TheRapist

by J. Levy

  ‘Can I help you, are you looking for someone?’ Still that curt, slightly high pitched voice.

  She just stared at him, unable to speak, when there was a fleeting flash in his eyes, either that or something trembling in the deep recesses of his mind.

  *

  Frankie and Jezzy

  Frankie was clutching Sam’s hand a little too hard.

  ‘Ow, Frankie, you’re really grabbing at me.’

  She loosened her grip, ‘sorry kid.’ She kissed his hand and handed him his snack and a pack of Rolo’s.

  Sam looked at the pack and smiled, ‘it’s almost full!’ he declared, rather pleased with his acute perception.

  Frankie looked at him fondly, ‘but you know I’d always give you my last one don’t you?’

  Sam looked chuffed. He took a Rolo, then another. ‘Where are we going?’ he said, between mouthfuls of toffee.

  ‘To see Jezzy, just for a little while. Is that OK? I have a friend who’s visiting and he’s there now.’ Her heart leapt, banging palpably on the inside of her ribs. This really wasn’t the perfect time to meet him. Him! He could be the man of her dreams and she was meeting him for the first time at her friend’s office with Sam in tow and crisps in between her teeth. Still, was there ever a perfect time? She wished she could shower and change on the way, but the best she could do was pop into Starbucks to swish her hair around in the loo, put on some gloss and chew a couple of mints. Her skin was clear and her eyes bright. Hopefully he would just focus on that and maybe, if her conversation was witty enough, he wouldn’t even notice that she had a button missing on the back pocket of her jeans. She bought Sam a cupcake and milk and they headed to Jezzy’s office.

  Frankie crouched down just before they reached the building, beckoning Sam to her level. He thought it was a hilarious game, as the two of them crouched low, sidling along out of view of the window to reach the front door, despite the fact that the waiting room was internal and didn’t have a view of the street and Jezzy’s office was the first door on the right in the building. Frankie and Sam crept in, her heart banging so hard she thought the whole practice might hear it.

  Jezzy’s face lit up as they entered. ‘Hi Sam, come and sit with me and do your homework while Frankie says hi to her friend.’ She patted the chair next to her and pushed some files aside to make a space on the desk for him.

  ‘Is that OK Sam, I won’t be long,’ Frankie sounded nervous. He nodded, already digging in his bag for his tatty textbooks.

  Jezzy dipped her hand into her drawer and held up a spray. ‘Open,’ she whispered to Frankie and promptly sprayed something minty into her mouth.

  They pulled a face at each other. Those faces that only friends can pull and that could mean a cornucopia of things, but are really and truly just little symbols of hope and trust. ‘Go on, he’s in there,’ Jezzy thrust her head in the direction of the waiting room, almost putting her neck into a spasm. Frankie took a deep minty breath, turned and went in.

  *

  Edie

  Edie leaned her tired body against the faded yellow wallpaper, trying to hang her bony arm out of the window, but it would only open a crack, just enough for her to stick her wrist through, up to her protruding elbow. She grazed her thin, blue-tinged skin as she tried to edge her arm past the frame and through the window. Beads of blood appeared beneath her elbow, leaving a tiny trail of red speckles on the peeling wooden frame. She lifted her creased face to the sky, the sun glinting through the clouds making her wince so she closed her eyes, her lids transparent, shiny and blue. The feel of the sun on her face was nice, it took her back to a place lovingly stored in a deep recess inside her mind, a place where she had been happy and loved and young and free. For mere moments she was back there again, at a country club dance deep in the south when men were gentlemen and girls were treated like princesses, wearing a pink chiffon dress with roses at her wrists and a sparkle in her eyes, momentarily suspended in time. Then something rudely shifted in her mind, dislodging her dreams and she was back in the present. Her lonely, gloomy present. The past was so much more appealing, but she could never stay there for what seemed like more than a few precious moments. Her heart had been full back then, brimming with possibilities. Once upon a time her cup had runneth over, now it had been wickedly washed away. Edie could never seem to retrieve her memories for anything longer than a few precious moments and those small flecks of treasured time were what kept her heart beating. Those glimpses of what had once been, but were no more. The memories were like salt sifting through her mind, and she was unable to catch more than a few grains.

  The sun was burning into her eyelids. She squinted down through the crack in her first floor window and saw a powdery vision of a young woman walking a small, scruffy thing with a red leash. Edie clutched the glimmer of hope and called out in her thin, rarely used voice,

  ‘Please, help me, I’m imprisoned here…’. The woman with the dog looked up at her. Looked away. Carried on as if nothing had happened. Edie’s eyes welled with tears, warm drops spilling onto her gaunt cheeks, down to the unwashed flannelette nightgown. A warm trickle escaped from between her legs and even though she was alone it made her blush. She looked up at the sky again, forcing her eyes open to look beyond the clouds, to the promise of a world she could not yet see. A small creased face that barely filled the opening of the window. ‘John,’ she called thinly, ‘Come back to me John.’

  *

  Devon and Mr. Birdman

  As the two starkly different figures stood there, in front of an empty school on a windy, empty afternoon, her thoughts began to race through the caverns of her mind. Could he know her? It had been years, decades, but still surely he knew. How could he forget? How could he possibly forget unless, unless there had been others, countless others who had been transfixed by his gaze, melting before him with intimidation? People, like her, like who she had been, too lacking in confidence to be able to fend off the insidious advances of seemingly apparent innocence between a teacher and pupil. Mr. Birdman had seemed to know everything, right from the start. From the first day in that school. Never fitting in, always standing out. Out of place. Until becoming out of mind. And now, here they were, lifetimes later, standing together once again. Only this time she was the more powerful one. In strength, knowledge and self protection. She was so capable of protecting herself from others. How different she was now to who she had been back then. Now the only person Devon feared was herself, which stemmed from The fear of having her brain wrung out, time and time again. Mr. Birdman was one of those who had sent her to the mind mangle. One who had attributed to the cause. He had been there at the beginning, was the first to notice how her mind and body were at loggerheads. He knew even before she did. Her mind raced as she stood there, transfixed, looking into the beady eyes of Birdman. Her mind ran marathons at the speed of sound. Back to the past, into the present, never daring to even hint at the future. She felt as if the past were a vortex, climbing through her head, ready to swallow her whole, sucking her in and then she was spinning, round and round, deeper, down, back to a place where her fear began.

  Back.

  Black.

  *

  Rex and TheRapist

  Rex was a man with a fat belly and a big heart. The trouble was his heart was filled with pockets and pigeon holes lined with sycophantic layers, laced with neediness, clinginess and furry arteries. He was very well educated, an attorney, Harvard Law Review followed by a year at Oxford that gave him a Phd, but he had no social skills of which to speak. He had been in therapy for more than twenty years, which really hadn’t helped him at all. He still wouldn’t listen, (when listening was an infrequent option) instead he would just talk and talk, droning on and on, emerging from each session the same person he had been at the start. There was no character arc where Rex was concerned. He remained the same, so emotionally, he learnt nothing. In certain spaces in his mind he was brilliant, but he had yet to conquer the girl, instantly loving anyone who wo
uld give him a mere slip of anything beyond a hello. He loved politics, was a fervent donkey and on a par, educationally, with the best, though sadly he lacked the charm of Barack, the charisma of Clinton, even the misunderstood quirkiness of Bush and the wisdom of men, oddly less wise than Rex himself. Rex had been married, a marriage which had come about through an affair with an already married woman whose name was Nora. He had met her at a marble kitchen counter of a politician who had invited a variety of older political students and business people to a fund raiser at her home. And there was Nora, catering in the kitchen. Rex had always claimed to have been ignorant of the fact that she had been someone else’s wife and had consequently felt compelled to marry Nora when her husband had dumped her, leaving her, in fact, for a man. Nora’s first husband had been a hairy, wary man clamped to his worn, warm, brown couch and they had been together for five long, self harming years. It was completely out of character for Nora to commit adultery, but she was, at first, charmed by Rex’s hasty, fervent attention. Their marriage had lasted for eight years. Years where they both grew fat and fell quiet. After the initial excitement of consummating their daring, uncontrollable passion, after the honeymoon, a week in Loughlin, Nevada, beyond the first couple of years when he worked hard and she made the house shine, their relationship dimmed, becoming a slight trickle of water that had lost its way from the stream. They barely spoke, exchanging the odd sentence about dinner or a bill. He still worked hard, making it big in a small law firm but then he left, moved on to a new firm, to try again. His CV could get him into any company, but his social life was shot. He looked forward to his therapy sessions more than anything, never realizing that he wasn’t getting anything out of them. They were just depleting his mind and his bank balance. Nora knew he was going to therapy, never asking him about it, never questioning him about anything. She no longer worked for the catering company, just went to Publix every day to wander the aisles, to find something new and processed and brightly packaged for dinner. Unless she brought home take out. From Burger King or KFC. Chicken strips were good for you, right? On a Sunday she would get in her car, an aged, beige Lincoln Town car and drive half a block to the golden arches drive-thru to bring home their weekly McFlurries. Nora and Rex would sip at them in silence, fixating on the History Channel, until the paper cups were bone dry and the remains of froth were caught in their matching mustaches. Sex was a perfunctory action on their anniversary. Once a year, a one time fuck. He would lay on top of her, his blubber smothering hers and he would hunt for her vagina, a silent, dry desert encased in a huge mound of twisted hair. His cock curved in a defiant arc, straight to the left, as if was trying to get away from her, as he tried to coax it inside. It was a lot of work. Then she would lay still and he would flap around, pushing and grunting quietly with eyes glued shut until he came. She stayed where she was, in the same position as when they had begun and his head was beside hers and his breath was stifled through his dripping nose, caught between the wet sheets and her crispy hair. Sometimes he wondered if she slept through the whole thing? His sperm emerged hastily, gluing them together momentarily, somewhere between the folds of their combined flesh. He would never leave her though. She was his wife.

  *

  Adrian

  West Hollywood. Wednesday morning. Third Street. Adrian sat at a blank wooden table in the window of the little café. He had a half-finished mug of spicy chai tea and the crumbly remains of a half-chewed biscotti strewn across a blue napkin. He stared out of the window, at cafes and boutiques on the other side, the shady side of the street, his heart feeling heavy as if it were being weighed down by his mind, as if a one way tunnel ran between the two, depositing all the troubles from his mind straight down on top of his heart. He lingered on in the café, his time free until his Downtown 11am appointment.

  The door of the café opened, a cow bell jangling jauntily from the hinge and two girls in their late teens, floated in wearing tiny, ripped denim shorts and plunging necklines, which showed off their brand new, state of the art augmentations, courtesy of the much lauded Dr Rey, to swollen perfection. Unnecessary bras from Victoria’s Secret, in pale pink and mint green satin were bursting at the seams and their brand new cleavages looked so polished that they practically shone. Sunlight positively bounced off of them, bringing reflections of the joyful, hopeful optimism that Hollywood first shines into the eyes of teenage dreamboats. They looked very pleased with themselves, veneers sparkling inside perfect pouts as they laughingly ordered peppermint teas and rice crackers laced with cinnamon.

  Adrian grew sullen. A thin veil of hatred draping itself invisibly over his face and he sat miserably trapped behind it, sipping his cold tea. Nobody could possibly be aware of the way he was feeling. They never were, as he had learned to hide it so well. He knew how to layer emotion, how to disguise his black feelings with a conscious free counterpane of charm.

  The girls took the next table, so close that their scent of eau de beach tingled at the edge of his nostrils. Their glossy heads, laden with glorious hair extensions, shimmering in the sunlight that streamed through the window. They casually draped one lean, tanned limb across the other and began comparing notes on their forthcoming auditions. They murmured and laughed, sipping, nibbling, comparing new head shots, checking their iPhones, applied gloss the colour of freshly cut nectarines to their lips and left, wafting away on a perfumed breeze. They looked so young and carefree that by now Adrian was seething.

  He wanted desperately to be with Jezzy, because he thought that she was his savior. But his body craved Devon. And other things. Things which he did not dare to think about, let alone fulfill. He just sat there, dressed in exquisitely cut Armani pants, slate gray silk T-shirt, Kieselstein Cord belt and shiny, pointed Costume National shoes. His exterior was without blemish, but his mind had begun to rage inside his head. Snakes and poison that he felt were curdling and rotting inside his skull. Nobody could tell. Nobody could witness the turmoil that was happening right in front of them.

  *

  Devon & Mr. Birdman

  When Devon regained consciousness she was propped on a

  spindly wooden bench in the narrow hallway of the school. Her right shoulder ached and her coat was dusty. Squinting in the dim light, she strained her eyes upwards to look at the stained glass picture above the double front doors. Stained glass in lurid shades of primary colours, depicting a woman with swirly hair and a strange, peculiar animal at her feet. She remembered it so well.

  Mr. Birdman’s wing-tipped shoes clattered down the black and white chequered tile hallway, echoing through the empty school in the cool, bitter afternoon. He was carrying a cup of steaming tea in a dainty blue and white ubiquitous willow design china cup with a Garibaldi biscuit on the edge of the saucer. His bony hand reached towards her and she took the cup, sipped it, feeling the sweet, wet liquid warming her body, but the biscuit made her want to heave, the smell of it bringing back sensory memories of the sickly sweet smell of his breath, with Garibaldi remnants stuck between his pointed teeth. He sat down next to her, on a long bench with a worn, grey pad fastened to the legs.

  ‘Are you feeling better now?’ he chirped.

  She looked at him and gave a benign, sterile nod.

  ‘You had quite a nasty turn there, luckily I caught you before you landed and helped you up here, into the school.’ He sat next to her and scratched his pointed knee with a thin finger.

  ‘I don’t remember.’ She sipped at her tea, speaking into the cup of warmth, the steam moistening her mouth. Then she lifted her damp face and turned to him, fastening her eyes onto his beady stare. ‘No, actually, I do. I remember everything.’

  *

  Frankie & Manny

  Frankie had never imagined it would be this way. Every time she had dreamt of this moment, every night in bed when she thought about him, even before she knew him, every stolen moment on the bus, at the school gates, or as she lay in a deep bath of bubbles at night, she always had a different picture of t
his moment in her mind. That moment when their eyes would meet and unlike any of her romanticized visions, here it was, in a doctor’s waiting room in London, surrounded by faded sofas and well-thumbed magazines. One lady bulging out of white cheesecloth trousers and an orange ribbed string top, bosoms desperately heaving themselves beyond the neckline as if they were trying to escape, all topped off by a vast white cast across her newly renovated nose. An elderly man with a crooked nose, a bent back and a very jolly tie, doing his best to perch on the edge of an antique, upright chair. A young woman with long, flaxen hair and glossy skin rifling frenetically through copies of Vogue and Tatler, ripping out certain pages and stuffing them into her Gucci bag. Then there was Manny. Handsome Manny, in the flesh, smiling at her from across the room. Manny walking towards her as she too broke into a smile. Heart banging. Pulse racing. Good thing she was where she was: a doctor’s waiting room was probably the safest place to be, as she willingly accepted the dizzy feelings swirling through her veins. He stopped, just out of reach, looked deep into her eyes and then he spoke her name.

  ‘Frankie. At last.’ His American accent was deep and soft and for the first time in her life she thought her name sounded good and how pleased she was that her mother had called her Frankie, because surely no other name in the world could sound so good and then, right there, in the middle of the waiting room, beneath an enormous chandelier, beside an oil painting of a wild sweet meadow, in front of witnesses, Manny took her in his arms. He smelt like a man should, safe and strong. A scent that made her heart race even more. Could he hear it through his clothes? Her head seemed to fit right into his neck. A man with a neck built just for her! Never one for public affection, (get a room, a life, out of my sight!) Frankie wrapped her slender arms around his neck (a move he surprisingly embraced, having historically always stopped it), felt his hair grazing the tops of her hands, his mouth moving against the top of her head, his lips buried in her hair.