by Edward Lee
“This is gonna be neat as shit!” Melanie exclaimed.
Martin laughed. “It’ll probably even be neater than that.”
But Ann felt disheartened. She’d seen all those places when they’d had Dassault as an auxiliary client, and she’d never really cared. Yet Melanie, her own daughter, longed to see these museums, and Ann had never even considered it.
She plucked her last clam out of the shell when the phone rang.
“I’ll get it,” Martin said.
“It’s probably that guy with the creepy voice,” Melanie ventured.
“No, let me get it,” Ann insisted. This was one thing she wanted to get to the bottom of.
“Hello?”
The line seemed to drift. She thought of wastelands. She heard a distant rushing like trucks on the freeway.
The ruined voice sounded wet, exerted. “Ann Slavik?”
“Who is this? Why have you been calling me?”
Martin got up.
“Listen,” the voice creaked. It stalled again, as if each word demanded a pointed effort. “Don’t come,” it said.
“What? Who is this!” Ann demanded.
“You don’t know me.”
“Who the hell is this!”
“Just…don’t come.”
“Give me that,” Martin said.
She held him off. “Don’t come where?” she asked of the caller.
The voice sounded shredded. “Take your daughter… Go far away.”
“If you don’t tell me who you are—”
The voice grated on, but Martin snatched the phone away. “Listen, you son of a bitch,” he said. “Don’t call here anymore or I’ll have the phone traced. I’ll have the police on your sick ass, you hear me?”
Martin looked at the phone, mouth pursed. “He hung up,” he said.
“Who was it, Mom?” Melanie asked.
“No one, honey.”
“Some nut, that’s all,” Martin contributed. “What did he say?”
Don’t come, she thought. Take your daughter… Go far away.
What could he have meant?
What bothered her most, though, was what the voice had said as Martin had been taking the phone.
The moon, Ann. Do you remember? asked the abraded voice. Look at the moon tonight.
«« — »»
Down the hill, trucks roared past along Route 154.
Erik hung up the pay phone.
“You make your precious phone call?” Duke asked when he came back to the station wagon. He was eating Twinkies.
“Yeah,” Erik grated, and closed the door.
Duke grinned, showing cream between his teeth. “You busted out of a psych ward just for that, huh? Just to make a call?”
“Not quite.”
“Who was it?”
“The past,” he said.
Duke chuckled.
Erik drove the station wagon out of the truck stop. Duke had bagged over a hundred dollars at the Qwik Stop. Since then, they had purchased a Norelco electric razor, some food, some different clothes, and hair dye.
She’ll come, Erik thought.
He hoped a cryptic warning might work, but somehow, now he knew it wouldn’t. Providence, they’d called it.
“Where to now, fairy?”
“Duke, please don’t call me that.”
Duke slapped Erik’s back. “I’m just joshin’, man. We’re buddies, right?”
“Yeah. Buddies.”
“Where to, buddy?”
Home, he thought. She’s going to come, and she’s going to bring her daughter.
“We’ll find some out of the way motel for tonight. We gotta change how we look and get some rest.”
“What then?”
“Tomorrow we’ll go to Lockwood.”
Duke guffawed. “Sounds good to me, fa—I mean, buddy. I got nothin’ on my agender.” He crammed another Twinkie in his mouth.
Home, Erik thought. Providence.
He drove the car down the route. He did not look at the moon.
—
Chapter 7
That night, Martin made love to her. Lately, he hadn’t been, sensing her skewed moods. Tonight, though, it had been Ann’s advance. She’d felt her juices flowing all day; she was geared up for Paris—they all were—and Ann supposed that she wanted to see how this prospect of change would affect her responses. She hadn’t had a normal orgasm in two months. She thought sure that tonight, given her different feelings, she could…
But, of course, she didn’t.
She knew just minutes after they started. Martin was very vigorous in his passion; he wanted to do anything she liked, anything that made her feel good. When foreplay failed to moisten her, he went down on her, yet the harder she tried to get into it, the more remote she felt. After an hour they were engaged in positions they’d never attempted. Poor Martin, he was trying so hard, and so was she. But how can he know? she thought, turned upside down over the edge of the bed. Thank God for the dark. What would Martin think if he could see her face squeezed closed in anguish? It was like pushing a refrigerator up a steep incline, the effort she exerted to keep the images of the dream out of her mind’s eye.
His penis felt cold in her. She didn’t even feel like herself. It’s more like watching Martin fuck someone else, she thought, despairing. Each thrust into her flesh jerked the nightmare’s face closer. She was starting to get sore. She put on her act, which she’d gotten quite good at recently, and then it was over. He spent himself in her and collapsed.
Fear and guilt. But of what? Dr. Harold’s implications were hard to put into decipherable terms. Everything was a matrix of symbols. The symbols were sexual. Having real sex with Martin—the man she loved—reminded her of sex as it should be. The fear and guilt in her psyche prolapsed that reminder, filling her subconscious with ideas of sex as it shouldn’t be. She was afraid of the nightmare because the nightmare attracted her in some way, aroused her, and being aroused by an aberration caused a negative response. Hence, no orgasm under normal circumstances. Her consciousness battled with her subconsciousness. A vicious cycle.
She felt guilty about the dream because the dream came from her. The dream disgusted her, yet it also fulfilled her. More guilt, more fear. The dream was destroying them all.
Yes. Thank God it’s dark.
She pushed her face in the pillows to dry her tears.
Eventually, Martin fell asleep. His semen trickled in her; it felt cold. None of this is his fault, yet even he’s becoming a victim.
Does he know? she dared to ask herself. It was a question she’d kept buried. Did he know that she faked her orgasms? Martin was very perceptive, often uncannily so. How long could their relationship last like that?
Then another dread drifted up: Melanie. Do I really doubt that she’s a virgin? Dr. Harold seemed to think so. The dream was of Melanie’s birth, and it was sexual. What was her subconscious trying to suggest in that? Ann had always left sexual issues to the board of education, which only highlighted her failures as a mother. Mothers were supposed to talk about such things with their daughters, weren’t they? Ann’s mother hadn’t, though, and again Dr. Harold came to mind. You’re afraid of becoming your mother, he’d said. A few times Martin had talked to Melanie about sex, considering the AIDS crisis and the world’s growing list of STDs. But never Ann. Ann was always “working.” Ann was “too busy.” It was fear, she knew, fear of acknowledging something that she didn’t want to acknowledge. She absolutely could not imagine her daughter in a sexual situation. The image distressed her, and the punky looking leather and Goth button clad creeps Melanie hung around with amplified the image to one of utter terror. It all made her mind feel jammed. Too much to deal with, she thought, and whined. Just like Harold’s other inferences. Lesbianism. Religious voids. Did Dr. Harold really think she had lesbian tendencies because the nightmare involved women touching her?
God, she thought.
The bedroom’s darkness seemed particulate, grain
y. It distilled her discomfort. Martin’s breathing sounded strangely loud, and her own heartbeat could’ve been someone kicking a wall. The room’s only light oozed similarly through the window, from the moon.
The moon, Ann, clicked the riven voice in her mind. Do you remember?
Remember what?
Look at the moon tonight.
Carefully, she got up. She walked naked to the blinds and peeked out. Boats rocked gently along endless docks. Moonlight rippled on the water. It seemed pink.
Her gaze rose. The moon hung low on the horizon. An egg moon, her mother would say—it was lopsided, not quite full.
Look at the moon tonight.
All right, I’m looking. It did look funny, its inordinate size and the queer pinkish hue. She’d been hearing about it on the news the last few days, some rare astronomical occurrence. The first day of spring was just days away; apparently, the moon’s position in conjunction with this caused an atmospheric anomaly that pinkened its light at certain times.
Big deal, she thought.
But the more steadily she stared…
It’s pink, she thought. It’s bloated.
Like her belly in the dream. Pink. Bloated.
But that was stupid. She was letting too much get to her. Everything reminded her of the dream. Her own belly felt bloated as she backed away from the window and padded to the bathroom.
She closed the door and turned on the lights. The mirror’s brightness shocked her, and the sharp clarity of her nakedness. She still looked good—for thirty seven. Her skin was tight, bereft of stretch marks. Could use some sun, though, she realized. When was the last time she’d actually lain out in the sun? Years. Her skin was very white, creamy, which contrasted intensely with her very dark brown eyes and ashen brown hair. Her nipples, too, were more brownish than pink, and large. She’d had little to compare herself to. There’d been occasions in college—phys ed electives—when she’d showered with other girls. Her body had always seemed more robust, her nipples larger and darker, her skin tighter and white. It pleased her to see how little her body had changed. At the firm there was a junior partner named Louise who was the same age as Ann. Once they’d shared a hotel room in Detroit during prelim litigation for an air wreck, and they’d changed together. Louise’s thighs looked like bags of cottage cheese. Her breasts depended, and her belly sagged. “I’ll loan you my best dress if you loan me your body,” she’d said with a sullen laugh.
Ann pinched her thighs. No signs of dreaded cellulite. She pinched her tummy and came up with almost nothing in the way of excess. Maybe it was her hair that made her look younger, too. It hung thick and plainly straight to her shoulders, the way she’d always worn it. The full plot of pubic hair, the same color as her hair, seemed to shine.
But suddenly, she felt adrift before the bright mirror. Mirror, she thought. The sensation of portent returned for no reason. Her nakedness. Her brown nipples and white skin. She closed her eyes and saw the spraddled, sweating body, the spread legs, the tight bloated belly pushing…
She thought of the emblem, the bizarre double circle engraved upon the dream’s chalice and suspended upon the wall.
When the phone rang in the bedroom, she nearly shrieked. For a moment she could only stand there staring at the vivid image of herself in the mirror, as the phone shrilled on. Not him again, she pleaded. Not the caller
Martin was answering it just as she opened the door. The bright bathroom light threw a block into the bedroom.
“It’s…it’s for you,” Martin said. Sleep roughened his voice. “It’s your mother.”
Ann sat down on the bed’s edge and took the phone.
“Mom?”
Her mother’s voice sounded curt, businesslike. It sounded…stoic. “Ann, there’s been a…”
“What, Mom?”
“Your father,” the voice hesitated.
Oh, no. Please, no, Ann’s thoughts dripped.
“Your father’s had a stroke. It’s bad. Dr. Heyd says he might not last the week.”
As the words sank in, Ann could only stare. Through the minute slats in the window blinds, she could see the pinkened, pregnant moon.
«« — »»
In another place, two girls sat side by side in the grove. They were young. They were naked and holding hands. Wistfully, they peered up into crystal black sky.
“Heofan,” one whispered.
“Give lof,” whispered the other.
They had. They could taste it in their mouths, salty sweet blood.
“The wifmunuc will be happy.”
“I’m happy too!”
The old pickup truck sat in darkness down the grove. So stupid the helots were. Like animals. The girls had only had to hang around the parking lot for a few minutes before they’d been approached. “Whatchoo two purdy thangs doin’ standin’ round here all by yerselfs?” the fat one had asked. “Our boyfriends left us,” one of the girls had replied. “Can you guys give us a ride home?” “Why, shore!” offered the tall one. “Cain’t have two purdy thangs like yawl hitchhikin’ these dark roads all by yerselfs.”
The two girls had grinned.
All four squeezed into the big bench seat. The tall one drove. He was nice looking, long black hair, nice boots, nice smile. He cranked up Led Zeppelin. The fat one looked…fat. Long hair too, sideburns, flannel shirt. He looked like a redneck Meat Loaf. “We alls from Crick City,” he said. “Where yawl from?”
“Lockwood,” answered the young dohtor.
“This here’s Gary, I’m Lee,” the fat one said.
Then Gary said, “Still a bit early, though. And Lee an’ me was fixin’ on partyin’ a little more.”
Lee’s chubby face grinned. “Yawl like ta join us awhile?”
“Sure,” said the younger.
“The night is young,” said the older.
They both grinned again in the darkness.
“We know a place we can go. Nice and quiet.”
“Just lead me the way, sweetheart,” Gary enthused, and cranked the Led Zep up a little more, “Houses of the Holy.” Lee cracked open beers for all of them, Iron City. “Best brew ya can buy, an’ only a buck ninety nine a six!”
It had been a glorious fulluht; the girls had learned well. The younger had reveled in the look on Lee’s face in the moonlight. She’d had to push his tremendous beer belly up to get on him right, though. It hadn’t been easy.
“We give lof,” said the younger.
“Through hüsl,” finished the older.
The younger drooled, straining over the fat one’s thrusting hips. The older was moaning, riding the tall one in the dirt. They were powerless now; the dohtors had taken them quick. They’d seeped into the peows’ gasts like balm. The tall one hadn’t even screamed when the elder dohtor sank the æsc into his heart. The younger one had plunged her own æsc delightfully in and out of the fat one’s belly in time with his fervid spurts. Blood flew, painting her. She shrieked in bliss as the big, dumb body twitched between her legs.
Sated, they rose and went to work. The blood on their young flesh looked black in the beautiful moonlight. They worked hard and happily.
The older dragged their bodies back into the truck as the younger siphoned gasoline into a paegel, which she then splashed into the cab.
They sat for a time first, they always did. They liked to stretch naked beneath the moon and dream of red heofan, of the godspellere, and the coming blissful nihtloc.
Later, they dressed and collected their things. The older carried the laden bags. “See ya ’round, Gary,” she said, laughing.
“Nice partyin’ with ya, Lee,” called the younger. She lit a pack of matches and tossed it into the cab.
The cab burst into beautiful flames, like a fek oven. Within the fire, the meat hissed and sizzled.
—
Chapter 8
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Ann, it’s not your fault.” Martin poured coffee for her in the kitchen. He drew the curtains
and let the morning sun beam in.
“I want you two to go. I’ll go home by myself.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “This is an emergency, and we’re a family. We’ll go together.”
“Melanie will be crushed,” Ann said.
“Ann, Melanie will understand. This is your father we’re talking about, and her grandfather.”
Sometimes Martin was too understanding. Ann knew he would do everything he could to help her, to make things work, in spite of the fact that her parents never really approved of him. “A poet?” her mother had objected. “Poets don’t make any money, Ann. Why do you insist on getting involved with these deadbeats?” Yes, Martin knew all about that, and still he would do everything he could to smooth things out.
“We’ll go to Paris next time,” he said.
Next time. When would that be? A year? Two?
Suddenly, she was crying.
Martin put his arm around her, stroked her hair.
“Every time something good happens, something bad happens,” she sobbed.
“It’ll be all right. There was nothing you could do.”
“He’s dying.”
“Ann, just because he had a stroke doesn’t mean he’s dying.”
“But the doctor said—”
“Come on, Ann, that old guy? He doesn’t know a stethoscope from a periscope. The best thing we could do is get your father out of that town and into a real hospital.”
It would never happen, Ann knew. Her parents believed in fate, not CAT scanners and ICUs.
“We better start getting ready,” Martin said.
As Ann rose, Melanie traipsed into the kitchen. “What time are we—” She stopped, looked at them, hesitated. “What’s wrong?”
Ann and Martin hesitated in return. Ann looked up at Martin in panic. The look said, Please tell her, Martin. I can’t. I just can’t.
Martin understood at once. “Melanie, we’re not going to be able to go to Paris this time,” he began. “Something bad happened yesterday…”
«« — »»
“Tharp’s escaped. Erik Tharp—remember him?”