by Rex Baron
She was supposed to possess him completely now, even though she knew he did not love her. What a fool she had been not to choose her words more carefully. It had not occurred to her to ask that he might love her and want her, as she longed he would. She had asked incorrectly, a blunder in scientific method, resulting in a failed experiment.
She pressed the square button to turn off the tape player and lit a cigarette. The smoke curling around her face was an uncomfortable reminder of the eerie substance that had surrounded them, threatening their very lives, only the night before. It seemed like years away in time. The violence and fear of that memory had little place in the quiet tedium of her familiar lab.
She surveyed the cluttered room, which had reverted back to its original state of confusion soon after Marc had lost interest in his charade of academic conscientiousness. Once he had started wooing her and making love to her, he had forgotten his clerical duties, and let the records and files pile up in jumbled cohabitation with the scratched and neglected bits of microfilm that had strayed from the third cabinet drawer on the left.
It would soon all be lost to her, she thought. Only that morning, she had foolishly called John Ruskin, telling him that she had something remarkable to show him, a startling discovery that would surely merit the reconsideration of the Board of Regents. He was probably already on his way, and she had nothing except a wild story of how they had conjured a demon from the depths of Hell, without a single shred of hard evidence to prove it. He would surely think she had lost her mind, and she realized that there was no hope of regaining his esteem before the appointed date of her termination.
If only she had asked the demon for reinstatement of the department and the Nobel Prize as she had intended. But instead, her mind had weakened and been wrestled to the ground by her powerful and hungry emotions. She had forgotten her original intention and asked only that Marc have no other woman but her.
She felt a presence of evil around her, as if the force that they had conjured and the fear it had instilled in her had seeped from her pores, filling the room with its ominous presence. She watched from the corners of her eyes for imperceptible movement, the slightest sign of an unwanted visitor. She began to hum to herself nervously as the fear rose in her stomach. She wished that one of her pimple-faced sophomores would burst through the door, bringing with them the simplicity of their mundane world. She would welcome their bland wholesomeness, that insipid, godly goodness that would drive the evil away.
Instead, John Ruskin appeared at the door, holding his hat in his hand. He reminded her of the police inspector who had come to tell her about Doctor Mathew’s death. In future, she thought, perhaps a man's hat would come to represent the bearing of bad news, and she saw, with amusement, that she might develop a psychotic phobia at the sight of a simple gray fedora.
She ushered him into the office and exchanged strained and uncomfortably superficial comments about the weather and the prospects of an early fall. He spoke to her carefully so as not to upset her, the way one would speak to a small child or one who was gravely ill. His fat, red face smiled at her in what she was sure he thought was a fatherly fashion. Finally, he came to the point.
“I understood from your telephone call this morning that you had something interesting to show me?” He stated the obvious as if it were a question. “I do hope it's something a little more plausible than your reincarnation nonsense. I gave up a breakfast at the Rotary Club to come here, so I hope I won't be disappointed.”
“I don't think you will be,” Elizabeth answered calmly.
She pulled a cigarette from a fresh pack on her desk and lighted one, then offered the pack to him. She enjoyed the look of horror on Ruskin's face as he refused with disgust, and was glad that she was able to shock and displease him this one last time with so little effort.
“I've decided to resign,” she said flatly. “My new project didn’t turned out to be plausible, as you say. In fact, I have nothing at all to show you.”
Ruskin shook his head and put his offending hat on the table.
“I'm sorry Elizabeth, but I can't say I didn't see it coming,” he said without smugness. “I was afraid that young friend of yours would lead you off on the wrong track, and it looks as if he has.”
Elizabeth laughed aloud, shocking the fatherly concern in his voice into anger.
“I don't know why you think this is so funny,” he continued, “but, if I had just lost my job as you have, I wouldn't be so amused.”
“But I haven't lost my job, I've resigned,” she corrected him.
“Put it anyway you like,” Ruskin snapped with annoyance. “The fact remains, this university can no longer indulge your kind of irresponsible research. We have higher academics standards to maintain.”
Elizabeth nodded approvingly at his rhetoric. She held her sweater close to her chest and dragged in on the cigarette.
“I suppose I ought to thank you,” Ruskin said. “It looks better for all of us if you resign, makes it simpler all around.”
“I will assume that my resignation is effective immediately,” she said with a professional edge that deflated Ruskin's fatherly scolding. “I'll have my formal notice in by this afternoon, and my things out of the lab by Friday,” she said calmly.
Ruskin could find no other words to say and took his leave of her, carrying his odious gray hat with him.
Elizabeth felt peaceful in a strange way, the sensation a drowning person might feel as they surrendered to the inevitability of the water's lure. She felt herself let go, and let the massiveness of the event sweep over her.
She slumped into her chair and pushed the button to activate the videotape. She stared at the betraying blankness of the screen and thought she saw the face of the Devil smiling.
Chapter Seventeen
Pacific Palisades
Elizabeth watched Marc's face as it smiled out of her television on the ten o'clock news. He had been awarded a commission to do a mural in the new Municipal building. He presented himself as fashionable and witty, tossing off clever comments to the lady interviewer as he showed the sketches of large classical nudes he intended to paint in bright colors on the walls.
Elizabeth had been right to be suspicious, to question why someone who looked as he did, and dressed with such expensive style, would be interested in her dry and profitless research. If only she had known then what she did now, she thought.
She lay on her bed in the same nightshirt she had awakened in that morning and worn all day. She had not even noticed that she forgot to shower and had, only an hour before, realized that the gnawing in her stomach resulted from the fact that she had not eaten a thing since noon the day before.
She kicked the rumpled bedclothes out of the way and stumbled to the kitchen, to forage in the refrigerator, through the dried remains of week-old leftovers and withered vegetables, for something that contained enough nutrition to at least keep her alive.
Why was it that Marc's part of the bargain with that vile thing from the nether regions had been immediately fulfilled, while hers was not? Perhaps she had, in some way, subliminally channeled all her energies into ensuring that his wishes be answered and neglected her own, robbing them of the wattage necessary to impress them upon the beast. Perhaps the agreement, signed in blood, which Marc had neglected to mention to her, was the key.
She smeared a dab of peanut butter on a stale pretzel and had a disquieting thought. Perhaps Marc had arranged it this way. After all, he had been the one to choose the incantation, nothing more than a meaningless string of words and names that could certainly have conveyed a message totally without her knowledge. Perhaps Marc had selected an incantation that would work at her expense, offering her up as a sacrificial lamb in exchange for his success. The idea gripped her with panic and she knew that she had been tricked.
She realized that he had no intention of returning her telephone calls or coming back to her dusty, unfashionable world. She saw in his eyes that she, too, had been no
thing more than one of the boring little people in dirty shoes, who he had so often ridiculed in his conspiratorial way. He had always made her feel as if she were with him, above the rest, in a privileged world occupied by those who possessed beauty and genius. She had been made to feel exempt from his mockery, and yet, now, she realized that she had been one of the sad little mortals all along. Her face burned with shame as she tried to think of how it must have galled him to make love to her.
She smoked a cigarette down to the filter before picking up the phone and ringing his apartment. She had not decided what she would say when he answered, but she knew she must speak with him. She might reproach him for his neglect, or simply congratulate him on his art commission. She half feared that she might lose control and beg him to come to her, but she concentrated on the memory of the ugly scene between them that was captured on tape, and knew that she would not.
The telephone rang on the other end of the line, four rings, before a machine picked up, asking her to leave a number and wishing her a nice day.
Chapter Eighteen
Marc’s studio, Westwood Village
The portrait on the easel was recognizable but flattering. Marc chiseled the nose of his sitter to an aquiline sharpness, giving the appearance of classical beauty. Holly Driscoll looked at the timeless, mirror image of herself with unabashed admiration.
“I should tell you that you didn't do me justice, to avoid inflating your ego,” she said, “but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I've wished for that face every day of my life, since I was tall enough to peer into the nearest mirror.”
“It is your face, no doubt about it,” Marc replied. “It's only abstracted and elongated a bit.”
The Holly in the painting was dressed in a pale blue fabric that clung to the curve of her hips and breasts, as if she had been caught in a summer shower. Her blonde hair had been turned to waves of spun gold and her white neck, thrown back in a gesture of languishing near-ecstasy, rivaled the finest ever carved in alabaster. One hand rested lightly at the throat, the fingers fanned in a graceful arch as they displayed the sapphire necklace that Marc had struggled to capture in paint.
“I'm not that good with jewelry and things that shine. It's a completely different technique from flesh tones, but I think It looks convincing,” he said critically.
The real Holly ran her fingers over the cool strand of silver and stones she wore.
“I think it looks divine,” she answered without hesitation. “You really are gifted. At first I thought I might have a lovely flirtation on my hands, but now I see I have much, much more.”
She moved closer to him and wrapped her arms around his neck, drawing his lips closer to be kissed.
Holly had been coming to Marc's studio since the week after they met. He had made what he thought was a flattering offer to paint her, without realizing that it was no less than the standard pitch of any and all who attempted to ingratiate themselves into her inner circle. She accepted his offer on the hope that a physical seduction might be achieved outside the boundaries of the gallery and her world, and that she might take her prize and escape without having to promise him anything, or deal with extricating herself from his eager needs and unsaleable talents. She breathed in the intoxicating aroma of the kiss and sighed at how wrong she had been.
He was not only desirable to her, but talented and marketable as well. It amazed her to think that she had not realized it before. She had already made plans for her new little moneymaker, and convinced him, with the mere drop of a word, that they should fly to New York and mount a modest show of portraits as soon as he could finish three reasonably well-known celebrities. After that, she was sure she could make him a household name by linking it to the likenesses of countless friends who owed her favors.
As she held him at arms length and appraised his chiseled handsomeness, the telephone rang, interrupting her moment of admiration. Marc picked it up after the third ring to silence its annoying intrusion. His charming smile turned into a thin line and his eyes narrowed and grew noticeably cold.
“I haven't time to talk to you right now, Elizabeth,” he said without charity. “I have a client here at the moment, and I'm in the middle of a meeting. No, I don't think it's possible to see you for a while... I'm just so busy, and so much is happening.”
Holly poured herself another glass of champagne, as Marc turned his back toward her and hissed into the phone.
“Look, I told you I don't care. I explained to you what the arrangement was before you got into it, and now, we both must live with the consequences. It's not my fault that you weren't able to make it work for you. I gave you your chance to have anything you wished. What more do you want from me?”
He put the receiver down and turned to Holly, flushed but smiling.
“Sounds like someone you need to unload,” she said with a knowing smirk across her face.
She sipped her wine with studied delicacy and waited for him to respond.
“Just someone I used to know,” he answered with a nervous little laugh.
Holly resumed her position around his neck and drew herself close.
“Face it darling,” she said, “we all have those nagging little needy people, who latch on from time to time. But you mustn't feel guilty if you have to peel one off now and again, like a used band aid. It's for their own good really.”
She planted a kiss on his mouth and unwound herself from him to have another look at her likeness.
“Don't you wish Neddy were here to see this. He would have been thrilled that two of his dear friends could find each other so sympathetically in both a professional and personal way.”
“Neddy?” Marc repeated the word, questioning its foreignness.
“Why, Edmund Raymond, of course,” Holly answered with surprise. “I thought you told me that you were the only other person besides me who he let call him that.”
Marc tried to recover his balance.
“I just wasn't thinking about the dead,” he answered, as he swept Holly up once again in his arms. “I can only think of the living and how lucky I am to be among them.”
Holly turned her face and accepted his passionate kiss on her cheek, then pushed herself away and out of his arms.
“You know, I've thought a lot lately, how funny it was that you and I never met at one of Edmund's parties or at the house in Palm Desert. You weren't one of his boys were you?” she asked holding her breath.
“Of course not,” Marc laughed nervously, as Holly took in a grateful breath of relief.
“I'm amazed we never met. I thought everyone he knew, and some he didn't, were at his white party last spring.”
“Oh yes. Unfortunately, I was out of town that weekend,” Marc replied. “Sometime near Easter wasn't it? I was invited, of course, but I had to be in Santa Barbara on business.” Marc busied himself refilling their champagne glasses as he stammered out his explanation. “I heard I really missed something.”
“I suppose Carrie Baxter called you the minute it was over and libeled everyone,” Holly said, holding Marc in her steady, watchful gaze.
“I don't know Carrie Baxter,” Marc answered, glancing down into his bubbling wine.
“Really?” Holly said with a mysterious smile of satisfaction. “Neither do I. Just testing you, my dear. As far as I know there is no such creature.”
Marc swallowed hard and laughed. “You are a sly one... but I'm afraid you've met your match,” he whispered close to her ear.
Holly yawned and stretched her arms drowsily, then plopped down into a soft chair. She raised her champagne glass in a silent toast to her portrait, then to its creator. She watched him, basking in the light of her admiration, and knew that he had lied about being good friends with Neddy. There was, in fact, a Carrie Baxter. It was Edmund's married sister, the one who had sent out the invitations to the white party and who knew each of the invited guests personally.
She returned his seductive grin with her own. It did not change the fact
that she had an opportunity to make some money with this young man, she thought. The only real danger in dealing with a fraud of this charming and guileful variety was if she allowed herself to fall in love with him, but Holly Driscoll was, after all, nobody's fool.
Chapter Nineteen
Pacific Palisades
Weeks passed and Elizabeth found little else to do in her life but follow Marc's progress in the Society and Arts and Leisure sections of the daily paper. His work was suddenly in great demand, and even artists of considerable reputation where being dropped by the social set in favor of the rising new star. She scowled down at his face peering up at her from the morning Times, and placed her coffee cup over it to stave off the sudden rush of pain and anger she felt whenever she looked at him. It was so unfair that he had been rewarded while she was being punished.
She had sent off resumes to several universities and even replied to an advertisement she had spotted in the paper for a science instructor at a private girl's school in Cambria. This would surely be the end of the line, the death knell for her career, she thought. But then again, what did it matter.
All she wanted was to disappear, to drop off the face of the earth and hide from the humiliation of what she had done, and the memory of how easily her poor untried emotions had been manipulated. Two more weeks passed, with no answer to her far-flung resumes, and there seemed no place on earth to hide. That was why she had gone out and bought the gun.
She woke one Wednesday morning and decided she needed it. Without heavy consideration or melodramatic pondering, she simply got out of bed, dressed and went out shopping for it, as casually as if she were going to the greengrocer or the corner pharmacy.
“Remember now, you'll have to register it with the police, and if you intend to carry it in your car, get a special permit,” the man behind the counter said, as he raised an eyebrow and peered at Elizabeth. She was examining the pistol in her hand as if it were an interesting shell that she had found washed ashore.
