Carol ignored the warning, turned back to the wailing man. He lunged toward her, steadier than she would have thought possible, given his wrecked state.
“Easy, man.” Nick had her by the arm, was pulling her away. “Easy now, dude, no harm meant.”
The man grunted, muttered, “Fuck off,” stepped back until he was leaning against a Dumpster.
Nick led her farther along, past two young women shooting up. He held both her arms and positioned her against a wet brick wall. She noticed that she wasn’t worried about the cold and damp seeping through her jacket and blouse onto her skin. He lifted her skirt, pulled down her panties, unzipped himself, and pushed in, all this before Carol had fully registered what was happening. She said, “No, Nick, not here,” but her words seemed to come from a distance, and it felt good, and she stopped resisting.
Over Nick’s shoulder, she saw a woman watching them. A man was pissing on the wall a couple of yards away. In spite of the acrid smell that assailed her, Carol came at the same time as Nick and she cried out.
“Nice work,” the pisser called.
Everything seemed unreal. The alley scaffolding like a dozen guillotines. Lose your head, pack up your heart, and go with your cunt. Not what I want, no, not what I want.
The walk back was long, the air crystal clear but her thoughts far from clear, tumbling over each other. She talked: “God, that was awful, it was wrong, it was too weird, I should go home.”
At home on Sunday morning, she felt ashamed and angry. The experience had been neither terrible nor sublime, only squalid. Like one of her sexy stories for Richard gone horribly wrong. She’d been stoned, or she never would have agreed. Maybe it was an aberration for Nick, too, not the kind of kink he needed to get off. But what if it was? And why had she been attracted to someone who could pull her to the edge like that? Was it a darkness she’d been waiting for? Had she wanted to go to extremes to feel alive again?
She remembered the hooker asking Nick, “How do you want me?” Her question had seemed personal, implied a history between them. Carol was very disturbed by her suspicions.
She went back to Nick’s apartment the next evening, thinking it might be the last time, and confronted him immediately. “Have you taken photos of the women on the street? Pornographic stuff?” she asked.
“No, no pornography. A few candid shots, but mostly portraits shot here in my studio.”
“Can I see them?”
“Of course.” He opened a computer file. “Sit,” he said. “Take your time.”
The photos were beautiful. In the portraits, Nick had especially caught the eyes: many sad, some defiant, some with a glint of mischief. All of the pictures seemed to her to be loving and respectful, sensitive portraits of broken and nearly broken women.
“Sorry,” Carol said. “I was freaked out by having sex in that stinking alley and thought the worst.”
“It’s all right. There are guys who shoot pornographic stuff in this neighbourhood, but I’m not one of them. I couldn’t exploit the women like that.”
Carol continued to scroll, and breathed in sharply as she saw a portrait of Emily. She was thinner than Carol remembered her, her eyes large and staring. “Jesus,” Carol said, “I know this girl. Do you know where I can find her?”
“No, I haven’t seen her for quite a while.”
“Can I have a copy of this photo? Richard knows her and wants to find her, too.”
February 2012
Richard,
I wish very much that I hadn’t told you about that alley scene when I was weak and decided to tell you everything.
Carol
Carol,
But it was such a gift to me as a writer! Not so much as a jealous husband.
Richard
TWENTY-NINE
WHEN RICHARD ARRIVED at Jericho Beach, he found Jacintha and Beth waiting for him near the bonfire. Laughter and flute music and the smell of marijuana filled the air. Two of his other students, Andrew and Aiden, were standing nearby. The former was wearing a black cape and sombrero and the latter looked like an extra from Romeo and Juliet, with his tights and puff-sleeved, green velvet jacket. Both of them wore small, black “burglar” masks.
“Welcome to our revels,” Andrew said, “our Bacchanalia,” and he took a large swig of the bottle of beer he was holding. The full moon picked out the voluminous shapes of the capes and skirts of others around the bonfire and ribboned the incoming tide with its light.
Jacintha, who was wearing a blue velvet cape, pulled a black cotton one from her bag and draped it over Richard’s tweed jacket. “I brought this for you,” she said.
Richard had been unaware that the gathering was to be in costume. He’d been told the class was having a “wienie roast with wine.”
“It’s a farewell to The Tempest as we’ve known it, and a hello to The Tempest as it evolves,” Jacintha said, laughing. “It’s also going to be, I hope, an inspiration for some production ideas my writing group has.”
Beth was wearing a satin dress with a laced bodice and a beaded Juliet cap.
“Where did you get the Elizabethan costumes?” Richard asked.
“The theatre department,” Jacintha said. “Tanya and Greg raided the costume storage room and brought things over, but they couldn’t stay, a rehearsal or something. We have to get the costumes back later tonight before someone notices they’re missing.”
Beth walked on one side of Richard, Jacintha on the other. Jacintha took his hand and he felt a charge of energy rushing up his arm. He waited a moment before he gently pulled his hand away.
“Beth,” he said, “were you involved in planning this event?”
“Yes, a little.”
“Well, a nice surprise,” he said, in his most professorial voice.
Wild laughter came down the beach. The night smelled of too much excitement, the kind that could spin out of control. He wondered what other surprises Jacintha might have in store for him. She was unpredictable at the best of times, and this atmosphere — moonlit, pungent, evocative — was ripe with possibilities. He felt almost too alive. Almost young.
He remembered beach parties as an undergraduate, lying in the sand, half-drunk, kissing some eager girl, her breast under his hand, and then walking with her to find a private place. He was both nervous and excited about being here in the dark with Jacintha. He hadn’t seen her since the Thanksgiving dinner a week earlier, and in spite of not knowing what he would say to her or what he would do, he had longed to see her. She had dropped off some of the play manuscript at his office when she knew he’d be in class. He wondered if her avoidance of him signalled the end of her … what? Her flirtation? But when she had taken his hand, he was pretty sure it hadn’t ended.
Two or three people were drumming, the beat heavy and insistent. Masked figures sat in a circle around a bonfire. A flute joined the drums, and then a violin, sweet and soaring.
“Here, put this on,” Jacintha said.
“Oh, not a mask.”
“Come on. Get into the spirit of it.”
The mask was small, like the ones Andrew and Aiden and several men and women were wearing. He put it on. Jacintha put on a full-face mask, painted garishly — bright red lips and cheeks, black-rimmed eyes, skin dead white. With her long, golden hair framing the mask, she looked otherworldly, frightening.
“Are you anybody in particular?” Richard asked.
“I’m Juno, goddess of marriage.”
“Not typecast, then.”
“Great. A bit of dry wit. We could use more of that.”
“Could we?” Richard said, but she’d moved away toward the fire.
Richard moved nearer, too, and saw that several others wore decorated masks like Jacintha’s. He had a hard time recognizing anyone. The women all wore long dresses and capes, the men capes or Elizabethan jackets and tights. There were about twenty people. His class consisted of eleven.
“Who are these others?” Richard asked.
“Fr
iends who didn’t want to miss the fun,” Jacintha said.
The women rose en masse, as though by some silent signal, and began to dance vigorously to the music, the light from the flames dancing with them. When they moved out of range, they seemed to disappear. One of them noticed the effect and started whooping each time she moved closer to the fire, and the others followed suit. The movement in and out of the light and the whooping sent shivers up Richard’s spine. Young people could be so Dionysian, could slide so easily into the nonrational, the sensual and joyful.
Beth remained close to Richard. “It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?” she said.
Richard didn’t respond. She touched his arm. He turned and smiled vaguely at her.
“Beautiful night,” she repeated.
“Yes, yes, beautiful.” He looked away again quickly and Beth, after a moment, moved away from him toward the fire.
Jacintha appeared suddenly out of the darkness. “Smoke or wine?” she asked, a bottle in one hand, a joint in the other.
“Just a little wine, please.” He took a sip.
She took his hand and led him down the beach. When they were well away from the others, she removed her mask and pulled him to her. As she kissed him, she reached down and undid his fly. In her hand he immediately became hard. She pulled up her skirt and his cock was against her naked belly. He moaned and she laughed. He didn’t know what he would have done next, because two partiers came squealing past, very close, and he quickly pulled back and zipped up his fly.
“They didn’t even notice us,” Jacintha said.
His heart pounded and he felt out of breath, as though he’d been running, and he feared his erection was going to take its sweet time going down.
And then Jacintha whispered in his ear, “I love you,” and his heart seemed to stop.
“I have to go and conduct a wedding now,” she said. “Don’t forget where we left off.” She picked up her mask. “Listen, I want you to play Prospero in the ceremony. It’s a handfasting; a Wiccan marriage ceremony.”
“Marriage?” Richard was finding it hard to listen.
“Yes, I’m doing it for real for Anna and John. Haven’t you noticed they’re together?”
“No, I hadn’t noticed.”
“Do you know ‘Sonnet 116’ — the ‘marriage of true minds’ one?”
“I know it by heart.”
“Wonderful. I thought it would be great if Prospero spoke the sonnet as his blessing. Let’s go.”
Back at the bonfire, Jacintha clapped her hands and shouted, “Attention, everyone. The handfasting will begin now.”
A young woman shrieked and came running from the dark into the light of the fire, a young man close behind her, growling like a bear. It took a couple of minutes for everyone to quiet down.
Then another woman shouted, “We have to do our song first. Come on, everyone.”
Almost everyone stood in a line, arms linked, and after a “one, two, three” began to sing “Stormy Weather” at the tops of their lungs, kicking high — a chorus line. Richard recognized where they’d stolen the idea. Derek Jarman had used the song, sung by a blues singer, near the end of his marvellous film of The Tempest, while sailors in white uniforms danced. Or had they danced afterward, to another tune? Anyway, it had made Richard smile for a moment, before he started thinking about what Jacintha had whispered. Could it be true? He’d had only a few sips of wine, but he felt drunk.
When they were finished, someone yelled, “Okay, on with the wedding for the poor, deluded fools!”
Jacintha had to ask Richard twice to begin his recital. The voice emanating from him sounded to him like an automaton. He had a feeling like stage fright.
It was only when he got to the fifth line that he realized how appropriate the poem was for present purposes: “… [Love] is an ever-fixed mark / That looks on tempests and is never shaken; / It is the star to every wandering bark …”
When he’d finished, Jacintha called Anna and John to stand in front of her, and, with her surreal mask in place, began the ceremony.
Richard only half listened. There were a lot of “blessed be’s” and the pair were to recognize in each other the forms of the goddess and the god, and to know that whatever they did to each other, they did to the divine beings, too.
A vision came to him, strong and swift: Jacintha naked, wearing a crown of flowers, her legs wrapped around his naked waist as he carried her to an altar to make love to her in front of acolytes. How wonderful. He was a king. He was a god, and she was his queen, his bride, pressed hot and wet against his skin.
He forgot where he was until he heard gasps of surprise and turned back to the ceremony just as Jacintha raised a small dagger above her head, the blade glinting in the moonlight.
“Swear you now, on this sacred blade, that there is no reason this union should not proceed,” she said.
They both swore.
“An’ it harm none, do as thou wilt.”
The ceremony was over.
“Say ‘I now pronounce you husband and wife’!” someone called out.
“Not part of handfasting,” Jacintha said.
“Well, at least say ‘kiss the bride.’”
Everyone laughed and John and Anna kissed.
The chorus line stood again and belted out a heartfelt rendition of “Blue Skies,” presumably a counterpoint to, or an overcoming of, “Stormy Weather.” They might be Dionysian, he thought, but he was in the grip of Eros. “The bittersweet, the limb-loosener,” Sappho had called the god. Bittersweet, yes. His Eros was fierce, biting into his flesh, knocking the wind out of him.
Jacintha had moved nearer the fire and was mock-conducting the choir. Several of the students, probably the drunker ones, started singing “Stormy Weather” again, drowning out the voices of the others. It was getting wilder.
When he saw a man in a ski mask and black cape rushing at him, brandishing a knife, he assumed it was part of the play, that they were moving on to another scene. Maybe Caliban was supposed to be menacing Prospero. He thought it was an act right up until the man plunged the knife in below his shoulder. He screamed. But the chorus line drowned him out, shrieking, “When my man and I ain’t together.”
His attacker put his arm around Richard’s waist in a grotesque parody of an embrace, one hand still on the knife in Richard’s flesh, and hissed into his ear, “Jacintha’s your daughter. You’ve been fucking your own daughter, you piece of shit.”
He pulled the knife out and the pain was even worse and Richard cried out again.
Beth, who had been standing nearby and about to approach Richard, screamed, “Help, Richard’s been stabbed!”
Someone laughed.
“No, help. It’s real!”
The attacker raised the knife again and Beth threw herself against Richard, knocking him sideways to the ground. The knife struck her. She fell, wailing, as people ran over to them.
Grunting, scuffling. Someone was trying to subdue the attacker. Shouting. Swearing.
“He’s getting away! Across the road. He’s heading into the trees. Go after him, somebody.”
“Hell, no. He’s got a knife.”
“Call 911!”
Someone was pressing a cloth against Richard’s wound. Someone else was tending to Beth, who lay close beside him.
His mouth was near her ear. “How bad?” he asked.
“Don’t know.”
Richard whispered, “If you know who it was, don’t tell.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m begging you. Will explain later.”
“All right.”
Jacintha was with him now, had taken over the pad that was staunching the blood. “Jesus, Richard. Who would do such a thing? Don’t worry, you’re going to be all right. An ambulance will be here soon.” She kissed him quickly on the cheek.
“Don’t … shouldn’t. Was it your knife?” It seemed unimaginable, but what the attacker said was unimaginable and his head was swimming and … an
d … no.
“God, no. Richard, no. How could you think … See, I have the ceremonial dagger here, tucked into my belt, see, see, no blood on it. Oh god, Richard, no.”
Richard reached out and pawed at the dagger. “Yes, sorry,” he said.
He heard crying. More swearing.
“Fucking Christ. What the hell was that about?”
“The shit got away.”
“Anybody know who it was?”
No one answered.
“Leave it to the police.”
“Oh, sure, the fucking police.”
When the ambulance arrived, Jacintha said, “I’ll come with you to the hospital.”
“No.”
“Of course I will.”
“No. I don’t want you to.”
One of the attendants asked if she was a relative, and Jacintha said yes and Richard said no.
“Don’t want her to come,” Richard said.
“Sorry, lady,” the attendant said.
If what Skitch said was true — Richard had recognized his voice, his build, his smell — then Jacintha had told the attendant the truth, but it was too terrible to contemplate. He couldn’t stand her to be near him at this moment, cooing sympathy, touching his cheek.
It couldn’t be true. But where would Skitch get such an idea? Why would he make such a thing up? Was he crazy? Anyway, better she didn’t come with him, because someone would call Carol to the hospital.
Please, God, let it not be true.
March 2012
Richard,
Shit, Richard. I’ve always given you the benefit of the doubt when you said you hadn’t had sex with Jacintha. (Well, maybe not in the beginning.) But can you really claim that your naked cock against her bare belly isn’t sex?
I’m disappointed in you. It seems you have trouble differentiating between lying and telling the truth, so I can’t be sure now if you fucked her or not. Regarding that, I’m past caring. It’s more your dishonesty that hurts.
Carol
Dear Carol,
Yes, there it is, the big question. What we did could certainly qualify as sex, but we never did have intercourse. I suppose I could be accused of using the “Bill Clinton Evasion,” but the difference is we didn’t repeat our particular act again and again, as Clinton and Lewinsky were said to have repeated theirs. Ours was one time only, lasting only a few moments. Still, it added greatly to the disgust I felt about myself later.
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