgive me.”
He straightened in his seat, eyes narrowed. “What are you apologizing for?”
She bit her lip and lowered her head. “A number of things, all of which you know about already. Must I go through them one by one?”
He snorted gently. “No.”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“I was hoping for a response.”
“Some particular response, Carolyn?”
She started to sputter, but the waiter chose that moment to bring their entrees, and she was forced to shut it off.
When the waiter turned away, Mike picked up his fork and began to feed himself. She picked up her own, but instead of following his lead, she studied him a while. It was something she hadn’t done recently.
Despite the Irish peasant lumpiness of his face and body, Michael McIlhone carried himself with an elusive grace. His motions, though brisk, were fluid and efficient. He wore both business suits and coveralls with an easy panache. Neither the attentions nor the disdain of others affected his manners or disposition. She couldn’t remember seeing him ill at ease in any situation. Even Onteora’s most refined figures, from families that had been bred to wealth for centuries, could not daunt him.
He’s capable, adaptable, much brighter than he looks. He meets people at their own level. He’s never been the crude barbarian I took him to be. That I wanted him to be.
“Mike, I’m not a very nice person, sometimes. I’ve had some trouble learning to consider the feelings of others when I’m in pursuit of what I want. If I’ve bruised your feelings, if my indiscretions have wounded you, I’m very sorry.”
He nodded and laid down his fork. “But what do you want, Carolyn?”
His eyes met hers with the force of a sworn accusation. Hers darted about the beautiful Continental restaurant as if there had to be someone who could take her place, answer him for her.
“I…”
Just say it, girl. You don’t have to mean it.
He waited with an air of anticipation, like a researcher with a pet theory about to be proved true.
“I…”
There’s a hell of a lot on the line. Do you want to go back to that cold-water flat and those piles of groceries? Say it!
“I…”
It would not come out. She could not bring herself to lie to him another time, to tell him that she wanted him, his loyalty and his affection for all the days and nights remaining to them. It would have required a reciprocal commitment she could no longer fake. He would know better than to believe it, anyway.
He saw the resignation in her eyes as she ceased to struggle. It brought forth a sad, knowing smile.
“It’s hard to grow up, isn’t it?”
The tangent jolted her out of her agony. “What do you mean?”
He waved a hand. “I was just thinking about kids and cookie jars. At first it’s the cookies. Then it’s the little thrill of getting away with it. But one day it’s the budget, or the waistline, or the diabetes. No more cookies, and no Mom to blame any of it on. And that’s when you know you’re all alone, out in front of God and everybody, and you have to choose for yourself.”
Tears flooded Carolyn McIlhone’s eyes and cut furrows through her carefully applied makeup.
“It’s okay, Carolyn. I don’t understand, but I accept it. Do you want the quarter million?”
She nodded, unable to speak.
“Okay. I’ll have Warren draw up the papers and we’ll do it the easy way.”
She feared to open her mouth, feared that instead of what she wanted to say, she’d vent a howl or a sob, but she had to know.
“Why, Mike? Why are you being so generous?”
He smiled.
“I know myself. If I don’t pay for my mistakes, I make ‘em over and over again.”
Unusually for a Saturday night, the Black Grape was empty. Despite not having seen him in several weeks, Joyce was unsurprised when Mike McIlhone walked in.
“How’re you doing, Mike?”
“Just about right. You know, not too bad, not too good.” Mike ambled up to the bar and perched on the stool before her. “You got any more of that wicked ginger ale, Joycie?”
“New stock, arrived just today.” She filled two glasses and passed one to him. They clinked, and she grinned. “I’ve been wondering when you’d pop back in.”
“Had some stuff to settle, babe.” He grinned back. There was an ease to him, an aura of relaxed confidence, that she hadn’t seen before.
“I know, the mess with your wife, right?”
“You got it. Wasn’t really that much of a mess, but I wanted it squared away before I returned to the wild life, here.”
“How come, Mikey? You didn’t need my shoulder any more?”
He chuckled and tossed off his soda. “Wanted it bad, babe. That’s why I had to stay away.”
“Huh?” She refilled his glass without asking.
“Careful with that stuff, I’ve got to drive home later.” A little of the confidence slipped; he seemed to gather himself. “I had to get clear of Carolyn before I could know whether I’d be making a mistake with you.”
Joyce Donati felt the world wobble on its axis.
“Mike, this is… uh… kind of sudden.”
McIlhone shook his head. “Cut the crap. How long have I been coming in here?”
“I don’t know, eight, nine months.”
“Maybe you think I’ve got nothing else to do with my time?”
“Well, no, but Mike—”
“Come on, Joycie. You seeing someone just now?”
“Well, no, but—”
“You got anything to do tomorrow around ten AM?”
She drew a sharp breath. One hand rose to her lips. She forced it down.
“Well, that’s when I usually go to Mass.”
He nodded. “You got a problem being seen with me, Joycie?”
She tried to work out whether she should be outraged. “No, Mike, not at all. Why?”
“Because I’d like to go with you. That okay with you?”
A tightness had developed in her chest. “You sure this isn’t one of those on-the-rebound deals, Mike?”
“Nope. But I’m going to do it. There’s lots of kinds of mistakes, Joycie. And one of them is not going after what you want, once you know you want it.” He hesitated, then reached across the bar and slid his hand around hers, clasping it lightly. “You can say no, if you don’t want it.”
Joyce studied the clear green eyes. There was a hint of appeal in them, and an affectionate challenge.
Am I afraid that I’ll miss the cut, or that I’ll make it?
She stroked the tight place in her chest, then squeezed his hand and nodded. “I want it.”
He smiled, squeezed back and rose from his stool. “Wear something nice.”
Ashley rounded the curve into Albrecht’s Perfumes Cove and stopped short, heart surging, unable to believe her eyes. “Carolyn?”
Carolyn turned to meet her incredulous stare. “Hello, Ashley, how have you been?”
“What are you doing back there?”
Carolyn gestured at the bottles and implements around her. “My job. Care to sample some White Linen or Tresor, Ashley?”
“You work here?”
“Can you think of a better way to be sure the guards will let me in?”
“It’s been a year, Carolyn. I’ve missed you terribly. When I couldn’t reach you at… at your husband’s house, I thought I’d never see you again.”
Ashley’s ex-lover looked into her eyes. “You knew I wasn’t long for that address.”
“Why didn’t you call?”
The older woman smiled. “Excuse me just a moment, dear.” She turned to wait on a customer that had joined them moments ago. Ashley stepped back a pace. Her thoughts snarled into a tangle from which she could find no exit.
It was some time before her ex-lover’s attention was available to her again.
“Where were we, dear?”
“What happened, Carolyn? How did you wind up here?”
“Well, I always liked Albrecht’s, and I had to support myself somehow.”
“But a sales clerk?”
Carolyn’s mouth quirked. “I don’t really know how to do anything else.”
Ashley pulled a card and a ballpoint pen from her handbag. “Where can I reach you? I’ve wanted to see you so much, and no one had any idea where you were.”
Carolyn gazed at her in silence for a long time.
“Did you ask Mike where I was?”
Ashley opened her mouth, closed it again quickly.
“He’s known the whole time. Now that we’re not married anymore, we’ve gotten to be pretty good friends.”
“Carolyn, you know I could never have asked him.”
The older woman shook her head. “You could have.”
“But why didn’t you call?”
Carolyn’s face clouded. “I didn’t want to make a little mistake into a big one.”
“What?”
“Ashley, was I important to you?”
“You know you were!”
“You weren’t important to me.”
Ashley jerked backward, pain and confusion mounting within her. Carolyn raised a hand and beckoned her to return.
“Let me put that another way. I looked at you and didn’t see you. I saw the heir to the Forslund family fortune, the golden girl of Onteora’s elite, welcome anywhere, the center of attention wherever she went. I made love to your social position, not to you.”
“It didn’t have to be like that! It wasn’t like that from me!”
“I know, dear. But when Mike and I parted, I had some hard lessons to learn. I couldn’t afford to adulterate them with exceptions.”
It was too much. Ashley Forslund began to gasp, and to cry. A petite woman in a forest green suit and high heels turned and hurried toward them, managerial concern written across her elfin features.
“Is there something wrong, Miss Forslund? Has Albrecht’s disappointed you?”
Carolyn intervened. “It’s all right, Helen. We’re old friends. We haven’t seen one another in a while, and some sad memories were dredged up.”
Helen looked dubiously from Ashley to Carolyn, waited for Ashley to speak, then gave a brief nod and glided away.
“Come, dear, surely you’ve had some agreeable company since you last saw me?”
Ashley struggled to calm herself and stop the flow of her tears. It took a mighty effort.
“You… don’t know… how much… I’ve missed you.”
Carolyn watched her in silence as she regained her self-control.
“Was it that bad?”
Ashley nodded and looked away, afraid she’d begin to cry again. Carolyn reached across the counter and stroked the young woman’s cheek.
“I wish it could have been I who paid the full price for that mistake, dear. I might not have appreciated you, but I never wanted to hurt you.”
Ashley’s head whipped around, a sudden heat surging through her.
“The hell with your intentions. The hell with your penances. I want you back.” Her voice cracked and descended to a whimper. “Tell me what I have to do to get you back into my arms and I’ll do it, anything at all!”
Carolyn gaped at her. Ashley restrained herself from lunging over the counter by the narrowest of margins.
“Is it really that way, dear?”
Ashley nodded, eyes brimming again.
Carolyn reached for the card and the pen Ashley clutched, pried them gently from her spasming hands. She wrote a telephone number on the card and handed it back.
“I’ll be there after nine.”
“You won’t give me your address?”
“Not yet, dear. It’s an efficiency, not a very nice place. It’ll be awhile before I can afford better.”
Ashley’s tears began to fall again. “I love you, Carolyn. Let me love you again.”
Pain darkened Carolyn Pahliavsky’s exquisite face. “Don’t, Ashley. We have to start fresh.” The muscles in her slender neck spasmed. “I have to. Call me tonight, okay?”
Onteora’s golden girl clamped her eyes shut. Her shoulders slumped forward as she strove to fight down the swells of heartache.
Our last phone conversation didn’t end so well. I told her I wouldn’t help her and hung up before she could get upset. If she were to do the same to me, it would only be what I’ve already earned.
Ashley forced down a final spate of whimpering and pulled herself upright.
“Okay.”
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
The Best Sauce
(I have a writer friend by the name -- I kid you not -- of Abigail Zenobia Treesong, with whom I'm in the habit of trading friendly challenges. At intervals, one of us will come up with some set of strange requirements for a story, and then challenge the other to meet them. It's an entertaining way of broadening our technical skills -- and sometimes, our ability to write on subjects we'd never before attempted.
After I wrote The Gift Room, Abby, who liked it very much, challenged me to "go harder?" "How?" I asked.
"Your erotica is always so restrained and delicate. I know that's the way you are, but your stories needn't be like that. Give me something wild and pagan, something that will make me want to rip off my clothes, go spinning through the streets, and ravish the first man I see. Something with some oomph."
I suppose I need not mention that Abby is, according to her husband, "quite a handful." Well, let that pass. I cast about for quite a while for an idea with "oomph," and discarded several as just too, well, crude. I don't do crude. But I was determined to write something that would make Abby slide right off her chair, so I kept considering ideas and discarding them, until I remembered this passage in C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength:
"She [Mother Dimble] is a Christian wife. And you, you know, are not. Neither are you a virgin. You have put yourself where you must meet that Old Woman and you have rejected all that has happened to her since Maleldil [Christ] came to Earth. So you get her raw -- not stronger than Mother Dimble would find her, but untransformed, demoniac. And you don't like it. Hasn't that been the history of your life?"
The "Old Woman" to whom the speaker refers is a supernatural creature: the angel Perelandra, who holds dominion over the planet Venus and has power over men's desires.
And I found myself thinking: why not?)
Martine thrust a bite of scalloped veal into her mouth, chewed and swallowed quickly, then pointed her fork at Helen's lunch. "Aren't you going to eat any more of that?"
Helen glanced down at her Caesar salad and shook her head. "I never have more than a morsel or two at lunch, dear. I can't burn it off the way you younger gals do."
Martine's face colored. At fifty, Helen was the picture of glowing good health, with classically voluptuous proportions that called to men of all ages. She wore form-fitting silk blouses, leather miniskirts, and stiletto heels that would have looked foolish and vain on nearly any other woman her age. Her sensual appeal was as powerful as any beauty queen's, and as unaffected as the gait of a cat. Martine, who'd always thought herself absolutely heterosexual, could hardly look at Helen without wanting to touch her.
Nine out of ten women of any age would have killed to have Helen's figure. Martine was one of the nine. At twenty-five, her lifelong chubbiness had started to edge toward genuine overweight, and she felt powerless to arrest it.
"It seems like a lot to give up," Martine said, "just to have a fashionable figure."
Helen's face went blank. She leaned forward and steepled her fingers against her lips. "What makes you think that's the only reward, dear?"
Martine put down her fork. "Well..."
"Have you ever heard the saying, 'hunger is the best sauce'?"
"Uh, no."
"But it is." Helen's smile returned. "Desire is what gives any satisfaction its intensity. The more desire, the more satisfaction. The less you eat, the more pleasure you take from your meals. Are you enjoying your veal?"
Martine was momentarily nonplussed. She looked quickly about the little restaurant, inexplicably anxious that someone might be eavesdropping on them. "It's all right, I guess. Why did you ask?"
"I've had it here," Helen murmured. "They do it exceptionally well. But you were gulping it down as if you could hardly taste it."
Martine's mouth dropped open. She looked down at her nearly empty plate, and realized that what Helen had said was true. She put her fingertips to the edge of the plate and pushed it gently away. It took more effort than she expected.
"One of the less obvious things about pleasure of any kind," Helen said, "is how a certain amount of self-denial can make it so much better. Enough to sharpen your nerves and bring you up onto your toes for it."
"I would never have expected," Martine said slowly, "to hear an exotic lingerie and sex toy retailer advocate self-restraint. I thought the whole point of what you do is to encourage people to enjoy themselves."
Helen nodded. "It is. What's the point of what you do, dear?"
"Huh? I write Web applications, you know that."
"For their own sake? The more code, the better?"
"Of course not! My clients have specific needs. Once I know what those are, I craft Web sites to meet them."
Helen merely sat silently.
Martine chewed her lip. Her last romance had fizzled out from mutual indifference. Neither she nor Ted had wanted to continue it. They'd begun making elaborate excuses not to get together. Yet there was nothing wrong with him. In fact, she'd thought of him as a considerable catch. She still did, when she viewed his assets objectively.
There wasn't much wrong with her, either. She was bright, pretty, well to do, still on the sunny side of thirty, and at ease in any social setting. She had no faults the loss of twenty pounds couldn't cure.
Without preliminary, she rose, fished a twenty-dollar bill out of her purse, and slapped it on the table. "Let's go back to your shop, Helen."
The older woman cocked an eyebrow. "Was there something you wanted there, dear?"
Martine flipped a hand. "Maybe. Maybe you'll find it for me."
The corners of Helen's mouth canted upward. "Ah. I see. Yes, let's be off."
As they entered Naughty But Nice, Helen's exotica shop, the older woman turned toward Martine and spread her arms as if to invite her guest to peruse the wares. She stood that way, unspeaking, as Martine collected her thoughts.
I've been here a lot of times, but maybe I've never seen what Helen sees, or what her other customers see.
"What does any of this," Martine said, "have to do with self-restraint?"
Helen's eyes glinted with humor. "Much of what you see here is designed to provide a challenge. Silky underthings, for instance, titillate without providing release. If you can withstand the teasing, you can build up a nice head of desire for whoever will be coming to visit...or coming home at the end of the day. The vibrators and such are for people with other problems. I have other goods as well. Would you care to see them?"
Martine nodded. Helen turned and, with a delicate flip of the fingers, beckoned her to follow.
Presently they stood in a large, mirrored room. Its sole furnishing was a single upholstered chair that looked as if it belonged in a Victorian parlor. Martine looked about her in bafflement.
"Where are the goods you were talking about?"
Helen went to one of the mirrors and pressed its edge. It sprang open to reveal a capacious closet filled with leather garments. She riffled through them briefly and returned to Martine holding one festooned with laces, garters, and bits of bright chrome detail.
"Have you ever worn a waist cincher, dear?"
"Uh, no."
Helen spread the garment for Martine's perusal. It looked impossibly small, far too small to wrap around her bulges.
"It looks as if it would be...tight on me."
Helen nodded. "Yes, it would. Once laced, I expect it would take four or five inches off your tummy. It would be uncomfortable at first, but should you have the discipline to keep it on, it would restrict your eating to a much more moderate level. Over time, your hunger would diminish, your body would adapt, and you'd shrink to the dimensions it imposes on you. Then we'd proceed to the next stage."
"What would that involve?"
Helen lowered her brows to catch shadows in the hollows of her eyes. "You'll learn about that when the time comes, not before. Are you willing to try this?"
"Uh..."
"Don't disappoint me, dear. You're quite impressive in many ways. I've been hoping you would come around for a little...assistance."
Martine swallowed. "Okay."
Helen nodded. "Take off all your clothes."
With the garment fully laced and tightened, Martine felt as if she could hardly breathe. Yet the sensation wasn't wholly unpleasant. Her posture felt straighter and stronger by several degrees. She held her head an inch or so higher, and kept it there with little effort. Her reflection in the mirrors displayed assets she'd never before possessed.
She was definitely narrower by at least four inches. Her bosom thrust forward nicely, and her hips and legs were accentuated as well. She admired herself with undisguised delight.
"Lovely, isn't she?" Helen said.
"Yes," Martine breathed.
"But we're not finished." Helen went to another segment of mirror, opened yet another concealed closet, and withdrew a pair of round-toed pumps in gleaming black leather, with high straight heels. "Here, put these on."
Martine stepped into them carefully. It took her a moment to stop tottering and establish her balance, but once she'd done so, the shoes felt almost as comfortable as her habitual ballet flats. Her reflection had become utterly stunning, and utterly alien.
Helen had moved to stand behind her.
"This is what a little discipline can earn you," Helen murmured. "If you want this, I'll help you to get it -- to make it as natural for you as any life you've known to date. But I must warn you, dear: once we've begun, I will not let you turn back." She stepped behind Martine and settled her arms around her body. "Are you willing?"
Martine was hypnotized by her own appearance. She nodded at once.
"Excellent," Helen murmured. Her hands rose to cup Martine's breasts. Her thumbs brushed lightly over the nipples, once, twice, thrice. Martine gasped and sagged backward as a dull smoldering ignited at the base of her spine.
Helen's hands traveled down Martine's torso. Her fingers toyed briefly with the younger woman's pubic hair before questing for the moist slit below.
Martine bucked backward against Helen. Her own hands went to press Helen's more firmly into her mons.
Without warning, Helen pulled her fingers away. Before Martine could register the change, Helen had wrapped a thick band of leather tightly about her waist. Another, harder object rose between her legs. There were two quick metallic clacks, and Martine gasped again.
"What -- what's this?" Her hands scrabbled at the smooth surface of the thing that had captured her groin.
Helen smiled. "It's a chastity belt, dear."
Martine gaped. The belt was completely seamless. It enclosed her mons closely and perfectly. There was no way to get under it with anything wider than a needle. The mating parts were solid steel. As tightly as it clasped her above the hips, she knew it wouldn't come off unless unlocked.
"But I thought you were going to..."
"Oh, no," Helen said. "Weren't we talking about self-restraint just before? Well, here's your first course. You're going to wear both these items until we've got your weight down to where it belongs. You'll keep the shoes on, too; they'll provide added incentive."
Martine couldn't tear her eyes away from the chastity belt. Beneath it, her loins pulsed with unslaked need.
"Until I say otherwise," Helen purred, "you'll be eating all your meals with me. In fact, I think it would be best if you moved in here for a few weeks, so your sanitary needs will be easier to meet. You wouldn't mind walking next door to your office each morning, instead of walking downstairs from your flat, would you?"
Martine turned to look directly at Helen. Her heels caught beneath her, and she started to tumble. Helen caught her under the arms and steadied her.
"No turning back, dear," she said. "Six weeks from today, eight at most, you'll have the best figure in Los Angeles."
"How -- how am I supposed to live like this?" Martine lowered her gaze to the floor.
Helen's expression became stern. She took Martine's chin between finger and thumb and raised it until their eyes met again. "Under my supervision. But I promise you, once it's over, you won't regret a moment of it. Now get dressed. I'll expect you for dinner at six. Bring what you'll need for the morning."
Helen would not relent. She allowed Martine one brief, supervised toilet each morning before sending her to her office, then one more at lunch, and one after dinner. After the first three days of the regimen, Martine stopped drinking coffee.
She ate all her meals with Helen as well. The older woman made all their menu choices and measured out all their portions. There were no second helpings of anything. To insure that Martine didn't stray, Helen popped into her office without warning several times each day. She confiscated Martine's bags of chips and nuts with a glare and a lecture that no snacking was allowed.
At first Martine thought she might die of it. Her hunger was a worm in her belly with the teeth of a tiger, continuous and painfully sharp. All she could do for it was to concentrate on her work, and on the non-nutritious entertainments Helen allowed her in the evenings.
Yet the passage of time proved Helen right. The less Martine ate, the more she looked forward to her meals, and the more pleasure she took from them. She educated herself with each bite: how to portion the mouthful, how to chew it and savor it as it rolled over her tongue, and how to swallow with the back passages of her mouth properly opened, so that the gustatory experience formed an elongated whole of aroma, texture and taste.
After a week, the intensity of her hunger pangs had substantially faded. After two weeks, she thought about eating only immediately before meals. After three, there was a noticeable slack between her belly and the chastity belt.
Helen noticed it too. She cinched the belt tighter at once, to Martine's disappointed groans.
Helen had her ways of reminding Martine what awaited her at the conclusion of her ordeal. Her breasts brushed across Martine's back far too often for it to be accidental. When she talked, her hand would go to Martine's waist in apparently casual fashion, then slide caressingly over the buttocks below. When they sat together at Helen's dinner table, their feet and legs often touched with the suggestion of an entwinement to come.
Side by side in their nightgowns on Helen's couch, with the television glowing irrelevantly before them, the older woman would idly drape her arm across Martine's shoulders or reach into her lap to take her hand. In the process, Helen's hand would brush lightly over Martine's breast or thigh, and the younger woman would shudder with reawakened lust. But there was no satisfaction to be had. The chastity belt stayed firmly locked around Martine's waist, its brushed-steel crotchpiece denying all access to the urgently aroused flesh beneath.
Unlike her hunger, Martine's need for release never slackened.
"Why?" Martine shuddered against Helen's breast. "Why did you do this to me?"
Helen stroked her hair and murmured meaningless soothing sounds. Behind them, the talking head on the television nattered pointlessly into the gloom.
"I was arrow-straight only two months ago," Martine said in a half sob. "Now all I can think about is touching you, holding you, loving you. You had to have done it on purpose, so why won't you let me love you?"
The older woman didn't reply at once. She pushed Martine back a little way and looked into her eyes. Her expression was warm and a little wry.
"Incentive, dear. You adapted to the diet very quickly. I haven't heard a peep of complaint from you in six weeks or more. If I were to permit you this, what other reason would you have to stay the course with me?"
"But I have stayed the course!"
Helen shook her head slightly, and Martine's eyes widened.
"You've lost your twenty pounds, yes. You look marvelous, even better than I'd hoped." She ran her hands lightly down Martine's shoulders and arms and held her by her beautifully tapered waist. "Your posture is excellent and your walk is grace itself." She glanced down at the five inch heels Martine had worn for eight weeks running. "Tell me, are the shoes comfortable?"
Martine nodded. "I don't even notice them any more."
"As I expected." Helen smiled. "So you see, dear, you're everything you wanted to be, just as I predicted. Would you agree?"
Martine nodded again. "But --"
"But why haven't I let you out of the chastity belt? Because you aren't yet everything that I want you to be."
"What..." Martine's voice cracked and sank near to a whisper. "What do you want me to be?"
Helen's smile was delicate. "My underling."
Martine's mind filled with questions. "At the store?"
"Certainly at the store, dear, but not just there. Here, as well."
Martine stood mute in her confusion, the implications of the words clanging within her.
After a moment's silence, Helen dipped a finger into a tiny pocket in her miniskirt and drew out the key to the chastity belt. She undid the latches and unbuckled the belt, tossed it onto the floor and stepped back. Martine, her loins unexpectedly freed, shivered briefly, put a hand tentatively to her mons, then let it fall to her side.
"You hunger as you once did for food," Helen said, "but now it's for something quite different. I've teased you while denying you release, as carefully and intensely as I know how, as another woman once teased and denied me. I know the storm that rages in your body. It rages just as wildly in mine.
"To have what you want -- which I very much want to give you, dear, have no doubt of that! -- you must give me what I want: yourself. You must agree to give yourself to me, body and mind, heart and soul. You must do exactly as I say, whatever it is, whenever I say it, with no reservations, qualifications, or words of complaint. You must abandon that silly Web business of yours and apprentice yourself to me in mine, so that there will be continuity of knowledge, skill, and desire from me to you, as there was from my mistress to me, many years ago...and, one day, when I live only in your memories, from you to your underling, whoever that might be.
"You see, dear, I'm not just a shopowner, or, for that matter, an advisor to young women dissatisfied with their figures and their love lives. I'm also a priestess. And the most sacred of all my duties is to insure that they'll be seen to after my life is spent, by one trained to the worship of the power I serve."
"What...what power is that?"
Helen's all but undetectable smile quirked. "Desire itself."
At those words, the wave of need that lashed Martine swelled to fill all her being. A Presence barely perceptible at the edge of her awareness, that she'd thought a mere artifact of her yearning for Helen, zoomed toward her at an immeasurable speed. It suffused her completely, reverberating through her like the tolling of a great bell. She ceased to feel her own body, or to sense her own existence. Her soul became a single blinding flame of lust that exploded outward and took her consciousness with it.
All thought ceased as she slumped to the floor.
Martine awoke in Helen's bed. Helen was sitting beside her, holding her hand and watching her face. Helen's cat Astarte lay at the foot of the bed, cleaning her claws with leisurely flicks of her tongue.
"The god touched you, didn't it?"
Martine tried to speak, found her tongue unresponsive. She coughed gently, tried to lubricate her mouth, and managed, "God?"
Helen nodded. "Not the God, of course. A lesser deity. An angel. Definitely a higher being whose special charge is human desire. A being that must be honored and served. Did it touch you?"
Martine's mouth remained dry. She nodded.
"I'm glad," Helen said. "That reassures me that it was meant to be."
Martine tried to speak again, coughed twice, and shook her head. Helen waited in silence.
"What...what do I do now?"
The older woman's eyes crinkled at the corners. "Nurture it."
"How?"
"In all ways." Helen turned back the bedcovers to expose the sheets. She ran her fingers lightly over the fabric. Martine realized abruptly that she was swaddled in silk.
"You must encourage your desire in every possible way: with your clothes, with your walk, with your speech, with your surroundings, and above all with your restraint. You'll wear that chastity belt until you've worn it out, and then another, and another, until your self-discipline is so firm that no tidal wave of lust can break your will. Your desire must build high, like a bonfire meant to warm the whole world, for that is what you will use it to do."
"But why?" Martine struggled onto her elbows. "What good is desire you're not allowed to satisfy?"
"Oh, you'll be allowed to satisfy it." Helen chuckled. "Once the power is satisfied with you. And there'll be other rewards for your devotion as well. How old am I, dear?"
Martine frowned. "Didn't you tell me you were fifty?"
"No, dear. I let you believe I was about that old. But my age requires more than two digits. In fact, it will soon need more than three."
Martine gaped.
"My body has not changed in any way since I was your age," Helen said. "Your impression of my age comes from my expression and my carriage, not from any mark time has left upon my flesh. The reward of desire is the gift of life. Desire is life. The more intensely we yearn, the more intensely we live. When we lose our desire, we lose our lives as well."
"And I will be...like you?"
Helen nodded. "If you commit yourself as I did, you will have what I have. Probably longer and stronger than I've had it. It's in you to be a great priestess. I can smell it."
Fully restored to consciousness, Martine felt the stirrings of lust renew themselves in her loins. She slumped back onto the pillow.
"What will my duties be?"
"While I live, you'll serve me just as I've said: in all ways, without reservation or protest. You'll dress as I do, work alongside me by day, and perform the rituals with me at night. You'll learn the ways of desire regnant and the ways it must be propitiated. When I'm gone -- not too soon, I hope -- you'll do as I have done: counsel young women, teach them to find the desire within themselves and their mates, help them to excite it to its fullest pitch, and then set it free.
"Women are the keepers of desire. Men's lusts are crude things: necessary, but low, simple, and entirely of the body, with no fineness and no persistence once the needs of their gonads have been met. It's women's job to learn true eroticism, the techniques of ardor and bonding, and to wield them for all the human race. Without these things, neither families nor society can endure.
"There was a time when that knowledge was passed from mother to daughter like a family heirloom. Every woman came to her maturity as a courtesan-priestess. But today, because of some highly unfortunate notions that have gotten into circulation, a tragic fraction of them are without anyone to teach them, so it falls to us." Helen smiled. "All the same, it's very pleasant work."
She rose from the edge of the bed and stood looking directly down at Martine. "Do you want it, dear?"
"Will there be...men?"
Helen pursed her lips and shook her head microscopically. "Only as clients, dear. That's one indulgence we're forbidden. I don't know why, but the prohibition is absolute. But that's the only thing I know that's barred to us. Now, do you want it?"
Martine closed her eyes and let the pounding of her blood echo within her.
It would be a life without men. But it would be a life measured in centuries, all of them blessed with vibrant youth and mature self-command. A life devoted to the homage of a being that could wield desire like a torch, illuminating its intimates with the red light of passion. A life spreading erotic knowledge and power among the less favored, first in company with Helen, and later with an understudy of her own.
"On one condition."
Helen raised an eyebrow.
"We make love. Now."
Helen's gaze flicked toward Astarte. Abruptly, the cat stood, jumped down from the bed, and disappeared through the open doorway.
Without a word, Helen unbuttoned her silk blouse and shrugged it away. She kicked off her high-heeled pumps, unzipped her miniskirt and let it slide to the floor as well. A moment later her knees straddled Martine's torso. Her perfectly depilated mons glistened a few inches above Martine's face.
"That, my dear, is the ordination rite."
One pair of lips descended to meet the other.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
Terminal Guidance
(Science fiction with a twist. Every man believes himself immortal, no matter how ardently he might protest his disbelief. But a man who has lost enough, and suffered enough, might want to take out insurance on the matter…and if he’s a genius beyond all the geniuses we’ve known, his “policy” might prove to be a departure from all we’ve known, as well.)
Darius Culloden almost fell asleep and missed the capture. His apparatus did not.
Culloden had picked one of the four derelicts in the storeroom as likeliest to expire that day. The old man's skin was chalk white. His beard was caked with mucus. His shallow, raucous breathing presaged pulmonary failure, barely fogging the chill air. His slumped position, head canted against the grimy wall tiles, suggested that there was no fight left in him. Culloden had positioned the detector coils and meson generators accordingly, and had retreated to the hall outside before any of the winos alerted to his presence.
Culloden struggled to stay awake in the gloom of the maintenance tunnel. He could risk no light by which to read. He dared not make any unnecessary sound. The tumor in his gut stabbed at him sporadically, and his body, all its other defenses exhausted, yearned for the shelter of sleep. He muttered fragments of poetry under his breath, recited mathematical derivations in his head, and grieved over his dead wife and daughter. By three AM it had all failed, and his pain-wracked body slouched toward slumber.
Culloden had surrendered to exhaustion when the dying bum emitted a bubbling gasp, the field coils hummed and the meson generators surged to life.
He pushed back the curtain of darkness with groggy determination and raised himself erect. The humming from the storeroom rose as he shouldered open the dented steel door.
The wino was breathing what would have been his last, save for Culloden's trap. Tracer beams illuminated a cube eighteen inches on a side over the derelict's face. Had it been a solid object, the old bum would have been kissing it.
Within the cube surged a power source of enormous size. The field coils hummed and glowed in time to its efforts to free itself, but the meson flux held it tight.
Torn between supreme exaltation and borderless fear, Culloden fetched his containment and inched toward the trap. Heedless of the grunts and stares of the other three derelicts, he knelt, slid the technetium box delicately around the trap zone, swung the lid over the open face and snapped its clasps shut. The wino did not stir. The humming sank to a subsonic bass, then dwindled to nothing.
He held his breath.
The box was solid and steady in his hands. It emitted nothing his senses or instruments could detect.
Pain shrieked from Culloden's abdomen. Fear howled at the center of his brain. Adrenaline sang in his veins. He strode out into the tunnel, and raced out of the Penn Station sub-basement, toward the world of living men.
By the time Culloden reached his lab and locked its door behind him, all his fatigue had fled. His body was indifferent to pain, alive with imminence. He stood at the threshold of a greatness no man had ever approached.
The technetium box remained static and silent. The thing trapped within gave no indication of its presence. If it struggled to escape, there was no sign.
He stepped carefully over the bundles of cables that crisscrossed the floor and mounted the box in the sensor cradle at the center of the web. As the box's walls slid against the cradle's slip-contacts, the instruments that lined the lab began to show readings. Within seconds, all the screens were active. Culloden stepped back cautiously, eyes fixed on the box, and slumped into the high-backed chair at his battered sheet-steel desk.
Fatigue surged back. Dizziness tipped him forward, tilted his head toward his chest. His eyes slid closed.
"WELL? WHAT NEXT?"
The godlike basso profundo blasted him a million miles from sleep. He shot forward as if catapulted from his chair. No one else was present. The lab door was still closed, still locked.
The voice had seemed to come from all around him.
The technetium box was where he'd left it. The many displays around the room were as they had been.
"Is it you?"
"WHO ELSE? SHALL WE DISCUSS THIS, OR WOULD YOU RATHER NAP?"
It was evident that the entity in the box preferred the former choice.
"How is it that you can speak to me?"
"THE BOX CONFINES ONLY MY MOTION. THE CONTACTS ALONG ITS SIDES, IF PROPERLY MODULATED AT THE QUANTUM LEVEL, ALLOW ME TO VIBRATE THE OBJECTS TO WHICH THEY ARE CONNECTED. I CAN HEAR YOU THUS, AS WELL."
Culloden's head swiveled about the room again, examining each of his instruments in turn. All continued to function.
"FEAR NOT, DR. CULLODEN. EVEN WERE I MINDED TO HARM YOU, I CANNOT. IT IS CLEAR WHY THE ALMIGHTY DID NOT PERMIT TECHNETIUM TO OCCUR IN NATURE. MY CONGRATULATIONS ON THE DISCOVERY OF THE AGES.
"BUT I MUST ASK: ARE YOU SATISFIED WITH HAVING PROVED THAT YOU CAN DO THIS THING, OR DID CAPTURING ME HAVE SOME LARGER PURPOSE?"
Culloden's muscles had turned to water. He could not bring himself to move even enough to return to his chair.
"There was... more."
A bellows-like sigh ghosted through the room.
"I SUSPECTED AS MUCH. TELL ME, PLEASE. I HAVE DUTIES TO DISCHARGE."
Culloden's resolve returned in a flood.
"You will not be returning to those duties, Uriel."
"AH, YOU KNOW MY NAME. MOST ERUDITE. THEN PERHAPS YOU WILL TELL ME WHY?"
The last syllable, though no louder than what came before, seemed to shake the walls with its gravity.
"It is my mission." The researcher marshaled his will. "I am alone in the world. All that I loved, you have taken away. Parents, friends, colleagues, even my wife and child. Soon, myself... unless I take your scythe from you. From this day forward, for as long as that box will hold you, no one shall die."
The silence became immeasurably deep. Culloden had wondered how the angel would respond. Surely an immortal would not passively accept imprisonment by a lesser creature.
"YOU ARE IN THE GRIP OF A MISCONCEPTION, DR. CULLODEN. IT IS NOT I WHO DECIDES THAT A MAN SHALL DIE, OR WHEN. ALL THINGS THAT LIVE MUST DIE, BY THE LAWS THE ALMIGHTY HAS DECREED FOR YOUR WORLD."
Culloden smiled.
"Not so, Uriel. What of the amoeba? What of the bacteria and viruses? What of the carp? If these can pass down the eons, why not Man?"
"A FANTASY. THE AMOEBA DIES IN THE ACT OF PROCREATION. SO ALSO DO THE BACTERIA. VIRUSES ARE NOT TRULY ALIVE, HAVING NO STABLE FORM AND BEING INCAPABLE OF UNASSISTED REPRODUCTION. A CARP MAY LIVE A LONG TIME, BY YOUR STANDARDS, BUT IT TOO MUST EVENTUALLY SUCCUMB, WHETHER TO DISEASE, PREDATION, OR MISADVENTURE."
Footsteps sounded in the hallway outside. Culloden's guts leaped at the thought that Uriel's booming voice might reach into the adjacent labs. Then he thought about being found talking to himself in an empty room, and could not decide which would be worse. His reputation had already deteriorated because of his obsession with religion and myth. He stepped closer to the box.
"Uriel," he murmured, "I cannot risk having others discover your presence here. Please lower your voice so that only I can hear it, or I shall sever the connections that permit you to speak."
There was a brief silence.
"Agreed." It was a barely audible murmur, as if the word had been impressed on the wind. Culloden slumped back into his chair. One hand rose to rub at his chest.
Was it possible for an angel to lie? Could the Dark Angel, the Doorwarden between the worlds, be telling him the literal truth?
If so, his family had perished for no reason at all. Unthinkable.
"Until I have proof, I prefer to believe otherwise. If I'm right, I save uncounted lives with each hour I confine you. If I'm wrong, I do no harm."
"No harm, you say?" Though the voice remained whisper-quiet, its words rode an undertone of scorn. "Do you think a multitude of souls expelled from their mortal bodies but tethered to this world, unable to affect their surroundings or reach their destinies, constitutes no harm?"
"Unable to reach... what?"
"Their destinies, Doctor. Their final rewards for the lives they've lived and the deaths they've died. It is by my hand that a soul slips the bonds of time and passes into eternity. I am the Doorwarden. I do not kill. I liberate.
"As we speak, souls accumulate about the globe in unprecedented numbers. They are confused, distressed, uncertain of their fates. They await a guide to the next plane, the guide you have taken prisoner.
"Imagine your wife and child, set free of their bodies, confronting their remains. Imagine their bewilderment at not being able to communicate with you, not knowing what has happened or why you don't respond. Imagine the frenzy that would build in them, were that condition of silent impotence to be prolonged. Now multiply it a millionfold for each day you chain me here. The consequences will not be long in coming."
Culloden's tumor, quiet since his flight from the Penn Station storeroom, awoke and racked him with pain. He winced, clenched his teeth, and waited for the attack to subside.
"What consequences?"
"The souls of the dead cannot act upon the material world, but if they remain upon this plane, they can be sensed by the souls of the living. The sensation is not pleasant. Weaker minds are unhinged by it. In time, the accumulation of unguided spirits will cause eruptions of mass psychosis. They will be worst in those parts of the world where mental discipline is least practiced. The Middle East might well devour itself whole."
Culloden's brain reeled in the silence. He imagined a thousand pairs of ghostly eyes, Sophia's and Bridget's among them, weighing him, questioning his judgment, and pondering the punishment for his arrogance.
"I cannot... It's unthinkable, Uriel. You must take me for a mortal fool. No such thing would occur. God would intervene at once."
"He would not. He has not, has he? After the Deluge, the Almighty renounced the police power over your world. Until my brother Gabriel sounds the last trump, it will be what you make of it, nothing more."
Despite his agony, Culloden smiled. "But all of this requires the assumption that you do only what you say, that you don't take lives. Without that premise, your argument fails."
"Are you a scientist in name only, Dr. Culloden, or in fact?"
The researcher stiffened. "What do you think, my unwilling guest?"
"I think you have evaded the question."
"I am a scientist." He hurled the words at the Dark Angel, a return of service of the glove Uriel had hurled into his face.
"What is the first rule of science?"
"Prediction is knowledge."
"How many counterexamples are required to disprove a theory?"
Culloden could see the end of the syllogism. "One."
"Then let us return whence you found me."
The nether dankness of the Penn Station sublevel was more oppressive than before. Rivulets of moisture dripped from the overhanging pipes and ran down the mottled cinderblock walls. Each step scuffed a cloud of gritty dust from the concrete floor. Now and then Culloden glimpsed motion in the crannies along the walls and ceilings, where webs of pipe or electrical conduits had allowed vermin to nest.
The researcher clutched his prize and pressed on, oblivious to pain and fatigue. Uriel had been still since they left the lab.
Down the long main corridor, through a near-invisible side vent and down a narrow, steeply sloped passageway devoid of light, were the oldest of the terminal's storerooms. Shorn of their original purpose for a century, they stood unlocked, unlit, and unused, except by the bottommost bottom dwellers of the city. Culloden fumbled out his torch, lit it, and pressed cautiously against the battered door where he'd kept vigil. It swung open at his touch.
Four bodies lay sprawled amid the trash. Two were visibly moving, chests rising and falling in the wheezing labor of pneumonia. The third was less obviously alive. It did not seem to move, and made no sound. The fourth, over which he'd poised his trap, lay absolutely still, exactly as he'd remembered him. As he'd left him.
Culloden set the box down next to the motionless derelict. He pulled headphones from his coat pocket, slipped them on, and taped their jack against a contact on the technetium box.
"We're here, Uriel," he whispered.
"Indeed." Through the headphones, the angel's voice thundered like an enveloping storm. "How would you describe the man I was attending when you captured me?"
Culloden squatted, muscles clenched against the protests from his abdomen, and laid his fingers against the pulse point in the derelict's neck. There was no vibration, and no warmth. He put his palm against the bum's grimy mouth and nose. No breath.
"He's dead."
"Now, you might argue to yourself that I had finished with him before your trap closed upon me. But what of the others?"
Culloden went to the other unmoving derelict. He performed the same checks as before. There were no signs of life.
"This one's dead too. But he could have --"
"He did not."
"How can you expect me to take your word?" A spasm from his tumor lanced through his body. "If I release you in error, I've unleashed death on the world, only hours after chaining it!"
There was a long silence from the box. Yet Culloden sensed a gathering of energies within it, as though a mighty engine were being prepared for an unknown purpose.
"You need not take my word, Dr. Culloden. Look yonder, to your left."
One of the two remaining derelicts had gone into crisis. His back arched against the floor. His hands flailed the darkness, fingers twitching galvanically. He grunted a series of weak protests against... what? The intrusion upon his privacy? The quality of his accommodations? The unfairness of it all?
Culloden crept silently toward him.
The bum's back flattened against the dirty concrete. His gruntings and twitchings grew slower and weaker. Presently that stopped as well. The silence was restored.
Straining against a reluctance that dwarfed any emotion he had ever known, Culloden laid two fingers against the pulse point in the old wino's neck. Nothing.
"Are you satisfied, Dr. Culloden?"
Culloden started to reply, stopped. He rose shakily from his squat over the dead derelict, closed his eyes, and surrendered to tears. It was the first time he'd wept since the accident in which his family died.
"It was all for nothing."
"Was it, Doctor? You have gained knowledge of a thing which has been a mystery throughout all the ages of man. You have pierced the veil that shrouds the lands beyond time. No one has ever thought to investigate the phenomenon of death as you have done. Likely, no one will ever do so again.
"And there is this as well. Listen."
"To what, Uriel?"
"Just listen."
At the fringes of his consciousness, Culloden detected a faint, non-auditory buzz. Despite its insubstantiality it was decidedly unpleasant. He strained toward it in a manner he could not define. His five conventional senses collapsed to shadows.
The buzz crescendoed from a faint, sinister scraping against the surface of his mind to an insistent, terror-filled cadence that converged upon him from a thousand points of pulsing not-light and not-sound. A battalion of triphammers might have made such a clamor, if triphammers could feel ultimate loss and fear.
Culloden reeled back, desperate to put space between his ego and whatever keened at it so piercingly. But the yammering things were faster than he. They beat at the defenses around his consciousness, screaming for mercy and vengeance as one, growing louder all the while. The torch fell from his nerveless hand.
"Stop it... Uriel, stop it, please!"
"You must open the box."
The researcher dove for the angel trap and groped for the catches. He ripped back the lid and frantically thrust himself away, toppling backward, smashing his head and elbows against the concrete. His brain floated in an ocean of pain.
Something uncoiled from the box. It expanded through measureless dimensions to enclose the mass of shrieking ghosts that had assailed Culloden. The clamor subsided at once. Silence returned.
A tide of acceptance swept through Culloden. It relaxed his entire body, washed away his pain and fear. Though he lay amid the greasy detritus of a century, with three dead bodies nearby, he felt only peace. He closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, he beheld a glowing naked figure, a young man of extraordinary beauty. Though his flesh shone white, radiant as the sun, his eyes and hair were of the darkest jet. He smiled and spread his arms in welcome.
"Now, do you see?"
Culloden rose to his feet with unaccustomed fluidity. The torment from his gut had disappeared. There was no pain from his fall. Even the long-endured stiffness in his hips and knees was absent.
"Uriel?"
The youth nodded.
"How..."
"Be at peace, Dr. Culloden. You chose well."
"But how is it that I can see you?"
The angel indicated the floor behind Culloden with a gentle wave of the hand. Culloden turned.
He lay supine in the filth, arms splayed wide, eyes closed and features at rest. No movement. The technetium box sat open and empty beside his corpse.
Of course.
"Will I lie here for long?"
Uriel chuckled. "Your flesh, perhaps. The rest will soon embark on a remarkable journey. More remarkable than even the man who conceived of how to capture an angel can imagine."
"If I had died before releasing you --"
"But you did not."
"Then --"
"Come. The Father awaits."
The Doorwarden stepped forward to embrace the soul of Darius Culloden. As Uriel's arms closed about him, he unlinked from the reality he had known. The grimy storeroom, the labyrinth beneath the city, and the world of men were swept to an infinite remove. Around them shone a golden light that knew no sun.
"Will I... are Sophia and Bridget...?"
"Yes. Be at peace."
"And your other duties? The ones I... interrupted?"
"The work of a moment."
"Uriel..." Culloden faltered, "will there be work for me?"
Culloden felt the angel's smile as a wave of serene joy, the embrace of a purpose that could consume even an eternal life.
"You may rest assured of it, Dr. Culloden. God wastes not."
