Present Tense

by Gil Hogg

  I had a gym class at the club, and I was wondering whether I had the courage to attend. The chances of meeting Chadwin were remote, but the thought spoiled the place for me. Then I got annoyed with myself for being so weak. The club was part of my territory, and why should I withdraw because Chadwin wanted to speak to me? I pumped up my courage sufficiently. I drove to Abbott’s Point.

  I walked into the lounge, and my breath caught in my chest. I saw Chadwin immediately! He was seated with a group at the bar, back to the bar, with a clear view of the room. He was positioned to notice me come in, and he did. He stood immediately, and called my first name loudly as I walked, head down, toward the doors leading to the gym. His voice resounded across the nearly empty lounge. He had been expecting me, waiting for me.

  I was all the more uneasy because one of the men with Chadwin was Marty Kutash. I had to turn around and acknowledge them. I stopped by the picture window looking out on to the eighteenth hole, shivering with repulsion. Chadwin had detached himself from his friends, and moved towards me.

  “Hi, Loren, we’ve just had an afternoon’s golf. It’s a great course,” Chadwin said with his kid’s toothy smile. “How about a drink, or don’t you touch liquor before you start pumping lead?”

  “How do you know I have a gym class?”

  “Whatsamatter honey?” Chadwin said, soothingly, as though he knew me intimately.

  “Why are you following me?”

  “We could go to another bar,” he offered quickly, deaf to my words.

  “Didn’t you hear? I don’t want even to see you in the distance,” I said, trying to give the impression of composure.

  “Like I said, we’re in the same fishbowl.”

  “One of the people you’re with works with my husband.”

  “Uh-huh, don’t worry about Marty. I’ll tell him I owe you an apology for last Friday.”

  I moved away, intending to abandon the workout class.

  “I’ll call you at your office,” he said.

  “No!”

  “You’ll regret it baby.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He stroked his jaw with a hurt-child look. “I should call you on your private line. Let me know the number. It’s less embarrassing than going through your PA. I believe you have a PA. And a staff. And a title. You’re a smart girl. You’ve come a long way. Don’t spoil it.”

  “I’m not going to talk to you,” I said, choking on the monstrous implications of the vague threat.

  “Oh, yes you will, honey.”

  Angry as I was, I could see there was a trace of sense in reaching an understanding with this misguided man. How else could I live from day to day? But at the moment, in the face of his presumption, my reason and my actions were out of sync. I broke away from him, and heard his laugh in my wake.

  I gave Marty Kutash a friendly wave as I headed back toward the gym. It had taken only a few moments to talk to Chadwin, but I wondered at what cost. How would it appear to Kutash? As though I had called in, specifically to speak to Chadwin? I couldn’t just leave the club. I went through the entrance to the gym, although I had no stomach for the workout. I hid in the washroom, and cried; they were tears of frustration.

  I had another sleepless night. The thought of Chadwin’s call, and when it would come, and what could be said, never left my mind. I had to force myself out of bed in the morning, drugged with tiredness.

  At the office, I was on my third cup of coffee when Chadwin called. I let Sally put the line through, and then cut it before speaking. In a few moments, he was on the line again. This time I had to deal with him more frontally.

  “Tell him I’m out,” I said to Sally, trying to sound bored with a nuisance caller.

  I didn’t want to tell Sally not to put any future calls from Mr Chadwin through, because it was such a personal declaration that it would have created questions in her mind, although she didn’t know who he was. Fortunately, Chadwin didn’t call again. In the afternoon while I was working, whether I was talking to people, or on the computer, I railed in my mind at what an unfair world it was for women. We were supposed to be emancipated, and yet a macho male animal like Chadwin was pushing me around as he pleased, and I was retreating, retreating, trying to protect my reputation, myself, my life.

  That night when Greg was asleep, I moved over tight on my side of our big sleigh bed, lying on my back, eyes open. I tried to see the situation as Chadwin might. He could be an unreasoning, swollen penis in human form, but that didn’t square with his upbringing, college education and career. He had moved with success among sophisticated people, and he must have some insight into them. Surely a rational understanding between us was possible.

  Meeting, just for an instant, after fifteen years, was one terrible stroke, but it was more than that. He now appeared to be talking about me to his new friends, and pursuing me. Actively pursuing. His overbearing tone didn’t square with a man who simply wanted to reach an understanding with his former victim, and retire. I could be wrong about that. He was the bully-boy type. He probably tackled most of his relationships in football boots. Or, he could be so sexually jaded that the prospect of pursuing his victim after all this time had a special frisson, an excitement beyond his other encounters; a try-on which he would push for a distance, and then give up in the face of my resistance.

  I didn’t want to consider the one further possibility; that in a perverse way he wanted revenge. Revenge for being put in the dock to face criminal charges, for the embarrassment of his family; revenge for his own suffering while the outcome of the case was in doubt. Revenge for the pain he had unquestionably brought upon himself. I couldn’t believe that he could really be that disordered.

  If I was going to meet Chadwin, as he wished, be alone with him, there were two ways it could be: calm with an opportunity for serious talk, or angry. If it was going to be anger, I couldn’t deal with a two hundred pounds plus man. He could beat me up, and walk away – unless I could restrain him. Restrain him? Yes, restrain him so that I could talk to him. If a woman wanted to restrain a monster like Chadwin, it could only be done with ropes, and a secret place to keep him.

  My crazed mind wandered into this impossible territory, and led to a fantastic dream that night about the workshop at Chateaugay, which had some of the qualities of a safe and secret place. I could tie him up there and talk sense to him. I could force reason and decency down his throat with a lavatory brush.

  In my dream, I was looking around the workshop with the idea of confining Chadwin there. It’s deep under the house. You have to go through the garage at the front to get to it. If the garage doors were closed, as well as the workshop doors, nobody would hear anything out front, and the lakeside is entirely private. I looked at the walls of the workshop to find a pipe, or a bracket which he could be tied to, but there was nothing. All I could do, I reckoned, would be to secure Chadwin on a frame on the floor, so that he was spread-eagled, flat on his back. He wouldn’t be in any pain. He’d be able to listen and talk. In my dream, I bought a double mattress, and ropes in Clayburg. I invited Chadwin to the house. I hit him over the head with a baseball bat. I dragged his body down the stairs to the workshop, and tied him to the mattress. When he became conscious, he only swore at me. He wouldn’t acknowledge the horror of what he had done to me. My plan had failed. In frustration, I tied a rat-trap around his groin, with the open end over his penis. Inside the cage was a hungry, scurvy rat.

  I woke up suddenly, sweating at having created a medieval inquisition in my imaginings, but more than that, deeply depressed at not being able to get any acknowledgment from Chadwin about the hurt he had inflicted.

  Greg found me sipping a glass of milk, sitting on the end of the bed in the dark, at three in the morning. He flicked the bed-lamp on.

  “What’s the matter?”

  I should have told Greg then, let the whole ugly story come out – but I felt as though I would be fouling the warm security of our bedroom.

  “Oh…
those work problems.”

  “It’s not like you. You’re always saying to me, if you can’t cut it, it’s no use busting yourself trying. Maybe you should be thinking of making a move.”

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  When I lay down beside my husband, and felt him cuddle in around me, I had decided to go with my first thoughts about Chadwin – that he was taking a bull-headed approach to an understanding between us, or at most, that he was a bored voluptuary seeking a thrill, but in the end, amenable to reason. I therefore had to let Chadwin know clearly and calmly how I felt, and that could only be done by talking with him, preferably face to face.

  I accepted the phone call at my office the next day with a grim heart.

  Chadwin spoke with a voice of oily expectation, and sighed theatrically when I agreed to meet.

  “I knew you’d see reason, Loren.”

  “The only reason I’m seeing you is that we need to agree that we will never ever, ever, ever have anything to do with each other.”

  “That’s kind of difficult in this one man and a dog dump, but we can talk about it.”

  We haggled about a date, and I insisted on the club as a place, around 6pm the forthcoming Friday. It was public, and we both had a reason to be there. At least it was better than my office, a bar, a park or the telephone. I wanted to get Chadwin off my mind as soon as possible.

  On Friday when I arrived at Abbott’s Point I saw that Mr and Mrs Chadwin were playing in the mixed foursomes. I hadn’t reckoned on Mrs Chadwin being around. In my view this put an end to the possibility of having a private talk with her husband. When I was in the ladies’washroom, Eve Chadwin came in. She might have seen me, and followed me in, because I suspected that in the few moments when we were introduced, she may have divined that my connection with her husband was not about an accident with a glass. She remembered me. Recognising somebody in the mirror is somehow less personal than turning toward them. I had tied my hair back in a ponytail, and I was wearing a black trouser suit from Saks.

  “You look stunning, my dear,” Eve said.

  “It was a present.”

  Eve raised her eyebrows which were plucked to a thin line. “A generous and tasteful husband – how rare!”

  “No, a sister-in-law who thinks I need a bit of style.”

  “How candid of you.”

  As we were putting the final touches to ourselves, I had the feeling Eve wanted to speak. She arrested me a few steps from the washroom door, and paused to clip her Gucci handbag. I felt no animosity.

  “And do you think my husband has the rare qualities I mentioned?”

  “How could I possibly have the slightest idea?”

  Eve’s question interested me less than a grain of salt, but it showed that she understood, with the uncanny antennae of a wife.

  “I thought you knew him!” Eve cackled, exhaling sharply and distending her nostrils.

  “You’re mistaken,” I said, and to exclude any further enquiry, I asked how they were settling down.

  As Eve began to speak, it came to me with complete clarity, that there might be a way of dealing with Chadwin which I had not thought of before: tell his wife. Tell her the facts without any embellishment. It would be an explosive revelation, but it would bring to a halt any plans Chadwin might have to harass me. I knew very little about Eve. She was a successful investor, and it was gossip that she had rescued Chadwin from a deal which had gone sour, and threatened him with bankruptcy. She would undoubtedly be a strong influence over him. But it would be unwise to embark on this course without telling Greg first. He might be drawn into it. I needed to think about the implications of telling Eve more carefully, and that included telling Greg my story, to start. As we walked toward the lounge, I contented myself with my denial.

  Eve said that Rochester was an awful place. It had been raining and windy ever since they had arrived, and there were no decent shops. Chesterfield was no more than a kind of doll’s village. Cedar Falls was pretentious and indescribably boring. The only way they would be able to endure it was by flying regularly to their place in Florida. Eve mentioned she had two children from a previous marriage who also hated the move. She admitted that they were spoilt and demanding.

  “I sometimes think children delight in torturing their parents,” she said.

  Eve was a brittle woman with a variety of postures and poses. Elegant, attractive and rich as she was, lines of anxiety were beginning to be chiselled around her mouth. Her skin was drying and shrinking. And she was Chadwin’s wife.

  Chadwin ensured that we appeared to drift together in the crowded room. I saw him, after a while, discreetly near me at the end of the bar. His glance wasn’t lecherous; it was chilly and knowing. He moved to a place beside me when he could, and began to talk. His first marriage was written off as a stupid mistake. By the sound of the vacations he and his wife were having in Europe, they had a lot of money. I looked around to see who was watching us, and decided probably nobody. This was a neutral place to be seen with Chadwin. He was bending over me proprietorially from his six feet. The way he moved his head and shoulders exuded a virility that would have made me laugh, if he had been any other man. He was wearing a plain grey suit cut closely to his figure, and a button-down shirt open at the throat. The clothes were a platform for his red-gold hair. Women gave him a second look and he knew it. He could see I was jumpy and inattentive.

  “Come out to the car, and we can talk.”

  “What about your wife?”

  “Eve’s gone to a book-signing in Chesterfield.”

  “You don’t do them.”

  “I don’t read fiction, baby. I prefer real life,” he guffawed.

  I knew how risky Chadwin’s proposal was. I didn’t trust the man, and I didn’t want to be seen consorting with him. But I couldn’t go on with phone calls and suggestive meetings in a crowd. Chadwin already had the wrong idea about me. The very knowingness of his attitude demanded an understanding, so in spite of my misgivings, I decided to go.

  Chadwin eased away, and headed for the door. I waited a few moments and followed. When I got to the front steps, I could see Chadwin in the half-dark, headed for the far side of the parking lot where there were few cars. Perhaps he had parked with the idea that he might lure me there. No. I was an adult going to have a necessary talk with another adult. Chadwin pointed to his car when I approached, and I was relieved to see it was quite small. I walked around the rear where the badge said XJ12S, a sports convertible, very low to the ground, with two aircraft type seats in front, and lots of controls between them. The car park was floodlit, and there was still light in the sky. I would have suggested we talk outside, but for the gritty gusts of wind which swept across the lot.

  I think Chadwin would have liked to grab me when he got inside, but he slid back behind the wheel, defeated by his surroundings.

  “Bloody car! It’s only good for driving.”

  I launched myself like a suicide off a bridge. “You obviously recognised me when you first saw me.”

  “Of course,” he said, smugly. “I’ve often wondered what happened to you. I thought you might have made a living as a call girl.”

  I restrained myself from leaving the car. “You want to be insulting, like you were the person who got hurt.”

  In the half-light, his face looked metallic, different surfaces reflecting like plates of copper, yet quite open and honest-looking.

  “You caused me a wagon-load of grief, Loren, but that was long ago.”

  “Big deal. You had grief. Why are you after me?” I said, my breast heaving, trying to control the turbulence.

  “Why not? We’re both looking for fun.”

  His hand groped ineffectively across the drive housing, fumbling my knee.

  “Get away! I’m Loren Reynaud. The People versus Chadwin and Schultz!”

  Chadwin’s arm slid away, and he was stilled. A mistiness clouded his features, a heave of air into his barrel chest.

  “You were
just a little bag of trash – then, but you’ve put on some polish since.”

  I heard the label which had been assigned to me implicitly in the Westchester County court. The insult generated a white heat under my skin, but I took it.

  “You didn’t expect to meet me at your country club. I have a respectable life here.”

  “Do you?” Chadwin said, flexing his jaw disdainfully.

  “I don’t want my life spoiled by harassment from the man who raped me!”

  “Goddam it, Loren, I have forgotten all that stuff that happened centuries ago.”

  But I knew he hadn’t forgotten, and the past had been reawakened for me, too. A wound of yesterday, still bruised and bleeding.

  “Can you understand how nauseating it is to see you, let alone speak to you?”

  “Why are you here, then?”

  “You dick! I’m here because you threatened me. I’m here because of what happened in Yonkers, and nearly drove my sister crazy. I don’t know you. I only know a brute from the past who is threatening me now.”

  I was beginning to doubt whether the spoiled, over-privileged savage at the Westchester court had become, or would at least behave like a sensible career executive with a family and a reputation to sustain.

  “So why have you given me the come on?” Chadwin persisted, amused now.

  “How can you say that, you fool? There must be something wrong inside your head. I’m prepared to talk to you. I want us to work out how we’re going to handle this. How we can both have a life here.”

  “Talk? Shit. Let’s have a screw. It’s what we both want.”

  “Never!”

  “Listen, Loren. I’d go easy on this. My advice to you. You have a nice job, and your husband is well placed. Once people know about you. You know? People can’t handle this.”