Sacrifice

by Edward Lee

  Katelyn rose from the water, dripping. The moonlight shone on her skin. The soldiers would be coming off watch soon from the quarry, and her heart surged in the expectancy. She would wait for the next one, her nudity a siren song in the hot night, her smile a beacon.

  Then she would take him to the grotto.

  The grotto, Katelyn thought.

  The place where the angel lives.

  ««—»»

  “You did…what?”

  Alice judged by the sound of Holly’s voice that this hadn’t been a good idea. Concealing things from her psychiatrist was not a good idea either, she knew, but…

  I can’t believe what I did, Alice thought.

  Holly’s otherwise pretty face looked flat with subtle shock as she looked at Alice from the other side of her desk. “Am I hearing you right, Alice, or are you just joking? Please. Tell me that you’re joking.”

  “It’s no joke,” Alice confessed, her eyes glued to the carpeted floor.

  “You had sex? With the plumber?”

  Alice nodded.

  She wasn’t proud of the fact. That’s right, Holly, she imagined herself saying. I had sex with the plumber, right on the kitchen floor. And that was just for starters.

  What had gotten into her? Everyone was spontaneous at times, but this pushed spontaneity to a new limit. It was probably just some subconscious backlash, a monkey wrench thrown into her psyche from the suicide attempt. But Holly’s frown only aggravated her, like salt in a small cut. All right, so I did something stupid! So what! I didn’t rob a bank, Holly! I had sex with a guy!

  Holly rested her forehead in one hand, muttering, “I can’t believe it. You fucked the plumber.”

  Alice snapped, “Listen, you’re the one who dragged me to the bar the other night! Remember? To pick up men?”

  Holly’s face rose back up, her expression focused to a glare. “I took you there to meet men, Alice, not to pick them up and take them home. I took you there to reacquaint you with a commonplace mode of socialization, to give you a chance to interact and to be personable and to respond to people. I didn’t tell you to take that lawyer home, and I sure as hell didn’t tell you to fuck the plumber! Who’s next, Alice? The mailman? The Pizza Hut boy?”

  “You’re being judgmental,” Alice replied, her face dark. She wanted to get up and leave. Why should I sit and listen to this? But she knew if she left, it would just give Holly one more thing to pick at her about.

  “Maybe I am being judgmental, Alice, but it’s only because I care about you. I’m concerned about you, and you’re my responsibility. When are you going to get that through your thick head?”

  This was worse than the hospital. It was embarrassing. And—

  I didn’t really even do anything wrong, she thought. I made love to a man I was attracted to…

  Made love. Well, maybe that was a light way of putting it. She’d seduced him, enticed him and exposed herself to him. She’d left him with little choice. But why shouldn’t she acknowledge her attractions, and pursue them? It was honest desire…

  “Well, at least you made him use a condom, right?” Holly asked after a tense silence. “At least tell me you had sense enough for that.”

  Alice chewed the inside of her cheek.

  “Goddamn it, Alice!” Holly railed as she deciphered her patient’s gesture. “I can’t believe you!”

  “What, you expect the guy to carry condoms in his toolbox? It was pretty spontaneous, Holly. Things like this usually are. I wasn’t exactly thinking about condoms at the time, and I wasn’t about to send him out to the 7-Eleven in his plumber’s truck to buy a pack.”

  “Smart women keep condoms themselves, Alice,” Holly snapped back. “We have to protect ourselves; if we left it up to men, we’d all be dead!”

  “He’s a plumber, Holly, not a gay IV-drug-user from Haiti!”

  “That’s beside the point and you know it,” Holly grumbled.

  Actually, Alice did know it; it was nothing to scoff at. But it was the situation more than anything else. The idea of buying condoms herself was inhibiting enough—she couldn’t picture herself walking into the Dart Drug and asking for a box of Trojan Ribbed—and she’d been very lucky, too, with Steve, who’d convinced her he was safe. Boy, am I a sucker, she thought. But with George, things had happened so fast; she’d had a hard time remembering even what had happened. Condoms had been as far away from her mind as the clouds.

  Because there’d only been one thing on her mind at the time…

  Silence settled in the office; Alice calmed down while Holly recomposed herself. Then, much more calmly, the psychiatrist asked, “What happened? Tell me everything, from start to finish.”

  Alice closed her eyes, tried to let her recollections come unraveled. It wasn’t easy. It seemed dreamlike, distant, while segments of the actual sex blazed in her memory. “I just felt sort of…weird,” she said.

  “Weird in what way?”

  “I-I’m not sure.”

  “Weird as in aroused, as in excited? Sexually?”

  Alice nodded.

  “Before or after the plumber arrived?”

  “After,” Alice said. “Definitely after. Before that I felt fine. I felt bored, actually. But after he came over I remember thinking how attractive he was, and then I was talking to you on the phone, but I couldn’t take my eyes off him. It was so distracting…” Alice took a breath, trying to think more clearly. “It was almost like I was watching myself.”

  Holly only looked at her.

  “I was fantasizing about him,” Alice confessed.

  “Fantasizing. And what was he doing while you were fantasizing?”

  “He was working on the sink.”

  Holly stifled a sigh. “Do you fantasize about people often? Or even periodically?”

  “No. Never, really. I’ve never really felt that sexual, even before…”

  “Before the accident, you mean.”

  “Right,” Alice said. “All I remember is he came in and suddenly I was very…excited.”

  Holly nodded dully. “Go on.”

  Alice went on, as best she could. She’d seduced him, yes, had baited him by removing her blouse. And neither of them had said a word past that, had they? No, not a single word. They’d embraced, rolling around together right there on the kitchen floor. Her hands had worked frantically to open his pants, to feel him, and George hadn’t been the least bit reluctant in allowing this, sliding his pants down and off, and then the shorts. Alice’s own lack of inhibition was so unusual, so unlike her. Ordinarily her leg would’ve been her first and foremost concern, her fear of what his reaction would be once he saw it, her fear that he would be repulsed and leave. Instead, though, she’d peeled her own jeans off without a second thought, and lay back, spreading her legs for him. Her prosthesis never even occurred to her.

  As though it didn’t exist in the first place. As though her leg had been real all along, real flesh instead of cold, rubberized plastic…

  I want you in me was all she could think, and then she was pushing down at his hips, the gesture more than sufficient to communicate her desire. It was more, in fact, than something she merely wanted—it was something she needed.

  And the faintest whisperings seemed to continue in her ears.

  Afterward he lay atop her, spent, as her sweat cooled. It didn’t matter that he’d come quickly—she’d wanted him to—because she knew that the first time, there on the kitchen floor, would be the first of many times before the day, and the night, was over.

  “Jesus,” Holly remarked, now more astonished than shocked or displeased once Alice had finished telling her story. “Just how many— How many times did you do it with him?”

  Alice’s blush deepened; it made her face feel hot. “I don’t know. Six or eight.”

  “Six or eight! When did he leave?”

  “Late, or I should say early, early in the morning.”

  “He was there all night, in other words? The guy came over at fiv
e p.m. to fix your leaky faucet and he didn’t leave until the next morning?”

  Alice could only nod.

  “What—” Holly paused. Now her face was a maze of bewilderment. “What kind of things did you do for all that time?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what exact acts, what positions—”

  “Holly!” Alice exclaimed. “I’m not going to answer that.”

  And, besides, she couldn’t. It would be too embarrassing. Oral or copulatory, Alice and the plumber had had a sexual jubilee that might’ve made Caligula feel naive. The rest of the day, and then all through the night, Alice had pursued a desperate thirst for sensation, and any sexual position she could imagine, they’d coupled in. By midnight she’d felt wrung out by her own orgasms, but she couldn’t desist—her constant arousal wouldn’t let her. Poor George scarcely had time to refract before Alice was on him again, coaxing, by any means available or imaginable, one erection after the next. It wasn’t until the mantel clock had struck four that they’d stopped, neither able to move. Alice fell asleep with her head on his chest, her sex sore to the point of numbness.

  “I’m not asking to be nosy, Alice,” Holly went on. “I’m asking for the purpose of analysis. The things you do, or are compelled to do, are all based on a reason pertinent to your state of mind. That’s why I want to know everything you—”

  “We did a lot, all right?” Alice snapped back. “A lot; things I’ve never done before, things I’ve never even thought of doing before. Jesus, Holly.”

  The psychiatrist seemed to simper for a moment; then she asked a question that, in a way, was even more personal.

  “Was it good?”

  Alice gaped.

  “Did this experience satisfy you sexually, Alice?”

  The contemplation lulled her; it seemed to carry her away. As confused as she was, and as shaken and mystified, Alice could make only one honest answer.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Alice, in fact, had never known such pleasure in her life.

  ««—»»

  The rest of their session went as uncomfortably as Alice would expect, yet at the end of it she had no more of an understanding of the experience than she had when she’d first arrived. Eventually Holly reverted to her usual trenchant, clinical double-talk.

  “You had an erotomanic break, Alice. Episodic hypersexualism is what we call it. It’s actually more common than people think. What’s uncommon, though, is, it generally doesn’t happen to people like you.”

  “People like me?” Alice challenged. For some reason the comment seemed insolent. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “There’s no need to be defensive all the time, Alice—you’re awfully touchy lately. I’m merely quoting clinical statistics. This type of hypersexual activity is generally only exhibited by divorced or unhappily married women ten to twenty years older than you.”

  “Oh,” Alice said.

  “I’m trying to think—” Holly touched her chin, let her eyes stray absently to the ceiling. “Suicide attempts and episodic hypersexualism aren’t known to be synonymous. Your only recent anomaly, at least that I can think of, is the change in your medication. But Protriptyline is just a mild antidepressant, and its only notable side effect is a deflation of the sex drive, not the opposite. I just can’t imagine the etiology of any of this.”

  “The what?”

  “The origin. The cause, Alice. You claim that this is the first time you’ve ever experienced an episode like this. There’s got to be a reason why it happened and, more important, there’s got to be a reason why it happened now.”

  “Holly,” Alice objected, “maybe there isn’t any fancy textbook reason. Maybe I was just blowing off steam. I mean, it’s been a while, you know.”

  “No, Alice, it’s much more than that. This is something completely contrary to your normal pattern of personality and behavior. It’s not like catching a cold. It comes from something rooted deep in your psyche.”

  Alice sat back in her chair, a bit bored now. Frequently she felt interrogated in Holly’s office, a prisoner before the unflappable commandant; sometimes it felt as though Holly was the chargé d’affaires of her life. “Well, our time’s up,” Holly said.

  Not a second too soon, Alice thought.

  “Why don’t we go get a bite to eat?” Holly suggested.

  The proposition caught Alice off guard. She liked Holly, certainly—at least most of the time—but right now the psychiatrist seemed like the last person she’d choose to spend time with. Why go out to eat only to feel browbeaten? Nor was she very hungry, either, in spite of last night’s physical marathon.

  “Thanks, but I’ve got some other things to do right now,” she said, even though she really didn’t.

  “Oh. Okay.” Holly, if only for a sliver of times, appeared dejected. “Well, I’ll see you at our next session then. And if you—”

  “I know,” Alice finished as she got up. She couldn’t help but smile. “If I have any problems, I’ll call you. ’Bye.”

  She turned to leave then, but at the door Holly added one more question.

  “Alice, are you, uh—”

  Alice turned. “Hmm?”

  “This guy, this plumber.” Holly stalled. “Are you going to see him again?”

  What a question! “I doubt it. When I woke up this morning he was gone. He left a note saying he’d call me, but you know how that goes. He’s really not my type at all.”

  “Oh. Well, I just thought I’d ask. ’Bye.”

  Alice left, amused now. Picturing herself in a romantic situation with George seemed preposterous. And why would Holly care, anyway?

  Once she got back outside, Alice shriveled in the heat. Each day seemed hotter, more humid. Her electric bill would be sky high, she knew, for the rest of the summer. Heat shimmered off the asphalt, and even off the shiny old cobblestones of Main Street, as she drove the car back through town, toward home. The lush trees, too, seemed flat in the blistering heat, birds perched high and motionless, squirrels plodding sluggishly over parched branches.

  Alice couldn’t have gotten home faster. The sun burned behind her; she rushed into the house and slammed the door, the brass knocker tapping several times from inertia. She stood a moment simply to cool off; then her shoulders drooped despairingly when she realized she had nothing to do the rest of the day. Perhaps she should’ve gone out to eat with Holly, but who could eat in this heat?

  Then she remembered something.

  My meds.

  She hadn’t even opened them yet, the new antidepressant Holly had prescribed after the suicide attempt. Antidepressant, she thought—the word itself sounded depressing, but she supposed she’d better take them; Holly, as infuriating as she could be, was also clearly a good shrink who knew what she was doing.

  And it couldn’t hurt, could it?

  Alice went to the bathroom and tore open the drugstore bag containing the bottle of pills. Protriptyline. One pill once a day between meals, read the instructions. Alice shook one into her hand. It was a beautiful pill, a blushing-pink color with a lime-green stripe. It was tiny. She turned on the faucet, let the water run cool, and filled a glass. Then—

  (Alice? Alice?) she thought she heard.

  It must be the heat. She was hearing voices from her dreams.

  Alice stared at the pretty pill in her palm.

  (Don’t take it.)

  Alice continued to stare.

  (It’s bad for you, Alice.)

  Bad?

  (It will take away from what you are. It will take away from all the wonderful things you can be.)

  Alice stared harder. She didn’t understand. She was hearing something that she couldn’t be hearing…

  (Don’t take it. It will hurt you. Haven’t you been hurt enough?)

  Alice’s eyes glazed over.

  Then she turned.

  Then—

  (I know what’s best for you.)

  —she dumped all the pil
ls into the toilet.

  — | — | —

  16

  I see.

  Seeing is such a wonder…

  I see all that you see…through your pretty eyes.

  I see you—

  I see you coming up.

  Your pretty hands, your sleek arms—

  Ah…

  Your sleek arms slick to the elbows with blood.

  ««—»»

  But first, he thought, a little head.

  After all, it was only midnight. Steve had a little time to kill, so he might as well spend it wisely.

  The city possessed a three- or four-block besmirchment from the Loew’s Hotel to the Citco. Junkies, dealers, whores. The town cops didn’t even bother trying to keep a lid on it anymore—all cities had their tenderloin drags, regardless of law enforcement or municipal legislation. He’d see them all the time on his runs back from a job: the street urchins. Not call girls or streetwalkers; these girls were a strata lower—desperate to cop a twenty for their next nail of skag or toke of crack. They never even mentioned rubbers; they weren’t health-conscious. Steve would never fuck any of this trash—are you kidding?— but he figured head was pretty safe. And it was quick, too. Steve wasn’t the kind of guy who had a lot of time to fool around.

  Main Street stretched on in a haze of midnight sodium light. Anything off Clay was considered the hunting ground.

  He needed to get, well…charged up first.

  Was that so bad?

  After all, Steve was an amorous man.

  Yeah, I wanna get that first nut off now, he thought, popping a Mountain Dew out of the machine at Citco. That way I’ll last longer when I’m shagging the next mark.

  And killing her…

  The papers were a veritable bulletin board for easy marks. Christ, didn’t people know anything? He’d read it in the Capital just today:

  ACADEMY BRASS TO INSPECT ANNAPOLIS

  Ranking security officer for the U.S. Naval Academy, Commodore Fenton Laurel, has been invited by the Navy Security and Inspection Group Activity to survey the newly built, $1 billion Los Angeles-Class attack submarine, the U.S.S. Annapolis, in Groton, Connecticut. The Annapolis, armed with 24 nuclear-tipped torpedoes, is the fastest, most maneuverable, and least detectible submarine in the world, and can travel under water for a full year without surfacing. Commodore Laurel, recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross, will inspect the state-of-the-art sub this weekend with an inspection team from the Defense Department—