Reprisal

by Wilson, F. Paul

  “Sounds like another variation on the Eloi and Morlocks,” someone said. “Creators on top, Consumers below.”

  “Not so,” said Rafe. “That implies that the Consumer masses are slaves to the Creator overlords, but it doesn’t work that way. The Creators are in fact the slaves of the masses, providing them with all the benefits of art and modern science. The Wellsian cliché of the Eloi elite owing their comfortable lifestyle to the labor of the Morlock masses is backwards. The Consumer masses owe their health, their full bellies, and the comforts of civilization to the efforts of the small percentage of Creators among them.”

  “I’m confused,” someone said.

  Rafe smiled. “It’s not a simple concept. Nor is it a clear-cut division. The dividing line is nothing so obvious as economic status. Creators have often reaped fame and profits from their work, but throughout history there have been countless Creators who’ve lived out their entire lives in obscurity and abject poverty. Look at Poe, at Van Gogh; think of the mathematicians and physicists whose work Einstein studied in laying the groundwork that led to his theory of relativity. What are their names?”

  No one answered. Lisl glanced around the table. All eyes were fixed on Rafe, everyone mesmerized by his voice.

  “And far too many of the wealthiest among us are nothing more than overfed Consumers. Those who have merely inherited their wealth are the most obvious examples. But there are others who’ve supposedly ‘earned’ it who are just as useless. Take the Wall Street types—the stockbrokers and arbitrageurs: They spend their lives buying and selling interests in currencies or in concerns that actually produce things, they pocket their commissions, they cash in on the spread, but they produce nothing themselves. Nothing at all.”

  “Nothing but money!” Pelham said, evoking a few muted laughs.

  “Exactly!” Rafe said. “Nothing but money. A whole life of six, seven, eight decades, and what besides a big bank account have they left behind? After their assets are gobbled up by their greedy little Consumer heirs, what mark have they left in their wake? What evidence is there to indicate that they ever passed this way?”

  “Not much, I fear,” said a middle-aged woman with red hair. Lisl knew she was in the Philosophy department but couldn’t remember her name. “If I may quote Camus: ‘I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: He fornicated and read the papers.’”

  “And if I may paraphrase Priscilla Mullins,” said Rafe. “‘Speak for yourself, Albert.’”

  Amid the laughter, Pelham said, “Are you serious, or are you just trying to rattle the cage as you did with your sound-as-a-detriment-to-filmmaking theory?”

  “I’m quite serious about both.”

  Pelham stared at him, as if waiting for Rafe to smile and laugh it all off as a joke. Lisl had a feeling he might have a long wait.

  “Okay,” Pelham said finally. “If all this is true, why haven’t these Creators taken over the world?”

  “Because they don’t know who they are. And because too many of them have learned over the years not to reveal themselves.”

  “Why on earth not?” Lisl said.

  Rafe’s eyes poured into hers.

  “Because they’ve already been crippled or damaged by the masses of Consumers who try to destroy any trace of greatness in others, who do anything they can to douse the faintest spark of originality, no matter where they find it. Even in their own children.”

  Lisl felt as if a bell were chiming in a remote corner of her past, toning in resonance to Rafe’s words. It made her uncomfortable.

  “I’ve consumed too many drinks to create a cogent rebuttal,” said someone at the far end of the table. He turned to his date. “Want to dance?”

  They headed for the postage-stamp dance floor and began to sway to a slow tune on the jukebox. A few others followed; those who didn’t said good night and departed, leaving Lisl and Rafe alone at the table.

  Lisl glanced around the dimly lit tavern, at its college memorabilia-strewn walls, at the dancers on the floor. When she turned back to Rafe she found him staring at her over the rim of his glass. His eyes glistened in the neon light. The scrutiny made her uncomfortable.

  “Care to dance?”

  Lisl hesitated an instant. She had never been much of a dancer—had always thought of herself as clumsy—and had never had many opportunities to learn. But the two and a half glasses of wine in her system had lulled her inhibitions and she was too surprised to say no.

  “I, uh … sure.”

  He led her from the table, took her in his arms, pressed himself against her, and led her expertly around the tiny floor. They moved as one. Light presses and pulls from his left hand on her right, or from his right hand against the small of her back told her precisely which way to move. For the first time in her life she felt graceful.

  “Where did you learn to dance like this, Rafe? I thought it was a lost art.”

  He shrugged. “My folks made me take ballroom dancing when I was a kid. I found it came easily. I was the best in the class.”

  “How did you do in your modesty lessons?”

  He laughed. “Flunked every time.”

  As she grew used to the sensation of gliding around the floor, she became aware of another: Rafe’s body against hers.

  Deep within her, old emotions stirred. At first she wasn’t sure what she was feeling. So long since she’d felt much of anything. After the number Brian had done on her in the final days of their marriage, and the nastiness of the divorce, she had simply turned off. She’d wanted nothing to do with another man, and women didn’t interest her that way in the least, so she’d gone into a sort of sexual coma.

  What was happening now? Was that what she was feeling? Was she waking up?

  She couldn’t deny how good it felt simply to have someone hold her. The emotions stirring in her, churning to life after years of dormancy, surprised her. Human contact. She had forgotten what it was like. She had thought she no longer needed it.

  Maybe she was wrong.

  She pushed the thought away but stayed close to Rafe. The contact was too enjoyable. He was holding her tight against him. She became aware of the sensation of her breasts rubbing against his chest; their two bodies seemed joined at the pelvis.

  Warm. Very warm where they met. And the warmth was spreading. She found her body pressing itself more firmly against his, as if it had a mind of its own. Well, not a mind, perhaps, but most definitely an agenda.

  It wanted him.

  Rafe leaned back from Lisl and looked at her.

  “Let’s go to my place,” he whispered.

  Her mouth was dry. “Why your place?”

  “It’s closer.”

  The logic of that simple statement struck her as utterly flawless.

  2

  It wasn’t far from the tavern to Parkview, the upscale development where Rafe owned a condo. They walked quickly, in silence. Lisl was afraid to speak, afraid it would shatter the mood and taint the delicious excitement coursing through her. The last thing she wanted or needed now was to stop and think about this. No common sense, no cold hard facts, no prudence, no worries, no doubts or second guesses. None of that. The excitement was too wonderful. So long since she had felt anything like this. Like a teenager. She didn’t want to let it go. And she wouldn’t. She’d flow with it, let it take her where it was going, do something impulsive for once in her life.

  But she had to hurry before she changed her mind.

  The brisk walking pace graduated into a jog, which evolved into a gallop. When they reached the door to Rafe’s condo, they were both breathing hard, perhaps not wholly from the exertion. Lisl leaned against the railing while he fumbled with his keys. When the door opened they ducked inside, slammed it shut, and then they were in each other’s arms. Rafe’s lips found hers. Lisl’s arms went around him as his fingers slipped lightly up the sides of her face and ran through her hair, down to her shoulders, coming to rest
at the top button of her blouse. He unbuttoned it and moved to the second.

  Lisl experienced an instant of panic. Too fast! This is happening too fast! Then his tongue probed hers and her apprehensions melted away.

  When he had her blouse open, he slipped it off her shoulders, then reached around and unfastened her bra. As that fell away, he pulled his lips from hers and ran them down her neck to her breasts, his silky mustache tickling her along the way. She groaned and leaned back against the door as his tongue found a nipple.

  “Oh, God, that feels good.”

  Rafe said nothing. His hands never stopped moving. While his lips and tongue pleasured her breasts, his fingers caressed her back, her abdomen, and then they were working on her belt, the buttons to her slacks, pulling them open, pushing them and her panties down until they sank to her ankles.

  And then Rafe too began to sink. He drew his tongue between her breasts, down her abdomen to her navel, circled it, then continued downward. His lips slid into her hair down there, his tongue probed toward the swelling heart of all her sensation but didn’t reach it. Lisl spread her legs. She felt wanton, she felt wonderful. She entwined her fingers in the silky black waves atop his head and pushed his face more tightly against her. So close now … he had to reach it. Rafe gripped her right leg behind the thigh and lifted it so that it rested on his left shoulder. It felt fat and heavy there. She was glad the lights were out, she wished she were slimmer, she wished—

  “Ahhh!”

  He’d found it! Bolts of white hot pleasure shot down her legs and up through the rest of her body. She shuddered with delight, not wanting it to stop, not wanting it ever to stop.

  Too fast! she thought again as her breath hissed in and out through her teeth at a steadily increasing rate. It’s going way too fast!

  But the night was only beginning.

  THE BOY

  at five years

  “You’ve been neglecting my money,” Jimmy said at breakfast one day.

  “Your money?” Carol said. “I didn’t know you had any.”

  She and Jimmy had reached a sort of equilibrium. She had grown used to his almost unearthly precocity and adapted to it. Adapted as well as one could to a forty-inch child whose brain seemed to hold the accumulated wisdom of the ages. Five years of daily life with him had closed off areas of feeling; and questions she’d asked had gone unanswered so long her mind had stopped asking them. He was imperious, intolerant, inconsiderate, insufferable at times, but he could be charming when he wished. There were times when she almost liked him.

  “The inheritance. The eight million dollars worth of assets my father inherited from Doctor Hanley.”

  “So Jim’s ‘my father’ now, is he? I thought he was ‘merely the vessel.’”

  “I do carry his genes. However, the fact remains that my birthright has been lying around, moldering, static, when it could have been growing all these years. I want you to rectify that immediately.”

  “Oh, you do, do you?”

  He was in his insufferable mode but Carol found him amusing nonetheless. Despite everything, he was still her son. And Jim’s.

  “I want you to go back to New York and start converting everything—the mansion, everything—to cash. I will then advise you on how it shall be invested.”

  Carol smiled. “How good of you. The Bernard Baruch of Sesame Street.”

  His dark eyes blazed. “Do not make fun of me. I know what I’m doing.”

  Carol realized her remark had been gratuitous. But understandable in light of their ongoing battle of wills.

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “One thing, though,” he said, his voice soft, almost hesitant. “When you get to New York—”

  “I didn’t say I was going.”

  “But you will. It’s your money too.”

  “I know. But we can’t spend the interest we get on the bonds and CDs we already have. Why fool with it?”

  He favored her with one of his rare smiles. “Because it will amuse me to see how fast I can multiply it.” Then the smile faded. “But when you get to New York … be careful.”

  “Of course I’ll—”

  “No. I mean, be wary. Beware of anyone who asks about your child. Tell them you miscarried. No one must know I exist, especially…”

  Something in Jimmy’s eyes … something Carol had never seen before.

  “Especially who?”

  Jimmy’s tone was grave. “Be alert for a man in his mid-thirties with red hair.”

  “I’m sure there’ll be a fair number of those in Manhattan.”

  “Not like this one. His skin will have an olive cast and his eyes will be blue. There is only one like him. He will be looking for me. If such a man approaches you, or tries to speak to you, or even if you merely see someone like him, call me immediately.”

  Carol realized that Jimmy was afraid.

  “Call you? Why? What will you do?”

  He turned and stared out the window.

  “Hide.”

  NOVEMBER

  SIX

  North Carolina

  1

  Lisl glanced at her desk clock as she finished grading the last calculus test. Noon. Perfect timing. She was starved. She pulled on her jacket, picked up her cushion, and stepped out into the hall.

  Al Torres, a tenured associate, was passing by, shrugging into a light sport coat as he headed for the stairs.

  “Going to the caf, Leese?”

  “Brown-bagging it today, Al.”

  “Again?”

  “The diet. Can’t make it work if I go to the grease pit.”

  He laughed. “You’re really sticking to this one. And it’s working. Good girl!”

  Lisl was tempted to call him on that “good girl” business—she was thirty-two, for God’s sake—but knew his heart was in the right place. He had two young daughters and probably used the phrase a lot.

  She pulled her lunch bag from the department’s ancient refrigerator and looked inside: Four ounces of cottage cheese mixed with pineapple chunks, two carrots, two celery stalks, and a diet Dr Pepper. She stuck out her tongue.

  Yummy-yummy! I can hardly wait.

  But it was working. With a three-mile jog every morning and a strict diet the rest of the day, she’d dropped fifteen pounds in just six weeks. She was feeling more fit now than at any time in her life.

  She headed for the elm tree. Will had beat her to it, sitting on the newly fallen leaves, unwrapping a huge sandwich. Her mouth watered at the sight of the inch-high stack of corned beef between the thick slices of rye.

  “You buy those things just to torture me, don’t you?”

  “No. I buy them to torture myself. You southerners don’t have the faintest idea of the proper curing of corned beef. This thing may look good, but taste-wise it’s a pallid reflection of the kind of sandwich people eat every day in New York. What I wouldn’t give for a hot pastrami from the Carnegie Deli.”

  “So go back and get one.”

  Will looked away for a moment. “Some day I just might.”

  “You sound like a born-and-bred New Yorker. I thought you grew up in Vermont.”

  “I lived all over the Northeast before moving south.” He suddenly leaned forward and stared between her breasts. “A new necklace?”

  Don’t think I don’t know when you’re changing the subject away from your past, she thought as she smiled and lifted the shell hanging from the fine gold chain.

  “Yes and no. The chain’s been in my jewelry box for years and I’ve had the shell forever. I just decided one day to put them together.”

  “What’s the shell? It’s a beauty.”

  “It’s called a cowry. The South Seas natives use them for money.”

  This was her Rafe shell. A few weeks ago she’d dug into her shoebox and pulled it out. A glossy cowry with an intricate speckled pattern on its back. Beautiful—just like Rafe. She’d had a jeweler drill a hole and, voilà, she had a necklace. Only Lisl knew who it represente
d.

  A moment later, Will was staring again, this time at the impoverished contents of her lunch bag as she laid them out on a paper napkin.

  “Still hanging in with that diet, I see.”

  “Hanging is right—by my fingernails. Six weeks of gerbil food. I just love it. I jump out of bed every morning looking forward to the myriad gustatory delights that await me.”

  “You’re getting results. I mean I can really see the difference. Maybe you’ve lost enough to merit a treat once in a while.”

  “Not till I’ve reached my target weight.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “One-thirty. Fifteen pounds to go.”

  Whoops. She just gave her weight away. Not that it would matter with Will. She had a feeling that he was something of a sphinx when he wasn’t with her. But it was not a number she wanted to slip out too often.

  “I think you’re fine the way you are now.”

  “So do the actuarial tables. According to them, a five-five, medium frame female like me should weigh one-forty stripped, and I’m close. Maybe that’s optimal for maximum life span, but it’s not right for the clothes I want to wear.”

  “You still look fine to me.”

  “Thanks.” But she knew her looks didn’t really matter to Will. “I’ll tell you one thing, though. Besides freeing me of some excess baggage, all this dieting has given me some real empathy for those people with lifelong weight problems. I can’t imagine fighting the pounds year in and year out. It’s so depressing!”

  Will shrugged and took another bite of his sandwich.

  “Just self-discipline,” he said around the mouthful. He swallowed. “You set yourself a goal and you go after it. Along the way you make choices. The choices you make are determined by what you value more. In the dieter’s case it comes down to choosing between a full belly or a trim figure.”

  Strange. He sounded almost like Rafe.

  “It’s not that easy, Will. Especially not when there are people around—like you, for instance—who seem to be able to manage both a full belly and a trim figure. When have you ever had to make a sacrifice hour by hour, day by day, week after week, month after month?”