by Jeremy Bates
They had to see what they’d started through to the end.
◆◆◆
After tossing everything he’d purchased from a Target in West Oakland into the small trunk of the Audi, Dr. Wallis slid behind the wheel, stuck the key in the ignition…but didn’t put the car in Drive. His libido was revved up with blinkers on. It had been more than a week now since he’d slept with Brook, and after that whole episode with Sharon stripping in front of him, he was having a tough time getting sex off his mind, and he knew it would soon begin affecting his ability to work and concentrate.
Dr. Wallis didn’t like the term “sex addict.” It sounded dirty and unbecoming of someone of his position in society. Not that the clinical designation of “hypersexual disorder” was a much better alternative. Nevertheless, Wallis couldn’t deny that he was addicted to sex. He didn’t have the cravings as bad as some people did, but he thought about sex—and engaged in it—a lot more than most.
The addiction began when he was a young man of twenty-two, shortly after his parents were murdered in the Bahamas. Sex, he discovered, helped to numb the pain of their loss. At first he was paying for one or two prostitutes a week, but it wasn’t long before he was blowing two grand every other night in strip clubs. The next step in his disillusioned pursuit of happiness was the local sex club scene. Even when Brandy came into the picture a few years later, he spent most nights he wasn’t with her with other women. The thrill of everything that came before the sex—the flirting, the conversation, the drinking, the dancing, the thoughts of will we or won’t we?—filled him with adrenaline and became almost as important as the sex itself. Orgies, BDSM parties, swinging, exhibitionism, dogging, he’d done it all—and was always searching for more extreme and exciting iterations of sex. Brandy never knew of his nighttime doppelgänger, of course. He supposed it hadn’t been fair to have strung her along in a dead-end relationship for as long as he had, because no matter how much he liked her as a person, he had become detached from the emotional value of sex and relationships in general. She had offered him a sense of belonging and nurturing, which he’d so desperately desired, she had made him feel wanted, which he’d so desperately needed, yet despite all of this…it inevitably amounted to a false intimacy. He had a hole in his stomach, and he had a compulsive need to fill that hole, and one woman was never going to be enough.
The unfortunate situation was repeating itself with Brook now. He enjoyed spending time with her, and he enjoyed the attention she gave him, and the serenity she exuded, but in the back of his mind he was already preparing for when he would have to cast her aside and move on.
Brushing these thoughts aside, Dr. Wallis drove to an upmarket twenty-four-hour bordello in Oakland’s Financial District. It was not one of the seedy brothels posing as a massage parlor you could find all over any city. To the contrary, it was an invitation-only establishment that served a very select list of clientele.
Wedged between a bank and a nail salon, the bordello resembled an old European hotel, and for tax purposes it in fact doubled as a boutique short-stay hotel. Wallis entered through the front door into a small, dimly lit lobby filled with plants where a receptionist he didn’t recognize welcomed him with a smile.
“Good morning,” she said. “Are you looking for a room for the night?”
“No, I am not,” he said.
“Have you been here before?”
“I have.”
“May I have your name?”
He told her, she entered it into the computer, then said, “It’s very nice to see you again, Mr. Wallis. Would you follow me?”
She led him to a private waiting lounge that resembled an elegant Victorian men’s bar. There were more plants here, while portraits of abstract female nudes in muted colors decorated the walls. A few minutes later the madam of the house, who Wallis did recognize, appeared with three primped women in skimpy yet elegant clothing.
“Hello, Roy,” the madam said, shaking his hand. Unlike the prostitutes, she was dressed in regular clothing and cute sneakers. “How are you, darling?”
“Just fine, Janet.”
“Which one of these lovely girls would you care to join you this morning? If you’d like to spend some time in private with each to get to know—”
“Not today,” he said.
“Of course. Girls?”
Obediently, they took their leave.
“So who will it be, Roy?” Janet asked.
Dr. Wallis had been with the African before, the Asian was too overly augmented for his liking, so he decided on the Scandinavian.
“Excellent,” Janet said. “She’s only been with us for a month or so now, but everybody loves her. She’s part of the family. Cash or credit?”
Dr. Wallis paid with a credit card for a thirty-minute booking. The madame placed the girl’s cut into a folder of the sort restaurants use for the bill, handed it to Wallis, then picked up a telephone. “Vivian, darling? Thirty minutes with Roy.” She hung up and said, “You have a very special time now, and please come back soon.”
She left the waiting room and the Scandinavian returned shortly thereafter.
“Hi!” she said brightly. “I believe you have something for me?”
Wallis handed her the folder, and she led him deeper into the house, which quickly morphed from Victorian to Greek décor. Her room featured four corner columns, a hot tub, and a statue of Venus.
“Shower’s right in there,” she said, indicating a door that led to a marble bathroom. “I’ll be right back.”
Wallis had a hot shower and returned to the bedroom with a white towel around his waist.
Vivian held a box in her arms and was neatly arranging an assortment of condoms, toys, and lubricants on a small table.
“Have you been here before?” she asked, smiling at him.
“Yes,” he said, obliging the small talk. “Janet mentioned you’re new?”
She nodded. “This is my first month…in the business.”
Dr. Wallis put her in her early thirties, which meant she was late to prostitution.
“I was in sports medicine,” she said.
“What led to the change in profession?”
“The money.”
He nodded.
“What do you do, Roy?”
“I dabble in psychology.”
“Is that so? Have you met Lisa before?”
“I don’t believe I have.”
“She’s been here for about a year now. She used to work as a licensed psychologist. She once told me she felt as though she helped more people here than she had at her previous practice.”
“I can imagine,” he said, making a show to glance at his wristwatch. “In any event, and in the interest of expediency, the faster we drop the charade and fuck, the better for me, as I have somewhere rather important I need to get back to.”
◆◆◆
Dr. Wallis returned to the observation room in the basement of Tolman Hall at 9:15 a.m.
“They’ve behaved?” he asked, going immediately to the small portal and surveying the sleep laboratory. Chad sat in the same corner he’d been in earlier, only now he was facing it, his back to the viewing window. Sharon was lying on her side on her bed, in a slightly fetal position.
Guru nodded. “They have hardly moved since you left.”
“Good,” Wallis said, grateful he had not missed anything. “Now come step outside with me for a moment.” In the hallway where he’d left the two large Target bags, he added, “Take one of those, my friend, and choose a room where you would like to set up.”
Guru retrieved a bag and said, “Which room do you want, professor?”
“Doesn’t matter to me.” He poked his head into the room adjacent to the sleep laboratory. “This will do fine.”
“I will go this way a little then.” Guru started down the corridor, sticking his head into one room after another before stopping at the fourth one down. “I like this one.”
A chill feathered the nape of Wa
llis’ neck. Guru had selected the same room where he’d stored Penny’s body.
“Make yourself at home,” he said with a forced smile. “Mattresses have an in-built pump, but give me a call if you need a hand.”
Dr. Wallis unpacked and inflated his own mattress, unrolled his sleeping bag on top of it—and stared at the bed longingly. He hadn’t slept all night, and the Australians weren’t doing much of anything right now. Perhaps he could squeeze in a couple of hours…?
◆◆◆
Brook never did too much of anything on her days off from work. She began the mornings with a homemade breakfast after which, Karl the Fog permitting, she would embark on a forty-five-minute walk along the bay. At the end of the walk she would often stop by the library to browse the head librarian’s recommendations. Back home it would be something simple for lunch, then the outstanding chores (cleaning, laundry, emptying the septic tank if it was full), then…well, it would be time to start preparing dinner, and where did the day go?
Today Brook had spent the morning puttering around the marina and feeding and watering her plants, and now she was in the kitchen, making a half dozen devilled eggs…and thinking about Roy.
In fact, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him and his Sleep Experiment ever since returning from the university campus the night before. That the two young people Roy was employing would smear their own excrement over that window was not only mindboggling but terribly worrisome. They were clearly not in a very healthy state of mind.
Roy had appeared shocked at what they’d done, but he’d quickly brushed it aside as no big deal.
Why?
Had he been downplaying their behavior for her benefit, or had he come to expect such conduct from them? Was psychosis a side-effect of remaining awake for a substantial period of time? And if so, had Roy’s Sleep Experiment been sanctioned by the proper authorities? Because it was hard to imagine how any ethics review board would sign off on an experiment that drove the test subjects crazy.
Then again, this certainly wouldn’t be the first experiment involving human test subjects to cross ethical red lines. Brook, as an avid reader, could cite all sorts of examples off the top of her head. The physician who’d developed the smallpox vaccine deliberately exposing children to the deadly disease to advance his research. Project MKUltra, a CIA-sponsored research initiative, plying unwitting Canadian and American citizens with LSD and other mind-altering drugs in an effort to develop chemicals that could be used in clandestine operations. Nurses at the University of California employing cruel and unusual techniques to study blood pressure and blood flow in newborns as young as one day old. The Imperial Japanese Army’s covert biological and chemical warfare research experiment, Unit 731, in which scientists removed the organs and amputated the limbs of Chinese and Russian prisoners to study blood loss. A South African army colonel and psychologist who was convinced he could cure homosexuality via electric shock therapy. The chief surgeon at San Quentin State Prison performing testicle transplants on living inmates using the genitals of executed prisoners, and in some cases, goats and boars. The United States Army releasing millions of infected mosquitos in Georgia and Florida to observe whether the insects could spread yellow fever and dengue fever. And, of course, everything that was revealed during the Nuremberg trials concerning Nazi experiments on Jews, POWs, Romani, and other persecuted groups.
Brook shook her head at these thoughts as she sliced another egg in half lengthwise. It was ridiculous to compare Roy to the Imperial Japanese Army or to the Nazis. He wasn’t committing crimes against humanity; he was merely keeping two test subjects awake for an extended period of time with that mysterious gas of his.
Besides, who was she, a waitress, to question UC Berkeley’s Chair of Psychology? Roy knew the laws and codes that governed his work better than anybody. He would not skirt them. She simply had to trust in him.
Brook focused on the culinary task before her. She dumped the yolk from each hard-boiled egg into a small bowl and added mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, apple cider vinegar, and salt and pepper. She stirred the mixture into a creamy paste and scooped a spoonful of it onto each egg white. She placed the finished deviled eggs in the refrigerator, made herself a tea, and then went to sit on the sheltered deck out front of the boathouse. She gazed out at the menacing storm clouds and the slanting rain pockmarking the bay, but her mind was a million miles away.
She was thinking about Roy again.
He’d told her he’d dismissed one of his assistants. Was this truly the case? Perhaps she had not been let go but had instead quit. Perhaps she’d disagreed with the direction the experiment had been heading?
Who cares, Brook? What’s gotten into you?
She didn’t know. She simply felt as though something was…wrong.
In any event, Roy was working double shifts. Which meant he was now spending sixteen hours a day in that dingy little basement room.
It would be extremely boring.
And lonely.
Brook sipped the tea without tasting it. A raft of fluffy white clouds eased in front of the sun, stealing the brightness from the sky.
I should make him something for dinner, she thought. Bring it over for him later in the afternoon.
He would appreciate the food and the company.
And she would get a second look at this experiment of his.
◆◆◆
Dr. Roy Wallis shot upward out of sleep. All was dark and quiet. His heart was beating quickly in fear of a dream that he couldn’t remember. He was about to get up and go to the observation room to check on Guru and the Australians when he felt an itch at the back of his skull. Frowning, he reached a hand behind his head to scratch it—and discovered a small protrusion in the little valley where the occipital bone met the cervical spine. He probed it with his fingers. It was hard and unyielding. Concerned, he picked at it until he felt blood smear his fingertips. He knew this wasn’t doing him any good, but he couldn’t stop himself.
When all the skin was removed, he realized the protrusion was made of metal.
A zipper, he thought a moment later.
He gripped the slider between his index finger and thumb and pulled upward. It moved slowly along the parallel rows of teeth, creating a Y-shaped channel in his skin in its wake.
The zipper terminated at the very top of his skull. Still unable to stop himself, he slid his bloodied fingers beneath the dangling flaps of skin and peeled them forward. The skin came free easily, almost like the shell off a hard-boiled egg.
Fascinated, repulsed, and alarmed, he stared at the folded clumps of hair and skin cupped in his hands, which also included his shapeless face—
“Professor?”
Dr. Wallis opened his eyes. For an awful moment he thought he was in a prison cell. Then he made out Guru crouched above him, aglow from the hallway light.
He sat up quickly. “Has something happened?” he demanded.
“No…not exactly. But that may be the problem.”
“What the hell are you talking about, man?”
Before Guru could answer, Wallis was on his feet and hurrying to the observation room. He peered through the portal in the viewing window.
Chad remained seated in the same corner as before, his back to Wallis. Sharon was not on her bed.
“Where’s Sharon?” he asked, even as his eyes went to the closed door at the back of the room.
“She went to the bathroom nearly two hours ago,” Guru said. “She has not come out.”
“Two hours ago?” He glanced at his wristwatch. It was 10:13 p.m. “I’ve been asleep all day!”
“I did not want to wake you…”
Dr. Wallis sniffed. Then he saw the brown paper bag with Chipotle branding sitting on the desk. “You left them unsupervised to get food?”
“I would never do that, professor. I ordered Uber Eats. There is a steak burrito in there for you.”
Famished, Wallis dug out the burrito, tore away the aluminum foil wrap,
and sank his teeth into it.
Guru smiled. “Is it not delicious?”
“Pretty damn good,” he said around a full mouth. “Now you say Sharon’s been in the bathroom for two hours?”
“Yes, roughly.”
“Have you tried communicating with her?”
“She doesn’t answer.”
Dr. Wallis swallowed, licked some adobo sauce from his fingers, and pressed the Talk button on the touch panel controller. “Sharon? How you doing?”
No answer.
“Sharon?”
Nothing.
Wallis turned to Guru, his concern growing. “Why didn’t you wake me earlier?”
“I did not think there was anything to be concerned about, professor. If she was cutting herself again, I would have…heard her.”
Wallis nodded but didn’t mention the possibility she could be in there hanging from the shower head.
Suddenly no longer hungry, he set the burrito down on the table, wiped his mouth and beard with a paper napkin, and said, “I’m going to check on her.”
◆◆◆
The sleep laboratory still reeked powerfully of excrement and body odor, and beneath this, the sweet scent of blood.
As Dr. Wallis crossed the room, he noticed Chad turning to keep his back to him.
He stopped. “Chad?”
The Australian made a phlegmy, broken sound.
Giggling?
Wallis said, “How about turning around for me, brother?”
He went very still.
“Chad, buddy?”
When the Australian refused to respond, Wallis decided to deal with him later. He continued to the bathroom and rapped his knuckles on the door.
“Sharon?” he said. “It’s Dr. Wallis.”
Giggles—though unlike Chad’s, these were deceptively childlike.
“What are you doing in there?”
More childlike giggles.
“I’m going to come in.”
“No!” Sharon screeched suddenly.
Dr. Wallis pushed the door inward. It moved two inches before slamming back shut. She had her back or feet to it.
