Cast a Pale Shadow

by Scott, Barbara

  Perhaps that was just the point. Without a word, Nicholas stood and picked his way around her discarded clothing to the bathroom, shutting the door in her face when she padded after him on her bare feet.

  Her bath had made a shambles of his ordinarily shipshape bathroom. She had used no less than four towels and abandoned them in heaps on the floor. In the scum-ringed tub, the soap was softening in a puddle near the washcloth-blocked drain. The contents of her elephantine handbag had been spilled and scattered over the commode and countertop. Several clean and dripping panties and bras hung over the shower curtain rod. And there was no telling to what uses she had put his now-bedraggled shaving brush. "Damn," he grumbled and tossed it into the waste can.

  Ignoring her tapping on the door, he shaved, using his fingers to spread the lather. When he found his toothbrush under a wad of crumpled Kleenex, he eyed it suspiciously, then yanked open the door and confronted her with it. "Was this anyplace other than your mouth?"

  Beth stepped back, her hands on her hips. "I have my own toothbrush, sir. I wouldn't think of putting some stranger's in my mouth!"

  "Hmmmph," he muttered, wondering at what logic allowed her to be a prude about her toothbrush and loose with her body. He shook his head and retreated to finish his tasks. The folly of his decision to bring her home weighed down on him, and he was determined to reverse it before things got out of control.

  It wrangled Nicholas that she had made the approach. He wondered how many others had rejected her before he succumbed. How many other nights had she pulled the same routine? If she could say he was not the first, could she put a reasonable number to his ranking? Or had she already lost count?

  No, he decided, he could not replace Janey with this one. He should not be thinking of replacing Janey at all. There had to be an end to it. If he fell into the trap of assuming that anyone, saint or slut, would do, then where was the mystery in it?

  He was not being true to the magic if anyone would do, and that would make everything that had gone before more horrible than it already was. Janey was the last. He had to make her the last.

  But when he emerged from the bathroom with her repacked satchel and with her wet undergarments rolled up in a clean, dry towel tucked under his arm, Nicholas knew it was too late. It was the sight of Beth tiptoed on a chair, reaching for a jar of peanut butter on a shelf far beyond the tips of her fingers, the effort raising the hem of the sweatshirt to the bottom pink curves of her rump that made it so.

  They had two months. Though Beth said she had no experience with kindness, had never expected it from anyone, didn't quite know how to respond to it, for a while she had seemed to revel in it. The brittle edges of her undernourished body softened. A natural bloom on her cheeks belied her need for the rouge that was her addiction. Her hair, always her glory, acquired a deep, lustrous fire of its own.

  He gave her money to buy clothes, and she spent her days shopping or watching television and regaled him with daily blow-by-blow descriptions of The Guiding Light and General Hospital.

  And Nicholas hadn't suspected a thing until he found the photographs of Mitch in a roll of film he was developing.

  "I don't know why you're so upset. I told you it's only sex with him. It's all he's capable of," she had informed him casually.

  Nicholas wanted to threaten her with what he knew was in his blood, what it didn't even take fury to incite in him, that slow, smoldering craving for the darkness, madness, and, maybe murder. He could have frightened her with it, he was sure. He had done it before. Janey had packed her bags when faced with the storm of it, small difference that it was not directed at her, nor could it ever be at any woman. It was not a woman's face or voice that ignited Nicholas's black rages.

  But he couldn't do it. After Janey, he had worked so hard to get that part of him under control. He could not now use his latent madness as a weapon, no matter how Beth provoked him.

  When she demanded money from him to end her pregnancy, he refused. He saw that tiny life within her as a chance. For both of them.

  But he hadn't really been surprised to come home to find her gone with only the note for her goodbye. His life would go on without her. In this form or some other.

  Trissa

  At sixteen, Trissa's body betrayed her, buckled under to the assault of hormones that had set her emotions into rages for so long and succumbed to the curves and shapes she had envied in others and yet feared in herself. Finally, no amount of round-shouldered slouching or shapeless sweaters could disguise it. And without her willing it, the same food she had always eaten, magically transformed itself into round, firm breasts, slim but curving hips, and a slender waist.

  If she still saw a wide-eyed, scrawny monkey in her mirror it was because she refused to see anything else. In her heart, she feared others who cared to look saw quite a different reflection.

  On the city bus she shared daily with other commuting students, the same boys who had ignored her for her more precociously ripe classmates now cast their less-than subtle eyes in Trissa's direction. What the eyes beheld, the hands sought to confirm, and only her cold looks and her well-placed clutch of books saved her from the worst of the poking and pawing

  In April, her mother rallied her dormant interest in Trissa long enough to express her wonder why she had heard no plans for the Junior Prom.

  "I can't believe you won't be going," Edie Kirk said one afternoon. "Did you know I was princess at my junior prom? Your father looked so handsome in his tux and boutonniere! I knew I would marry him from that very day. These are memories that you can never replace. You have to go, Trissa."

  "I don't want to go. In case you didn't notice, I don't have boys lining out the door begging for the opportunity to escort me," said Trissa, swallowing the comment that she never realized she had a carnation and a rented suit to thank for her miserable life.

  "You go to an all-girls' school. Of course, you have to take the initiative to find some one. Maybe one of Lonny's old friends has a little brother who..."

  "No! I don't want you to manufacture a boyfriend for me. That is not the kind of memory I want."

  In the end, her mother won and she went off to the prom in pink tulle with Steven Maher, somebody's cousin's friend. After detailing his financial outlay for tux rental and flowers, and gas for the car he'd borrowed from his brother, and pizza after the dance, Steven told her she owed him the opportunity to create a few memories of his own.

  And so Trissa found herself in one of the parked cars on Calvary Drive on a rainy predawn in May, hidden from view behind steamed-up windows. Trissa tried to imagine herself watching the old Buick from her place on the other side of the tracks, as she had watched so many other old cars and their young occupants the lonely summer before.

  It was like watching someone else's dream with Steven supplying what she had only imagined could be going on in the slightly swaying cars. She marveled at the ease at which the intricate hooks and eyes and fastenings of her dress succumbed to his nimble fingers. These same pesky closures had required ten minutes of her mother's fussing while Trissa got dressed. She laughed out loud at his facile cajolery while the barrier of her bra yielded to his onslaught.

  "My God, your tits are so soft and sweet. Like ripe, little peaches. If I could just look at them... If I could just touch them... If I could just kiss them..." And he did every 'if' without her saying he could. But then, Trissa never said he couldn't either. She supposed she should be fighting him off, but her hands seemed to clasp only at empty air until he guided them to touch his neck, to reach beneath the popping studs of his dress shirt to stroke his chest, to ruffle through his hair while he kissed her lips, insinuating his tongue between her teeth to tease her mouth. ß

  "I won't hurt you, Baby. I'll stop any time you say. No one will know," came his easy promises as his hands ventured lower. Trissa became so amazed and intrigued that this should be happening to her, and that she had no conscious will to make it stop, to test his promise with a "no" that when
his fingers reached their secret, magic destination, his words seemed to come to her garbled through a sparkling haze of heat.

  A sudden dazzle of light in her eyes and a pounding on the window glass she at first mistook for the pounding of her heart brought the spinning world to a halt. All around her, Trissa heard the grinding of ignitions and the fitful rumble of newly started engines.

  "You kids get home now. This here's private property. I give you two minutes and then I'm calling the cops!"

  "Damn!" muttered Steven as he scrambled over the seat to get behind the wheel. Trissa had barely managed to reassemble her clothing and gather her scattered wits before she was deposited on her doorstep with a perfunctory kiss and an "I'll call you".

  He never did.

  Cole

  The telegram was creased and finger-smudged from repeated unfolding and refolding, but Cole was sure he had never read the words himself until now. It was dated May 23, three months ago.

  DUNCAN BREWER TRANSFERRED TO STATE MAXIMUM SECURITY PSYCHIATRIC FACILITY IN SPRINGFIELD STOP VITAL THAT I MEET WITH YOU IMMEDIATELY STOP

  FITAPALDI

  Three months. Mechanically, Cole began to pack, hardly aware of how he knew where the things he needed were stored in this unfamiliar apartment, in God knows what city. The telegram was addressed to Erie, Pennsylvania but the newspaper told him Cleveland and the date, if it was a local paper and today's. Maybe he was already headed in the direction of home. He had lost track of his intentions when he had lost track of himself.

  It made little difference, a day or two, or a month or two, this city or that. Cole had misplaced more time, great precious chunks of it, on other occasions. He had gone to sleep in Philadelphia or Dayton or Terre Haute and awakened in Detroit or Chicago or Atlanta with no memory of the trips. He found it best to gather the fragments of life without searching for reasons. It was better not knowing what went on in those times and places between.

  TWO FREIGHTERS COLLIDE OFF NANTUCKET; 20 FEARED DEAD

  Cole read the first few paragraphs of the sea disaster story with its photograph of one of the doomed ships on her beam-ends moments before plunging to the bottom of the ocean, and another of a rescued seaman, round eyed with shock.

  He thought it not unlike his own story with two lives colliding, one being sent to the murky depths of consciousness, the other left in startled awareness that some kind of life must go on. He had long since learned to handle such madness with a semblance of sanity. Cole was the only one to suspect the truth of it, that he was his father's son and probably insane beyond redemption.

  He found a set of car keys next to the coffee pot. At least he had a car, a Ford this time. He never questioned whether it was stolen, or paid for, or bought on time. Some dab of self-preservation must remain in the dark cavern of his lost time to spare him that. The purchases made, decisions rendered, and actions taken during the blanks in his memory had always been easily reversible, at least any that Cole had found out about. Sometimes he suspected that the prospect of a long-term commitment was what returned him to himself. Cole had learned to be a master of escape and extrication.

  He lifted the curtain and scanned the parking lot to see how difficult his search for the car would be. The worn condition of the keys and his obvious and chronic state of financial distress hinted that the Ford would be old. Spying but two likely prospects in the lot, he shouldered his bags with relief and made his way to the dark green '58 coupe parked closest to his own door.

  Success. The keys fit and he opened the trunk and loaded his belongings. He would not be returning here. Whatever boss expected him to report for work tomorrow morning would be disappointed. Whatever utility bills he had accumulated would go unpaid. Whatever human connections he had made were just as well severed. When traveling down the road to insanity, one learned to travel light.

  The first stop had to be a service station. With the tank filled and the oil, air, and water checked, Cole studied the road map the gap-toothed attendant had provided him. He was in Cleveland, a city he had never visited before to his conscious knowledge.

  "Going on a trip, Nick?" the attendant asked as he counted out his change.

  It took a moment for Cole to respond to the name. He was not used to being called that anymore. "Huh? Oh, yeah. Ann Arbor," he lied. It was close enough. "Got any advice on the fastest route?"

  "Sure. My cousin lives there. Used to go up there all the time and fish with him. Gimme that map."

  Cole handed him the map and his pencil, and the attendant sketched out the roads for him.

  "Sure would be nice to be able to go fishing right about now. Is that what you're up to?"

  "Naw, family business, I'm afraid. Not a vacation." It was another talent necessary to the pretense of sanity -- to be able to fake familiarity with total strangers who knew you on a first name basis -- a first name that wasn't really yours.

  "Sorry. Not sickness, I hope."

  "Not serious."

  "That's good. Here." He poked a grubby finger at the penciled map as he handed it back. "You'll wanna watch this junction at Toledo. Heavy road construction. This way is shorter. I marked it, see."

  "Thanks. Catch you in a couple weeks."

  "You betcha, Nick. Drive careful now, you hear? Say, hey, what about your gal? You're not leaving her here unattended, are you?"

  Cole felt a claw of anxiety clutch at his stomach. "No, uh, she's gone. You know how these things are. Hot one day. Cold the next." This Nick and his 'gals' would be the ruination of him yet. He shrugged and flashed the attendant a knowing, who-the-hell-cares smile.

  "Ah, well, shit. Plenty of fish in the sea. See ya, Nick." The attendant thumped the counter to send him on his way.

  Images of Nick's gal haunted the drive toward Lansing. Cole would find out soon enough how close the imagined came to the real. There would be a picture of her in the file or undeveloped in the camera. They always turned up there. He had found no other evidence of her in the apartment he had left, so it was probably true that she had gone on her way sometime in Nick's regime.

  The headache he had been fighting since he read the telegram burst upon Cole full force, blurring his vision and constricting his chest. He would have to stop near Toledo for the night. The mental disorientation he could manage, but when the torture of it began twisting at his heart, driving was impossible. Not that he would sleep, he couldn't chance the dreams.

  He looked like hell when he finally slouched in the chair across from Dr. Fitapaldi. He could see the look of judgmental concern on the good doctor's brow. It was part of his couch side manner, an expression that was probably fifteen percent of his grade in Patient Manipulation 101. That and the smoothly cultivated sincerity in his tone as he told him of his father's present condition and whereabouts had probably earned Fitapaldi a place on the honor roll in his student days.

  "The research grant simply went unfunded this year, and the state decided they could no longer manage this placement. The state facility is quite adequate."

  "Quite," Cole responded with flat emotion. "I'm sure."

  "You needn't worry about him. He'll be taken care of."

  "I never worry about him. Your telegram, however, hinted at some urgency in this matter."

  "You sensed urgency? Yet, I sent that telegram ... oh, it's been about three months now, I think." Fitapaldi stroked his hand over his hairless pate as he must have done when whatever locks he once possessed fell onto his brow. Taking up his pencil, he made a few notations in the file he had opened on his desk then closed it and shuffled it to the bottom.

  Cole straightened in his seat when he saw him open a second file and sift through it. It was Cole's. He knew it. How dare he keep a file on him? When Cole realized that his fists were clenched with knuckle-whitening intensity, he tucked them between the chair arms and his legs. "It took a while to reach me. I've been on the road."

  "I want to continue seeing you, Cole."

  "Continue? There is nothing to continue. The fundi
ng ran out, remember? My father is gone."

  "I am very concerned about you."

  Concerned. There it was, the key word. Cole knew he would let it slip. They charged by the hour for concern. Setting his mouth in a grim smile, Cole nodded and rose. "Has the loss of my father hit you in the wallet?" he asked scornfully. "What an ambulance chaser you have become, Doctor."

  "An ambulance responds to an emergency. Do you feel your situation is an emergency?"

  "Do you?"

  "There may be danger in it."

  "To myself or others?"

  "To yourself, I believe."

  "Then the danger is as minimal as the victim is meaningless. I was saved once already by the wonders of modern medicine. I can show you the scars to prove it." With deliberate ease, Cole slipped the pencil from Fitapaldi's scribbling fingers and closed the file on his hands. "One miracle to a customer."

  "I do not have to see the scars," said the doctor, watching him without blinking. "But they are not only physical."

  "Scars are evidence of healing, Doctor. I must therefore be healed, correct?"

  "How much do you remember of your father's attack?"

  "To which attack do you refer? They were numerous and varied. My father had a talent for torture."

  "The last one."

  "Ah, yes, the last one. I should invite you into my nightmares sometime. Mere words could not do justice. But, this sounds an awful lot like analysis, Dr. Fitapaldi. You must save your probing for your patients. I have a life to live, restored to me for some momentous purpose which so far has eluded me." Cole raised his hands. "But fear not, I shall continue to seek it. As a survivor, I owe the other victims as much. I suppose this is goodbye then. With my father gone, there is no reason for my return, is there?"

  "You know I believe there is."

  "You're probably right. But I don't care enough to find out."

  "If you don't, perhaps there is someone else in your life who might."