Dagger Key and Other Stories

by Lucius Shepard

  “It’s a massage technique,” she says. “Didn’t you enjoy it?”

  You start to say “no”—you’re accustomed to having more control in bed than, in retrospect, it appears you had, and you’re annoyed. “I would have enjoyed it a hell of a lot more if you hadn’t sprung it on me,” you tell her.

  “That doesn’t say much for your sense of spontaneity.” She fixes you with her green gaze. You’re startled by how specifically it communicates her disappointment; you suspect that her emotions may be more deeply held, more genuine than your own, and thus easier to read. Whether true or not, the thought that it might be increases your annoyance; but then she cuddles against you, her softness a distraction, and says, “I won’t do it anymore if you don’t want.”

  You’re coming to understand that’s how things work in your relationship, and how they probably always will work—she cedes control to you when control is no longer an issue.

  Days, weeks, months fly past, and you move in with her, but what you know about her never gets much more detailed than the fact that she likes teriyaki. Oh, there are things you discover through observation and experience. Things about her character, her quirks. She believes the world will end in a series of cataclysms for which we should prepare. She loves the rain and likes to run out into it without an umbrella, sometimes without clothes. She keeps a large aquarium filled with water, with a pump that gurgles loudly, but no fish—she explains that she hasn’t found the right kind to put in it, but enjoys the sound made by the pump, so having fish is unimportant. She eats a weird vegetarian diet, flavored with herbs grown in a garden at the side of the house, that you also must eat (though you supplement it with burgers you sneak after classes or while at work in the microbiology lab). She has the habit of calling you “angel,” a term she also applies to taxi drivers and restaurant workers, random people, and when you ask why she does this, she says that some people are descended from angels—she recognizes them by their aura—and she’s just acknowledging them as such. She practices Tantric magic, sexual magic, a discipline you’re coming to appreciate, being a direct beneficiary of it. But her history, the plain truth of her, remains elusive. She says her parents died when she was young and she was brought up “…all over the place…” in foster homes, but she pushes the subject aside so quickly, you have the idea that it may be standing-in for a more unpleasant truth. She doesn’t appear to have any friends, but claims to have a few and promises you’ll meet them soon. As far as you’re concerned, the fewer friends, the better. Your fascination has grown to the level of obsession and you want to monopolize her time. Trying to explain how you feel to your best friend, Gerald, you’re reduced to cliché and hyperbole, and say that she’s redefined your view of women.

  At twenty-four, Gerald’s a full year older than you, yet he still wears his baseball cap backwards and acts like an idiot. He tells everyone he’s in a band (he’s not), shares an apartment with a lipstick lesbian whom he claims is his girlfriend (she’s obviously not), and is employed as a barista, manning the coffee cart outside the University Book Store. Nevertheless, you maintain the illusion, held since you attended high school together, that his opinion has value. He slams an espresso shot, wipes his mouth and shudders as if in reaction to raw whiskey.

  “Yeah?” he says. “She a trannie?”

  You tell him that the qualities you perceive as flaws in other women, Abi possesses as strengths. Her skill at manipulation, for instance. You never feel used, you say, when she manages to get her way by manipulating you, because there’s always something in it for you, and also because she performs the act with such subtlety, it’s as if she elevates it beyond criticism. And that has allowed you to see that the art of manipulation in the female is pure and necessary, as essential to her well-being as body mass and muscle to a male.

  You understand that you’re talking utter bullshit. You’re trying to convey Abi, all of her, by describing, ineptly, one aspect of her, and that can’t be done. Gerald isn’t listening, anyway; he’s leafing through a skateboard magazine.

  “Dude, is she hot?” he asks.

  “Why don’t you tell me? You want to meet her?”

  “’Cause if she’s hot…” Gerald swats at you with his magazine and grins. “None of that other shit matters.”

  Gerald’s partner, a white guy who’s too cool to talk—he nods, he grunts, he gestures—and has nasty-looking blonde dreadlocks that have been dipped in blue dye, takes over at the cart and you drive to Abi’s house in Gerald’s shitbox. It’s raining steadily by the time you arrive and Abi is out gathering herbs in the garden. Her T-shirt’s plastered to her body, reminding you of an old Italian flick in which Sophia Loren wandered around for half the movie wearing a ragged, soaked-through dress. You park across the street, point Abi out to Gerald, and the two of you sit and watch for a minute. Her curves accentuated by wet black cloth, Abi looks nothing if not hot.

  “I don’t get it,” says Gerald. “She’s a plumper, dude. I didn’t know you’re into plumpers.”

  You gape at him.

  Gerald turns his eyes toward Abi once again. “She’s got some potential, okay? But seriously, man. Way she is now…I mean, she’s built like your mom. What’s your mom now? Forty-five, forty-six? If Abi-whatever is this big at twenty-five, time she’s forty-five, she’s gonna be like one of those freaks they have to cut through the roof to lift ’em outa their bedroom.”

  “Fuck off!!”

  “No, really. I’m trying to help you out, okay?”

  “No, really! Fuck off!”

  “Hey, man! Since you been with this chick, she’s got you so whipped, it’s like you’re not even the same guy. You’re all fucking oh-I-love-her-so-much-she’s-such-a-big-fat-goddess. You should hear yourself. You got me thinking about doing an intervention.”

  Gerald has adopted an earnest expression that doesn’t quite cover up his underlying attitude, which you perceive now to be one of jealousy—you haven’t been spending much time with him since you hooked up with Abi and he’s taken it personally.

  “I’m serious,” he says. “I’m thinking about it.”

  “You’re being a real asshole, y’know.”

  “You’re the asshole! Letting this cow lead you around by the dick!”

  You open the door and Gerald, angry now, says “Carole, man. She was hot. I can’t figure why you broke up with her. But this one, she’s got a butt on her looks like a bagful of oatmeal. Maybe you got a thing for chicks who look like your mom.”

  You jump out of the car, slam the door.

  “Maybe you got a thing for your mom?” Gerald shouts. “Little Oedipal thing? Maybe that’s why you’re so into Miss Piggy!”

  He says “edible” for “Oedipal.” You tell yourself it’s time you put high school behind you. Gerald’s trapped in a universe of Tool concerts, stoner weekends at Rockaway Beach and raves in some scuzzy warehouse with underage girls on Ecstasy, whereas you have moved on. Steaming, you flip him off as he pulls away from the curb, shouting something about “…fat bitch!”

  Abi stands at the edge of the garden, her fingers black from grubbing in the dirt, and there’s a smudge on her chin, too, where she’s wiped her face; strands of wet hair cling to her pale cheeks. She looks like a sexy vampire fresh from a dirt nap. “Hey, angel,” she says, and asks who was the guy in the car and you say, “Just this assbag.” From the way she kisses you, a promise of more and better to come, you imagine that she must have heard some of what Gerald had to say and the kiss is your reward for defending her.

  Gerald’s dismissal of Abi, however, has planted a seed and in the weeks that follow you spend a good deal of time wondering if your entire experience with her has been the product of a newly manifested perversion. The suspicion that your feelings might be unhealthy or somehow unreliable causes you to notice things about her that are less than ideal and you become aware that she’s far from the perfect woman you described. Her refusal to talk about personal affairs now strikes you as pa
thological. While she’ll go on at length, say, about the relationship between astrology and electro-magnetism, or the role of angels in human affairs, she’s reluctant to speak of anything regarding your relationship. This frustrates you—it’s like you’ve switched roles with her, like you’re the sensitive woman and she’s the uncommunicative guy. Equally frustrating is her tendency to talk about the end of the world as though it’s already occurred. Because of this, it’s impossible to make plans more than a couple of weeks in advance without prefacing the discussion by saying, “If we’re still around…” or something of the sort; otherwise she’ll point out the omission and maneuver the conversation onto a different track. Her passion for the rain seems demented, cracked, fetishistic; her diet gives you gas. Perhaps the most problematic of her flaws is a lack of empathy. Crossing a Safeway parking lot with her one evening, you encounter a deaf couple having an argument, a man and a woman of late middle age, reeking of alcohol, wearing soiled down jackets and baseball caps. Instead of making delicate, quick speech with their hands, they jab at one another with fists and fingers, gesticulating wildly, their fury all the more intense for its silence. Abi laughs and says disdainfully, “From a distance you’d think they were Italian.”

  Taken by itself, it’s not an important failure. But it opens a door that’s difficult to close and you’re persuaded to believe that what appeared to indicate an insensitivity goes much deeper: Abi is contemptuous of everyone and, though you’re getting the best part of her, the kisses, the smiles, the sex, you conclude that her passion for you must be counterfeit and what you have assumed to be gentle teasing in regard to the movies you like, the books you read, your favorite foods, everything, has always borne the stamp of contempt…and yet you refuse to accept this as true. Your ego won’t permit it, nor will logic. If she feels nothing for you, why hook up with you? You decide you must be missing something. She displays such a narrow range of emotions, perhaps you’re overlooking some nuance that distinguishes her disdain from her affection. You can’t quite accept that, either (you’re not sure which are less trustworthy, your judgments or her emotional responses), but it makes a good fallback position.

  One night, coming home late from lab, you round the corner onto your block and spot Abi standing in the doorway, dressed in her green silk robe, talking to two figures on the porch—they’re partially silhouetted by the light issuing from inside the house and are wearing purple sweatshirts with the hoods up. You can’t tell much about them, but you assume them to be men since they’re considerably taller than Abi. Startled, because this is the first time you’ve seen her speak to anyone except busboys and waiters and the like, you slip behind a fir trunk across the street and spy on them. You can’t hear what’s being said, but every so often, over the ambient noise, you catch a fragment of a gruff voice. Abi stands with her arms folded; the men’s hands are at their sides. Solicitors, you think. You get lots of Greenpeace people in the neighborhood, Secretaries For A Better Tomorrow, that sort of thing, most of whom Abi rebuffs, pissing them off by saying it’s too late to save the planet their way. But that notion takes a hit when one of the men puts his hand on Abi’s shoulder, a gesture you interpret as affirming, as if he’s saying, Be strong or something similar. With that, the men trot down the steps and walk briskly away. As they pass beneath the streetlight, you notice their sweatshirts are identical, each bearing letters that spell out Washington Huskies Athletic Department. Their jeans and running shoes, also identical, look to be brand new, but the light shows nothing of their cowled faces. Abi gazes after them and, with a sharp glance in your direction, goes inside and shuts the door.

  “I saw you lurking,” she says as you enter and toss your pack on the sofa.

  “I wasn’t lurking.”

  “Do you always hide behind a tree before you come in?”

  “I was surprised you had company.”

  “Well, if you’d acted normally, I could have introduced you.”

  “You should have called me over.”

  “I didn’t want to interfere with your lurking.”

  She passes into the kitchen and you follow, watching her ass roll under the green silk.

  “Who were they?” you ask.

  “Just some friends. Mike and Rem Gregory. You’d like them.” She peers inside the refrigerator.

  “Rem? Like rapid eye movement? Like the band?”

  She moves a Tupperware container aside. “I think it’s short for something.”

  “So are they twins?”

  She frowns at you over her shoulder. “No. Why would you say that?”

  “Because they dress alike. You don’t see a whole lot of that these days…adults dressing alike.”

  She takes out a bottle of water. “They’re eccentric, but they’re angels, really. I’ll have them over to dinner some night.”

  “That’s cool. Maybe next week sometime.”

  “They stopped by on their way out of town. I’m not sure when they’re getting back.”

  “Yeah, well, let’s do it for real. I’m looking forward to meeting them.”

  “For God’s sake, stop it!” Abi gives an inarticulate yell and throws the bottle at you. Thankfully, it’s plastic and her aim is off. “You’re always picking at me! You’re always prying and sneaking around!”

  “What do you mean? I’m not sneaking around!”

  “What do call hiding behind a tree? Then you stroll in asking all these questions about Mike and Rem.”

  “Are you insane? I was making conversation. I don’t give a fuck about your fucking friends!”

  Abi stares coldly at you; she takes off her pearl spider ring and sets it on the edge of the sink.

  You laugh. “What…you gonna take a swing at me?”

  “I’m insane, I’m liable to do anything.”

  “Calm down, all right?”

  Without further warning, she hurls herself at you, scratching, clawing at your face, and slams you back into the stove. You cover up, but a fingernail clips you near the eye; you feel wetness on your cheek and push her away. She reels off-balance and goes staggering through a door that leads into a hallway. Her robe fallen open; breasts swaying; panting; hair in disarray; she looks like the poster girl for a bad acid trip. She rushes you again. This time you control her wrists, spin her around and the two of you go dancing across the kitchen. Momentum carries you out into the hallway, where you manage to pin her against the wall. She tries a knee that you block by flattening her with your body.

  “Calm the fuck down!” you shout.

  She snaps at you, snagging your lower lip. She struggles to break free, but gives it up after a few seconds. She slumps, her face empties.

  “You okay?” You relax your grip slightly, and she tries to head butt you. “Goddamn it!” With your right hand, you clamp both her wrists above her head, and put your left hand at her throat to restrain her.

  “Want to rough me up?” She lets out a peal of laughter that would not sound out of place echoing down the corridor of an asylum. “Come on! Rough me up!!”

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  “Can’t you handle it?” She grinds her pelvis against you. “Come on, bitch!”

  “Take it easy!”

  She snaps at you again, but less fiercely, more a love bite, and keeps saying, half under her breath, “Come on, come on!”, taunting you, turning the fight into animalistic foreplay. You’re bleeding from the corner of your eye and from your lip, but you go with the moment and drag her into the bedroom, shove her down onto the bed. She raises her knees, opens to you, laughing now, and soon you’re going at it like beasts.

  You expect her to apologize afterward, but she merely inspects your wounds, says “You’ll live,” and then gets out of bed and slips on her robe.

  You watch her searching for the sash. “Can I ask a question without setting you off?”

  She finds the sash, ties it, sits on the bed. “Sure.”

  “Why do you get so defensive?”


  “It’s not defensiveness, it’s I’m irritated. You do pry a lot. And that hiding-back-of-a-tree thing was just stupid.”

  “Maybe so, but you totally overreacted.”

  A shrug. “Didn’t you have fun?”

  “Fun? At the end I did. It wasn’t much fun earlier.”

  “I enjoyed every minute.”

  It takes you a moment to absorb this. “You mean you weren’t angry?”

  “I was angry…but not that angry. I thought letting the anger out would be a healthy exercise.”

  She’s a wholly different woman than she was a half-hour before. The way she’s sitting there, fussing with the end of her sash, giving off a cheerful, self-possessed vibe. It’s difficult to picture her shrieking, infuriated…though not so difficult as once it was.

  “So you were…” You grope for the right word. “Acting out? We could’ve gotten hurt.”

  “I have complete confidence that you’re my physical superior. I knew you wouldn’t hurt me.”

  “You hurt me.”

  She makes a wry face. “Oh, yeah. You’re scarred for life.”

  You tell her you don’t see how going straight from minor disagreement to a violent confrontation is going to do other than muddy the waters.

  “Do you feel muddied?” she asks. “I don’t. I feel perfectly clear. And we went from a disagreement to violence to sex. You left out the sex.” She stands, cinches the sash tighter. “Life is the reasoned exercise of passion. When it’s not, it’s death.”