by phuc
Kathleen had turned the a/c off and opened the windows and the slider, and had sat around all day in her panties. She was thinking about "the story," hoping the heat would incite her. She didn't even know if a story existed. What if the killer never contacted her again? And even if she did, how could Kathleen make a story out of it?
What do you look like? she wondered. What's your name? What do you do? She closed her eyes, lax on the couch, and tried to visualize this red haired human cryptogram who'd seen fit to mail her a severed penis. The red hair was as far as she got. The rest stood upright in her mind as only black smears, like a charcoal sketch. Red hair atop a faceless head. A body of shadow. Hands like black bones.
The Dream. Of course. The figure in the dream symbolized the killer. You didn't have to be a psychiatrist to figure that one out. And the photographs? Kathleen vaguely remembered. Quite a bit had been booked as evidence at Uncle Sammy's trial. One exhibit had been a King Edward cigar box filled with snapshots of naked children. That's what the nightmare had been about: backwash of her past colliding with her horrific speculations regarding the killer. Embrace your hatred, the figure had said. Kathleen hated Uncle Sammy.
She smoked one cigarette per hour; it was a long road. She'd gone from Salems to Merits to Nows, which were the lowest tar she could find. She'd tried cold turkey several times, and had been miserable. Weaning herself slowly made more sense. She discovered, oddly, that anticipating the next hour's cigarette kept her on a sparkling creative edge. It gave her something to look forward to.
But that's my life, she thought. Not much ever happened now. All her hopes seemed to exist in the future. She'd lose weight in the future. She'd have a lover in the future. She'd become famous as a writer in the future.
I want something now.
The sunlight through the sliding glass door made her feel dark. The heat chilled her. She attempted to masturbate on the couch but gave up after a diligent 20 minute effort. Images of male models left her unimpressed; they weren't real to her. Her fingers dawdled over her pubis for nothing. Often she'd picture herself in bed with past lovers, and would moisten. But then the desire shut down like a power failure when the memory elucidated her own body. It wasn't the men, because Kathleen was much older when Sammy was caught. There was one guy she'd dated in her freshman year at Maryland. He was the only one she'd ever told about Sammy. After a mixer at the Student Union, they had gone back to his dorm and begun to make love, but suddenly, well into the act, Kathleen had gone dry as pumice. She'd had to stop, gushing apologies. "It's all right," the guy had said. "It's that goddamn uncle of yours, isn't it? I'd like to strangle the bastard." But that wasn't it at all. Thanks to a private counselor her father had sent her to, Kathleen was cured of Uncle Sammy's horrific memory within a year. "Rape Conclusion Substitution," the technique was called, and it worked. She knew it wasn't Sammy who sabotaged her sexual desire. She knew it was herself. The image she had, and the concept she had, of Myself, she thought.
At 6 p.m., she turned on the radio shrink. "...and it makes me feel dirty," a caller was confessing.
"It makes me feel absolutely perverted. It can't be normal for a woman to become excited while she's breast feeding her baby. I'm so ashamed." "Don't be," the radio shrink replied. "Sexual excitation during breast feeding is not only normal, it's a clinically acknowledged component of primal genetic motherhood. Cave women had a lot of perpetual worries worries that make the stresses of our own lives seem quite paltry such as starvation, predators, inclement weather.
Today we worry about our next pay raise; our ancestors, however, had to worry about getting eaten by saber toothed tigers. Its part of the cerebro chemical design of motherhood to feel sexual pleasure while breast feeding. It's an inducement, an additional reason to feed our babies when we might otherwise be worrying about more dire things, and it's not to be confused with any sexual aberration. It's normal and it's healthy and it's nothing to be ashamed about. Many women, in fact, experience minor orgasmic spasms while breast feeding. Think of it as your body's way of reminding you of the importance of keeping your baby well fed..." This seemed interesting to Kathleen, yet grossly disconnected. She didn't like to hear about babies because it reminded her that she didn't have one, and probably never would. Who'd want to have a baby by me? she asked herself. Her thighs spread on the couch, and her spreading buttocks stretched her panties. When she leaned up, a roll of fat at her waistline looked like a seam in dough. You're a Fattie, Kathleen.
You've got to lose weight. But there she went, slamming herself again, doing exactly what she advised her own readers not to do. How many times had readers written in, depressed because their boyfriends had left them for slimmer women? Kathleen always told them that they were better off without men like that, and that better men awaited them. Hypocrite. Fattie. She looked at the clock. Ten after seven.
The lecture! Holy shit!
«« »»
"Isn't it wonderful?" the group president elated. She was an elderly, pale woman, quite misdressed in a shiny black evening gown. Kathleen sat with her in the back of the auditorium, at a table where tickets were sold. "We sold over 200 non member tickets tonight," the older woman said.
Kathleen had arrived late. Thank God there's a speaker before me. A voice echoed hollowly, amplified through the PA system. Rows and rows of people in chairs faced a long draped stage.
The first speaker, a long haired blond man, looked tiny behind the distant podium.
"He must be pretty well known," Kathleen remarked, noting the packed auditorium. There must be 300 people here tonight, she realized.
"Who? Platt?" the older woman said. "Oh, no. He's just a local poet. Usually we don't even sell 50 non member tickets. All these people, Ms. Shade, are here to see you."
Kathleen felt remotely flattered. She'd spoken at writers groups before but never to a crowd this large. Had all these people really come just to see her?
"He'll be done in a minute," the older woman said.
The voice echoed on. Kathleen fidgeted. I hope I don't smell, she fretted. She'd skipped showering. She'd fixed her hair as best she could and had jumped in her car. She couldn't imagine how embarrassed she'd have been if she hadn't made it.
She looked on, over a plethora of heads. The poet, whose name was Maxwell Platt, had read several poems and then broke into a commentary about the function of aesthetics. "...and I can think of no better way that humanity defines itself than through its art. All art really is, after all, is the decryption of our feelings and our views into creative terms, and poetry, the ultimate art form, best discharges this function. Where would we be without it? Where would we be a million years from now when our ruins are discovered and all we have to show for our existence are sitcoms and Schwartzenegger movies? I thank God we have better than that. We have Shelley and Stevens and Pound. We have Owens and T.S. Eliot. We have Shakespeare. But more important than that, we have you. We have all of us, mindful people in chaotic times, the new poets of the new dark age..."
This sounded insightful, but the words kept shifting away. Kathleen scarcely knew what she would talk about when her turn came. These people had paid money to hear her talk. What am I going to give them back? she thought.
Now Platt was saying, "...and I'd like to finish by reading you my latest. It's called ‘Exit.'"
The crowd hushed. Kathleen was thinking about the dream. She was thinking about the killer, and the things Spence had said...
Platt began, "Cenote or ziggurat, so shall it be, to end this riven hatred which beckons me, like torture into the light of the past. The dreams of some are the nightmares of others, blessings assigned or black lots cast, in the most wretched adieu. I glimpsed the light, the light went out.
All my dreams come true."
Dreams, Kathleen thought.
Applause rose. Platt smiled behind the long blond hair that hung in his face. He held up a finger and said into the microphone: "Thank you all very much. And let me add one more thing... We are all the
progeny of creation. I bid you to create."
Kathleen's heart fluttered. It's my turn now, she thought as the older woman said at the same time, "It's your turn now."
The poet came off the stage as the applause subsided. I must look fatter than Roseanne in this dress, Kathleen feared. The lavender crepe swished behind her as she followed the older woman up. She sensed her heels on the waxed wood sounded like mallets pounding.
The older woman tapped the microphone, a formality. "It's my great pleasure," she said, "to introduce our next guest, the renowned columnist from '90s Woman, Ms. Kathleen Shade."
Kathleen addressed the podium. The applause deafened her and seemed to go on and on her propped up smile made her feel like Arsenio Hall. Stop clapping! she thought. Let me start, even though I haven't got the slightest idea what I'm going to talk about. She felt sorry for the poet; he'd received only half the applause. When they finally died down, Kathleen began, "I'm grateful for the opportunity to be here tonight " At the edges of her vision, though, at the back of the auditorium, she noticed two men in suits standing by the door. Another similarly dressed man stood at the forward entrance, arms crossed as if bored.
Kathleen began her talk, which occurred to her somewhat unconsciously. Words flowed from her lips without her really hearing them. The crowd stared up raptly. "Feminism has evolved in many unique ways over the past decade," she was saying, "and what I'd like to talk about tonight, among other things, are the ways in which we, as critical writers, can assert..."
And while she was talking, her eyes drifted across the crowd, and there, sitting in the middle of the front row, was Spence.
(II)
She's thinking of blood.
She's thinking of cutting off skin.
Don't go in. You shouldn't go in.
Her mother's a ghost. Her mother sits beside her in the little car. She's waiting in the lot for 7:30, to go in and see with her own eyes, the Great Woman, when her mother says, Don't go in.
"But why?"
They could catch you.
Her eyes want to explode.
Sometimes she just doesn't think.
"I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking."
That's all right, honey.
Her mother dissolves.
For a moment she wants to cry. The sun is an orange, bright ball creeping past the edge of the city. She presses a fingernail into her palm until blood comes out.
Then she feels better.
No, she mustn't go in. She's about to back out of the parking lot, which is full of cars all coming to see the Great Woman. It's 8:15 now.
A big car whips into the lot.
A big black Ford Thunderbird.
The Great Woman is late.
She watches the Great Woman get out in a fluffy lavender dress and rush toward the pillared building.
She writes down the tag number and leaves.
Bright lights buzz over her head. Tiles shine.
She hears screaming.
A man screaming.
It's a sweet sound. It makes her want to go to the custodial closet and touch herself.
On her way to work, she drove past The Cross.
She sees The Cross now, in her head.
The screaming lets her see The Cross.
The body on the crash table convulses under the bright lights. A black man. Multiple knife wounds to the throat.
"Cut down!" one doctor yells. "Stat!"
"Clamp it!" yells another.
People yell in the ER a lot.
The black man's feet kick.
Blood flies across one doctor's face as if shot from a squirt gun.
Another squirt hits him right in the eye, like Daddy.
Her head lightens. The image: licking the blood off and sliding an Arista #24 scalpel up his crotch at the same time. Several times a month she sneaks into the prep station at night to watch the charge nurse fucking one of the interns. The nurse is on her belly, her white skirt pulled up and her white pantyhose off, on a transport gurney with the rails down gritting her big white teeth in a mindless grin. The intern always slaps her big flabby buttocks as his hips thrust. She always fantasizes sneaking up behind them and snipping off the intern's testicles while he fucks the fat nurse, with something nice, like Westcott umbilical scissors, or the shiny Bruns serrated plaster shears.
But it's only a fantasy.
Instead she sneaks away because this is the best time to steal, while the charge nurse is busy fucking the intern. The other nurses are on their bed checks so she can go into the supply room and take what she needs. She can also go into the med station for pharmaceuticals of lower control classifications. The barbiturates like diazepam and Amytal, and the amphetamines like Desoxyn and methamphetamine HCL are strictly controlled and inventoried, so she can't steal those. She gets those instead during the post ops in the ER where things are always very hectic and everybody's going in different directions.
She takes what she steals out in a gym bag since all custodial personnel are required to bring a complete change of clothes every shift in case someone throws up on them or bleeds on them.
She steals all kinds of neat things. Tissue forceps, hemostats, brain spatulas, rib cutters, disposable S,K,&F packaged tourniquets.
The ER doctors disperse, snapping off their gloves, when the black man dies.
She leans over to wring a clean mop.
Pine smelling water spurtles through plastic holes.
Her vagina hurts.
She smiles at the truth of the pain.
She sees The Cross.
When they've all left the ER cove, she starts to mop up all the beautiful blood.
| |
Chapter 6
(I)
Was Spence smiling? His blatant, arrogant blank face seemed to mock Kathleen throughout her speech. It provided a distraction she didn't need. Maintaining eye contact with the audience was important during a lecture, yet as she spoke, and wherever she looked, she could feel the cold police face gaze on her.
She was so mad she wanted to shriek.
Her speech seemed to go well, however. She began with a short biography of her life and credentials leaving out, of course, Uncle Sammy and then she spent the rest of her time proposing insights and speculations about the woman's market in general and the new feminist philosophies in particular. Psycho social dynamics, counter subjugation, interpersonal domestic designs of the
'90s, etc. When she was done, the auditorium tremored with applause. Several women actually asked her for an autograph.
The older woman, who turned out to be the treasurer of the writer's group, gushed gratitude, as did many of the group's other officers. Then things began to thin out.
"I thought you gave an excellent talk," a male voice came up along her side. It was Maxwell Platt, the poet. He had dressed neatly in jeans, a midnight purple shirt, and a black tie.
"Thank you," Kathleen said. "So did you."
"I read your magazine regularly. It's much more diverse than a lot of the others, and much less sexist."
Kathleen wasn't sure what he meant by that last clause. She lit her hourly cigarette, which by now she was dying for. "That's a little unusual, isn't it? I mean, a man reading a women's magazine?"
"Why?" Platt said. "What better channel can men have to the feminine mystique?"
Kathleen could've laughed. She hadn't heard that term in years. She was about to ask him about his poetry when another, less welcome voice rose at her other side.
"You are an absolute hallmark of civil irresponsibility."
She knew it was Spence before she even saw that blank, arrogant face of his. She could feel his bulk shadow.
"I'm not surprised," she said, "that I have no idea what you're talking about."
Spence smirked stolidly. "I can't believe your incognizance. A public speaking engagement. An advertised public speaking engagement. And you didn't even tell us."
"Why on earth would I tell you?" Kathleen sucked her cigarette, hoping the kick
of nicotine might quell her rage. "Am I supposed to notify you every time I go somewhere? To the library?
The mall? The toilet?"
"Fortunately I caught the announcement in BookWorld "
"Oh, you read?" Kathleen interrupted.
" and was able to get some men down here."
"Why?" Kathleen asked. "What's the big deal?"
"The big deal is " Spence lowered his voice, honed his glare " there's a certain person who's taken quite an interest in you. And that person could very easily have seen one of the advertisements for this little talk of yours. In other words, that person could be here right now."
Kathleen opened her mouth, then closed it. She hadn't thought of that at all. Had the killer attended the lecture? But then she dismissed it, if only to save face. "That's ridiculous, like everything else I've heard you say..." And then her rebuttal trailed off. Past Spence's shoulder she saw some of the men in suits at the back of the auditorium questioning five or six women with red hair. "You've got to be kidding me. You're harassing women just because of their hair color?"
