The John Maclay

by John Maclay

  Nor is there anything wrong with her being…her age, he thought now, trying to hold back insanity, as he helped her out into the light of day, back across the parking lot to the Audi, and they drove west. The direction was not lost on him; west was also death. She’s not unbeautiful—as Meg, God, Meg wasn’t, and wouldn’t have been, unbeautiful. It’s just that she’s missed all the years in between—as I have, the later ones, with Meg—but for Marcia, far worse.

  So to try to keep Marcia happy—I’ve ruined her, but I’m not completely selfish, he thought ruefully—he reached over, flipped on the radio once more. And out came the sounds of an Astaire-Rogers musical, from the thirties.

  Her puffy fingers drummed on the dashboard, “Ooo, lover! I used to dance to that…when I was young.”

  The day before, he would have braked to a stop and screamed. Now, Jack turned the radio off.

  Their next nightfall—at a cheap motel in the wilds of Utah, all pretense of luxuriant sex gone, sunken into the earth they’d traversed, and into the folds of Marcia’s flesh—was uneventful, but for the surreal landscape around them, which matched Jack’s now-horrible odyssey.

  And but for the proprietor’s surprise that he should be sharing a room with his…mother. Something else, Jack thought with supreme logic, that I tried to escape.

  They got a late start the next morning. He dimly remembered her having gone instantly, heavily to sleep, while he tossed and turned on the bed in a half-conscious stupor, his heart and head pounding; at one point he thought he’d even fled from the room, and gone out onto the desolate earth to scream at the moon. But it was she who was worn out now…as he bundled her bent, white-haired, toothless form, shapeless in a sack dress, into the car.

  It was the last day of their trip, but where Jack might have imagined himself and Marcia being in an impossibly-free, light-hearted mood as they entered California, their secret goal, that…young place in which they’d hardly dared think they would enjoy the rest of their lives together, now neither of them spoke, as if she, in her senility, could have anyway. He kept his eyes away from her, stared at the ribbon of road, driving being the only reflex which remained to him; didn’t even dare reach for the radio, in terror of what new, or old, surprise it might hold for him, and in her. The only, constant sound was the swish of the Audi’s tires; he didn’t even stop for meals, as if either of them could have eaten.

  But when, after dark, they entered the last city, L.A., Jack forced himself to look at Marcia one more time. Maybe it had been only a nightmare after all, born out of his second thoughts, his disorientation at finally achieving his dream. Or better still, he thought, some sort of parable made mystically manifest, some lesson about youth and age. Maybe…

  Yet when, in the passing lights of the sprawling city of the west, he got clear looks at her, he knew the worst, the unspeakable end. Something he might have guessed, from the inexorable progress of the last few days. The…process…

  “Oh…God! Oh-oh-oh…God!” he heard himself scream to the empty sky. But inside, he was beyond terror…already dead.

  As was the form, once his golden young woman, on the seat beside him. Whose sack dress was now a sack…of bleached, white bones. And whose once-beautiful, spring-like face had become…a skull.

  Jack drove on, straight ahead. Through the night streets, aimlessly, of that city of youthful promise, now become a city of death. Straight ahead, through neighborhoods, rich and poor, passing surreally in the dark. To the end of the American land, to a place where the bulky forms of ships waited.

  Straight ahead, into the even deeper darkness of the sea.

  LYNN

  The real horrors, of course, are the worst ones. A plane crash, a diagnosis of cancer, the death of a child. They fracture our world, instantly transforming it into endless night from a succession of sunny days.

  That’s why I always draw upon my own experiences for my plots. Vampires and werewolves seem silly to me in comparison. Sadly, there’s plenty of horror in all our lives, so I try, in that way, to deal with mine.

  Yes, the worst horrors are the real ones. And when they relate to the erotic, which is supposed to be pleasurable, they’re worse still.

  I see it all more clearly now, too.

  It happened about fifteen years ago. I was an advertising manager, and I had an appointment with the new sales rep for an out-of-town, national magazine. I never looked forward to such pitches, trying only to be polite.

  But when she walked into my office that Wednesday morning, I had to sit up and take notice. The salesperson, Lynn, was one of the most beautiful young women I’d ever seen!

  She was tiny, no more than five feet tall, but that only made her features finer. Her exquisite face was framed with shoulder-length blonde hair. Her figure, in a tan suit, was perfect, from her high, round bosom, to her trim waist, to her gracefully curving hips and thighs.

  But I wasn’t objectifying her, because her personality, as she sat down and began to make her presentation, was even more striking. It took me no more than a minute to know that I’d seldom met anyone who was so genuine, good-hearted, and above all, happy. Lynn was a sudden breath of fresh air in my otherwise humdrum routine.

  “So that’s what we’ve been trying to do with our publication, Mr.—” she concluded, with a smile that lit up my life. I must have been staring at her, because she made a little laugh, too.

  “Please, call me ‘Jack,’” I responded, meeting her clear blue eyes. I smiled more broadly than I had in ages, as something passed between us, for sure.

  I bought a full-page ad, of course. Lynn surely knew the effect she had on male clients, and so did her employers, but who was to blame her, them, or me? Besides, I’d often bought the same ad from her predecessor, a fat guy of forty-nine.

  But there was more to it than that. There was something in the air that wasn’t phony or crass, at all.

  So, although I was happily married, I did something more. Not being my usual self, or rising above myself, I asked her out for a drink after her local rounds, and she agreed.

  You regret more the things that you do not do.

  We met in a dark little bar uptown, a place where no one knew me. In any event, since it was early, we had the place to ourselves.

  But as we sat at the candle-lit table and talked, and as it got later and later and the room filled up, it was still, only, ourselves. There was a true rapport between us, something I saw in her eyes as well as felt deep inside me.

  Was I being stupidly romantic? Maybe. Was I guilty of gloating that such a beautiful woman should be attracted to me? Perhaps.

  But it didn’t matter. If I was any good at all, I knew that on that star-struck evening, she and I simply…were.

  “It’s time to go,” Lynn finally said, her smile still sparkling.

  “Can I drop you at your hotel?” I asked, as I paid the check.

  “Sure,” she replied, her musical voice thrilling me.

  Then I walked with her to my car, as in a dream, through the wondrous city night.

  I drove her through the dark streets. My wife was waiting at home, but she might as well have been on the moon. Something real was happening here, and I’d be damned if I didn’t live it.

  And when I pulled up, got out, and walked her to the lobby door, I asked further.

  “Can I…can we?” I questioned.

  For a long moment, Lynn looked at me. Then, her small, exquisite body arching upward, she put her arms around my neck and gave me a soul-cleansing kiss.

  “I’m seeing someone, Jack,” she told me. “And you’re married.”

  She paused, during which time I felt her warm bosom against my heart.

  “It’s been great, though,” she concluded, as she released me and turned away. “You’re great.”

  I watched her walk into the hotel. Then, realizing I must have been standing there
for five minutes, I got back in my car. I drove home, not feeling guilty, but great indeed. If, in the light of the next day, I saw it as only a harmless fling, even then it would have been great.

  But again, there was more to it than that. And there was more to it in a practical sense, because I knew that Lynn would call on me, if only as a sales rep, again.

  She did, about a year later, since my company’s product didn’t really need to be advertised that often in her magazine. In the meantime, I had pushed her into the back of my mind, beautiful as she was and as striking as our brief encounter had been. She’d become, I had to confess, only the fantasy I’d believed she’d made real.

  Yes, she walked into my office once more. When she did, though, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  I’ve thought long and hard about how to tell the second part. It’s going to be as difficult as the first part was easy. In fact, I’ve unconsciously let this story lie for weeks, and now I know why. The key, of course, is in the beginning.

  “The real horrors are the worst ones,” I wrote. “When they relate to the erotic, they’re worse still.”

  And, I have to reflect as I go down deep inside myself to finish, they’re even harder to deal with when extremes are involved.

  When what was once heaven has been transformed into a living hell.

  Nor will I be exploiting the situation or Lynn.

  The other thing about the real horrors is that they really happened.

  “I was in an auto accident, Jack,” she explained, as she sat down. It came out by rote, since she’d surely had to say it many times before. “I hit a tank truck, just like in the movies. But I was…lucky. I walked away with nothing but the…burns, and even those were only on my…”

  I hadn’t asked, or even said a word. My fallen face had obviously done the asking.

  She was wearing a dark blue suit, and her figure was as perfect as ever. Her shoulder-length blonde hair, too, was healthy and lustrous.

  But the face that it framed was a mass of scars, of a depth and a complexity that I knew better than to ask whether even plastic surgery could ever repair.

  And her life-lighting smile had been transformed into a twisted grin.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I finally responded, instantly grimacing myself at how stupid my words were.

  “There really isn’t anything to say,” Lynn replied gently. Her voice was the same, although clouded with sadness, as were her once-clear blue eyes.

  I bought another full-page ad. As I did so, I couldn’t help but reflect that where the last time it might have been due to her beauty, now it might be out of pity. So many conflicting thoughts were running through my mind, both worthy and unworthy.

  But I did something else, something that led to all the rest of it. Before she left, I asked her out for a drink as before.

  “You don’t need to do that,” she said. Of course, she’d be familiar with thoughts like mine, not to mention far more horrible ones of her own.

  “No, I want to,” I insisted, still feeling stupid.

  And Lynn agreed to meet me that evening.

  We sat in the same dimly-lighted bar. Now, though, the darkness served to hide her face rather than to render it more romantic. I struggled to make conversation, where before my words had flowed easily. I just couldn’t get beyond the horrible thing that had happened to her—and, I had guiltily to admit, to my memory, my dream.

  I kept telling myself she was the same inside—which, apart from her new and natural sadness, she was. I could see flashes of our old rapport in her blue eyes, as she, too, tried to communicate. But it wasn’t going very well for her, either.

  Then the thing occurred.

  “Are you still with your boyfriend?” I asked, achieving the ultimate in stupid questions.

  “No, Jack,” she sighed. “He left me soon after the accident.”

  And two large tears ran down her cheeks, winding their way among the scars.

  Indeed, there wasn’t anything to say.

  But, suddenly and miraculously, that very fact led to an absolute torrent of speech.

  “We ought to just get up and leave,” Lynn said, her tears giving way to a wry laugh.

  “Yes, but I don’t want to,” I replied quickly and accurately.

  “Neither do I,” she agreed.

  She paused. And then, incisively, she did what wound up taking us where so obviously we’d been fated all along to go.

  “We lay our cards on the table. We say the first thing that comes to our mind,” she proposed.

  “Yes,” I reacted, with a rush of relief. “That’s it!”

  And during the next hour, that was what we did.

  She said she’d thought about me often after our previous time, and that she really had been attracted to me. Then, after the accident and her break-up, she’d come to think that I, above all others, would understand. She’d only known me briefly, but there had been something real and deep between us.

  She also told me that she’d wondered, given her disfigurement, whether her physical needs would ever be satisfied again. And, although she’d determined to wait until her annual visit, she’d hoped that I, after all, would still want her.

  “I thought you could imagine me as I was before, Jack,” she said. “At least you could concentrate on my body, and maybe, given who you are, on what’s inside.”

  Lynn smiled crookedly. “Since we’re being frank, I think they call it a ‘mercy fuck,’” she concluded. “Then you could just go back to your wife and forget about me. And, while I don’t really want to think of it that way, it’s what I need now.”

  Now it was my turn. I told her, quite honestly, that the same term had entered my mind. It was insulting to both of us, since it implied that she did require mercy, and that I’d be so egotistical as to think I could provide it.

  But I confessed I had been guilty of thinking that now, the way she was, I’d have a better chance with her.

  “You’re surely the most beautiful woman I’ve ever been close to,” I finished. “You did seem unattainable.”

  When she heard that, she laughed hollowly.

  “‘Beautiful,’” she said. “‘Unattainable.’ Well, I’m no longer the first one, at least as people see me. And as to the second, I wasn’t above you then, and I guess no one’s above anyone now.”

  “Well, what are we going to do?” I asked. We’d talked, and it was time to make a move.

  “I think you should offer to drop me at my hotel again,” Lynn replied.

  She paused.

  “Then,” she concluded, “maybe we can find out what is real.”

  I didn’t even think of going home. We left the bar, and I walked with her through the city night once more. We reached my car, and I drove her to the hotel.

  But this time, I didn’t leave her at the door.

  She made love with a fineness I could hardly believe. Her miniature body was sublime, from her perfect, upright breasts, to her firm, flat belly, to her artistically curving hips and thighs, not to mention what was between them. And she moved with an expressiveness that truly made sex a work of art.

  She was beautiful, after all, and it was beautiful. Her inner self was behind and beneath it, too, as I’d always sensed it would be. Finally, as I’d also known would be the case, there was our consummate, fated matching.

  We had purposely left the lights on, as well. And even when I saw her face, to rewrite an old song, I was still a believer. Or, as the saying went, beauty was in the eye of the beholder, indeed.

  “Oh, Lynn!” I gasped, bursting toward her, as she also found her long-delayed release. “My beautiful, beautiful Lynn!”

  And it wasn’t a lament, but an affirmation.

  So she and I had finally made it, only after she’d been disfigured. We had found out what was real—and, you might sa
y if you’re into maudlin and demeaning analysis, maybe somehow as a result of that.

  But you may be asking where the horror is, the conflict. After all, I’ve given you a reasonably happy ending.

  That, however, is because the third part is yet to tell.

  After that night, it became obvious that Lynn and I couldn’t leave each other. So I left my wife instead, and found a new job in her city. I moved in with her, and we were more than content for a time.

  Gradually, though, something came between us. It wasn’t her scarred face, or even the reactions we received when we went around together.

  Those, in brief, consisted of pity for her, or for her and me, or of admiration for us both for being how we were. At the worst, as regarded myself, it was “mercy fuck,” or conversely exploitation, all over again.

  No, those things weren’t it. Instead, it was suddenly my face, in the mirror, that was the problem. Nor was it that I wanted to become like her in order to spare her sadness.

  No. It was something else.

  The more I saw Lynn’s face as beautiful, the more I couldn’t stand my own.

  And now I even wondered if she’d love me more, or less, if I were to be like her.

  So I asked her. And she said she’d love me just the same—the same, I couldn’t help thinking, as we were inside.

  But I still had to know.

  I began with little cuts, cuts that I could say I did while shaving, and she didn’t notice. Then I graduated to wounds I told her I got while playing sports or while helping a friend clear some briars in his yard, but she said nothing.

  After that, I made some really big gashes, ones that required medical attention. She looked at me questioningly, but she still didn’t comment.

  It was painful, of course, but there was an end in view, and an end in sight.

  Before long, my face, too, was a mass of scars.

  Now, when we go out, the reaction is better. People don’t appear to be thinking that much about us, because the mismatch is gone.