Psychosomatic
Page 20
Megan stroked Alan’s hair. His eyes now open and unblinking, he was still breathing. Shallow breaths, then catching. A long exhale.
Megan whispered, “You were a good man. She loved you.”
Alan didn’t take another breath.
EPILOGUE
Six months later
Lydia liked the way the men felt when they were on top of her, their hard cocks urgent and powerful inside her. She gave up trying to memorize their faces weeks ago and instead gave in to fantasy. Alan was still in some of those fantasies, much leaner and more confident, and she shouted his name sometimes. Some of the men didn’t like that, and they stopped or they tried to hit her. When that happened, Terry stormed in with a baseball bat and knocked the guy off her, told him his time was up. He protected her that way, and was so gentle when he cleaned her up after each man, washed her with her favorite strawberry/kiwi-scented soap, fixed her hair, changed her silk teddy, sometimes white, sometimes red. He never came on to her, never helped himself. Maybe he didn’t find her attractive. Lydia hoped that would change one day. She kept pouring on the sweetness, hoping for his surrender.
When the cops netted her in the airport, Lydia imagined a sexless life. Even if she got out of prison, how would she ever be able to meet another man like Alan? Then Terry suggested they let men pay to be with her, a good way to earn enough money quickly to help them escape to someplace warm. It was taking longer than she expected. Every day, Terry told her they were so much closer, to try being patient. She had lost track of days, lying on this bed, only occasionally being carried throughout the small apartment to watch a little TV (never the news or a talk show, nothing current. Maybe a reality show, a dating show. Terry and she both loved those), or relax in the tub, a rare treat, since Terry had to hold her in there.
She complained about the drafts, since Terry had set them up in an old house divided into two apartments, upstairs and down, in northwest Grand Rapids. The winter winds found the cracks and it was tough to keep their upstairs apartment warm. When they arrived there, it was summer, and Terry raved about the beautiful Michigan summers, assuring Lydia they would be on the way to the tropics before the first snow. As time passed, though, he confessed that the cost of living was taking a little more money than he first anticipated—gas, electric, cable, upkeep on the Monte Carlo, especially getting the back-end repaired.
“I can’t keep this up forever,” she told him. “Isn’t there another way?”
“Sure, if you want to get risky,” Terry said.
She couldn’t see how having unprotected sex with anonymous men up to ten times a day was any less risky, at least for her. In fact, she had no idea if she was full of disease or pregnant or rotting away from the inside.
All she had were the feelings and the fantasies. Sometimes, considering what prison might have been like, this alternative seemed the better deal. At night, alone, without Alan to tuck her in, she felt disgusting. She often wondered where Alan had escaped to, and hoped he would one day come looking for her.
The next man stood in the doorway. Lydia heard Terry’s voice as they discussed price. The sun had set and the light outside the window was fading, so Lydia only saw the silhouette of the man, short and balding in a flannel shirt. He lingered by the bedside looking at her.
“What’s your name?” she said.
“Shut up, please. Don’t say a word.” He dropped his pants and played with himself, breathing getting heavier. Then his free hand reached, rubbed the nub where her left leg used to be. It was the worst thing the men could do. Alan always saw what she had seen—the phantom limbs real as everyone else’s if they imagined them to be. He knew the curves, the lengths, all the sensitive spots. These men, it was as if they were slicing their hands right through her skin, touching muscles and bones instead of her reaching arms and shapely legs.
She turned her head to the other side, squeezed her eyes shut, and promised this was the last one. It was time to mold Terry the way she had molded Alan. Terry’s resistance had been strong so far, but Lydia still knew some tricks.
The last one.
As the man climbed onto the bed and pushed her silk teddy up, she wondered how many times she had thought that lately. Fifty? A hundred? This time, she meant it.
Anthony Neil Smith is currently the Director of Creative Writing at Southwest Minnesota State University. He earned a Ph.D in English from the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Writers in 2002.
His first novel, Psychosomatic, was published by PointBlank Press in 2005, and was later translated into Swedish. His second novel, The Drummer, was published by Two Dollar Radio in 2006. His third, Yellow Medicine, was published in 2008 by Bleak House Books. Yellow Medicine was one of January Magazine’s Top Crime Novels for 2007. The sequel, Hogdoggin’, was published in June of 2009. Smith has published over forty short stories in venues such as Murdaland, Exquisite Corpse, Bellevue Literary Review, Thug Lit, Natural Bridge, Crime Factory, Beat to a Pulp, Needle, Connecticut Review, and many others.
Dr. Smith is co-creator and editor of the internet noir zine Plots with Guns, which attracts a wide audience from both the crime fiction and literary arenas. Stories from PWG have been featured in Best American Mystery Stories, and one was nominated for an Anthony Award in 2003
You can find him at:
anthonyneilsmith.typepad.com
twitter.com/docnoir
plotswithguns.com