Punish Me with Kisses

by William Bayer

  He picked up the diary from the bed, began reading excerpts, excited, wildly excited, like an adventurer on a manhunt, she thought, tracking, closing in on a quarry, dizzy with the thrill. He was acting triumphant about it, triumphant, putting together the puzzle, filling in the pieces, talking about her father, calling him a murderer, saying he might try and murder her. It was too much. She couldn't take it, began to scream. He told her to shut up, then they fought, she scratched at him and he wrestled her and held her down, and then, pinned on the bed, she stopped thrashing and began to weep again.

  Jamie says he's tired of pimping for me. "Spades, fags, Ss and Ms," he groans, "and now you want college boys in Maine!"

  "So, I'm tired of fetching and carrying for you," I tell him, "finding props, unloading your goddamn cameras, doing all the shitwork in the darkroom. OK?"

  "So?" he asks, "like what's the bottom line?"

  "The bottom fine," I tell him, "is that I'm fed up and walking out."

  A real quarrel then. "I pay you a salary," he screams. "There's this thing called professional ethics."

  "What bullshit, "I tell him. "All the shoots we go on, the fashion photo trip, is just fucking under another name."

  "I'm teaching you," he yells. "Letting you see how I work, the secrets of my craft"

  "Well," I say, "you're not exactly Richard Avedon, you know. I don't feel like I'm apprenticing to a genius quite."

  He's furious! That name, Avedon, always sets him off. He hates Avedon, though he'd kiss his ass if he had the chance. He hates the notion that he's second-rung, because he knows that's what he is.

  "You're a spoiled little rich bitch, " he says. "You're a fucking nympho. You're hung up like no one I've ever seen."

  I laugh. Is that really the worst he can come up with? Of course I'm a spoiled little nympho bitch. I eat cocks like his for breakfast. What about SUPPER? What about LUNCH?—

  Later she'd smile as she thought of how their faces must have looked that Monday afternoon when they finally saw Schrader at his office on upper Broadway. It would be a cynical smile, amusement at Jared's naiveté, his purity of purpose, his demands for justice, the youthful outrage in his eyes. And as for her own face, red and puffy from a night of tears and screams, she'd laugh a little bitterly at that, too, remembering how confused she'd felt, how close to madness, when the real madness was yet to come.

  Jared did the talking; she and Schrader listened. Schrader had grown a goatee since she'd seen him last so that between the two bushes of gray on either side of his head and the gray point of his beard his face was now triangular. Schrader didn't say much, just threw in an occasional question to keep the chronology straight. As Jared came to the end of the tale Schrader closed his eyes and nodded at each point (the dogs hadn't woken up; there hadn't been any tracks), and then he looked at the passages underlined in the Xerox copy of the diary, and he nodded after he read each passage, too. Finally when Jared was finished, there was silence in the room.

  "So," said Schrader, "I see what you're driving at. What do you want to do?"

  Jared looked at her, then back at Schrader. "Reopen the case," he said.

  Schrader nodded. "Yeah. That's what I thought." He turned to Penny. "You go along with this?"

  "Of course she does."

  "I'd like to hear it from her."

  Jared shrugged. "Come on, babe."

  "Well, I'm sure now they had an affair," she said.

  "But you don't think your father killed her?" She shook her head. "That's what I thought." He turned back to Jared. "Forget it. You don't have anything at all." Jared started to protest, but Schrader raised his hand. "Actually what you've got is a girl's diary which doesn't prove anything except that maybe she experimented a lot with sex. It's a nice story you've told me, or maybe not so nice, but it's just a story, totally worthless in a court of law."

  "Now wait—"

  "You wait. I'm trying to save you a lot of pain. I got you off and it wasn't easy. Robinson had a damn good circumstantial case. If it hadn't been for Penny here you'd be in the jug right now. But with this—" he pushed the diary back across the desk, "—it'd be a picnic. Any two-bit criminal lawyer could defend against this. No prosecutor would take it on anyhow, because there's nothing here at all."

  "There's plenty there."

  Schrader shook his head. "It purports to be a diary, but then maybe it isn't. Maybe it's just a lot of crazy fantasies. It doesn't prove incest, and it certainly doesn't prove homicide." He paused. "What do you think's going to happen? Penny's father's going to read this and listen to your theories and then break down and gush out his confession and that'll be that—he'll be sent up, and you'll be exonerated for good? Forget it. You're free. You're walking around. No one can touch you. You can't be tried again. If it bothers you what people think, go away someplace—San Francisco, Paris, any place you want. You're young. You've got a lovely girlfriend. Your whole life's ahead of you. Don't let this eat you up."

  He spoke brusquely, but with kindness, too, Penny thought. Listening to him she felt relieved. "Last night," she said, "everything seemed so clear."

  "Sure it did. To you. And maybe, by some remote chance, Jared's right. But there's nothing he can prove. People drive themselves crazy with cases that can't be proved. I've got people waiting outside who've got cases I can win. But this is hopeless, a hopeless case."

  "That's it, huh?" said Jared. "You're busy. You want us to go."

  Schrader smiled. "You asked me for advice."

  "What- about the break-in?"

  "Incompetent burglars."

  "Cynthia said—"

  "She said some people came around and asked her what you talked about. We might be able to find them, prove they work for Chapman, but what does that prove except that your father's still suspicious of Jared, and is keeping an eye on him because he doesn't want his other daughter killed."

  "OK," said Jared. "OK. We get the picture. What a crock of shit."

  Schrader nodded. "Maybe a crock of shit. That's what most things are these days." He shook hands with them, saw them to the door. Out in the waiting room Penny saw the anxious faces of his clients, poor people clutching eviction papers, blacks and Puerto Ricans the police were trying to ramrod into jail, junkies who couldn't afford a lawyer, thieves, murderers, clients he knew how to defend. But he couldn't help them, or rather, she thought, he already had. He was a defender, not a prosecutor, but he knew his law: no prosecutor would take her father on.

  Out on Broadway Jared stopped. "Can't believe that guy, how hard-nosed he is."

  "Come on," she said. "Let's go home. I've really had enough."

  "I don't want to go home. I want to go up to your dad's office and slam the diary down on his desk."

  "Look," she said, "I'm tired now. Let's go home—OK?"

  Though it was cold they decided to walk straight across Central Park upon grass crisp with December frost. Jared was edgy, nervous, full of anger. He stopped every so often to kick the ground. "I really want to show him the diary," he said. "Tell him we know what's going on and we're going to shout it from the rooftops. Hey—let's do it." He grabbed the envelope from her hands.

  "Give that back," she cried.

  "No," he said. "I want him to know."

  "That's mine, Jared," she said, calmly, though she was angry now herself. "Give that back to me right now. I'll decide what we'll do with it, if we'll do anything at all."

  "OK," he shouted. "I get it now. You want to take that bastard's advice."

  "That bastard only saved your life. You're out free. I'm the one who's injured now. It's my father. What the hell is wrong with you?"

  He stopped. "You know something, Penny? You sound more and more like her every day."

  "Spare me, will you? We've been through all that a million times."

  "Like last night, talking to Cynthia. 'Right?' 'Right?' Just like her. I could have sworn your voice was just the same."

  "So?"

  "Yeah—so? What's happe
ning to you? Want to protect him because he's your dad? I may be out free, but don't forget he tried to set me up. He sat there while I went to trial. He glared at me in court like I was a killer, when he knew all along—shit!"

  "Look," she said. "I can't deal with this. I'm taking the diary," she grabbed it away from him; he didn't try to hold on. "I'm not going home; I'm going back to the office, and I'm going to try to function, and meantime I'm going to think this through. Tonight we'll talk it over—"

  "Real calm like it's a rational situation we can really sit down and discuss."

  She paused, looked at him. "You know something, Jared? You're the one who's changed. You were the one who always said 'you have to live with it' and 'let's not get carried away' and 'it's his problem, not mine.' You never cared. You didn't particularly want to go to Maine. You said the diary was a crock. You were the one who sat around on his ass all day long."

  "So—it's come down to that. I'm the one who sits around on his ass, and you're the one who goes to work."

  "Jes-sus!"

  "There you go again."

  "I sound like Suzie, right?"

  "Right!"

  She was standing about six feet away from him, looking at him closely, examining him, trying to decide whether she wanted to be with him anymore.

  "The way you're looking at me now—"

  "Is just the way Suzie did. Right?"

  "What's wrong with you?"

  "What's wrong with you?"

  They were eyeing each other, more like enemies than lovers, she thought.

  He stood back, relaxed his body, started to employ an extra calm and reasonable tone of voice.

  "You know he killed her. Inside you know."

  "He didn't. Schrader says so, too."

  "Schrader's full of shit." He was angry again.

  "Everybody's full of shit except you, and you're a genius and the rest of us are idiots. That's about it—right?

  "God—you're so hung up."

  "I think you're the one who's hung up now."

  "Look—"

  "And you haven't been all that straight with me either."

  "How haven't I been straight?"

  "Oh, I don't know—holding things back. Stuff like that."

  "Holding back what?"

  "That night. Everything that happened. It took you long enough to get around to that."

  "I didn't think you'd want to hear about it."

  "I had to pry it out of you, that's for sure."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "All that stuff about how guilty you felt. How you could have done it. All of that."

  "I don't see what that's got to do with this."

  "And shining the flashlight in my eyes. Wanting to test me. Or so you said."

  "What are you saying?"

  "I'm not sure exactly. Just that this whole situation is very odd."

  "I'll say it's odd. A father and daughter—"

  "That's not what I mean."

  "Well?"

  "Well, I just think it's odd the way you were so happy-go-lucky about everything until last night, and then suddenly, suddenly you're on this insane notion about my dad, and very hot and eager and out for blood, so to speak, as if you've been waiting for all this to come along, so you could sort of—"

  "Yeah?"

  She shrugged. "Divert attention, maybe. I don't know."

  "If you're saying what I think you're saying, then you're full of shit, too."

  She laughed. "Your vocabulary's getting kind of limited." She looked at him and shrugged. "I'm full of shit, huh? Well, that's OK with me."

  "There you go again. What is this 'OK' stuff, this 'right' stuff, wanting to know about her, even how she screwed? You really are trying to be like her. Maybe you have similar fantasies. Maybe that's why you're suddenly so protective of your old man. What the hell is happening anyway? Here we are accusing each other—this is so damn crazy—I just don't—" He turned, walked over to a tree, slammed his fist into the trunk.

  She left him there in the park hoping he'd calm down. She knew she'd said cruel things to him, but he'd said cruel things to her. Now she wanted to go to work. She couldn't screw up her career. Her whole life was a mess, but still, she knew, she had to keep her head.

  She couldn't concentrate. She went through the motions at the office, made some calls, sat at her desk pretending to read, then went to an editorial meeting where she didn't say anything, and when Mac turned to her to ask her opinion on a novel for which an agent was demanding an exorbitant advance, she announced: "I have no particular opinion on that just now."

  When she came home Jared was in the bedroom. He had the door closed and was watching TV. The place smelled like a McDonald's. He'd gone out for fast food, brought home hamburgers and fries, eaten them, and left the wrappers in the sink. It would have taken him five seconds to put them in the garbage. Sheer hostility, she thought.

  She cooked dinner, then brought it to him on a tray. He didn't even look up from the TV, didn't acknowledge that she was there. OK, she thought, he's mad. She went back after half an hour, took the tray away, washed the dishes, then returned and sat beside him, reached for him with her hand. He didn't take it, just lay limp, sprawled out on the bed.

  "OK," she said. "If you want to be like that for a while—OK."

  They didn't talk any more that night. She reached for him in the dark, sometime after midnight, started to stroke his chest, but he changed his position so she couldn't continue, then finally he turned his back.

  "Why do you hate me?" she asked. He didn't reply. "OK," she said, "I hope you get over this, I really do. Because if you don't then I don't want you with me anymore."

  He spoke to her then, but he didn't turn. "Is that an ultimatum?"

  "Sure. Sure. Take it that way if you like. In the meantime I just want you to know that I'm the injured party. I'm the one whose life is messed up. I'm the one who ought to be hating everybody. Me. Not you. Me."

  Silence. She didn't sleep well and could tell he wasn't sleeping well himself. She shut her eyes, tried to will herself asleep, but she could hear the pipes gurgling as the heat subsided for the night, could hear great trucks in the early morning hours tearing down the avenue and then the garbage trucks just before dawn grinding up the trash piled on the sidewalk in bags.

  She got up very early. It was still dark outside. She made coffee, then left the house, went to a coffee shop, sat there hunched over her table, drank two more cups, ate a jelly roll, watched people come in, and thought: I'll go to the office, get something done before they come, maybe reread that novel so I can give Mac an opinion. I'll throw myself into work today.

  She did; she had her memo typed and on MacAllister's desk before he came in. She advised against paying the advance. "The novel's good," she wrote, "but I don't think it's big money reprint stuff. Also there's something about this agent's demands that makes me think the author's disloyal, that even if we pay him what he wants he'll go someplace else next time. He's dissatisfied with us for some reason, thinks he's ready for a prestige imprint, something 'classier' than B&A (as if there could be, Mac!). My advice —let's pass this one up."

  MacAllister called her in after lunch. "Just wanted you to know," he said, "I called the agent and told him 'no way.' Not because of your memo—I'd come to the same conclusion myself. But that doesn't take away from you at all. You're an editor, Chapman. You understand the business. You've got hunches, instincts. You're getting to be important around here."

  She was overjoyed. She called the apartment to share her news. No answer. Maybe Jared was out someplace, walking in the Park, jogging maybe, or sitting in a movie house. She hated the thought that he was just lying on the bed watching TV, not bothering to answer the phone.

  She came home prepared to talk things out with him, apologize first of all for her "diverting attention" remarks. Then she would put it to him bluntly—maybe the time had come for them to consider breaking up. She was annoying him with her Suzie man
nerisms. She couldn't stand the idea that he thought her father was a killer. There was another possibility and she would put that to him, too—they could go away someplace for Christmas (Bermuda, the Caribbean, even Marrakech), someplace where they could lie out in the sun and try and patch things up. But he would have to purge himself of his suspicions of her father. Incest was one thing—that was bizarre and tragic and painful enough to contemplate. Murder was something else. She didn't want to hear about that anymore.

  When she got home she found his note. It was sitting on the center of the bed:

  Going away for a while. Need to be by myself, think things through. Will get in touch when I'm ready. Till then take care. J.

  She quickly checked the closet, the drawers. He'd taken all his clothes, cleared out everything he owned. He was gone and from the look of things he didn't intend to return very soon. She lay back on the bed, looked at the note again. He hadn't even written "Dear Penny." He hadn't said that he loved her, where he'd gone or when he might return. He hadn't even called her "babe."