Obsessed

by Rick R. Reed

  In short, it looked like a good room for blackmail. Pat laughed.

  She pressed a button on her wheelchair, directing herself toward the door.

  Joe leaned against Pat's doorway in a deliberately casual pose. A spark seemed to light in her eyes as she drank his tall figure in.

  "Mr. MacAree," Pat said, and Joe's heart skipped a beat. "So pleased to see you. You will come in?"

  The wheelchair made a soft whirring noise as Pat moved to admit him. Joe quickly looked around the room; he didn't notice Pat's work.

  "Why don't you sit down, Mr. MacAree?" Pat motioned to a chair.

  Joe took the chair, mainly because he was uncertain how much longer he could stand. He had counted on Pat's not knowing who he really was, counted on her bluffing. Now she knew his name. How had she found out?

  "Can I get you something?"

  Joe closed his eyes for a moment. This was all too unreal. He felt the cool hardness of the switchblade pressing into his thigh through his pocket. "Look . . . why don't we just cut this out?"

  Pat smiled at him. There was something rodentlike in her face when she smiled, something predatory in her eyes. Joe was afraid of her. "Cut what out, Mr. MacAree? You're the one who came to see me. Something on your mind, Mr. MacAree?" She laughed.

  Joe leaned forward in his chair. "How do you know my name?"

  Pat dared not tell him the simple truth. She didn't know why, but she feared his knowing would make it too easy for him to slip away from her. "Oh, I know lots about you, Joseph. Or do you prefer Joe? How do you like living on the Gold Coast? Must be nice. Do you have a view of the lake?"

  "What?" Joe felt theperspiration breaking out on his upper lip, felt the dampness under his arms. Absurdly, he considered informing her he was too far north for the Gold Coast. "I'll ask you again: How do you know who I am?"

  "I know where you live, who you are ... I know you murdered Maggie Mazursky. Why did you do it?"

  With such fury and suddenness it stunned even him, Joe felt his rage rise up and overpower him. He leaped from his chair and lifted Pat Young half out of her wheelchair, his hand clutching a fold of her pink polyester blouse. "Listen, you skinny little bitch," he whispered, spitting his words out, "tell me how you know who I am."

  Pat placed her hand over his. "Or what? I don't reveal my sources."

  Fear stabbed into Joe's mind. Sources? Were there others who knew? Oh, God, did this mean the end? Gently, he let go of her, lowering her back into her seat. "You mean, other people know?" The anger had ebbed completely from his voice, replaced by a hoarse fear.

  His question gave Pat inspiration. She wouldn't have to use the silly ploy about a letter having to be opened in the event of her death. Thank you, Joseph MacAree, for providing my insurance. Pretending to be annoyed, she snapped, "Of course there Eire others who know! You don't think I'd just let you in here to kill me if other people didn't know?" She noticed the look of his face when she mentioned killing her. Another point for Pat. "Yes, I know you came here to kill me. But just try it and the police will be on your tail before you can make it back to your Gold Coast."

  "Okay, so what do you want from me?"

  "Money."

  Joe lowered his head and stared at the floor. For the past three years he and Anne had managed to keep up an affluent front for their friends. But that was all it was—a front. Both of them made substantial amounts of money from their respective careers, but the money came in spurts, often leaving them the victims of collection agencies and lawyers. They had no money once the bills were paid—and barely enough to cover those. More than once their phone had been "temporarily disconnected." More than once Anne found herself finding a buyer for a designer dress, coat, or jacket. More than once Joe had asked for advances on freelance writing projects. They lived well, Anne and Joe, well beyond their means. Even if Joe could manage to get some money to Pat Young, Anne's and his funds were so jointly held that even the smallest withdrawal from their accounts would be noticed by Anne. And then would come the questions. Questions from a woman Joe was certain was getting more than a little suspicious.

  Joe stared at the floor like a shamed boy and murmured, "I have no money."

  Pat's mocking laughter was sudden, so high-pitched Joe winced. "What do you mean? I may not be able to get around as well as the next guy, but I am in no way impaired up here." She tapped her forehead. "So, please, spare me the lines. Now, I'll be needing a modest thousand dollars a month. That's not unreasonable, is it? A mere thousand? Why that's"—Pat paused to think —"only about thirty dollars a day. You probably spend that on lunch."

  Joe looked at her. Her small, close-set eyes were trained on him. The eyes seemed to have no color; bland and dark, they managed to inspire in him a fear and nausea greater than any he had ever known. How could he ever make this woman believe him? He spoke louder this time, but the words were the same: "I have no money."

  "I told you already: I'm not buying."

  "I can't help it. I don't have that kind of money to give you. I live beyond my means, you might say. I don't have a spare dollar to give you."

  Her eyes narrowed to slits. She took a breath and then said, "Well, I guess I'll just have to turn you in." Joe closed his eyes and listened to the soft "whirr" of her wheelchair. He knew she headed in the direction of the telephone. Without opening his eyes he listened as she lifted the receiver out of its cradle. He thought he even heard the dial tone; he was certain he heard the tones as she punched the number in.

  Her voice was confident. "Berwyn police? Yes, I have some information about the Maggie Ma-zursky case." A pause. "Well, I'd rather go into that with a detective. Yes, I'll hold."

  Joe's breath began coming more quickly. He felt dizzy, cold sweat running down his face, under his arms. He groped for a chair and sat down.

  The next thing he heard was the receiver being replaced in its cradle. He finally opened his eyes to see Pat smiling at him. She moved close.

  "You really don't have any money, do you?"

  Joe shook his head and ran from the room. In the bathroom, he vomited. The attack was violent and Joe found it hard trying to quell the endless dry heaves that followed. When he finally stopped, he rinsed his face, stood straight, and looked at himself in the mirror. He was shocked his emotions could cause such a physical transformation: his eyes were wild; they seemed larger. His skin had taken on an ashen hue. An ironic comparison came to him then: His skin far too closely resembled the flesh of his victims.

  When he returned to the main room of the apartment, Pat waited for him, a smile on her face. For someone who smiled so much, she had no problem conveying menace.

  With mock sympathy Pat asked, "All better now?"

  Joe ignored her. He edged close to the front door without even realizing he was doing it. Quickly Pat blocked his path. "Not going so soon?"

  Joe looked confused for a moment, "No . . . I . . ." Joe went toward the chair he previously occupied and sat down.

  For a long time neither of them said anything. Joe placed his head in his hands, trying to recover some composure, and Pat, like a beast of prey, watched and waited.

  Finally Joe lifted his head and looked at her. There was pleading in his eyes. "What do you want from me now?"

  Pat had known, from the day she had seen him outside Maggie Mazursky's apartment, what she wanted. Poring through years of Playgirl had never satisfied her, and even though she felt nothing from the waist down, she wanted Joe. Perhaps the cruelest thing about her accident was that it stole from her her ability to consummate what had always been a very strong sex drive. In the years since the fall her desires had not diminished, even though her ability to act on those desires was gone forever.

  She wheeled herself toward him. Unable to speak but certain she had him so in a corner she could do anything she wanted with him, she placed her hand on his thigh. Tentatively, she slid her hand up until it covered the bulge in his jeans.

  "I want you," she whispered.

  Jo
e couldn't believe what was happening. For an instant he was sure she was playing some kind of joke. A smile flickered across his face.

  But the want evident in her eyes was too desperate for her to be anything but serious.

  "How?"

  For once she lost her composure. Staring at the floor and perhaps her withered legs, she whispered, "I could watch you."

  Joe heard and understood. His stomach turned at the thought. He had to escape this woman. She was insane. Hoping he could embarrass her out of the idea, he asked her to repeat herself.

  This time she lifted her head and looked at him. "I want to watch you. I'd like to see you get off." There were tears in her eyes and as he stared at her, they brimmed over and ran down her face. "Is that clear enough for you?" she screamed. "Now get undressed or I'll call the police."

  Joe saw the fear, hunger, and confusion all mixed together on her face. He continued staring at her, making no move to undress.

  Pat closed her eyes, wiped the tears away. When she opened her eyes once more, the tough veneer was back. "Stand up and take off your clothes or I'm reporting you."

  Hesitantly, Joe stood and took off his sweater, then began slowly unbuttoning the shirt beneath it.

  "Faster!" she screamed.

  Joe undid the remaining buttons and let the shirt fall to the floor. He didn't look at Pat but heard her breath quicken as she stared at his chest. He stooped to untie and remove his boots, then his socks. Finally unzipping his jeans, he stepped out of them. He stood before her in a pair of pale blue bikini briefs Anne had given him.

  "All of it." Pat's voice was hoarse.

  Joe hooked his thumbs into the elastic waistband and pulled the briefs down over his hips and off. Pat moved closer. He felt her breath near his navel. Joe looked down at her; she was staring at his penis.

  "Get hard," she whispered. She looked up at him. "Do it." Pat rolled back from him and waited.

  Joe began caressing himself, closing his eyes and trying to put himself someplace else . . . with Anne. It wasn't working. The more he thought of how much "depended on his performance, the less willing his cock seemed to be to harden. He handled himself more roughly, let his fantasies grow more desperate, more perverse. Anne lay prone before him on the bathroom floor, her body covered with baby oil, motioning for him to come to her, pulling her labia apart.

  It still wasn't working.

  "You disgust me," Pat said. She wheeled next to him, and with a swift gulp took him in her mouth. The warm sensation of her mouth was startling, and for an instant he began to get hard. But as soon as he told himself where he was and what was happening, he went limp once more.

  And then, almost unbidden, came thoughts of Maggie Mazursky. He remembered the look of fear on her face when he removed the razor from his coat, the quick, vertical slashes he made down her forearms, the sudden rush of blood.

  She was too surprised to scream. Joe covered her mouth and forced her to the floor. Taking her hand as a love-struck suitor would to propose marriage, he brought her wrist up to his mouth and began to suck. The warmth, the metallic taste, so odd and yet so comforting, filled his mouth. The blood came so quickly now he almost choked and was swallowing it in fast gulps. He looked up to see that Maggie had gone faint. He removed his hand from her mouth and began to suck from the other wrist. When the blood in her arms had gone from a wild pump to a barely sluggish movement, Joe made a slit in her throat and drank from this well until it, too, was dry. And then he pulled the clothes from her limp body and fucked her.

  Pat stared up at him. "God, you're beautiful."

  Joe looked down with wonder at his hard cock. With a minimal touch, almost like a wet dream, he began spurting his semen. The first few drops fell to Pat's brown carpeting, the rest she caught in her palm.

  Joe watched as she waited until he was finished, cupping her palm as it filled with his come. When he was through, she pulled on his cock, milking it for the last few drops.

  With nausea he listened to her moans as she spread the semen over her face, licking some of it from her fingers. Her eyes were closed; she was lost to her own passion.

  Suddenly her moans stopped. She turned her wheelchair and wheeled quickly into the bathroom. She slammed the door behind her. In a moment he heard her voice, broken by sobs, "Get out of here."

  Joe picked up his clothes and dressed. He ran from the apartment.

  Even over the sound of running water he could hear Pat crying.

  He ran blindly north on Oak Park Avenue. Not wanting to think because his thoughts were telling him he understood Pat Young better than she would ever know.

  8

  "All right. What did you lose this time?"

  Joe had burst into the living room to find Anne, sitting in their bentwood rocker, waiting for him. Although there was a calmness (a deadness of tone, actually) in her voice and her features betrayed not even the slightest emotion, Joe could tell at a glance her cool was a facade. She was a pot about to boil over.

  He stared at her for a full minute without saying anything. Her modeling assignments often took her into the late evening hours. Joe had assumed, since this assignment was one of her biggest, he would not be seeing Anne until after dinner at the very earliest. Yet here it was not even two thirty in the afternoon and she was home.

  He shouldn't have asked (because it said much about his guilt), but he did: "I thought you were modeling for a spread in Chicago; what are you doing home so early?"

  Anne stood and walked rapidly toward the window. She stared out at heavy gray clouds, hanging low, foretelling heavy rain or snow. "I should've known you'd ask. The shoot was canceled for today—postponed, I should say—because Ching, the photographer, has come down with this bug that's been going around. You know, everyone's been getting it. I noticed a lot of people home in the building today; I think they're all sick. Probably with the same bug. Anyway, the shoot should be tomorrow or the next day. Some time real soon anyway. There are deadlines, you know. If Ching can't do it someone else will. So it should be tomorrow ... or the next day. At the very latest." Almost automatically, her shoulders went over and she began to cry. She wept silently and then said, "So you'll be free to do whatever it is you do when I'm not around." She laughed, but there was not a trace of humor in it. "You can go to the zoo, I guess."

  Joe came over to her, tried to embrace her. She shrugged his arms away and turned to face him.

  Joe was stunned by her face: angry red, framing eyes liquid and bloodshot. Her lip quivered as she stared at him.

  "Don't touch me!" She ran over and sat down on the couch. Grabbing a pillow, she clutched it to her stomach, trying to wrap her body around it. She began to rock slowly. "You must be seeing someone, Joe. That's the only explanation. I don't believe you were at the zoo that day a few weeks ago; you hate the zoo. What a lame excuse! And I believed it. Maybe you did lose the lighter I gave you, maybe so. I hate to admit it, but I called Priscilla and asked her if you were at Nature Snack the day you said you were."

  Joe looked surprised.

  "So we both don't have to pretend on that one anymore. Maybe you lost the lighter at her place, whoever she is. Or maybe it's a he?" Anne laughed. "What's the story for today? You told me last night you would be here today. Said you'd get the bathroom floor washed. Anyway, what's the story?"

  Joe had had too much in one day. "I was only out for a few minutes," he said weakly. "Just getting a little air."

  Anne closed her eyes, trying to will out the pain. "I have been here since ten o'clock, Joe. It's a quarter till three. You're going to have to do better than that. I deserve a better story. And surely a creative mind like yours . . . Wanna try again?"

  "Anne, it's the truth."

  "Oh, don't bother." Anne looked at him, her eyes brimming with tears. Then she turned and rushed into the bedroom.

  Joe stood for a while, his stomach churning, knowing it was too late to make up an excuse. He went into the bedroom.

  Anne had already flung he
r closet door open and begun throwing clothes on the bed. Joe began to cry.

  He tried to grab her hand; she snatched it away. "Please," he said, "don't go. It's not what you think."

  She looked at him. "For so long I've been telling myself lies. I've wanted to believe them more than you hoped I would. No more." The veneer of tough assurance broke. Her features softened. "Maybe this doesn't have to mean forever, Joe. I just need some time by myself, to think. I'll be staying with my mother."

  Joe tried to speak. She put her finger to his lips. "No. Don't say anything. We're both too upset to be rational, and I don't want to say the things my mind is telling me to say. And I know you don't want to hear them. So just leave me alone. Let me get my things together."

  He stared at her, unable to halt the tears.

  "Please." Anne bit her lip.

  "All right," he whispered, and hurried from the room.

  For a while he listened to her finish packing. There was the hard click of her boots on the bathroom floor as she emptied her makeup into the Louis Vuitton bag he had bought her at Christmas, never thinking she would use it for this purpose.

  All too soon Anne emerged from her bedroom, laden with two suitcases and the satchel. "I called a cab from the bedroom. It should be downstairs by now." She regarded him for a while. Although he didn't say a word it was obvious from his eyes, his expression, he was pleading with her to stay.

  She went to the door, set one of the suitcases down, and opened the door. He stared at her, numb. She picked up the suitcase and walked out. After a moment she closed the door behind her.

  Joe hurried to the window just in time to see the Checker cab pull up in the circular drive. Before long he saw the driver get out and help Anne with her bags.

  "She's gone," he told himself again, his voice weak with crying. "She's gone. She's gone. She's gone." The words were a litany as Joe walked in small circles, around and around the kitchen. He took a big butcher's knife from the block on the counter and went into the bedroom with it. He sat on the bed and pointed the knife toward his stomach. "She's gone and I can't live without her."