Kissing the Beehive

by Jonathan Carroll

  "Okay, so what happens if he reads what I wrote and doesn't like it?"

  "If he was someone else, I'd say you were in trouble. But he's different. He wants you to do this. It's his only chance of having a book written about him. I don't think he'll do anything other than give you suggestions."

  "Suggestions? Jesus Christ!"

  "Stop fretting, Sam. There's nothing you can do about it now except go along with what he wants. Let's figure out –"

  "Veronica?"

  She caught her breath as if she was sure I was about to say something she didn't want to hear. Her "Yes?" was a whisper.

  "Thank you for your help. Thank you very much."

  She exhaled loudly. "You're welcome. It's the least I can do after the trouble I've caused. Listen, I had lunch with Cassandra. Please don't be mad. I know you don't want to see me now but I thought it would be all right if we met and I told her everything. I asked her not to tell you till I did. We had a good time, Sam. She said she'd like to introduce me to her boyfriend. She's so smart. She's a great girl."

  I sent her the disk. Two days after it arrived, the monster called and told her to meet him at noon at Hawthorne's bar. The choice of place wasn't surprising, given all the other things he knew about us. Still, I hated the irony, as he probably guessed I would. That place had only lovely memories for me. Now it was off my map forever.

  Not knowing what to expect, Veronica took only a small purse that contained the disk and her wallet. She said she was tempted to bring a small pocket tape-recorder and turn it on before she entered the bar. I shuddered hearing that because who knows what he would have done if he'd discovered she had it with her.

  It never got that far. She took a subway downtown. Almost as soon as she got off the train, she was grabbed from behind and slammed against a wall face-first. It cut her forehead badly. She saw the thief for only a moment when he took out a small knife and cut the strap of her purse in two. When she cried out and tried to stop him, he pushed her into the wall again, snatched the bag and ran away.

  "It was a boy, Sam. Very dark-skinned. I think he was Indian or Pakistani. But a boy, fifteen or sixteen. He must have followed me all the way from my place and been on the train. It was so smart! Hire a kid to steal it."

  Because it was New York no one helped her. After it was over and her head was bleeding, one woman – one – came up and gave her a handkerchief to cover the cut. Veronica managed to get to her doctor and then the police. They made out a report but shrugged when she asked if there was anything they could do.

  I had waited the whole time in her apartment. When she had been gone two hours, I called the bar but they hadn't seen her. It was dreadful to sit there helpless, thinking of all the bad things that might have happened. When she returned, the first thing I saw was the bandage across half her forehead.

  I ran across the room and we embraced. I wasn't thinking of anything but that she was okay. After the hug, she took my head in her hands and pulled me into a long, deep kiss. Great relief carries its own surprises and this was no exception. The kiss became plural and soon we were on the floor making love. Thank God it was crude, fast and over in no time because slow sex with Veronica was as addictive as any drug. This was all hard touch and relief, are you there? Yes, feel me, I'm right here.

  When it was over, both of us were shy and completely out of sync with each other. Immediately I wished it hadn't happened, but it had been necessary and that made it okay. Despite all the things that had happened between us recently, there was a large part of me that wanted her back in my life.

  We got up and dressed. I went into the kitchen to make tea. She came in a few minutes later. Blood had soaked through and stained the white of her bandage. It was bright and disturbing.

  She came over and reached out to touch my arm. At the last second she stopped and her hand fell to her side. "I'm sorry. That was my fault."

  "It was no one's fault, Veronica. Don't think that. Sometimes you've got to touch someone to ground yourself. We both needed it."

  "I dreamed so often about sleeping with you again. But that wasn't it, this was only fucking."

  "Fucking can be great. Especially after something like this."

  She sat down and gently lowered her cheek onto the kitchen table. "I was so scared. After it was over and he ran away, I was angry. But when he hit me I was so scared."

  I arranged the tea things on the table and waited for the water to boil. It was hard to look at her, the wide spotted bandage, knowing it was because of me. Knowing that the sex had already turned into a mistake, a place neither of us wanted to be.

  Outside it had begun to snow again. The sky was a mysterious plum gray. In contrast, the strikingly white flakes were huge and fell slowly.

  "What are you going to do now?"

  The snow was so cheering and full of mischievous life that it was an effort to turn away from the window. When I did, she looked sad and tired.

  "There's nothing I can do but wait to hear what he says. Wait to hear what grade he gives me on my term paper."

  Closing her eyes, she touched the bandage with one finger. "I couldn't do anything, Sam. I wish –"

  I walked over and got very close. "I missed you. I thought about you all the time. There was nothing you could do! You were attacked."

  "But I thought if I met him, I might be able to . . . I don't know. I feel very dizzy. I'm going to lie down. You can go home if you want. I'll be all right."

  "Don't be silly! Go lie down."

  She sighed and stood up slowly. "The only thing I ever wanted was to be your friend. But when everything else happened and we got so close, I ruined it.

  "Now I can see in your face it won't come back. It's over and it's all my fault. Everything that's gone wrong has been my fault. I hate it! I hate what I've done, and what's worse, I still love you so much. But looking at your face now, I see it's gone. All that love has turned into fear and the sex is fucking and there's nothing more I can do!" Her lips began to tremble. She closed her eyes a long time, then walked into the bedroom and closed the door.

  I have heard women say that if they were able to remember the pain of childbirth, they would never go through it again. I think that is true with anything traumatic. I know it is for me. I cannot objectively describe what happened to me later that day. Like a faulty nuclear reactor, some safeguarding system in my soul closed down that part of my memory. And I am grateful because what I do remember of it, however diminished by passing time, is still appalling.

  I waited for Veronica to reappear but she didn't. I sat on her couch and read a women's magazine cover to cover. Then I stared out the window at the snow and darkening afternoon, walked several circles around her living room, turned on the television . . . Whatever there was to do while she hid herself from me and the truth she had spoken earlier. As the afternoon died the room darkened. I lay down on the couch and quickly fell asleep.

  I don't know how long I was out, but it must have been some time. It was that fathoms-deep, bottom-of-the-ocean sleep where you don't even remember closing your eyes, much less any dreams. On waking, you feel as if gravity has increased tenfold. You can barely raise a hand.

  I think what woke me was the flickering, but that may only be my selective memory. Something flickering back and forth across my closed eyelids. I'm not sure, because it might have been her voice. A soft, urgent susurration inches from my ear. Lots of S's. Did they start the unconscious alarm going inside my sleeping skull?

  Impossible to say and ridiculous to try. This is what happened: I awoke to her voice whispering very nearby. The room was pitch-black except for the flickering somewhere. And noises. There were more noises, voices, other voices besides hers. But hers was so close. I could almost feel the hair inside my ear moving from the force of her breath.

  Veronica was saying, "Stealing. It was always stealing. Something of yours. Sex, sacred things. It was so close, Sam. Sometimes it was so close it was inside me –"

  I had been
so deeply asleep that despite the distinct flickering in front of my open eyes, it didn't register above her voice. I blinked a few times but didn't move, like an animal caught in the headlights of its doom. She kept talking. Low, sexy, as intimate as a lover's fingers stroking your back.

  My eyes finally focused on what they were seeing across the room. Her television was on, playing a video of us in her bed, making love. I had never known she filmed us doing it, never seen a camera in her bedroom. Nevertheless there we were, rolling and tumbling, making the secret noises you think about afterward and love to remember. All of it on tape, Veronica's secret home movie.

  How long had she been talking to me? How long had she been sitting on the floor next to the couch, a foot away, talking and watching this film while I slept? What kind of person would do this?

  She said something I didn't understand and laughed. A lewd, joyous laugh that might have come in the middle of terrific sex. An electric zap of fear shot through my body. This was madness, velvety-soft but complete.

  For however long, although it could not have been more than a few seconds, I lay there thinking as fast as I could about what to do. But there was no good answer because demons lived here, serpents and ogres, creatures from deep inside this woman's disturbed consciousness that lived in their own world and had no space or time for anything else.

  Because I could think of nothing to say, I uneasily watched the television. The picture cuts from her bedroom to a busy New York street. I come walking along and enter Hans Lachner's bookstore, the place where Veronica and I first met. This part of her film meant nothing to me until I saw the suit I was wearing. Then I shuddered. It was a blue and white seersucker I had bought a long time ago at Brooks Brothers. Two years before, Cassandra had accidentally knocked a bottle of permanent black ink across both the jacket and pants. The dry cleaner said it would be impossible to save the suit, so I gave it to the Salvation Army. Two years before. Veronica was filming me then? How long had she been following me? How long had she been circling my life before we ever met?

  I moved to get up, but she put a hand on my thigh and gently held me there.

  "A few seconds more, please! I was going to give this tape to you for Christmas. You have to see this next part before you go. I want to watch it together. It's a big surprise." Her beautiful face was turned to the television and she was smiling. A child's smile, full of excitement and expectation. Slowly I eased back onto the couch. There was enough adrenaline in my body to bring three bodies back to life.

  The film abruptly cuts to some kind of formal dance. The women are all wearing long white dresses, the men tuxedos. Hairdos announce the time period. Almost all of the younger men have too-long hair, mustaches or beards, whether it looks good on them or not. The young women wear their hair very long and ironed straight, as if they're all trying to look like soulful folk singers, Joan Baez or Joni Mitchell. It's the sixties.

  Pauline Ostrova and Edward Durant Jr. dance up to the camera and stop. I put a hand over my mouth. Grainy and awkward as the film is, I remember her face. That wide mouth, the small eyes. I remember her. Thirty years have passed. I am a man well into middle age, pushing a heavy wheelbarrow full of life and experiences in front of me. Yet on seeing Pauline, I do exactly the same thing I did whenever I saw her, any time, any place: I gulp. Guuulp. Seeing Pauline Ostrova always made me gulp. In excitement, raw fear, adoration. Just like a fool, like any boy chocked full of hormones and jumbled love, his heart fireworking over the most interesting girl he had ever seen.

  It was the first time I had seen Durant Jr. outside of the photographs his father had shown me. It added a dimension to the son I had never sensed. For he was a big man although he moved with great lightness and grace. To look at him, I would have guessed he was either an athlete or a dancer in Broadway musicals. The handsome one in the second row of the chorus of Oklahoma!, wearing blue overalls and a smile that makes you think he's having a hell of a time up there onstage.

  The couple mugs for the camera. Edward dips his head in front of Pauline's. She pulls his ear to get him out of the way. Both of their faces are so animated! They go on like that, young and attractive, hamming it up and having such a good time together.

  Seeing them on that summer night years ago made me long to freeze the film. Keep that frame of them smiling forever, holding each other. I was barely able to ask, "Where did you get it?"

  "There are other clips of her on the tape. I went around Crane's View asking people who knew her if they had home movies from that time. All of the ones I found are here. You'll see.

  "This came from Edward Durant. When I told him what I wanted to do, he handed it right over. It was a summer dance at their country club." She stood up and turned the television off. Ejecting the tape from the video machine, she slid it out and brought it to me. "I want you to go now. Merry Christmas, Sam."

  Her mood changed so quickly that I wasn't sure how to react. Then I remembered that a few minutes ago she was watching a secret fuck film and whispering weird things in my ear. That was enough to get me going again. I stood up.

  "Will you be all right?"

  "Do you care, Sam? Really, what do you care about me?"

  Leaving her building, I walked out into a snowstorm. Luckily I'd taken the train into the city. After dinner with Cass, I planned on spending the night at a hotel.

  Standing at the curb looking for a taxi, I thought I heard something over the street noise from way above, someone calling me. Looking up through the swirling snow, I saw a head sticking out a window halfway up the side of her building. It was hard to tell, but I thought it was Veronica. Wasn't that a patch of white on the face? Her bandage? She was shouting down at the street. I couldn't make out what she was saying. Then she started waving an arm as if she needed even more emphasis. What could it be? What more could she want after all that had already happened that afternoon? A few moments went by. I thought about turning around and going back to see but right then a taxi hissed up in front of me. I opened the door and looked up at her, or whoever it was, shouting down through the snow. What she said before was right: What did I care about her now? After the friendship and intimacy, the travel and talk, the wonderful hours in her arms. After her tricks and deceptions, lies and flat-out frightening acts. What did I care? Not enough to stop me from getting into that bright yellow New York taxicab and riding off into the snowy night.

  I checked into the Inn at Irving Place and sat down for half an hour in a fat comfortable chair before meeting up with Cassandra. There was a video machine in the room. I was tempted to sneak a peek at the rest of Veronica's tape, but there wasn't enough time. It could wait till later.

  The afternoon had put me in a bizarre mood – half despair, half exhilaration. I had no desire to make small talk with my daughter. At the same time, I was glad I'd be with someone that night while my mind sorted and sifted through all the new information. Sitting there with eyes closed, so many different images and memories of Veronica floated through my head. Like an aquarium full of exotic, beautiful and dangerous fish, they swam leisurely by, one after the other.

  Someone knocked at the door. Surprised, I jerked out of my trance and got up to open it. Cass stood there in her immaculate white down jacket, which emphasized the red of her cheeks and green eyes. Like her mother, hers was one of those faces where whenever she cried, everything went royal red to the point of near incandescence. I pulled her in and closed the door. She stood there stiffly with hands jammed into her pockets and a grief on her face that made her look a hundred years old. Her voice was furious when she spoke.

  "They wouldn't let me come up! I told them I was your daughter but they didn't care. What did they think I was, a prostitute? I had to show them my stupid ID card. I said to call you but they wouldn't. They were so stupid. I –" Boom. Her tears came without warning and they almost knocked her flat. She refused to come any farther into the room although I kept pulling on her sleeve. Almost as if she was afraid that if she moved even an
inch, she would break into a million pieces right there on the spot. Her hands stayed in her pockets while she wept herself out.

  "I don't wanna come in! I didn't even wanna come here tonight, but what was I supposed to do, go home and be with Mom? She doesn't understand anything!

  "Daddy, Ivan and I broke up. We had a ridiculous fight about something so absurd you wouldn't believe and then we broke up. I don't know what I'm gonna do!"

  "Sit down, honey. Will you do that? Right here is good, right here on the floor. Tell me what happened."

  It was odd to be sitting there on the floor a foot away from the door. But that was as far as I could get her to come.

  A friend of Ivan's had invited a bunch of people over that afternoon. The friend was a very handsome painter studying at the Cooper Union. He was interesting and clearly interested in Cassandra. They talked and talked, sometimes with Ivan around, sometimes not.

  "But nothing happened, Dad, he was just nice. Nothing wouldhave happened either, because I don't do that. That's not me. But Ivan! Oh boy, he acted like I was going to elope with the guy. So immature! What was I supposed to do, put on a veil and lower my eyes? It was a party. You talk to people at parties. You socialize."

  "Sounds like he was a jerk."

  "He was! God!"

  "You had every reason to be angry."

  "Damned right I did! I'm good, Dad. I'm true to someone if I love him. Even if I were interested in Joel, I would never do anything as long as I was with Ivan. Never. You know me."

  "I do, and jealousy always has a bad odor. But Cass, he loves you. You're his girl. He was scared. Unfortunately he showed it in an ugly way. That's not an excuse. You have every right to be angry. But I'm going to tell you something, sweetheart, and you must think about it carefully.

  "I've made a mess of just about every relationship I've ever had with women. You name it, I did it wrong. I wrote the textbook for marital failure. I just spent the afternoon with Veronica and it's probably the last I'll see her because there are just too many problems. It breaks my heart because there are great things there, but not enough.