Portrait of the Psychopath as a Young Woman - Edward Lee.wps

by phuc

  She's staring at the dark church on the corner.

  It looks desolate, doomed.

  The cross on the steeple catches her eye.

  But it's not her cross, it's not The Cross.

  This cross is meaningless.

  There is no power in it.

  It does not make her strong against the past.

  "You and me, we gotta have a little talk."

  The BMW idles at the corner next to a wire wastebasket that reads PITCH IN! KEEP

  WASHINGTON CLEAN!

  The black man is looking up at her from the open driver's window. He's wearing a gray pinstripe suit jacket, crisp white dress shirt, a dark silk tie with a diamond stickpin.

  "Get in. I won't bite," he says.

  No, she thinks. But I will.

  Be careful, her mother says. Wait 'til he's off the crowded blocks.

  I know, she thinks.

  "Are you ‘Rome?" she asks. "I'm looking for a guy named ‘Rome."

  "Hmm," he says. He's driving down M Street now. "What we need to talk about concerns a little matter of professional protocol, not to mention professional etiquette and known doctrines of professional boundaries, not to mention the way things fucking are."

  "I know," she says. Signs on buildings pass. THOMAS CLOCK JEWELRY, LATT'S

  COUNTRY SQUIRE, C & P TELEPHONE COMPANY. "I can't work the street without a pimp."

  The black man seems to wince. "You're on the right track, in spite of a slight misapplication of terms. I'm ‘Rome."

  "Can I work for you?" She keeps her voice quiet, cool. "I need work."

  "Um hmm. Well. That depends." He turns right back onto L, passing the huge pickup spot called Rumors, a Thai restaurant called Star of Siam, and then a city cop parked facing out in an alley.

  "Only the classiest, the cleanest, and the best girls work for me. I have criteria, which we'll get into later. Before I can fairly even think about taking you on, I want to take you back to my place and rap, find a little bit out about you. Does that sound all right?"

  "Sure," she says. "You don't buy a car without taking it for a test drive first."

  "Something like that," ‘Rome says.

  He's looking at her now, at the stoplight.

  Do something, her mother says.

  Her mother is in the back seat.

  Act normal!

  She removes a compact from her purse, examines her face in it. She knows he's looking at her, she knows his eyes are roving her the same way Daddy's hands pushed her legs back on the couch while she looked at The Cross.

  She's dressed much better than the other girls she's seen. A short black halter dress with a wrap front, a spare gold buckled belt, pearl earrings, a pearl bracelet around her wrist. The wig gives her shimmering shoulder length white blond hair...

  "Before you can test drive the car, of course," the black man metaphors, "you have to start the ignition." He calmly places her left hand between his legs, urging her to prod him. She is able to do this without hesitation because when she closes her eyes she can see The Cross, and The Cross gives her the power to fantasize. ‘Rome makes a sound like "Mmmmm" as her hand deftly caresses the satchel of flesh at his groin. She thinks of prejudiced jokes, of bigotry and stereotypes, and she wants to say something whory like, "So it's true what they say about black men." She's delighted by what she's feeling in her hand, this burgeoning parcel of sexual meat, and it doesn't bother her at all to be made to feel him like this because for the whole time she fantasizes carefully about cutting it all off with Bruns serrated plaster shears.

  "How far away do you live?"

  "Four, five blocks up."

  Now, her mother says, before you get back on the crowded blocks.

  He slides his big black hand up her left thigh.

  She shivers a moment.

  She doesn't like to be touched.

  His fingers slide under her high hem, touch her panties, and suddenly she's disgusted.

  It's Daddy's hand.

  It's Daddy's hand, she thinks.

  It's the hand of every man who ever touched her mother.

  Her right hand slips into the purse.

  Now! her mother says. Hurry! His girls will see you from the street.

  She feels so bad, so small.

  She feels like if she died right now, she'd feel better.

  She can see his skull beneath his face, like glowing bone.

  Skulls mean death, she remembers.

  She pulls Daddy's big revolver out of her purse.

  She cocks it and quickly presses the barrel into his crotch.

  "Wh " ‘Rome big white eyes bulge. "Jesus..."

  "Drive where I tell you to drive," she says, "or I'll blow your cock off."

  (II)

  "It's probably not a good idea for you to stay with me tonight," Kathleen said to the dashboard.

  "Nonsense. I think it's a great idea."

  They passed long lines of warehouses on New York Avenue. Most had windows broken out of lattices of steel frames. They appeared abandoned, bombed out. In a rubbled lot, several rats the size of puppies glanced up with red eyes.

  If you don't want him to stay with you, Kathleen, how come you're heading back to your apartment instead of his? She didn't even want to contemplate what the radio shrink would say about that.

  "I'd really like to stay with you tonight," Maxwell said.

  Kathleen didn't say anything in response.

  When they passed the police station, she thought sourly of Spence, and of his sour face and attitude. She didn't mind being disliked but only as long as she knew the reason. That's what bothered her foremost.

  What's the reason?

  She needed to distract herself. A large sign on an office building read: IT'S THE CRIMINALS, STUPID. "I don't get it," she said, pointing errantly. "What does it mean?"

  "That's the NRA building," Maxwell replied. "I think what they're trying to say is that guns shouldn't be blamed for the crimes people commit with them."

  "Oh."

  Maxwell didn't say anything more when she pulled into her own parking lot. Kathleen supposed one thing she liked about him was his sense of tact. He knows when to not say anything. She thought about what he'd said at the sushi bar. Am I afraid of communicating? she wondered.

  Apartment buildings passed like rows of gravestones. Am I afraid of my own emotions?

  I'm afraid of a lot of things, she realized.

  "How, uh, how come we're driving around in the parking lot?" Maxwell piped up.

  Again, she didn't reply. She scanned the rows of cars, idling past in the big T Bird. When she drove the full loop, she parked in front of her own building. A breeze moved down the lot, but it was hot, humid. The sound of slow traffic came like surf.

  "What are you looking for?" Maxwell asked when they were out of the car. She was looking behind her, scanning the parked cars. Sentinels, she wanted to say. Spence had told her he was putting a plainclothes officer in the lot round the clock. She didn't know how she felt about that.

  She didn't know if it made her feel safe, or scrutinized. Knowing that there was a cop out front all night might make her feel peeped on through a hole in the wall.

  No, she didn't know at all how she felt about that.

  She walked briskly ahead of him, so he couldn't put his arm around her, or hold her hand.

  Trotting up the apartment steps, an image pounced on her: falling into darkness, an abyss.

  Inside Maxwell made himself right at home. Kathleen didn't know how she felt about that, either.

  He opened the refrigerator for a soda. Then he turned and said, "Do you want anyth Kathleen?

  What the hell are you looking for?"

  She held the curtain back at the slider, peeking down into the lot. You're out there somewhere, she thought, squinting. Where are you?

  "Sentinels," she eventually answered Maxwell.

  "You know something?" He sat down casually on the couch, turned on the TV with
the remote.

  "You have some really bizarre things going on in your life."

  "Really bizarre," she murmured. Earlier she'd Express Mailed next month's column to the magazine. She couldn't believe she'd almost forgotten.

  "And I'm trying to figure out why you don't want to tell me about them," he went on. He kicked off his shoes, put his feet up on a coffee table full of women's magazines. "Don't you trust me?"

  "I trust you," she said. All at once she felt wound down, exhausted. When she looked over, she smirked. Maxwell had turned on a baseball game.

  "Goddamn Yankees," he griped, shaking his head. "The second I turn the set on the first thing I see is Ripkin knocking one out of the park. Wells should try pitching with his feet."

  "You're a poet, Maxwell," she ventured. "Poets don't watch baseball. It's primordial. It's stupid."

  "Especially when the Yankees are playing," he added. He turned off the set. "Thanks for the sushi. It was good. It was unique. I never thought I'd be able to say I ate fried shrimp heads..." He leaned up on the couch. "Are you all right? You look exhausted all of a sudden."

  "I am," she said. "I don't know why. Can we go to bed now? You know, just to sleep?"

  "Okay."

  She had the notion that he understood immediately: she didn't want to have sex, she just wanted to sleep. Halfway to the bedroom she turned and saw him peering mystified out the front window. He shook his head then came back.

  "...simple human spontaneity," came a voice like mist from the clock radio. It was the radio shrink's show. Was she on all night? "This needn't be confused with abnormal behavioral thought patterns." "But it was just...so wild, so unlike me," a caller said. The radio shrink continued: "It's your spirit, your innermost self, telling you that it's all right to be happy again. Spontaneity is often how we celebrate our joys, our happiness..."

  Kathleen turned the radio off before Maxwell could hear. The radio shrink's show often depressed her in her fascination for it, for listening to strangers open themselves. She took off her shoes, unbuckled her jeans, and sat on the bed.

  "I'm sorry," she said when Maxwell came in.

  "Sorry about what?"

  "I don't know." Her desire to sleep made her feel narcotized. Her eyelids fluttered as she slid off her jeans and began to unbutton her blouse.

  Maxwell was bending over, clumsily taking off his pants. Something joggled her as she watched him. He had slim legs. His jockey shorts looked tight on his slim buttocks.

  Was it spontaneity? She thought it must be something even less complex her own unassurance of herself, or of her desires. "Maxwell," she said. "You have a great ass."

  "Oh, yeah?" He looked over his shoulder, still bent, as he slipped off his underpants. "Women tell me that all the time." Then he stripped off his shirt and cast it to the floor. Kathleen's toes dawdled in the carpet. She was staring at him.

  "I thought you just wanted to sleep," he said.

  "Well, I guess I changed my mind," she said.

  The next procession of minutes didn't seem like time at all. She leaned up to look, she liked to look at him. It made her happy to see his mouth burrowed in the fur of her sex, and happier still to feel him. The wet sensation bloomed, sending antsy shivers up her stomach. She cradled the back of his head and sighed.

  Next he stood up right in front her, brazenly naked, his penis erect before her face. "I want you to put it on me," he whispered. He placed a condom packet in her hands.

  When she opened it and began to slide it down, she thought what silly things they were. Rubbers.

  Even the name was silly. She could smell the gritty scent of the lubricant.

  "Okay, now," he said. He sat down on the edge of the bed. "This is a special technique I read about. You're supposed to sit on me, like this."

  His hands guided her hips. She sat down in his lap, facing him. She put her arms around his neck, wrapped her legs around his back.

  His penis slipped right into her, to the base.

  "Maxwell, this is kind of "

  "It's called the Vertical Pelvic Alignment Technique. It's supposed to ensure female orgasm."

  "Yeah, really?" It felt weird just...sitting on him. "Are you making this up?"

  "No. I read about it in a magazine. You'll never guess which one."

  "What, Penthouse?"

  "'90s Woman."

  God knew, he probably had. Maybe one day I'll start to read the magazine I write for, she thought. But this "technique..."

  "Aren't we supposed to, like, you know..."

  "No," he said, "not according to the article. We're just supposed to hold each other and rock back and forth a little."

  She felt like a monkey wrapped around a tree. Maxwell gently rocked her, running his hands up and down her back, kissing her shoulder and up under her throat.

  At first it seemed awkward just sitting on him like this. A moment later, though, it began to feel...nice.

  He wasn't thrusting at all. He was just in her. As they rocked, her pubis rubbed against his. Oh, God, she thought. Soon she was feeling things she'd never felt before soft lovely waves diced by knifelike flashes of heat.

  "Doesn't this feel good?"

  "Yes," she nearly gulped into his ear. She clung to his neck, wrapped her legs tighter. Her breasts pressed flat against his chest, the nipples prickling. Maxwell lowered his arms to gird her waist, and the slow, deep gyrations of their hips intensified. The combination of feelings his penis all the way up in her, and her pubis steadily rubbing against his induced a delicious hot churning sensation, spreading upward. Moments later she was mad for the contact, driven for it; she held him tighter and gyrated her buttocks more quickly in his lap.

  "Kathleen..."

  "Maxwell," she panted, "I'm going to "

  "I want you to."

  Her orgasm seemed to implode. It knocked the wind out of her and filled her with dense, earthy heat. Fervid contractions went off like bombs as Maxwell continued rocking her, her pubis rubbing, rubbing, her breasts hot and squashed to his chest. Each time she thought it would end, another contraction seized her, every nerve alight. In spite of the condom, she felt Maxwell come too; his breath raged into her bosom as his arms went rigid about her waist. They fell back onto the bed, spent, cocooned in one another.

  "I really do love you," he whispered.

  Kathleen couldn't move, she could only lie there splayed on him. She couldn't have said a word even if she'd wanted to.

  «« »»

  Asleep, she dreamed. The darkness dripped or ticked. The faceless figure, the abbess of the nightmare, leaned over. The pictures glared, the snake coursing toward her open sex as she lay in naked paresis on the bed.

  "Embrace your hatred," the figure said.

  In the first picture, the snake's big angled head was just nudging into the opening of her sex.

  And in each succeeding picture the snake burrowed deeper, deeper She awoke shrieking. Maxwell quickly turned on the light and held her, stroking her hair. "It's all right," he whispered. "It was just a dream, just a dream."

  Her eyes felt lidless. She shivered in the heat.

  "Kathleen, you have to tell me what's wrong. You can't keep it in anymore. It's tearing you up...

  Tell me."

  Minutes ticked by in his embrace. Her coat of sweat felt like paste. Eventually she said, "A serial killer has been in contact with me for about a week."

  (III)

  Skulls mean death, her mother whispers.

  The heavy revolver feels light in her hand.

  It was Daddy's gun, big, awkward.

  She found it in the closet a long time ago, the same week

  Skulls mean death, her mother repeats, interrupting.

  The Cross shines in The Window.

  His face looks like a skull.

  "What are you do "

  She can sense her mother's smile behind her at The Window.

  The black man is shackled to the bed.

  Daddy's Room used to be a den. W
here Daddy's friends would do things to her and her mother.