Black Widow

by Randy Wayne White

  I was thinking: My God, the woman’s brilliant. Brilliant and beautiful.

  “Marion? Be honest. Were you at the Lookout tonight?”

  I nodded. “Where I saw the boats recovering your nephew’s body.”

  The woman flinched. “Did you see Fabron?”

  “Only for a minute or two.”

  “You didn’t stand there arguing with him? I know I heard men arguing.”

  “I didn’t stand on the cliff with Fabron. I swear.”

  “A lot can happen in a minute or two at that place,” Norma said, eyeing me as she thought about it, probably picturing different scenarios, seeing herself wrapped in the carpet, the long drop to the water. She let it go, now thinking of her nephew.

  “Paul,” she said, still inside herself. “That poor, sweet boy. He never got his chance in life. Had a daddy who stole orchids for money. He came to a bad end, too. It was like it was in the boy’s blood.”

  I thought, Was the boy’s name Paul or Rafael? But then Shay came into my mind, a woman troubled by her own blood linkage to a brutal father. Dexter Money would have lined up Fabron, Wolfie, Ritchie, and the others and shot them without remorse—but not because he loved Shay. Dexter had a killer in him. Some people are born to it.

  “I’m sorry about your nephew.”

  “You showed that. You’re a good man. I think I owe you more than you’ll ever tell me.”

  I was patting the woman’s leg, reassuring her, but also feeling her thigh, skin taut beneath the sheet, and thinking, Such a sensual body, seeing her face, the way her eyes converted light into liquid amber.

  “You’re gorgeous. One of the most gorgeous women I’ve ever seen.”

  She said, “Uh-huh,” again, but I saw the flush of a woman unaccustomed to compliments.

  “Did they try to kill you because you warned me this afternoon? It was sweet and brave of you to warn me, Norma—”

  “That’s not the reason,” she said, looking at her hands. “It was something else. Can we not talk about it?”

  I was stroking her hair again. Couldn’t help myself. “Whatever you want. I want you to be happy . . . and safe. You deserve to be safe.”

  The woman smiled. “I don’t know if that’s the Divinorium speaking, or you. But it doesn’t matter. Drunk or sober, it’s a damn short life, and you’ve got to take comfort where you find it. The sound of those waves coming through the speakers—you recognize those sounds in the background?”

  I tilted my head, saying, “Birds?” trying to pay attention to the sound track instead of the woman’s face, and her contours beneath the sheet.

  “Not birds. Listen close. It’s from a tape someone made over on Saint Lucia where all the honeymooners stay. There’s a few jungle parrots calling, but mostly it’s honeymooners making love in the morning.”

  I forced concentration. The yelps and whistles of birds were redefined as the primate sounds of lovers. A brilliant idea—an idea I’d heard somewhere before. Audio pornography. Subtle, subliminal. Impossible to ignore as it radiated through the ears to the abdomen as a warm, engorging glow.

  I stood, staring, stroking her hair as Norma shifted her position on the bed to face me. “You may not think therapists are experts. But I am.” She grinned. “One look, and it’s obvious your ching chi toxins are elevated. But I want you to understand something.” Done with the joke, Norma turned her grin to a soft, sad smile that squeezed my heart. “This is different for me. This isn’t a job. It’s for pleasure now, Marion. Then I’m leaving. Okay?”

  Norma reached and touched her fingers to the towel around my waist. She tugged the knot free. At the same time, she released the bedsheet, showing herself to me.

  32

  DOOR OPENS. Shadows absorb a shadow—Norma-sized. Door closes—click—the sound of a secret sealed.

  Door opens. A figure clothed in white appears. Door closes—click—and displaced air floats an odor to my bed. A hooded face stands above me.

  Lips where bugs might feed say: “I’ve been watching you. You remind me of a feral orchid—all pistil, no stamen. Yes . . . pretend this is a dream.”

  Norma’s lips, swollen with wanting, warn me: “I don’t drink that stuff because it gives me dreams.”

  Dream . . . dreams . . . dreaming. I drift in and out of sleep, uncertain what is real, what isn’t.

  I’ve been watching you ...

  “Men—she likes men. The Widow picks her favorites, watching them on a monitor, and they don’t even know they’re being watched. I’d bet she’s seen all of you there is to see . . .”

  I’ve been watching you ... all pistil, no stamen ...

  Fingernails from a dream explore my face, then shoulders. Fingernails flex—cat claws dig, drawing blood.

  “Ouch!”

  Dream melts into nightmares that are old familiar scars: napalm flames, the stink of flesh . . . my index finger twitching on a trigger as, nearby, young men lay frozen in their innocence, alive, terrified, eyes fresh with homecomings; haylofts, ghettos.

  The stink ... that sickening smell, where’s it coming from?

  A woman’s masculine voice tells me: “I am a child of the church. A disciple of the Holy Virgin. Through the sacrament of blood, I will judge the purity of your heart. Are you shocked that I crave sin?”

  Touch of a rough-tongued cat licking my neck. Cat claws flex deeper.

  “Get away!”

  A dream, Ford, stand easy.You’re only dreaming.

  There is no helmsman when we sleep. The brain becomes a default computer, organizing random data into familiar patterns. Sparks leap synapse gaps; neurotransmitters arc. Chemical film snippets play on the backside of our eyes. Meaningless.

  A woman’s masculine voice tells me: “Desire is pain if you love the church. Pain is the path to redemption. We are born to suffer through the grace of our Holy Mother, the Virgin Mary. Spread your legs now. I want to touch you . . .”

  Mary.

  A familiar voice reminds me, “The only woman who impressed my mother-in-law was a dead virgin named Mary. The perfect Catholic girl—kept her knees together, but still gave birth to a saint like Michael.”

  A familiar voice says, “My family has done business in the Caribbean for years . . .”

  A familiar voice says, “A couple of his aunts invested in Father’s project. . . . I’ve met Isabelle Toussaint four or five times in Paris.”

  A familiar voice says, “I thought Shay rented the house through the Internet. But maybe she asked around for advice . . .”

  Images of orchids and empty white cribs drift through darkness as another familiar voice says . . . says . . . what?

  What does the familiar voice say?

  The chain of logic vanishes in a putrid blossoming of human breath. I struggle between dream and reality, remembering: Life conforms to a statistical pattern. Coincidence is inevitable. Multiple coincidences are not.

  White crib, white crib, white crib.

  What is the significance of a white crib?

  Blue cribs are for boys. Pink cribs are for girls. White cribs are for . . .”

  As cat claws stroke my inner thigh, the hooded face leans to kiss my lips. Breath is gaseous, metallic-scented with tobacco, and the ferrous stink of red corpuscles.

  Blood.

  Blood? My blood.

  Enough! I bust through dream’s fog into a room cloudy with light and cheroot smoke, yelling, “Get the hell away from me!” as I roll naked from bed to the floor.

  Wearing nothing but her nun’s hood, Isabelle Toussaint stands aghast, her face rouge-painted like a clown. Her hands are up, fingers spread like claws, fingernails red with my skin and blood.

  She screams, “You can’t see me! I’m not real! I’m not real!” Then whispers, “I’m the Maji Blanc.”

  She slaps her hands in modesty, or shame, over her crotch, covering a miniature penis and deformed vagina. The penis resembles an infant’s pinky. The vagina is hooded, the labia fused, shaped like the petals of an
orchid.

  She screams, “You left the dream, you fool! Why? So you can say my body disgusts you? That I’m abnormal? It’s your death warrant!”

  Because I understand what I am seeing, the left side of my brain overwhelms the drug-murked right side, and I tell the Maji Blanc,“You’re not abnormal.”

  I am thinking: Growing up in the church had to be hell for a hermaphrodite.

  CARIBBEAN DAWN, rain-forest wind. Black water floats a buoyant sun. Sun’s elliptic pushes Venus, Saturn, Jupiter into the failing darkness of the Southern Cross.

  Sunrise rising illuminates the blue of an old morning sea.

  Parrots scream from humid shadows.

  Parrots.

  Parrots . . . the noise I heard as I awoke. Their wild bickering pounded a timpani skin that was the back of my brain.

  I sat. I stood. I was in a cell that smelled of water on rock. Mold and rodents. A spear of sunlight touched my face. I squinted at the room’s lone window. The opening was the size of a brick, slightly higher than my head.

  I got up on tiptoes and looked out. I could see the stone façade of Toussaint’s château. Far below, the sea was cobalt blue. My cell, I realized, was built into the side of a hill, part of the foundation of the woman’s house.

  How had I gotten here? I felt like a drunk sifting through images that had survived a blackout.

  Ritchie and Clovis had dragged me into the cell. No surprise that they worked for the woman. They’d . . .hit me? Yes. Clovis had used the palm of his hand. Ritchie had used fists.

  I touched my cheek, my jaw. Slight swelling; some tenderness. Not bad.

  I moved into the light and inspected myself. They’d left me my running shoes and shorts, but my pockets were empty, and my watch was gone. The Rolex I’d owned for years, Ritchie had taken it.

  What else?

  There was something I had to remember. A conversation. A detail.

  Finally, the memory returned, and it scared me that I could have possibly forgotten.

  Toussaint had gone into a screaming fit. Said she was going to watch me die tonight.

  I had to find a way to escape.

  Using my hands, I began to explore the walls of the cell. Old stone. Dense, like granite. I went from wall to wall, searching for loose stone . . . then stopped.

  I heard voices outside, coming closer. A woman’s voice, raspy from cigarettes and screaming.

  I dropped to the floor and pretended to be unconscious. My cell door opened. Clovis and Ritchie again.

  TOUSSAINT YELLED at the two men, telling them to stop punching me, stop waving that damn gun around, and put the knife away. I was conscious. That’s the way she wanted me to stay.

  “Are you trying to kill him? Not until I tell you to!”

  I waited until the two men moved away, then stood. I said, “Thank you, Isabelle,” hoping the familiarity would touch a chord. I was going to use her name whenever I got the chance. I’m confused, Isabelle . . .You may be right, Isabelle ... Isabelle, I’d like to understand ...

  Killers dehumanize their victims to appease their own conscience. I wanted this killer to know that I was decidedly human.

  Toussaint was under control now, dressed in her theatrical robes—purple and scarlet, decked with gold—the Midnight Star sapphire hanging from her neck. She was the all-powerful queen, two believers at her side, eager to do as they were told. But the orders Toussaint gave Clovis and Ritchie surprised them. Me, too.

  “Go outside. Leave the door open for light, but none of your damn eavesdropping. You heard me!”

  They’d brought a folding chair. The woman sat, her back to the door. She could see me. All I could see was her silhouette.

  “Sit down,” she said. When I didn’t move, she yelled, “On the floor!”

  I sat, then scooted a few feet to her right to change the angle of light, but also to create distance. It wasn’t the woman’s breath that stunk, it was a foul combination of musk and perfume. Overpowering. She lit another cheroot, the match flame illuminating wrinkles beneath her makeup, the heavy, hooded eyes, her nicotine-stained lips.

  “You think you’re clever, don’t you? I knew your real name even before you arrived. And why you came here. Does that surprise you?”

  I was looking at the woman’s distinctive forehead, her earlobes, hearing Shay’s voice tell me about her future mother-in-law’s six sisters—the one with a birth defect; the one the family didn’t discuss because she’d been institutionalized in France.

  It pleased me that I remembered. The effects of the drug were fading, but I still had to concentrate to speak without slurring. I replied, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Then you’re stupider than I’d hoped. You’ve also put me in a very awkward position.”

  “I’m sorry, Isabelle.”

  “You are not! What are your two little bitches going to say when they discover you’re missing? Now I have to invent an excuse to send them away. Or I could arrange for them to disappear, as well. But that’s not good business, is it? They’re like annuities—money and political favors I can cash when I want. Why hurt my own livestock? But I’ll hurt you if you don’t tell the truth.”

  I said, “I have no reason to lie,” and nearly added, Isabelle, but didn’t. The woman was insane, not stupid.

  “What did you mean when you said what you said?”

  I replied, “Huh?” as if confused.

  “You said I wasn’t abnormal! As if you know anything about it. You’re just another little man-coward trying to save his life. You think I’m disgusting. Well, it’s your kind who are disgusting! All of you—you’re nothing but breeding stock. With your adolescent flirtations and absurd charades. Perfume and lies—like flowers manipulating bees. Nothing but silly playacting. Behaving like animals!”

  I was still feeling the effects of the Divinorium. There was nothing irrational about assigning the woman’s bitterness to a quirk of genetics. But I felt no sympathy. She did disgust me, but I had to win her over, or she’d kill me. Maybe Beryl and Senegal, too.

  “I didn’t say you’re normal. I said you aren’t abnormal. I’m a biologist— you know that. Name a species—often there are three sexes, not two. Primates are omni-sexual as children. Boys experiment with boys, girls with girls. Some are born with omni-sexual bodies. The percentages are small, but statistically consistent.”

  The woman’s anger wavered for a moment, displaced by curiosity. “You don’t think I know that? But why would you care?”

  “Caring has nothing to do with it. I don’t get emotional about facts. Vertebrates produce a small number of intersex members.” I touched my neck, then said, “You scratched the hell out of me.”

  Boom—she lost it again. “That wasn’t me, you fool!”

  I said, “What?”

  “The Maji Blanc scratched you. She inhabits my body. She’s a demon. And believe me, demons are as real as heaven and hell.”

  I said, “It’s your hell, but it’s my neck,” then stood and went to the window to get air, carefully not turning my back on her.

  “Your neck? As if anybody cared about your neck! Don’t you understand the power of purity?”

  “You’re saying you do?”

  “Yes. It’s why I raise orchids. Did you know some orchids are self-pollinating? They aren’t parasites like you people. They don’t feed on filth. No need for your grotesque inserting this into that. I bet you actually believe I came to your bed out of desire? Hilarious! God sends the Maji Blanc to punish you. To punish you for what you are, not what I am. I’m His servant.”

  “His servant, huh?”

  “In ways you can’t understand. I film people’s sickness. It gives me power—like air to an orchid. Money is the penance sinners pay for their sins. Now you stand there and pretend to understand me. You just want to ingratiate yourself because you’re afraid to die.”

  I turned from the window and said, “Dying’s inevitable. Getting pushed off a cliff isn’t,” a
nd was surprised at the effect. She winced as if hurt.

  “I’ve never pushed a man off the Lookout. No matter what people say, it’s not true.”

  She was talking about her late husband, I realized.

  I said, “I suppose the Maji Blanc pushed your husband,” and expected her to explode.

  Instead, she became maudlin. “The Maji Blanc does that. I hate her for it. But my husband died before she selected me.”

  It was said so softly that I had to strain to hear. Raging highs, abrupt lows—bipolar symptoms in a woman who was, in fact, three people.

  “Delbert Toussaint. A week after our wedding night, fishermen found his body. The idiots in the village say I pushed him. It’s a lie. Delbert jumped. On our wedding night, he saw my body. I disgusted him, and he jumped. Because of the church, he knew we could never divorce. That’s why it hurts when I hear the rumors.”

  I said, “I’m beginning to understand.”

  Her anger began to cycle back. “Do you? Do you really think you’re capable? Then you understand why it was good my husband jumped. Think about it—do you see the wonder? I was never deflowered. Can you comprehend the significance? A few weeks after Delbert died, the Maji Blanc came into my body. It was God’s plan all along!”

  I didn’t trust myself to comment, so I asked, “What makes you think your husband jumped? Did he leave a note?”

  “No! But he left me rich. And he left me pure. Important people come to me now because my medicines keep them young. Potions only I know—brought from Africa by the first slaves. I have the courage to acknowledge the power of blood.”

  I said, “Human blood.”

  Her voice got louder. “Sometimes! Read the Bible: ‘Unless you drink the blood of man, you will have no life.’ The scripture doesn’t say wine, it says blood. Wine?” The coughing laughter again. “It’s a sick perversion of the truth. Does that offend you?”