Body Language

by James W. Hall

  “Thanks, Dan.”

  “Now, you owe me one, Alex. I need to know where you are.”

  She watched a blue car cruise slowly up East Ruskin Street.

  “I can’t do that, Dan. Not yet.”

  “Christ, Alex. Stop being such a goddamn hardhead.”

  “I bet I can guess the shrinks’ other insight.”

  “Talk to me, Alex. Give me a location.”

  “After he’s done two more, D and R, and his appetite is in high gear, that’s when he comes for me. I’m the last A, the grand finale. Is that what they said?”

  She heard Dan sigh.

  “That’s what they said.”

  THIRTY

  She was so near, he could taste her. Within breathing distance. Sharing these same molecules with her, drawing them deep inside, letting them out. He could smell her on his tongue, an iridescent scent. A cold burn with bright edges. She had tried to flee from him, but she could not. She could not hide her distinctive fragrance by crossing streams or jumping precipices, or running six hundred miles away. He was tuned to her smell. An infallible homing device. One particle was all he needed, one fleck of sloughed-off skin, one invisible dot of her evaporated sweat. She was in his nose. He was inhaling her, taking her into his body, directly along the neural pathways. Flakes of her physical self were chafing his brain stem. He was alive with her. Tingling in the dark. “Tiger! Tiger! burning bright/In the forests of the night …” His invisible flames, orange and red and yellow, leaping up to the sky. He was on fire, a transparent wraith. Incandescent and unseen.

  Standing perfectly still in a sandy lane across East Ruskin Street, white picket fences to his left and right, fifty feet away from her, he peered through her flimsy curtains. Fifty feet of sheer darkness, only that diaphanous veil of sweet nighttime air between them. In seconds, he could cross the street, be up the stairs and through her door. Hit her, take her, enter her body, watch the hatred surface in her eyes, the murderous loathing. Then he would have to slice her throat to save himself. His final salvation. So effortless, so exquisite in its symmetry.

  But for now, he stayed put, watched her speaking on the phone, watched her rise, pace in front of the couch. Watched her stare ahead, her eyes meeting his through the dark, though she did not know he was there, for he was profoundly shrouded. A shadow within a shadow. Darkness shielded by darkness. A swimmer in the black sea of midnight.

  He was in no hurry. On the contrary. Over these last few months, as he had made her name take shape on the bloody floors of Miami apartments, he felt an increasing serenity, a warmth, a crystal focus. The relaxed readiness of a man poised before a hissing rattler. Looking for his moment. Waiting with every nerve fiber twinkling, each muscle cocked, waiting for the perfect instant.

  No reason to hurry, for this was the final chapter. When it ended, there was nothing for him afterward. Nothing. For years, he had immersed himself in her life. Following her on her ceaseless rounds, even at times following her husband, Stan. He had given over his life to watching her, and he was fully aware of the void that awaited, but it did not disturb him in the least. That endless stretch of empty time without Alexandra in the world would be his fulfillment, his time for contemplation and reflection.

  Maybe he would simply become another. Sink away beneath the surface of the personality he had already created. Assume that identity. Marry, have children. Go about his job, his daily rounds of exercise and eating and companionship. Disappear into that shell of a man that the world saw. So benign, so trustworthy, so interchangeable with any other man. Maybe that was his future, his job done, his quest complete, a quiet death of personality, the wolf softening into the lamb.

  He was watching her, watching her move, watching her talk into the mouthpiece of her phone, watching her breathe, when from the edge of his vision he noticed movement.

  He drew back and peered up into the dark.

  Three doors away on the dark balcony he saw the glimmer of faces, the flit and flicker of two women, both blond, one short, one tall. And a man, large and unmoving. All of them stood at the railing as they stared down at Alexandra Rafferty’s rented beach house. He heard the clink of their glasses, their soft laughter.

  He would have thought nothing of it. He would have looked away, gone back to his own watching were it not for that inexpressible movement of the tall one’s head, some tic with her hair, a flip perhaps, that made him catch his breath. Pushed him even farther into the shadows.

  It was body language he had seen before. A gesture so precise, so exactly duplicated that there was no doubt. He had seen this woman earlier. Watched her from afar. Several moments passed before he could remember where or when or who. But then it came with sudden clarity, with the intense brilliance of revelation.

  In watching Stan, he had encountered this one, apparently his mistress. The name on her mailbox was Jennifer McDougal. From what he could tell, she was a woman filled with fluff. Stan’s diddle-headed lover. A feather to any wind.

  Seeing her there at Seaside, watching her look down at Alexandra’s rented house, he felt the bowstrings draw taut within him. Jennifer McDougal. For months he had watched Stan Rafferty coming and going from her house. He had watched them kiss good-bye on her front porch. Seen that same hitching toss of her hair, a gesture no doubt meant to be sultry and alluring but repeated so often and so mindlessly, it meant nothing, a dead echo, a parody.

  Jennifer McDougal and her two friends. He didn’t know why she was there, didn’t need to know. He watched them watching. He watched them glimmer in the dark, listened to their laughter, the tinkling of their glasses. Three doors down, two floors up. Perfect. Absolutely perfect.

  The Red Barn was a rock-and-roll bar in Grayton Beach, two miles from Seaside, beyond the halo of the town’s lights, beyond the gravitational pull of its charm. The Red Barn was a loud and smoky honky-tonk with a thousand beer cans decorating the shelves. A stale taste in the air of a deep-fat fryer that hadn’t been shut off in years. Guys in dirty T-shirts, jeans, and construction boots mingling with retirees in pink shirts and green trousers and college kids with their baseball hats on backward. An occasional amateur staggering up to the stage to play his harmonica or banjo with the raucous, kick-ass band for a song or two, a lot of hooting, a couple of serious pool games going on in the back room.

  Nice loud cover for whatever he wanted to do.

  Jennifer McDougal and her two friends had been there for half an hour. They were wearing low-cut cotton dresses, Jennifer in burgundy, the dark girl in a paisley print. Something about the way the dress fit the shorter girl, or the way she wore it, suggested that she had never worn a dress before.

  Six guys had approached their table and were sent packing, the girls howling with laughter as the rejects marched away. In their quiet moments, the girls gazed at each other, held hands below the table.

  A minute earlier, he had followed one of the cast-off suitors out into the parking lot and with only minor physical pressure, had secured from him the password to these girls’ affection.

  Now he called up his best smile, pushed himself away from the wall, and ambled over to their table. He stepped close, blocking their view of the stage, his green knapsack slung casually over his shoulder.

  “You girls out for a night on the town with your daddy?”

  “This is Norman,” the small blond one said. “He’s nobody’s daddy. He’s a sphinx. An enigma.”

  “He’s from the planet Penis,” said Jennifer McDougal.

  “I see.”

  “How about you? You from Penis, too?”

  “Of course I am,” he said. “Aren’t all men?”

  “If you want to sit down with us, you’ve got to answer a question first. That’s the rule,” the short one said. “A riddle. Get it wrong, you gotta fuck off.”

  “All right,” he said. “That’s fair.”

  “But we have to warn you. Nobody’s gotten it right. Five flameouts so far.”

  “Six,” he said.
“I counted six.”

  “Ohhh,” Jennifer said. “He’s been watching. He’s been plotting. I think we have a naughty boy here, Emma.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “He looks naughty all right.”

  “What’s in the knapsack, good-looking? A gross of condoms?”

  “Blood,” he said.

  “Blood?” Jennifer lifted a theatrical hand to her mouth. “Oh, boy, we got a live one this time.”

  “What do you mean, blood?” said Emma.

  “I mean two plastic pouches of blood. Five hundred ccs per pouch.”

  Emma frowned.

  “You’re lying.”

  “I don’t lie,” he said. “It’s the one thing I will not do.”

  “Get out of here, you weirdo.”

  “Emma is asshole-intolerant,” Jennifer said. “I guess you’ll have to go.”

  “What about the riddle? Don’t I get a shot?”

  Jennifer took a deep sip of her margarita and backhanded the foam off her lips.

  “Okay, all right. We’ll give you two chances. That’s what we’ve been giving the others. That’s fair, isn’t it, Emma? Two chances for the naughty boy?”

  “All right,” said Emma, not meeting his eyes. “So here it is, lover boy. What has eighteen knees and white blood?”

  “The President of the United States?”

  Jennifer laughed. Emma stared at her friend, unsmiling.

  “One more guess,” said Jennifer. “Eighteen knees and white blood.”

  “A cockroach,” he said. “A common brown roach.”

  Jennifer squealed and clapped her hands. Emma turned her head away and stared at one of the red exit signs.

  “Can you believe it, Emma? He got it tight.”

  “How’d you know that, penis-head?” She refused to look at him. He liked her better every minute.

  “I know a lot of things. I’m a man with considerable arcane knowledge.”

  “Okay, Mr. Arcane, sit your butt on down.” Jennifer patted the chair next to her.

  “I believe your friend would rather I shove off. I don’t think she wants to share.”

  “Oh, she’s just being cranky. Go on, sit down. Join us. You got the riddle right, so you win the right to buy us a drink.”

  “How about the enigma—does he mind?”

  “Hey, Norm. You give a shit if this good-looking guy sits down and pays for the rest of our drinks?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, then, pretty boy. I’m Jennifer and this is Emma. Snag us a waitress, why don’t you? Make yourself useful.”

  When the waitress had left with their orders, he turned back to the young women and said, “You seem to be celebrating tonight. What’s the occasion?”

  “We won the lottery,” Emma said coldly.

  “Wonderful. And how do you intend to spend your loot?”

  “Emma and I are going to become home owners in Seaside. Going to join the leisure class.” Jennifer was beaming.

  “And you, Norman?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Jennifer laughed and said, “Norman’s one of those guys you read about in the newspaper, this hermit who’s got only one shirt and one pair of raggedy underwear, lives like he’s penniless, saves string and has jars full of buttons that he’s been squirreling away for forty years, but then when he dies, it turns out he leaves about two hundred gazillion dollars to his goddamn parakeet. That’s Norman.”

  Emma’s frown defrosted and she turned a faint smile to Jennifer.

  “Wow, Jen. That was good. That was a good one.”

  “I’m sky-high,” Jennifer said. “I guess being rich must agree with me.”

  A half hour later on the moonlit beach, he and Norman followed fifty yards behind the girls. He was carrying a bottle of wine, Lucere, a crisp and spicy California chardonnay that had been chilling in the ice chest in his car. Just the thing for a beach party.

  The girls were skipping along at water’s edge, hand in hand like sprites, dancing like dryads along some ancient Grecian shore. Even from a mile away, the Red Barn’s booming bass still shook the air.

  It was perfect, perfect, perfect. An exquisite night, one to remember, when all things became congruent, when the neat round pegs of the past fit into the neat round holes of the present. When one hand pressed against the opposite hand, a flawless fit. Yin merged with yang, pit answered pat.

  “So what’s your story, Norman?”

  The big man trudged beside him as they moved deeper into the dark.

  “I don’t have one.”

  The earth seemed to cringe beneath his tread. Small quakes at each footfall. The man must have weighed three hundred pounds. Hard fat, a lumbering mind.

  “Why’re you with these girls? An older man like you hanging out with children? Why is that? And why do you let them pick on you? Mock you? Twist your nose, ridicule you? Why, Norman? There must be some good reason you subject yourself to that. Do you have low self esteem? Are you slow-witted, a moron of some kind?”

  “No.”

  “What you remind me of is an indulgent parent, unable to discipline his unruly teenage girls. Is that what you are, Norman?”

  The big man halted and turned to face him.

  “Oh, I’ve struck a chord, have I?”

  Norman filled his lungs with night air and blew it out.

  “Yes, yes. I thought I saw something twitch in your eyes when I first came to the table and asked if you were their daddy. You are, aren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “You’re a bad liar, Norman. I like that in a person. Truth is important, don’t you think? The most important of the virtues.”

  Norman walked on in silence.

  “But of course. The dark one, the mouthy one, Emma, she’s your daughter. Not the other one, lovely Jennifer. Yes, of course. I see the family resemblance. Emma’s broad face, her heavy Slavic cheekbones. Yes, of course.”

  Norman halted again and stared into his eyes.

  “Who are you, asshole?”

  “I’m the man inside your head, Norman. I’m the one who can sense each and every secret circulating in your blood. Emma is your daughter, but you’d rather no one knows. You’d rather pretend to be just a friend, their peer. Why is that? Is it because you sleep with her? Have you spread her legs, Norman, and forced yourself inside her? Is this why she’s become a lesbian, because her daddy screwed her?”

  “Hell no.”

  “How sad it is. How terribly poignant. What’s the world coming to when a child can speak so harshly, with such malice to her own father? What a sad, twisted world we live in.”

  “She doesn’t know.”

  His large face went dull and he turned his eyes to the shadows.

  “What? You’re telling me Emma doesn’t know she’s your daughter?”

  “You can’t let her know.”

  “You’ve been associating with your daughter and hiding your identity? Well, how fascinating. How utterly strange. What happened? Did you have an affair with Emma’s mother long ago and now you’re embarrassed to reveal the truth? You’re unsure of Emma’s response if she was to find out. Perhaps she’d be outraged. Perhaps she’d exile you from her kingdom. So you’ve chosen to suffer her derision rather than risk having her know the truth.”

  “I’ll kill you if you tell.”

  Norman turned away and plodded after the girls in silence.

  “Oh, my,” he said, as he hurried after Norman. “Now death has reared its ugly head.”

  Norman tramped through the dark.

  “Do you ponder death a great deal, Norman? Drawing your last breath. Are you death-obsessed?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “You don’t care, do you? I sense that. You’re one of those who don’t see a huge difference between this life and the afterlife. It’s no big fucking deal. Is that you, Norman? Do I have you pegged?”

  “Maybe.”

  He shifted the backpack on his shoulder, felt the cold blood wobble.


  Thirty yards ahead, the girls were ankle-deep in the surf, Jennifer splashing water playfully at Emma. The throaty barks of their laughter.

  “And that’s because of your childhood. Something happened, didn’t it?”

  Norman halted and looked at him.

  “Who are you?”

  “Oh, I’m just another tortured soul. A lot like you, I dare say. I suspect we carry the same passport, members of the same club. Of course, I’ve only just met you, but I’m quick to read a fellow sufferer’s vibrations. I’m certain we have a lot in common. A loveless childhood, a traumatic event. Scarred souls, aberrant pathologies. That’s us, isn’t it? I’m not being too impertinent, am I? You’re a lost soul, a man without conscience or remorse. A man so cold and empty, you sometimes frighten yourself.”

  Norman resumed his stride. The girls were squealing somewhere ahead in the dark.

  “Would you mind if I killed you, Norman? Would that bother you a great deal?”

  “Try it, asshole.”

  “Oh, Norman. You’re so contemptuous. Why? You don’t think I can kill you? Because you’re so large and ruthless and I’m just an average-size man? Is that what you think? You’re a believer in appearances, are you?”

  The big man continued to plod toward the girls.

  Out beyond the surf, a trawler was moving through the dark. Its lights winking, a stray piece of country-western music escaped across the waters.

  “You see, Norman, I know exactly how you think. I can get inside your brain and read your shapeless thoughts. I’m in there now. It’s a skill I have. I can be inside your head, feel your mind at work. I can experience you from the inside out. It’s a thing I can do, an ability, a gift. Do you believe that, Norman? Do you believe I’m inside your mind right now, sensing the world as you sense it? Do you think I have that genius?”

  “If you say so.”

  “Oh, yes. I say so. I most assuredly say so. And what I know from being inside your large and spacious skull is that you had the same terrible childhood that I had. You had a mother who was not a mother and a father who was no one’s father, and there were men who beat you and women who preyed on you and teachers and policemen and neighbor children who tormented you and drove you to the horrible cave where you dwell now. I think you stood too near the bonfire of your misery, Norman, and it incinerated your soul. Am I wrong? Or do I speak your thoughts, Norman? Do I give words to the song of your horror?”