“One thing.”
“What?”
Hesitation. As if he was afraid to tell her what he wanted.
Well, sure. Looking as he did, reduced to what he’d become, the cocksure quality that had struck her years ago was nowhere to be found.
“If it’s sexual,” she said, “anything at all, just tell me. I won’t have a problem with it. Whatever you want, just tell me.”
“Sex.”
“Whatever you’d like me to do—”
“Can’t feel anything.”
“Oh.”
“Neck down. Nothing.”
“I just thought—”
“Sometimes it gets hard.”
“It does?”
He got the words out, one ragged phrase at a time. He had no sensation there, but sometimes he got erections, and when it happened he knew it, sensed it somehow even without sensation. If his head was in the right position he could look down and see it.
And eventually it would go soft again, because he didn’t have a hand to jerk off with, and couldn’t have moved it if he did, or felt anything in either his hand or his penis. He’d tried to come by mental effort, tried to increase his excitement by thinking sexual thoughts, trotting out old memories, working up new fantasies. He let his thoughts run the gamut, tender, violent, aberrant. He’d entertain the memory or the fantasy for a while, and then his erection would subside, and that would be that.
Once or twice, though, he’d come very close while he was sleeping. Almost had a wet dream a time or two. Woke up, though, before he could climax, and that was as far as it went.
Jesus, she thought.
“Is it hard now?”
“Can’t see. But no, can tell it’s not.”
“May I see?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. A sheet covered his lower body, and she drew it down to mid-thigh. His penis was soft, and her hand went to it automatically, held it gently.
“Can you feel anything?”
“No.”
“But you like that I’m holding it.”
“Yeah.”
“And you can tell that I’m holding it, can’t you? I mean, of course you can, you can see what I’m doing, but let’s try something. Close your eyes, and I’ll hold it and then not hold it, like off and on, and you’ll know when I’m holding it and when I’m not. At least I think you will. Can we try that? Can you close your eyes?”
Eye, she thought. He only had one eye to close. Was it wrong to say what she’d said?
Well, it didn’t seem to matter. And he’d closed both eyes, anyway, because that’s how the eyelids seemed to work, you closed or opened them both at once, the real one and the glass one.
She played with him, fondled him. Then let go of him. Then held him again.
“You can tell, can’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Even if you can’t feel anything, you can tell. So deep inside somewhere, you’re feeling it. Your mind just doesn’t know it.”
“Maybe.”
“You have a beautiful penis. I don’t want to stop touching it. It doesn’t matter if it’s hard or soft. It’s just beautiful.”
And it was, sort of. In a sense it was just a dick, and God knows she’d seen enough of them in her time, but she was connecting with it in a way that was, well, getting her hot. He couldn’t feel anything, and she was getting hot. Go figure that one.
“I want it in my mouth,” she told him. “I want to suck that beautiful cock, and play with your balls, and stick my finger up your ass. I want it for me, see, and I don’t give a shit whether you can feel anything or not. But you’re gonna feel it, Alvin, even if the message doesn’t get all the way to your brain. Your cock’s gonna feel it. It’s gonna get hard as a fucking rock and I’m gonna suck it and suck it and suck it and you’re gonna come like crazy and I’m gonna swallow every drop. Every fucking drop, you hear me?”
“Alvin?”
His eyes opened, and the good one met hers and held it. Was it clearer now?Was there a light in it that hadn’t been present earlier?
“Did you feel any of that?”
He took a moment. Then he said, “I knew when it happened.”
“Was there pleasure?”
“Kind of.”
“There was for me. I had an orgasm.”
“Don’t have to say that.”
“It’s true.”
“Yeah?”
“I was touching myself, but I think I would have come anyway. It was all intensely hot for me. I’m glad you got Joanne to give us some time alone. I guess this is what you had in mind.”
“No.”
“Or something like it, and if there’s anything else—”
“Different.”
“Oh?”
“You wouldn’t do it.”
“Wouldn’t do what? Alvin, anything you want me to do, all you have to do is ask.”
His eye bored into hers. There was something there but it was hard to read.
“You’re afraid to tell me what you want.”
“Yeah.”
“Because of what I’ll think of you? Alvin, I won’t—”
“Don’t care what you think of me.”
“Then why—”
“Because you won’t do it.”
“I can’t if you won’t tell me what it is.”
“Only thing I want.”
She waited. That would do it, she knew. If she just waited him out, sooner or later he’d tell her.
“Pam…”
Still waited.
“Kill me.”
Words and phrases, spilling out in fits and starts:
Can’t stand it. Nothing to live for. Can’t get better. Can’t keep from getting worse. Dying by inches. Sis won’t let me die. ‘Bubba, you’re all I live for.’ Jesus. ‘Bubba, together we’ll keep you going.’ Sweet Jesus. ‘Bubba, keeping you alive’s what keeps me alive.’ Only person ever loved me and I’m starting to hate her because she won’t let me fucking die.
Just kill me. All I want’s for it to be over. Don’t worry about hurting me. Can’t nobody hurt me. Don’t feel nothing. Except inside. Inside the pain’s always there. Only one way to make it go away and that’s kill me.
Can’t ask it of you. I know that. You’re good, you’re gentle, you’re kind. You ain’t no killer. I know all that. Asking you anyway. Begging you. Nobody else to beg. Nobody comes here but Sis. Anybody ever does show up, one look and they’re gone. Can’t blame ’em.
Can’t take no more of this. Can’t eat, can’t move, can’t pay attention to TV. All I got left’s a heart won’t quit beating and a voice in my head won’t shut up. Tried to kill myself by force of will. Didn’t work. Couldn’t make myself come that way. Couldn’t make myself die either. All my mind’s good for is letting me know how miserable I am.
Used to think an orgasm might give me some pleasure. Was like watching it happen to somebody else. Now that’s not even there to hope for. Nothing to hope for, nothing but dying.
“Stop,” she said.
After a moment he murmured something, and she had to lean close and ask him to say it again.
“Sorry,” he said, in his ragged whisper.
“For what?”
“Laying it all on you. Held it all in so long, nobody to talk to. Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “Look, I’ll do it.”
“What?”
“What you asked. I’ll kill you.”
He stared at her.
“Not today,” she said. “Your sister’ll be back any minute. In fact I think I hear a car. I’ll come back tomorrow and we can send her shopping again, and once she’s out the door you can tell me if you really want to go through with it.”
“I already told you. You think I’ll change my mind?”
“You might. You told me because it was safe to tell me because you flat knew I wouldn’t do what you wanted. Well, you were wrong about that. I’ll do it. But you’ll have to tell me tomorrow that it�
�s still what you want. And that’s her car, she just cut the engine. I’ll get out of here in a minute, and I’ll be back tomorrow, and she’ll go shopping again and by the time she gets back I’ll be gone forever. And, if it’s still what you want, so will you.”
The only motel, a quarter-mile or so from the convenience store, was about what you’d expect. Hedgemont didn’t get much in the way of tourist traffic, so most of the units were rented by the week to the sort of people who could only dream of working their way up to a broken-down house trailer.
She paid cash in advance for a single night and tried to remember what name she’d told Kirkaby and his sister. Pam, of course, and not Hedgemont, because that was the name of this shithole town, but it started out that way before she caught herself, and what was it? Hedges? Hedgeworth?
Headley! Pam Headley, and it was nice she remembered, but it didn’t matter because the old drunk in the office didn’t give her anything to sign, just took her money and slapped a key on the counter.
Half an hour later she was sitting in front of the last black-and-white TV in America and eating food from the convenience store— Fritos, Hostess cupcakes, Slim Jims. She forced herself to use the shower, dried herself with the ratty little towel they provided. Stayed up late, woke up early.
Mid-morning, she was back at the trailer.
It was hard getting rid of Joanne. She didn’t have to do any more shopping, she told them. Had everything they needed. Why burn up gasoline driving around?
Alvin insisted. He wanted some time alone with Pam. She’d be leaving soon, he might never see her again, and he wanted time together, just the two of them.
The woman got a mulish look on her face. But what could she do? “Maybe I’ll visit my friend Aggie,” she said. “That’s all the way over in Timber Creek. Say an hour there and an hour back, and she wouldn’t let me leave without she gives me lunch. So four hours? That enough time for the two of you to do whatever it is you have in mind?”
Joanne grabbed her purse, got her car keys in hand, let the screen door slam behind her. Alvin was about to say something, but she made him wait until she heard the car start up and pull away. Then she asked him if he’d changed his mind.
“No. What got me through the night was knowing it was the last one I had to get through. And you?”
“Me?”
“Change your mind?”
“No. I’ll do it.”
“Yeah, what I realized about you. Last night, thinking. You’re steel inside.”
She let that go.
“Tried to spare you. Last night. Tried to swallow my tongue. Supposed to be a way to kill yourself, shuts off the air flow. Heard of it somewhere. Don’t know if it’s even possible, but I couldn’t do it.”
“I said I’d do it.”
“I know. There’s a pillow on the sofa. No? What’s wrong with that?”
“Pinpoint hemorrhages on the eyeballs. First thing anybody’d look for, and then they’d look at Joanne.”
“Sis? Anybody who knows her’d know she wouldn’t do it in a million years.”
“So then they’d come looking for me. They wouldn’t find me, but they’d come looking, and who needs it? I’m not gonna hold a pillow over your face, okay? It’s not that easy if the person’s conscious, anyway.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’ve done this before, okay? And not as a fucking act of mercy, either. Didn’t see that one coming, did you? Like a roadside bomb, comes from out of nowhere and takes you by surprise.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I put a pillow over a guy’s face once,” she said, “and then I sat on it, and I have to say it was H-O-T. But I don’t think he liked it much, and it took him a while to die. Which was fine with me, but I like you, and I want this to be easy, so why don’t you just let me do it my way?”
God, the look in his eye.
“I have some drugs with me. Should be quick and easy, and if you feel anything you won’t feel it for very long.”
“I can’t swallow pills.”
“This would be an injection. There’ll be a pinprick, but you won’t feel that, will you?”
“No.”
She’d prepared the syringe before she left the motel, filled it from one of the vials from the drugstore in Glens Falls. Now she retrieved it from her suitcase and showed it to him.
“All set,” she said. “Anything you’d like to do first?”
“Like what? Eat a sandwich? Take a quick jog around the block?”
“I thought you might want to have sex again.”
“No.”
“Or, I don’t know. Say a prayer?”
“Not much for praying.”
“Me neither. You figure there’s anything afterward?”
“After you die, you mean?”
“Maybe you’ll have your body back again. You know, in another dimension. Your arms and legs, and everything healthy.”
“Not counting on it.”
“Or maybe it’s a kind of existence where there aren’t bodies.”
“Just souls floating around?”
“Maybe.”
“Or maybe it’s nothing,” he said. “Maybe it just, you know, stops.”
“Maybe. This vein looks good. Are you ready?”
“More than ready.”
“I don’t suppose I need an alcohol swab. I guess infection’s not a consideration. Sorry, I’m all thumbs all of a sudden. Just as well you can’t feel anything. Okay, I think I’ve got it in the vein. Alvin?”
“What?”
“Look, if there is something afterward, and somebody up there wants a report, would you tell them I wasn’t bad all the time? That there was one time I did something good?”
Jesus, was that a tear in the corner of his eye?
She pressed the plunger, kept looking at his eye, watched the light fade from it.
One.
TWENTY-ONE
One.
A bus, a plane, another bus. A Rust Belt city in east-central Ohio, immune to economic cycles because it had been in its own permanent recession ever since the end of the Second World War. A dingy SRO hotel, her drab room so small that the initials might as easily have stood for Standing Room Only as Single Room Occupancy.
And a minimum-wage job two blocks away, in a shop that sold rolling papers and recycled jeans. She wore the same basic outfit every day, loose jeans and a bulky sweater, and she didn’t put on makeup or lipstick, or do anything with her hair. She kept herself as unattractive as possible short of putting on weight or breaking out in pimples, but a certain number of guys hit on her anyway. Some guys were like that; the mere possibility that you might be the possessor of a vagina was all it took to arouse their interest.
She deflected any attention that came her way, meeting their gaze with a slack-jawed, bovine stare, missing the point of their innuendo. Some of them probably thought she was retarded. One way or the other, they all lost what minimal interest she’d inspired.
After work she’d pick up half a barbecued chicken or some Chinese take-out and eat in her room; when that got old she’d stop at a diner and sit in a rear booth reading the paper while she ate. Back in her room she read library books until it was bedtime. She went to bed early and didn’t get up until she had to. If this city was a place to hide, well, so was sleep.
It was strange. She’d felt uplifted after she left Hedgemont, felt she’d done something good, something transcendent. She’d given Alvin Kirkaby something he longed for, and something no one else could or would have given him — the liberation of a peaceful death.
And that made her feel good, in an unfamiliar way, and she enjoyed the feeling while it lasted.
But it didn’t last very long, and when it passed it gave way to a feeling of emptiness. Her life stretched out in front of her, and she saw herself going on like this forever, hooking up with men, sleeping with them, killing them, and moving on. What she had always enjoyed, what had indeed never failed to thrill
her, all at once seemed unendurable.
So she worked in the daytime and read in the evenings and slept at night. And put everything on hold, waiting.
One afternoon she bought a phone. Prepaid, good for a couple of hours of calls. You could trace it back to the store where she bought it, but no further than that. They didn’t make her give a name, let alone show ID.
She took it back to her room, put it in a drawer. Three nights later she picked it up and made a call.
“Kimmie!”
“Hi, Rita.”
“I was wondering if I’d ever hear from you again.”
“Oh, I’m harder to shake than a summer cold.”
“It’s so good to hear your voice. Only the thing is—”
“You’ve got company.”
“How’d you know?”
“Is he cute? Has he got a nice cock?”
“Kimmie…”
“You want to call me back when you’re done? I’ll give you my number.”
There’d been no calls, to Rita or to anyone else, since she left Hedgemont. There’d been no phone — she’d left the battery in one trash receptacle and the phone in another, and hadn’t bothered to get a new phone until just the other day, when a store she’d passed every day suddenly drew her in.
And then, the new phone in her possession, she’d left it alone until tonight. She’d bought it for one reason and one reason only, to call Rita. So why did it take her three days to get around to making the call?
“So did you fuck him?”
“Kimmie! Suppose it was somebody else calling?”
“Not much chance of that. Nobody else has the number. Anyway, I know the answer. Either you fucked him or there was something really good on TV, because I was just about ready to give up on you and go to sleep.”
“What, at nine-thirty? Oh, you must be in one of those weird eastern time zones.”
“Central. It’s eleven-thirty here.”
Talking, back and forth. She found herself talking a little about her job, about the place where she was staying. And realized how she’d missed this contact, this connection.
“Such an exciting life,” Rita was saying. “A new job, a new address…”
“Feeding a Xerox machine. Picking up General Tso’s chicken on my way home. I don’t know if my heart can stand the excitement.”
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