Sacrifice

by Edward Lee

  Of course, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t mind a quick tumble tonight with Shauna. He’d heard through the grapevine that her legs were like a 7-Eleven: open all night.

  “You believe every rumor you hear?” he said, then maximized the lie. “Besides, Colleen’s the one who made the condition.”

  “What condition?”

  “That we see other people.”

  Shauna’s brow rose. That got her, Steve thought. The first hook. Steve was proud of his ability to bait women, to manipulate them into sexual situations. Shauna would be easy to crack. Just a few more hooks, he thought, and slugged his beer.

  Lately, though, he had been feeling more and more like a loner. This bar scene wasn’t as interesting as it used to be. Maybe it just meant that he was growing up. Being more professional about his life, his…career. But it was good to drop by every so often, to see if he still had the old skills.

  Two girls yakked at a table behind him. “Did you read the Capital today, Joyce?”

  “The Capital? What’s that?”

  “It’s the city newspaper! Don’t you even read the newspaper?”

  “Well, sometimes. What about it?”

  “There was another rape last weekend. Some guy’s going around breaking into houses and raping women. This is like the tenth one this year. What a sick world.”

  “You’re right. A sick world full of sick people.”

  Steve’s mouth turned up into the slightest, most momentary grin.

  On weeknights the crowd generally dwindled. Steve preferred it that way; more space meant he could get closer. The Undercroft offered a diversity that couldn’t be found at the City Dock bars: no dancing; no loud music; an older, more mature set than the city’s typical post-yuppies, midshipmen, and girls who’d turned twenty-one last week. The tavern sported an old heritage, two-hundred-year-old brick-and-mortar walls, equally old rafters, a stone floor, and pre-Revolutionary architecture, like so many buildings in the city. To Steve it proved the ultimate sexual hunting-ground: women in their thirties and forties, who now felt ancient in the dance clubs. Women who feared they were getting too old to get married. Steve had gotten laid thanks to the Undercroft so many times, he’d stopped counting years ago. A little finesse, a little bullshit, and a little of the old poor-hand-some-boy-looking-for-a-relationship routine. It worked every time.

  It fact, he’d met Alice here…

  “I mean, it’s none of my business,” Shauna went on. Christ, she was already half done with her third Amstel—another hour and she’d be in the bag. And in my pants, Steve finished silently. She went on, very subtly slurring her words. “What happened with Alice? Weren’t you two engaged?”

  “Jesus, Shauna,” Steve muttered. Perfect, he thought. Perfect! “That’s old news. You never heard what happened?”

  “No.”

  “Well…” Steve knew the bullshit would really serve him now. He went into his sullen, boy-gets-dumped-by-girl mode. “It was last winter. We were engaged, all ready to get married.” He faltered a moment. “It was really wonderful. I mean, I really loved her, really thought she was the one,” he lied through his teeth. “We’d made all the plans, you know, the nice little house, a bunch of kids, and all that—all the things I’ve always wanted, and the things she said she wanted too. It was perfect.”

  Shauna’s drunken concern became more and more apparent. She put her hand on his knee. “What…happened?”

  Steve faked a hard gulp, faltered a bit more. “She came over one night last December. She was drunk. And she just laid it all right out. Said she didn’t love me anymore, didn’t want to get married. ‘I don’t know what I want,’ she said. In the same breath, though, she said she’d met another guy, said he was everything to her, much more than I ever was. Then…she left. Just like that.”

  “Oh, Steve!” Shauna exclaimed. “I—I’m so sorry!”

  “Then—” Steve gulped again, his bipolarity and lies brilliantly synchronized. Shauna leaned closer to him, faintly redolent of perfume. Her breasts compressed to highlight the cleavage in her tight, low-cut blouse. At once Steve tuned out the tavern and its patrons. The entire world, just then, was this woman’s buoyant breasts, the tiny waistline, the sleek crossed legs that hid the target of his predations. I am the man your mama warned you about, his thoughts whispered, snickering.

  “Then she drove home. It was snowing real bad that night, and you know how things are in this state. The snowplows spend more time parked at convenience stores than they do on the road. Anyway, Alice is really drunk, and it’s snowing like mad, and she…crashed.”

  Shauna’s beer-glazed eyes went wide.

  “Evidently she weaved into the other lane and hit an oncoming car.” Steve stared stolidly into the mirrored rows of liquor bottles. His words rasped from his throat. “She lost—” He stopped, gulped, began again. “She lost a leg. Her left leg…gone from the knee down.”

  Drunken grief bloomed on Shauna’s face. She stroked his back, as if to console him, and half-slurred, “Oh, Steve, that’s terrible! I’m—I’m so sorry.”

  Steve nodded stolidly and sipped his beer. “When I went to visit her in the hospital she wouldn’t see me, told me to get out. Told me it was my fault.”

  “What an awful bitch,” Shauna said. Then her eyes fluttered. “You mean…you still wanted her? Even though she, you know, lost her…”

  “Of course I still wanted her. I loved her,” Steve affirmed. “I would’ve done anything for her, anything.”

  “You’re so sweet.” Shauna wobbled a bit on her stool, her hand rubbing his leg. This is gonna be easier than I thought, Steve reflected, without affecting his aggrieved visage. When a single tear rolled down his cheek he thought, I should be an actor!

  “She’s just such an awful person,” Shauna blabbered. “Don’t be sad about it—she doesn’t deserve you.”

  Steve shrugged. Then he winced and shook his head. “Look, I’m really sorry. It’s not fair for me to sit here moping to you about my problems.”

  “That’s all right—”

  “But I…I’m sorry, I’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Why?”

  “This place,” Steve said, glancing around. “Too many memories.”

  “What do you mean?” Shauna asked, more confused than usual.

  Steve did his best now to appear sensitive and misunderstood–women were suckers for that. “It’s hard, you know, to describe without sounding really sappy. But…Alice and I met here.” He shrugged again. “I just can’t handle being here right now.”

  “Let’s go someplace else, okay?”

  “Yeah, good idea.” Steve paid their tab, then ushered her to the brick-framed front door. With no obvious effort at all he was holding her hand by the time they reached West Street.

  A warm breeze stirred. I’m gonna knock the bottom out of this bimbo, and hard, Steve thought. “You want to go down to the City Dock; maybe check out McGuffy’s or the Map Room?”

  Shauna’s inebriated grin stretched thin. “Why don’t we check out my bedroom instead?”

  ««—»»

  In the morning he grimaced at neonlike lines of sunlight that framed the shades. Christ. She’d been decent, but not good enough to bother further with. If she came from money…well, that might be different. He’d got what he wanted: another notch on his gun. Time to blow this fuckstand, he thought. Don’t wake the bitch up.

  He dressed quickly and quietly—another aspect of his well-honed social skills. How many times had they done it? Three? Four? He couldn’t remember. That last tumble had been a doozy. You kinky thing, you. He’d tied her up…

  But then, that was something he’d grown accustomed to of late.

  Just as he zipped up his slacks, she roused in bed. “You’re not going yet, are you?”

  Shit!

  “I have to,” he lied. “I have to go to work.”

  “Weren’t you even going to say good-bye?”

  “I didn’t want to wake you.�
�� He fastened his shirt buttons. “You’re beautiful when you’re asleep.”

  Shauna smiled groggily. “Oh, yeah? What about when I’m awake?”

  “Even more beautiful.”

  “Well—” She fidgeted beneath the covers. “You can stay a few more minutes, can’t you?”

  “No, really. I’ll be late.”

  “Just a few?”

  Steve saw how accurately the sheets clung to her body. Like pure white skin. Her nipples were so dark, he could see them through the material. Then the material slipped off when she leaned forward.

  Even in the morning dark, her body called to him in its nakedness. She wasn’t bad-looking at all. But she wasn’t interesting anymore; she wasn’t new.

  Today was a new day.

  “I’d like to,” he said. “But I’ve really got to go.” She pouted until he leaned over and kissed her.

  “Will you call me?” she asked almost desperately.

  “Sure,” he promised.

  Steve hid his smile as he left her apartment. Yeah, I’ll call you, all right. Next century maybe.

  The job at Harris’ Boat Supplies was no big deal; he didn’t even have to be in until noon today. And the thing about Steve was, he didn’t even need the job—he didn’t need any job, for that matter.

  It just made things a lot easier to have a W-2, to prove to the IRS that you had income.

  Alice had never even asked about it, had she?

  What a dumb bunny, he thought.

  Before he cruised home he stopped by Paceway and picked up a danish and a cup of coffee. He also picked up the local newspaper.

  The headlines read:

  CITY REMAINS IN SHOCK AFTER LATEST BURGLARY/RAPE

  Steve took a bite out of his danish and smiled.

  ««—»»

  “You’re depressed.”

  Alice sighed to herself. Am I? she wondered. I haven’t even had a chance to sit down and she’s already psychoanalyzing me.

  Dr. Holly Ryan waited behind an expansive cherry wood desk covered with odd knickknacks. Thinly framed oil paintings, depicting abstractionist themes, hung about the stark paneling. Heavy drapes blocked out the sun. Alice didn’t know if the sessions were doing her much good, but she did like coming here. The office’s sedate darkness seemed to tranquilize her. It didn’t seem like a therapist’s office at all, but rather some cozy art-deco parlor.

  “I don’t feel depressed, Dr. Ryan,” Alice countered and took a seat in an armchair of riveted dark-maroon leather. “In fact, I feel pretty good today.”

  “You’re prevaricating,” the doctor remarked. “You’re bound up in your own rigidity and you refuse to acknowledge it.”

  Rigidity? This sounded absurd. “I won’t even ask about that one,” Alice said. Suddenly her left leg began to itch, but by now she’d accustomed herself to resisting the urge to scratch.

  Dr. Holly Ryan was an attractive, articulate woman, probably in her mid-forties. Her clipped, very businesslike demeanor and dress complemented her unsophisticated good looks. Modest bosomed, she had heather-gray eyes and shiny sable-dark hair that hung straight to her shoulders. Her bangs had been cut sharp and even as a bezel. Pretty, manicured hands remained folded atop the desk blotter.

  “I use the term rigidity in a technical sense,” the older woman stated. “What I mean is a refusal on your part to concentrate on your own self-image.”

  “Because of the accident, I suppose,” Alice replied sarcastically.

  “Actually, no. You only think it’s because of the accident, when actually it goes back much further, probably to preformative childhood.”

  Already Alice felt vexed. I’m paying $125-per-hour to not understand a single word she says. “I see. I’m rigid because of my childhood? I had a good childhood, Dr. Ryan.”

  “But what is the nomenclature of a good childhood? Your conscious, persona-oriented rigidity is an obvious refusal to feel close to others. Your persistence, for example, in calling me Dr. Ryan, when I’ve continually asked you to call me Holly. You’ve been coming here twice a week for two months now yet you refuse to sever your own personal strictures. Due to the manner in which you see yourself.”

  Alice felt a hot yet distant infuriation gaining on her. “And how is that? How do I see myself?”

  “You see yourself as bland and maladjusted. You see yourself as unattractive in a world of beautiful people. You see yourself as an amputee.”

  “I am an amputee.” Alice’s reply rasped.

  “You’re an insightful, creative, and very successful woman. That’s what you are, Alice. Look at what you’re wearing, for instance. Jeans. Always jeans. Instead of wearing dresses, you insist on camouflaging your body, your femininity.”

  “I’m camouflaging an artificial leg,” Alice was hard-pressed not to shout.

  “Your total lack of a real self-image has nothing to do with your artificial leg, and you know it,” Holly replied. Her lips pursed, as if she was quietly exasperated.

  Alice let it slide. Arguing with a feminist psychiatrist, she’d quickly learned, was pointless. What bothered her most, though, about Holly, was the nagging possibility that the therapist was correct about everything, and that Alice herself was too inept to realize it, to see it. She looked into the narrow gap between the drapes, to distract herself. Cars swept through Church Circle. Pedestrians strode happily in the sun. Yeah, maybe she’s right, Alice thought. There’s a whole world out there that I don’t feel part of. I don’t even know if I want to be part of it.

  “Come on,” Holly said, standing up behind her desk. She picked up a tiny ostrich-skin purse and removed a silver compact from it.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Let’s get out of this stuffy office—”

  “But I like your office.”

  Holly quickly ran a brush through her shiny, dark hair, then freshened her lipstick. “This office—dark, remote, closed-off—makes you feel safe from the outside world. That’s why we’re leaving. We need to get you out in the sun, out into life.”

  Alice experienced a stab of fear. She didn’t want to go out. If she went outside, people would notice her limp. But…Do it, she suddenly insisted to herself. Show her. Prove her wrong. “All right,” she said. “That’s fine by me.”

  Holly gave a tiny grin. “No, it’s not. You just want me to think it is. Come on.”

  Alice frowned and followed the woman out.

  “It’s such a beautiful day, isn’t it?” Holly suggested, smiling into the sun. “We should have our sessions outside more often.”

  Alice barely heard her, adjusting to her limp. She imagined people looking at her, noticing. Holly Ryan walked just ahead of her in a nice white-silk blouse and a light, pleated floral skirt. Her high heels tapped casually across the sidewalk, her hair shining. Across the Circle loomed the Old Post Office Pavilion; behind it, the vast, bone-white dome of the State House rose bare to the sky. This nexus of the city reminded Alice of older, simpler times. Narrow cobblestone streets, each lined with the familiar colonial row houses, branched away from the Circle, descending. Antique shops, old book and gimcrack stores, and even a pharmacy whose wooden swing sign read chemist, offered their wares through doors propped open by ovenbricks and brass irons. Alice and Holly wended their way around the light crowd, down Main Street and toward the City Dock. “You’re still taking your Imipramine?” Holly asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Any contraindications?”

  “What?”

  “Are you experiencing any negative side-effects?”

  “None at all.”

  “Well, it’s a low dose. You probably don’t even need meds, but I want to play it safe for the time being. Your depression, after all, is merely reactive.”

  Alice grimaced. “Why do you keep insisting that I’m depressed?”

  “Because you are,” Holly said flatly as they passed the famous Haunted Bookshop and Pendragon Gallery. Gargoyles and trolls stared after them. A tongue-lolling demo
n seemed to smile.

  “You’re remote, existential, socially terrorized, and depressed.”

  This confounded Alice. Yes, she knew she was depressed, but the fact that it seemed to show so obviously…

  That bothered her. It made her feel misguided, undisciplined, out of control of herself.

  It made her feel—

  Pathetic, she thought.

  “Oh, I know where we can go,” Holly interrupted the thought. Walking a bit too briskly, she crossed the street with Alice in tow. Just past the Market House, the bay gleamed, as myriad boats bobbed gently in their slips. Sailboats flecked the horizon, while power boats and cabin cruisers shot this way and that, leaving foamy white plumes in their wake. All her life Alice had lived in this port city, yet never once had she been on a boat. Maybe I’ll buy one now, she thought, considering her settlement. She could take it way out to some distant cove, drop anchor, and just lie on deck in the luscious sun, thinking…

  Holly held open the door at McGuffy’s, one of the City Dock’s many nautical bars. I don’t want to go to a bar, Alice thought. In fact, she hadn’t been to one since…

  Since the accident.

  Bars reminded her of too much. She’d met Steve in a bar…

  “Let’s not be prissy and take a table,” Holly suggested. “Let’s sit right up at the bar.”

  Alice contained her smirk. They pulled up stools. McGuffy’s sported typical watermen decor: lots of dark, veneered wood, lots of brass, anchors, compasses, and sextants. It was dark and uncrowded now. A few patrons lingered at the bar. A thin blond man, whose black T-shirt read the holy terror, scribbled frantically in a notebook. At the bar’s furthest end, a couple argued discreetly.

  “What can I get ya, ladies?” inquired a suspendered barkeep whose upper lip was obscured by a great salt-and-pepper mustache.