TheRapist

by J. Levy

  He knew Devon was really no good for him, despite her hypnotic, ineffable qualities and instead tried to focus more on the girl in London. The one he had met online but hadn't yet seen. Her emails were light and witty and charming and her thought he should make the effort to go and see her, to get away from Devon's close but unreachable proximity and Meringue's needy sweetness.

  Pulling himself from his wiry, tangled thoughts, he broke free and buzzed his secretary; she with the scraggy neck.

  ‘Book me a return Virgin flight to London on Monday with two nights at the Halkin Hotel in Belgravia.’ He slammed the phone down before she answered and before he could rethink, picked up his cell and punched two numbers.

  ‘Hello?’ Meringue had a faux veil of expectancy across her tired voice.

  ‘I want to take you to the movies.’ Manny fumbled slightly. This was a new way of speaking between them.

  Meringue’s heart leapt. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, Century City. Can you meet me now?’

  ‘Your office?’

  ‘Box office.’

  ‘Oh, OK.’

  ‘See you there.’

  His heart was pounding. Stupidly. He had been taking women to the movies for close to thirty years! Now he was trembling like a teenager on a first date, flying across the world to meet a woman he had never even seen and still obsessed with the unattainable Devon. What was wrong with him?

  Meringue was excited. She had never been out with Manny during the day. She had never been out with him before, period. She had already showered, so she pulled off her bright blue acrylic house dress with multi-colored birds flying across it, the one that nobody in the world had ever seen or ever would, quickly patted a fragrant, whipped lotion on her body and pulled on white terry track pants and a candy pink Abercrombie T, the perfect ‘Sunday Afternoon Movie in LA’ outfit, despite the day. Her skin was good so she needed only minimal make-up. Touche éclat to hide the dark shadows in her translucent skin. A sweep of Nars creamy peach blush with hints of sparkle. A touch of mascara, waterproof in case the movie was a weepie. Michael Kors for Estee Lauder nude gloss. She stepped into bright white keds, bought for $12 at the outlets, grabbed a pale grey cashmere cardigan in case it was chilly later, fluffed her hair forward and back and was ready to go. Her stomach was filled with butterflies and hope was brimming all around.

  A date. With Manny. Maybe LA had something to offer after all?

  *

  Devon

  Harrods. The grand dame of iconic British department stores. Second floor. Book Department. The Signing.

  Devon sat at a crystal clear glass table, looking pristine in a candy apple green linen skirt suit. Her blouse was sheer silk chiffon, the colour of deep olives and she wore a silk jersey camisole beneath it, the colour of her skin. The queue was long as her PR had once again performed sublimely. After her introduction she gave one of her warm, throaty readings. It lasted mere minutes but the crowd was entranced. It is not often that a hush is thrown across Harrods, but this was the effect her warm, mesmeric voice had on people. Devon signed book after book after book, unflustered, unhurried, a warm smile for everyone. She was unflappable and nobody could have imagined where she had been or what she had been doing only hours before.

  ‘Please sign this to Fiona,’ requested a lanky girl dressed entirely in an array of patchwork.

  ‘Can you write my name, Philip, on here, sign it to me please, it’s mine? I’m Philip!’ grinned a tall, thin man with an anxious, elongated smile, as he excitedly thrust his book towards his heroine of fiction. Ignorant of the fact that she was, in reality, a fictional heroine.

  She looked up at him slowly, at his eager look, thinking that he resembled a donkey, with jutting yellow teeth and a hanging expression. He looked down on her, adoringly, his smile growing even wider, if that were possible. Maybe she could ride him on the beach, sucking on a red ice lolly as she had done on seaside trips as a child. She also thought what she could do with him, how she could torment him into a stupor. A shiver travelled down her spine, brought suddenly to a halt by his excitement, which resulted in a dab of saliva dripping from his lower lip onto the table. Devon shuddered, pulling herself out of her mangled thoughts. She forced her mind back to the moment. Not know, she silently scolded herself, not in these clothes. She was Devon Cage the author, not her other self, the Other Person. Not that filthy, dirty little whore she hated. Her thoughts were making her chest prickle and her neck hot, she looked down and saw a pink glow creeping through her blouse.

  ‘Are you alright Ms. Cage?’ an enquiry from one of the more alert staff. Devon squinted against the gold gleam from the girl’s name-tag, as it shone coldly in her eyes. The lights seemed all too bright, almost hallucinatory. The pen had gone rigid in her hand. She couldn’t breathe. The heat was enveloping her, suffocating, vivid, breathless and the world began to swirl uncontrollably before her eyes….

  She was helped from the chair and quickly ushered into a back room, where she was seated in a soft armchair and handed a glass of water. She tried to sip it, but misjudged where her mouth was and wet her blouse. For the first time in a long time, Devon felt vulnerable. She tried to laugh it off, make light of it.

  ‘It’s the jet lag I imagine, a total killer!’

  ‘Are you OK Ms. Cage, is there anything we can get you? Would you like some food?’

  ‘You know that would be great, I think I forgot to eat breakfast.’ She spoke with a smile, laced in charm.

  Within a couple of minutes, a tray of croissants and Danish pastries filled with swollen, red fruits appeared, with a pot of strong English Breakfast tea, milk, sugar and honey. The tea was poured for her and she ate two croissants, thickly spread with butter and marmalade, eating quickly to quash her earlier thoughts. She would eat those thoughts away, gobbling them up to erase them with each bite of sweetness.

  After her second cup of tea she was completely composed again and said, ‘I can go back now.’

  ‘If you’re sure Ms. Cage,’ said the alert girl.

  ‘I am. I’m sure.’

  The crowd had been waiting patiently outside. Naturally they had, after all they were British and everyone knows that the Brits love to queue.

  The crowd let out a small dignified yelp and a cheer when Devon reappeared. She smiled at them, ‘Sorry guys, jet lag and a lack of food, a dangerous combination!’ They laughed obligingly as she sat down and went back to signing their books. By now the queue was longer than ever, but she had recovered and spent the next hour autographing the books and charming the crowd. She was good at that. Had she learnt that particular kind of charm from Adrian, or was it she that had taught him? As she wrote her name on the first page on every unread book, throwing out disarming glances to an adoring public, she began to let part of her mind drift back to the past, wrenching it almost instantly back to the present, stopping the intense pain before it fish-hooked itself into a never ending spiral.

  She succeeded.

  Just.

  *

  Jezzy

  Adrian had left for Los Angeles that evening with the promise that he would return soon, if Jezzy didn’t get to him first. Jezzy was laying on a large blue mat on the floor of her gym, her right arm at right angles to her body, her head to the left and she noticed, in her peculiar position, that the mat had a glossy sheen to it. A trainer called Baz, with his peroxide blonde crew cut, small teeth as white as freshly laid snow and a slew of curved tattoos woven around his arms, was standing above her, bending her leg towards her head as far as it would go, which was incredibly uncomfortable but she tried to move beyond the pain, a little like she had been trying to move through the uncertainty in her mind to find out what was on the other side. Could it lead her to a fragrant stroll down the yellow brick road to Oz or would she end up prostrate and whimpering in the cuckoo’s nest? She looked at the man lying next to her on the mat. His cheek was squashed into the floor and his complexion was bright and florid, seemingly growing redder before he
r eyes. Raging red, writhing on the floor. He was on his stomach and had a burly trainer on top of him, digging at his ribs. Every so often he grunted. Then he opened his eyes to find Jezzy staring at him across the mat. His eyes were surprisingly bright and as blue as the mat beneath them.

  ‘Feel good?’ she asked, almost breathless as Baz was still pushing her leg as far as it would go.

  The man with the blue eyes grunted.

  ‘What’s he doing to you?’ she enquired of the stranger’s trainer. The trainer answered for him, pushing the man’s cheek a little further into the floor. ‘Rib articulation,’ he offered.

  Jezzy thrust her chin towards Baz and asked, ‘Do you do that?’

  Baz shook his head. She looked back at the man on his belly. ‘Still feeling good?’

  He grunted again and there they lay. Two strangers being manipulated by two more strangers, grunts, puffs and heaves coming from four directions.

  Baz had finished with Jezzy. He looked down at her as he stroked his tattoos and said, ‘Do you want to book a bundle of sessions? Discount for five.’

  She struggled to get up. ‘I might, if I can walk in the morning.’ She had been given a voucher for a free trial, but didn’t know if she wanted this to be a regular thing. What if she ended up in LA with Adrian? What if she bought a ‘bundle of sessions’ and never used them? What if every time she came here she would end up lying cheek to cheek with the same man on the mat? What if she never saw Adrian again? What if? If being the little word between life, according to her Grandmother. She could not waste her life by constantly contemplating about ifs and possibilities. Feeling the need to get away to live her life, she left the man on the floor, still grunting. Left Baz consumed by the appointment book. Left the gym.

  On her way home she stopped at Tesco for a few things. Skimmed milk, which she usually took from the back of the fridge where the dates were always fresher, but this time grabbed the bottle at the front so as not to waste time, Weetabix, a box of white sugar cubes, a crusty white roll, a bag of ready-to-go salad, two Granny Smith apples and a long, thin carrot. Her basket grew heavier so she made her way to the till. The queue was always too long in Tesco. She suddenly had a craving for avocado on melba toast with salt, so she went back to the fruit section and the cracker aisle. Adrian called from Heathrow while she waiting in the queue but she couldn’t hold the phone and her basket and have a conversation and then her mobile began to get very hot against her ear and only the day before she had read something in the paper about not letting the phone get hot against your ear because it was dangerous and it made her panic, so she said she would call him back before he boarded. She didn’t.

  *

  Her and TheRapist

  ‘See, the thing was that I don’t think I ever liked him that much at all. Not really. Not at all really, I don’t think. I mean, when we first met, you know the first time I saw him, I sort of bypassed mostly everything that was right in front of my face and just decided to think what really pretty eyes he had, you know, for a big guy. So then I didn’t look at him much, not properly. I mean, I did, but not so I’d notice. I tried to arrange every date in a dimly lit place and never meet him in the daylight. The daylight sucks. Everyone looks like they really look in the daytime. His features looked a bit lost in his face, if you know what I mean, even though he sometimes looked good. I suppose, looking back, I thought I should find the good in everyone and I’ve always been attracted to guys who had something weird about them. I mean, don’t all men have something, even just a little tiny thing about them that’s weird? I could go through the whole list of all of them, right from when I turned thirteen! Do you want me to? I could. I know it’s not what I’m paying you for, not what’s right there in my mind, but then I guess it must be because I’m talking about it. Do you think? I think I will go through them all with you. Just not this week. I just couldn’t believe that after all the men I’d had to choose from, I would end up with a guy I was barely attracted to! I mean, turn the lights out and hold my breath and it was doable, you know! But that’s not my dream. I still want that. My dream. My dream man. He was OK. Kind and sweet. But he was picky too. Let me tell you something. I’ve had no complaints from men. Nobody’s ever complained about me before, not in a physical way anyway. Some have said I didn’t have much of anything to talk about that was worth listening to, or that I wasn’t intellectual or anything, but nobody ever complained in the bedding department………listen, where I’m from that’s what it’s called. There was a department store called Fodgers and they had a big sign in their bedding department that said, ‘Bedding Department’, in huge orange letters, and so that’s where everybody got that saying from. You might have sex with hundreds of guys, but you don’t talk dirty about it. Certainly not in the daylight. Not to people you don’t know very well anyway. Like you, you know? I mean, I know you, I tell you everything don’t I! But it’s not as if we would meet for coffee or do a spinning class together or meet up to go paint a piece of crockery. Right? Shit. So you see what I mean? Hah! As if I have to ask! I am just so, so glad that I have you in my life to advise me and help me get things right and everything. Wow, is that the time already, well, OK, I’d better be going I guess, but thanks. Really, thank you so much. See you next week and I’ll start telling you about all the others too. Ciao!

  *

  Jezzy

  Jezzy sat at her desk at work, realizing that she felt more serene without Adrian than with him, liking the thought of him being six thousand miles away and feeling quite content at being linked by spirit alone. Now he was gone she had time to think. Proper time, to really decide what she wanted. What should she do? Marry him and have kids? Marry. Marriage. Married. It was such a strange word when repeated over and over again. Tied. Bound. Constricted. Suffocated. She had a sudden vision of a chicken, its legs strung together with twine. Why was that? She had once heard on a cookery show that the legs of a chicken should be trussed before roasting so that they didn’t open up, flap around and burn whilst in the oven. Would she? Did she need to be tied in order to be happy, to prevent her from being hurt? Was she akin to a chicken? Her mind was racing. Things didn’t seem quite so serene anymore. She needed a break. Some air. It was almost time for lunch. She hated being a temp. Her thoughts were broken by a voice. Receptionist interrupted. Temporarily, of course.

  ‘Where’s my one o’ clock?’ Spoken in the gruff tones of Dr. Kampf.

  Jezzy shuffled in her seat. ‘She’s late Dr. Kampf.’

  He leaned over the desk and looked into her eyes. ‘Hate that,’ he breathed. Old musty smells carried the words from his throat, landing right in the path of Jezzy’s nostrils. She flinched and moved her chair back, the legs catching along the scuffed carpet. She looked down at the ratty, faded coral wool. Two channels that had been carved into it by the same chair legs. Time and time again. The reason for the scuffing. Obviously.

  ‘Would you like me to call her again?’ offered Jezzy, leaning down to pick up a fictitious object from the floor, so as not to breathe in any more of her boss’s foul breath.

  Dr. Kampf turned back to his office, thankfully breathing his fumes in front of himself and away from her.

  ‘No. Take your lunch. Be back by five to two.’ He slammed the door. Jezzy threw her small, black leather pouch bag across her chest, tapped a phone button to send the calls to the answer service and headed out the door towards Pret.

  She managed to snag one of only six seats in the sandwich bar and looked down at the lunch she had chosen. A BLT. Cheese and onion crisps. Pomegranate juice. Maybe the juice would compensate for the rest of the lunch in terms of goodness. She wondered, if Adrian were here, what she would choose. Half a slim tuna or was that too smelly? Tuna may be deemed a healthy option but it stinks, lingering hatefully on the breath. No spicy or interesting crisps, only the mundane ready salted. The pomegranate juice passed everytime. She looked at her watch. 5.15am in Los Angeles. Maybe Adrian would be getting up to go to the gym? Pret was b
ulging at its granary seams. She stuffed a handful of crisps into her mouth, too many really for one mouthful, when a man approached her tiny table.

  ‘Excuse me, is anyone sitting here or may I?’ He spoke with an American accent and was tall with dark skin and blue eyes that looked as though they had the consistency of ice cubes.

  ‘No, it’s fine.’ A small spray of cheese and onion flew from her lips, highlighted even more by the sunlight that at that moment had decided to shine through the window on Wigmore Street. She wiped her mouth. Why were serviettes in sandwich bars and coffee shops always rough and the colour of hay?

  He sat opposite her with a fat sandwich stuffed with crayfish, a slice of lemon cake and a Diet Coke. She looked at him from behind the safety of the juice bottle. He had beautifully smooth skin but looked a little weary under the eyes. She had always thought that men looked their most attractive when a little worn and weary.

  ‘Jet lag,’ he offered, as if she wanted to know. Which she did. ‘Just flew in from LA and hoping to surprise a friend pretty soon, but that jet lag gets you every time.’

  ‘I recently got back from New York. Are you from LA?’ She took a sip of juice and felt a little easier.

  ‘I am, but not many are,’ he smiled. ‘Most people are just bred there. Some would say Los Angeles is a breeding ground, for many things. Not for regular people like you and me.’

  ‘How do you know I’m regular?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t, I was just hoping you were,’ his smile was slow and easy.

  She realized that he was flirting with her, right in the middle of Pret for goodness sake! How can a good looking guy happen to even be in a place like this, let alone try and pick you up? How could she even contemplate another man with Adrian back in her life? What was wrong with her? Anything or everything?