Soul/Mate

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Dorothea lay luxuriously in her bath in the warm fragrant water, noting idly that her breasts, her creamy-pale unused breasts, floated gently, like balloons, and that the dark wiry hair between her legs, scratchy to the touch, was obscured by the water’s rippling soap-bubbled surface. She stretched her rather long legs, pressed her toes against the hard rim of the bathtub. I love you. His mind had simply shattered. The gentleman to whom Ginny Weidmann had introduced her tonight had asked if he might telephone her sometime the following week; might she be free for dinner sometime soon, perhaps a concert in the city? She’d been vague and polite, not quite looking him in the eye. Thank you, yes. Perhaps. Sometime.

  She was nodding off to sleep, in the bath. The day had been so incalculably long.

  A boy’s face appeared suddenly: blunt, bold … the eyes searing, knowing. Not a human boy but an angel: a fierce bellicose archangel, out of Michelangelo perhaps, blowing his doomsday trumpet, cheeks puffed and forehead cruelly creased. Colin, his name. He’d stared at her, in front of the others. But what was his last name? She was too drowsy to remember.

  2

  Colin Asch had been forced to kill before but never so dispassionately. So without premeditation.

  A clean sort of XXX, he was to note in his Blue Ledger in carefully printed block letters, uncontaminated by desire.

  It had happened in innocence. It had been the consequence of actions not within his control. He’d left Sea Breeze Village (several acres of condominiums) early in the morning of November 10, driving out of Fort Lauderdale in the red ’87 Mustang with the sliding sun roof the woman had given him, which she surely wouldn’t call the police to get returned, and just south of Daytona Beach on I-95, maintaining his usual steady unobtrusive speed of sixty-five miles an hour, he happened to see, one lane over to the right, one car length ahead, a car he thought at first to be identical with his, lipstick-red, two-door coupe, good condition except for streaks of corrosion on the fenders, but it turned out to be a Toyota of about that year, and what drew his attention to it like a magnet was it had a sliding sun roof too and the roof was partway open and there was a hand stuck through it wriggling the fingers to taunt him.

  Or was it a signal?

  (In the open air! Drivers on all sides! The Florida State Highway police patrolling in unmarked cars!)

  Colin’s immediate and instinctive response was to brake, slow his speed, let the Toyota move ahead. Because the disembodied hand (it was the driver’s hand: he had only one hand on the steering wheel) was so distracting, vertical in the air like that. Because the eye is drawn irresistibly to such a thing, against the mind’s will. Because looking at it while he was driving, staring at it, was dangerous; what if he had an accident? Colin Asch was by temperament and choice the sort of person who neither shrinks from trouble nor seeks it but if this was a taunt or a signal what then?

  Slowing his speed didn’t help: the Toyota slowed too. Kept the distance fixed between them. Aloud he murmured, half sobbing, “Why don’t they leave me alone!” He had cash on his person, nearly $1,000 in various denominations, thus a form of anonymity, thus clean and pure, but there were credit cards too. Certain goods in the trunk of the car.

  You need to concentrate at such times. Need to be alert at every pore.

  The Toyota in the right-hand lane was a mirror twin of his car, and in it a driver (male, alone) was arrogantly sticking his hand up through the sun roof, making a fist, flexing the fingers. What did it mean? Was it directed at Colin Asch, or simply at the driver of the red ’87 Mustang? It might have been a fag sign too, Colin thought. He speeded up to pass, but the sight of the disembodied hand through the roof was so distracting so insulting so dangerous he lost his nerve and fell back. He was in a sudden panic, fearing the loss of control of his car.

  But he played it cool. Inside, he wasn’t emotional really; he could enter the Blue Room, breathe in its chill numbing air; he was going to be untouched. Had not he impressed Dr. X (the most recent of Colin Asch’s many psychiatrists, psychotherapists, spiritual counselors, et al.) with his “integral” personality? his maturity? his healthy optimism tempered by a healthy sense of realism? That look in the eyes (so important to make eye contact with the fuckers) that meant intelligence, patience, humor? Pointless to risk so much. And the credit cards, one of them for Neiman-Marcus of Palm Beach, in a name clearly not his. And the goods in the trunk which were his by rights, but still it was risky.

  North of Daytona Beach, about thirty miles from Jacksonville, the driver of the Toyota exited at a rest stop. Colin Asch followed. For some miles he had not been taunted by the disembodied hand, but the point had been established. To prepare himself he’d whistled flawlessly from start to finish, not missing a note or a beat, the languorous first movement of that Beethoven piano sonata known as the “Moonlight.” An insipid sentimental title, not Beethoven’s. But it had stuck.

  There he was, suddenly, the driver of the Toyota: medium height, medium build, black bushy hair, glasses, teacherly, short-trimmed beard, denim jacket, jeans … not so much as glancing over at Colin as Colin nosed the Mustang into the space beside his. Cool. He’d locked his car and gone off in the direction of the men’s lavatory.

  On the rear bumper of the Toyota was a sticker: ANIMALS ARE ONLY HUMAN TOO. What was that supposed to mean? Was it some kind of joke? Colin Asch detested bumper-sticker jokes; they interfered with your thoughts. The Toyota had District of Columbia license plates and a Georgetown University parking decal. In the back seat were scattered books, pamphlets, articles of clothing. Though Colin Asch stretched and yawned, a lazy relaxed look should anyone be watching, in fact he was scrutinizing the rest area: just about deserted except for a station wagon with Iowa license plates, a camper with Ontario license plates, and a diesel with its motor running on the far side of the rest rooms. The place smelled of damp and loneliness.

  Stealthily, Colin’s fingers tried the door on the passenger’s side of the Toyota. But it was locked. And the sun roof too was shut.

  In the men’s lavatory with its powerful stench of disinfectant, Colin Asch struck up a conversation with the driver of the Toyota, remarking on the bumper sticker—What’s that, mean, animals are only human too?—and the young man said he was an activist with an organization called the Animal Rights League; the bumper sticker was just a sort of joke. Easygoing enough but he didn’t seem inclined to linger so Colin asked another question or two, learning that the organization was comprised of a coalition of animal lovers, conservationists, philosophers (academic), and lawyers; their project was to “define” and “protect” animal rights, to expose inhumane practices regarding animals in our society, and to publicize abuses all the while behaving as if on the road there’d been no signal between them, so Colin too played it ingenuously, nodding and smiling his boyish sweet attentive smile, beautifully lashed russet eyes fixed to the other’s ordinary mud-brown eyes behind the lenses of his glasses, two youngish males measuring each other maybe, but it was a public place; anyone could walk in at any time.

  The guy was a fag but not acknowledging it? Seeing that Colin Asch was not the man he’d thought he was?

  Or was it something else entirely?

  The animal rights man, a professor at Georgetown, philosophy, might have thought it strange that Colin Asch was so absorbed in their talk that he followed him out of the lavatory without using it, but he gave no sign, captivated perhaps by Colin’s bright flattering sincerity and the evidence he gave as if off the cuff that he too was a sharpie, remarking how he’d always thought it disgusting the way animals were exploited by man, raised to be slaughtered and eaten, tortured in laboratories in the name of science, but the tricky thing was as Jeremy Bentham argued (wasn’t it Bentham? one of those hard-nosed Utilitarians?) that there are no rights outside the law, you can’t have “rights” without “law” since there is no natural law, no moral law, only transcribed manmade laws in certain carefully delimited political contexts—which took Colin’s listener so b
y surprise he really opened up, talking warmly and excitedly as if he’d found some long-lost friend or brother. That was the effect Colin Asch generally had on people when he tried.

  The man’s name was Lionel Block; they even shook hands. Colin showed great interest in reading Animal Rights League literature, thanked Block kindly for giving him a pamphlet (“The Metaphysics of Animal Awareness” by Lionel Block), stood beside the Toyota turning pages, seeing photographs of hideously burned, scarred, mutilated animals … including wild creatures that had gnawed off their own paws to free themselves from traps. Block was talking but Colin Asch wasn’t listening. Tears of hurt and rage slowly filled his eyes. He said quietly, “You will go to any extreme, won’t you?—people like you.”

  There was a startled silence. Colin grinned at Lionel Block, who was frowning at him as if he hadn’t heard.

  Overhead, high, an airliner was passing. On the interstate, traffic passed in a steady droning stream. The diesel was starting up on the other side of the rest rooms, heaving into noisy motion like a prehistoric beast. The station wagon was gone, the camper too. Colin said, “That signal you were making back on the road—what did it mean?”

  “Signal? What signal?”

  “With your hand. You know. Through the sun roof of your car.”

  Block adjusted his glasses on his nose, peering at Colin as if he didn’t understand. His hair, bushy and kinky, was receding from his forehead; he wasn’t Colin Asch’s age after all but some years older. When he asked again, “What signal?” Colin made the gesture himself, with his right hand, flexing the fingers lewdly. Block stared. He said, “I wasn’t making any signal. I was trying to keep myself awake.”

  “Awake?”

  “The cold air, the wind—it’s just a way of keeping from dozing off,” Block said uneasily. “When I drive alone I get hypnotized from watching the pavement, so sometimes I open the sun roof a little. Just some crazy thing I do.”

  Colin regarded him levelly, smiling as if they shared a secret understanding. “So that was it!” he said. “All those miles I thought you were making a signal.”

  They stared at each other. The rest stop was a desolate place, back far enough from the highway so that no one driving past could see, or would care to make the effort of seeing. At any instant, however, someone could exit, drive right up to within a few yards of Colin and Lionel Block, and this Colin liked, sort of. It kept him on his toes. He had the wire loop prepared in the right-hand pocket of his sheepskin jacket, and his fingers crept in, to caress it. He winked, and grinned, and said, “You certainly fooled me! Made a fool of me! Misreading you the way I did.”

  Block licked his lips, trying to smile as if mirroring Colin Asch’s smile but with little success. His eyes gave him away; they were the eyes of a badly frightened man. He said, “Well, I guess you did. Misread me. I’m sorry.” He rubbed at his nose with blunt stubby fingers, and a gold signet ring gleamed on his left hand. “Now if you’ll excuse me—I have to leave.”

  “That sort of thing is distracting, you know,” Colin said. “At high speeds. Making signals to other drivers and confusing them.”

  “But I wasn’t making signals! Jesus Christ, I never dreamt anyone was watching. Or, if watching”—Block swallowed clumsily in mid-sentence—“paying any attention.”

  “It was a false signal, then,” Colin said brightly. “A false alarm.”

  “I—I guess so.”

  “You just said it was, didn’t you?”

  Colin stood quietly, unmoving, his head slightly lowered as if he were preparing himself for a struggle. He had tied his longish hair back in a careless ponytail at the nape of his neck, but several strands had worked free and were blowing across his face. He brushed them irritably away from his lips; he couldn’t bear hair on his mouth, his own or anyone else’s. Then he returned his right hand to his pocket, fingering the wire loop. He carried an eight-inch switchblade in an inside pocket, and there was, in the trunk of the car, the woman’s snub-nosed little .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver, but it would be the wire loop, the wire noose, this morning. He said softly, “No one likes to be manipulated.”

  Block stammered, “No one was manipulating anyone! I’m sorry if you misunderstood!” He would have pushed his way to his car, pushed Colin Asch aside, but courage failed him. Thus far they had not so much as touched. “Look,” he said, pleading, “this is crazy, isn’t it? Are you joking? Are you crazy? You must know I didn’t mean … if it was some sort of hand signal, some sort of secret signal, Christ, I swear I didn’t know, I’ve never heard of such a thing. Don’t you believe me? Anything I did I did in absolute innocence! And I certainly wasn’t aware of keeping pace with you, you and your car.”

  Colin said, winking, “OK, but tell me. Why did you select me? I mean, why me? How did you know?”

  “Look, I’m going to have to get some help, help from the police, if you don’t let me by.” A rim of white showed above the dark dilated pupils of his eyes. His breathing was harsh. At this point, Colin would afterward note in the Ledger, he seemed to comprehend his error and the fact that there would be no turning back.

  Still they discussed the matter further. Like reasonable men. Colin was saying that Block wasn’t going anywhere until he explained, and Block persisted in saying there was nothing to explain, and Colin said, what the signal meant, and how he knew Colin was in the car behind him, how he’d known when Colin himself could not have known. He was gripping the wire noose, calculating the motions he’d make, observing himself from a distance or, as if it had already happened, on film. Block might have been a match for him if he’d tried, but like most men of his type (Colin Asch knew the type) he wasn’t going to try, scared shitless just by some stranger looking at him the wrong way and saying things he wasn’t prepared to hear. Thus Block was backing off, looking confusedly around for help while at the same time hardly daring to take his eyes off Colin’s face. But there was no help. No one would come. Out of a mottled bluish sky fat raindrops fell as if idly, erratically, striking the asphalt pavement, the men’s red-matched cars. Block was saying in a broken voice, “Let me alone—I’ll get the police,” and Colin said, following him, though not yet hurried, “Hey, man, I only want to know why of everybody out there on the road you selected me, why me?” and Block said, “But I didn’t,” and Colin said, “Why, for this? For now? For what you’re forcing me to do?” and Block lost control at last and shouted, “But what am I forcing you to do?”

  Four days later, late in the evening of November 14, Colin Asch arrived at the Weidmanns’ home in Lathrup Farms, Massachusetts. He was driving the red ’87 Mustang. He was spaced out and tired—hadn’t eaten in a long time. Hadn’t washed (except for his hands), hadn’t shaved (hadn’t had the opportunity). He’d planned on stopping in Baltimore (where, guilty and reluctant, and maybe a little scared, they’d have to take him in) but for some reason kept on driving. North to New York, north to Massachusetts. Boston. Reasoning it was wisest under the circumstances. No one would ever catch up with him, but distance helps.

  He’d promised his Aunt Ginny he would visit them anyway; she loved him and would take care of him, and even if she asked too many bossy questions he could handle that, no problem about that. The husband he could handle too. No problem. He didn’t lack for cash—he had now about $1,075 in his wallet—but that wouldn’t last forever and he was tired, suddenly so tired. The good feeling had propelled him for days, but now it had left him as it always did like water draining out of a sink and there he was in Lathrup Farms, at his aunt’s house, knowing she’d take him in. “She is one of the few people who believes in me,” he said aloud, as if to another party. And it was true. The other sons of bitches were always waiting for him to make a misstep, waiting to find fault, commit him to medical treatment. But his Aunt Ginny loved and trusted him; she’d taken him in for a while after the scandal broke at school, Mr. Kreuzer found dead and all that. Just to think of her was to forget, sort of, his actual age, and to half
think (as in a dream) that he was some other age, years younger. But it was all subjective, after all.

  In the Blue Ledger where he kept account of his life he’d noted only B.L. 781011Alf. regarding what had happened in Florida, reversing initials and numerals in case anyone ever read what he’d written. He knew there were professional code breakers who worked for police and the FBI, but that didn’t worry Colin Asch in the slightest. To break your code they first have to find your code. They have to find you.

  There were guests at the Weidmanns’, seated at the dining room table, but everything was stopped for Colin as soon as he stepped inside the door. His aunt greeted him as if she’d been waiting for him all these days, hugged him hard, fussed over him. Powerful waves of shyness and pleasure alternated in him, raising heat into his face.

  Ginny Weidmann was a large soft perfumy woman, not bad-looking for her age—about fifty, Colin guessed—with a bright made-up face and intense eyes. The kind of female who, if you closed your fingers around her upper arm, you’d leave prints in the flesh. But sharp-eyed and no fool: she was biting her lip, trying to gauge the extent of his hunger, his tiredness, all he’d been through these past few days. Even noticed the marks on his hands, the shallow reddened scratches, saying half accusingly, as if Colin were much younger than his age, “Oh, Colin—what on earth have you done to yourself? And where have you been?”

  She sent him away upstairs to shower and change; his Uncle Martin was a good generous-hearted guy taking him in hand—here’s the bathroom, he told Colin, and here’s a closet of shirts and things; anything you need give me a holler, you promise?—and Colin, a little breathless, promised. His eyes were filling with tears at this welcome. When he was alone in the shower, lifting his face to the hot stinging spray, he said, “They know they can trust me—they’re not like the others.” If he’d barged in on his uncle down in Baltimore, the old fart might have sent him away again; Colin wouldn’t have put it past him. I’ll go away, I didn’t mean to interrupt, he’d have said, polite as he was with the Weidmanns, and the old bastard might have taken him at his word. Which was why he hadn’t gone to Baltimore after all. Or one of the reasons.