The Girls He Adored

by Jonathan Nasaw

  “Why was that, do you think?”

  “I don't know—I never really thought about it.”

  “All right, sorry for interrupting. Go on—you were about to tell me something about her.”

  “Just that I think—no, I know—that she loved me as much as I loved her. We used to talk about moving away and getting married when I was old enough. We would have, too, if it hadn't . . . if it hadn't been for him.”

  His fists were clenched; he'd twisted around on the chaise until his back was to Irene.

  “Christopher? It's all right, Christopher, it's all right now,” she crooned soothingly. “I need you to take a nice, slow, relaxed breath. . . . There you go. This is obviously a charged subject for you. Are you sure you wouldn't rather wait until tomorrow morning? Two sessions in one day can be awfully draining.”

  “No, let's keep going. I'll be okay. You need to talk to Max now, anyway.”

  “Fine. Just remember to breathe—and remember it's the past. Whoever he is, he can't hurt you now.”

  Ain't that the fucking truth? thought Max—he'd already executed the switch.

  He was Mr. Kronk, the high school shop teacher, Max explained to Irene. Before she met Maxwell, Miss Miller and Kronk had had a brief flirtation. But she was much younger than Kronk. His size, his maleness, the smell of sawdust and machine oil, all reminded her of her late father, a widower who'd abused her sexually after her mother passed on.

  So Kronk had married the high school secretary and Miss Miller turned her attentions to her new ward, who was as far removed from Kronk and her father as a male could be, and still be a male. (Sometimes, when he was cooking with her, or doing housework, it seemed a lot like having a little girl around. But she never learned about Alicea, never knew about the alters—like most multiples, Maxwell's skill at hiding his disorder bordered on genius.) And it would never have occurred to Miss Miller that she was as much an abuser as her father had been. Boys were different—boys had needs. She never forced herself on Ulysses, as she always called him—quite the contrary.

  It took Miss Miller another seven years to understand that she had needs, too—needs that couldn't be filled by an increasingly strange boy half her age. Ulysses was growing ungovernable. He was already fearfully strong for such a little fellow, a varsity wrestler and a brown belt in karate. Handling the big, soft, recently divorced Kronk was probably a piece of cake in comparison.

  So she told the boy that while she'd always be there for him, that part of their relationship would have to end. Soon he found her bedroom door locked against him. It was the same type of lock he'd picked as a five-year-old, but he withstood the temptation, telling himself he could stand not having her, as long as nobody else did. Then she began dating Kronk, staying out all night or, even worse, bringing him back to her own bedroom.

  It was pure hell for poor Christopher, Max explained to Irene. He would lie in his bed, in his room across the hall, a pillowcase he'd stolen from her pressed to his cheek, smelling the scent of her hair while he listened to the bedspring serenade, old fat Kronk wheezing and snorting, and Miss Miller's breathy cries, until he was half mad with longing, fear, and jealousy. Eventually he reached the point where he no longer even wanted to come out to take his turns in the body—he preferred the darkness.

  So it was Max whom Kronk and Miss Miller took out to dinner one dreadful night in the spring of 1987.

  “Julia has done me the honor of accepting my proposal of marriage,” Kronk explained, while she simpered and admired her new ring. But Kronk wanted Max to know that he intended to be like a father to him. He painted a pretty picture—they would go fishing, Kronk would teach him woodworking and take him to ball games.

  Oh swell, thought Max. Just what Lyssy would have wanted— when he was five and his real old man was screwing him up the ass. But it was too late for all that now. What the system really needed was what it had learned to need from Miss Miller.

  Hurt, humiliated, and angered, Max kept up a brave front all through dinner. When they got home, he even agreed to join them in the living room. They put on an old Dennis Day record Miss Miller used to dance to with her father, and Max and Mr. Kronk took turns waltzing with their strawberry blond.

  But when the two adults retired to Miss Miller's bedroom early, a new alter took control of the body. His name was Kinch. And although this was Kinch's first time in the driver's seat, he must have been there all along, or at least since they were five, because it was with a feeling of déjá vu so strong it all but crackled that Kinch crept down to the kitchen and took an ice pick from the drawer, tiptoed back upstairs, and sprang the lock on Miss Miller's door the same way Lyssy had sprung his parents' bedroom door.

  Ah, but Kinch was not Lyssy—and he was certainly not five years old. He was sixteen, Maxwell's chronological age, strong and cunning and quiet as a stalking cat. The room was lit only by candles, but there were dozens of them, on the bureau, on the vanity, on the bedside table. The light may have seemed romantic to the lovers, but it looked hellish to Kinch.

  “Max?”

  “Yes?”

  “Could I speak to—”

  “Trust me, Irene, you don't want to. You already met him once— he's the one who shot the highway patrolman. When Kinch comes out, people get hurt—and you're the only other person around.”

  “I suppose I'll take your word for it. But you know, sooner or later, if Kinch is going to be involved in the fusion, I will have to speak with him.”

  “Maybe we can work something out.”

  “I hope so.”

  Kinch tiptoed to the foot of the bed, watched impassively for a few seconds as Kronk's hairy ass rose and fell, rose and fell. He couldn't see Miss Miller at all. Then she shifted her legs and the covers slipped down, revealing her fine slim legs wrapped around Kronk, her pale thighs spraddled out obscenely, her hard little heels drumming against that hairy, blubbery ass as it pumped away and pumped away and pumped away until Kinch couldn't stand it any longer. He jumped on top of that gross, hairy back, his nostrils recoiling from the man-scent, and drove the ice pick between Kronk's shoulder blades.

  The big man roared, and tried to buck him off. Again and again, Kinch drove the ice pick into that meaty back with enough force to penetrate through the meat, through the back ribs and the spine, into the heart and lungs. And he kept stabbing long after Kronk had ceased to struggle, kept stabbing until, after achieving the briefest and limpest erection compatible with ejaculation, he had climaxed. Then he was Max again, and at last Miss Miller's faint smothered cries reached his ears—he realized that she was being crushed beneath the combined weight of their bodies.

  Max rolled Kronk's corpse off her, dislodging the ice pick. “It's okay, Miss Miller,” he told her. “I'll take care of you now. I'll always take care of you. You don't need Kronk—you never needed Kronk.”

  But she wasn't listening. She pushed him away and threw herself across the body of her fiancé, weeping hysterically, trying to give Kronk mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, her face smeared with the bloody froth he'd breathed out at the last. Max, angered and disgusted, dragged her off the body, threw her on the floor. She pulled herself up and fell across the body again, began kissing Kronk's bloody lips, making no pretense at resuscitation.

  This time Max threw her halfway across the room, hard enough to stun her. But she would not be denied—she began crawling toward the bed. Infuriated, he snatched up one of the candles on the bedside table and began setting fire to the sheets, while Miss Miller grabbed at his ankles, trying to pull him away.

  When the flames started leaping around Kronk's body, Max grabbed Miss Miller by the wrists and tugged her out into the hall. With desperate strength she fought free of him and raced back into the bedroom, snatched the satiny polyester comforter off the floor, and tried to beat the fire out with it. Seconds later the comforter was a sheet of flame draped over her head, clinging to her flesh.

  She staggered backward, arms flailing. Max threw her to the flo
or and tried to pull the comforter away, but the polyester had melted to her skin from the top of her scalp to her knees; flesh and fabric were inextricably merged. Max beat the flames out with his hands.

  A violet hush had crept over the forest. Irene couldn't bring herself to speak. She leaned forward and placed her hand on Maxwell's left shoulder. He reached back to pat her hand; she turned his hand over to look at the scars. Again she marveled at the smoothness of his palm—no life line, no love line, nothing there to show a palmist how many children he'd have.

  “It must have been painful,” she said.

  “I was glad for the pain. It kept my mind off the guilt.”

  “Do you still feel the guilt?”

  “Only every fucking day of my life.”

  “And the woman I met this morning—the woman with those terrible scars? That was Miss Miller?”

  Max nodded. “What a world, what a world,” he said in a high-pitched, cackly voice.

  The words of the Wicked Witch hung in the still forest air.

  “Sounds like a good place to start our next session,” said Irene encouragingly.

  “You're the doctor,” replied Max, smiling weakly.

  59

  PENDER HAD TO PUT ON his drugstore half-glasses to review the fax Davies had sent him. There was no background, no narrative, just names, dates, descriptions, convictions, incarcerations. Davies had highlighted the names of the five strong-arm criminals who were either in custody or on parole—the highlighter showed up as a gray bar on the fax.

  Of these, one of the parolees in particular caught Pender's attention, perhaps because of the unusual first name. Cazimir. Cazimir Buckley, aka Bucky, aka Caz. African-American, six-two, hundred and eighty pounds, born Los Angeles, 1970. The closer Pender studied the tiny print, the better this Buckley looked. String of assaults going back to age twelve. Did three stretches in the Umpqua County Juvenile Facility. In a year, out a month, in a year, out a month, in a year, and on to the penitentiary. Pender read between the lines: little problem with managing your anger there, Caz? Probably not easy being black in Umpqua County. Wherever that was.

  When Buckley was eighteen, they put him in with the big boys after a conviction for aggravated assault. The assault must have been aggravated as hell—they'd given him the going rate for manslaughter in Oregon. Perhaps he learned anger management in the state pen, though—Pender noted that he was paroled only six years later, so he must have earned all his good time.

  Cazimir Buckley was currently under the jurisdiction of the Umpqua County Parole Board. Seemed like as good a place as any to start. Pender got the area code for Umpqua County from the operator, got the number for the parole board from directory assistance, then gave himself the rest of the night off and went back down to the bar, where he washed down two Vicodins with the help of his old friend Jim Beam—his head was absolutely killing him.

  Jim and the Vicodins proved to be a potent combination. The big bald man in the plaid sport coat, head bandages, and crumpled, bloodstained hat finished the evening perched on the end of the piano bench, singing Everly Brothers duets with the piano player. Pender took Phil Everly's parts, his sweet tenor handling the high harmonies with surprising ease. “Bye Bye Love,” “Hey Birddog,” “Wake Up, Little Suzy”—he even remembered the entire recitativo of “Ebony Eyes.”

  They finished up with “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” then Pender stuffed a twenty into the tip jar and staggered back to his room. Umpqua County, he thought, as he collapsed into bed. Where the hell is Umpqua County?

  60

  IRENE HAD EXPECTED TO be dining with Maxwell and Miss Miller that evening; instead he brought a covered tray up to her room. A tiny chicken, hardly bigger than a Cornish hen, baked potato, snap beans, and a bottle of Jo'berg Riesling. He and Miss Miller needed to spend some time together, he explained. So if she wouldn't mind staying in her room until tomorrow morning. . . .

  The antique escritoire was in the corner of the room. Irene pulled it over to the window and watched the sun setting behind the next ridge while she dined. Living on the shore of Monterey Bay, Irene was no pushover when it came to sunsets. But this one was a keeper—it set the sky on fire and burnished the green meadow grass gold. Her heart filled, then emptied with a rush that left her breathless and despairing. She'd never known homesickness before. She missed her house, her friends. She prayed Barbara was all right. Old Bill and Bernadette, too. She wondered if she'd ever see her father and brothers again. She even missed her young stepmother.

  She also worried about her patients. Lily De­Vries—they still hadn't followed up on her last breakthrough. The girl would be bound to see it as yet another abandonment, another betrayal.

  Hang in there, Lily, she thought, raising her head and looking out at the fiery sunset. As she did so, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window.

  “You too,” she told the reflection. “You hang in there too, Irene.” And though she was not particularly hungry, she forced herself to finish the meal, washing every other mouthful down with a swig of wine as it turned to ashes in her mouth.

  There were no books or magazines in her room, no television. Feeling restless, unable to concentrate on her notes from the day's sessions with Max, she decided to try her hand at a haiku. She'd gone through a haiku phase in college. Frank had illustrated some of them with his pastels—what delicate, feathery strokes his big hands were capable of. She and Frank told themselves that someday they'd publish a book of her haiku and his drawings, but of course it never happened—life, then death, had intervened.

  Irene poured herself another glass of wine, turned the notebook to a blank page, began doodling green curlicues around the margins. First line, five syllables. She looked out through the window and the pen began to move. That two-horned mountain. Second line, seven syllables: Black, jagged, it hides the sun. Third line, five syllables: And the creek runs cold.

  Quality time with Miss Miller. Supper in the dining room, with the good silver, the good china, the candelabra on the white tablecloth. Miss Miller, with effort, dissects her chicken with a knife and fork and insists that Ulysses do the same.

  To eat, she unties the bottom string of her green silk surgical mask and shoves the food under. She wears only silk—she can't bear any coarser fabric rubbing against the scar tissue. After dinner, they do the washing up together—she washes, he dries—then walk hand in scarred hand to the chicken coop at the edge of the forest.

  Freddie Mercury has already led his harem from the outer yard into the inner coop. Miss Miller locks the gate while Max checks the wire surrounding the yard for breaches, and examines the ground outside the fence for holes.

  Reassured that the flock is safe from raccoons and foxes for another night, the master and mistress of Scorned Ridge return to the house, and Miss Miller selects a video from their extensive collection. Casablanca —they watch it together at least once a year. The original version, not the colorized. During the last scene, Miss Miller speaks Ilsa's lines along with her; Max does Rick and, at the very end, Renaud as well.

  The act of retiring to bed is an intricately choreographed ballet-—a pas de trois, though if Max and Peter execute the switch successfully, as they have for the past several years, Miss Miller will never know it.

  They go upstairs together, each to his or her own room. Max showers, gives Miss Miller time to wash up, then crosses the hall to her bedroom. She's already lying on her stomach with the hem of her nightgown hiked up to the small of her back. He sits on the side of the bed and injects her in the left buttock with one ampoule of pharmaceutical morphine sulfate, and in the right buttock with another.

  While they wait for the morphine to come on, Max pulls the blinds, closes the shutters, draws the blackout curtains, and stuffs a towel under the door so no light leaks in from the hallway. Miss Miller insists on the room being pitch-black.

  Now comes the tricky part. Standing by the door, Max checks the floor to be sure there are no obstacles lying ar
ound, then turns his back to the room and orients himself precisely, right hand on the doorknob, left hand on the light switch, before executing an alter switch. Exit Max, to voluntary darkness; enter Peter, to darkness on the physical plane.

  Peter was one of the last alters to be created. His was a difficult birth—almost an act of will on Max's part. Peter shares little memory with the other alters, none of it visual. Born full-grown, eighteen years old and destined to remain so, Peter has been blind from birth. He's never seen a woman—never seen a human being—and only touched one. Only met one. Miss Miller. He knows this room intimately; once he has his bearings he can negotiate it like a sighted person.

  Blind Peter finds his way back to the bed, helps Miss Miller roll over, and taking great care not to cause her pain, undresses her. She is woozy, quietly euphoric from the double dose of morphine. Her senses dulled, she finds his gentle, feathery caresses bearable, even welcome, as much for the emotional enjoyment as the erotic.

  After considerable foreplay, Miss Miller rolls on her side, facing away from Peter, and he achieves penetration from a horizontal rear-entry position. The morphine often prevents Miss Miller from reaching orgasm, but tonight it only postpones, then prolongs her climax. Afterward he strokes her long soft hair, taking care not to dislodge it, until she falls asleep.

  Then he falls asleep. In Peter's case, though, it's not sleep as the rest of us know it, but only a descent into a warmer, welcoming darkness. And as he fades off, without any visible signs of switching, Max awakens, feeling every bit as high on post-orgasmic endorphins as if he'd just finished making love himself. He hears Miss Miller's raspy, steady breathing and slips out of bed. He's halfway across the room when her voice freezes him in his tracks.

  “Did you enjoy that, sweetness and light?”