Blood Games

by Richard Laymon

  Trying to sheath the knife, she missed its scabbard and poked her hip bone. ‘Damn it!’ She dropped the knife into the puddle by her knee, then clutched the anchor with both hands. She lifted it, twisted sideways, and dropped it over the side. It thumped the water and flung up a cold geyser.

  Good show, she told herself. She wondered if any of the others had witnessed her exploit, but decided it didn’t matter. The anchor was gone. She’d accomplished something that should help to keep them afloat. At least for a while.

  Still on her knees, she leaned forward until the edge of the seat pushed against her ribs. She reached out with both arms, and hung on.

  All she could see was darkness and pouring rain and leaping, churning waves capped with froth.

  Are we even going in the right direction?

  As the boat plummeted, she shut her eyes and mouth. The edge of the seat jammed her chest. Water flew into her face. Then the boat started to rise, so she blinked and squinted.

  A flash of lightning streaked down through the clouds ahead. In its stark glare, she glimpsed something on the surface of the lake.

  A thrill surged through her.

  ‘The raft!’ she yelled through a crash of thunder.

  Doubting that anyone had heard her, she pushed away from the seat, turned around, and sat in the sloshing swamp at the bottom of the boat. She felt the knife under her rump.

  Good. Wouldn’t want to lose it.

  Cora was still rowing like a madwoman.

  Cupping her hands to her mouth, Abilene shouted, ‘The diving raft! Dead ahead! ’

  Cora glanced around.

  Abilene gave her a thumbs up, and yelled, ‘Almost there! Fifty, sixty feet!’

  Nodding, Cora turned away.

  Abilene rolled a bit, reached down, and pulled the knife out from under her.

  She realized she was grinning.

  We’re gonna make it!

  Another wave came down, washing over her back, but she didn’t mind. She reached under the side of her skirt and plucked the scabbard out. Carefully, her jerking hands guided the blade into the leather slot. She slid the blade home, leaned against the port side of the pitching boat and pushed the sheathed knife down the waistband at her hip.

  Only then did she realize she was sitting in water up to her belly.

  If it’s this high here…

  She pushed herself onto the seat. Cora still pulled at the oars, but the boat resembled a kid’s wading pool, water nearly to its brim. Finley and Vivian were both on their knees, wildly hurling away handsful while more water splashed in over the sides.

  Abilene twisted around. No lightning at the moment, but she could see the diving raft through the downpour.

  Twenty feet away? Thirty?

  She turned back to Cora. ‘We aren’t gonna make it!’

  Cora kept straining at the oars as if she hadn’t heard.

  We’ll have to swim for it, Abilene thought. Shit!

  She knew they were all capable of swimming such a short distance, even in such rough water. But if it came to that, they’d lose the shotgun and ax.

  If we could dump some excess baggage…

  She tugged her shoes off. Reaching down behind the seat, she pulled the anchor rope. She found its end, drew it around her waist, and knotted it. ‘Hang in!’ she shouted, then threw herself overboard.

  She plunged head first into the lake, thrashed to the surface and trod water for a moment to get her bearings. She was beside the boat, close to its bow. Turning, she spotted the raft. She swam for it. The waves shoved her upward, dropped her, tipped her from side to side. Then the slack of the rope gave out.

  The line tugged at her waist, pressed into her groin. She felt as if she’d been yanked to a dead halt. But she kept on jabbing out her arms and drawing them back, kept on kicking in spite of the taut rope wedged between her legs.

  She raised her head. The near end of the raft appeared to be no more than ten or twelve feet away.

  She switched to the breast stroke and saw the distance close a bit.

  We’re not stopped dead, she thought.

  The boat seemed to be moving along sluggishly behind her.

  She watched the raft as she struggled toward it. The platform was high out of the water, pitching about on the churning lake. She supposed it must be anchored to the bottom with chains. The corner on the right was higher than the lefthand one, tipped upward somewhat because of the sunken oil drum kitty-corner from it.

  Attached to the right side of the raft was a wooden ladder.

  Abilene swam for it, towing the boat.

  The boat seemed to be moving along better, now, the rope no longer straining at her waist or digging into her groin.

  She swam alongside the raft, reached out and grabbed a rung of the ladder.

  Clinging to it, she looked back. Cora still sat in its center, tugging at the oars. Only the gunwales remained above the water line, and every wave flung more water into the nearly submerged craft.

  Finley and Vivian weren’t aboard.

  They were stretched out side by side behind the boat, holding onto its stem, kicking.

  They’d been pushing it along while Abilene towed it by the rope.

  Glancing over her shoulder, Cora shouted, ‘Tie it up!’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  BELMORE GIRLS

  ‘To us,’ Cora toasted.

  ‘Hear hear,’ said the others. They clinked their champagne glasses and drank.

  It was a warm June evening three days after graduation. It was to be their last night together in their rented apartment on Spring Street.

  Tomorrow, Abilene and Harris would be heading north to Portland where they intended to share an apartment while she embarked on her graduate studies in English literature. Helen would be going home to Coos Bay, where she planned to stay with her parents through the summer. Cora and Tony would embark for Denver to pursue teaching credentials. Vivian and Finley would be travelling together to Los Angeles, Vivian to seek out jobs as an actress and model, Finley to study filmmaking at the Institute for Creative Cinema which had accepted her application on the strength of her ‘Mess Hall’ videotape.

  As Abilene sipped her champagne, she felt a lump in her throat. She was glad to be moving on, excited by what lay ahead. But God, she would miss her friends.

  ‘We’ve got to stay in touch,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Helen said. ‘You’re the best friends I’ve ever had. I don’t know what I’m gonna do…’ Her voice broke.

  Abilene squeezed her shoulder. ‘You’ll do fine.’

  ‘I’ll miss you all so much.’

  ‘Hey, let’s not get all weepy,’ Finley said. ‘This ain’t a wake, for Christsake.’

  ‘I know, I know, but…’

  ‘Here’s to all the great times we’ve had,’ Cora said, hoisting her glass again.

  ‘They’re all over,’ Helen muttered. ‘We’ll probably never see each other again.’

  ‘Sure we will,’ Abilene told her. ‘Hell, you’re gonna come to my wedding, aren’t you?’

  ‘Hickok, you’re such an optimist.’

  ‘We’ll get married one of these days. And all of you’d better show up.’

  ‘There’ll be plenty of chances to get together,’ Cora said, nodding at Helen.

  ‘It won’t be the same.’

  ‘Everything changes,’ Abilene said.

  From the hurt look on Helen’s face, that wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

  ‘I mean, that’s life. But the changes don’t have to be bad. There’s no law that says we can’t visit each other from time to time and…’

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ Vivian said. She’d been sitting in silence, staring into her drink.

  ‘Hold it,’ Finley said. ‘We’d better jot this down for posterity. Better yet…’ She hopped up from her cushion on the floor, hurried across the room, and snatched her video camera off the dining table.

  ‘Give it a break,’ Cora protested.
r />   ‘No, come on,’ Vivian said. ‘We aren’t dressed.’

  ‘Sure you are. Unlike the first time I taped you.’

  ‘You’ve gotten rid of that, haven’t you?’ Abilene asked. ‘Surely you jest.’ She raised the viewfinder to her eye and started taping. ‘Just act natural, babes. You look great. What was your big idea, Viv?’

  Vivian, in a sheer black nightgown, frowned at the lens and covered her breasts with the arm that wasn’t busy holding her champagne glass.

  ‘Don’t worry. Nobody’ll ever see it but us.’

  ‘So you say,’ Cora remarked. She wore only an oversized T-shirt.

  Helen, sitting on a sofa and dressed in a low-cut nightie, reached out and grabbed a corduroy pillow and clutched it to her chest.

  At least I’m okay, Abilene thought. She was wearing pajamas. They belonged to Harris. The morning after her first night with him, she’d worn the bottoms and he’d worn the top while she made instant coffee in the motel room. By the time they’d gotten around to drinking the coffee, it had been cold.

  Later, she’d packed the pajamas in her overnight bag and he’d laughed. She’d had them ever since.

  Finley, wandering about the room and taping everyone from different angles, said, ‘One of these days, we’ll get together and watch all this stuff and have a few laughs.’

  ‘Sure,’ Helen muttered.

  ‘Which brings us to my idea,’ Vivian said. ‘Remember? My idea?’

  Finley zoomed in on her. ‘Spit it out.’

  ‘Well…’

  Finley turned the camera away to catch Cora.

  Cora, on her knees, scurried about the floor and poured more champagne into all the glasses.

  Vivian waited until hers was full. She took a drink, then said, ‘Anyway. You know that play, Same Time Next Year?”

  ‘A movie,’ Finley corrected, swinging the camera toward Vivian.

  ‘It was a play first.’

  ‘I haven’t seen it,’ Helen said.

  ‘You wouldn’t have liked it,’ Abilene told her. ‘Nobody gets chopped up.’

  Helen almost smiled.

  ‘Anyway,’ Vivian continued, ‘it’s about this man and woman who fall in love. They can’t marry each other, so they meet at a certain place once each year.

  ‘Hence the title,’ Finley said.

  ‘No matter what’s going on in their regular lives, they always show up and spend this one weekend together. Anyway, here’s the thing. We could do something like that.’

  A smile spread across Helen’s face. ‘Hey, that’d be neat.’

  ‘That’s a great idea! ’ Cora blurted.

  ‘Yeah!’ Abilene said. ‘We’d have to really do it, though.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Cora agreed. ‘No matter what. Jobs, families. Nothing can get in the way. Once a year, we meet somewhere. Just the five of us.’

  ‘Right,’ Vivian said. ‘No husbands, no loverboys, none of that.’

  ‘They’d put a cramp in our style,’ Cora said.

  Helen laughed.

  ‘We’ll watch all the old tapes of our adventures,’ Finley said.

  ‘Whoa! ’ Abilene gasped. ‘In that case, no husbands for sure! ’

  ‘And we’ll have new adventures,’ Finley added. ‘New and daring exploits.’

  Cora smirked. ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. We’ll think of things.’

  ‘I know,’ Abilene said. ‘We can take turns thinking up exploits. Each year, it’ll be someone else’s turn to arrange the whole thing. We’ll all agree on whatever weekend…’

  ‘What kind of adventure can you have over a weekend?’ Finley complained. ‘Maybe we should try for a whole week.’

  ‘A week it is,’ Cora said.

  ‘This is great,’ Helen said. She polished off her champagne, tossed her pillow aside and leaned toward Cora with her glass. Cora crawled over and filled her up. ‘All of a sudden, it’s like everything isn’t over anymore. You know? This is great.’

  ‘Who goes first?’ Cora asked, and raised the bottle to her mouth.

  ‘The whole thing’s Vivian’s idea,’ Abilene pointed out.

  Vivian, smiling pleasantly, eased backward. She stretched out on the floor, glass resting on her belly, and crossed her feet at the ankles. ‘So I get to go first?’

  ‘Right,’ Abilene said.

  ‘We’ll all do whatever I want?’

  ‘Within reason.’

  ‘Fuck that,’ Finley said. ‘A choice oughta be a choice. It’s her adventure. We all have to do whatever she wants, whether we like it or not.’

  ‘A heavy responsibility,’ Vivian said, smiling at the ceiling.

  Cora popped a cork from a fresh bottle. It shot past Helen’s face. ‘Be careful. You’ll put someone’s eye out.’ She shut one eye and started giggling.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Vivian said.

  ‘You’ve got all year to think about it,’ Abilene told her.

  ‘And please,’ Finley said, ‘try to come up with something that won’t bore us all to death.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  VIVIAN'S CHOICE

  A year and two weeks after graduation from Belmore University, on the fifth night after their arrival in New York City, they stepped out of the Dunsinane Theater on Bleecker Street after a performance of Mother Courage.

  Vivian led them to the left.

  ‘Are you sure we shouldn’t be going the other way?’ Cora asked. ‘This doesn’t seem right.’

  ‘It’s not,’ Finley said. ‘It’s left.’

  ‘I don’t want to get lost again,’ Helen said. ‘My feet won’t take it.’

  ‘The subway entrance is just a couple of blocks from here.’

  ‘I sure hope so.’

  It seemed to Abilene that Helen had spent most of the week complaining about her feet. With good reason, she supposed. Vivian had taken them everywhere.

  They’d roamed Macy’s, Saks, Bloomingdale’s, F.A.O. Schwartz, and countless other stores. They’d gone to the Trump Tower and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

  They’d explored Grand Central Station, astonished by the underground world of shops and tunnels that seemed to go on forever, but appalled by the squalor, unnerved by the filthy beggars who seemed to lurk everywhere, and finally so overwhelmed by the smell of the place that they had rushed for fresh air.

  They’d explored Central Park.

  They’d taken the NBC tour at Rockefeller Plaza and later gone to the top of the Empire State Building.

  They’d spent a day at Coney Island, not only trying out some of the rides but hiking far along the beach and spending a long time on a pier where they were fascinated by the assortment of people fishing, throwing out crab traps baited with Kentucky Colonel, cooking meat on grills they’d apparently brought from home, and hawking their barbecued specialities along with such things as ice cream, sodas, beer, hard liquor (in tiny ‘airline’ bottles kept out of sight under a table) and firecrackers.

  Except for subway rides to such distant places as Coney Island, the Battery and Greenwich Village, they’d walked everywhere they went. Throughout, Finley carried her video camera (at least during daylight hours), Vivian and Cora seemed tireless and Helen complained about her sore feet and Abilene didn’t complain but sat down every chance she got.

  Nightfall had provided some relief, but not much.

  They often hiked around the Times Square area for blocks in search of a ‘neat place to eat’ before deciding on Nathan’s or Sbarro or a Mama Leone’s or Houlihans.

  Then they’d be off, on foot, for the theater district. The plays had been great; you could sit down for a couple of hours.

  Then they’d be up again. And wandering 42nd Street to look again at the gawdy display windows and street artists and musicians and break-dancers and tourists and beggars and cripples and cops on horseback and guys peddling wristwatches.

  At last, they would head back for the Hilton, stopping along the way at a small grocery market to pick up so
das, beer and snacks. Finally, they would arrive at their suite, get out of their shoes, get into their nightclothes, and gather in one or the other of the connecting rooms to sit around and drink and eat and chat and moan and laugh for a while before calling it a night.

  Today had been the worst, Abilene thought as she walked with the others along MacDougal Street.

  After sleeping in late, they’d taken a subway to the Battery, gone over to the Statue of Liberty and stood in line for two hours before entering the statue. Abilene supposed that the climb to the top was the most tiring - and scary - part of their Big Apple adventure. After making their way up flight after flight of ‘normal’ stairs, they’d come to a circular staircase so steep and narrow that she had almost chickened out. Though Helen had muttered, ‘Oh my God,’ at the base of the twisting iron stairs, she’d gone ahead and started up, Abilene behind her. The singlefile line moved slowly upward. There were long pauses. The air was hot and stuffy. Abilene felt as if she were suffocating. She gasped for breath and blinked sweat from her eyes and wished she could turn back. There was no way to turn back. What happens to people who pass out trying this? she wondered. Is there a rescue team, or what?

  The iron railings, because of their steep angle, were so low at her sides that it seemed quite possible to tumble over one. Again and again, she imagined herself going dizzy, rolling over the left-hand rail, and plummeting straight down the center opening.

  If Helen can make it, I can, she kept telling herself. And at last she followed Helen into the crown. It had no openings. It had no fresh air. It was even hotter, stuffier than the stairway. All she wanted was out. Nudged on by those behind her, she filed past the tiny windows. Glanced through glass so dirty or scratched that it made a foggy blur of the harbor and the New York skyline. Kept on moving and started downward.

  The very best thing about the Statue of Liberty, she found, was escaping from it.

  While they rested in the park, Abilene had looked into Finley’s camera and said, ‘Now I know all about those “tired, huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” They’re the poor slobs climbing to the top.’