“Who did you see?”
The woman lunged at Helen, holding out her third eye. For a second, Helen thought she saw a purple orb glowing in the space encircled by Sully’s black fingers.
“I saw you.”
“Get away from me!” Helen ran toward the Pittock House, the asphalt biting her bare feet.
Behind her, Sully ranted. “I saw you floating in Carrie’s well. The girl who watched him do it on the train tracks. I saw her floating in the well. The well in my mind.” Sully raised the third eye back to her forehead. “I see you. I see how he looks at you. I see how she loves you. I see you go down inside and die. In the dark. In the cave. Underground, where he cuts you. I see you. I see you!”
Helen’s heart pounded as she fled into the Pittock House and slammed the door behind her. She checked the lock twice, then hurried to the kitchen and pulled all the curtains, as though shutting out Sully’s face could shut out her fears. She’s crazy. Helen paced around the kitchen. She’s crazy.
Around her, the house creaked. It was after midnight. She stared at her phone. Who could she call? Hornsby? Helen knew what happened to administrators who meddled in police business. Get in the way too many times, and the channels of communication would be closed. She could call Terri, but he was a thousand miles away, working for a college where the biggest question was did Dean What–The–Hell–Were–You–Thinking sleep with the head of the cheerleading squad? He was in-house counsel, not a detective. As for Drummond, he’d just seen the mortician carry away the body of his childhood friend. Helen tried to remember the number of Charles, the young middle manager from the bar. She had long since discarded the card he gave her.
Helen slipped on a pair of flats and a sweater, picked up her purse, and stepped back outside. There was never anyone she could go to. Only a world full of strangers and the cold hum of an anonymous hotel room. She scanned the area for Sully’s shadow and, seeing nothing but the still, lamp–lit campus, she ran to her car.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Helen found a bar on an empty stretch of road that was little more than a shack, attached to a sagging motel. A reviewer on Yelp had written, “Here is where alcoholics go to die.” The drinks were strong, the prices cheap, and the bathrooms best avoided.
She parked in the gravel lot that Lucky Tom’s Tavern shared with the Cozzzy Inn. Inside the smoky, dim-lit bar, conversation was shouted across the tables. As Helen entered, the bartender yelled to one of the pool players.
“That’s dirty pool,” the man called back. “Fuckin’ scratch on the eight loses. I don’t give a shit what the house rules are.”
On opposite sides of the bar, two old men argued about the game on television. A crowd of younger men in No Fear t–shirts sat at a table covered with pitchers. One of them caught Helen’s eye as she slid onto a bar stool and ordered a martini.
“I don’t know if I know how to make one of them.” The bartender was mocking her. Helen still wore the dress for convocation.
“It’s cold vodka in a glass.” She wasn’t in the mood for teasing.
“I like this one,” the bartender announced to the crowd. To Helen he added, “You must have had a day like mine.”
That would be hard to imagine. Helen nodded. “Bet I did.”
****
She had finished her first martini and started on a second when the man who’d first eyed her sat on the stool next to hers.
“You been here before?” He was beginning to slur his speech, the smell of cigarette smoke thick around him.
“No,” Helen said. “I’m visiting my mother in Great Barrington. Just couldn’t take it, if you know what I mean. Had to get out. Talk to some real people for a change.”
He grinned. “You wanna come sit with me and my boys?”
She was just about to say yes, when she felt a hand on her wrist. A younger man had taken the bar stool on her other side. He wore a baseball cap over long hair. Dark brown eyes stared at her from beneath shaggy bangs.
“I’m gonna buy you a drink.” The chewing tobacco tucked in his lower lip made his voice thick.
“I’m fine.” Helen extricated her wrist.
“Gotta talk to you,” the young man said. To the other man he said, “Mind if I borrow her for a sec? I’ll give her back.”
The other man shrugged and stumbled off his stool. He was drunker than Helen had thought. “Suit yourself. Come on over when you’re done, pretty.”
The young man took a Coke can from between his legs and spat in it. He spoke quietly. Helen had to strain to hear.
“Those guys are no good. Don’t mess with them. Last weekend they called a stripper out to the Cozzzy Inn. Then two of the guys tried to fuck her. The girl ran down to the lobby to call the police. Manager locked the lobby door on her, didn’t want to break up a fight. They were about to beat her up bad when the cops came.”
“And you didn’t break it up?” Helen asked. She wasn’t sure she liked his tone. He was too young to be warning her with such authority.
“I’m not stupid,” the man said.
Helen tried to glimpse his face beneath the hair and baseball cap. There was something vaguely familiar in the shape of his jaw.
“What’s your name?” Helen asked.
The man glanced up at the bottles behind the bar. “Jack.”
“You live around here, Jack?” Helen asked.
“Pittock.” He pronounced it Pidick. “You?”
“New Jersey. I’m just visiting my mom in Great Barrington.”
“Is that so?” The man ran his thumbnail along the back of Helen’s arm. “Cause I’m thinkin’ you came here for the same thing I did.”
Helen watched him caress her arm. His nails were clean and his hands unworn. He was very young.
“You got a room next door?” Helen asked.
****
Helen followed the man into the Cozzzy Inn. He opened his second floor door and ushered her inside, placing his hand over hers before she could turn on the light.
“You don’t want to see this place in the light.” He put his hands on Helen’s waist and kissed her. His kiss was stilted by the tobacco still tucked in his lower lip. His breath was unexpectedly fresh. He moved his hands to her cheeks, cupping her face so lightly she could barely feel his touch. “Do you know me?”
She stared at his dark brown eyes. She hardly knew herself, but in a room like this everyone was the same. She nodded. When she tried to put her arms around him, he grabbed her wrists and pinned them behind her. He pressed his lips to her neck, then whispered,
“I want to make you feel good, but first I need to know: you want to go slow or you want to get fucked?”
Helen wondered at his confidence. “How old are you?”
“Thirty–five.” He pressed his face against her neck. His skin felt as soft and hairless as a girl’s cheek. His breath quickened
When Helen spoke, she realized hers had too. “I don’t believe that.”
Still holding her hands, he pressed his hips against hers. She felt his erection, already hard in his jeans, and gasped.
The man chuckled. “Tell me what you want.”
Helen closed her eyes. “I want to forget.”
The man had the courtesy to pull down the bedspread. Helen reached her arms around him. Beneath his shirt, strapped to his lean ribcage, she felt the outline of a gun. He pushed her hands down.
I’ve gone too far. Helen had always known she would eventually make a mistake. Like Russian roulette, one chamber was always loaded. Maybe it would be rape. Maybe an attack. Maybe AIDS. But that was the thrill. That was the reason. One chamber was loaded, and when the bullet clicked into place, she could forget Eliza and everything she had done.
****
The man had stripped her clothing in seconds. He spun her around and pushed her face down on the bed. She heard his zipper release, then felt his hand slide under her body. His fingers grazed the sides of her clit, deliberately teasing. When he removed his finger
s, Helen groaned.
“Do you want me?” He leaned over her shoulder. She felt the seams of his jeans biting into her buttocks, the weight of his body pressing her public bone to the bed, the gun against her ribs.
“Yes.”
He licked her shoulder and bit the skin at the base of her neck, sending a shiver through her body.
“How do I know you want me?”
“I’m wet.”
He slid his fingers inside her, then pulled them out. She heard him lick his fingers, heard him unwrap a condom. Without fully removing his jeans, he thrust into her. She gasped, and he froze for second. Then he lowered his weight onto her and massaged her clitoris directly, keeping time with the pulse of his hips. Her whole body existed between the pressure inside and out. The exquisite pressure made her bladder feel ready to burst. Spirals of orange appeared behind her closed eyes
He pumped faster and faster. Helen felt her body tense in opposition, certain he would climax first and leave her to sit miserably on the toilet, unable to rub out an orgasm or pee.
“Don’t stop,” she said hopelessly.
“Not until you tell me to.” His voice was high with pleasure, high and familiar. Helen had no time to think about that.
“Make me forget,” she heard herself say, as if from a great distance. The orgasm exploded in her clitoris and raced like electricity down her thighs, into the palms of her hands, her eyelids. For a second, the world went black.
****
The man was in the bathroom. She could hear the toilet flush, the sink running. He was probably washing the scent of her off his hands before returning to his girlfriend, or wife, the teen mother of his unintended children. She remembered the skin on his cheek. Perfectly smooth, like a boy’s. Of course he carried a gun. He was too young to own that kind of confidence himself.
Helen felt sick to her stomach. She was getting careless. This boy… Was he eighteen? He’d been so forceful, but he had a girl’s hands. His voice barely deeper than hers. She searched her memory for some detail that made him older than a teenager. The only recollection she had was of a dean at Vandusen, who’d been disgraced after it was discovered he’d had sex with a seventeen–year–old girl. The girl had told him she was twenty–one. She held a job, rented her own apartment. He broke it off when he learned the truth. It was too late for his career. What would Helen have without her career? She didn’t even have her own apartment.
She switched on the light. The room was bleak: cigarette burns in the curtains, a faded print of a cowboy roping a steer on the wall. The man’s wallet lay on a table by the door. She grabbed it and pulled out the contents, not worrying whether he would suspect her of pilfering his money. There were a dozen shoppers’ cards, one credit card, and some cash. Then she found his license and saw the photo on the card. Her jaw dropped. She read the print as if it mattered: Massachusetts address, age thirty-five, organ donor, no corrective lenses. Her gaze flew from the name to the photo. She knew those pale, blue eyes.
Chapter Twenty-nine
When the bathroom door opened, the light shone in Wilson’s hair like a rumpled halo. She had removed the wig and baseball cap. She carried the jean jacket wadded under one arm and emerged with a summery smile.
Helen looked at the ID again, terrified that what she saw was not real and terrified that it was. She clutched the card. It still read: Wilson, Adair Merrill.
“You always go through girls’ wallets?” Wilson asked. Cheerful. Cocky.
Helen crossed the room in one swift motion and slapped Wilson across the face. It was not a hard slap. By the time her hand rose, the better part of her brain was already anticipating her perfunctory hearing before the college board ended her presidency. What could justify hitting a professor? By the time her hand connected, the slap was just symbolic. It was almost a caress.
Still, Wilson drew back. “Why did you do that?”
“Why?” Helen repeated. “What the hell did you do to me?”
“I made you come.” Wilson held out her arms, as though she thought Helen might embrace her. “You can slap me if you want, but give me a safe word first.”
She was flirting.
“I don’t want you,” Helen said. “I don’t know you. This is a mistake. You had no right.” She could barely breathe through her indignation.
Wilson dropped into a chair. “Shit.” She ran one hand through her hair. Then she slipped a finger into her mouth and dislodged the roll of cotton that stood in for chewing tobacco. She tossed the cotton into the trashcan. She licked her fingers and flicked the dark contact lenses out of her eyes. She tossed them on the floor, not bothering with the trash.
“Did you follow me here?” Panic rose in Helen’s chest. It was over: her career, her livelihood, the respect of her colleagues. In a flash, like an end–of–life vision, she saw herself alone. Who would she turn to when Wilson exposed her? Who would understand this wretched hotel room, the anonymous encounters that, until this night, had not even yielded sexual pleasure? She felt a warm trickle of cum run down her thigh as her body betrayed her.
“Did you come here because I wouldn’t listen to your crazy stories? So you could slander me like Marshal Drummond? Is that why? To get something on me?”
Wilson set her jacket on an end table and the dildo rolled out. Her eyes were wide and worried. “I thought you knew. You looked at me. I asked you if you knew who I was, and you said yes.”
Had she known? Her body had known.
Helen stumbled in her rush to dress. “I would never…” She couldn’t even finish her sentence.
“But you would with Jack.”
Helen froze. Wilson did not have to say anything else. Helen would sleep with Jack. Jack the child. Jack the stranger. Jack the man with chew in his mouth, who didn’t take off his boots. But she would not take Wilson in her arms and say, “You saved my life, kiss me again.” When Helen looked up, there was a fissure of sadness in Wilson’s face.
“Everyone comes here eventually,” Adair said.
“You’re dressed like a man.” Helen fumbled with her bra. A familiar dizziness washed over her. If she panicked now, she’d have visions of Eliza and be cast back into her madness. She pinched the back of her hand, hoping the pain would keep her focused.
“Consider it professional development,” Wilson said ruefully. She stood up, and without the aid of hair, wig, or contacts, she was a boy again. Her shoulders slouched. Her bottom lip jutted out. Her whole persona changed. “Watch out for those guys in the corner. They’re bad men,” she said. Then she dropped back into the chair and was herself again.
“Was that all a lie?” Helen took a breath to steady herself.
With shaking hands, she tried to zip up her dress. Wilson strode over and did it for her, without touching Helen’s skin.
“Did you plan the whole thing? Do you come here to… attack women?” Helen went on, uncertain whether her outrage was real or just required.
“I didn’t plan anything,” Wilson said. “I’m not stupid. Massachusetts may have legalized gay marriage, but out here that doesn’t mean anything. There are guys in that bar that would beat the crap out of any dyke who messed with their women. Hell, they’d beat the crap out of their women just because it was Tuesday. But I don’t know anything specific about the men in the corner.”
Wilson picked up the flesh–colored dildo. “You can keep it if you like.” The flirtation in Wilson’s tone was a question. Are you really angry?
Helen’s whole body had given in to pleasure the moment she realized the young man was not going to come until she was ready. Helen felt herself blush. Of course he wasn’t.
Wilson tossed the dildo onto the bed. Helen flinched.
“Whatever. I’m sorry.” A sad smile creased the corners of Wilson’s eyes. “I shouldn’t have brought you here.”
Brought you here. That was a polite euphemism.
“I saw you at the bar, and I knew I shouldn’t. I told myself, don’t do it. But you’re so bea
utiful, and I fall for powerful women.” Wilson shrugged, as though that explained everything. “It’s my weakness.” She was still flirting, but there was something bitter about it now. “And I thought you recognized me. I thought we were playing a game.”
“Why are you carrying a gun?” Helen asked.
Wilson stood and pulled her t–shirt over her head, revealing a tight undershirt. The leather holster rested on the white fabric. She removed the gun and held it out to Helen. “It’s a Glock. It’s not loaded.”
“Why do you have it?”
“I’m from New Hampshire.”
“That’s not an explanation.” The whole scene was absurd.
“My brothers are gun nuts. Anyway, I told you those guys would beat up any dyke that walked into their bar. Here. Look. It’s empty.”
“I don’t want to touch it.”
“I have a permit.”
“I don’t care if you have a permit. You don’t bring it on campus, do you?” Helen scanned her memory for Pittock’s weapons policy. Then she felt her stomach drop, as though she had stepped off a curb to find herself in freefall. How much longer would she get to play the responsible administrator? She could punish Wilson for bringing a gun on campus. In turn, Wilson could ruin her.
Helen pictured Adrian Meyerbridge sitting in the hallway, watched over by paintings of Pittock presidents. She saw the saliva on his lips. She saw her own hand moving toward the tissue box. Then she saw the blood oozing from his tracheotomy. She saw Eliza. Helen pinched the skin on the back of her hand again.
“Helen? Are you okay?” Wilson returned the gun to its holster. Her abdominal muscles rippled beneath her undershirt.
“Get out,” Helen said.
Wilson took a step toward Helen and reached out to touch her hair. Helen struck her hand away. She wanted to plead with Wilson, beg her not to say anything. Even if Wilson intended no malice, she would tell a friend like Patrick. She would swear him to secrecy, and he would swear the next friend until, by word of mouth, the story traveled up the college hierarchy and reached Drummond or the board president. Then there would be negotiations, a contract buy–out, a privacy agreement. On the face of it, Helen would make out well, but when she left campus, in her heart, she would have nothing.
The Admirer Page 14
