IN THE DARK, page 23
Jane felt as if she’d been clubbed in the belly.
This is what I get. Never should’ve looked. This is what I get.
The dirty rotten filthy fucking bastard!
She wanted to run away.
But she stayed.
Let’s just see what the bitch looks like. Come on, turn around. Let’s get a look at you.
Maybe it’s someone I know.
That didn’t seem likely. Except for patrons of the library, Jane hadn’t met very many people. All her friends had been left behind when she moved here to take the job.
Never should’ve come here, she thought.
Who is she? Who is this miserable damn slut…?
Probably one of Brace’s students. I’d bet on it. A dirty thing to do, fuck your students. Happens all the time, though. And what the hell, he’s a guy. It’s the sort of thing guys do. They’re all so horny they’d fuck the crack of dawn.
Why should Brace be different.
But I thought he was.
Yeah? Well, watch him in action—giving one of his English majors a private lesson.
Come on, bitch, turn around. Let’s see what you’ve got, huh?
Are you prettier? You got bigger tits?
Obviously, she was slimmer. She didn’t need to turn around for that to be apparent. Jane could see the way her back tapered down to a slender waist before flaring out around the hips and rump.
She’s not all that much thinner than me, Jane told herself. And I bet I’m stronger.
Yeah, she’s skin and bones. Looks almost frail.
The cock came all the way out of her. Nobody reached down to do anything about it. The girl kept hold of Brace’s shoulders, and his hands stayed out of sight—probably playing with her tits. The engorged head of his cock prodded her a few times, then found its way in and she sank down, taking all its length and thickness into her.
Jane groaned.
Stop watching! Stop it!
No. I’ve gotta see what she looks like from the front. See what’s so special.
Try knocking on the window, Jane thought. She’ll be sure to look around, if I give it a few good sharp raps.
Why not? Why the hell not?
They’ll catch me, and they’ll know I was watching, and…
So what? What’s Brace gonna do about it, dump me?
Go on, do it!
No. That’d be crazy.
Suddenly, Jane heard voices from the other end of the courtyard. She scurried backward away from the window and looked toward the gate. Nobody there. Not yet. But she still heard the voices.
Male and female.
Probably another prof bringing home a student to screw.
Oh my God, I can’t be caught here!
She twisted this way and that, looking for a place to hide. And spotted a lounge chair she might duck behind. But it was at the far side of the pool. No chance of getting to it in time.
Nowhere else to hide.
Nowhere close enough to reach in time.
Except for the pool, only a few paces away.
Jane rushed to it, sat down quickly and lowered her legs into the chilly water. She scooted forward until the edge of the poolside pressed into her rump. Then, hanging on to the edge, she eased herself down. The water climbed her body, wrapping it with cold.
When the water reached her waist, she turned herself around so she faced the wall. She lowered herself to the chin, took a deep breath and let go of the side. She went under. Motionless and limp, she waited. After a few moments, the water began to lift her. So she blew out some of her air and stopped rising.
Her lungs began to ache.
She wondered if it would be safe to rise.
They’re probably inside an apartment by now, she told herself. But even if they haven’t gone in, they aren’t likely to spot me over in the corner here. Probably so dark here they wouldn’t see me even if they looked.
But she decided to wait.
How about half a minute? Can I hang on for half a minute?
In her mind, she started counting slowly toward thirty.
By the count of ten, her lungs felt as if they were being squeezed by vices while fires blazed inside them.
At thirteen, she came up for air. She sucked in a deep breath with a gasp.
Hope nobody heard that!
Blinking water out of her eyes, she tried to breathe more quietly as she scanned the courtyard.
No sign of the intruders.
Curling her fingertips over the edge of the pool to hold herself high enough, she peered at Brace’s window.
Just as well I had to run for cover, she thought. Otherwise, I’d still be standing there.
You can’t go back, she told herself. Not without making puddles and footprints on the concrete. You sure don’t want to leave tell-tale signs like that at his window.
What I’ll have to do is climb out of the pool at the other end—put my trail as far from Brace’s rooms as I can.
Screw it.
She boosted herself up, water sluicing down her body and splashing into the pool, then pattering on the concrete. Her shorts had been tugged halfway down her rump by the pool’s suction as she popped out, so she pulled them up.
Her shoes made squelching noises with each step as she walked toward the window.
She thought, Who cares?
Why am I doing this? I know better!
She stopped just in front of the window and leaned forward until her dripping forehead touched the glass.
Guess I won’t need to knock, she thought.
Because the girl was facing her—off the sofa and striding straight toward her, filling her view.
All Jane could see was the girl.
Tall and slender, wet coils of hair clinging to her brow and temples, sweat speckling her face, her skin ruddy around her mouth from too much kissing, blotches on her neck and shoulders and breasts from the suck of a mouth—Brace’s mouth.
It isn’t her face that got him, Jane thought. I’m a lot prettier.
Has to be her boobs.
Twice the size of mine.
They bounced and swung as she walked.
Gimme a break.
She reached up and grabbed the edges of the curtain, and started to pull them together, and happened to look straight forward—straight at Jane.
Who mashed her face against the glass and bared her teeth.
The girl’s eyes bulged. Her mouth leaped open.
Jane listened to the muffled shriek as she sprinted alongside the pool.
Glancing every which way, she saw nobody look out any windows at her, no doors swing open.
If I’m quick enough…
Then she was hidden in the passageway.
Made it!
She opened the gate, stepped out, eased it shut, then dashed across the street and ducked behind a parked car. From there, she watched the front of the Royal Gardens. Nobody came rushing out.
She started walking. As she hurried away, she kept an eye on the gate of the apartment building. So far, so good.
At the first cross-street, she headed to the right.
Got away with it!
She let out a laugh.
“Did you hear that bitch scream?” she asked herself. “Got her! Man, did I get her!” She laughed again.
Brace might figure out it was me, she thought.
So what? He can’t do anything about it. And who gives a shit what he thinks of me, the filthy son-of-a-bitch? And I hope I scared the piss out of his hot little teeny-bopper slut.
Then Jane was crying, bawling as she walked along.
Don’t be a twit, she told herself.
She kicked an empty beer can. It tumbled and skidded along the sidewalk. “Hope his fuckin’ dick drops off,” she muttered. After a sniffle, she added, “Probably will, too. Asshole never heard of a rubber?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Jane woke up, saw that she was in her own bedroom and the morning looked sunny outside her window. A beautiful day, she thought. But a cold, hollow feeling in her belly told her that the day was about to turn foul. Something really ugly had happened, and as soon as she could remember…
Oh.
Brace.
The sudden memory of what she’d seen through Brace’s window made her groan and roll onto her side and hug her belly and bring her knees up.
Her clothing didn’t feel right.
Looking down, she found herself wearing her tank-top and running shorts.
She frowned.
What’d I do, just flop into bed last night without…?
That’s what I did, all right.
She could remember it now: staggering into the house, breathless and crying, half-blinded by her tears, stumbling along until she came to her bed, then flopping on it face-down and burying her face in the pillow.
Ah, yes.
Didn’t even so much as take a shower.
Should’ve at least brushed my teeth, she thought.
She ran her tongue across her teeth. They felt scuzzy.
“Great,” she muttered.
Groaning, she crawled out of bed. When she tried to stand, muscles everywhere rebelled. She groaned again. And groaned with each step as she hobbled, bent over, toward the bathroom.
The first thing I’ll do when I get there—if I get there—is brush my teeth. Next comes peeing. Or should that be first? No, gotta brush my teeth first—they’re disgusting and they’re in my mouth.
Brush, then pee, then shower, then scoot into the kitchen and get the coffee started.
Or do the coffee first, so it’ll be ready…?
No no no. It can wait.
In the bathroom, Jane made her way to the medicine cabinet, then forced herself to stand up straight. She gazed at her reflection in the mirror as she scrubbed her teeth.
Hair a tangle, eyes dazed, cheeks hollow, still a dim yellow bruise on one cheek where the dog had stepped on her face.
A vision of loveliness, she thought.
And spit a mouthful of foam into the sink.
Then studied her face some more as she resumed brushing.
On my worst day (and this might be it), I look better than that pony-faced whore of Brace’s.
Done with her teeth, she put the brush away and bent over the sink to rinse her mouth. As she cupped up water with her hand, she saw her cleavage in the mirror.
Okay, so she’s got bigger boobs than me. Doesn’t mean hers are any better.
Jane shook her shoulders, and watched how her breasts shimmied a little inside the drooping front of her shirt.
“Oh, well,” she said.
She laughed once, then turned away from the mirror. Stepping toward the toilet, she peeled the tank-top over her head. She tossed it into a corner.
Her back to the toilet, she hooked her thumbs under the elastic waistband of her running shorts. As she was about to give the shorts a pull, she looked down.
“Huh?” she murmured. Not troubled, at first. Just confused, disoriented.
Whatever the things might be, maybe she wasn’t seeing them quite right. Maybe they were something normal.
But she didn’t think so.
What they looked like were rows of black marks across her skin between the bottoms of her breasts and the waistband of her shorts.
Small black squiggles mixed in with tangles of horizontal and vertical lines.
She bent lower. Pressing her breasts closer to her chest, she peered over the backs of her hands.
“Oh, my God,” she muttered.
Handwriting.
Someone had scribbled a message across her skin. With a felt-tipped pen, from the looks of it.
But Jane couldn’t read the message.
Even though she was viewing it upside-down, that wasn’t the problem; from time to time, she had practiced reading things upside-down.
This looked like gibberish.
A foreign language? she wondered. No. That’s not…
It’s backward writing!
Just like the letters you see on the front of an ambulance when you aren’t looking at them through the rearview mirror of your car.
Jane hobbled over to the medicine cabinet. In its mirror, the jumble of black marks became letters, words…
My Dear,
On the tablet
of your body and soul
we script the book
of
Of what?
She tugged her shorts down.
Jane
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
At first, Jane felt sickened by the knowledge that Mog had come to her bedroom during the night while she was fast asleep. He’d done that sort of thing before, of course.
And left his little verse about kissing her.
Almost everywhere.
This time, he had penned his poetry (if it could be called that) on her very skin.
How could he do that without waking me up? she wondered.
A delicate touch, maybe.
What else did he do?
“Anything he wanted,” she muttered.
She stared at the message and pictured Mog crouching on the mattress, lifting her tank top, starting with “My Dear” just below her breasts and working his way downward, line by line, the pen’s felt tip sliding on her skin, the “of” fitting in nicely between her navel and the waist of her shorts.
Ran out of room on purpose, she supposed.
Because that’s how he’d wanted to finish his weird little note: by scrawling her name down where she would read it through the wispy coils of her pubic hair.
Mog’s idea of a little humor, she supposed.
Or maybe he’d done it that way figuring it had some sort of major significance.
This is Jane—her essence, her center.
Or what I am to Mog, she thought.
Maybe it’s just his way of calling me a pussy. Or worse.
Could be a lot of things, she supposed. It might be nothing more than his way of showing he was there.
Mog and his bizarre little ways.
Like writing the stuff backward. How the hell did he do that, anyway? Using a mirror? Better yet, why? Just to make things even stranger than usual? Trying to freak me out?
Suppose he did it just so I could read the thing in my mirror? Wanted to make it easy for me.
Maybe.
Maybe maybe maybe.
Why does he do anything?
The pervert gets a charge out of messing with me, that’s why.
Tilting back her head, Jane called out, “Hey, Mog. If you’re gonna drop in and screw around and write on me and everything, how about dropping off some of that money you’re so famous for? I’d appreciate it.”
Then she smirked at herself in the mirror, and gave her head a shake.
“Do you find me amusing, Mog?” she asked.
At least he hasn’t deserted me, she thought. I oughta be grateful for that. He hasn’t dumped me.
Faithful and rich, what more could a gal want in a fella?
Sanity, perhaps?
Laughing softly, Jane left the bathroom. She went to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. By the telephone, she picked up a notepad and pen. In the bathroom again, she stood in front of the mirror and copied the message.
Then she read it off the note pad.
My Dear,
On the tablet
of your body and soul
we script the book
of
Jane
“Right,” she muttered.
Then she studied it, wondering if there might be hidden clues about where and when she might go off to seek another envelope.
She couldn’t find anything of the sort.
Which didn’t surprise her. This just didn’t seem like that kind of message.
Not an instruction. More of a commentary.
Which, she supposed, would explain why it hadn’t been accompanied by a payment.
Who says there wasn’t a payment?
I’ll have to look around, she told herself. Shouldn’t just assume he didn’t leave a bunch of money for me somewhere.
The search, however, could wait till after her shower.
Before heading for the shower, she double-checked her note against the mirror’s reflection of the writing on her skin, found no errors, and set the pad aside.
She started to turn away.
What if he wrote on my back?
She whirled around and peered over her shoulder at the mirror.
Her back was slightly pink from yesterday’s time in the sun. The bikini ties had left a thin, pale line across it. On her buttocks was a pale triangle with stripes that reached to her hips.
Nobody had used her back as stationery.
“Oh, well.”
She supposed she ought to be glad about that, but all she felt was mild annoyance and disappointment.
She took a long, hot shower.
The writing did not come off easily. She scrubbed at it with a soapy washcloth, rinsed, found a dim ghost of the message lingering on her skin, and had to scour it two more times before washing away every trace of ink.
After her shower, she roamed casually through the house, searching for more money but not expecting to find any.
None turned up.
So she ate breakfast, put on her work clothes and drove to the library. She arrived a little early, and got busy.
It helped, being busy.
Whenever her mind strayed to Brace or his teeny-bopper, she felt like yelling in rage. Or weeping.
Though it was awfully funny, the look on that gal’s face when she saw me in the window. That was damn near worth the price of admission.
What price, a broken heart?
Sometimes, Jane smiled or chuckled quietly when she thought about how she’d shocked the girl. But her amusement never lasted long before it twisted and dropped and left her feeling ruined.
Thinking about Mog, at least, didn’t cause her any pain.
It only confused her, worried her, made her blush with shame, filled her mind with countless questions, frightened her, excited her.
Like I’ve got a phantom lover, she thought.
That night, she thought about doing exercises or lifting weights.
But she was too tired for that, and her muscles ached too much.
