Rapture

by Thomas Tessier

  "When I was back in Connecticut just about a year ago," Jeff said, "there was a tremendous heat wave the whole time."

  "That was the exception," Bonnie told him. "This is normal for the beginning of May."

  "I guess."

  He took a slug of malt Scotch. There was about a third of the bottle left, and he passed it to Bonnie. She hoisted it like a veteran drinker, but pursed her lips tightly and took only a small amount of the whiskey.

  "This stuff numbs my lips," she said. "You know that?"

  He smiled. "It's actually very smooth."

  "But it does give you a nice warm feeling inside," she added, completing her thought.

  There wasn't a boat to be seen on Cape Cod Bay, weather threats apparently having prevailed. The shore was equally deserted in both directions. Jeff and Bonnie had come to this place more or less by accident. Boston had looked dreary and uninviting from the ninth floor of the Hyatt that morning, but neither of them had wanted to hang around the hotel room all day.

  "We could do this every year," Bonnie said.

  "What?"

  "What we've been doing. Three days and nights of sinful sex and fun. We could get together once a year, every May, just for a long delicious weekend, and then not see or talk to each other at all until the next year."

  " ?" VVFhy

  "I don't know. Wouldn't it be kind of adventurous and romantic?"

  "A reunion," Jeff said, and the word reverberated through his mind.

  "Right. I bet it would be fun."

  "I'm not sure reunions are such a great idea."

  "I think there was a movie about two people who did that," Bonnie continued. "They'd meet once a year, and they kept the affair going for about twenty years."

  "There's a movie about everything, but that doesn't mean it would work."

  "Oh, Jeff." She poked him playfully. "You're getting tired of me already."

  "No, it isn't that. I wouldn't mind taking you back to L.A. with me tomorrow. But a year is a very long time in some ways, and you'll be a different person next May.*

  "Yeah, but I might still like the idea of spending a dirty weekend with you."

  'Bonnie ..."

  But she knelt forward and put a finger to his lips while she tried to keep herself from giggling.

  "Never mind, Jeff. I was only kidding. Honest to God, you take things so seriously, sometimes it's impossible not to put you on."

  Jeff made a face at her and then busied himself taking another gulp of whiskey and lighting a cigarette. The trouble was, she had a point, even if she didn't fully realize it. The weekend was disappearing fast, and he'd hardly begun to come to terms with this girl. He knew much more about her, he knew her intimately-but that didn't seem to matter. He hadn't found a way to use that knowledge and, if anything, he felt less sure of himself than he had before he'd come to Boston. Bonnie always seemed to be a step ahead of him, or she'd say something that would stop him in his tracks and make him wonder. He was the older, the one with the experience and the money, but in some way Bonnie had taken control of the situation, and never relinquished it.

  The previous night had been a nonevent as far as Jeff was concerned. He'd wanted to begin talking about Georgianne, but with that one simple stabbing question in the middle of their love-making, she'd made it impossible for him to speak seriously. For someone essentially so innocent, she seemed to know him, and understand him, all too well. That was starting to frighten him.

  They'd gone to a steakhouse for dinner and talked about sex-Jeff reluctantly, Bonnie enthusiastically. She informed him that she wasn't wearing panties under the dress she'd bought at Filene's. It was something she'd wanted to try doing once, since she'd read The Story of 0. Jeff didn't know the book.

  "So how does it feel?"

  "Put your hand up in there, and I'll tell you."

  "Here? No thanks."

  Then she told him about an associate professor who'd called her into his office one day to discuss a course. He mumbled vaguely for five or ten minutes and then casually asked her if she'd sit on his face. According to Bonnie, she had done it, but by then Jeff didn't believe a word she said. She was trying too hard, he thought, to make fact out of fantasysomething he had enough experience of to recognize.

  "Does your mother know how you ... live at college?"

  "What do you mean-how I live?"

  "Well, you know. Does she know you sleep with men?"

  "As opposed to women?"

  "You don't sleep with women."

  "And how do you know that?"

  "Does your mother know?"

  "What do parents ever know about their kids? Mom and I haven't really discussed it since she sent me off last year with all the usual warnings and advice. I love my mother, but she lives in her world and I live in mine. If I need to talk to her about something, she's always there. But she respects me, and my privacy."

  "She trusts you."

  "Right. Besides, you make it sound like I sleep around all the time. Actually, I'm very choosy."

  "Uh-huh, like the associate professor."

  "He was an exception, and so are you, for that matter. But then, I'm an exception for you too, right?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Oh, I could tell right away, Jeff. You don't sleep around much at all, do you? We're really very alike in that regard. You sleep alone nearly all the time. . . ."

  Sometime early Sunday morning Jeffs sleep had been disturbed by a strange voice. "One and two and three and four ... One and two and three and four ..." He rolled over in bed and opened his eyes. Bonnie was doing something on the floor. The television set was turned on, the volume low but clear. "One and two and . . ." Jeff blinked a couple of times and sat up. Now Bonnie was wearing only a pair of panties. She was doing exercises, along with the two girls in brightly colored, geometrically patterned leotards on the TV screen. A few minutes later, the television clicked off, and Bonnie slipped back into bed with him. She had worked up a light sweat, and her body was warm and arousing.

  "Rise and shine," she whispered.

  At that moment the thought had come to him that it might be the last of their love-making, but now, as they relaxed and passed the Scotch back and forth in the shelter of the dunes, he realized he'd been mistaken. They still had tonight, and tomorrow morning, unless he botched it. But he had to talk about Georgians and run that risk, because Georgianne was far more important than screwing Bonnie one more time.

  "What do you think your mother is doing this afternoon?" he asked idly. "Right now."

  "I don't know." Bonnie shrugged, and then said, "But what if she tried to call you? Your phone could be ringing in California right now, and you'd never know you missed her."

  "I doubt it," he replied, turning his face away. Did she know what she was doing to him when she said things like that, or was she completely, innocently oblivious? He wasn't sure which was worse. All he knew was that when she got too close, little flares of pain or anguish went off inside him and he couldn't do anything about it.

  "Are you a very lonely person?" Bonnie asked quietly. "I think you must be."

  "Oh boy." Jeff tried to force a laugh, but it sounded weak. Triffids came to mind, the few times he had gone there in search of someone or something, the driven people he had met, the whole depressing scene. But Bonnie had kicked away the last block that held him back, and Jeff found that the words finally began to come easily to him. "Yes, I guess I am, or I have been. For a long time I never thought about whether I was lonely or not. After the divorce, I just worked and worked, and worked some more. Loneli ness is something you have to sit down and think about-you have to notice it one way or another. If you stay busy enough, you can get by for quite a while. But that doesn't mean it goes away. It does catch up with you sooner or later, like an illness that doesn't have any symptoms until it develops to a certain point...."

  "Critical mass," Bonnie said.

  "Yes. Exactly."

  And what's beyond critical mass, Bonni
e wondered. She had seen enough of Jeff over the past forty-eight hours, in bed and out, to get a clear impression of the man. He was more than lonely; he seemed to be possessed of strange demons. She had seen it in the stiffness of his manner, in his hunger for physical contact, in the way his eyes moved and his skin tightened across his face when he didn't know what to say. She had seen it immediately in the mirrored sunglasses and what he'd done to his hair, and in his willingness to go along with whatever she wanted to do (which was probably because he couldn't think of anything to do himself; he had very little spontaneity). And she had seen it again this morning. He'd gone out by himself for a few minutes and then returned to announce that he'd rented a car and they were going for a drive. That was fine, but as soon as they were on the highway heading south, it became clear he didn't know what to do next. Get off at Quincy? Braintree? Weymouth? Assinippi? He wanted to be the man, the one in charge, but he just didn't do a very good job of it-a fact that seemed to haunt him all the time.

  Finally they had stopped in Plymouth for lunch at a fish shack and then a look at the Rock. They had proceeded on as far as Sagamore, where Jeff had decided abruptly that he didn't want to drive to the end of the Cape after all. So they meandered back north along the old coast road until they'd come across this neglected, unprepossessing patch of sea front. It wasn't much of a beach and it wasn't pretty, but they were near Manomet Point, and there would be people around if the weather were better.

  "I think I reached that point when I met your mother again last year," Jeff said nervously. "Critical mass, or whatever you want to call it."

  "Really?" Bonnie sat up, brushed some sand off her sweater, and dug her boot heels into the hard ground. "What did Mom say or do to ... ?"

  "Nothing, really. But seeing her old family house for sale, and then meeting her after so many years, well, it made me sit back and think. I'd been rushing through my life, but like a zombie, blind to everything but the work in front of me. When I got back to California, I was still thinking about it, and I realized what I had been missing. All those years, I hadn't really been enjoying life at all. I decided that it wasn't too late and that I could change my life; it didn't even matter if I made mistakes or it didn't work outbecause the important thing was that I try, that I make the effort."

  "That's good," Bonnie told him. "That's healthy."

  He gave a short, bitter laugh. "And the funny part is, as soon as I started changing my habits I discov ered that I had a lot more freedom than I would have guessed. It came as a shock to me, but at the same time I liked what I was doing. I knew immediately I was right.*

  "You were Rip Van Winkle," Bonnie said.

  "In a way, yes. That's right."

  'Were you in love with my mother?" Bonnie thought she knew the answer to the question already, but it was time to make Jeff talk about it. They had skirted around it all weekend, but he could hardly bring himself to get it out in the open and face it with her.

  "Was I ..." Jeff echoed. He didn't seem to understand what she was asking.

  "When you were in high school together."

  "Oh, well. Maybe I was," he replied vaguely, shaking his head and smiling oddly. He should have expected a blunt question like that from Bonnie sooner or later. In fact, he had seen it coming after yesterday's question. But he still felt an enormous dread, even with the moment at hand, and he wasn't sure what to say. "That was a long time ago. I was a teenager, and who knows what teenagers think and feel? I've spent a weekend with you, but I can't pretend I really know or understand you."

  Bonnie absently nudged a piece of broken shell, but she was not to be diverted. "Are you now?" she asked. "Are you still in love with her now?"

  Jeff lit a cigarette, turning his face away from her. He stared at the bay, at his feet; he brushed his hair back with his hand. Finally he faced the girl again.

  "Yes," he said simply, quietly.

  Bonnie nodded slightly to herself. The look on her face seemed so neutral it was almost scientific. Jeff had the unpleasant sensation that she was looking right through him at something else. But then she glanced at the sky.

  It must be getting late," she said. "Don't you think we should start back to Boston?"

  "Hey, wait a minute," he said anxiously, sitting up. "I want to talk about it."

  "Yeah, but I'm getting cold here, Jeff, even with the Scotch. Can't we talk while we're driving?"

  "Sure, we'll talk in the car, but"-Jeff put his hand on her arm-"I want to get something clear first. Are you mad at me?"

  "No. Why should I be?"

  "Because I've been to bed with you several times this weekend and now I've told you I love your mother."

  "Well, that's the way it goes."

  "That's the way it goes?" Jeff was astounded. "That's all you have to say about it?"

  "I told you I'm not mad at you. I don't know what else to say."

  "Say what you think."

  "Give me a few minutes to get used to it," Bonnie said. "In the car I'll tell you what I think. Okay?"

  "Hang on a sec. Was it very obvious to you?"

  "I had an idea," she admitted. "I wondered about it."

  "Since when?"

  "Last year. The first time I met you."

  "You're kidding." Jeff felt his face reddening.

  "No. You hardly ever took your eyes off Mom. It kind of reminded me of the way a kid in my class used to look at me, and I thought: Hmm, I wonder."

  "Was it that obvious to your mother and father?"

  "They didn't talk to me about it," Bonnie answered with a deliberate shrug. "Maybe Dad was a little uncomfortable, but then you went back to California and that was the end of it, so ..."

  "Yeah, right."

  "Shall we go now?" Bonnie suggested brightly.

  .No, wait a minute."

  His hand was on her arm again. He's not going to let me go, Bonnie thought. He wants to have it all out right here. She was aware of being a little frightened, but she still had a lot of confidence as well. She should have waited until they were in the car and back out on the road before asking Jeff if he loved her mother, but even then, at that last moment, she hadn't really believed it was true, or that he would admit it. Everything added up exactly as it had each time she'd looked at the situation-and yet she'd still been reluctant to accept it. It was a fact the mind naturally wanted to resist. And could she be sure ... ? Or was she simply overreacting?

  Bonnie had given a great deal of thought to Jeff Lisker the previous autumn, when she'd drawn up her list of names. He became more interesting when she learned that he'd been back to visit her mother again, and that he was calling her on the phone twice a week. But that was all there was to it. The move from Jeff's interest in Georgianne to Sean's murder was simply too big a leap. Bonnie had thought then that if Jeff ever turned up in Cambridge looking for her, she'd know. That would be it, that would tell her everything. But she'd thrown away the list and tried to forget about it all.

  Until Friday. Jeffs sudden appearance had shocked and frightened her, but she hadn't been entirely unprepared, and she thought she'd handled it well. What he'd done to his hair was interesting. The fact that she hadn't seen any computer components or business papers in his hotel room was also noteworthy. But the real questions were whether he'd come to Boston because he wanted Georgianne or because he wanted her daughter, and whether he really was capable of killing. She had taken him to bed to find out what kind of man he was.

  Bonnie soon had no doubt that he was in love with her mother, but she was also surprised that he let himself be seduced so easily. And the more time she spent with him, the less she thought it likely he could hurt anyone. He acted like he'd learned to live by following instructions in a manual. Killing Sean for the love of Georgianne would be insane, but it would also require courage and romantic heroism, however twisted, and Bonnie had seen nothing of those qualities in Jeff. He might love her mother, but he had too much of the spinster aunt in him to do anything drastic about it.


  Bonnie didn't actually feel threatened just now Jeff looked puzzled more than anything else-but she did want to get away from that empty beach. He wasn't ready to go. But she had persuaded him to do whatever she wanted all weekend, and there was no reason for that to stop now. She simply had to talk to him and reassure him until they were in the car and moving.

  "What are you going to do?" she asked softly, squeezing his hand affectionately.

  "About what?" He sounded confused but wary.

  "Well, you haven't talked about this with Mom, have you? Are you going to?"

  "I don't know. I guess so, but that's what I wanted to talk to you about. Are you sure you're not upset?"

  "Because we've slept together? No, I told you. Why should I be upset? I wanted it as much as you did, maybe more. It doesn't have anything to do with my mother. Besides, you're better in bed than you think, and if you and Mom get together, well, that's nice to know."

  Jeff liked what she said, but something was wrong. It didn't quite ring true. Bonnie was clever, but she'd also been open and frank all the time he'd been with her. Now she was just saying whatever she thought would sound right to him.

  "You wouldn't tell her," he said.

  "Christ, no. Why would I do that? Imagine how it would hurt her. And even if I didn't care what she thought about you, I do care what she thinks about me."

  That made sense. "The thing is," he said, "I did try to let Georgianne know how I felt about her, but it didn't seem to get through to her. Uh ... this was some time after your father's death, of course."

  "Sure, well ..."

  "And it's depressing, very depressing. Back in February, she more or less told me not to come for a visit. And I thought that if I didn't call for a while, it might ... she might ... well, nothing came of it. Nothing happened at all."

  "I see."

  "I guess I probably didn't do a very good job of making myself clear to her," he went on.

  "Maybe you did," she told him.

  "What do you mean?" he asked. Her remark threw him off stride for a moment, but then he understood. "You mean I did get through to her but she isn't interested in me?"