"Bev Archer? But that was so long ago. Must be twenty-five years. Surely she doesn't still think…because it wasn't us, you know. It was set up. She ought to talk to her—" Jimmy shakes his head. "Bev can't still be angry over that."
Oh, she's angry!
Diana feigns an attack with her second pick, then waits for Jimmy to raise his hands in a posture of defense. When he does, she punches at him through the opening, hitting him hard in the center of his stomach. As he chokes and doubles over, she stabs him through the window of his right eye, then thrusts her pick deep into the mushy substance within his skull.
The killing done, Diana calmly switches on lights in order to examine her handiwork. Jimmy lies on his side, ruby red blood pulsing from his eye socket across the white tiles and into the grout lines of the bathroom floor. In the bedroom Stu MacDonald lies sprawled out on his back, half on, half off his bed. Diana takes mental pictures of their positions, for she knows the kinds of questions Doctor will ask.
Both killings together have taken her a total of ninety-seven seconds. Not bad, she thinks, for such a complicated house. Moreover, she has engaged for the first time in actual dialogue with a quarry, a unique experience she is eager to share. Even as she prepares the brothers for gluing, she imagines the keen expression that will transfix Doctor's face when she describes the confusion slowly giving way to recognition in Jimmy MacDonald's frightened eyes.
An hour later, having glued up both brothers and collected two new trophies of her hunt, Diana drives one of their vehicles, a gray Jeep Wagoneer, back into the town of Kent. When she emerges from the Jeep, she is wearing the same nondescript light brown wig and L. L. Bean hiking clothes she wore earlier in the day. She transfers her backpack into her rental car parked in the shopping center lot, then, careful to observe all traffic regulations, drives back across the Route 341 bridge, continuing this time into New York State and on to a preselected spot far off the main road where she can park safely, curl up, and get some sleep.
The next morning, on her way back to New Haven, Diana decides to make a brief side trip. She does so in full knowledge that should she confess this unauthorized detour to Doctor, she will be severely punished.
Nonetheless, passing so close to Derby, Connecticut, she feels the need to look again at Carlisle Hospital. The place means much to her. Having been incarcerated there on account of the ax murders of her mother, grandmother, and sister, she spent five relatively happy years in intensive therapy before a judge signed an order for her release.
Departing from her designated route, she follows the side road that leads to the institution, then stops her car a hundred feet from the main gate, turns off the ignition, and stares in through the sturdy wire fencing that surrounds the grounds.
Far in the distance, between the red-brick main treatment building and the gray cinder-block residence known as A, she makes out a small group of young men and women playing touch football in a field. They are much too far away to recognize, a good thing, too, since she knows well the awkwardness of meetings between former patients and patients still confined.
As she watches, a man exits the door of the main treatment building and walks to a second building, which houses the manual therapy shop. Diana recognizes this person on account of his stride. He is chief psychiatrist Dr. Carl Drucker, a gentle man with merry eyes and a funny, pointed beard who, in her last months at Carlisle, assured her she was cured.
Now something bittersweet wells up within Diana as she remembers Dr. Drucker's kindness and watches the young people in the distance at their play. She thinks nostalgically of the years she spent in this institution, happy, lighthearted years. And although she acknowledges the enormous debt of gratitude she owes to Doctor for her release, there is a side of her that wishes she were still locked up inside.
Tears well in her eyes as she recalls her life here, how she was permitted to wear her hair long, to roam freely about the grounds, to meet, talk, perform, and make friends without having always to ask permission in advance. Now in the city every moment of her existence is regulated, bounded by Doctor's demands to perform missions and bring back trophies of her kills. Am I free now? she asks herself. She doesn't know the answer. But peering through the locked gates of Carlisle, she fondly remembers carefree days within.
There is but an hour of light left after a warm October day, an Indian summer day in Manhattan. Two young women, one short and dark, the other tall and blond, stand on a bluff in Riverside Park overlooking the Hudson River. Although both wear workout clothes, tank tops and running shorts, the taller woman's garments are brightly colored, while the shorter one's are totally black.
The short dark-haired girl is holding a bow. She has notched an arrow in its string and is demonstrating the pull to her taller friend. Very slowly she pulls the arrow back. At full extension she holds it poised for flight. She stands this way for what seems an eternity, both hands steady, the bow not moving, and then, very slowly, she raises the bow upward in an arc so that the arrow is pointed directly at the sun. Again she holds her position. Then, suddenly, she lets the arrow fly. For a moment it shows black against the dark orange solar disk. Then it disappears from sight.
The taller woman nods. She is impressed. The shorter one offers her the bow and aluminum quiver filled with arrows. The tall girl, accepting, promises to practice diligently. The shorter one assures her taller friend that she need not return the equipment until she has mastered the technique.
Remember the MacDonald brothers, Mama, Jimmy and Stu, those tall, strapping, handsome all-around fellas at Caxton Academy when I was at Ashley-Burnett? So many of the girls had crushes on them. In those days they were the type you were supposed to swoon over and adore. Stu played football, Jimmy basketball, and they both were great dancers. Broad shoulders and even broader smiles. Hunks of what the girls called U.S. Prime Grade A Beef.
There was something marvelously shallow about them, too. Oddly that may have been their most attractive feature. They weren't tormented intellectuals or overly mature and thus awkward among their peers. They weren't emotionally skewered by a bizarre home life, or artistically gifted, or unpredictable in any way. The MacDonald boys acted their age. They were interested in sports and cars and girls and not terribly much else. Easy going, fun-loving playboy types, who, like all red-blooded guys back then, were always looking to get laid. But if a girl turned them down, they didn't get too upset about it. Men and women, boys and girls—to them relations between the sexes was a game of flirt, conquest, and submit. Sometimes you won, other times you didn't; but win or lose, you knew there'd always be another round. What I'm getting at, Mama, is that with the MacDonalds what you saw was what you got: two normal white bread all-American boys, the kind who, when they grew up, would run businesses or sell stocks and help keep our nation strong.
Except what I saw was not what I finally got. Because there was a dark side to the MacDonalds, a side they hid so you wouldn't see it, except maybe sometimes when they were drinking or smoking grass, and then there was a little bit of blackness showing, enough so that if you were an astute observer, you'd catch a glimpse of the smallness, the meanness, the part that would always take advantage, the cheap crooks crouching behind the cardboard pasteups we used to call (ha!) gentlemen.
Remember, Mama: I was fifteen years old. There was a dance that winter over Christmas. I didn't want to go, but you said I must because the parents of the kids giving it had put my name on the list as a favor.
I hated dances, first, because I was such a maladroit dancer and, second, because I was so rarely asked onto the floor. I was too plain for the Cleveland boys. Something about me, withdrawn and worried, put them off. I wasn't sexy. I didn't have your looks or charm or poise. I was clumsy and mousy and too smart for my own good. I hadn't yet learned the craft of pretense. . . of which I am a master now.
And so I went. You gave me little choice. You bought me a dress, not particularly flattering or attractive, and you arranged a ride for me wit
h someone else's father. Studying me while I waited, amused at my anguish, you asked why I was looking so damn tragic since it was just a dance. I really wasn't going to be burned at the stake, you said. I might even enjoy it if I tried a little bit. "Come on, Bev—let's see you smile," you said. "And try not to be a wallflower, okay?"
I remember riding downtown silent in a car filled with giggly, overexcited girls, off to some dark, stuffy club on Euclid Avenue, where there were rows of old oil paintings on dark wood-paneled walls and the air smelled of dead cigars. I followed the others up a grand staircase and into a ballroom, where an orchestra was playing the smarmy, sentimental standards of the day. There were kids buzzing around, parents smiling, a bar for soft drinks, and couples dancing on the floor.
Well, Mama, just as I'd foreseen, I stood by the wall with the dozen or so other wallflowers, unattractive girls, girls with acne on their faces, girls who were merely shy—stood with them, a stupid, turd-eating grin on my face, looking hopeful, eager, waiting, waiting for what I knew would never come.
On the other side of the room stood our counterparts, the stag line: unattractive, shy, acne-faced boys who didn't dance well and acted silly around females. We wallflowers eyed the stags and the stags eyed us and no one came over, and thus the evening wore tediously on.
But there was something afoot that night. The MacDonald brothers had cooked up a private little scheme, something no wallflower had ever experienced or even hoped for in her dreams. They'd decided between themselves that they would romance one of us clinging to the wall. And for some reason, I've never managed to fathom why, they settled upon me. Me, Mama! They chose me to be their Cinderella.
They began their courtship early in the evening. First Jimmy and then Stu came over and asked me to dance. No one watching could believe it. Dreamboat Caxton boys, the kind a girl would kill for at Ashley-Burnett, offering themselves to mousy little Beverly Archer, twirling her off to dance in strong, authoritative arms.
They were good dancers, so agile and slick they made me feel like a princess at a ball. Around, around I danced with them, first Jimmy, then Stu, then Jimmy, then Stu again, around and around and around.
Those MacDonalds knew how to charm a girl, knew how to talk and to seduce. After they warmed me up, got me all sweaty and excited, they led me off to an anteroom, and there Stu produced a slim silver cigarette case filled with lovingly rolled, thickly packed joints. He lit one and took a deep drag, passed it on to Jimmy, who also inhaled and then passed the joint to me.
It was good stuff, as I recall. But I wasn't used to it, and very soon it had me flying higher than a kite. Then back to the ballroom for more whirling and twirling, each of them romancing me, working me over, and I got high on it, it was a dream come true, a dream I didn't even know I'd had: drab, little, brainy Bev Archer getting her first taste of what it felt like to be desired.
Oh, yes, Mama, those boys made no bones about their cravings. They lusted for me; they made that clear enough. They even whispered provocative little endearments as we danced.
Jimmy: "You're really special, Bev. I've had my eyes on you since September. I just couldn't get up the nerve to do anything about it till now. There's something of your mom in you, isn't there? Stu and I've been down to the Fairmount Club Lounge and heard her sing. One very sexy lady, your mom."
Stu: "We both knew as soon as we saw you. Jimmy nudged me. 'She's as sexy as her mom. Probably as talented, too.' Hey, it doesn't upset you to hear me use that word, does it, Bev? 'Cause it's true. I mean you are sexy . . . if you don't mind my saying so."
Mind? Of course, I didn't mind. I loved it, adored it, was intoxicated by the thought. Sexy was what you were, Mama, and it was the one thing I was certain I was not. I had never felt sexy, wasn't sure I'd even know the feeling if I did. But then, as it turned out, I did know. Because while they were talking to me, I began to feel aroused.
Thinking back on it now, I don't think it was those particular boys that got me going so much as the general situation I found myself in: being high; being told I was sexy; being attended to as if I were sexy; being competed for and treated so openly as an object of desire.
I had no doubt they both hungered for me. They made it manifest, pressing themselves against me as we danced, making sure I was aware of their rigidity, showing me the hard bodily proof of their lust. But I'm sure now it wasn't their stiff cocks that excited me. Male organs have never done much for me one way or the other. It was the aura of their excitement, the evidence of their craving. I certainly didn't feel I wanted to be screwed by them, but most assuredly I enjoyed the fact that they pined to screw me.
There was a part of me, too, that knew sooner or later one or the other of them was going to make his move. But I wasn't thinking about that very much; I was too excited by the here and now of it all. Still, I wasn't naïve. I was your daughter; I knew about sex; I'd met your lovers. And the girls my age at Ashley-Burnett gossiped about little else but boys, what they liked to do and how a girl could handle them if she kept her wits about her. So on a mental level I pretty much knew what to expect. But having no practical experience and no psychological training, I badly underestimated my predicament.
It was around midnight (the dance was scheduled to end at 1:00 A.M.) that they first broached the notion of driving me home.
"We've got a car," Jimmy said. "We can easily drop you off. Anyway, aren't you getting tired of this crappy dance? Let's leave now, stop off for a nightcap at this dive we know. The bartender's a good guy. He'll serve us without making us show ID. What do you say?" And when I hesitated: " Not scared to go to a bar, are you, Bev—you who used to hang around with your mom at the Fairmount Club Lounge?"
Actually I was thrilled with the idea of going to a bar in the company of two handsome tuxedo-clad boys. So I sought out the girl whose father had driven me downtown, told her I'd arranged another ride, and enjoyed the obvious envy in her eyes when she warned me to watch out, I could get a bad reputation hanging around with the MacDonalds.
A bad reputation! At that moment I couldn't think of anything I wanted more!
We never did stop off at any dive, of course, if such a place did actually exist, which I doubt. Once we were in the car (Stu at the wheel, me and Jimmy in the back) the slim silver cigarette case emerged again. Jimmy and I shared a joint and then started in on a second. Meanwhile, Stu drove us to a deserted overlook above the Cuyahoga River, parked, got out, came around to the back, and sat down on my other side.
There I was, Mama, boxed in between them. And then the fun began. Stu deep kissed me. That was okay; I'd been looking forward to a real kiss like that. But then Jimmy kissed me that way, too, and that was kind of strange. I mean, there I was sandwiched between two brothers, both of whom were trying to make out with me at once.
"Hey, please! One at a time," I said, or some such nonsense. That only encouraged them. Next thing I knew they both were simultaneously trying to undress me or at least gain access to my top.
"Down, boys!" I said, in the haughty way an Ashley-Burnett girl might address a pair of obstreperous guys. And when that didn't stop them: "Enough! Jimmy, Stu! Come on, let's all go home."
"Uh-uh, Bev," I remember Jimmy saying as he leered. "Get into a car with a couple of horny brothers, you gotta take the consequences. Right, Stu?"
There was a lot of giggling then, I remember, mild attempts on my part to push them off, equally lighthearted attempts on theirs to unclasp my bra. We were in a kind of three-way wrestling match, laughing, having fun, and I confess I enjoyed the struggle, doubtless because I figured it wouldn't continue very long. Stu and Jimmy were decent, well-brought-up young men. Sooner or later, when they realized I wasn't going to play, they'd give it up, we'd stop off for the promised nightcap, and then they'd take me home.
That, Mama, was conventional dating wisdom as it was promulgated amongst the student body in the corridors and locker rooms of the Ashley-Burnett School for Girls. But wise though it might have been, it bega
n to dawn on me some minutes into the struggle that in this case it was not going to apply. Then I panicked. I was scared, Mama, real scared. I began to struggle, struggle hard, and then, as can happen in close quarters like the back of a car, somebody got hurt.
It was Stu. Struggling with them both, I managed to stick my elbow in his eye. He got mad. "Watch it, bitch." Then he slapped me, not full force, of course, but hard enough to make me scream.
Jimmy cupped his hand hard over my mouth.
"Why'd you hit her, Stu?"
"Bitch poked me in the eye."
"We weren't 'sposed to hit her."
"Who cares what we were 'sposed to do. Let's do what we want. Yeah?"
At that Stu ripped down the entire front of my dress. And then the real combat began. Even through the haze of pot I knew I was in trouble and tried seriously to fight my way out of the car. Jimmy took hold of my arms and held them tight behind my back. Then Stu pulled off my bra and grabbed hold of my breasts. When I screamed, Jimmy cupped my mouth again. This time I bit his hand.
"Fuck!" He was furious. He grabbed hold of my hair and yanked it back. "Bite me again, I'll clobber you, too."
I screamed at them to let me go, and when they didn't, I began to beg. But by then they were all fired up. I'm sure all my struggling had turned them on. They'd reached the point where they wouldn't let me loose until I gave them something in return.
"Think we danced with you all night 'cause you're so attractive?" Stu sneered. He answered his own query. "Only reason you trot a wallflower is to get her to put out later on."
Then they really started to work me over, Mama. They grabbed at me and grasped at me and taunted me for my ugliness. They laughed when I started to cry. "Bet she's wet down there, too," one of them said.
The struggle went on for a good ten minutes. They laughed and hooted and talked about me in the third person as if I didn't have ears or couldn't understand.
"Look at the way she twists. Like a snake. What she needs is a good fucking, yeah?"
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