CHAPTER THIRTY
There were two mirrors in the group session room with high-end digital cameras mounted behind each one recording gigabytes of pathetic admissions on DVDs. Psychiatrists and social workers would review them later for therapeutic insights and dinner table conversation. God, how Marie loved show business.
She fussed with her makeup—a little more concealer, a little more blush. Fluorescent lights washed out her eyes and made her skin look blotchy unless her liner, shadow and foundation were in perfect balance. This was Marie’s opportunity to establish her star credentials; she didn’t want to blow it. If things went as planned, her DVD would be in Dr. Moon’s permanent collection, and the good doctor himself would be in hers. Always room for a new man on the trophy shelf.
Marie’s plan was simple. She’d pretend he wasn’t watching while she offered up her history in dribs and drabs, just like in their private sessions. He didn’t stand a chance.
The doctor would peer at her through the mirrors like a peeping tom. Men were suckers for that sort of shameful secrecy. She’d reveal some things he wanted to know and some things he didn’t. Nudge him out of his comfort zone. It was a tricky process. Like tickling a tightrope walker, just enough to keep him off-balance but not enough to make him fall. The essence of the feminine mystique.
Dr. Moon liked to hear Marie talk dirty, but not too dirty. She knew that much from their private sessions. He was titillated by her extensive experience, but explicit description made him panic. Dr. Moon was a peculiar man. Weren’t they all?
He had deeply hidden wants and needs. God only knew what they were. Foot fetish, bondage, golden showers, discipline—so many possibilities. Eventually, Marie would know exactly what turned the doctor on. Meanwhile she’d pretend.
The relationship had finally reached the touching stage. Nothing inappropriate so far. His hand would brush against her shoulder. He’d straighten a displaced lock of her hair with the backs of his fingers. He’d place a protective palm on the small of her back as they walked together through the halls. Almost sweet, but there was more to come. Marie knew where Dr. Moon hoped his innocent touching would eventually lead.
He moved in that direction at a snail’s pace. Incredibly slowly for a man of middle years. Dr. Moon wanted Marie Ferraro, but was clearly afraid of her. Not a bad combination from her perspective. The psychiatrist would not be Marie’s first spooky man, but he would be the first one she didn’t plan to take all the way. A new frontier of seduction.
She offered her most dazzling smile to the members of her group. She gave each of the two-way mirrors a full-face view and a profile while resisting the temptation to scratch her nose. Movie stars never had an itch they could not ignore. That, plus stunning good looks, was the secret to their success.
Crazy people seated themselves in an imperfect circle of chairs. A young male psychiatric resident sat among them. His nametag and his watch were the only things that set him apart from the clients. He looked nervous, but so did everyone else.
The resident had his agenda, but Marie had a plan. She didn’t wait for him to coax the group into action. She stood and made a brief introduction loaded with enough barely suppressed emotion to pass for sincerity. When she stepped outside the circle of chairs, no one tried to stop her. Heads turned to follow her as she walked around the room. She changed direction a time or two, just to keep them guessing. After a couple of mood changes, she had their full attention. Roll ’em.
“My boyfriend abandoned me in Hugo, Oklahoma. You could say that’s where my life really began.” Every true confession story Marie had read started with a line like that. It was a literary way of saying, “Here goes nothing.”
She made sure her face was visible in both mirrors before she tracked her eyes upward and to the left. A clear sign of a memory-search, gleaned from an episode of Dr. Phil. Any therapist worth his salt would recognize it.
“It was the year I turned fourteen.” Marie told the group. “I was a pretty girl with flexible moral standards and had no trouble finding men who would take care of me . . . for a while.” She checked her audience reaction. Just as she’d planned. The women were busy judging her. The men judged her too, but in a different way.
“Arthur Walkingstick.” Marie accentuated the final consonant in her old boyfriend’s name. She ran the tip of her tongue over her lips relishing the taste of his memory.
The resident’s mouth dropped open. He crossed his legs and squirmed in his seat, trying to manage physiologic responses that were now firmly in Marie’s control. Meet your new group leader.
“Arthur didn’t want to leave me.” A single tear ran from Marie’s left eye and pooled in a dimple. She trembled just enough to make it sparkle.
“Arthur Walkingstick was wanted by the law.” Her face shifted gears again. She radiated serenity and wisdom. “I knew from the beginning that a man with warrants never really has a choice.”
She told them how the circus used to winter in Hugo. “The weather was mild enough for exotic animals and local citizens hardly looked twice at the human oddities.”
“There was a fat man, a skinny man, a bearded lady, an illustrated man, and a pair of Siamese twins. It wasn’t nice to stare at them, but you could look at the animals and the trainers all you wanted.”
Marie was on her way to watch the elephants bathe in Owl Creek, when Arthur Walkingstick drove past her in the Oldsmobile Delta 88 he’d bought with money earned robbing banks. Arthur blew Marie a kiss and then vanished in a cloud of dust from the gravel road.
Sheriff’s deputies followed him about a hundred yards back. “To save the paint on their new cruiser.”
“I waited where he saw me last—for hours. When the sun went down, I began to cry.” Marie didn’t bother to explain how men are attracted to the sound of a young woman crying. “It wasn’t long until Gideon came to my rescue. He was a tall, imposing man, with a back as straight as a German soldier’s.”
“Are you all right, Miss?” Marie lowered her voice a full octave when she repeated the first words Gideon Bible ever said to her.
“I threw my arms around him. Buried my face in his shirt. It was dark, and Gideon’s silhouette looked completely normal.”
Not until Marie entered Gideon’s well-lit trailer did she realize her rescuer was the circus’s illustrated man. “By then it didn’t matter. Love’s dominoes had already begun to fall.”
Hashilli locked the doors of the observation room and turned the lights down. Why didn’t he feel safe?
Bullets couldn’t penetrate the two-way mirrors separating him from group session. The room was insulated against sound; good enough to pass muster on a television game show. The doors were metal, set in metal frames with double bolts. The walls were steel-reinforced gunite, capable of withstanding a low yield thermonuclear blast. Nothing could get at Hashilli here, except perhaps Marie.
Her woman magic broached the room’s defenses as if it were a house of straw.
Little pig, little pig, let me come in. Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin.
Marie didn’t have to blow Hashilli’s house down. He would unlock the doors at her command. How the hell did she do it?
His heart raced like a drum roll at a colonial hanging as he waited for Marie to embellish her romantic story of statutory rape. What had she been like back then?
As pretty as she is now, Hashilli decided, but vulnerable.
He watched Marie pace around the group session room, looking past the women, locking eyes with the men, moving with the precision of a prima ballerina. She had complete anatomical awareness. She knew the effect of every line she struck, the impact of every change in position. None of her ammunition was wasted as she told the story of the illustrated man who won her heart in Hugo, Oklahoma.
Hashilli listened while Marie told how Gideon Bible had transformed his body into a religious artifact with a tattoo artist’s needle. The Old Testament covered Gideon’s lower body, beginning with the
book of Genesis written on his feet. The Ten Commandments stood out in bold calligraphy below his navel.
“An appendicitis scar divided the book of Exodus,” she said. “The way Moses parted the Red Sea.”
There was music in Marie’s voice as she described the holy pattern on the illustrated man—religious music. “The New Testament merged with the Old at Gideon’s waistline. Even his eyelids were covered by scripture.”
Hashilli doubted if Gideon’s scriptural armor was adequate protection against Marie’s magic. Given time, she’d find a way to get under any man’s skin.
Marie told the group that every human with a Y chromosome has desires as strong as a lion and resistance much weaker than a lamb. Hashilli watched the male clients accept this revelation with a stoic frown. The women agreed with a silent synchronized nod.
“But Gideon Bible was different,” said Marie. “Gideon found a way to absorb righteousness through his skin the way a salamander breathes under water.”
Supernatural protection. Hashilli knew it was stronger than bullet-proof glass and steel doors. But a man’s souls, his inner and outer shadows? How long could a tattoo artist’s ink protect them?
“I could see he wanted me,” Marie told her group. When Gideon was in his trailer or among his circus friends, he seldom wore clothing. Covering the living word with fabric implied a preference for some books over others. Who could know what God would make of that?
“A naked man can’t hide his feelings for a woman,” said Marie. “No part of Gideon’s body was free of scripture. As you can well imagine, I had many opportunities to read passages from Psalms that were normally abridged when he paraded across the carnival stage.”
Hashilli imagined Marie reading his own fine print. The image was exquisitely detailed, down to a pair of gold rimmed reading glasses, a Victoria’s Secret camisole, and a pair of black patent leather shoes with six inch heels. His mind’s eye could see from the reflection in fantasy-Marie’s shoes that she wasn’t wearing panties. The thought of that word made him shudder.
“Gideon never denied his interest,” said Marie, “But he never once gave in, not completely.” She asked God to overwhelm the illustrated man with lust. “It didn’t work, of course. Jesus is not the man to go to for relationship advice.”
Out of desperation she sought out the circus’s Gypsy fortune teller.
“Love potions were Madam Dooriya’s specialty.” Marie bought a potent philter guaranteed to turn morality into mush.
Potions and decoctions. The chemistry of love and obsession. Hashilli’s knowledge of power plants was limited to poisons. And spirit powder, of course. He promised himself he would learn more. Even Grandfather never mastered this aspect of magic.
Marie pantomimed stirring the contents of the vial into a pot of soup—the evening meal she would share with Gideon. In an hour, the room started spinning. In two hours, the world vanished into a pool of black ink. In eight hours, Marie and Gideon awakened in each other’s arms covered in the salty residue of dried perspiration.
“The ache between my legs told me Madam Dooriya’s potion had done its work,” she said, “but my memory was blank.”
Gideon said nothing about the lost evening, and as the winter weeks dragged on, Marie came to believe nothing had transpired between them.
“When my pregnancy became obvious, Gideon told me God was my child’s father.”
She enlisted the help of the clowns, the animal trainers, the barkers, even the Gypsy fortuneteller, but the illustrated man was immune to persuasion. Gideon argued the case for Immaculate Conception, the product of a righteous woman sleeping with the word of God.
After a while, Marie believed it too.
“The Lord’s ways are mysterious.” Marie Ferraro closed her eyes and folded her arms.
“Sheriff’s deputies came looking for Gideon several months before my Sarah was born.” Her tone was flat. Her face lacked expression.
“Gideon had warrants from his sinful days,” she said. “A man running from the law never really has a choice.”
Hashilli watched as Marie turned her eyes exactly to the spot where he was standing. She gave him a moment to consider the implications of her power, enough time to draw a noisy breath and take a backward step.
“Maybe God swore out that arrest warrant for Sarah’s father,” Marie said directly to Hashilli. “Maybe Sarah is the product of immaculate conception, just as Gideon believed.”
“I’ll let the experts decide.” She placed her forehead against the glass, close enough to see into Hashilli’s hiding place. She watched him back away, as far from her as he could go. He pressed his back against the wall like a ledge-walker acknowledging his mortality.
She waved at him. A smile spread across her face as she analyzed his reaction. The smile of a cat who has pinned a mouse under her paw.
Owl Dreams Page 31