by phuc
Later she took a cool shower, and caught her sudsy hand lingering over her pubis. The cool torrent made her breasts feel dully electrified. She remembered what Spence had said, about...
What word had he used? Parity, she remembered. Similarities between herself and the killer. The whole thing had been a set up, but why? The killer was abused as a child, you were abused as a child. So what? Does she look like me? she wondered. Does she have a body like me? A face?
Kathleen smiled to herself. Does she touch herself in the shower?
What was Spence driving at?
Suddenly she felt bursting with quirks, with silliness. She didn't dry herself off but went at once out to the couch. In a moment she was lying down, eyes closed. She was masturbating. She was thinking about Maxwell. She fantasized saying the dirtiest things to him, things she would never say for real. She blushed as her fingers goaded her.
Her bare feet kneaded the couch end when she came; it didn't take long. For some reason, unlike ever before, touching herself seemed to bring all the parts of her closer together spiritually, not physically. It attuned her to herself, this upfront granting of pleasure by her own hands. It seemed honest. Perhaps that was it. She often felt hypocritical and contradictory, smothering the real woman that she was in the vagaries of the age.
She snapped up the phone before the end of the first ring, as if caught doing something she shouldn't.
"Kathleen? This is "
"Maxwell!," she recognized the voice at once. She blushed again, noticing her still shiny fingers.
"I was, uh, just thinking about you."
"I've been trying to call "
"Oh, I'm sorry. I was on the phone for awhile, with my father. Then I took a nap."
"Well, listen." He sounded reserved, or discomfited. "Something kind of weird happened. This morning, just a few minutes after you left."
"Yeah?" Kathleen said, crossing her feet on the couch.
"There was a knock on the door, so I open it and there're two city cops standing there. And they ask me if I'm all right."
"All right? Why wouldn't you be?"
"I don't know," Maxwell said. "Then they started asking me about you. Like how long I've known you, and if I noticed anything unusual about you, stuff like that."
"I can't imagine wh " She bit the rest of the sentence off. It hit her all at once, like walking down the street and having a flower pot land on her head. Spence, she realized. That son...of a...bitch.
"Are you there, Kathleen?"
"Yes, I, um..."
"They also asked me if I knew about any book projects you might be working on."
"What did you say?" she asked, perhaps too quickly.
"I told them I didn't know what they were talking about. It's none of their business anyway. This isn't a police state."
Kathleen lolled in relief. Of course, Maxwell was a poet; most poets were liberals, even radicals.
"They even asked me if you dyed your hair, or if I knew of any friends of yours who were redheads."
But Spence knows I couldn't be the killer, she fumed to herself. Does he actually think I'm in some sort of complicity? The idea was too absurd. No, Spence was just sending his boys around to harass her. I'm going to sue him so help me G
"It was kind of strange, at any rate," Maxwell went on. "Are you in some sort of trouble with the police?"
"No, no, nothing like that." At least not yet, she thought. "I'll tell you all about it sometime."
Silence drifted. "I was just worried a little."
"Don't be. It's really silly if you want to know the truth."
Another pause. "Okay. Good. So when can I see you again?"
The abruptness of the question stifled her; it made her feel pretty, it made her feel demanded. Not
"Can I see you again?" but "When?" Don't push things, Kathleen, she told herself, aware of all the times she'd advised her readers likewise. It seemed all too prevalent: women, after even a single sexual encounter, would go nuts for a man. They didn't give it time. Universally, men freaked when pressured toward commitment. The best recommendation was to take things slow, and that's what Kathleen regularly prescribed to her readers. Take your own advice for a change, Kathleen, she insisted to herself. Don't move too fast. Give it a week. Or at least give it a few days.
"How about tonight?" she said. She frowned at herself. "I'll pick you up at eight. I'll even spring for carry out Chinese."
"Sounds great," Maxwell said. "See you then."
Kathleen hung up, thinking of the old axiom: Don't Do As I Do, Do As I Say. She knew she could ruin everything by pushing; at this early stage, in fact, she didn't even know what there was to push. I can't help it! she thought, as if arguing. I want to see him. What could be wrong with that?
She was about to light her hourly cigarette when she felt the familiar rumble of the mail truck.
Even though she knew her carrier from the magazine would not arrive 'til next week, she hauled on old clothes ratty red sweat pants and a JUST SAY MOE T-shirt and rushed ahead.
She opened the front door. She was about to go down the steps. Something caught her right eye, a tan flash. A rectangle.
A 9x12 envelope had been taped to the front door.
On a white label someone had typed:
MS. KATHLEEN SHADE
That was all.
| |
Chapter 10
(I)
" 's it really," Maxwell was explaining in the Thunderbird. "The only thing I hate is hatred. The only thing I'm negative about is negativity." His face looked placid in some stoic satisfaction.
"The only thing, in the whole world, that I have ill will toward is ill will."
"Eat shit and die, dickhead!" Kathleen barked as a black Fiero cut her off at Sheridan Circle.
"Can you believe these people? Learn to drive!" she yelled out the window and honked. The man in the Fiero gave her the finger.
"I'm not religious," Maxwell continued, "at least not in any classic sense, but I suppose I'm what most people would consider spiritual. Christians, for instance, believe that life is a gift from God.
Well, even if it's not from God, it's still a gift from somewhere. A gift from providence, perhaps, or fate. It's a gift from the pure positive potential of the human spirit. I don't believe in the ‘Cosmic Soup' theory it can't be true. Life really is a wonderful, joyous thing. It really is a gift."
"Fuckbrain!" Kathleen honked, stopped behind a double parked plumbing van that read MR.
ROOTER! on the side. "Oh, right, like it's my fault this idiot's double parked!" she yelled. The line of cars behind her blared their horns in unison.
"Take the fundamental nihilists." Maxwell's hands shaped things in the air as he spoke. "They believe that there is no objective basis for truth and, hence, no objective basis for beauty. But how can this be? It's easy to see the world as nothing but a sphere of ugliness, despair, and lies when we're bred to believe that. I, on the other hand, reject that, most adamantly. If you open your heart when you look, the world really is a beautiful place."
"This is such infuriating shit!" Kathleen commented. "Where do all these cars come from?" Her fists clenched on the wheel as she squeaked by MR. ROOTER! and nearly got clipped by a Red Top cab.
"You should calm down," Maxwell said.
"Yeah, well, I've had a bad day." Now a commuter bus pulled in front of them, excreting blue, soot laden smoke.
"But that just goes back to what I've been saying," Maxwell went on. "We should examine our ideals more closely, I think. By what standards do we define a bad day? I prefer to look at the matter through a veil of jubilation. So what if the rent goes up? So what if we don't have enough money for all our bills? So what " He raised a finger. " if we're stuck in traffic? Whenever I'm in a bad mood, I try to shake myself and take a good hard look at what life really is. Any day that I wake up and the sun's still shining and the world's still turning and my heart's still beating now that's a good day."
Bugge
r philanthropy, Kathleen thought. She supposed he was right, but that didn't matter, not today. The traffic, and the ugly, sooty, mephitic city was just a catalyst. Stark, rust stained buildings made a canyon of Massachusetts Avenue. The descending sun glinted like lava in windows.
"Is everything all right?" Maxwell inquired.
"Of course," she said a bit too testily. Now the sinking sun shot spikes of glare across the windshield. "Jesus Christ!" she yelled. "How am I supposed to see?"
"You don't seem like yourself."
"You've only known me for two days, Maxwell," she replied, very unglamorously lighting a cigarette as she spoke.
"Oh."
What a dumb thing to say, she lamented. But how could she be cheery knowing that a psycho killer had discovered her address?
"I'm sorry," she said a moment later.
"You shouldn't apologize for how you feel."
She grit her teeth. The light changed and traffic hitched on. Her address was unlisted. The killer had gotten it somehow.
The killer had actually walked up her apartment steps and affixed the envelope to her front door, no doubt while Kathleen had been inside. She was just feet away from me, she realized. A killer.
Maxwell had dressed laxly in faded jeans, sneakers, and a blue T-shirt that read THE TAIT
LITERARY REVIEW. He didn't complain that she had not turned on the air conditioning.
Perhaps he was as content in smothering heat as she.
"How's your story coming along?" he asked.
It was the worst thing he could ask just then, or perhaps ever. What could she say to him?
Anything? "I'll be right back," she said, and pulled over. She hopped out of the car and went into Berose Liquors. Long reach in coolers hosted unique beers. She didn't particularly care what she got; she just wanted something cold. "Is this wine?" she asked the proprietor, holding up a big bottle. "It's Blue Heron Ale," he said. "You can't do better."
Why did she need a drink all of a sudden? It wasn't like her. As she paid for several of the large bottles, not really even knowing what she was buying, she felt some sort of dread, like mystic pressure. Of course. She would be home soon. And the killer's manuscript was waiting for her.
She had read it all and quailed.
You asked for it, Kathleen, and you got it. And now you're going to have to deal with it.
"Come again," said the proprietor.
"I thought we were getting Chinese food," Maxwell said when she got back in the T Bird. An ambulance passed with its siren off, lights throbbing. Pedestrians moved on obliviously.
"Well, we can. I'm suddenly thirsty." She pulled one of the large, pretty bottles out of the bag and placed it between her legs, noting for the first time her ratty sweat pants.
"Isn't it, like, socially irresponsible to drink and drive?"
"Goddamn it!" she exclaimed in sudden turmoil. "These aren't twist offs!"
Maxwell, frowning traceably, got out of the car, walked around to the driver's side, opened the door, and pushed her over to the passenger seat.
"What are you doing!"
"I'm driving," he insisted. "You're weird today."
"Thanks a lot."
He pulled out, craning his neck. He kept blowing the long blond hair out of his eyes, waiting for a gap.
"You can tell me what's wrong when we get home," he said.
The ale was delicious but it was too strong. Half the bottle left her calmly sluggish on the couch.
Maxwell didn't say anything for quite a while; she sensed he was giving her time to cool off.
Men. What schmucks, she thought. He was watching a baseball game.
Somebody was hitting lots of home runs. "I don't know why the Yankees don't just disband.
There's no reason for them to even be on the field," Maxwell said as if she cared. "The only difference between what that pitcher is throwing and regular garbage is that regular garbage generally comes in a can. Christ, I could pitch better than this guy."
She'd hidden the manuscript in her desk, along with the Xeroxes, which were apparently from a book. INITIATORY RITES, the passage had been entitled. Never in Kathleen's life had she even guessed that such things could exist...
...in an array of unique, and often repugnant, examples. At a tribal level, such customs functioned in one of two ways: fashion, or rite. Hierarchs of empiric China thought it fashionable for their women to have small feet hence, foot binding. This process, generally begun at about the age of four, severely inhibited the formative growth of the bones of the feet. Mothers insisted upon it, however; it was status to marry off a daughter to the upper class. The smaller the feet, the more feminine, it was considered. The fact that this technique crippled tens of thousands for life was quite immaterial. It was culture. The same too for African "lip plating," thousands of years old yet still prevalent today. Upon puberty, girls would receive their first plates, and from there the race for fashion began. Lip plates were considered the epitome of female desirability, the larger the better (the largest were often 18 inches in diameter!), and any woman without a lip plate was laughed at. The idea was to stretch the incised upper lip to such an extremity that women could encompass their breasts when bedding a man. If a married woman was ever found guilty of adultery, she was forbidden to ever wear her lip plates again, upon the penalty of death, consigning them to spend the rest of their lives with slack ropes of flesh dangling from their faces. Even stranger was the technique of nipple elongation, of the Chinese Han Dynasty (206
B.C. to 220 A.D.). For an hour each night, prepubescent girls were made to stand with weights suspended by strings which were threaded through their pierced nipple ends. By the time they were of marrying age, they sported grossly elongated nipples, regarded as an ultimate attraction.
Nipples were often stretched to the length of eight inches.
But so much for fashion; tribal mutilation exceeds itself in its ritual designs. Foremost is circumcision originally the clipped foreskin served as an offering to God. Much less known, however, is the similar rite of female circumcision, i.e. the partial or complete removal of the labium minus. Regrettably, careless or unknowledgable tribal doctors often removed the clitoris as well, by accident. Most interesting, however, and utterly extreme, was the practice of full vaginal closure. Many female dominant societies actively utilized this technique, as an ultimate offering to the object of their spiritual beliefs. Throughout history, countless female dominant sects and/or societies have existed, some for protracted periods of time. Chief among them, the notorious "Amazonians" of central and upper South America; the Bengalian Camu sects of the 10th Century, who worshipped the female goddess Camunda; and the countless female superior societies of the Polynesian and Melanesian archipelagoes. Perhaps history's earliest feminists, these societies were actively ritualistic in their hatred of the male of the species. Men were uniformly enslaved for labor, secluded for reproductive roles, or cannibalized for religious purposes. The most noteworthy example exists in the Loknas of pre Druidic northern England, who worshipped a common "mother goddess." First born males were sacrificed upon birth, while first born females were viewed as partial incarnates of the mother goddess. So zealous were the Loknas in their loathe of men that the notion of any subcarnate first born being even touched by a male was unthinkable, and even less thinkable was the notion of sexual congress. Hence, ritual vaginal closure, or the sewing shut of the vaginal channel, which served as an oblation to their goddess. Cured animal gut provided the suture, blessed fishbones were used as needles. Initiants were expected, by codices, to perform the act upon themselves...
My God, Kathleen thought. Stodgily written as it was, the text winded her, crushed her as inquisitors crushed suspects with pallets weighed by rocks. The images raged in her head...
She stared at the TV, through haze raised by the ale. A batter with a bird on his hat hit a homerun. Maxwell swore under his breath. As the batter rounded the bases, he looked like Uncle Sammy.
All th
ose memories were resurfacing now. Why? Memories, she thought. Then she thought further: CHILDHOOD MEMORIES.
She wondered if anything could be worse, anything in the world. A prostitute for a mother, and a pedophile for a father, who apparently shared her with his sick friends. In the manuscript, she said she'd been molested since the age of four or five...
Maxwell turned off the set with the remote. "We can talk now if you want," he said.
"That's all right. You can watch your game."
"There is no game, not when the Yankees are playing. Anyway, I really think you should talk about what's bothering you."
She felt like a slug on the couch. "I don't want to now."
