Slippin' Into Darkness

by Norman Partridge

  Amy’s breath caught in her throat.

  So it was over. Finally. Literally buried in the ground.

  Still, Amy needed to know. Her voice was little more than a whisper, and she hadn’t quite framed her next question before the words spilled from her lips. “But were you and April…”

  Doug Douglas grabbed Amy’s hand. For a fat man his speed was surprising. He held her slim fingers in his soft, damp grasp. “April knew how to treat people. She didn’t forget about them. She knew how to make a man feel special.” Gently, Doug slid Amy’s wedding ring back and forth, almost taking it off her finger, then sliding it back on.

  “This could have been my ring,” he said.

  “That was a long time ago, Doug.”

  “Yeah. And you’ve forgotten all about it. You didn’t even remember me. The guy whose life you ruined. There hasn’t been a day go by that I haven’t thought of you.”

  “Doug—”

  “No. I remember you. I remembered everything, snapping away with my camera outside that kid’s window. You haven’t changed a bit.” He smiled. “You still do that little biting thing. I remember how you used to do that when we parked out on Lake Herman Road, or when we went to the drive-in. It used to drive me nuts.”

  Amy didn’t say anything. She didn’t like the direction the conversation was taking. Maybe Doug Douglas wasn’t the complete slob that she had taken him for when she first saw him sitting on the bumper of her Mercedes. After all, he had a fresh haircut, was clean-shaven and smelled of Irish Spring, and his clothes were cheap but new.

  So he wasn’t a slob, but he wasn’t the hard-bodied athlete she’d dated in high school, either. Amy guessed that Doug weighed in excess of three hundred pounds. The Mercedes leaned to one side under his weight. He was a lump.

  And his eyes wouldn’t let her go. “I liked you better when you had long hair, though,” he said. “I used to knot my fingers in it. Pull it, just a little bit. You liked the way I pulled it, didn’t you?”

  The prospect was revolting. Amy loathed herself for even considering it.

  “Those were the good old days, right Amy? Both of us workin’ on our night moves.”

  “Bob Seger,” Amy whispered. The prospect was revolting. But….

  “You remember some things, all right.”

  Amy exhaled, slowly, so it would mean something. “Some things you never forget.”

  Doug massaged her palm. “Christ, you’ve taken good care of yourself. I followed you to that health club one day. The one by your house. I even got a picture of you in that sexy leotard. The black and purple one, you know? But, Christ, I never dreamed what was underneath it. You’re solid. You look better today than you did in ’76.” He loosened his grip on her hand, as if he were sure that she wouldn’t pull away. “But it’s not going to work. Amy.”

  “Why not?”

  “I know how fat I am. It’s embarrassing. I’m into video. I’m into watching.”

  Amy held her breath, dreading what Doug Douglas might say next.

  “See? You’re disgusted. You’d probably have an easier time fucking that old prune-faced husband of yours than you’d have doing me. I guess even a snake can have a little pride.”

  The condescending hand-pat that followed the last remark was more than Amy could stand. “I’ve had about enough of this,” she said, adopting the same icy tone she’d used to shame Doug Douglas when they were both eighteen. “Poor little Dougy. I’m into watching. You were into watching then, but I guess you’d rather forget about that.”

  “Hey—”

  “Why don’t you grow up? I never could stand your little persecution complex. Why don’t you stop whining and tell me what you want?”

  Without warning, Doug drove Amy’s wedding ring the length of her finger. She gasped in pain as he twisted it back and forth while trapping her fingers in his massive grasp. A one-carat diamond bit into her pinky and her middle finger, drawing thin lines of blood, and she blinked back tears.

  “Don’t you talk to me like that,” Doug Douglas said. “I’m in charge here.” He laughed. “This time the shoe is on the other foot.”

  “Okay…okay.”

  “You remember what this is, then?” Doug asked. Amy didn’t answer. Doug twisted the ring. The big diamond tore flesh. “You remember?”

  Amy answered through clenched teeth. “Blackmail.”

  Doug Douglas shoved her hand away with such undisguised disgust that he might as well have thrown a piece of garbage at her. “It might have been different if you’d come to April’s funeral,” he said. “She didn’t even have any family left. I was the only one there. I know she had other guys. I know that. But I was the only one who had the guts to show up. If it wasn’t for me, she wouldn’t have even had a headstone or a decent burial. It cost me my savings to do that for her.”

  “I didn’t even know she was dead,” Amy said.

  “Like you would have come anyway.”

  “She was a whore, Doug.”

  “Yeah? And why was that? We all know who did that to her. But who helped them do it?” Silence hung between them.

  “April used to come to my place. A couple of mornings, every week. She fixed me breakfast…. Eggs and pancakes and sausage and hash-browns and toast and fresh-squeezed orange juice. The works…I know she had other guys…but…she used to just kiss me. She kept her eyes closed, just for me. That was all we did. Just kiss.”

  “You told her everything, didn’t you?”

  “Not everything. Only the things she hadn’t figured out for herself. April wasn’t stupid, you know.” He laughed. “You make it sound like I should have been loyal to you or something.”

  Amy grinned. “I’ll bet there were some things you didn’t tell her. I’ll bet you left a few things out.”

  Doug actually blushed.

  “So, what happens now? What am I going to have to do to get that film?” Amy looked at the camera, not at Doug. “Answer me, Doug!”

  “I don’t like your tone of voice. What now, Doug? Answer my question, Doug! It’s just the way you used to talk to me. Like it didn’t matter at all what I said unless it was what you wanted to hear.”

  “Deal with it, Doug. Maybe I’m not going to roll over so easily, like you did eighteen years ago.”

  “Okay, then. If that’s the way you want it, I think we’ll do it the hard way. First off, I think we’ll try a little B&E. That’s cop talk for breaking and entering, in case you didn’t know.” Doug Douglas dug into his pocket and slapped a key onto the dashboard. “I’ll make it easy for you. This will take care of the ‘breaking’ part. You can take care of the ‘entering.’ ”

  Amy stared at the key. Her adrenalin surge had run its course. A wildfire of anger had burned through her body, leaving only charred remains behind.

  With great effort, Doug Douglas pulled himself out of the Mercedes. “You remember breaking and entering, don’t you. Amy? You remember the thrill you used to get by invading someone’s privacy?”

  Amy didn’t move. She was tapped out. All her smart remarks were gone.

  “C’mon. I know that underneath that fancy name you’re still the same old Amy. I’ll bet that you end up enjoying this. See, April left something for you.” He tossed a hand-drawn map onto the passenger seat. “And don’t be afraid. April hasn’t been dead that long. I don’t figure her place is haunted.”

  Doug laughed, walking into the darkness.

  “Not yet, anyway.”

  2:15 A.M.

  It wasn’t a matter of record, not with The Six Million Dollar Man’s doctors, not with his employers. April Destino was the only person who shared his secret. But April was dead, and The Six Million Dollar Man wasn’t making any new confidences. So no one knew that his conscious mind fired like an eternal machine, twenty-four hours a day.

  Simply put, Steve Austin had stopped sleeping when he was seventeen years old. And, like so many paths in Steve’s life, this one led back to a certain dead cheerleader.

>   Steve had had an art class in his junior year. April Destino was in it. The class had been doing watercolors on a September day that sang of Indian summer. Simmering heat broken only by an occasional sea breeze that slipped over the dry, weed-choked hills to the northwest. Venetian blinds rattling with each breath that whispered through the open window, the sound of a playing card tickled by bicycle spokes.

  Each student wore an old shirt—something loose and sloppy enough to ruin with paint. That meant, in most cases, a shirt dad had grown tired of wearing. April’s dad worked at the shipyard, and her shirt was one of those dark Ben Davis numbers that had been the uniform of blue-collar guys back in the sixties. Steve’s dad worked on the docks in nearby Oakland, and he was more than familiar with the uniform. But it had never looked as good on anyone as it looked on April. Once seventeen-year-old Steve Austin saw April Destino in that Ben Davis work shirt, he couldn’t take his eyes off of her. Her blonde hair overflowed the worn collar, the perfectly curled strands a brilliant white-yellow against the dark, olive-colored cotton, her hair still holding the highlights that came from a summer spent in the sun. Her skin was golden and alive, and her perfect fingers were wrapped around a paintbrush.

  There were other memories, too. The flash of embarrassment in April’s eyes as she laughed at her awful painting of the Destino family dog. The little smudge of white paint slick and wet on her cheek. The way she turned to Steve with a friendly sigh as if to say oh well, the empty working-man shirt’s shoulders sagging over her small frame in a way that made her seem completely vulnerable.

  The big pocket of that Ben Davis shirt empty and gaping.

  The images laced Steve’s dreams that September night in 1974, the last night he really slept. April Destino. Her dad’s shirt. Her dog. But in his dream they weren’t in a classroom. They stood in a meadow ringed with black pines. Doves nested in the deep shadows of the trees, their cooing music riding the warm breeze. April’s dog burrowed through stands of wild cosmos. The dog’s name was Homer, after Homer Price. But in Steve’s dream the mutt was a crazy-quilt version of a dog, just as it had been in April’s painting—out of whack, legs too short, head too big, impossibly yellow eyes crossed. A weird dog-clown, but not at all scary.

  Slobbering, Homer charged through a net of poppies and cosmos. April laughed. The little smudge on her cheek bloomed, and when Steve worked up enough courage to move closer he smelled honeysuckle and felt the cool petals brush his cheek as he buried his face in April’s perfect curls.

  Then came the longest wait in the world, in dream or in reality. Standing there with his arms around April’s waist, trying not to shake, trying to breathe.

  Her golden hands settled on his shoulders. Her grip tightened as she moved closer. He kissed her and she kissed him. And he knew, instantly, in that way that only seventeen-year-olds can know, that April Louise Destino was the only girl for him. That this was a wonderful thing, and that it meant they would be together forever.

  The meadow was their bed. April wore no pants, no skirt. Only the Ben Davis work shirt. No bra, no T-shirt. She undid the small green-black buttons and slipped the shirt over her shoulders while Steve took off his clothes. They lay together, the bright sun looming overhead, and it wasn’t like a meadow would be in real life because there weren’t any bugs and the wild grass beneath them didn’t make their skin itch and it wasn’t too hot or too cold.

  Everything was perfect.

  It was a dream.

  Steve was still a virgin at seventeen. The result of an almost terminal case of shyness. But he dreamed what it would be like to enter April. To be inside April Louise Destino while his breath tickled her neck and his fingers danced over her dark nipples, lightly, the way the Playboy Advisor instructed. His hips moved slowly when he really wanted to move fast—more advice from the World’s Most Eligible Bachelor—and he didn’t surrender to the impulse to move faster until he couldn’t hold back any longer. April moved with him, her flat belly heaving against his. She sighed in a way he had never heard but accurately imagined.

  She kissed him in a way no one ever had, with her mouth open, her tongue dancing with his. She didn’t talk dirty or wear leather or have a whip or any crap like that. This was a dream, but the girl in the dream was still April Destino at seventeen, not some weird doppelgänger.

  For Steve, in the dream, she was the real April.

  As real as real could be.

  * * *

  Steve awoke from the dream spent but with a numb hard-on, wanting nothing more than to have the dream again. He stumbled through the next day in a daze. When he saw April in the hallway at school he stared at her until their eyes met, and then he almost lost himself in her open gray irises. Shaken, he blushed and hurried away, books and Pee-Chee folder held over his stiffening cock.

  Home after school. Geometry. Biology. TV Dinner. Early bed. Lying in the dark, in his single bed, he couldn’t slow his thoughts. His heart thumped a frightening rhythm. He jacked off thinking of April, but it wasn’t as good as the dream. It didn’t seem real. And it seemed stupid, like something a kid would settle for, because even though he could recall every second of the dream in minute detail—the meadow, the dog, and, most especially, April—even though he could play it back in his mind, it wasn’t real the way it had been when he was asleep.

  He started to worry that having the dream had been wrong. This feeling wasn’t new— it was the way Steve felt sometimes after imagining a certain girl while he masturbated. But the fact that his encounter with April had happened in a dream seemed to make it worse, uncontrolled somehow. It was as if he had slipped into April’s room and raped her while sleepwalking or something.

  It was sick.

  Wasn’t it?

  Was it? Maybe that was the proper question. Because in the dream, April enjoyed it. In the dream she was with him.

  It had all seemed so real.

  Lying in his single bed, legs wrapped in tangled sheets, the evening breeze dying just short of the open window. Sweating. Frightened. All alone inside himself. The old joke playing over and over in his head: The first time I had sex I was terrified.

  The punch line: I was all alone.

  But maybe he hadn’t been alone in the dream.

  He wondered if April had dreamt with him. He lay there that night, running the thought down, searching desperately for a solution that was as elusive as sleep. There was a simple way to find an answer, but Steve couldn’t imagine asking April. He would never approach April Destino and say, “Uh, April, did you dream that we…uh, that we, uh…made love in this meadow…while your dog Homer was running around?”

  He would never talk to April Destino like that. He would never talk to April Destino at all. Christ, what could he say to her? Him, Steve Austin, the farthest thing in the world from The Six Million Dollar Man, who didn’t even know what to say to himself in the privacy of his own stupid head?

  But maybe April had shared the dream. It was the kind of thing that would happen on Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, sure, but maybe it could happen in the real world, too. And maybe he could make it happen again.

  If only he could get to sleep.

  But that Steve Austin could not do. Not that night, and not on the many nights that followed. At first he dragged ass and his mom threatened to take him to the doctor, but he was sure a doctor would pronounce him insane once he discovered that the insomnia was connected to the dream. He would end up in a nut ward at Napa State Hospital, spending his days with the other perverts engaged in a life of round-robin slobbering and one endless circle jerk.

  His fears made him more introverted than usual, in the wake of the dream they grew to almost unbearable proportions. The only thing that got him through was thinking of April, and the meadow, and the dog named Homer Price. And imagining that maybe, just maybe, April had actually been there him in the dream.

  Junior year passed. Watercolors gave way to pencil sketches, followed in short order by sculpture and portrait work. April’s
shirt was dappled with paint and smears of gray clay and Steve knew that charcoal shadows would soon be added to the blend. Once in a while Steve would intercept a probing glance—April’s face without expression but her eyes somehow hungry—and he would wonder if she was mad at him for not sleeping, for not sharing the dream. When she looked at him that way, he was certain that she knew.

  April never said anything, but that was what Steve imagined.

  And that made it all the harder when he tried to sleep.

  Intercepted glances. Steve was good at catching things like that, but he couldn’t figure out what they meant. He couldn’t see them the way other people did, and that bothered him. It made him feel like he really was some kind of machine.

  So, ultimately, he fumbled the ball. But he adjusted, at least to the sleep disorder. He read some scientific articles in the library but they didn’t help. And then he ran across a series of stories in a trashy tabloid that detailed the lives of people who didn’t sleep at all and who got along just fine.

  His body adjusted. Or, perhaps, he adjusted to his body. He lay in bed each night, thinking about the dream, and April. Or the cheerleading squad, and April. Or art class, and April. But always April, in one way or another. Not really trying to get to sleep anymore. Not in the dream, but still with April.

  That was how Steve Austin, teenage cyborg, passed his nights. In careful concentration, while his days faded. And the things he did, and the things he said, became unimportant when measured against that one cherished dream.

  But he went on.

  Life went on.

  * * *

  Years later, Steve got to know April. He was older and not so afraid anymore, and she wasn’t as imposing as she had once been.

  He told her about the dream after their first time together. “It was the weirdest thing,” he said, lying in her arms. “I never forgot it. I’ve thought about it…a lot. I mean, it was so powerful that I thought maybe we’d actually been together somehow. That we shared the dream.”