Wallflower

by William Bayer

  What I still can't understand is why she turned. I never did anything to her except love her. So . . . maybe that was it. She couldn't take my love. It was too powerful, too consuming. Fearing it, she betrayed my trust.

  A year after it happened I wrote her a letter. "Please," I begged, "all I want to know is why. Please just tell me why?" She didn't answer. I should have known. So there I was, humiliated again. And then I vowed that one day she'd beg something from me, beg me not to glue her.

  She was an ice goddess, was Miss Cynthia Morse, with her thick blond hair, parted to the side, so she could throw it back whenever it fell into her eyes, fling her head and throw it back like the fine Thoroughbred mare she knew she was. Her skin tanned more beautifully under the sun than any human's skin should be allowed to, her eyes were clear and gray, and she had a wonderful smile that made her whole face light up like a sunrise. I don't think I'll ever forget the touch of her, the satiny feel of her flesh, the fresh salty flavor of it, and the smell. Her small but perfect breasts cupped in my hands, the feel of her ribs through the skin of her flanks. She was a knockout beauty and I was plain, she was popular and I was disliked, she was gregarious and I was a loner, but still, she chose me to be her friend.

  I was proud of that. I believed I was envied for it. Anyone in the whole college would have been happy to be Cindy's roommate, but she had chosen me. "You'll keep me honest, Bev," she told me one afternoon, spring of freshman year, when we took a long walk together across the meadows and she broached her proposal that we room together in the fall. "I can talk to you. You're always there to listen. Know what I think you should be? A shrink. Ever think of it, Bev? I know you'd be good at it. You're so giving, you know. Such a good listener. And you have such good intuitions about people, too."

  Oh, I was giving all right! I gave her everything I had. Friendship, affection, love, later my passion. That was my undoing.

  "This it, Cin?"

  "Oh, yes, Bev. Down there, yes. There. That's the place. Yes! Right there! Oh! Do me, Bev. Please do me there again. Oh, yes, yes, your mouth feels so good. . . ."

  And I did. I reveled in it. Before I knew what she was up to, I would actually beg to be allowed to taste her. That's how stars-in-my-eyes stricken I was. Well, ha!, she's the one begging now!

  There were nights, I remember, January and February nights, when we'd put a Mozart horn concerto on the stereo, then lie together in her bed in the dark of our room, watching the snow falling gently outside.

  "This is great, isn't it, Bev?" she said, hugging me. "This is the way it should be. Just the two of us together like this, together and forever. I truly wish our lives could go on like this forever. Don't you, Bev? Don't you?"

  One night I asked her if she thought a day would come when we'd each have a man in our lives.

  "Men! Oh, Bev, sometimes you're just so screwy. I haven't seen any men around here. Have you? All I've seen are boys, and I don't mean just the kids, I mean the whole damn male faculty, too. Men! Ha! Who needs 'em? I sure don't. On a night like this, what could a man do for me that you can't do?" Cindy paused, stretched. "Hey, wanna go down under the covers? Feel like it, huh? It's so nice when you're down there taking care of me. Helps me to sleep, you know. Hey! What're you doing? Oooo! I like that. You never did that before. Where'd you learn that? You've got great moves, kid. No boy I ever went out with knew how to do that. Oh! Yeah! Yes!"

  For two months I loved her, passionately, feverishly. She didn't reciprocate, just had me do special things to her, things she let me know she liked by the way she wiggled and moaned and swooned. And I was glad to do them, although I believe now some part of me must have known I was being used. But even if I'd realized it at the time, I wouldn't have cared. The bliss, you see, was all mine. Her needs became my obsession; her secret chambers became my pleasure domes. All day long in my various classes I'd think about servicing her at night. I was totally enraptured by her, enthralled, enslaved, possessed. Cynthia Morse, blond Thoroughbred mare—she became my world.

  Looking back now, I can see it all coming and wonder at my blindness to what was going on. She needed me that winter, but as soon as spring came, she was ready to cast me aside.

  That in itself could be understood. In this life, as you so often remind me, Mama, people use one another all the time. "It's all this use," you say, "that makes the world go around." But use is one thing, betrayal another. Cindy betrayed my love for her, betrayed it in a vulgar way. Use can be forgiven but not betrayal. You taught me, Mama: Betrayal must be avenged.

  I had gone down to Cambridge for the weekend to do some research at Widener Library. My intention was to spend the night in Millie's Harvard dorm room, work the following day, then return to Bennington on Sunday night. But when I got to Millie's, I found I wasn't welcome. She and her roommates had male guests; there'd clearly be no room for me unless I slept on the floor. In any event there'd be no privacy.

  I was furious. I'd told Millie I was coming, and she'd promised she'd save me space. We got into a fight, which led to my walking out in a snit. Steaming with anger, I decided to hell with research, I'd return immediately to Vermont.

  Back in Bennington, tired and depressed, I taxied to my dorm from the bus stop. Our room was empty. Cindy wasn't there. Feeling needy for her friendship, I decided to search her out.

  I found her finally, or rather should say I heard her, for it was her unique effervescent laughter that told me where she was. In a room on the floor below, belonging to Gretchen Hawes and Karen Tate, well-known campus lesbians, close buddies of Cindy's but not, I'm afraid, of mine.

  I don't know what made me hesitate before I knocked. Perhaps I was curious about what was inspiring so much giggling inside, afraid, too, that my depressed mood might bring the others down. I certainly didn't want to intrude and put a damper on their fun. So I stood outside the door and listened. And then I understood: They were talking about me.

  "She's too much, Cin. Too much," said Gretchen.

  "Well, I think she's very sweet," I heard Cindy reply.

  "You would. Seeing as how you've been on the receiving end." Laughter.

  "Sick, sick, sick," said Karen. They all broke up.

  "Play us some more. Come on, Cin. More!"

  Much giggling again, and then I couldn't believe what I heard. My own voice, on tape, begging Cindy to let me love her: "Please, Cin. I know just what you need. Please—let me do it. I can make you smile, you know I can. Please."

  The blood rose, boiling, to my face. I felt as if the top of my head were about to explode. My voice! Begging to be allowed to pleasure her! And she recorded it! And was playing it now for them!

  "Hey, I've got an idea, Cin." Gretchen tittered. "Bring the little mouse down here one night. Share some of that 'please, please, please' with us, okay?"

  "I've got some special places she can do." Karen snickered. "So long as she begs for it." And then: "Sick, sick, sick!"

  I wanted to scream. Don't know why I didn't. I wanted to curl up, die right there on the floor. But instead I took hold of the doorknob and shoved the door open. The three of them were sprawled out on their stomachs on top of Karen's bed, the little tape player in the center.

  Six eyes met mine, laughing, defiant eyes. And then, when they realized I'd been listening, those six eyes turned mean.

  "Snooping, Bev?" Gretchen sneered.

  But I ignored her. I stared straight at Cindy. "You recorded me?"

  She shrugged, then smiled sheepishly. "Yeah, well, I guess I did."

  "How does it feel to be a rat?" I spat the words, then reached to the tape player and ripped out the cassette.

  "Hey, watch it!" said Karen. "You can screw up the machine. We were just having a little fun. God!"

  But I kept my eyes on Cindy and let her have it. "Is this your idea of fun?"

  "Get off your high horse, honeybunch," said Gretchen Hawes. "Eavesdropping at the door is like reading other people's mail. Do that, and you deserve what you get."

>   I met their eyes with as much contempt as I could summon, then, bursting into tears, ran back to our room and flung myself onto my bed. "How could she? How could she? How could she?" I screamed into the pillow. I wept and wept and wept.

  Cindy turned up an hour later. She'd been drinking. I could smell the booze on her the minute she walked in. I pretended to be asleep. She was noisy as she undressed. It was clear she wanted to disturb me. Finally she spoke: "Stop faking, Bev. I know you're wide-awake."

  "How could you do that to me?" I asked. "How could you?"

  "You kind of let yourself in for it if you know what I mean," she said.

  I sat up in bed. "Let myself in for it?"

  "Sure. The way you've been slinking around all winter, trying to get into my pants all the time. I mean, now and then it's fun, but when I asked you to be my roommate, I didn't know I'd be taking the, you know, lezzy route."

  "But it was you!"

  "Uh-uh, Bev. Was you started it. I never put the make on you. I wouldn't want to." She snickered. "You don't turn me on."

  I stared at her. This was my Best Friend! "I turned you on plenty as I remember," I whispered bitterly.

  "Work your tongue around long enough you'll get a reaction. I'm just flesh and blood, you know."

  "So you never cared for me? Is that what you're saying?"

  "Frankly I like guys, but I try to understand other points of view. You know the saying 'Different strokes for different folks'? Right?"

  I rushed at her then, attacked her with flailing arms and nails. I wanted to scratch out her eyes. Being bigger and stronger, she overpowered me easily. Finally, when I was exhausted, pinned to the floor, she looked down on me and smiled her unforgettable smile.

  "Let's not make such a big deal out of this, huh? There're still a couple months till the end of the term. Let's try and get along, Bev. I'm sorry about playing the tape for those guys. I really am."

  Sorry about playing the tape! What about recording it? What else besides playing it did she have in mind when she taped me when I was most vulnerable?

  It all had been a setup, that much was clear; I'd loved her as best I could, but to her I'd been little more than a pest.

  The next day I packed up my stuff. She came into the room just as I was finishing.

  "Leaving, huh?"

  "What did you expect?"

  She shrugged. "Well, it was nice while it lasted, Bev. It's too bad you had to sneak back early on the weekend."

  Sneak back! The girl was incredible.

  "You hurt me, Cin. Hurt me a lot."

  "If I did, I'm sorry, I really am. I'm sure you'll get over it. When you do, I hope we can be friends." She shrugged again and left the room.

  Twenty years ago, and I never did get over it, Mama. And I never loved anyone carnally again. I'd learned the risks the hard way and didn't like them. Cindy was the last lover I ever had.

  That whole spring was miserable, that whole summer, too, not to mention the whole rest of my life. But as they say, you live and learn. And there was one good thing that came out of our relationship: Cindy steered me to my profession. On her advice I became a psychologist.

  By the following autumn, tired of suffering, I decided to concentrate on my anger. And then I began to have fantasies, delicious fantasies of Cindy begging me not to hurt her the way she'd hurt me.

  In response I shrugged and smiled and told her not to make such a big thing about it. I was going to kill her; that's all I was going to do. After all, she was only flesh and blood; isn't that what she'd said? And after she was dead, I was going to seal her up with glue. No big deal, right, Cin? Different strokes for different folks, right? Huh? Right?

  I'm looking now at the trophy Tool brought back from Seattle. The yearbook of our Bennington class. Nice book, though I'm not in it. Nice picture of Cindy as she was then, tossing back her head to flick away the long blond hair that always used to fall across her face. Reminds me a little of someone I've seen recently, same eyes, hair, same warming, radiant smile.

  Carl's bedazzled reaction when you broach taking the tool into your house: "Sometimes you surprise me, Bev."

  "I don't know what's so surprising, Carl. Diana's my patient, she's my responsibility, and since I've got an unrented basement apartment available, and she's going to be coming to me four days a week for therapy anyway . . . well, it just seems natural to throw in a little housing, too."

  "Sort of like a halfway house for her. That what you have in mind?"

  "Now that you mention it—sure, why not?"

  His little eyes dance a jig. "And you were so against her being released."

  "Never against it, Carl. Hesitant about proposing it, that's all." You shrug. "I guess you could call me conservative when it comes to murderesses."

  He strokes his beard, becoming grayer and more pointy by the month.

  "What about a job?"

  "There're a lot of possibilities right in the neighborhood—museums, institutes, archives. She's a trained librarian. She'll have no trouble finding a position."

  "Small-town Connecticut girl—think she can hack it in the city?"

  You put your hands on your hips. "I'm from Cleveland, Carl. I can hack it, so why not her?"

  He fondles his beard again. "Want to know what I think? I think you're one superduper human being. How's that?"

  You stare at him incredulously. "Well, thank you, Carl. I believe that's the first real compliment I've ever had from you. And we've worked together a lot of years."

  "We have, Bev. And pardon me for not being one of those bosses effusive with the praise. But when I say something like that, I mean every word of it. I think you're an incredibly talented shrink and a terrific person, too."

  Flattered and stunned, you shake your head. "I'm going to treasure what you're saying, Carl. It really means a lot."

  When you first noticed the tall blond girl in Diana's martial arts class, you knew she reminded you of someone, though you couldn't put your finger on exactly whom. It was only later, after you asked Diana to get to know the girl and cultivate a friendship, that it struck you whom she reminded you of. Cindy Morse, of course.

  Then you couldn't wait to get your hands on her. But you were patient. Patience, you might say, is your middle name. And Diana was clever about it, too, building the friendship slowly, exactly as you'd ordered.

  You'll never forget the evening Diana reported that she and Jess Foy had gone out for coffee after class. As you'd instructed, Diana told Jess she worked part-time at the New York Society Library and confided, too, in a most casual way, that she was in intensive therapy with a female shrink. Jess, in turn, informed Diana that she was a student at Columbia, where she was also on the women's varsity fencing team. She herself had never gone to a therapist, she said, although there were times when she was sorely tempted, what with the pressures of college and all. The girls chatted about karate, gossiped about the sensei, and exchanged tales of their initial embarrassment at having to change clothes in the unisex dojo locker room. But then, giggling, each admitted to the other that she now deliberately took no special pains to conceal herself when undressing.

  "Let the novice hard-ons drool, that's my motto," Jess told Diana.

  Diana reported how much she liked her new friend and was pleased at your instruction to nurture the relationship and make it grow.

  Beverly Archer and Diana Proctor both were aware that the stakes were high and that for each of them, in separate as well as connected ways, it would be a night of destiny. Depending on the outcome, Beverly would learn whether the course she had embarked upon obsessively so many years before would finally lead to the attainment of her goals. For Diana the night would prove whether her murderous passions, once raging and incoherent, now disciplined and honed, could be applied to the completion of Beverly's design.

  As the day ended, the strain between the women, always apparent on account of the extreme polarity of their roles, seemed to increase with the inexorable withering of the
light. Beverly was more snappish than usual; Diana, quieter and more withdrawn. As night settled in, there was a palpable tension in the second-floor bedroom, where they waited, silent, before the large portrait of Beverly's mother in the niche.

  Beverly had turned on the red lamps so that the chamber was curiously illuminated, suffused with crimson light redolent of blood. She wore the same scarlet dress as was depicted in the portrait, a dress that had once belonged to her mother and that she'd had altered to fit her shorter, plumper frame. But there was something anomalous about her in that particular costume, designed to be worn by a featured singer in a nightclub. And since Beverly had refused to have it dry-cleaned, it still reeked faintly of tobacco, alcohol, and sweat, the signature aroma of her mother's professional milieu.

  Diana Proctor, dressed in the costume of a night killer, full-length black bodysuit, black sneakers, tight-fitting close-cropped black wig, black latex gloves, had two ice picks fitted into leather holsters strapped to the insides of her forearms. In a small waist sack, suspended from her belt, rested a caulking gun loaded up with glue and, wrapped carefully in tissue paper, a withered field daisy collected that morning from Central Park.

  An hour later Diana, in a loose denim jacket that concealed the ice picks, sat alone at the end of a subway car on a sparsely filled downtown express. The train hurtled through the tunnels, swaying and moaning, wheels grinding against the tracks. To a neutral observer Diana might have appeared drugged and in a daze. In fact, she was visualizing, a process taught to her by her therapist in preparation for the important act she was on her way to perform.

  She got off her train at Union Square, took the exit stairs that led directly to the park above. Once outside she sniffed the night air, clean and cool, then made her way east along Fourteenth. It was a quiet weekday evening; traffic was sparse, and there were few pedestrians. As Diana approached Second Avenue, she began to look around. She was searching for a quarry, not a stray cat or dog, not even a jogger to prick in the butt with a pin. Tonight she was stalking something bigger. She was looking for a human she could kill.