Strangers

by Mort Castle

  Beth shuddered with pleasure. She floated into the totality of Now: Michael’s caresses. The water, its feel, the hissing ring of it the only sound in all the universe. The simple and magical niceness of hereandnow, being clean and naked and steamy with this clean and naked man, who touched her, who loved her, her husband, Michael…

  She lurched away from the wall, turning, to throw her arms around him. She wanted him—wanted him with an achingly intense desire that she’d not known for too long—and she knew he wanted her, felt his want, the rigidity of him that was now between them but that would unite them, make them one, BethandMichael, MichaelandBeth, a completion, much more than the sum of the parts.

  They could not make love in the shower.

  They did not delay by leaving the washroom, going across the hall to their bedroom.

  Naked and wet, the hair on his chest gleaming with water droplets, Michael lay on his back on the large brown oval rug on the tile floor. His arms were out to her. “Come on, honey, yes.”

  She lowered herself upon him, guiding his smooth maleness into flesh that was moist with readiness to receive him.

  So good, she thought…Magic! The fullness within her was exciting, yet was also somehow sentimentally nostalgic, like a trip home after years of wandering. This was a joining together. This was connection.

  Pressing the heels of her hands—on his hipbones, her fingers spread on his lean belly; Beth rocked and felt rooted to him. We are One, she thought, no way to tell where his flesh leaves off and mine begins.

  She moved slowly at first, and then, as thinking became unnecessary, then impossible, with an increasing speed. Her heartbeat quickened. Her body found a rhythm of up-and-down and side-to-side that suited it, encouraged and guided by Michael’s hands cupping her buttocks.

  Beth neared the peak moment felt its promise warm within her. A rising pressure in her throat became a moan.

  And then she was there, the blissful convulsion, the whirling rush into release. It was not a falling into the nothingness of dissolution but a blending—of their selves: HeandI, BethandMichael…

  Michael bucked up hard, his body bridging, lifting her. His climactic pulse—inside her—made him groan, his mouth set in a rictus. Then his face lost all expression, became death-mask placid as his hips fell and he hissed like a tea kettle.

  Beth slumped, resting on him. She liked the flesh-covered line of his collarbone where her cheek lay. She liked his hairy chest tickling her buzzingly sensitive nipples. His breath was a soft breeze around her eyes—a life breeze from inside him, love him…

  Michael said, “I love you, honey.”

  She thought, I am so very happy now and everything is so fine and everything will always be fine…

  The cold ring of the bedroom telephone seemed to drill into the center of her forehead. She felt Michael start.

  She held her breath. She hoped for a wrong number discovered after a single ring, but no such luck.

  Michael swatted her, his palm a damp spat on her backside. “I do believe you’re—closer to the phone.”

  “I… Damn!”

  “Uh-huh, always rings just when you don’t want it to.”

  The flesh parting from flesh was too hurried, making them both say, “Oh.” Snatching a tissue from the plastic dispenser on the toilet’s flush tank, Beth hurried across the hall.

  The call? Michael thought as he sat up. He realized how unlikely that was. There’d been so many calls since he’d begun the waiting time. Calls from aluminum siding salesmen and newspaper subscription hustlers and insurance agents. Calls from Beth’s mother, Claire, who insisted on remaining alive and annoying despite astronomically high blood pressure that should have given her at least one major coronary by now. The pestering, piping-voiced calls: “Can I talk to Marcy?” “Can I talk to Kim?” The wrong numbers. The calls from the damned dentist, reminding him his teeth needed cleaning. A call from the Red Cross asking him to be a blood donor…

  Never the call! The Call of The Strangers—for The Stranger.

  He stood up. He splashed water from the vanity basin—too cold, damn it!—to clean his flaccid penis and pubic hair, dried himself thoroughly with the big brown towel monogrammed “Dad,” and wrapped it around his waist.

  Smoothing back his hair, he studied his reflection in the mirrored doors of the medicine chest. Even after all these years of knowing, it came with the faintest tick of surprise that he was unable to see the aura—his aura. His special glow. The inner light of the Stranger.

  He knew all human beings had auras, variously hued, blue, yellow, green, sometimes utterly clear, sometimes—so rare—a deep red, a red that seemed suffused with the thickness of arterial blood, but only a few people possessed a form of—sixth sense, the psychic sight, that enabled them to perceive auras. And of those who had that gift, there were not too many with knowledge beyond the rational logic of accepted science to interpret what an aura revealed about a person. Certainly—Michael sneered—most of the so-called clairvoyants who set up card tables at shopping center “psychic fairs” were frauds or even fools who couldn’t read the “E” on an optometrist’s chart if they’d written it themselves. Yes, he knew that about his head was a writhing red nimbus, and he’d had moments when he’d thought he could literally feel it, a force that was his life essence, but he had never seen his aura. Nor had he seen the aura of Vern Engelking, his boss and ally, or that of Eddie Markell…

  When he was very young, though, he had imagined he’d seen the corona around the head of Jan Pretre. Jan… whom he had not seen for so many years. Jan Pretre, his teacher, who’d guided him through his rite of initiation. Jan Pretre who wore the invisible red light crown of the Stranger and who could see the shining brand on other Strangers.

  Others… Michael thought. John Wayne Gacy? A community leader, a friendly neighbor, the kind of guy who helped young people, lining them up with summer construction jobs, killing them, entombing their corpses beneath the floor of his modest suburban house in Des Plaines. It was possible.

  No, the bathroom mirror reflected no aura. Michael Louden saw only the unremarkable features of an “average guy,” the falsehood as the world saw it.

  “Michael?”

  He turned. Beth had put on her gold terrycloth robe. She stood at the bathroom door. She might have seen him as he was intently studying what was—and wasn’t—in the mirror…

  “I can’t understand it,” he said quickly. “I’m no teenager, so why do I still get blackheads?” He traced a line across his unblemished forehead.

  “Brad Zeller’s on the phone,” Beth said. “Dusty got lost. Brad sounds just heartsick.”

  “Dusty?” Michael said. “Jeez…”

  “I told Brad you’d talk to him, Michael. I know Brad. He’s old fashioned and he feels uncomfortable letting a woman know he’s so upset. I think he needs to talk to you.”

  “Sure,” Michael said. “Of course.”

  Standing by the night table on Beth’s side of the bed, the telephone to his ear, Michael heard it clearly: Zeller was in a bad way.

  He let Brad go on for a minute, savouring the hurt and worry that shaped the words, and then Michael said, “Brad, you take it easy, okay? I’m just out of the shower so give me a couple minutes and then we’ll go on a Dusty hunt together.”

  “Michael… Thank you. I need…”

  “No sweat, my friend,” Michael said. “It’s not likely Dusty booked himself a flight to Rome. We’ll find him.”

  Michael put down the receiver. In case Beth walked in, he turned his back to the door.

  He grinned.

  Michael put on a pair of jeans and a brown and yellow plaid sport shirt. He went next door. When Zeller let him in, Brad’s face was the color of sooty snow except for the red streaks of broken capillaries on his nose.

  Zeller’s words came at Michael in a flurry, repeating only that Dusty was gone and adding little to that. Just the facts, asshole, Michael thought.

  He quietly inte
rrupted Zeller’s monologue. “When did you discover he was missing, Brad?”

  “See I went out,” Brad replied. “I wasn’t gone fifteen minutes. I just drove over to the White Eagle so I’d have some coffee in the morning. Dusty didn’t want to come in the house, so I let him stay out back. What could it hurt? And he wasn’t there when I came back.”

  Michael nodded. “I see,” he said. Then he asked, “Are you sure, Brad? Maybe you did bring him in…”

  “I’m old, Michael,” Zeller snapped, “and sometimes I drink more than I should. But I’m not senile and I’m not a drunk. I know I left Dusty out back.”

  Michael raised a placating hand. “Brad,” he said smoothly, “All I’m saying is, well, sometimes I’m so damned sure I left my keys on the table or the dresser, okay? It’s like I can actually see myself putting them down, but they wind up right in my pants pocket.”

  “Sure,” Zeller said.

  “It won’t be a big deal for us to check the house, Brad. Hell, Dusty might be snoring under your bed right now, playing a joke on us. Let’s look around, just to satisfy me.”

  “All right,” Zeller sighed.

  Zeller wasn’t hoping, not yet—Michael saw that—but it was possible the old shithead was starting to feel he had a chance for hope. Good; that would make it better. Let him think everything just might work out okay. There was probably a stupid bastard on the Titanic who thought that way three seconds before he was treading ice water.

  They searched the house the dog and man shared. Dusty was not in it.

  At Michael’s suggestion, they went to the backyard. Michael said he was looking for a place where Dusty might have burrowed under the fence.

  “Uh-uh,” Zeller said, an edge to his voice. “He’s not a roamer. Never has been.”

  “Brad,” Michael said softly, “I’m only trying to help.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Brad said pinching the bridge of his nose, rubbing his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “You’re helping me and I’m spitting at you like a fighting tomcat.”

  “Forget it,” Michael said. He clapped Brad on the shoulder. Want to play the “Getting warmer-colder game,” Brad, old buddy, old pal? he thought. “Let’s drive around the neighborhood, maybe we’ll spot him,” he said.

  In the silvery dusk, Brad slowly drove his eight-year-old Dodge Dart down Walnut. He stopped at the corner where a group of junior high school age—perhaps younger—boys and girls stood in the artificially casual attitudes of young people striving to maintain their images within the clique. They all had cigarettes in their mouths or hands.

  Michael leaned his head out the window and asked them. No, they hadn’t seen a black and white dog.

  Brad pulled away, muttering, “Brats smoking like that right out in the open.”

  Michael knew Brad was talking to hear himself talk and to keep himself from thinking about his “lost” dog. Michael said, “I catch my kids with a cigarette, I’ll set the seat of their pants smoking.”

  Zeller shook his head. “Kids acting like that, that’s modern times. It was different when I was a kid, you know? Hell, I bet you didn’t act that way either.”

  “No,” Michael said, “people used to think I was a pretty good kid.” The ironic honesty tightened the corners of his mouth.

  Yes, You’re a good boy, aren’t you? That’s what you want them to think. It was Jan Pretre who spoke to him across all the years, Jan’s voice reverberating in the echo chamber of memory.

  They drove around the neighborhood until dusk had changed to dark. Disconsolately, Zeller said, “We’re not going to find him, Michael. Not now.”

  “We’ll keep looking if you want, Brad.”

  “No, no use. Let’s head back.”

  Turning into his drive, Zeller switched off the headlamps and braked the car. He twisted the ignition key. The Dart dieseled a sputtering instant before it died.

  Zeller didn’t move. Staring straight ahead, he said, “You know, I really don’t believe this. Dusty’s gone and I don’t know what happened.”

  Want some food for thought? Michael mused. Good, tough gristle and sinew you can chew on? He said, “I don’t know either, but maybe someone…” He paused, as though he’d had an idea but dismissed it, or decided it was nothing he wanted to say after all.

  “Go on,” Brad said tonelessly.

  “Okay,” Michael sighed. “You do hear about dognappers grabbing animals for scientific labs so they can do experiments, dissect them…” He stopped there as though the idea were too ghastly to contemplate.

  “Yeah,” Zeller said. “I don’t want to believe that. I don’t believe it.”

  “Nah, me either,” Michael said, making sure ‘his voice was loud and emphatic—too loud and too emphatic. “It’s a stupid idea and I don’t know why I even said it. Just forget it, okay?”

  “It’s young dogs they want for stuff like that. Dusty’s old. He’s no good for them. He’s…”

  “Like I said, Brad, a stupid idea. Don’t even think about it,” Michael said.

  Zell said nothing. He pushed open the car door, the dome light a sudden, sickly yellow glow. He turned his head and said, “I’m going to have a drink. Want to have one with me?”

  “Sure, Brad,” Michael said. “A beer.”

  Zeller had a shot of Seagram’s Imperial and chased it with another and then he poured a third. Sitting at the kitchen table, Michael said, “You give the police a call, Brad. There’s no real crime in Park Estates so they have plenty of time to look for lost pets. I’ll bet they find him.”

  Zeller nodded. “I will call the cops.” He lifted the shot glass with leprous white fingers. “But they won’t find my dog. Dusty’s gone and that’s all. That’s what I feel.”

  “Don’t you think that way, Brad,” Michael said. He finished the Old Milwaukee. “You can’t give up hope.”

  Michael rose. Zeller gazed at him, eyes anguished under the bright alcoholic sheen. Michael put a hand on Zeller’s shoulder. “You’ll see, it’ll be okay,” he said.

  Then he added something he truly believed. “You’ll see Dusty again,” he said. “I’m sure of that.”

  — | — | —

  THREE

  BETH WAS upset to hear there was no sign of Dusty. She wished there was something they could do for Brad, something more…

  Michael assured her he, too, was concerned. “Brad’s so attached to that dog, it would just destroy him if anything happened.”

  There’d been two calls while Michael was out, Beth informed him: her mother and Vern Engelking. Beth had said, “yes” to the invitation to the cookout Vern and Laura were having on Saturday, Labor Day weekend. Oh, and while Vern said it was nothing important, there was something about business, so if Michael wanted to call back, that would be okay.

  “Guess I will get back to Vern,” Michael said with a realistic sigh. “If I don’t, I’ll be wondering what it could be, and”—he smiled at Beth—“I don’t want anything on my mind, now except us.”

  Michael went upstairs to the room he’d made his office. He turned on the overhead light and closed the door. He looked at the file cabinets and the magazine rack with its copies of Fortune, Time, Newsweek and US News and World Report, the bland seascape hanging on the wall, the desk with its digital calendar-clock pen holder, the adding machine, the portable manual typewriter.

  No question about it, he thought, he had the ordinary at-home office of a white-collar nonentity. From the desk, he took the ordinary photo. There they were, he and Beth and the kids, pressed under no-glare glass, a picture taken last year at the lake. The sky was blue, the water more so; they all wore the lop-sided smiles of “family togetherness time,” preserved in the orange tone of Kodachrome. People said Kim resembled Beth and that Marcy was “100 percent his girl,” but he couldn’t see it. The children looked like children, period—like small nothings who might someday grow up to be big nothings—if he let them.

  Michael sat in the swivel desk chair, not reaching for th
e telephone. He relaxed. Here, with only himself, he was himself and no one else.

  I am a Stranger, he thought, relishing the affirmation of his power and guile. Then he telephoned the Stranger who was the president of Superior Chemical Company.

  “Michael,” Vern Engelking boomed cheerfully, “I’m so pleased you and your lovely family will be attending our little get-together. We’ll drink beer—lemonade for the’ wee ones, of course—eat hamburgers charred to carbon on the Weber kettle, and have a marvelous time.”

  “Right,” Michael laughed dryly. “There was business you wanted to discuss?”

  “A trifling matter,” Vern said, “but it seems our suspicions regarding Herb Cantlon have sadly proven correct. That’s the basic gist of the report Eddie Markell’s provided me. Herb is utterly unethical, a viper at the bosom of Superior Chemical.”

  “He’s ripping us off,” Michael said.

  “Indeed,” Vern agreed. “We’ll have to terminate him.”

  “Yes.” Michael’s grin was wide.

  “We’ll arrange the details with Eddie in the near future. I’m afraid we’ll have to punish Herb Cantlon rather severely.”

  Michael laughed. “A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.”

  Vern Engelking chuckled, too. “Well, now you have two festive occasions to look forward to, our party and Herb Cantlon. I hope this brightens your evening. Goodnight, Michael, and see you tomorrow.”

  “Goodnight,” Michael said, and hung up the phone.

  Not the call, he reflected, but a call, promising a new chance to again know the exquisite pleasure, the thrill of near-omnipotence that came from killing.

  In the living room, Beth sat at the end of the sofa encircled by the light of the end table lamp. While Michael had been with Zeller, she’d put on her pastel green baby-doll pajamas.

  “Nothing urgent?” she asked, as Michael sat down. Her small foot spanned the distance between them to press against the side of his thigh.

  “Vern? No, no big deal. A price change on paper towels, that’s all.”