Community

by Graham Masterton

  ‘That’s the effect of your accident,’ said Catherine. ‘Your amygdala is creating an emotional experience to explain how you feel. Propranolol will help your brain to erase it.’

  ‘But what if it is real? And what if I don’t want it erased, whether it’s real or not?’

  ‘If you allow it to stay stored in your subconscious, Gregory, you may never find your way back to knowing who you really are. And I mean, like, ever.’

  Isobel was dressed by the time he returned to the house. She was wearing a tight charcoal-gray sweater and even tighter black jeans. She was laying out side-plates and glasses on the coffee table in the middle of the living room, but when Michael entered she immediately put down the plates she was holding and came over to wrap her arms around him.

  ‘I missed you,’ she said. ‘I think you should realize that making love is just as therapeutic as walking. Even Doctor Hamid will tell you that.’

  ‘OK. I’ll ask him next time I see him, just to make sure. What time are your guests arriving?’

  ‘Any minute now. It’s not still snowing, is it?’

  ‘Not as much as it was.’

  Isobel frowned and said, ‘Something’s still worrying you, isn’t it? It’s not me, I hope. I’m not coming on too strong for you? I think that’s always been my trouble. When I like a man, I can’t hide my feelings. I simply can’t.’

  Michael shook his head. ‘No, it’s not that. But I think that I’m being lied to. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if anybody in Trinity ever tells the truth about anything.’

  ‘What makes you think that, for heaven’s sakes? Everybody here is so friendly. And all the doctors and nurses at the clinic … they’re all so open, and all so helpful.’

  ‘OK,’ said Michael. ‘Where did you get those groceries yesterday?’

  Isobel lowered her arms, her forehead furrowed in a frown. ‘I told you. Ray’s Food Place, in Weed.’

  ‘You never went to Weed. I saw your tire tracks in the snow when I walked up to the clinic. As a matter of fact, nobody had been to Weed, not since the snow started.’

  ‘Well, of course I didn’t actually go to Weed. Why would I? We all place our orders with Ray’s Food Place online and then they deliver to the clinic, because it’s so central.’

  ‘Why don’t they deliver to your door?’

  ‘They do, when it isn’t so icy. It’s for safety, that’s all. There are too many kids and seniors walking in the roads, because the sidewalks are so slippery.’

  ‘I’m sure you told me that I should come along with you, next time you go there. Which kind of implied that you’d actually been there, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Well, you should come with me. You must. But not for a week or two. Not until it thaws.’

  She paused, and then she took hold of his hands. ‘Why would I lie to you, Greg? What would be the point? Why would anybody in Trinity lie to you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Michael. ‘Maybe I’m being paranoid. I feel like something’s badly wrong but I can’t work out what it is. Half the time I don’t even believe that I’m real.’

  ‘Of course you’re real. I can vouch for that. You can’t give a man head, can you, if he isn’t real?’

  ‘Yes – but supposing you’re not real? Supposing none of this is real?’

  At that moment the doorbell jangled. Isobel kissed Michael on the cheek and said, ‘I’ll prove it to you later, when all of our guests have gone. Meanwhile, how about being sociable?’

  They all arrived at once, nine of them, and crowded into the hallway, taking off their hats and coats and stamping their snowy boots on the doormat. Isobel went out to help them, but Michael stayed in the living room, staring at himself in the mirror.

  You’re real, he told himself, as he waited for Isobel’s guests to come in. The strange thing was that none of them was talking. The only sound from the hallway was shuffling and stamping and two or three coughs.

  After a short while the first of them came in, a short middle-aged man with gingery hair that was beginning to turn gray. He reminded Michael of Mickey Rooney. He held out his hand and said, ‘George Kelly, my friend. Pleased to know you. Glad that our Isobel has found herself another companion. What would we do without her, eh?’

  It was only when Michael saw that George Kelly’s bright blue eyes were not focused on him at all, but somewhere behind his right shoulder, that he realized that he was totally blind. He stepped forward and took George Kelly’s hand, and shook it. It was, like Isobel’s hands, stunningly cold.

  ‘Pretty darn chilly outside,’ he remarked. ‘When do you get spring in these parts?’

  ‘End of March, if we’re lucky, beginning of April. Can’t say that I notice the seasons much. Spend most of my time indoors, and when I do go out I don’t feel the cold. Don’t feel the heat, neither.’

  ‘Where are you from, George?’ Michael asked him. ‘I mean, like, originally, before you came here to Trinity?’

  ‘We don’t talk about the past,’ said a large woman in a crimson corduroy dress, flooding into the living room like a tsunami and clamping her podgy hand on George Kelly’s shoulder. ‘All we care about is the present, here in this community, and the future, too, of course. Some of us have been through experiences that we prefer not to dwell on.’

  ‘Sure, yes, sorry,’ said Michael. ‘I guess I’d be the same, if I could remember what happened to me, but the plain fact is that I can’t. Post-traumatic amnesia.’

  ‘You’re a lucky man,’ said George Kelly. ‘I’d give anything, if I could forget. Anything.’

  Now the rest of Isobel’s guests entered the living room. They varied in ages from a pretty girl with a ponytail who looked only about fifteen or sixteen, to a bulky man with a black bandanna tied around his head who was probably forty-something. Then in came an elderly woman whose back was hunched and who walked with two sticks, her long amethyst earrings swinging from side to side as she made her way across the room.

  Isobel asked Michael to go through to the kitchen and carry in three extra chairs, and then they all sat down around the coffee table. With the help of the girl with the ponytail, Isobel brought in shortbread cookies and brownies and ginger snaps, and poured out coffee or herbal tea or Pepsi-cola.

  ‘Everybody!’ she said, clapping her hands. ‘I want you all to welcome Greg Merrick, my new companion. Greg was involved in an auto wreck and has temporarily lost his memory, and so he’s staying here with me while he recovers. He’s a very welcome replacement for dear Emilio.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry to say that I don’t think anybody could quite replace Emilio,’ said the large woman in the crimson dress. ‘But we’re happy to have you here, Greg, for Isobel’s sake. We wouldn’t want to lose our dear Isobel; she’s the life and soul, so to speak.’

  Michael didn’t know if that was a compliment or an insult, so he said nothing at all, and simply smiled, and raised his coffee cup.

  The fortyish man with the black bandanna reached across the table and held out his hand. ‘Good to know you, Greg. My name’s Lloyd Hammers. Guess you and me are pretty much in the same leaky boat.’

  Michael raised his eyebrows to show that he didn’t quite understand.

  ‘My truck turned over on the interstate. Well, so they say. Me – I don’t recall how it happened. Broke both legs in seven different places and suffered from memory loss, just like you. I got most of my memory back but I was single and unattached and there was nothing for me to go back to Bakersfield for. I couldn’t drive a truck no more with my legs, so I decided to stay here. I get housed, and fed, and all I have to do is take care of old Mrs Kroker there.’

  The conversations continued, and it quickly became obvious to Michael that this was a regular support group, with everybody discussing their problems and their fears for the future. And there did seem to Michael to be one unspoken fear which haunted them all.

  ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do without my Lloyd here,’ said Mrs Kroker, her back so ben
t that she had to twist her head sideways to look up at them all. She reached out with a turkey-claw hand and gripped Lloyd’s wrist.

  Michael thought: What the hell is she worried about? She must be eighty-five years old if she’s a day. Her Lloyd is going to outlive her by two decades at least.

  But then George Kelly smiled in the direction of a young woman with upswept spectacles and flicked-up brunette hair and a pale green printed blouse. ‘I can’t imagine life without Hedda. I have nightmares about it, I’ll tell you.’

  Michael could understand anybody’s anxiety about being left on their own as they grew older, but what both Mrs Kroker and George Kelly were saying made no sense. What puzzled him even more was that neither Lloyd Hammers nor the girl in the pale green printed blouse made any comment. They simply smiled dumbly and shrugged.

  ‘Katie, dear, I forgot the paper napkins,’ said Isobel. ‘Would you fetch them for me, please? They should be in the third drawer on the right-hand side, under the flour jar.’

  The girl with the ponytail stood up and went through to the kitchen. Michael stood up, too, and held up his empty soda glass. ‘Just going to get myself a refill,’ he said, and Isobel smiled at him.

  In the kitchen, he found the girl opening and closing drawers.

  ‘Can’t find them?’ he said.

  ‘No. They’re not in any of these drawers, anyhow.’

  ‘Greg Merrick,’ he said, holding out his hand.

  ‘Katie Thomson,’ she replied. She was really very pretty, with a heart-shaped face and pink cheeks and wide brown Betty Boop eyes. She was wearing a shocking-pink sweatshirt with silver sequins on it, and bright red jeans.

  ‘Mind if I ask you what you’re doing with that crowd of misfits?’ he asked her, nodding his head back toward the living-room.

  ‘I don’t have any choice, do I?’

  ‘I don’t know. Do you? I would have thought living in Trinity was pretty soul-destroying for somebody of your age.’

  She let out a little snort as if she thought he had said something funny.

  ‘Where are your folks today?’ he asked her. ‘Don’t they come to these get-togethers, too?’

  ‘My folks?’

  ‘Yes. Your mom and dad.’

  Katie Thomson suddenly said, ‘Look, there they are! She left them on the window sill!’

  She went across and picked up the cellophane pack of blue paper napkins which Isobel had left behind the kitchen faucets. Michael turned around and opened the door of the fridge so that he could take out the bottle of Pepsi.

  ‘It seems kind of strange to me that you should be here on your own, that’s all,’ he said.

  But when he turned around again, with his hand on the bottle-top, he saw that Katie Thomson was already back in the living room, handing out napkins to Isobel’s guests. She was right on the opposite side of the coffee table, and he couldn’t think how she had got there almost instantaneously, without making any sound whatsoever. He hadn’t even glimpsed her leaving the kitchen out of the corner of his eye, even though she was wearing those red jeans and that shocking-pink sweatshirt.

  He filled his glass with cola and his hand was trembling. When he went back into the living room, Katie Thomson looked up at him and beamed triumphantly, as if she had answered all of his questions by leaving him like that. It occurred to him that he might have reason to be afraid of her. In fact he might have reason to be afraid of all of these people.

  He sat down next to her. She leaned over to him confidentially, and whispered, ‘I’m jealous.’

  He looked at her for a long time. Her eyelashes were long and sooty with mascara, and she had very fine hairs on her upper lip.

  ‘What of?’ he asked her at last, although his voice was little more than a croak.

  ‘Of Isobel,’ she said. ‘Of you.’

  THIRTEEN

  That night, when he was almost asleep, Isobel started gently to rub him.

  He turned his head toward her and said, ‘Hey …’

  ‘You should have come back to bed this morning. Then I wouldn’t feel so frustrated.’

  She continued to rub him, harder and harder, and after a while he tried to lift himself up so that he could climb on top of her.

  ‘No,’ she said, trying to push him back down. ‘Let me do it to you.’

  She started to wriggle down the bed, but now Michael took hold of her wrists and pinned her down. He heaved himself up again and sat astride her, gripping her body between his thighs. She struggled, and thrashed from side to side, but he was too heavy for her, and too strong, and besides that he urgently wanted to penetrate her.

  ‘No,’ she gasped.

  ‘No? What do you mean “no”? You’re the one who’s coming on to me!’

  ‘I said I’d do anything. But not that.’

  Michael reached one hand down and forcibly parted her thighs.

  ‘Please,’ she said, but his blood was banging in his ears now and he ignored her. He raised himself up, and positioned himself between her legs, with the head of his hardened penis nestling between the lips of her vulva. She was very juicy, even though her juice felt cold.

  ‘Greg,’ she said, ‘you won’t like me if you do this.’

  ‘I won’t like you? What do you mean? I do like you. I want you. I want to make love to you properly.’

  ‘Greg, please …’ she begged him, and made another effort to twist herself out from underneath him.

  But right then Michael wanted to push himself inside her more than anything else in the world, and he did. He leaned his whole weight on top of her and forced his penis into her as far as it would go. She gave a little jump as he touched the neck of her womb, but then she let out a long, breathy oohhhhhhhhhhh and tilted her head back and closed her eyes.

  Michael pushed himself into her again and again. But even as he felt his climax beginning to tighten between his legs, he began to understand why she had resisted him, and why she had said that he wouldn’t like her.

  Inside, she was numbingly cold. Slippery, yes, but slippery-chilly, so cold that his glans began to ache, in spite of how hard and how fast he was pushing himself in and out of her. He could even feel the cold juice smothering his scrotum and the sides of his thighs.

  He released her wrists and she clung to him tightly, digging her fingernails into his bare back. She was gasping now, while he was grunting. His penis was so cold that he could hardly feel it, and he had to push harder and harder to get any sensation out of their love-making at all.

  It was Isobel who climaxed first. She gave a high-pitched yelp, and then she began to quake. Her fingernails dug deeper into his back, and she quaked, and quaked, and as she did so, Michael climaxed, too. For a moment he could feel the warmth of his own semen inside her, but then that was chilled, too.

  He took himself out of her and rolled over on to his side, his penis shrinking as quickly as if he had waded into the ocean on a January day.

  Isobel stayed where she was, on her back, her legs still wide apart, her left forearm resting across her forehead, almost covering her eyes.

  ‘You’re so cold,’ said Michael, with a catch in his throat. He coughed, to clear it.

  ‘I told you that you wouldn’t like me, if we did it that way.’

  He leaned across and tried to kiss her but she turned her head away.

  ‘I do like you,’ he insisted. ‘But why are you so cold? Are you sick, or something? Have you talked to anybody at the clinic about it?’

  ‘I’m not sick,’ she said.

  Michael thought for a moment, but then he said, ‘What does that mean? You’re not sick?’

  She sat up, and swung her legs off the side of the bed, with her back to him. Her pale, triangular back. He reached out and touched her shoulder blades with his fingertips and then trailed them down her spine. She shuddered, but not as though she didn’t like it.

  ‘Are you saying that I’m sick? That there’s something wrong with me?’

  ‘I’m not saying any
thing. If you knew why I feel so cold, it would only spoil things, and I love you, and I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to lose me, either.’

  Michael sat up, too. ‘There you go. Talking in fucking riddles again.’

  Isobel turned her head around. Her eyes glistened in the half-light, in the same way that Belle’s eyes glistened inside the closet. ‘The whole of life is a riddle, Greg. From beginning to end. There’s no point in trying to work out what it all means. Like W.B. Yeats said, “Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.”’

  ‘But why do you feel so cold? That’s all I’m asking. If there’s something wrong with you, I need to call a doctor. If

  there’s something wrong with me, I need to call a doctor.’

  ‘There are some things, Greg, that no doctor can cure. Like a broken heart, for instance.’

  Michael reached out for her again, but before he could touch her she stood up and walked off to the bathroom. On the sheet where she had been sitting he felt cold, prickly crystals, like grains of rock salt. Some of them stuck to the palm of his hand, but almost as soon as they had done so, they melted.

  He lifted his fingers to his nose, and sniffed, and smelled the distinctive bleachy aroma of semen. When he had ejaculated inside her, Isobel had been so cold that his climax had actually frozen.

  He lay awake almost all night thinking what he should do. Isobel lay in his arms, cold but sleeping soundly, her cool breath playing against his shoulder.

  Catherine Connor must have known about Isobel’s medical condition before she brought him here to convalesce, and to act as her companion. She must also have suspected what would happen between them. So maybe her coldness wasn’t contagious, or life-threatening. But what sickness can make a woman so cold inside that she turns her partner’s semen into ice? Why wasn’t she dead from hypothermia?

  Then again, Isobel had appeared to suggest that the problem could be his, not hers. He felt OK, physically. His knee and elbow joints were still swollen, and he had moments when he felt off-balance, which Doctor Hamid had attributed to the concussion that he had suffered, but he was sure that he was improving every day. He certainly wasn’t suffering from any erectile dysfunction.