Jenny and the Jaws of Life

by Jincy Willett

  There are so many like Raymond Moreau.

  My disgust is not unreasonable. I know, because I have talked to my husband, and he agrees with me. He does urge me, from time to time, not to be too harsh: they mean no harm, he says. He contends that people usually do the best they can. I suppose he is right, although I do wonder if this is not really a tautology in lush disguise. He has always been a compassionate man. He alone sees me as I am, and loves me as he loves the truth.

  We are closer now than ever. We seldom go out; neither of us spends unnecessary time at school. Evenings find us here, laughing, talking into the night. We seem again to have as much to say to each other as when we first were lovers. I have fixed up the apartment quite differently—the bedroom is completely rearranged, with all new linens and a white bedspread and a thick white carpet. (I happen to like white. White does not symbolize.) Often we have picnics, as we did when we were young, only now we hold them indoors on the living room floor; and we drink good wine, ’66 Burgundies, ’61 Bordeaux, rich wines of every hue from purple-black to brick-red. And I have never been so content.

  But lately, and too often, as we lie in the dark, I curled away from him, peaceful and fearless, he rises, stealthy, gentle, and leans over me, watching my face; I can feel his breath on my cheek; and I must give him a sign, a sigh, a dreamy moan to ease his mind. Just like a robot he must rise, prompted by my old, foolish impulse, unworthy of him, as though by watching he could keep me safe; as though the universe concerned itself with us.

  There’s the violation. There’s the damage. There’s the tragedy.

  Justine Laughs at Death

  At 3:00 A.M. the phone rang and rang, extracting him like a stubborn, healthy tooth from the maw of a garish dream, a complicated one with melting scenery, shifting shapes, wheeling, screaming birds. In confusion and nascent outrage he reached for the instrument beside his bed. His hand, still dozing, held the receiver like a toddler’s, first with the earpiece to his mouth, then turning it so clumsily that the business end bruised his upper lip. “Why?” he said. This wasn’t what he meant to say, but it was a good question.

  The voice was a woman’s: sweet, motherly, unfamiliar. “I know what you’ve been up to,” she said. “I’ve got my eye on you, Sonny.” Click. Dial tone. He replaced the receiver and stared at it for quite a while.

  He owned six ordinary telephones, one for each other room in his apartment, but this bedside one, the one most often used, was a novelty model, bought recently in order to add an ironic dimension to his private life. So that now, in the grudging light of a new moon, he contemplated the emergent features of an obnoxious duck. For the first time it occurred to him that irony might not be the best thing for a man in his business to fool around with.

  For his business was Evil.

  He was a specialist, concentrating on Pleasure in the Monstrous—depravity, sadism, and gratuitous mayhem—uninterested in, say, hypocrisy, greed, or false witness. In his experience, general practitioners were gasbags, all talk and no action. Evil is notoriously inconsistent, so that the orthodox believer, pulled in several different directions, is often left at square one. One has only to study—as he had, in depth—the confused philosophy and pathetic life of the Marquis de Sade. Long ago, having zeroed in on the essentials of his faith, he had ruthlessly junked all corollaries not directly on point. For instance, he was not a racist; and if he had ever taken the time to file a return with the IRS, he would not have cheated on it.

  But he had time and attention for nothing but predatory delights. From the beginning, in 1887, his prey were exclusively women, his pleasure raping, maiming, torture, murder, and scaring the living daylights out of the entire sex.

  When he first made his mark, in the Whitechapel slums of Victorian London, he revealed to the world its first pleasure killer. He was still the champeen. He raped, maimed, etc., not for revenge or wealth, not for love of Art or Science, nor in the name of State or Church, but simply for the sheer dirty thrill of it. His style quickly caught on worldwide, so that he had many imitators—more every day—but all of them, to a man, got caught. Such was his genius that he never even came close to discovery, and never would. He was the Babe Ruth, the Art Tatum, the Secretariat of murderous heterosexual perverts.

  He followed lonely women down dark alleys and into singles bars, or capered and skipped ahead of them, letting himself into their apartments so that he could greet them properly, once they had closed and triple-locked the door behind them. (He loved to wait for her gentle sigh as she shot the deadbolt home.) He plucked schoolgirls from playgrounds and gave them long, leisurely country rides. He stalked big-boned, apple-cheeked hikers, unwrapping them from their backpacks, flannel and denim like granola bars. Every woman he chose was transformed in some permanent way—mentally, into, say, an agoraphobic, or a giggling lunatic; physically, so that she was in some measure smaller than before, or her face had become literally unforgettable; ontologically, so that what had been a living woman was now a pile or piles of organic matter.

  He made them do terrible, degrading things with the false promise that he would spare their lives. He made them do terrible, degrading things with the candid threat of certain slaughter whether they did them or not. (Hope being one of his minor themes. He loved to watch it die, and he loved even more to manipulate the hopeless, to test the limits of their endurance when their only certain reward was another few seconds of life.) Even the solitary recipients of his 3 A.M. telephone calls (always 3 A.M., their time) were altered thereby. The hardiest ones got unlisted numbers; most had their phones disconnected, and refused ever to speak into one again.

  Seriously. Every time a sex crime went unsolved it was his and his alone. Every serial killer who ever tantalized the press was this actual man. He was the unknown perp of the most voluminous open files in the police departments of every major city in the world. His was that intimate omniscient whisper in the dead of night, his the moving finger writing bloody valentines on flowered wallpaper, his the footprints cast in plaster, crumbling into powder on the evidence shelves of police warehouses. Every unclaimed torso, every writhing, bandaged horror, every pitiful seminude body discovered by Boy Scouts in a litter-strewn ravine was the work of his hands. And make no mistake, he was only human. Terrific genes, it’s true: easily passing for a man of half his age (he was one hundred and eighteen), and strong as a minotaur. But only human. He was finite in height and girth, commonplace in weight and glove size. He occupied one space at a time, just like you and me, submitted, as we must, to the natural law, and put on his pants in the age-old way. And his name was Robert L. Ripley.

  Ripley pulled on his terry robe and fuzzy slippers and shuffled out to the kitchenette. He fixed himself a club sandwich, the main ingredient of which, for reasons of prudence and pity, I shall not disclose, and ate it at the counter, and washed it down with buttermilk. He supposed there was a funny side (“THE BITER BIT”) to this midnight alarm. He supposed this, but didn’t really feel it. He smiled, broadly, just for practice, as though he did feel it; and his open-mouthed, bare-toothed, meat-flecked smile was at that moment the ugliest thing in the universe. Its object was a sweet-voiced motherly woman with indistinct features. He gave her thigh-and buttock-flesh by the handful, adding billowy white skin and the sturdy forearms of a breadmaker, and he was trying to decide which to subtract first when the telephone rang. This time, at least, it was an ordinary harvest-gold wall model.

  Anonymous again, and female, but much younger. She was thirteen or so and spoke, when she could get her words out, with an orthodontic lisp. From background squeals and whispers it was obvious she was not alone, but in the company of her coltish, spring-scented kind. Probably a slumber party. “Have you got—” she squeaked, and then peppered him with giggles, the crowd around her tittering like a flock of geishas. “Mister, have you got—” Again, no go. Hee hee HA-ha-ha-ha-ha. The sunny, burbling descent of a house wren. A happy little tune, and infectious, to anyone not naturally immune.
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  “Have I got what, Dear Heart?” A slumber party…. He concentrated on that winsome thought and tried to ignore the unprecedented affront. His fingers tightened on the receiver, indenting it a tad.

  “Have you got—shut up, I’m doing it—have you got Aunt Hee hee HA-ha-ha-ha!”

  He bared his lips in a smile no primate could misinterpret, and a large spider, viewing the grin eightfold, dropped legs-up onto a nearby windowsill and shriveled like fatback on a griddle. “Little girl? What’s the name of your street, Dear Heart? Precious? What’s the number on your front door?”

  “Have you got Aunt Jemima by the box?” Hilarity erupted at the other end, emerging at a pitch that scalded his eardrums.

  “NO!” he cried, the phone starting to deform in his hand like a surrealist watch, the children laughing, happy, safe. “No, my little squab, but I’d surely love to have you by the—” Click. Dial tone.

  After taking two sets of pills, some for sleep, some for blood pressure, he lay wide-eyed in bed, clenching and reclenching his fists and jaw, and his lips moved soundlessly in the dark. Sleep was out. He had been grievously wronged and his entire musculature cried out for justice. He switched on the light, took the duck in his lap, and began thumbing through the special black loose-leaf binder that he kept in the nightstand drawer. There were two sections to the notebook, both roughly alphabetical lists of names, numbers, addresses, comments; the first list of past correspondents, the second of future prospects. He picked a name, Lucy Garney, from the second list, letting her image coalesce as he removed his pajamas, wadded them behind his tense neck, slid down supine, threw aside comforter and satin sheet, splayed on the square bed like a peeled pink starfish. Lucy Goosey, plump and juicy, maybe old, though, with a name like that, no Jennifer she, no Adrienne, Kristin, Michelle Ma Belle. Quail-stout, doughty old Lucy, comes right out in middle age with her nickname for the world to see, none of this L. Garney nonsense. Looking for a husband, Lucy? Looking for love? He closed his eyes and felt out her number, touched her very tones, his fingertip hovering for a sensuous moment above the final digit. He rang her chimes. Even now she tottered, sleep-stupid, to the telephone, wondering Who has died in the night? Who, in extremis, thinks of silly old Lucy?

  Someone at 8 Buena Vista Circle picked up the phone. “Speak,” said Lucy Garney.

  She didn’t sound flustered, although he couldn’t tell much from a monosyllable. Maybe she worked nights. “Miss Garney? This is Omni-Research, Inc., calling with a brief survey questionnaire? I hope I didn’t disturb you?”

  “No problem.”

  It was almost four in the morning. “All righty. We deeply appreciate your cooperation, and I can tell you right now that soon, very soon, a surprise package will be hand-delivered to your very door, especially for you, Lucy Garney. Now, are you ready?”

  “Shoot.”

  “All righty. Now, repeat after me. No. 1. Rubber baby buggy bumpers.”

  “Rubber baby buggy bumpers.”

  “No. 2. Blooming boughs of bearded bats.”

  “Blooming boughs of bearded bats.”

  “No. 3. Brutal bloody blubber burgers.”

  “Brutal bloody blubber burgers.”

  “Excellent! Now listen hard, Lucy Garney. Here’s your question. Which of these three sentences—No. 1, No. 2, or No 3—would you have the most difficulty enunciating if I were to come over to 8 Buena Vista Circle right now with a straight razor and cut off your upper lip?”

  Utter silence. Not even the sound of breathing. Often they forgot to breathe.

  Ripley, grinning in the dark, wriggled his bottom like an ecstatic baby. “Lucy, dear, would you like me to repeat the choices?” Silence. “This isn’t a memory test, Dear Heart. I love you, Lucy.” Silence. “All righty, let’s try a different one. Number One. Thready throats of throttled thrushes—”

  “I guess Number Three.”

  “What?”

  “The one about the blubber burgers.”

  The grin felt plastered across his face; his left hand froze in mid-caress, contracting to a claw, producing agony. “Are you deaf, woman?” he shouted. “Are you feeble-minded? You—you—I’m going to kill you, you half-wit sow! Death by fire will seem like a month in the country by the time I—”

  “Gotta go now. ’Bye.” Click.

  Ripley, who in infancy had neither smiled nor cried, threw his first tantrum. He ripped the duck phone from the wall, along with a fist-size chunk of plaster; he clawed the sheets and comforter to shreds, upended his mattress, tore it in half like a joker’s telephone book, tore it into quarters, eighths, and so on, scattering feathers and foam. He attacked his pillow with an ice pick, cursing at full roar with every thrust, so that his neighbors banged on wall and ceiling and threatened to call the law. He grabbed his black notebook and ran into the kitchenette, stood by the phone turning pages with such violence that they ripped and scattered like handbills in a parking lot. He found a name, Violet Bone, misdialed her number, awakening a furious basso profundo, misdialed again, awakening an answerphone belonging to Jim&Sally Hamper, said something so hideous at the time of the tone that, had his voice not been unintelligible with rage, the Hampers would, post-playback, have sold their house at a loss and left the country. Finally he got the number. As it rang, he tried to get his breathing under control, which was difficult since, in addition to all other provocations, the receiver in his hand was so disfigured by his earlier fury that he couldn’t hold it to his ear and mouth at the same time, and was going to have to keep twisting it into position. “Hello?” said Violet Bone.

  “Is that Vi?” he asked, in a not-so-hot approximation of good-natured geniality. “Is that really you? Lawks, Child, I can scarce believe my ears.”

  “This is she,” said Violet Bone.

  “‘This is she!’ Ho ho ho. That’s rich, Vi.” He was on the verge of enjoying himself. “Well, this is I! And I bet you haven’t recognized my voice! Come on, Vi. Guess Who.”

  “You lose.”

  “Huh?”

  “Look, Ripley, the telephone is not a toy. Grow up or shut up.” Click.

  He looked every bit as stupid as he felt, standing there in his trashed kitchenette, in a mulch of obscene memos, one dull finger on the telephone cradle. His thoughts were looped and fragmentary. All he knew for sure was that he was not crazy. On the other hand, he was afraid to release the plunger because Violet Bone, She Who Knew His Name, might be lurking in the telephonic ether. He dialed 0 and got a man named Burt. “Yeah, Burt, I’m having trouble with my phone. It’s kind of…look, I’m going to be honest with you.” Ripley took a deep breath. “I may be the victim of a conspiracy. I mean a joke. The butt of a joke. Heh heh. Probably a bunch of my nutty friends. What I’m wondering is, is there any way you could put a temporary trace, or whatever you call it, on my phone?”

  Burt was quiet for a moment. “Do you own your own phone, sir?” Ripley said he owned all his phones. “Because you could put the trace on, yourself.”

  “Really? How?”

  “Phosphorescent paint would do it. Or garlic.”

  “Huh?”

  “Either way, you’d always know where it was.” Burt had a cruel, barking laugh. “Look, Mr. Bozo, nobody who wants his own telephone traced at four forty-five in the morning has any friends, nutty or otherwise. You are a conspiracy loon, and if you think I have to humor you, forget it.”

  Ripley turned eggplant-purple, the cords in his neck standing out like buttresses. “This is an outrage! I’ll report you to the phone company!”

  “Phone company! What phone company?” Burt laughed bitterly. “This is Anarchy, buddy. This is Chaos you’re talking to.”

  “I know your name.”

  “I lied. Go trace yourself.” Click.

  Ripley dialed 0.

  “City Information Justine Speaking May I Help You?”

  Ripley cursed the divestiture of the Bell System at such volume and with such force that millions of tiny circuits disintegrated
and the local weather outlook began inexorably to awaken everybody on the immediate eastern border of the city park. This was the first time he had ever expended his rage on a nonsexual target. It was a terrible waste. Midway through he remembered what he was talking to, and focused his wrath personally upon Justine, and called her names so dreadful that only a handful of men had ever uttered them aloud, and one in particular so foul that it has never even been written down, although everybody knows what it is, and even indecent women, upon hearing it, lose their minds.

  Justine’s response—a laconic “You ready to talk, Ripley?”—affected him more or less as the hundredth galvanic shock affects a Skinner animal. In other words, having by now acquired that combination of paranoia, sophistication, and lugubrious self-pity peculiar to the white rat, he caved in. He leaned against the sink, staring out the kitchen window with burning eyes at the noisome rebirth of day, held the phone tenderly against his ear, as though nursing both it and a migraine, and said, “Yeah. I’m ready to talk.”

  Justine lost her professional monotone, breathed too close into the receiver, teased him like some moist, silly preschooler. “What about?” She sounded like she was digging her toe into the dirt.

  “Who you are? How you know each other? How you know about me? What you want?”

  “Your worst nightmare. Psychic resemblance. You stand out in a crowd. To have a few laughs.”

  “Psychic resemblance? What the hell is psychic resemblance?”

  “We’re all alike, Bob.”

  A huge bird landed in the winter-stripped maple tree in the courtyard below his window. First he thought it was a crow; but it was too big, and perched ramrod-straight, with a military, uncrowlike posture. It sat still, ruffling its feathers in a rhythmic, self-soothing way, as though telling itself a bedtime story. Its big round head swiveled back and forth a couple of times like a tank turret. It dwarfed the tree that harbored it. Watching it helped, a little. “All alike?”