by N. Godwin
“Will you stop?” I huff angrily as I slow down. “I’m sick and tired of everyone overhearing our conversations and getting the wrong idea.”
“Everyone, Helen?” he asks, “or just God?”
“Mock me all you want. I don’t care.”
He reaches out and captures my elbow with his hand. “I’m not mocking you, Helen. It doesn’t matter what I do or don’t believe. Your fear is real. I can smell it a mile away.”
“You don’t know squat!” I say yanking my arm free and avoiding his eyes because they piss me off! “I’m not afraid of anything.”
“Uh huh?” he says. “You’re not afraid you can’t trust yourself around me?”
“No.”
“So, you’re not afraid to be alone with me?”
“No!”
“Uh huh,” he laughs again as he stops running and checks his watch. “Hey everybody,” he yells behind us, “we just passed the mile marker, only three more to go.”
“Aw, crap!” Andrea gasps as she jogs by us. “I’m dying here! Tell me again why I need to get in shape?”
“Only one mile?” Genie groans. “This is bull! You owe me big-time, Jimmy-Sue!”
“Oh, I think its fun!” Mandy giggles as she sprints by in her yellow polka dot bikini and does a springy little doe jump as she coyly looks back at Hobie. She giggles again and sprints ahead.
“God,” Hobie pants following in Mandy’s footprints. “I love this jogging stuff!” he gushes never taking his eyes off Mandy’s butt. “Thanks, Jimmy-Sue!”
“Ah love,” Andrea emotes and begins to cough and hack. “It’ll be the death of us all.”
“Thank you,” Rawly gloats down over me. “You sure set me straight.”
“I’ll climb out the window at the first red light!”
“Try it,” Rawly says, smiling like the devil. “You’ve tried everything else.”
I do and the window is locked, too. “This is so stupid!” I shout. “It’s kidnapping!”
“And bribery. I paid Genie and Andrea a hundred bucks each to bail on you so we could be alone. Isn’t it fascinating how easily your friends let me corrupt them?”
“I don’t trust you. What are you up to?” I ask eyeing him suspiciously, “All this subterfuge to go swimming alone with me?”
He doesn’t answer just downshifts and I could swear out loud at my choice of swimsuits, or rather Andrea’s choice of my swimsuit! It might be a Speedo but it’s a Victoria’s Secret Speedo and shows far too much cheek in the back, and is way too revealing to be alone with this monster. Screwing with Rawly’s head in the company of others was one thing, this was altogether another. And my fool cover-up is almost transparent! I will just have to keep my back turned away from him this entire spooky evening! I realize uncovered ankles could be dangerous around him and I lay my face in my hands and sigh.
“I really do hate you,” I say softly, firmly.
“Maybe I don’t care?” He says looking straight ahead. We sit in intense silence for an uncomfortably long and indeterminate time until he speaks again. “I’ve decided it’s time you learned something… more; time you saw another piece to my puzzle. Tell me, Helen, do you think you can handle my honesty?”
“I doubt it,” I reply as a shiver runs down my spine.
“Why, Helen, what’s the matter? You’re looking at me as if I were Satan himself.”
“Please,” I gasp. “Please. Let me go home! I don’t like this. I don’t like you! Please!”
He adjusts his arm around my waist, scowling down over me. “Relax,” he says dragging me towards the dock. “You can trust me, remember? Or were you just teasing me? You like to tease me, don’t you, Helen? I’m your whipping boy.”
Rawly drags me down the dock and stops before an immense, motoring yacht, an ocean going vessel like I’ve seen a few times in the distance, far out in the gulf. It’s the kind of yacht you marveled over, wondering about the owners and what third world nation they pillaged? Written in bold letters across the stern of the yacht is the name Hubris.
He points a key fob at a set of elaborate sliding doors onboard and presses a code. I listen as a small rhythm flashes on the panel beside the doors and they begin to slide silently open. A moment later a gangplank lowers before us.
“What is this place?” I ask as he sweeps me up into his arms and carries me like a child up the gangplank.
“My home away,” he tells me as I struggle to get him to set me down.
“If you don’t put me down I’m going to scream!”
“I wouldn’t if I were you.” His threatening eyes glisten with candor.
“Please don’t do this. Let me go home!”
“Ssh, Helen,” he whispers as he steps us aboard the silent yacht, “be still.”
“This might interest you,’ Rawly says and taps a code on the screen. I watch as another monitor flashes on and yet another panel lights up. “This is an ECS tracker. See this blinking dot here? That’s us. Now watch this,” he says typing into the keyboard. “See this path? That’s where we’re going.”
“Where are we going?”
“You have to discover that for yourself, but the boat will be our captain now. Leaves my hands free to--”
“Why are you doing this?”
“I told you, Helen, it’s time you learn more.”
“More what?”
“Tsk tsk tsk, you’re not paying attention. I’ve already told you once.”
I notice the bright geometric patterns of the carpet as he leads me down a long hall, away from one opulent room towards the next. “You could go blind from this carpet,” I say. “It’s nauseating, nightmarish. I can see it move!” I gasp as he drags me in further and deeper.
“And this,” he says pushing open the heavy teak doors and propelling me inside, “is my stateroom, where I try to sleep, where I try to get your face out of my mind.”
I stop in my tracks and shield my eyes because the light is almost blinding in contrast to the other darker rooms we’d passed. I notice all the mirrors first, mirrors covering every inch of every wall, even on the ceiling. There is no other furniture in his room except his massive wooden bed sitting only two feet off the ground. It looks Asian and ancient and my head begins to spin because the room smells musky and clean like fresh linens, and grass, and cinnamon, and him.
I step back and turn around quickly and come face to face with Rawly. I can tell by the cruel smile taunting the corner of his mouth that he knows that I am afraid, very afraid, and I can tell he’s enjoying his advantage over me.
“No, Helen. Step inside,” he insists turning me back around and propelling me forward. “Explore, touch my things.”
“I don’t want to!”
“No? What a pity,” he says walking around me and sitting down on the bed in front of me. His eyes open wide with innuendo when he bounces on the mattress and it squeaks under his weight. “I like to hear what I’m doing,” he explains as I feel myself blushing from head to toe. “Come on, baby-girl, scratch my surface a little and you might find some clue to my psyche you find… illuminating.”
He reclines back as I stand in place and look around the room to avoid any eye contact. No matter where I look I can’t help staring at his reflection or mine.
“You certainly enjoy looking at yourself!” I scoff monitoring his expression in a reflection.
“I didn’t have the mirrors installed to look at me,” he says as he meets my eyes in the mirror.
His arrogance makes me laugh. “Oh yeah, you’re the big deviant, too. The man who’s had over—what was it, a hundred lovers?”
“Yes,” he smiles, “and they liked every inch of me.”
“Not as much as you like yourself!”
“I didn’t have the mirrors installed for them,” he says with a shrug. “No other woman has ever been here, not one.”
“I don’t care!”
“Keep looking, Helen. I want to show you everything.” He leans back on his elbows as h
e watches my every move. “Touch a mirror, see what happens.”
“Why can’t you go stalk another woman?” I shout. “One who likes you?”
“I can’t,” he whispers as he rolls over on his stomach and buries his face in his elegant tapestry cover. He lies still a moment then raises his head and looks up at me. His eyes hold mine brutally in place as he blinks slowly, deliberately. “It’s been months since I’ve been with any woman. I can’t even feign the interest any more, all I can think about is you; your scent, your smile, you’re--”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because, it’s time, baby-girl.” He says as he sits up and slowly begins to unlace his boots. His laughter echoes in the mirrors like thunder around me as I retreat out the door before his first boot hits the carpet.
As Rawly proudly regales me with the heritage of the red wine he’s slowly opening, I study his lair carefully. Inside, over to left of the “galley-not kitchen”, is his office surrounded by a lavish wooden bar and massive desk with an impressive and confounding display of high-tech gadgetry, computers, and what’s-it machines I don’t recognize, interspersed with handguns in all shapes and sizes, and assorted knives and what appears to be a hand grenade sitting beside a bottle of The Macallan 1926 whiskey and a half empty glass. The area next to the office is separated by an exceptionally long and curvy, red leather couch. Directly across from the immense masculine sofa is a futuristic cabinet system housing different artifacts in dim spot lights, and looks as if it belongs in a museum instead of in a living room on a boat, and I find this more than a little creepy. I look away from the odd artifacts and notice the magnificent oil paintings by various masters of haunting women who look oddly familiar littering the wall surrounding each artifact. I look away quickly because I find the contrast both startling and provoking.
Dead center of the art collection is the most amazing stereo system I’ve ever seen glowing silver and blue, and I can’t seem to help myself as I am drawn over to it. I let my fingers trail across its brilliant surfaces that hum beneath my fingertips almost magically as I listen to his carefully chosen music. I try not to absorb the provocative melody, just examine it and take heed as I glance beside the tall stereo and am forced to concentrate for a moment on one of the ancient artifacts. As I step in to study the face of the Asian warrior, the one licking his lips with crazed eyes who looks to be holding a sword and a spear, the lights brighten over it ever so slightly, and when I move nearer still, it lightens even more as if the figurine were magically calling me inside its perimeter. My heart is beating in my throat and my breath is heavy in my chest until I can barely breathe. I notice the closer I come to this ancient deity the heavier the air around it becomes until all I can smell are the different scents coming off the beast behind me.
I suddenly notice what the weapons are that the deity is fiercely holding in his fists; in his left hand is a huge, jagged sword and in the right hand he is holding his grotesque and gargantuan penis.
“Ew!”
In disgust I step back as quickly as I can, bumping into Rawly, who is waiting behind me with our glasses of wine outstretched in his hands. He expertly adjusts to my clumsy gesture of escape with perfect choreography and opens his arms to cradle me and avoid drenching me in wine as I momentarily back up into him, my back molding against his rock hard surface. He feels like a mountain, like he was made of granite and steel, except warm, very warm, and I immediately spin around to face him, then take a giant step back, and then another and nervously stare down at my feet, studying my sandals and peeling Blushing Pinky Pink toenail polish.
I can’t explain why I take the wine or why I even take a drink, a gulp in fact, while I force myself to look away and focus all my attention on the first thing I can find. My eyes lock on another eerily smiling deity in Rawly’s art collection. I take another sip of wine and go for it, taking a step closer to the artifact. The closer I get to this artifact the brighter the light above it shines and, for whatever reason, I feel like I am moving in slow motion. My feet seem to be made of lead weights, holding me back, reminding me of some elusive worst nightmare I refuse to pacify. To make certain one last time, because I am evidently a slow learner, I take one final step closer. As its lights twinkle, coaxing me on and weighing me down, I instinctively back away from the light and artifacts in this crazy room, and out of Rawly’s path and watch as he comes over and lightly taps the door to the stereo, which slides open for him.
I step beyond him and the sliding doors and walk outside on deck to the back of the yacht. As I take another sip of the cool, aromatic wine, I notice the long red tapestry couches and pillows running halfway down both sides of this deck. There is an elegant table for two set with flowers and china and hurricane candles. I listen as the starched white tablecloth ripples in the wind.
“This is a date!”
“Is it?” he asks studying his watch.
“Every time you look at your watch it means you’re up to something.”
He doesn’t answer me and I walk along letting my hand trail over the various textures on top of the table. He has carefully placed certain intimate objects around to tempt my curiosity; a large wooden album with a bold family crest in gold, a tiny, delicately wrapped present with an iridescent bow, a silver frame. In the frame is a picture of two beautiful people who look remarkably like Rawly.
“Your parents?”
“Yes.”
“Your mother’s very beautiful.”
“Yes. Very.”
“And young.”
“I was a honeymoon baby,” he shrugs. “Mother was quite young when Father absconded with her.”
“Absconded?”
“Oh yes, very scandalous; it’s a famous Hawkings story, and we have many,” he taunts with a raised eyebrow as he sips his wine and studies me. “Their’s is particularly romantic, very erotic. I always knew that about my parents, even as a child.”
“How can you even mention erotic and your parents in the same sentence?” I frown in distaste.
“Don’t you want to know how he did it, how he got her to marry him?”
“Did he kidnap her on a boat?”
“No,” he laughs softly.
“Then I don’t care.”
“What’s the matter, Helen? Don’t you believe history repeats itself over and over again? Like the Laws of Manu say, the universe is cyclic, undergoing decline, destruction, and recreation endlessly.”
“Are you close to your mother?” I clear my throat and ask trying to ignore his hypnotic words as I take another drink of his heady wine.
“How fascinating that you should ask,” he allows and sips his wine. “She’s not so unlike you. She’s magnificent, in fact. When I was a child I completely understood Oedipus. If my father so much as frowned at her I wanted to kill him,” he chuckles softly. “Mother’s made quite a name for herself in the legislature, fighting one bureaucratic entity or another for her migrant kids.”
“Your mother’s in the legislature?”
“You sound surprised.”
“What does your daddy think about that?”
“Ah, my father,” he sighs, “is a brilliant man. He supports anything that makes her happy, anything, provided that she always--” He pauses and takes a drink of his wine.
“Provided that she always what?”
“Provided that she always loves him, of course.”
“Uh huh,” I say transfixed. I have never heard anyone speak of his parents like this so I don’t believe anything he’s saying. “Do you speak to them often?”
“There was a time when I was too busy, too self absorbed, but lately—lately it’s one or two times.” He pauses, sips.
“A year?”
“A day.”
“You’re joking!”
He just leans back against the wall drinking his wine and watching my face as his music changes. This time the music is too powerful to ignore and I feel myself being pulled deeper and deeper into its mysterio
us language. It’s an opera, I think, one I don’t recognize but it’s lovely and sad and terribly lonely.
For some reason I feel something falling down my cheek. I wipe a tear from my eye and study my fingers curiously. I remember Rawly and glance over at him. He is studying me with an odd expression. His eyes are relentless, probing.
“Something’s in my eye,” I offer, unable to stop the spell this music is weaving around me. “It’s this music,” I whisper. “It’s so sad. What is it?”
“A very complicated Italian opera.” He keeps his eyes glued on my face as he casually sips his wine. “You’ve never heard it?”
“No.”
“And, yet it’s the very same song you sang for me that night on your birthday.”
“Oh.”
“Curious isn’t it? Being able to sing a song you’ve never heard so perfectly in a language you don’t speak. Why do you suppose you can do that?”
“I never suppose.” I close my eyes and listen to the music. “She’s good,” I say and take another drink.
“Trust me, Helen, you’re much better. When you sang it sounded as if heaven’s gate opened for just a moment and we got to hear the voice of God’s favorite angel.”
“I’m hardly an angel.”
“I know,’ he says and winks. “But you do have incredible talent.”
“It’s not mine.”
“Tell me what you mean.”
“I can’t…control it. I don’t know where it comes from. I don’t even know if it’s good or if it’s evil.”
“And yet I could call it forward. You followed my every command. Why do you suppose that is?”
“I have absolutely no idea! Can we change the subject now?”
“Oh, you have plenty of ideas, Helen. You just choose to ignore them,” he says as his eyes nail me and I feel my knees buckle slightly.
“I choose to ignore lots of scary things, Commander,” I say as I reach for the wall to steady myself. “I have to ignore them. I have to! Or else I couldn’t move forward, can’t you see?”
I tune Rawly out, tune him out completely and look heavenward at the stars. “If I listen to him I’m doomed, right? And yet You keep telling me to be still and listen. Why? What do I need to hear?” I ask the moon earnestly.