“That’s okay with me,” she said, “but we can’t let them bleed to death—can we?”
“We’ll deal with that later.”
There was no way we could lift Vin into the back of the ambulance in his condition or his state of mind, so we’d have to leave him where he was. Frankie would be better off locked up—that way he couldn’t go for help—so I fetched the keys from the ignition and locked him in. Then I threw the keys into the undergrowth.
“You really gonna fuckin’ leave us here?” asked Vin.
“Why not? You scared of ghosts?”
“Like the bitch said, we’ll bleed to death.”
“I don’t think so. Just try to stay cool.”
“It’s gonna be fuckin’ freezin’.”
I held his own gun, a big Colt, on him while Sandy searched the Lincoln for something to keep him warm. She came back with a couple of plaid car rugs and also what looked like the blanket from a baby carriage, which she ripped down the middle to make a tourniquet for Vin’s leg. When she bent to apply it, he tried to grab her around the neck with his good arm. That gave me a legitimate excuse to rearrange his greasy sideburns with a sideswipe from the gun, which weighed about as much as a brick. I think I broke his cheekbone. In any case, he took my advice and shut up—except for the occasional squeal of pain—while Sandy finished tying the tourniquet. She seemed to know what she was doing, and said something about having her first-aid badge. When she was finished we tucked ourselves into the Lincoln and took off in the direction we had come from.
I let Sandy drive because the crack across my skull and other mistreatment were beginning to make me feel groggy. I had to ask her to slow down till we left the dirt track. The way the Lincoln’s suspension was taking the ruts reminded me of the time I got seasick on the ferry to Fire Island.
“I should’ve killed them,” said Sandy. “They were going to kill you. I could have killed them both when they opened the door, but I chickened out.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
“I should’ve killed them,” she repeated.
“Look, you took care of them—that’s all that matters. You saved my ass.”
She gave me a big smile.
“I’ll expect a thank-you note, then.”
The ambulance had turned right onto the dirt track, so we turned left when we hit the blacktop, assuming that that had to be the way back to the city. We soon merged with the highway we’d been on before, the one with the center divider and a canopy of trees that almost shut out the sky. We passed under a fake rustic bridge, and then I spotted a sign announcing upcoming exits to Norwalk and New Canaan. That led me to think we were on the Merritt Parkway, which heads up into Connecticut from the New York state line. When we came to a rest area with a pay phone, Sandy pulled over and I called 911, telling the operator that there was an ambulance and a couple of men with gunshot wounds somewhere on a dirt road northeast of New Canaan.
We could have been back in the city in under an hour, but what would we do when we got there? Sandy preempted that line of thought by taking the next exit toward Norwalk and pulling into the driveway of the first motel we encountered. It seemed like a good thought. We could rest up before we figured out what to do. We checked in and asked if there was food available, or anything to drink. The clerk told us that we could get food delivered from the diner just down the road and liquor from a nearby convenience store. We ordered sandwiches, vodka, and some mixers, and the clerk said he’d call the room when they arrived. That took about fifteen minutes. I went down to the desk, paid the delivery boy, and returned to the room. I found Sandy checking her makeup.
“I look a mess,” she said.
“You look like Ginevra de’ Benci,” I told her.
“Let’s leave your ex-girlfriends out of this,” she said.
I poured some vodka, then we tapped the two plastic cups we had together and each took a swig. Sandy patted the bed she was seated on, so I plopped down next to her. I kissed her and she kissed me back.
“This is where I cross the line,” I told her.
“Don’t let me talk you out of it,” she whispered, turning away from me so I could unfasten the white dress.
EIGHTEEN
The White Gables Tourist Hotel and Travel Court had aspirations, but not too many. Sandy and I had checked into a room on the second floor, big enough for two double beds, a dresser, a small table, a couple of chairs, and a folding luggage rack. There was an okay bathroom with a good-sized tub and a walk-in closet with hangers chained to the sliding hooks so they couldn’t be stolen and fenced in Poughkeepsie. For better or worse, someone had made an effort with the decor. The wall paper was figured with kidney-shaped abstract designs—or maybe they derived more from livers afflicted with cirrhosis—and there were curtains to match. On the walls were reproductions of colorful views of picturesque Mediterranean fishing ports, boldly set down with a palette knife. Sandy particularly liked one that featured a swarthy guitar player in a sombrero, seated on a bollard with shrimp boats in the background. I went for the one with the bare-breasted flamenco dancer performing for an audience of grateful ragamuffins and homeless dogs.
We undressed each other, which didn’t involve much effort on my part since Sandy was eager to help. Then we took a bath together and soaped each other, indulging in explorations I had dreamed about for days. After I had dried her off, I carried her to the nearest bed and laid her down on its chintz coverlet. The shower had reawakened the rawness in the deep welt on my cheek, which felt as if it was being cauterized with a blowtorch, but I almost forgot the pain as I became lost in the smoothness of Sandy’s skin. It was almost unreal in its silkiness, and free of blemishes except for a cicatrix like a miniature appendectomy scar on the right side of her groin.
There is a special quality in making love to someone for the first time, but in this instance it was heightened to a degree I can only describe as eerie. I was about to cross a line—the one drawn by Garofolo, J.H. Lucking, Esq., and God knows who else—but it felt as if I was also crossing another that was less tangible yet every bit as meaningful. I just didn’t know where it had been drawn, or by whom, or with what intentions. Absurdly, my mind spooled back to some Technicolor travelogue I’d once seen about the naval ceremony of crossing the equator aboard a nuclear sub—a raunchy undersea carnival featuring enlisted men costumed as brawny pirates, and ensign pollywogs in mermaid drag, with King Neptune and his court in charge of the whole deal. A beefy petty officer in a Jayne Mansfield wig was at the monarch’s side, swooning over the size of his trident—one of a suite of sixteen aimed at Vladivostok. As for Sandy, I had no idea what was going on in her head, but whatever it was, I dug the way it played out in the hormonal arena.
“You don’t know what this means,” she whispered as I grazed on her labia. “You don’t know how long I’ve waited for this.”
The words seemed odd, as if they didn’t apply to me, or only partially. How long had she known me? But I didn’t really care. I was just about to enter her when she broke the clinch—those fight terms come in handy—and rolled off the bed. I didn’t mind too much. Watching her bend over and reach into her purse was an aesthetic experience in itself. Maybe, I figured, she was looking for a contraceptive or something.
What she brought out, though, was the big .357 Magnum we’d taken from Vin. This did nothing to enhance the tensile quality of my erection, but then Sandy bit her lip and giggled, and flattened herself against me, and reached between my legs as she held Vin’s heater up against my forehead with her other hand. I’d heard about people getting their kicks playing Russian roulette during sex, but it wasn’t my scene.
“That thing’s loaded,” I pointed out.
“I know,” she said with another giggle.
“Would you mind putting it down?”
“Does it make you uncomfortable?”
“N
ot the word I would have chosen . . .”
“The safety’s on.”
“Great. That makes me feel much better . . .”
“You want to hold it? Doesn’t it turn you on?”
“No, it doesn’t.”
She saw that I wasn’t kidding, and probably felt it as much too, because her other hand was ideally placed to make that assessment.
“It was just a joke,” she murmured, unconvincingly.
She bit her lip.
“I thought you were the girl next door,” I said.
“I told you that depends on where you live,” she said. “And I told you I wasn’t always a nice girl. I grew up with guns. They’re like toys. Toys for boys . . .”
“Not to me, they’re not.”
“Well, let’s not let it spoil everything,” she said. “I was just a little nervous, that’s all—nervous about what you’re going to find out. I thought playing with a gun would relax me.”
I didn’t want to know about this shit. I was through with playing games. The moment had come. I was taking charge. I took the gun away from her. She didn’t resist. Feeling the gun cradled in my hand, I was instantly hard again. Sandy laughed.
“You see? It works.”
I put the gun down on the bedside table just as I found myself starting to believe her.
At the moment of penetration, she let out a yelp. I asked if she was okay.
“Oh God, yes!” she replied.
I became aware of a viscous fluid mediating between my engorged penis and the contracting walls of her vagina. Blood? Might the unthinkable be possible? But I didn’t dwell on this for more than a second or two, because now the line had been fully crossed and The Kingdom of Heaven was at hand. I passed through the Pearly Gates, giving St. Peter the finger, and exploded into the end zone—Hallelujah!—blissfully mixing metaphors as I downed the pigskin with such ferocity that it burst. The touchdown was greeted with yells of “Yes . . . yes . . . Christ, yes!” as Sandy bucked beneath me like a salmon fighting its way upriver.
Afterward, I lay there, still inside her, kissing her lips, her eyelids, and whispering haikus that had meaning only in the gibberish dialect of abject infatuation—in which, luckily, she was fluent. She returned my compliments with nonsensical madrigals and epigrams of her own.
“I want to do it again,” she said.
“Give me a minute,” I begged.
“Now,” she said firmly, disengaging herself from my flagging erection, then immediately setting about restoring it by caressing it with her discarded underpants. I watched as she went to work and saw that she had another purpose in mind beyond bringing me back to full tumescence. She was surreptitiously cleaning blood from my penis.
“You have your period?”
She looked at me as if she was wondering what story she could get away with.
“Would you mind?”
“No—but I think you’re trying to tell me something else.”
She bit her lip.
“Are you?” I asked, disbelieving. “I mean—were you?”
She said nothing.
“You told me,” I said, “that you lost your virginity a long time ago.”
“I was raped when I was thirteen,” she said. “In Kaiserslautern, where my father was stationed. Three ugly grunts—in the bathroom of a Wienerwald restaurant. That was the first time.”
“So you do have your period?”
She shook her head.
“So what’s the story?”
Another long pause.
“Ever hear of hymenoplasty?” she asked.
“A fake hymen? You’ve got to be kidding!”
“A prosthetic. It’s a common trick in places where a bride has to prove her virginity. Now you can get it done very nicely and hygienically by a plastic surgeon. If it’s done properly it tears just like the natural hymen, and there’s bleeding.”
“But why?”
“Can’t you guess?”
“Someone who wants you,” I said, “wants you to be a virgin?”
“Something like that,” she said.
“And this person believes you are a virgin?”
“Yes and no.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He likes to play pretend.”
“And this is the person who has been terrorizing you?”
“Shut up,” she said. “I’ll tell you everything, but right now I need you to fuck me. I need it like my life depends on it.”
I wanted to ask more questions, but she had applied her lips to my vestigial hard-on and just the sight of her devouring me, let alone the lovely ache that went along with it, was enough for me to file my curiosity somewhere where it wasn’t going to get in the way. Sandy knew tricks that she hadn’t learned by watching The Sound of Music, or even Thoroughly Modern Millie. The second fuck was a reprise of the first, but maybe even better. There was only one tense moment—when I attempted to plant a love bite on her throat. I’m not into the vampire thing any more than I’m into loaded pistols as a form of aphrodisiac, but her throat was so white and so inviting I couldn’t help myself.
“Not there,” she said, and her entire body froze, but in a few seconds the tenseness passed and I was free to melt into her again.
Afterward, always the traditionalist, I lit a cigarette. Sandy watched me inhale.
“Don’t you offer one to a lady?” she asked.
“I didn’t know you smoked.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know,” she said, taking the cigarette from my lips.
“I thought,” I said, “that this was when we were going to remedy that.”
For once Sandy didn’t dole out her stock reply. Naked on the bed, seated in lotus position, her face wreathed in smoke, she looked wonderful. But I saw something forlorn in her eyes I’d never seen before.
“I did say something like that, didn’t I?” she said. “There are a couple of things you really should know, but first I need a drink, because this isn’t going to be easy. You’re going to need one too—and this time let’s have some ice, for Christ’s sake.”
“First give me a taste of what I’m in for.”
She chewed her lip till I thought she’d bite through it.
“Did you ever hear,” she asked, “of how people who’ve had an arm or a leg amputated can still feel it when it’s gone? Sometimes it even itches and they want to scratch it, but there’s nothing there to scratch.”
“Yeah—I’ve heard that.”
“Well, how should I put this?” she wondered. “You were surprised, I think, a couple of nights ago when I told you I had a hard-on for you. The fact is, though, that’s exactly how it felt, and it really itched like hell.”
From her grin, I guess I must have looked shell-shocked.
“The proper term,” she said, “is gender reassignment.”
I don’t know how I responded to that.
“Get the ice,” she said. “You’re really going to need that drink before I’m finished.”
I climbed into my pants, pulled on my sweatshirt, and headed along a concrete terrace toward the ice machine that lived in a small, unfinished room near the stairwell along with vending machines dispensing Pepsi and 7-Up, Hershey bars and Frito-Lays. I took my time, because I was stunned by what Sandy had just laid on me. Given the paradoxes and inconsistencies that had arisen in what little I already knew about her, maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised, but the fact was it had turned me inside out. I tried to think about the sweet expression on her face as she had sprawled across the bed when we had finished making love for the second time, and the way she had asked me, guilelessly, “Did you really like that?” I didn’t want those memories erased, but I was stumped when it came to putting them together with what I had just been told. For some reason I remembered Yari M
endelssohn’s mantras. “So long as it doesn’t hurt anyone . . . You are who you eat . . . Love the one you’re with, luv . . .”
Seemed to make sense so far, but I knew there had to be a lot more to come.
I was so lost in shock and confusion I didn’t pick up on the approaching footsteps, but, as the ice rattled from the machine, I heard a scuffing sound—the wedge being kicked from under the door. I turned to get a glimpse of two familiar faces, one belonging to the Yul Brynner stand-in who had been working the entrance when I visited the Alibi, the other to Darla, the Alibi waitress and presumed undercover agent. Then, as the door slammed shut, the back of my skull was hammered for the second time in a few hours, and a red neon sign in the form of a peace symbol flashed on behind my eyes. And off. And on. And off again.
NINETEEN
I came to on a bare mattress in a room the size of a large broom closet, but soundproofed and furnished with a microphone, headphones, speakers, and other bits of electronic gadgetry. My ankles were shackled together, but the chain was long enough to permit me to stand and allow some freedom of movement. Standing proved to be about as much fun as taking a gig as Muhammad Ali’s punching bag, but I managed to struggle to my feet and look out through a large sheet of heavy plate glass set into one wall. I saw that I was in the isolation booth of a recording studio—the closed-off room where a vocalist or a soloist, or the drummer maybe, can be acoustically secluded from the other musicians during a recording session. Outside was the “live room,” littered with music stands, mikes, sound baffles, and folding chairs. A few instrument cases were scattered around, and a double bass stood in one corner. For some reason there were Union Jacks pinned to one wall, and on the back of one chair was a leather jacket hand-painted with a sampler of psychedelic clichés. Beyond all that was the panoramic window of the control room, overlooking the whole thing like the control tower of an airport.
There was no one to be seen, but I spotted a red switch on a console by the microphone, held it down, and said, “Okay—where are you fuckers hiding?”
The Girl From Nowhere Page 15
