Presently, the PM was wrapping up his opening address.
"And so, ladies and gentlemen, it gives me pleasure to welcome you to the tenth annual Transplant Meeting." He smiled his election-winning smile. "I am confident that you will find this morning's itinerary both interesting and informative, and I urge you to get behind these people, as I am, one hundred percent!"
Exuberant applause.
Now Longman took over the podium. She thanked the Prime Minister, who waved jauntily before leaving the hall, then launched into what promised to be a rather dry and long-winded effusion—monotone stuff about the disheartening donor statistics, the lack of a sound system of public education—and soon, Karen's attention began to falter.
It was a while before she noticed the woman in the wheelchair, which surprised her, considering how intently the woman was staring. She was parked to the right of the stage, not at one of the round tables but off by herself, in the aisle by the curtained wall. Karen figured her for about fifty—graying hair drawn back in a bun so severe it seemed to clutch her skull, thick dewlaps drooping from the exposed flesh of her upper arms, boggy ankles swelling over the top of black lace-up shoes. A plain gray shift covered her body like a tarp, its hem tugged down discreetly over bandaged knees. She wore no makeup. In her lap she held a black, leather-bound book—clutched it, the way her hair clutched her skull—a Bible, Karen thought.
At first Karen looked away, surprised by the fat ball of tension that dropped out of nowhere and landed in the pit of her stomach. Why would a crippled woman's stare feel so. . . creepy? By now she was accustomed to people staring, usually with a sort of glazy-eyed openness, a look Karen had come to interpret as awe. The way she imagined her own face would look if she met someone upon whom a miracle had been bestowed.
But as the minutes ticked past, seeming to slow and grind, Karen's gaze was drawn back repeatedly to that seamed, sour face, to those penetrating, ice-chip eyes buried in their black-hollow sockets.
And finally, the woman's gaze held her, bound her like spider silk, and everything else droned away—Longman's voice, the paneled room, the hundreds of attentive faces. . .
Karen felt it more than read it—the subtleties of facial expression were as new to her as the infinite spectrum of color. But there was hate in that face, in those blue, knife-slash eyes. Hate as pure as the deadliest venom.
And something else, something eerily familiar. . .
The hall receded even further. Vaguely, Karen was aware of scattered applause, of one speaker giving way to another, but soon even that perception was lost in the live-wire hum at the base of her skull.
Suddenly she wanted to leave.
By a huge effort of will Karen looked away, down at her knotted hands, then up, at the crystal chandeliers.
The room I was quiet now, too quiet, the silence anticipatory. . . then Karen heard her own name.
"Miss Lockhart? Karen?"
A reporter's flash exploded light. In its afterpulse Karen turned to see a throbbing negative of Longman.
"Yes?" she said to the shimmering phantom.
Suddenly she recalled her first-visual experience. It had been like this—grainy, pulsing, insubstantial—and for a panicky moment she feared she had lost her sight. Then Longman lightened and solidified, color leaking back into her too-loud suit.
Through her boiling confusion, Karen realized it was her turn to speak. They were waiting for her.
How long have I been out of it?
She stood, drawn by Longman's outstretched arm.
Applause. Cameramen swarming up and crouching in front of the stage. Huge cyclopic eyes recording her every gesture.
She approached the podium, rested her hands on its lacquered surface. Someone stood and adjusted the mike, cranking it up to match Karen's height.
Then she was clearing her throat, speaking in a voice that was somehow otherworldly, as if originating at a point remote from herself. She directed her gaze over the heads of the crowd, which had lapsed into respectful silence.
"I'd like to thank Mrs. Longman for inviting me," she said dazedly, trying to keep her glance from pulling right, to those eyes. "This is a real first for me. . . all these people."
Appreciative chuckles.
"I realize I've been pretty much in the public eye these days—"
Laughter now, and Karen realized that unwittingly she had made a joke. Helplessly, her glance slid to that woman again. . . she wasn't laughing, only staring.
Do I know her?
"Well it's not me," Karen blurted, looking away, wanting to get this over with and at the same time realizing there were things she wanted to say. "I'm not the important one here. I'm just a lucky little blind girl whom none of you would have known had it not been for the unfortunate death—and uncommon generosity—of one man." She inclined her head shamefully. "A man I never even knew."
The crowd fell silent, hanging on every word.
"I'm talking about the donor."
Karen's hands balled into fists. "For those of you who haven't already, imagine the courage it must take to sit down and sign your name to a contract which becomes valid only at the moment of your death. Imagine how tough it must be to pick up a pen and do that—because in the instant that you do, you look death square in the face. You admit its existence, and you submit to it."
Karen had no idea where all of this was coming from—she certainly hadn't planned it—she knew only hat it was coming, and that with each word she felt purged of some black and bottled emotion, a gut-deep gnaw which, quite abruptly, she realized was guilt. Guilt had been at the bottom of her morbid preoccupation with the donor. Guilt had fueled her dark imaginings.
But now it was pouring out and she was letting it, urging it along. She forgot the crowd, the woman with the caustic stare, and let it all come.
"People like this man are the important ones here. Without their courage, people like me remain blind"—she turned to the other recipients at the head table and eyed each of them in turn—"or die of heart disease, or kidney disease, or liver disease.
"So now I want to thank whoever that brave man was, thank him for me and for all of the others." She smiled, feeling better already; this had been building for a long time. "And I want everyone here to know that if I can, I plan to return the favor. I plan to sign that consent. Who knows. . . maybe these eyes will see again, for someone else."
Head bowed, Karen took a small step back, signifying the end of her speech.
Applause struck her like a dry wave of sound. People began pushing to their feet, their hands a blur of moved approval. To Karen's surprise, many of the eyes out there had gone misty.
Karen scanned the crowd for the woman in the wheelchair. She wanted to go to her, to find out who she was—that elusive impression of familiarity, of forgotten intimacy, refused to be dislodged—and why she was staring so intently. There had to be some simple explanation. Someone she had known a long time ago, while still blind. An old grade-school teacher, maybe. Catechism. The Bible. Karen had misunderstood her look, surely that was all it was; she was no expert at facial expressions. . .
But, no, she was kidding herself now. She had felt the loathing the way skin feels ice, with a curdling shudder that burns deep inside.
One by one, the cameramen rushed closer. Cass and Albert followed suit, then a swarming mass of well-wishers swept forward, all of them circling Karen as she hurried down the steps from the stage, more anxious than ever to talk to that woman.
The woman was still there, but wheeling slowly away, looking back over her shoulder with that same scalding glare, a Medusa's scowl that froze Karen in a breathless pocket of air. She tried to move but couldn't.
People pressed in. Cass, teary-eyed, took, Karen's hand and squeezed it. Albert hugged her heartily. Karen tried to draw away, tried to go to the woman, but now a fleet of microphones orbited her head; blurted questions throttled her ears. The circle of bodies tightened, and suddenly Karen felt lightheaded. The faces around
her slipped out of focus, muddied, some of them sagging into long, funhouse reflections. A queer sensation like a tickling feather commenced at the backs of both eyes. Her heart kicked a jig in her chest. Alarmed, she leaned on her father's shoulder.
"Hey, hon," he said through the din. "You okay?"
"Yes," Karen murmured. . . but she wasn't.
She rose on tiptoes, struggling to clear her vision, trying, to catch sight of the woman over the bobbing heads of the crowd. Then she spotted her, rolling off into an aisle, still staring but smirking now, Karen thought, coldly smirking, as if in possession of some dirty secret Karen needed to know but never would. . . until it was too late.
Her vision continued to distort, the entire room warping as if observed through a fish-eye lens, the woman's face now its leering axis. Her electric eyes seemed to float in her face, like twin nuclei in a malignant cell.
"Let us through," Albert said, his voice sternly raised, Karen's weight listing unstably against him. "She's not feeling well."
Dutifully, the crowd parted.
Albert ushered his daughter to a chair. Freed from the press, Karen dizzily scanned the hall. . .
But the woman was gone.
Chapter 22
A storm was coming.
A cloudburst. Ten, maybe fifteen, minutes away, Danny figured. They came like that sometimes in the spring, swooping in out of nowhere, dropping their payload down a cold chute of wind and then pulling away. To the south of where he sat fishing, on the grassy verge of Whitefish Lake, the sky was a leaden wall of ill-contained fury. Sodden thunderheads played electric leapfrog, roiling one over the other in layers a mile thick, while lightning flickered deep in their dyspeptic bellies.
Yet directly overhead the sky was a peaceable, unblemished blue. The sun beat down with a summery fervor, as if trying to ward off the coming squall; it felt good against the wadded scar that was Danny's neck, killing for a while its maddening itch. The surface of the lake spread away from him flat and clean, doubling the sphere of his bobber in flawless reflection.
In the distance, thunder rolled down a hardwood alley.
Let it come, Danny thought, bitterness seeping like bile into the well of his throat. See if I give a fuck.
He had run his car hard coming down here this morning, booting it up past eighty along the narrow, overgrown side road from the highway. Out of use since before Danny's birth, the road ran straight as an ice pick for five miles before ending at the fallen bridge over Terrance Creek, a rocky, sluiceway at the base of a thirty-foot gorge. At one time the road had joined up with the Twelfth Line, which ran past Danny's house. Sometimes he just walked to the lake from the opposite side—but he enjoyed the drive in. It made him feel like one of those Porsche jockeys on Wide World of Sports. To reach the lake from this side, he had to catwalk across the skeletal remains of the bridge—that, or fight his way through two miles of scrub to reach a spot where the gorge became shallow enough to ford.
This morning, though, bearing down on the bridge at eighty, Danny had felt none of the old exhilaration. In that last possible instant before braking he had considered just letting her go, taking the edge of the gorge like the goddamn Dukes of Hazzard, flattening the car and himself against the opposite rockface. . .
But it wasn't himself he wanted to hurt.
He gazed out sullenly over the surface of the lake. A solitary loon, its long beak inclined skyward, webbed unseen through the field of his vision. It paused briefly, scenting the storm, then dove.
Like the lightning, Karen's image flickered in Danny's mind. He had seen her on the TV this morning, at that meeting of fools, all of them sitting there like celebrity guests on some goofy game show.
"Okay, Mrs. Shitforbrains," Danny thought bitterly. "I want you to look at these four freaks and tell us which one of them has your kid's liver."
Christ, he shivered every time he thought of having another guy's eyes inside of him. He'd sooner be blind. It had to be a sin, cutting up bodies like that—
Something nibbled curiously at his hook. The bobber jerked once—again. . . and was still.
Sighing, Danny poked two grimy fingers into his jean jacket pocket; they came out holding a hastily folded square of paper. This he spread open in the cradle of his lap and read with a knitted-brow, battling dyslexia over each word.
Earlier this morning he had taken advantage of Karen's absence to let himself into her house. She never locked up, unless she was planning to be away overnight, but even when she did getting inside was rarely a problem. That credit card trick he'd seen on TV worked just fine—except that instead of a credit card, which he'd never owned, he used his like-sized Social Insurance card.
But roaming her place this morning had failed to give him the kick it normally did. He hadn't let himself in since way back in April, just after Karen's admission to hospital. Back then, the drab, conventlike simplicity of the place had comforted him. Within its plainness he had been able to imagine himself as Karen's mate and protector. It was a farmhouse then, nothing more.
But now. . .
Now he hardly recognized the place. New wallpaper, new furniture, thick new curtains everywhere (this goaded him most), new clothes in the closet.
Too much color. Too much. . . life.
And worst of all, the kitchen table had been strewn with flyers from a half-dozen different real estate agencies. She meant to buy a new place, move away from him.
Sitting there, sick inside, Danny felt the distance between them widening like a fault in an earthquake. An impotent moan escaped him. The way they were, that's how he wanted things. It hadn't been perfect, but at least he'd been with her, able to watch her as much as he pleased without seeing that look of disgust on her face. Before that damned operation there had always been some excuse to be near her: chores that needed doing, or when her father wasn't around he would drive her into town. . .
No, Danny declared silently. She wouldn't leave him. No way. Not after all these years. He wouldn't. . . no, goddamn it, he wouldn't allow it. He could forgive her for screwing someone else—
Oh, I heard, yes, I heard you through the window that night, talking to that skinny-bitch friend of yours, talking about that pig doctor in Toronto, humping you two and three times a night. But I'd forgive you, I would. . .
He'd kill the sonofabitch bastard if he could, for touching her. But he could forgive Karen. . . if only she'd stay, let things be as they were.
The loon surfaced not thirty feet out, and this time Danny did notice it. The bird's red eye seemed to fix him, as if aware of his thoughts. . .
Then it laughed. Rose up on its tail, flapped its massive checked wings, and laughed, high and mocking.
But the yodeling echo came back off the lofty lead wall of the storm like a scream.
Danny turned back to the paper in his lap. Flipping it open to the middle page, he let out a sigh of longing. He had found the scrapbook on a side table in Karen's workroom and had stolen the Life magazine fold-out, figuring she'd never miss it. There were plenty of other pictures in there. . .
Wedging his rod securely in front of him, he arranged the fold-out with the Before pose facing up. Then he spread himself out on the grass and unzipped his fly. He was already getting hard.
The sun beat down on his neck. Thunder grumbled, closer now, low and plaintive.
Danny gazed into the brown-eyed photo-face of the girl he loved, smiling with affection at the slight out-turn of her left eye, the more pronounced in-turn of her right. He dropped his gaze suddenly as he imagined their warm roundness looking back at him.
But with these eyes she couldn't see him, he reminded himself. No. With these eyes she was his. . . to look at, to love, to wait for.
Danny's cock grew stiff in his hand. That's what he liked to call it. His cock. It was her cock, too, long and hard and hot, and if that sour fuck doctor could ram her three times a night then he could take her six, seven, ten times.
Yes. . . oh, yes.
How
would it feel in that pretty mouth? a tormented inner voice asked him. Oh, God, how would that feel?
"'Good," Danny answered aloud. "So good."
The loon laughed again.
And abruptly the sun vanished, swallowed like a pill by the storm. The air grew colder, began to move. A fat raindrop spattered the back of Danny's eagerly pumping hand.
His eyes were on her neck now, drifting down to the sharp edge of the page, closing to slits, filling in the rest in his mind. . .
He saw the twin high, swells of her breasts as she touched and examined them that night in front of the mirror. He saw the smooth white pout of her belly. He saw—(gusts gliding across the lake like phantoms, chattering through the trees, nibbling at the corner of the picture tacked to the grass beneath two outstretched fingers, heralding the ravening windhordes behind)—the dew-flecked tuft of her center. . .
His mouth opened to release a pathetic moan of desire. "Oh, Karen," he breathed, the pressure in his balls heightening in pace with the storm. "Oh, Karen. . .”
He opened his eyes and looked into Karen's. He wanted to see her when he came. He wanted to see the ecstasy in her eyes. . .
Lightning forked, hissing into the trees across the lake. Living wood split with a crack! of agony. Gusts gathered on the opposite shore, grouped and came in low, whooping like strafing aircraft.
The loon dove again.
It's coming I can feel it feel it oh Karen can you feel it. . .
A finger of wind slipped beneath the photo, flipping it over to the After shot—
Then the blue eyes were on him, seeing him, really seeing him, and he read their revulsion, their disgust, their fear. He saw the look she had given him that morning by the woodpile, the look that had sent him off sobbing like a baby and made him dread ever returning to see it again.
Shriveled and cold, his cock lay limp in his palm. His solitary passion, unfulfilled, congealed sickly inside of him.
Then the storm broke.
Eden's Eyes Page 16
