Burning Time

by Glass, Leslie

  “I’m looking for Ellen Roane,” she said.

  “Well, you won’t find her here,” the guard said. He was Hispanic, not very friendly.

  “How about Connie Shagan?” April said. Connie Shagan, the Roanes had told her, was Ellen’s roommate.

  “Won’t find her either. Or any of them.”

  “Is there a teacher, uh, a professor, who lives here I could talk to?” She hadn’t wanted to, but now she flashed her shield.

  The guard looked at it and shrugged. “There’s still nobody here. It’s spring break.”

  April Woo cursed herself five hundred times as she walked back to where she left the car. See what happens when you leave out one tiny question. One detail that changes the whole story. The parents didn’t bother to tell her everybody disappeared. All the students, and even the professors disappeared. And she didn’t think to ask. It wasn’t very smart.

  She would talk to the parents in the morning when they came in with the girl’s picture and ask them if they really wanted to put their daughter in the system when she was probably skiing in Vermont. With the Barstollers, who had a Chinese maid. She smiled at the thought, as she took the car back.

  8

  Troland Grebs was up all night with bad dreams again. Monkeys were beating each other. A bull in the garden was goring somebody. He was in a cold sweat, only half drunk from a long evening of drinking. He couldn’t stop thinking about that girl in the movie. First time he saw it, he had to walk out.

  At three he gave up trying to sleep and went outside for a walk. The smells of the ocean off Pacific Beach, the palm and orange trees, the smooth green grass of front lawns soothed him. He walked around, circling his neighborhood many times. Just as the light was graying and before the sun rose, he was back in his one bedroom apartment, sitting on the tiny terrace on the third floor waiting for the jogger to come by.

  For months he had been waking up early to sit up there and watch her. She lived on the third floor, too, on the other side of the garden. He had heard people call her Jane, but he had never spoken to her. She kept her shades drawn. He never saw her undressed except this way, in the bicycle shorts and two tops. One stretchy thing made of a few straps over a similar thing with more straps in different places. Crisscrossed and so tight Troland wondered every day how she got them off. He knew how he would get them off. From the terrace he watched her dispassionately.

  She came out of the door and stretched. He could see her raise her arms and breathe. She started jogging in place, looking up at the sky. She plugged her Walkman into her ears. She never saw him, never looked in his direction. She took off at a moderate pace and disappeared into the street. After she was gone, he went in to shower, then dressed carefully and went to work at the plant just north of Lindbergh Field.

  He wasn’t talking much any more. He sat at his drafting table for hours every day, working on the intricate details of jet engine modifications, sunk deep in his own thoughts. Ever since the Persian Gulf War he’d been moving closer and closer to the insides of the cruise missiles he’d worked on all the years they hadn’t been needed, and no one believed would work. Now everybody knew that they could seek out and destroy. He felt his mark was on every hit in Iraq. It made him feel powerful. He had started seeking out and destroying, had gone back to where his own power used to be.

  What the soldiers did in Kuwait got him thinking about things he hadn’t wanted to do for years. But they just raped. He liked adding his mark afterwards. Long ago he got in trouble doing it to whores in Mexico, and had to stop. He had put the urge away in a drawer, along with the colored pencils and the old drawings. He had been good a long time, and then the war came. His very own missiles started killing people, started talking to him like they knew him. And he found out he could get away with it now. But right now he felt bad, and was pretty sure the movie had put a curse on him. But he wasn’t sure exactly why.

  At work he started thinking about it again. It was so boring. At first it was just people talking about sex and their “feelings.” It was so bad he almost walked out. But then the girl suddenly was naked, and he decided to stay.

  All at once he felt a flicker of something unpleasant about her. Then that was quickly overridden by the excitement he had thinking that the other actor resembled, and might in fact be, him. He was aroused. He folded his leather jacket across his lap.

  The guy in the film was fucking the girl with his leather jacket on and nothing else. This was also like him and turned him on. He looked quickly around, then burrowed his hand under his jacket. The bulge was enormous, too large for his pants. He rubbed back and forth with the palm of his hand. Except for the woman’s nudity and the man in the leather jacket, this was not very exciting sex. He switched his thoughts to the jogger who never had a name when he imagined fucking her.

  He called her the jogger and thought about grabbing her before she got to the street. Just taking her by the arm. He unzipped his pants and untangled his dick. The softness of his skin around the hard core always surprised him. It was a tool, a defier of gravity like the cruise missile. It could seek and destroy. He thought of shoving it into the jogger and watching that stuck-up, satisfied face fill with fear. He liked the idea of scaring her—no, filling her with fear so big there was nothing left of her but cunt and pure terror.

  The fuss they made in the paper all the time made him mad. Don’t make such a big deal of it! Real men always did it, always would. Rape wasn’t so bad. It was a natural thing, happened every day. Soldiers did it. He touched himself, thinking of the Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait. Things they did to the girls with their fathers watching. Shot the brothers in the street. No mercy. In the ass and everything. Probably did it with their clothes on, too. Grabbed women in their own houses and slammed them against the wall. Even made the children watch. Well, he’d seen his father do it.

  He stared at the screen, but didn’t see it. It was natural to conquer. He thought of pushing the jogger to the ground, getting on top of her and shoving his dick into her, of making her kneel in front of him and suck him off. Put her lips around him hard, and move her tongue just right.

  You could kill someone that way. Shove too hard and just keep going down their throat. It was good to force his way into places he wasn’t wanted. They were just cunts. Places to put sperm. They had no right to get their noses out of joint. Drops of semen oozed out onto his hand, lubricating his dick. It felt good.

  The Kama-sutra advised murdering the husband, father, brothers—anybody attached to a woman who resisted a man she didn’t want. That’s what the famous book said: When every attempt to get her failed, they had the right to kill her protectors and then rape her. Take her off and do whatever they wanted with her. The pressure intensified.

  He didn’t know why he thought of the Kama-sutra now. It was a book he read years ago. He used to masturbate while studying the chapters on the special marks you could make biting and scratching and slapping. Scraping the skin and biting so hard the skin broke or went black and blue. In India, no one was ashamed of walking around with bite or scratch marks. They were considered signs of mastery. It was only the West that was behind.

  The scene changed. Troland’s eyes flickered. They had their clothes on again, were talking. There was something familiar about the girl on the screen. Now she was walking down the street with her back to the camera. It was a familiar walk. It irritated him that the actress seemed to be someone he knew. He couldn’t be interested if he thought he knew her. His dick became soft in his hand. Who was it?

  It was impossible that he knew her. He couldn’t know her. The film was somewhere else, in a city. Looked like New York. He’d been there once. It wasn’t here. Was it a bimbo he knew from the beach? No, he didn’t know anybody who looked like that. Her skin was really white. He tried to relax. There was no way he could know her. But he couldn’t get excited again. He began feeling bad. What was the matter with this stupid movie? It wasn’t even right. He felt angry.

  It was some
body he knew. Couldn’t be. He looked around. The few people who were here were now looking bored. People who came to movies like this didn’t want to see talking and walking. His hand was sticky. He had gotten dirty and was no longer excited. He began to feel irritated and angry. Something was making him feel powerfully uneasy. But what?

  Somebody got up and left. That was the right idea. He shook his head, unnerved. That girl. That hair. The voice, now that he listened to it. How could it be? Under the leather jacket he put his limp dick back in his pants. Small and pitiful as a sparrow. Zipped up and went out into the California night. He couldn’t forget it.

  He left the plant at five-thirty. It was still blisteringly hot in San Diego, even though the sun had begun its descent into the ocean. He rode over to the beach to watch the simmering red disc go down. He often went there after work. It cooled the panic. He liked to stand there for an hour or so, leaning against his Harley, with his leather jacket strapped over a six-pack of beer on the back. He knew from the way the girls studied him from the sides of their eyes that he still looked good having a couple of beers and watching them on the sand in their thong bathing suits. He hated them all.

  He couldn’t believe it was her. Emma wouldn’t do that. She just wouldn’t. She was good. She wouldn’t do that. He thought he was wrong and just saw a resemblance. He wandered around thinking about it, how much he liked her, more than liked her. He hadn’t ever really liked anybody that way since. He remembered how perfect she was, really smart and nice. He had watched her carefully that whole year and knew she wasn’t just empty nice. She was really nice. Like all the way through. He knew she didn’t do anything bad like the rest of them. Wasn’t a liar. He loved her and saved her so she could go away to college. How could she betray him and turn out to be a whore?

  “You’ve been by here twenty times. You want to buy a ticket?”

  Troland turned around abruptly. “What?” He was back at the theater, didn’t know how he had gotten there, and was pacing back and forth in front of it without realizing what he was doing.

  “You all right?” The kid behind the window frowned.

  “What’re you looking at?” Troland snapped. He had a motorcycle chain over his shoulder.

  The boy behind the window held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Hey, what are you so ticked off about? Film doesn’t start for a half an hour, but it’s not full. You can go in any time.”

  Troland looked through him. “I’ll wait for the beginning,” he said furiously. The guy was crazy. He wasn’t ticked off.

  “Suit yourself.” He tried again when Troland didn’t move away. “You want to buy your ticket now?”

  “You deaf or something? I said I’d wait for the beginning.” Troland looked at the teenager. His hair was combed straight back. He was wearing a white polo shirt and looked puzzled. Troland shot him between his puzzled eyes and watched him slump forward in his chair. No, better to stab him in the chest. Yes, that was better. The heart kept going for a while pumping the blood out so it drenched the white shirt and splattered the walls and counter. He walked away. He wasn’t mad.

  He thought about it as the movie started. Maybe he was mad. Yeah, he felt a cold rage. Really cold. He sat by himself way at the back. It was in his stomach like a big rock he couldn’t digest. Cold and then hot.

  Fuck you. How could anyone act in a movie like this? How could she? He watched it more intensely this time. It was her. Now it was more her. And more shocking, the guy was him. How could he do that to her?

  He was appalled by the look on her face. She liked it. He hated her. Why was she letting him do that? This was no movie. She was really letting him do that. Him, Troland Grebs. That was him. He was confused. But they were in New York, and he was here in San Diego. He was aroused again, just as he had been the day before. No, he wouldn’t give in to it.

  He looked at the people in front of him. No one could see him. He was in the back, the leather jacket on his lap. He was fascinated. He couldn’t look away from the screen. His dick was in his hand, both hands now. It disgusted him that she was doing that. How could she do that? The guy was sucking her off. It was gross. It was tremendous. Maybe he was biting her. But he couldn’t be hurting her. She wasn’t screaming. Too bad. She deserved it. He rubbed up and down on his soft moist skin. It wouldn’t be bad to shove it in there. The screen went blank.

  Shit. What was going on now? What was that sound? It was a sound he knew. What was it? The screen was white for a long time. The tension grew and then he saw it was a silvery tattoo needle. When it touched the guy who looked like him, he came in his pants.

  As soon as it was over, the thrill was instantly replaced by a feeling of intense shame. He had befouled himself. His pants were sticky and wet. What a horrible thing he did. For some minutes he scolded himself for losing control. Then he pulled his shirt out of his pants to hide the stain, and thought again. Wait a minute. This wasn’t his fault. He had nothing to do with this. He didn’t turn an angel into a whore. He didn’t make the movie. He didn’t have anything to feel bad about. She did it. She was the one who did this to him. She should be punished. She would be punished.

  He sat there for a long time waiting for his heart to slow down. When the lights came on, he got up. His rage was enormous. Why did she do this to him? He walked out holding the jacket in front of him. The fingers of one hand unconsciously caressed the tattoo on his arm, then moved to the many scars crisscrossing his chest where his father had taught him what fire felt like.

  I’ll teach you not to set fires. I’ll show you what you get for being bad. He held him down and burned Troland with a red-hot wire hanger so he could never take his shirt off in public again.

  He hated the wet feeling in his pants, needed a drink. He unchained the bike and headed home.

  9

  “Do you know who this is?”

  Ronnie, Emma’s agent of many years, leaned over excitedly as she pointed to the name on the cover of a script she had brought for Emma to read.

  They were having breakfast at The New York Deli just around the corner from Ronnie’s office on Fifty-sixth Street and Sixth Avenue.

  It was a big name. Emma took another bite of her eggs Benedict and grimaced. “Of course I do.”

  “Well, this is it. This is how it happens. You do a nothing film, don’t have any expectations for it, somebody somewhere likes it. And suddenly you’re a star. I’ve seen it a million times.” Ronnie sighed. “It’s just never happened to me.”

  Then she reached across the table and slapped Emma’s hand. “Are you crazy? We can’t eat that,” she said as if she had just noticed it.

  Emma looked at the Canadian bacon smothered with Hollandaise sauce on her plate. “Why not?”

  “It’s four-hundred-percent fat.” Ronnie raked a hand through her blunt-cut red hair. The hair curled around her ears for a second and then fell back in its perfect circle around her plump face.

  Ronnie was a compulsive eater. She wrinkled her freckled nose at Emma’s plate with disgust and longing.

  Emma shook her head. Ronnie used to refer to her as You. You do this job or that job. Now when she talked about Emma it was We or I. “We’ll think about this,” or “I don’t want to do that.”

  “We have to be more careful,” she said now. “You can’t just eat anything you want. You can’t just do anything you want. We have to think about what it means for our career.”

  “It’s not our career. It’s my career,” Emma replied with a smile.

  The pink blush lavishly applied to Ronnie’s cheeks stood out strongly against her pale skin, as she blanched.

  “I just don’t want you getting fat,” she said defensively. “I wasn’t being pushy.”

  Emma let out a small laugh. Ronnie was extraordinarily pushy. But it never helped her, and her pushiness hadn’t helped Mark, Emma’s college friend and the writer/director/producer of Serpent’s Teeth, either.

  Ronnie hadn’t liked the modest project, and refuse
d to make a single call to help it. She had nothing to do with the film and now she was claiming she was instrumental in putting the whole thing together.

  “It grows in the night without your consent,” Ronnie said about the fat. “Look at me. I don’t eat a thing. Not a thing. I have one tiny lamb chop at night with all the fat cut off, and a lettuce leaf. I don’t know why I’m so fat.” She heaved a great sigh.

  “I’d be a pretty girl if I wasn’t so big, wouldn’t I?” She gave Emma a searching look. Emma knew that although Ronnie was deeply involved with her fat, that was not what was on her mind right then. She was really very worried that Emma would leave her.

  “You are a pretty girl,” Emma said.

  She turned her head and caught sight of a couple at a table across the room. They were caressing fingers while talking and looking deep in each other’s eyes. Unexpectedly, grief gnawed at her, filling her again with the overwhelming feeling of desolation that had slowly been taking her over for a long time.

  “We can’t eat fat. We can’t eat sugar,” Ronnie was babbling. “You’re not going to leave me, are you?” she demanded suddenly.

  Emma stared at the lovers. She couldn’t remember the last time Jason had looked at her like that.

  “What did you imagine happening after you did this film?” he had asked again last night.

  Her reply didn’t satisfy him. “It was a low-budget thing.” She had shrugged. Big deal. “Kind of a lark. We had no idea anyone would pick it up.”

  “Some lark.” He was like a stone wall. There was no getting through it.

  “Oh, come on, Jason, is it so bad that people will see my work instead of just hearing me?”

  For the last few years, Emma had been a voice on both TV and radio. She had acted in several of Mark’s plays, but got no important work on the stage and no parts at all on TV or in the films.