The Bloodstone, page 18
He began to lose track of time and space as she kissed him. Unpleasant kisses, too violent, too demanding. Control. He was losing control. Felt her fingers probing him, felt something hot and gushing flow over his belly. She was taking him, seducing him in a way he had never known before. Sex had never been so repulsive or so overwhelming. He saw a side of himself that was pure evil, pure lust.
A violent pull began to tear at his stomach, causing an intensified longing and loathing at one and the same time. It was as if his emotions sprang from the deepest part of his soul and could not be controlled, their essence being felt for the first time.
He felt possessed by a power so grotesque, yet so intoxicating, that he was unable to deny its force. He groped with his body, penetrating her inner mystery. He heard her whisper: “Fuck her... fuck her good. And me!” The voice faded into a heavy, gasplike breathing that rose and fell in little shudders from a spittle-filled throat.
“Eric... Eric....” Her distorted voice seemed to emanate through a megaphone, obscenely seductive and ugly. Her breath burned his neck. Her teeth tore at his flesh.
In quick succession he thrust himself forward, deeper, harder, his longing and loathing existing side by side, each struggling to dominate the final moment of climax.
The persistence of disgust finally gave way to sheer joy. The joy increased, became burning shafts of fire. He cried out, lunged against her and sank down, deep within her. He tightened his grasp on her waist and pressed her further into the mattress.
Overpowering lust consumed him. Everything roiled inside him, a terrible driving need to spend himself completely. Obsessed with fulfilling his desire, he closed his fingers around the flesh of her buttocks, driving her to him. He heard her scream: “Fuck me!”
She screamed, and screamed again.
He pumped harder, faster; the blood throbbing through his body, pulsating through his brain. He gasped, pulled her up in his arms and then suddenly exploded—a long, shuddering orgasm that seemed to go on forever.
And then he felt his body sag, breathless and exhausted, to a limp position beside her. His first reaction, his only reaction now, was one of disgust. Her grossness repelled him. He found it impossible to look at her, to touch her, to lie beside her any longer. Could she sense his revulsion, he wondered. She must have, because she said:
“Don’t you see how perfect it is—how perfect for the play?” Her voice was odd, not at all her own.
Sickened, he did see. “Somehow,” he said, “I’ll make sure you do Rachel.”
“Good,” she whispered. “Good.”
He tried to rise from the bed. She reached out and grasped his arm.
“Don’t go,” she whispered. “Tell me how much you liked it.”
He did not speak, and in a perverse way, he felt a sadistic pleasure in not answering her. He knew he had her now. He knew that the situation was now under control. His control. And this, more than anything else, was important to him. Lying beside her, he reached out and held her hand.
The room was silent for a moment.
What was she thinking, he wondered. What would he tell her if she confronted him? If she accused him of being sickened by the whole experience. He would not protest. Nor apologize. He would simply be honest with her. There was nothing strange in what he had felt. Many men had experienced similar feelings when they lost control of themselves. Surely she would be able to understand that.
Now he glanced at her from the corners of his eyes.
A pale light filtered in through the window and stopped just short of her face. He could not make out her features. Yet he could feel she was smiling. Experiencing a quiet amusement. He could also feel the strangeness of her grasp. Her fingers felt cold and thin. Bone thin. The flesh seemed to hang loose between her fingers.
“Chandal?” he whispered.
There was no answer.
He peered beyond the soft shaft of yellowish light. Yet her face was still hidden by shadows.
“Chandal, are you all right?”
And then she moved her face into the light.
For a swift second, before he could believe or react to what he saw, a long fingered hand that was nothing more than a loosely tied bundle of blue veins, placed itself tenderly on his cheek.
The old woman smiled at him, her raw, crinkled skin that stretched over the many folds of her eyes and mouth, wrinkled even more, and her fabled skull face of death glimmered white beneath a heavily applied rouge that covered most of her corpselike cheeks. She hissed at him like a snake through cracked and bloated lips: “I love your passion, Eric.”
And then he screamed and realized that in the middle of his bedroom, surrounded by darkness, he was not alone, there wasn’t any doubt, and he wasn’t going crazy, the old woman was still propped in his bed, breathing, and Eric screamed, and the cry echoed down the long hallway and he was about to explode because—the old woman would not go away and she would not let go either, her fingers gripped his arm and Eric struck out with his free hand but it was no use, the old woman clung tighter and now they were facing each other and the old woman’s violet eyes smiled at him, laughed, she laughed and he screamed, his breath coming in short gasps until it stuck in his throat and he gagged, while the room turned and spun and the old woman grabbed tighter and Eric tried snapping her fingers loose, but they would not loosen, they held on to him for dear life, dragging him under as she hissed and laughed and he fought—wide-eyed—but it was too late, she had him, held him, pulled at him, and she would not stop until she had finally dragged him under, and that’s where he was going, under, under, it was no use—he was going under... the gaping O of surprise smeared across his horror-stricken face.
Chandal stood naked before the mirror. The bloodstone pendant hung between her swollen and bruised breasts. With the eyes of a stranger she viewed Eric Savage’s limp and exhausted body sprawled out on the bed, asleep.
“See?” said the voice. “He has learned to accept it.”
The stranger within her smiled and then the sound of her voice was gone. But its effect lingered. Chandal stood, scared and trembling. Her image appeared clear in the glass. Her consciousness returned. She stared helplessly at the bruises on her breasts, at her sweat-coated skin, disheveled hair, and smeared makeup. “Oh, God....” she groaned and threw her hands up over her face. “What have I done?” She stood isolated, paralyzed, knowing she could never forgive herself.
Eric moaned and rolled over on his side. Chandal caught sight of his naked body in the mirror, as a sudden spasm jerked at his leg.
Hastily, she dressed. Slammed out of the apartment and down the stairs. She pounded down the pavement, breaking into a run but slowing again, shattered by a violent pain in her chest, propelled mercilessly by the image of Eric Savage, his naked body spread wide to accommodate the passion of his obscene dreams.
At the corner a group of men, all drunk and out on the town for a night of fun, blocked her way.
“Where are you going, baby?” barked the tallest of them.
They all laughed.
In their faces Chandal saw her own confusion and shame reflected. Completely disoriented, weak and shaken, she stumbled headlong, passed their howls of laughter, into the night. Deeper into the ever present abyss that awaited her.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CLOUDS THICKENED OVER THE CARRIAGE HOUSE AS THE FIRST brush-strokes of night began to darken its crude brick-stone face. Like a hideously painted mask, its reddish brick front grimaced secrets of those who had lived within for so many years. Images sprang into miniature jet-black view between the cracks and crevices of its malevolent, yet comic makeup: tiny pirouetting figures, dancers from another time, another stage, hellbent to express the intensity of their own pent-up emotions, while willing themselves to escape from their own stone skin.
Chandal stopped for a moment, listened to the whispers of the tree branches blowing in the slight breeze.
Secrets... the will-o’-the-wisp sound echoed in her mind. She went from room to room, drawing curtains and turning on a few lamps. In the den the light was especially dim and gloomy, and she made a mental note to get a package of higher-watt lightbulbs.
She sighed and turned her eyes to the yellowed parchment which she now held stretched tight between her hands.
“All human clay is subject to decay. But in Hell, we shall still be alive in this body—and this is better than annihilation.”
Standing completely still, her face pale, her eyes squinting from the room’s poor light source, she considered this. Considered the carefully scribed saying written in a fine Victorian penmanship across the deteriorating, perishable parchment paper.
After a moment she laid the scroll aside. It was old, possibly worth something. In any event, it was a curiosity worth saving. Strange words to be written in such dainty penmanship. Nothing else in the desk drawer seemed of interest. She tilted the drawer over the trash basket and let an assortment of debris and dust empty out. Then, using a damp cloth, she cleaned the grimy interior of the drawer.
Her thoughts threatened to wander toward last night and Eric Savage, who hadn’t called all day. What was she expected to do tomorrow—simply show up for rehearsal as though nothing had happened? Or sit and wait until Eric called? She shoved her chin forward and decided to go to rehearsal. The most he could do was to send her home. And she didn’t believe he would do that.
Unwillingly she let her confidence lapse a notch. Most people seemed to have dark, unpredictable sides to their personalities, shadow-selves so diverse as to completely alter, and sometimes dominate, the original creation. God knew she had her opposing slants. Last night, she had met Eric Savage’s divergent personality.
A hectic flush of heat worked into her throat. Her thoughts raced around, unable to fall into any one line of reasoning.
It was really just a few instants that she had retained, nothing else. A fleeting memory of Eric’s hands on her breasts, squeezing too hard. Something brutal about his eyes, as though they were punishing her for having digusted him. A leg flipped over her body, pinning her. The word “Rachel” spoken in an odious, shrill tone.
The question—the thing that eluded her—was how she had gotten into Eric’s bedroom. She had gone over it time after time and always her memory stopped at a certain point. She had gotten up from the couch almost ill. She had lost the part, Eric had said, but something in his voice, some teasing element told her he didn’t mean it, that there was still something she could do about it.
Hesitantly, almost timidly, she had moved. Eric’s eyes had followed her. Had she been seductive in any way? That hadn’t been her intention. She had merely crossed the room to stare at an unusual pen-and-ink sketch in a small chromium frame.
Then in the next instant, she had raised her eyes. It was all but impossible, yet there she had stood, naked before Eric Savage’s bedroom mirror, and she had known that in some horrible way she had degraded herself.
It made no difference to her why it had happened. It had happened. She knew she should never have gone to bed with him. Not then, not that way. She knew only too well. But the knowing hadn’t been enough, had it? She had allowed herself the experience anyway. But had she allowed it? It was hard to say. She had never even known the urge was there. If so, she would have guarded herself. Especially since it hadn’t helped anything. Her part in the play, apparently, was as much in jeopardy as ever.
How could she really be sure, she thought now with sharp loathing, exactly what Eric Savage would do? What any man would do, for that matter?
“Why don’t you pitch out that shelf of old magazines?” Mike Hammer snapped from the corner of the den.
Chandal turned with a start. She stood facing him as though suddenly stricken with amazement that she was really there, facing him in this small, shabby room. More to the point, she was amazed that he was there! She had completely forgotten his presence, despite the fact that he had been at work for most of the afternoon plastering the walls.
She waited, twisting her hands together.
“I... I think you could sell some of them to an antique shop,” she began slowly, “if you wanted to bother....
“Not me,” he sneered as if she had accused him of being a ragman.
She looked at him with sorrowful eyes.
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” she said.
“I didn’t say you did. I’m just not interested, that’s all.”
“Okay!” Chandal suddenly laughed. “Then we’ll pitch them.” She gathered the magazines up in two armloads and dropped them into the large wicker basket she was using for trash. When she turned around to see what Mike’s reaction had been to her sudden and swift obedience, she discovered that he had gone back to work, slapping plaster into place.
Motionless, she watched the wide expanse of his back, watched the muscles in his arms twitch heavily once or twice. She studied him in silence for a long time. Studied his broad shoulders and immense body that seemed to fill the entire surface of the wall he was now working on. With each new dip of his body, as he leaned down for fresh plaster, came a short gasp of air.
During the past week, Chandal had found that Mike all but inspired a feeling of visceral terror in her, an emotion so intense and so confusing that it required all her energies to avoid experiencing it, or at least to deny its existence. She had the strange sensation that Mike had been coming to her in her sleep. Dreams, she had told herself. Yet each experience had been distressingly vivid. There had been no sense of struggle, only a soft, effortless seduction of sorts. And there, in the shadows, Doreen was watching with glee. A terrible, pitiless exaltation.
“It has been ordered,” she would whisper. She would say it over and over again as though Chandal should understand and sometimes Chandal thought she did understand on some deep somnambulistic level. Each dream brought with it a source of constant irritation and frustration. A blend of revulsion and longing.
Suddenly Mike stopped his work to glance over his shoulder. He saw Chandal standing directly behind him. He brought his hand up to his forehead and flicked salty beads of sweat from his finger to the floor. Awkwardly, Chandal reached for the clean towel that hung over the desk chair. She stepped closer.
“Here,” she said.
“Thanks.”
Nervously she turned away, her eyes scanning the room.
“This is really a terrible room, isn’t it?” she said, not for the first time, and wondered why the only window in the den, the tiny arched window in the north wall that faced the courtyard, had been sealed off.
“Whose bright idea was that anyhow?” she asked, her head cocked at the window.
“Beats me....
“Can we do something about it?”
“Oh, sure. I really have nothing better to do than plastering your walls and knocking out your windows.”
Chandal pointedly ignored his sarcasm. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“Old ladies drink tea.”
“Coffee?”
“I’ll take a cold beer if you have one.”
“I don’t have one.”
Their eyes locked for what seemed like a lifetime, but was in reality no more than a second or two. It was sufficient for Chandal to feel that she knew everything there was to know about him, past, present and future, and that there was a current which crackled between them.
Chandal wasted no time in averting her gaze, glancing at the wallpaper she had selected for the room. “Do you think this paper will lighten the atmosphere in here?”
Mike looked at the paper briefly. “I guess,” he muttered and returned to work.
“I could add a few lights,” she said slowly, “but there is only just the one wall outlet.” She hesitated and waited for him to answer. He continued to work. “Electricians are so expensive. I guess I’ll just have to wait,” she said and moved closer. She found her eyes riveted to the back of his neck where his thick dark hair lay in longish curls. “Why in heaven’s name do you suppose that window was sealed up?” she said hastily for something to say and flushed when she realized she was retreading old ground.
“Drafty,” Mike said in a curiously gentle voice and flipped fresh plaster on the wall.
“Yes. You’re probably’ right. The heater in this room isn’t very big.”
“That’s what I mean.”
Irresistibly drawn to take a step closer, she peered over his shoulder. “Anything I can do to help?”
“No, I’m about done.” He smoothed out the last of the plaster and then laid down his trowel and turned to face her.
They were too close for convention’s sake and yet he moved closer until she could feel the warmth of his breath on her face. Chandal’s heart skipped strangely. An awareness that she was on treacherous ground flooded her being, but she was unable to turn away, was completely helpless to take her eyes from Mike’s handsome face.
He smiled. “I’ll let that dry. Finish it in the morning.”
“I won’t be here,” she said.
“I have the key.”
“Oh, yes—that’s right.”
For no reason Chandal could put her finger on, she felt her cheeks burn when Mike grinned and walked out the front door without saying another word. As if she... hell! Forget it.
She went back to cleaning drawers. She still had an evening to kill before meeting Billy Deats at The Boulevard at eleven. Dust was thick in the desk’s interior, great old rolled top desk that it was. It filtered down in little puffs every time she removed another item from the drawer. It caught in her throat like sticky fiber and even coughing did not completely expel it.
Digging through the pigeonholes she found old stamps, a stack of yellowing envelopes, a broken pocket watch, pens and pencils and several cigars which crumbled almost immediately upon her touch. Something about the way the cigars disintegrated in her hand left her with a vague unsettled feeling. She had always feared death. She had always been afraid to even permit herself to consider it.
Experiencing a certain disquiet, she opened her hand and allowed the loose tobacco to fall like dirty snow into the wicker basket. The action itself became a baptism of sorts.
A violent pull began to tear at his stomach, causing an intensified longing and loathing at one and the same time. It was as if his emotions sprang from the deepest part of his soul and could not be controlled, their essence being felt for the first time.
He felt possessed by a power so grotesque, yet so intoxicating, that he was unable to deny its force. He groped with his body, penetrating her inner mystery. He heard her whisper: “Fuck her... fuck her good. And me!” The voice faded into a heavy, gasplike breathing that rose and fell in little shudders from a spittle-filled throat.
“Eric... Eric....” Her distorted voice seemed to emanate through a megaphone, obscenely seductive and ugly. Her breath burned his neck. Her teeth tore at his flesh.
In quick succession he thrust himself forward, deeper, harder, his longing and loathing existing side by side, each struggling to dominate the final moment of climax.
The persistence of disgust finally gave way to sheer joy. The joy increased, became burning shafts of fire. He cried out, lunged against her and sank down, deep within her. He tightened his grasp on her waist and pressed her further into the mattress.
Overpowering lust consumed him. Everything roiled inside him, a terrible driving need to spend himself completely. Obsessed with fulfilling his desire, he closed his fingers around the flesh of her buttocks, driving her to him. He heard her scream: “Fuck me!”
She screamed, and screamed again.
He pumped harder, faster; the blood throbbing through his body, pulsating through his brain. He gasped, pulled her up in his arms and then suddenly exploded—a long, shuddering orgasm that seemed to go on forever.
And then he felt his body sag, breathless and exhausted, to a limp position beside her. His first reaction, his only reaction now, was one of disgust. Her grossness repelled him. He found it impossible to look at her, to touch her, to lie beside her any longer. Could she sense his revulsion, he wondered. She must have, because she said:
“Don’t you see how perfect it is—how perfect for the play?” Her voice was odd, not at all her own.
Sickened, he did see. “Somehow,” he said, “I’ll make sure you do Rachel.”
“Good,” she whispered. “Good.”
He tried to rise from the bed. She reached out and grasped his arm.
“Don’t go,” she whispered. “Tell me how much you liked it.”
He did not speak, and in a perverse way, he felt a sadistic pleasure in not answering her. He knew he had her now. He knew that the situation was now under control. His control. And this, more than anything else, was important to him. Lying beside her, he reached out and held her hand.
The room was silent for a moment.
What was she thinking, he wondered. What would he tell her if she confronted him? If she accused him of being sickened by the whole experience. He would not protest. Nor apologize. He would simply be honest with her. There was nothing strange in what he had felt. Many men had experienced similar feelings when they lost control of themselves. Surely she would be able to understand that.
Now he glanced at her from the corners of his eyes.
A pale light filtered in through the window and stopped just short of her face. He could not make out her features. Yet he could feel she was smiling. Experiencing a quiet amusement. He could also feel the strangeness of her grasp. Her fingers felt cold and thin. Bone thin. The flesh seemed to hang loose between her fingers.
“Chandal?” he whispered.
There was no answer.
He peered beyond the soft shaft of yellowish light. Yet her face was still hidden by shadows.
“Chandal, are you all right?”
And then she moved her face into the light.
For a swift second, before he could believe or react to what he saw, a long fingered hand that was nothing more than a loosely tied bundle of blue veins, placed itself tenderly on his cheek.
The old woman smiled at him, her raw, crinkled skin that stretched over the many folds of her eyes and mouth, wrinkled even more, and her fabled skull face of death glimmered white beneath a heavily applied rouge that covered most of her corpselike cheeks. She hissed at him like a snake through cracked and bloated lips: “I love your passion, Eric.”
And then he screamed and realized that in the middle of his bedroom, surrounded by darkness, he was not alone, there wasn’t any doubt, and he wasn’t going crazy, the old woman was still propped in his bed, breathing, and Eric screamed, and the cry echoed down the long hallway and he was about to explode because—the old woman would not go away and she would not let go either, her fingers gripped his arm and Eric struck out with his free hand but it was no use, the old woman clung tighter and now they were facing each other and the old woman’s violet eyes smiled at him, laughed, she laughed and he screamed, his breath coming in short gasps until it stuck in his throat and he gagged, while the room turned and spun and the old woman grabbed tighter and Eric tried snapping her fingers loose, but they would not loosen, they held on to him for dear life, dragging him under as she hissed and laughed and he fought—wide-eyed—but it was too late, she had him, held him, pulled at him, and she would not stop until she had finally dragged him under, and that’s where he was going, under, under, it was no use—he was going under... the gaping O of surprise smeared across his horror-stricken face.
Chandal stood naked before the mirror. The bloodstone pendant hung between her swollen and bruised breasts. With the eyes of a stranger she viewed Eric Savage’s limp and exhausted body sprawled out on the bed, asleep.
“See?” said the voice. “He has learned to accept it.”
The stranger within her smiled and then the sound of her voice was gone. But its effect lingered. Chandal stood, scared and trembling. Her image appeared clear in the glass. Her consciousness returned. She stared helplessly at the bruises on her breasts, at her sweat-coated skin, disheveled hair, and smeared makeup. “Oh, God....” she groaned and threw her hands up over her face. “What have I done?” She stood isolated, paralyzed, knowing she could never forgive herself.
Eric moaned and rolled over on his side. Chandal caught sight of his naked body in the mirror, as a sudden spasm jerked at his leg.
Hastily, she dressed. Slammed out of the apartment and down the stairs. She pounded down the pavement, breaking into a run but slowing again, shattered by a violent pain in her chest, propelled mercilessly by the image of Eric Savage, his naked body spread wide to accommodate the passion of his obscene dreams.
At the corner a group of men, all drunk and out on the town for a night of fun, blocked her way.
“Where are you going, baby?” barked the tallest of them.
They all laughed.
In their faces Chandal saw her own confusion and shame reflected. Completely disoriented, weak and shaken, she stumbled headlong, passed their howls of laughter, into the night. Deeper into the ever present abyss that awaited her.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CLOUDS THICKENED OVER THE CARRIAGE HOUSE AS THE FIRST brush-strokes of night began to darken its crude brick-stone face. Like a hideously painted mask, its reddish brick front grimaced secrets of those who had lived within for so many years. Images sprang into miniature jet-black view between the cracks and crevices of its malevolent, yet comic makeup: tiny pirouetting figures, dancers from another time, another stage, hellbent to express the intensity of their own pent-up emotions, while willing themselves to escape from their own stone skin.
Chandal stopped for a moment, listened to the whispers of the tree branches blowing in the slight breeze.
Secrets... the will-o’-the-wisp sound echoed in her mind. She went from room to room, drawing curtains and turning on a few lamps. In the den the light was especially dim and gloomy, and she made a mental note to get a package of higher-watt lightbulbs.
She sighed and turned her eyes to the yellowed parchment which she now held stretched tight between her hands.
“All human clay is subject to decay. But in Hell, we shall still be alive in this body—and this is better than annihilation.”
Standing completely still, her face pale, her eyes squinting from the room’s poor light source, she considered this. Considered the carefully scribed saying written in a fine Victorian penmanship across the deteriorating, perishable parchment paper.
After a moment she laid the scroll aside. It was old, possibly worth something. In any event, it was a curiosity worth saving. Strange words to be written in such dainty penmanship. Nothing else in the desk drawer seemed of interest. She tilted the drawer over the trash basket and let an assortment of debris and dust empty out. Then, using a damp cloth, she cleaned the grimy interior of the drawer.
Her thoughts threatened to wander toward last night and Eric Savage, who hadn’t called all day. What was she expected to do tomorrow—simply show up for rehearsal as though nothing had happened? Or sit and wait until Eric called? She shoved her chin forward and decided to go to rehearsal. The most he could do was to send her home. And she didn’t believe he would do that.
Unwillingly she let her confidence lapse a notch. Most people seemed to have dark, unpredictable sides to their personalities, shadow-selves so diverse as to completely alter, and sometimes dominate, the original creation. God knew she had her opposing slants. Last night, she had met Eric Savage’s divergent personality.
A hectic flush of heat worked into her throat. Her thoughts raced around, unable to fall into any one line of reasoning.
It was really just a few instants that she had retained, nothing else. A fleeting memory of Eric’s hands on her breasts, squeezing too hard. Something brutal about his eyes, as though they were punishing her for having digusted him. A leg flipped over her body, pinning her. The word “Rachel” spoken in an odious, shrill tone.
The question—the thing that eluded her—was how she had gotten into Eric’s bedroom. She had gone over it time after time and always her memory stopped at a certain point. She had gotten up from the couch almost ill. She had lost the part, Eric had said, but something in his voice, some teasing element told her he didn’t mean it, that there was still something she could do about it.
Hesitantly, almost timidly, she had moved. Eric’s eyes had followed her. Had she been seductive in any way? That hadn’t been her intention. She had merely crossed the room to stare at an unusual pen-and-ink sketch in a small chromium frame.
Then in the next instant, she had raised her eyes. It was all but impossible, yet there she had stood, naked before Eric Savage’s bedroom mirror, and she had known that in some horrible way she had degraded herself.
It made no difference to her why it had happened. It had happened. She knew she should never have gone to bed with him. Not then, not that way. She knew only too well. But the knowing hadn’t been enough, had it? She had allowed herself the experience anyway. But had she allowed it? It was hard to say. She had never even known the urge was there. If so, she would have guarded herself. Especially since it hadn’t helped anything. Her part in the play, apparently, was as much in jeopardy as ever.
How could she really be sure, she thought now with sharp loathing, exactly what Eric Savage would do? What any man would do, for that matter?
“Why don’t you pitch out that shelf of old magazines?” Mike Hammer snapped from the corner of the den.
Chandal turned with a start. She stood facing him as though suddenly stricken with amazement that she was really there, facing him in this small, shabby room. More to the point, she was amazed that he was there! She had completely forgotten his presence, despite the fact that he had been at work for most of the afternoon plastering the walls.
She waited, twisting her hands together.
“I... I think you could sell some of them to an antique shop,” she began slowly, “if you wanted to bother....
“Not me,” he sneered as if she had accused him of being a ragman.
She looked at him with sorrowful eyes.
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” she said.
“I didn’t say you did. I’m just not interested, that’s all.”
“Okay!” Chandal suddenly laughed. “Then we’ll pitch them.” She gathered the magazines up in two armloads and dropped them into the large wicker basket she was using for trash. When she turned around to see what Mike’s reaction had been to her sudden and swift obedience, she discovered that he had gone back to work, slapping plaster into place.
Motionless, she watched the wide expanse of his back, watched the muscles in his arms twitch heavily once or twice. She studied him in silence for a long time. Studied his broad shoulders and immense body that seemed to fill the entire surface of the wall he was now working on. With each new dip of his body, as he leaned down for fresh plaster, came a short gasp of air.
During the past week, Chandal had found that Mike all but inspired a feeling of visceral terror in her, an emotion so intense and so confusing that it required all her energies to avoid experiencing it, or at least to deny its existence. She had the strange sensation that Mike had been coming to her in her sleep. Dreams, she had told herself. Yet each experience had been distressingly vivid. There had been no sense of struggle, only a soft, effortless seduction of sorts. And there, in the shadows, Doreen was watching with glee. A terrible, pitiless exaltation.
“It has been ordered,” she would whisper. She would say it over and over again as though Chandal should understand and sometimes Chandal thought she did understand on some deep somnambulistic level. Each dream brought with it a source of constant irritation and frustration. A blend of revulsion and longing.
Suddenly Mike stopped his work to glance over his shoulder. He saw Chandal standing directly behind him. He brought his hand up to his forehead and flicked salty beads of sweat from his finger to the floor. Awkwardly, Chandal reached for the clean towel that hung over the desk chair. She stepped closer.
“Here,” she said.
“Thanks.”
Nervously she turned away, her eyes scanning the room.
“This is really a terrible room, isn’t it?” she said, not for the first time, and wondered why the only window in the den, the tiny arched window in the north wall that faced the courtyard, had been sealed off.
“Whose bright idea was that anyhow?” she asked, her head cocked at the window.
“Beats me....
“Can we do something about it?”
“Oh, sure. I really have nothing better to do than plastering your walls and knocking out your windows.”
Chandal pointedly ignored his sarcasm. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“Old ladies drink tea.”
“Coffee?”
“I’ll take a cold beer if you have one.”
“I don’t have one.”
Their eyes locked for what seemed like a lifetime, but was in reality no more than a second or two. It was sufficient for Chandal to feel that she knew everything there was to know about him, past, present and future, and that there was a current which crackled between them.
Chandal wasted no time in averting her gaze, glancing at the wallpaper she had selected for the room. “Do you think this paper will lighten the atmosphere in here?”
Mike looked at the paper briefly. “I guess,” he muttered and returned to work.
“I could add a few lights,” she said slowly, “but there is only just the one wall outlet.” She hesitated and waited for him to answer. He continued to work. “Electricians are so expensive. I guess I’ll just have to wait,” she said and moved closer. She found her eyes riveted to the back of his neck where his thick dark hair lay in longish curls. “Why in heaven’s name do you suppose that window was sealed up?” she said hastily for something to say and flushed when she realized she was retreading old ground.
“Drafty,” Mike said in a curiously gentle voice and flipped fresh plaster on the wall.
“Yes. You’re probably’ right. The heater in this room isn’t very big.”
“That’s what I mean.”
Irresistibly drawn to take a step closer, she peered over his shoulder. “Anything I can do to help?”
“No, I’m about done.” He smoothed out the last of the plaster and then laid down his trowel and turned to face her.
They were too close for convention’s sake and yet he moved closer until she could feel the warmth of his breath on her face. Chandal’s heart skipped strangely. An awareness that she was on treacherous ground flooded her being, but she was unable to turn away, was completely helpless to take her eyes from Mike’s handsome face.
He smiled. “I’ll let that dry. Finish it in the morning.”
“I won’t be here,” she said.
“I have the key.”
“Oh, yes—that’s right.”
For no reason Chandal could put her finger on, she felt her cheeks burn when Mike grinned and walked out the front door without saying another word. As if she... hell! Forget it.
She went back to cleaning drawers. She still had an evening to kill before meeting Billy Deats at The Boulevard at eleven. Dust was thick in the desk’s interior, great old rolled top desk that it was. It filtered down in little puffs every time she removed another item from the drawer. It caught in her throat like sticky fiber and even coughing did not completely expel it.
Digging through the pigeonholes she found old stamps, a stack of yellowing envelopes, a broken pocket watch, pens and pencils and several cigars which crumbled almost immediately upon her touch. Something about the way the cigars disintegrated in her hand left her with a vague unsettled feeling. She had always feared death. She had always been afraid to even permit herself to consider it.
Experiencing a certain disquiet, she opened her hand and allowed the loose tobacco to fall like dirty snow into the wicker basket. The action itself became a baptism of sorts.
