Son of the Endless Night, page 6
He rose in indignation, one hand on the girl, who had curled into a nest of well-worn animals and Tiger Beat magazines. He had just begun to thaw out but he noticed that the room was warm and dry, despite the fact that the rest of the hotel wing was as dark and coldly unpleasant as a catacomb.
There were spots of excited color on Polly's cheekbones; her eyes glowed despite the tears.
"I knew you'd come!"
"Why did he do this?"
Polly straightened on the bed so abruptly he could hear the pop of vertebrae. "Because he thinks I did it— I set the fire! But I didn't! I almost started a fire a few years ago but this time wasn't my fault, Rich; honest. It wasn't, and I told him that! Nobody listens to me! They say I'm a little bitch and w-won't— they just won't— "
Polly began to heave and claw at his slick parka, desperate for his understanding. He unzipped the parka and pulled her closer to him, kissed her cheek, her forehead, the tip of an ear. She licked her lips frantically, like a sick animal; the humid swipe of her tongue tickled his nostrils. Her forearms shivered from the effort of holding fast to him.
"They were here last night— they're hurting me, Richard!"
"Hurting you? How?"
"They beat me. Last night he beat me."
"Your father?"
Horrified, he stared at her. Their faces were inches apart. Perhaps it was too warm in the room, almost hot— Rich couldn't tell yet, he hadn't been inside long enough— but there was perspiration in the hollows of Polly's eyes, a few strands of hair were pasted to the angle of her jaw. Her ears, he thought, were too pale, bloodless to their tips.
"Don't you believe me, Rich?"
"But— why— !"
"To get all the mischief out of me! That's what they say! And they say— they say I'm evil, I'm going to do someone real harm if they don't get all of the evil out of me! There's this word they use— I don't remember— scurtch— "
"Scourge?"
"Yes! But I just can't take any more, why do they want to hurt me? I hurt so bad, Rich!"
"What have they— what do they do it with, Polly?"
"A big leather belt." The memory of it caused more pain; Polly's head came up, she leaned back, biting her underlip. "With metal things on it, that's what really hurts."
"Studs?"
Polly nodded.
"Want to see?" she asked, timidly.
"I— yes, I'd better have a look."
Polly rocked for a few moments on the bed, gaining some sort of terrible mind-momentum; then, quickly, her hands went to a knee-high stocking. She rolled it down almost to the ankle. Then she turned on her right haunch and elbow to reveal more fully the back of the calf of her long leg, which was streaked red and purple, livid and swollen from multiple lashings.
"Oh, Polly."
"But there's worse."
"Worse?" he repeated, stunned, unable to believe the damage he'd already seen.
Polly shifted position again, undid the side snap of her skirt, unzippered it. She rolled over on her stomach, tensing, pressing her face into the patchwork quilt and flannel sheets.
"Look."
Hesitantly he took hold of the loosened skirt; she raised up a little from the bed and he pulled the skirt down around her knees. She wore white cotton underpants. They seemed not to have been changed for a while. He was not prepared for the rounding maturity, the fullness of her buttocks.
"You can take them off," Polly said after a few moments. Her voice was muffled, neutral. "So you can see better."
Rich worked the underpants down carefully. They stuck to Polly. She flinched and hissed and hammered on the bed with her fists. There was an unclean, unhealthy odor, of stored corruption. The studded belt had cut and stippled gruesomely, the cuts had bled in ragged diagonals; it was dark blood he'd seen soiling the cotton. Infection that he smelled.
He dressed her, trembling, his vision dimmed by outrage, from the blood surging in his head.
"I'll get you out of here. This is— he's not— nobody can treat you this way. I'll have your father put in jail."
"Don't leave me, Rich!"
He hugged Polly to dispel any notion of abandonment, his mind still dwelling on the terrible welts, the violated young body. It was the same as rape. He was curiously, tenderly aroused in contrast to a much stronger emotion: his almost unbearable desire to repeatedly smash Windross's mealy face with his fists.
"Rich, I love you so much! Nobody else has ever cared. I don't know why. I'm not a bad person. Believe me!"
"I know you're not, honey." He cradled the girl, murmuring to her. "How did you get the locket to my room, if you're chained— "
"Rich, I can't breathe! You're holding me too tight."
"I'm sorry."
He sat Polly back, against a big bear with one black felt eye missing. Polly's knees were spread wide, bony and charming; the fingers of one hand interlaced with his. The chain that imprisoned her dragged heavily across the calf of his right leg.
"What locket? Oh, the one you gave— I honestly don't know what happened to it. I had to take it off to wash, I put it right there on the table— a week ago— and— how did you find it?"
"Somebody put it in my room last night. They scratched the number of this room across my picture."
Polly caught her breath, eyes rounding.
"How weird."
"Maybe it was one of those people who came here with your father."
She frowned. "I don't understand."
"I don't either. But one of them may be looking for a way to help you. How many are there?"
"Six. Usually. Sometimes more."
"How long have you been here, Polly?"
"I dunno for sure. But I saw another show of Dallas last night, and that's the second time Dallas has been on."
"And how many times have they come since you've been here?"
"Uh— " She counted silently. "Five."
"Could you identify— do you think you'd recognize all of them again, outside this room?"
Polly nodded emphatically, a momentary hard glint of vengeance in her faded blue eyes.
"Do you think they might come back again tonight?"
"No," she said, "it's never two nights in a row." She hunched her shoulders, as she must have done hearing them outside the door. Desperately trying to will some sort of defense against their implacable cruelty. He'd heard of incidents like this, read about the self-righteous child abusers. Well, she was acting bad, I had to hold her hand down on the stove so she'd learn to mind. Or shove her into scalding bathwater, or break her ribs with a broom handle. Got to teach the children a lesson while they are young enough. Whip the sin out of them good and early, before they can turn on you. Because we are all born as sinners. It's all right there, in your Bible and mine!
Polly began to squirm, trying to find a reclining position that didn't bother her.
"Doesn't matter," Rich said. "When they come again, you won't be here— no, don't." Rich stayed her hand; she'd been about to rub her lacerated bottom.
"But it itches," Polly complained, her chin crimped, her mouth turned down at the corners. "It hurts."
Unexpectedly his eyes brimmed with tears. He leaned forward to kiss Polly, to one side of her compressed lips. Then full on her softening mouth. His tears flowed. He was so sorry for her. Thank God and sweet Mary she hadn't broken mentally. A very tough kid in her own way. She was suffering: anxious and frightened. But she seemed fully capable still, not half crazed or inclined to hysteria.
"I'm going for the cops. We'll take you to the hospital right away, Pol, and have those cuts treated."
Enraptured by his show of concern, with her fingertips she spread his tears over his cheeks and then her own. Content in his arms, she closed her eyes. Her face, momentarily steadied, was tranquil, the nostrils flaring slightly as she breathed, breathed him.
"You're crying for me. Oh, Rich. You don't know how I prayed. 'Please get my message, Rich. Please hear me.' "
"You'll have to tell me how you managed that."
Polly's eyelids popped open; she was startled. She stared up at him, and smiled. Her two front teeth were longer than the rest, subtly out of line, and raked against each other. Nothing you'd want to try to straighten out, make too perfect.
"I will. But get me out of here first. I just can't wait any longer— now that I know you're here, I'll go crazy waiting!"
The problem, Rich decided, was getting himself out. He cased the room, squeezing his aching hands together, limping a little from the stabbing needles in his toes. He didn't think he could manage to reverse the circuitous way over the roof. And as he remembered, the hall was boarded up, the door in the new wall padlocked. Now that he could take the time to think about it, he realized he was almost as much of a prisoner in the room as Polly.
10
At the Frog Prince restaurant near Londonderry, Karyn waited until eight thirty-five before she made her first attempt to locate Rich.
She put in a call to the Davos Chalet, but if he was already in the room then he must be using the sauna, and couldn't hear the phone ring. Nor did he answer the phone at the Post Road Inn, and to Karyn's annoyance she was told that Rich hadn't checked out. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, she decided he must be en route but was having trouble locating the restaurant, a converted farmhouse in an area where almost all of the roads qualified as back roads, many of them not well marked.
She returned to the table, which dominated a side porch with fogged-up storm windows, fabric-covered walls, a small Victorian fireplace, and sprays of hothouse flowers in cloisonne vases. The group, nine in all, was on a third bottle of Cru Beaujolais prior to dining. She knew five of them— Tam and Brooksie and their boy friends, and Trux Landall, who was there with a tough-looking but emaciated Belgian youth who had spent his last two years immersed in the Amsterdam drug scene. He knew a lot about getting stoned; at least it was all he cared to talk about.
"Real cocaine, totally pure, does not give a rush," he explained. "That is a common misconception, even in this country, where coke is such a status symbol. The rush, the flash, the assault on the brain is nothing but a speed high. Nearly all coke sold in America, perhaps ninety-nine per cent, is very heavily cut with some sort of 'garbage'— isn't that the right word? Debased by amphetamines, caffeine, just anything to jolt the heart and electrocute the senses. The 'right stuff is pink flake from Peru, blue diamond from Bolivia; they provide a totally different sensation. A glow, a spreading sensual warmth that is totally beneficial. One feels, how should I describe— "
"Mellow," Tam volunteered.
"Yes, mellow. Uplifted. Blessed. Filled with all of the most noble sentiments and aspirations of mankind."
"Wow."
"Where can we get some?" Brooksie asked.
"Ah, well." The Belgian spread his hands. "That is the difficult part."
Tarn's boyfriend, whose name was Larry, said, "There's a guy over in Sligo my brother's done business with. He has a growhouse. I'll call Clubber and get his number."
"Freebasing's different, isn't it?" Trux asked his friend. "You don't get the bad side effects with freebasing."
"Unless you call cremation a side effect," somebody commented.
They all laughed, except Karyn, who looked unaccountably grim as she reached for her nearly empty wine goblet.
Trux poured more of the Beaujolais for her. "How's it going?"
She forced a smile. "Oh, great, you know."
"Rich couldn't make it?"
"I'm sure he's on the way. This isn't such an easy place to find. You have to know somebody who's been here."
Trux gave her right hand a reassuring squeeze. "Good seeing you again, Karyn. We had fun, didn't we? How did we lose track of each other?"
"People come and people go. As I recall, you went after Penelope Wycherly."
"But you weren't in love with me."
"Yes, I was: for about nine minutes once on a rainy afternoon when you called me collect from Paris and tried to read a poem by Mallarme in that awful French of yours."
"I must have been shitfaced; I don't even remember doing it now."
"For the first and only time in our relationship, you were doing something madly inconsequential, inspired by the mood of the moment. Now I suppose you're back on your preordained course, busting your ass at the Yaaadd. How do you like it?"
"I like it better than being flayed alive, but not much. The law school is still dominated by the old ballbreakers. The Socratic method. They humble you fast. That kind of classroom demagoguery makes hopeless sycophants out of some promising legal minds. Then they break what's left of your desire on the wheel of the appellate case method. Two goddam years left. I think I could learn just as much law from correspondence courses. Most of us figure, what the hell. It's not the degree that matters, it's the university. Thank God for notepools."
His hand had stayed where it was, lightly cupping hers. For a few seconds she had wished ruefully he would remove it; Brooksie was not looking at her exactly, but she had the finely honed awareness of a court gossip: her nose seemed pointedly to sense liaison. Oh, well. Seeing a trim familiar scar on Trux's hand, like a landmark on a now-blurred emotional map, Karyn was reminded, not uncomfortably, of what they had been to each other. He took care of his nails. No biting. No nerves, despite the rigors of learning by the Socratic method. She was glad Trux was there and she wasn't just sitting around getting more and more on edge because Rich had screwed up, or whatever. Momentarily she permitted a remorseful vision of the Porsche overturned somewhere, Rich sprawled unconscious beside an icy road, flares that turned snow pink and blood jet black, police; but then she dismissed it with a little hard practical flick of a mental whiskbroom. He was a good and careful driver, he'd show up, and she was in a mood to forgive him regardless. The wine was excellent and she was among friends. She wondered if Trux was fucking the blond Belgian, boy but decided no, dope and boys had never been his milieu, she would have heard something. The Belgian was just one of those strays whom he occasionally befriended, out of intellectual curiosity.
"Ouch."
She withdrew her right hand, protectively, encircling the wrist with the fingers of her left hand. Trux looked down at her.
"What's the matter?"
"I strained my wrist skiing." One of his fingers had accidentally prodded a sore spot.
"Let me see."
Trux held her forearm gently, the hand palm up, and carefully felt the tendons of her wrist with his fingertips.
"Does that hurt?"
"Right there. Oh!"
"Tendonitis. It'll be sore for a couple of weeks. Soak your wrist in a Jacuzzi and wrap it tight. Ski left handed for a few days."
"That would be like trying to fly with one wing."
"You can do it. I'll teach you."
He inclined his head in a dignified manner and kissed the inside of her wrist, and Karyn felt the tingle she was intended to feel.
Larry said to Trux, "Before you eat that, I can tell you the roulade of rabbit with basil they serve here is better."
"Having had both," Trux said softly, "I disagree."
"Screw you," Karyn said spiritedly, enjoying the attention, and she downed the rest of the wine in her goblet.
It was a quarter past nine before she gave Rich another thought, and that thought was a guilty one: she was having a wonderful time, they all were, his tardy arrival would be an intrusion of a sort, and he would not be in a very good mood for having wandered around the mountains of southern Vermont for at least an hour and a half trying to find them. And they weren't his friends, they were hers, always a point of contention with Rich. Maybe he'd just decided at the last minute not to come. Well, she could handle that, for now.
And tomorrow she'd really let him hear about it.
11
Rich needed to do a considerable amount of poking around the third floor with his flashlight before he discovered a potential exit from the burned wing. By the time he found it he was filthy; his nostrils and throat were clogged with soot.
He returned coughing to the room where Polly sat on the very edge of the bed, facing the door, wavering with the delicacy of an angelfish inhabiting a pool of magical light and warmth; he brought from the hall outside cold and painful currents.
"There's a big hole in the floor of one of the rooms down the hall," he explained to her. "I can use one of those bedsheets, tie it to something, let myself down to the second floor. The stairs aren't blocked on two. The front doors are chained, I'll have to break a window down below to get out."
"How long will you be gone?"
"Maybe an hour. Don't worry."
"You promise you'll come back!"
"Honey, you know I will."
He leaned on a bedpost, considering the effort that would have to be made; their eyes met but he was preoccupied, and this lack of attention caused her to quail, succumbing to the tortures of abandonment.
"Rich, what's going to happen to me? Where will I go?"
"I don't know yet. Let's just get you out of here first." His fingers lifted a shock of hair from one shoulder, slipped through it to the faintly throbbing indentation of temple. "You've been brave so far. Just a little longer."
Polly accepted the commendation with a little wince and fluttery release of breath, then sank down into herself, hands overlapping, chain rattling. She reached for the bedraggled bear behind her, pulled him slowly into her lap.
"For me," he said.
"Just hurry, that's all. Hurry!"
12
Dinner at the Frog Prince restaurant, beginning with Belon oysters and finishing with a well-aged Chevre and perfect, ruby-red strawberries offered up, after some unimaginably complex transit from a warmer, more fertile place, at six dollars the serving, lasted until eleven o'clock. Karyn had lost track of the quantity of wine consumed by the group, but she suspected they'd all had at least a bottle apiece, except for the Belgian boy. He drank sparingly and disdained food except for samples of Trux's sweetbreads and oysters in lemon and green pepper sauce. But on three occasions he had crumbled something, probably gorilla biscuits, into a glass of 7-Up that he held between his knees under the table.
