Spellbinders Collection

by Molly Cochran

  A normal woman would invite him in--to chat, to warm up, to have a cup of coffee or a drink. Not necessarily to stay the night. It would be simple politeness, on a night like this.

  He was good-looking, quiet, strong, and he reacted fast. He smelled right. He played Queen Pawn openings in his head. He had saved her from something, tonight. Twice.

  A normal woman would invite him in.

  She swiped a curl of wet hair off her forehead as if it was a fly tickling across her skin. Caffeine and alcohol tangled in her bloodstream and left her with a detached twitching high that ignored little things like slush soaking through her boots and icicles forming in her hair and a three-alarm fire lighting up the downtown sky. Instead, she paid attention to that warm hand on her arm and the fact that he seemed content to keep a polite distance.

  A normal woman would invite him in.

  And her cynical inner commentator answered her in the second person singular it always used. You are not a normal woman. A normal woman doesn't take a month of foreplay to work up to a kiss. A normal woman doesn't feel like vomiting from fear when a man comes within smelling range. A normal woman doesn't keep waking up clammy with sweat, eighteen years after that monster crushed her to the grass and forced pain between her legs.

  And yet she wasn't doing any of these things. Maybe the night's weirdness had burned out the necessary connections.

  A normal woman doesn't see a rapist in every man she meets.

  It wasn't fair. After enough psych. classes to take a minor in college, she damn well knew what her problem was. That didn't solve it.

  It hadn't "made a lesbian out of her," like some of the idiots she'd met might have said. Sexual attraction didn't work that way. Those strippers did nothing for her. She still dreamed about men--gentle men with gentle hands that never went anywhere without permission. She still would really like to find out what it meant, to do those things with somebody she loved.

  And every time she tried, Buddy Johnson elbowed his way into the scene and tore up the script.

  She dragged her thoughts out of the filthy slush. Even with all the crap running through her head, she could still find her way home in a storm. They were slogging across a gray-rutted parking lot full of white car-lumps, up to a three-story tenement with rotting balconies and cracked tan vinyl siding. Highland Apartments: the place she hung her hat.

  Yeah. Home is where the hat is, she thought. The world hasn't offered you too many places to leave your heart.

  Sometimes she wished she could kill that inner voice. She covered her turmoil by walking over to one mound of snow and kicking its bumper, hard. The wet snow slid off its hood, revealing a rusty green Toyota with, if memory served, 145,407 miles on the speedometer. She'd nicknamed it Musashi, after the samurai who never took a bath. Up to now, it had been crude but reliable, like him. Judging by this week, though, it might never turn 145,408.

  "Sonuvabitch won't start." She kicked it again, and more snow slumped down off the roof to pile up against the wipers. There was also a metallic clunk that sounded like a piece of rotten tailpipe expiring. Classic rust-bucket. It was all she could afford.

  Brian sloshed through the puddles to her side. He leaned over with hands flat on the hood, closed his eyes, and started muttering to himself.

  Maureen shivered at the sight of his bare skin touching cold wet metal. My God, she thought, he's just like one of those southern preachers, laying on the hands. Faith healing. This man is seriously weird.

  "You've got a cracked distributor cap," he said, after about two minutes of communing with Jap steel. "It also needs a new air filter and new plugs, but the distributor cap is what's killing you. And remember to use the parking brake more: the cable's going to rust up and seize on you if you don't."

  Bullshit! "You expect me to believe that? I've heard about wizard mechanics before, but at least they have to open the hood!"

  He shrugged. "How else do you think the British Empire survived Lucas Electrics? It had to be magic 'cause it sure wasn't engineering." He straightened up and dug a rumpled scrap of paper out of his pocket.

  "You should be able to start it in the morning. It won't last more than a couple of days, so you'd better get it fixed. This should cover it." She caught a glimpse of Ben Franklin in the streetlight's glow. A hundred-dollar bill.

  "But . . . "

  "I don't need it. You do." He shoved it into her pocket, next to the .38 Special.

  Good-looking, quiet, strong, smart, reacted fast. And, apparently, rich. She hadn't seen a hundred in years. The Quick Shop wouldn't take them.

  Taking money from strange men, Maureen? Like those women in the club? But her critic's voice sounded like it came from the far side of a brick wall, and the thought of comparing her life to an exotic dancer's or prostitute's almost made her laugh. The closest he'd come to making a pass at her was keeping her from falling on her butt when she'd slipped on a patch of ice.

  "Why don't you come inside and dry off for a few minutes?"

  Brian nodded, as if her question was totally normal instead of the summation of a formal debate. They stomped their way up the front steps, shaking off winter again like a pair of wet dogs. The outside door was never locked, and half the bulbs in the hallway were dead or stolen. A chill returned to the pit of her stomach, but all the shadows seemed to be empty.

  Besides, Brian could protect her. He'd proven that.

  She covered her fear by sniffing the wash of warm, damp air in the stairwell, her usual game of guessing who had what for dinner. It was the only use she'd ever found for a hypersensitive nose that could tell the difference between white and red oak by the smell of their leaves. Otherwise, a good nose was a liability in the city.

  All the apartments had their kitchens near the stairs. First floor, pizza with mushrooms and pepperoni overpowered whatever the other unit had. Second floor east smelled like KFC again, and west had whipped up a pot of chili. West's cooking was a fire-hazard, real five-alarm. They loved Cajun, Tex-Mex, Thai curries--anything to steam your eyeballs out. The couple had grown up in Jalisco.

  Fires kindled in her head--dismembered chunks of body burning in the alley, flames exploding out of the cellar club. Old Ones. Summer Country. Hunters. Terror dragged her into myth: visions of sleek gray cobras, man-sized and spitting fire.

  Maureen started to shake again.

  Brian shifted his hand, circling his arm gently around her waist as they creaked up the stairs to the third floor. It felt safe, as if he was comforting her instead of putting on a move. A memory from Girl Scout camp floated up, a skilled trainer running her hands along the flank of a skittish horse, smoothing out the mane, talking quietly to calm the frightened animal.

  The trainer's hands were magic. Brian would make a good trainer. His touch was gentle, reassuring. He had a feral, furry smell with a touch of acrid male to it, vaguely fox or skunk, unlike any other man she'd ever known. It roused a sense of rightness, weirdly soothing. It might not take her a month to kiss this man.

  She fumbled with her keys, her fingers cold and shaky. A man she'd known for an hour or so, and she was letting him inside her apartment. One step from letting him inside her body. Magic hands.

  "You say you're English?"

  "British. Welsh ancestry, anyway. Most Yanks don't know the difference. England, Scotland, Wales, even Ireland, it's all the same to you."

  "You don't have much of an accent."

  "I spent a few years in a place where a British accent could be hazardous to my health. Yanks were more welcome. Habits change fast with incentives like that."

  She flipped on the lights. The kitchen looked presentable for once: Jo hadn't left dinner dishes all over the place, with plates of petrified spaghetti sauce or gnawed chicken bones looking like the remains of a voodoo ceremony.

  Maureen hung her jacket on the coat-rack over the radiator. If the furnace didn't die again, even the quilted batting should be dried out by morning. Boots went in the tray where drips couldn't spread
across the floor and ambush her bare feet when she stumbled out to make breakfast. That was a real rude way to wake up.

  "Get you a drink? We've got Scotch or Irish whiskey, rum, or brandy. Cup of tea or I could make some coffee."

  "Tea would be nice."

  Such a prosaic end to such a surreal evening: tea for the British visitor. She set the kettle on the rear burner and cranked up the gas. It even lit. How novel.

  "Uh, take a seat. I've got to powder my nose."

  She'd drunk a lot of coffee in the last hour. Plus there was the question of that warmth she'd felt back in the alley. If she was thinking of letting a man inside her pants, they damn well ought to be clean.

  Maureen blinked three times, shocked at her own thoughts. The farther she got away from Brian, the less sane the whole night seemed. Her fingers started to tremble with delayed reaction.

  She almost tripped over a pair of black engineer's boots in the hallway, next to a battered hard-shell guitar case. Jo's door was shut.

  Shit!

  She stumbled to the end of the hall, past Jo's door and David's damn guitar, past her own door and into the john. She shut the door. Leaned her head against the cold mirror. Stared cross-eyed at the freckles that looked like they were painted on white paper.

  The night's load of shit had totally driven David out of her mind. He'd been as close to a boyfriend as she'd ever found in years. She'd forgotten he would probably come over, after practice. And go to bed with Jo.

  Jo.

  David.

  Bedroom.

  Goddamn whore.

  Goddamn man.

  The teakettle whistled in the kitchen, snapping her out of her misery. She must have been leaning there for a couple of minutes. She wiped her eyes, blew her nose, flushed the toilet for camouflage.

  Walking back past the bedroom door and the evidence, a muffled giggle slapped her in the face. She heard bedsprings creaking.

  Brian had shuffled around in the cabinets, had two mugs out and the box of Earl Grey. Now he waited for her to pour, like a gentleman. Maureen swallowed a scream.

  "I think you'd better leave. I don't feel so good, all of a sudden."

  He stood up and touched her cheek. She flinched.

  "I understand. You've had a rough night. Try to get some sleep. Can I call you in the morning, make sure everything's alright?"

  Maureen gritted her teeth, forcing herself to behave like a halfway-normal woman. "Phone's in my sister's name. I'll write it out for you."

  She turned away, pulled a piece of paper off the phone pad and scribbled against the refrigerator. She could feel his warmth behind her and squirmed away, practically crawling up on the kitchen counter.

  Their fingers touched as she handed him the paper. She desperately wanted to wash her hands, scrub off the touch. Goddamn nutcase. It isn't his fault!

  His eyes searched her face. "You don't mind if I call you? I can see you again?"

  "Fine," she snapped. "Just leave. Call me in the morning. If you don't get out of here fast, I'm liable to puke on you."

  "Maureen, what's wrong?"

  "Nothing's wrong, goddammit! Just, if you come to see me, don't go to bed with my fucking sister!"

  He backed away and the door clicked between their faces. She set the bolt and chains and leaned her forehead against their metallic coldness. Her gut still churned its mix of hatred and longing. Half of her, mind and body, wanted to rip the door open and chase down the stairs after him. The other half of her remembered his resemblance to Buddy Johnson.

  The kettle screamed on, behind her, and she turned to shut off the gas. It subsided into a serpent's hiss and then crackled quietly as it cooled.

  She wondered how much Jo had heard, how much David had heard. They were awake. Probably deaf to the world, thinking any noises were the earth moving under their bed. Then they'd try another position and see if the stars fell.

  She put one of the cups away, grabbed a bottle, and filled the other one. She gulped, and straight whiskey etched her throat. She wanted to heave the bottle across the room, watch the golden liquid splatter and hear the glass explode into little transparent knives. Walk on them, cut her feet, leave bloody footprints in the snow as she ran away into the storm. Disappear into the night, into the cold, into the sleep of winter.

  She still had thoughts like that. One time in high school, she'd stabbed a tattoo into her left arm with an art pen and India ink. She ran her fingers over the faint scars left by the cosmetic surgery. Self-mutilation, the shrinks had called it, itemizing another symptom. They hadn't liked what the message spelled out, either.

  She took another swallow. Fire slid down her throat and burned in her stomach. Maybe it would cauterize the wounds.

  Dammit, David had been hers!

  She'd met him after a set when his neo-Celtic group played in a local bookstore, for Chrissake, worked up her courage for a month, talked to him again and again. He was thin. Quiet in a strange intense way. Gentle. Patient. Insane subtle sense of humor. Delicate strong guitar-spider hands. An obsession with music that defused the whole man/woman scene and made him safe.

  Everything Buddy Johnson wasn't. Maureen had invested three months in letting David past her boundaries. He'd come over, and the three of them would talk music, and Maureen would chisel another brick free from the wall around her, working on opening a door. And Jo wiggled a finger in her sexy way and took him.

  Bitch.

  She stared down into her cup, following the patterns the whiskey traced along the surface of the porcelain.

  Patterns. Jo wanted something, Jo took it. That was Jo--confidence personified. She took clothes, took books, took food from the refrigerator, took makeup. Sisters were supposed to share. They were the same size, same color, enough alike to look at, they might as well be twins. Only difference was Little Mo's screwed-up head.

  It was all her own fault, anyway. She couldn't blame David. Two identical women, one with a psychic chastity belt and the other who'd drop her pants at noon in the middle of Haymarket Square. Which one would any normal man choose?

  Neither. A normal man would run away and hide from either of you.

  You're drunk, said the cup. You're a drunk, said her empty cup next to her nearly empty bottle.

  Come by it honestly, answered Maureen. Maureen's a weepy drunk. Jo's a sluttish drunk. Dad's a mean drunk. Grandpa O'Brian was a happy drunk.

  She remembered how her brain had pulled Grandpa's voice out of the night wind. Maybe that had been the connection. She thought she was twelve again and terror haunted her dreams and the only adult who would hug warmth into her sweat-chilled body in the middle of the night always smelled of Bushmills. Mom just clicked the beads of her rosary, and Dad was . . . Dad.

  Can't blame David. Can't blame Jo, either. Four years older. Made her fourteen at the start of everything. During the two years when It was going on, that four years made a world of difference. Difference between shit-your-pants terror and a kid turned loose in the toy store.

  Jo had been old enough for Buddy Johnson. She'd wanted sex with the single-minded passion she threw at any obsession. Mo hadn't. Simple as that.

  Buddy was your fault, too. You knew what he was going to do, after the first time. You could have stayed away from him.

  And if you had told anybody what was going on, Jo would have caught it worse than Buddy. Dad would have killed her with that black leather strap, the one that drew bloody lines across your back.

  Can't tell anybody: Dad, Mom, Father Donovan, the doctor, teachers, nobody. Never. You promised. Keep Jo out of trouble. Little Mo worships her big sister.

  Can't tell the shrinks. They'd tell Dad, Mom, the cops, everybody. They'd have to. Can't even tell yourself. It never happened.

  Lie. Play up the voices and delusions, they'll believe them. Turn the fear of men, the fear of your father, into paranoia to hide the real cause. Leave the real cause buried under the biggest rock you can find.

  Maureen stood up with the ex
aggerated care of a drunk who knows she's drunk. She put the bottle away, rinsed out her cup, and very deliberately finished up in the bathroom. She stared at the mirror and chuckled with an edge of hysteria. The mirror face grimaced back at her, bloodless and wide-eyed like a startled corpse.

  Those thoughts of letting a man into your pants: some other woman did that. Not Maureen.

  Back in her bedroom, she peeled off her damp sweater and jeans and underclothes and tossed them with drunken carelessness until she crawled into bed naked. To hell with the open door. Maybe David would get up to pee in the middle of the night and forget which door was which. If she woke up in bed with a man, maybe nature would take its course.

  Or maybe she'd kill herself.

  The blankets gave no heat, and the sheets felt like they were woven from soft ice. Her body ached for a warm body next to it, someone to gently knead the terror out of her shoulders.

  Bed-squeaks whispered through the wall between her room and Jo's. She'd seen Jo in bed with a man before, seen her learning the tricks of her trade with Buddy back when the world was young and innocent. That woman'd do anything. No way Maureen would ever pry David away from her. And if Brian ever did call, Jo would take him away.

  Patterns.

  If he comes back. Slap a man hard enough, he doesn't come back.

  She forced herself to relax, willing her eyelids to quit squeezing their way down through her cheekbones. Count breaths. Visualize the calming light of a candle flame, an altar candle flickering at the feet of the Virgin. Concentrate. Chant your mantra. Trigger the relaxation response the shrinks taught you, the only thing they ever really did for you in all the sessions through all the years because you swore you'd never tell. Relax.

  The candle turned into flames gushing from the second-story windows over the strip club, then metamorphosed into blue ghost-lights licking a slush-filled alley clean. Her eyes snapped open and she clamped her jaws to stop her chattering teeth. She was just coherent enough to recognize the symptoms of shock, and just suicidal enough to not give a shit.

  Jo's bed squeaked, again. Maureen grabbed a set of headphones from her bedside and blocked out the sounds. The caffeine still warred with the whiskey in her veins, and the whole shitty day left her twitching.