Edge Play X

by Wilson, M. Jarrett

  The smell of coffee wafted in from beyond the door as did the smell of food, heavy with salt and grease. X selected her clothes from her suitcase on the floor and dressed. When she saw the Van Gogh on top of her rumpled clothes, she felt ashamed for treating something so valuable so carelessly, so she gently placed it on a nearby dresser.

  Briefly, X examined her reflection in the mirror. The skin under her eye was dark purple. After she got her shower, she decided, she’d cover it up with make-up. She’d have to wear sunglasses when she went in public. But now, it was time for coffee. Her veins longed for it.

  The first thing she saw when she opened the door was Simeon. He was standing in the kitchen and washing a cup.

  “Hello,” he said, and X returned his greeting. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Yes, please,” X said as Simeon began filling up a large mug.

  “Milk and sugar?”

  “Black is fine.”

  Simeon brought X over the coffee and she took a sip, hoping the brew would help her shake off the lingering fatigue.

  “Are you hungry? While you were sleeping, I got a bucket of chicken, and there’s some milk and bread and lunchmeat, but not much more than that,” Simeon said as he opened the cupboards, taking inventory of the food.

  “The chicken sounds good,” X said as she got up from the small table where she had been sitting. X found a plate and began piling the food onto it. Next to the cheap paper bucket was a small chocolate cake in a clear plastic case.

  X realized then that he knew. The date would have been with all the other information in that folder he had about her, but she didn’t think that the date would be anything Simeon would have remembered.

  He sat down with her and they ate together. She measured their silence in chews and swallows, considering what she might say to him, wondering if he was going to punish her for leaving.

  “Did you sleep well? Is there anything that you need?”

  “No,” she answered, recognizing that having her life was enough.

  Simeon brought the cake over when she had finished her meal. He cut off a slice for her and put it onto a paper plate.

  “Happy Birthday, X.”

  His words embarrassed her. She felt like a child. They ate the cake together and X wondered why he was being so nice to her. She knew that she looked like shit, her hair undone and no make-up on her face, her eye blackened like some abused woman.

  As these thoughts went through her mind, Simeon watched her. She looked beaten and worn, defeated. He felt sorry for her for everything she had gone through since he and Compton had come into her life. And yet, he still wanted her to do what she was told. Things with Compton weren’t finished quite yet. But maybe it was time to try a different approach. Maybe X needed a gentle master. Some wild horses could not be tamed through force, only through whispers. Wasn’t that what his superior had said?

  When her cake was gone, she told him, “Thank you.”

  “The cake was alright? It was just a store cake.”

  “The cake was great. I meant thank you for rescuing me.”

  Simeon cleared their dishes and then joined her at the table again.

  “You’re welcome,” he said and then went back to sit with her, taking his own cup of coffee along with him.

  “How did you find me?” she asked.

  He paused. “The Mercedes has a tracking device in it. But I knew that you had been kidnapped because of the bug in Compton’s office.”

  “I see,” X said. “So you’ve known I’ve been in Santa Fe these last couple months?”

  “Yes.”

  All this time he had known where she had been and he had left her alone. The knowledge surprised her.

  “I was going to come back in a few more months,” she lied.

  “You don’t need to explain.”

  “I just needed to get my head together,” she said, the tears welling up now. She felt like she was a kid in the principal’s office trying to explain why she had gotten in trouble. A tear ran out of her eye and slipped down her cheek. She wiped it away with the back of her hand and sniveled.

  Simeon went over to the counter and picked up a new pack of cigarettes.

  “I picked these up while I was out in case you might want one,” he said, hoping it would help the woman calm down.

  “I don’t want one,” she said.

  “Well, they’re here in case you need one later.”

  “I don’t want one ever again!” she snipped, the tears rolling out in procession now. Simeon looked at the woman, perplexed.

  “You’re quitting now?”

  “Yes.”

  Simeon tossed the pack into the trash.

  “I’m sorry, X, I just thought with all you had been through lately…”

  “It’s because I want to live, Simeon.”

  X stood up and went over to sit on the couch, putting her head onto her bent legs and crying. Seeing her that way made Simeon pity her, made him feel uncertain about how to proceed. He went to the couch and sat down next to her, put his hand onto her back.

  “It’s over now, X. You’re alive.”

  She lifted up her head.

  “I want to know something, Agent Simeon. Was Compton going to give them their ransom?”

  “I’m not certain,” he answered.

  “Tell me,” she demanded. “I need to know.”

  Simeon rubbed the scar on his jaw. “X, it does not appear that he was willing to relinquish the money.”

  The sobs came again.

  “He would have just let me die? He would have let them kill me?” She was angry now, hurt and angry.

  “X, you took the car he gave you and left. He figured out what happened. Did you take his money, too?”

  X was silent, not wanting to incriminate herself.

  “Look, X, I know that there was a rather large deposit into your bank account shortly before you went on the run. I don’t know what you did to Compton to get that money, but when you took it and left, he wasn’t pleased.”

  X understood. What could she expect? But still, two million dollars was just a small fraction of the man’s wealth. Compton had written her a check for a million without a flinch and then sent her a Mercedes as a thank you, some kind of sick reward for giving him the thrill of being blackmailed. He would have let her die not because of the money, but to prove a point. Any inroads the two had made together in Paris were now overgrown with her rage. Were it not for Simeon, she’d be dead.

  “You can still be of help to us,” Simeon said. “We’ll make it seem like you escaped the kidnappers and you can return to California and help us implicate Compton once and for all.”

  Revenge. The idea made X’s mouth water. X wiped off the last of her tears and tried to pull herself together.

  She thought about Simeon and how he had saved her life. He hadn’t punished her when she had deserved it. And now, he was offering her another chance. She reached out and put her hand gently over his.

  “Simeon, can we begin again?”

  Simeon did not answer, just reached up to her face and ran his thumb over the bruise under her eye. X’s jumble of emotions was now supplanted with another, quite unexpected, somewhat unwelcome, as thick as honey.

  And this sensation, that of romantic love, made X feel as if she were an asteroid entering a foreign atmosphere. It compressed the air around her, causing it to heat up and incinerate the outer layers of her being, diminishing her persona as it throttled towards a force more powerful than her own, reducing her to the core, its glow vaporizing the stratums of her being in a vibrant and fleeting display, displacing her from her planned trajectory.

  He leaned in to kiss her then, sealing the deal, certain then that it was him, not Compton, whom X desired.

  *

  They made love in every room, on every available surface, in every way. Their individual bodies, no longer sovereign territories, merged and melded until what was previously autonomous flesh now was extended and en
hanced, the pleasure of each lover amplifying the conduction of the other, heightening the rapture of axon and dendrite, allying them in ecstasy.

  And then one morning, Simeon told her that it was time to go back to California. She didn’t want to return. She wanted to stay with Simeon, continue to spend all day immersed in the viscous nectar of fucking, trysts interrupted only for physical necessities like eating or showering or sleeping or using the bathroom.

  And yet, what other choice did she have? She missed her life in California, had been a fool to think that she could stay away. One of those times that Simeon had gone out for a quick drive so that he could talk to his superior, he had been told to return and to bring X back with him. He had broken the news to her the next morning. So it would be.

  Simeon told her the news with a tinge of apology, said that it was out of his control, and anyway, they couldn’t stay at the safe house forever. He went on to say that their access person had told Compton that X had escaped the kidnappers and was on her way back to California.

  X thought about asking him who their access person was but decided against it. She knew who it was. Steinberg. Who else could it be, who else had such access to the man?

  X packed her things, nearly forgetting the Van Gogh in the process, and then, through the heat of the desert, they returned to California. X was home.

  Act V

  1.

  It was a beautiful day, perfect almost. The sky was spotted with puffy clouds, mellifluous billows which moved so slowly that they appeared to have been painted onto a smooth blue canvas. A breeze was coming in from the peninsula and sweeping in through the open windows of the studio. In the distance, a crane was slowly lifting beams into a new structure.

  X had been back for nearly a week, time in which Compton had sent her flowers every day again, the first bunch coming with a note that said that he was grateful that she was alright and that he couldn’t wait to see her again. She had given a weak explanation to Michael about why she had returned, saying that everything in her life was fine, she wasn’t worried anymore, had probably overreacted, and thanks for the help but she couldn’t stay away forever.

  And Simeon, he had stopped over for a couple evenings, time they had spent in the smooth confines of X’s bed. He hadn’t stayed the night, telling her that it would look suspicious if he and X spent too much time together. But still, he would make efforts to see her as much as he could.

  She borrowed a gun from Michael, one that had belonged to his father, resolute that she would never be kidnapped again.

  And this particular morning when X painted in her studio, she was joined by her studio mate, a German sculptor named Helmut who had recently returned from Europe. X thought that he was a gifted sculptor but an airhead of a man. Regardless, they had been happy to see each other, exchanging warm hugs and conversation before delving into their own work. X was having trouble painting and thought that perhaps her mind had been muddled from all the sex.

  The man worked at the far end of the studio, returning to a piece that he had abandoned last summer when he left. Helmut had already completed a large wire framework of a horse. That alone had taken him months to do and it had sat in the studio all winter like a skeleton in a barn. Now, he was busy adding paper-maché over the interlace of wire, putting slim strips into a trough of glue and then pulling the paper between his fingers, flicking the remaining adhesive back into the trough before adding the newsprint onto the framework. He had started at the horse’s ass.

  They worked like this for hours, X painting at her easel, listening to Murder by Death through her earbuds, Helmut at the other end of the studio busy adding a paper skin to the horse. It would be lunch soon, and X’s stomach was growling. With some plastic wrap, X began to cover her brushes (flat, angle, rigger, filbert, and fan), just something to keep them from drying out while she was gone. X considered where she would go for lunch. Maybe she’d ask Helmut to go along so that they could catch up.

  But as she wrapped her hog hair brushes (finally she had been able to buy the best that were available), X noticed something from the periphery of her vision. The image lasted just a few seconds, enough to garner her attention. She watched as a gust blew through the window, a fast entrance of wind that caused Helmut’s haphazard stack of newspapers to begin to blow through the room, lifting them up to the ceiling, pushing them as weightless as dandelion parachutes all through the room, scattering the pile entirely in a mini tornado.

  What had surprised X was not the gust of wind (for those were expected), but that she was quite sure that the surge had been infused with effervescent bursts of light, insubstantial yet visible. It had been lustrous and radiant, that influx of light, ethereal and weightless. Apparitional. The gust had brought along with it the scent of flowers, rose and hyacinth perhaps, jasmine most definitely, but like the wind, the smell was gone as quickly as it had arrived.

  X, thinking she was hallucinating, asked Helmut, “Did you see that?”

  “Oh, yes, what a wind!” he said as they worked together to gather the loose papers and then put them into a short cardboard box. They wrangled the newsprint from the corners, from the stairwell, from under the old radiator.

  They were almost finished when X, a few sheets of the old newsprint in her hands, looked down at the society page which she held. When she saw the photo of Terry Compton, one in which he still had his atrocity of a mustache, X looked at the date. The paper was over two years old, discolored and brittle. X read the caption under the photo which had been taken at a charity event in the Bay area. She looked at the photo again, surprised this time by what she saw. In the background of the photo was another man, one she recognized quite well. He was smiling and laughing, a cocktail in his hand, just a face in the crowd.

  X stared at this photo. She had not seen this other man for a long time. He was an accountant, a man who had done her taxes for a couple years. She remembered a series of specifics about him: his car, his apartment, his breakfast preference. And as she looked at this photo, a group of synapses made contact with neurons, and in a matter of milliseconds, a memory came to her. X recalled the photo Simeon had shown her when he had taken her to the fake hotel room. Finally, she recalled the last time she had worn that particular ensemble, recalled when its zipper had broken.

  She kept a hold of this paper, telling Helmut that she had to go, that she would see him soon and they could catch up. And then hastily, X ran downstairs where she found Anne at her desk, looking at some papers through her reading glasses.

  “Hello my dear,” Anne said, “you look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

  X nearly told the woman about the strange event she had just witnessed.

  “Anne, I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”

  “Yes, dear, anything for you.”

  “That man you are dating, the one who works for the state tax department. Would he be able to get me somebody’s tax returns? I just need to look at them for a minute.”

  Anne looked at X quizzically, then pushed her glasses up her nose.

  “I am afraid that he would never do that,” she told her, to which X nodded her head in understanding and gave a defeated sigh. “I, however, happen to have his password,” she continued, going over to her computer and opening up a new screen. “The poor fool uses the same one for everything.”

  And within a few minutes, Anne had printed her out the last several years of tax returns for a man named Andrew Tomlinson, a pile of papers which X took back with her to her apartment, ruminating for a few hours before phoning Steinberg and saying to him quite directly, “Please set up a time for me and Mr. Compton to get together again.”

  2.

  There was satori and then there was the gun. So many things end with a gun, end with an explosion.

  X took her gun along with her to the dungeon. It wasn’t a real dungeon, X thought as she entered. Or maybe it was. Torture happened in all kinds of different ways.

  Compton was on his seat again, still
as ever. A nearly naked man on a simple seat. The thinker. Why didn’t he ever twiddle his thumbs, tap his foot, fiddle around? He was deliberate, methodical. The weight of it descended on X. Never before had the sheer mass of it been so apparent to her. She had underestimated him and his desires. Motivations were a difficult thing to understand; they attracted assumptions.

  He would do what she told him to do, X knew that. It would be nothing to restrain him and really torture him, scar him for life. But that was what he wanted, not so much the pain but for X to cause the pain. Making him suffer caused her to relinquish a part of herself; that was part of the pleasure he derived. Even love would not be a fitting reaction because that would mean that he still had power over her. She would excuse herself from his game momentarily, release herself from him, and that would be his punishment. First, there were questions.

  It was simple enough to get him to sit in the bondage chair, easy enough to snap the restraints over his wrists and feet. X believed that the metal arcs over his limbs secured with the metal pins would hold, making escape impossible, but he had never tried to escape. Where would he go? She had the gun. It was in her bag, wrapped in a t-shirt and loaded with bullets. Before that evening when X had loaded the gun, she had never held a bullet. When she eventually pulled it out of her bag, Compton was surprised to see her holding it. Next, she would point it at him. Guns are meant to be pointed. But first she pulled out the paper. It was crinkled and had paint on it. The ink was coming off on X’s fingers because of her perspiration.

  “Tell me how you know this person,” X demanded to Compton as she held the newsprint in front of his face.

  “What person?”

  “This man right here,” X said, tapping the image of her former lover, seeming to injure the paper as she did so.