The Need

by Andrew Neiderman

  “And if someone hears you … an inferior?”

  “I pretend I’m thinking aloud.” I leaned toward him sharply and seized his hand. The abrupt movement took him by surprise and he nearly dropped the glass of wine he held in his other. “Don’t you see,” I said emphatically, “he haunts me.”

  He gulped down some more wine and I released his hand and leaned back again.

  “Do you do the same thing to Richard? Speak to him? Haunt him?”

  Good question, I thought. He was trying to see if I could have influenced Richard, perhaps have prevented him from killing Michael, or for that matter, any of the others.

  I leaned back and gazed over the room. I didn’t want the detective to see the tears that had come into my eyes. I drew them back, buried them under my lids and took a deep breath. Then I slipped my Ingrid Bergman natural smile over my face and fingered the silverware as I stared down at the table.

  “No. It’s not the same. The male in us is more insecure. He will need to reinforce his existence. Instinctively, he will know that he will be the first to go.”

  “Like this Mary who could no longer become William after she had had her menopause?”

  “Exactly,” I said, looking up sharply. He wasn’t just toying with me. He was keeping track of all the details. I was impressed.

  The waiter brought our appetizers.

  “Good-looking shrimp,” Detective Mayer remarked. “Not like the stuff I get at Mike’s, a small bar and grill near the station. Sort of a hangout for us police types.”

  “I know your hangouts,” I said.

  “Oh?” He started to chew his shrimp and stopped. “You’re not trying to tell me that there are … police who are your kind?”

  “That’s precisely what I’m telling you.”

  He resumed chewing, nodding thoughtfully.

  “Why did you decide to have Richard keep a diary?”

  “He was doing it anyway, in a sense.”

  “What d’ya mean?” He ate slowly, enjoying the succulent flavors. I decided he was a man of great passion, this detective. He submerged himself fully in his pleasures and was the kind of a man who would suck the meat clean off the bone.

  “He was writing me letters.” The detective stopped chewing.

  “You mean sending you mail?”

  “Of course not.” I had to laugh. A couple at the table just to the right of us looked our way. I saw they had the look of people who had grown bored with each other and whenever they went to dinner, tuned themselves in to other people in the hope of finding someone or something more interesting than themselves. Whenever I saw couples like this, I envisioned them as echoes dying out as they dropped through the dark and lonely caverns of time. To be married and lonely had to be a torment, I thought.

  “I would awaken and find them waiting for me on the desk in our room. Naturally, I had no memory of their being written. I was supposed to destroy them after reading them, but I tried hiding them in a shoe box in our closet or in a pillowcase, or wrapped in my panties. Wherever I hid them, he discovered them and burned them. It was a game we played.

  “Of course, there is one he didn’t destroy—his last letter to me; for he hasn’t yet returned to find it and burn it.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “Eventually,” I said. “I stuck it in his diary. It’s after the last entry and it pertains to his latest…” I hesitated to use the word “hunt” in the androgynous sense, for I knew that Richard hadn’t gone on a typical hunt to feed so he could live on. This was a pure act of jealousy and revenge.

  “Tell me more about the letters,” he asked.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. What did he write about?”

  “In the beginning his letters were like the letters an older brother might write to his younger, but budding sister. Like most men, he saw himself as wiser and far more sophisticated when it came to male-female relations. After all, he had emerged and had been the one to go on the hunt and get the kill, so it was just natural for him to assume he knew more.”

  “He described all his kills, then?”

  “Not all, some. The ones he found more interesting than others. Don’t worry,” I said, “I remember a lot of detail from those letters and I’ll tell you some of it.”

  He nodded, a look of appreciation on his face.

  “That morning after I awoke and made all the discoveries about our room, I found his first letter on the desk, placed right next to my schoolbooks so I wouldn’t miss it.”

  “Let me ask you this,” Detective Mayer said, “you say you have different fingerprints. Do you have different handwriting?”

  “Of course. You still don’t understand that we are two different people, two entirely different people.”

  He saw the anger in my eyes. He wasn’t this dense; he just didn’t want to understand.

  “I’m sorry, I…”

  “You’re just like any other arrogant man: You can’t accept the fact that God created something more wonderful than you.”

  “He created you. I accept that. I’m just having trouble accepting Richard.”

  “Um.”

  “Hey,” he said, leaning toward me. “Don’t blame me for not wanting to see you become a man.”

  We stared at each other for a moment and then I smiled. He was a little more complicated than he seemed to be, my detective.

  “Getting back to the handwriting … I thought he had a fine, thin handwriting, in much more artistic script than mine. The ends of his words all had little sweeps at the base of the final letters. At first, that made it difficult to read, for the words seemed connected. But I quickly got used to it. I have his very first letter memorized. Do you want to hear it?”

  “Very much.” He leaned back, folded his arms just under his chest, and waited.

  I closed my eyes. When I did so, I could hear Richard reading me the letter in his voice.

  Dear Clea,

  Today you are beginning school as a woman. I can tell you that the boys in your class will be a little intimidated. They won’t be pushing and punching and joking around with you in the same way. They will stand back and do things to one another to fight for your attention.

  Older boys, however, will approach you directly, expecting you to swoon. Many will try to take advantage of your innocence. Be alert and remember what they are after. It’s not a conquest, conquering you; it’s conquering their own innocence, their own insecurity. Men have always seen women as prey. It should come as no surprise then that the androgynous men literally hunt.

  I know this sounds like a big brother preaching to a younger sister, but I can’t help but want to give you the benefit of my masculine viewpoint.

  Forgive me for my condescending tone.

  Love,

  Richard

  “Love, Richard,” I repeated, barely doing more than mouthing it.

  I opened my eyes. Detective Mayer was staring at me intensely, his mouth slightly open.

  “When you say that from memory…”

  “Yes?”

  “Your face, it seemed to change for a few moments.” He shook his head. “Must be the dim lights, the wine.”

  “No,” I said. “Richard was probably using the moment to reach out. It’s as if I provided him with a window, a hole in the ice, and for a moment, he could come up for air.”

  I shook my head and sighed.

  “I couldn’t help it. The memory of that first letter … seeing his signature. You can’t begin to understand, but when you ask if our handwriting is different…”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t you see? The sense of him being a whole, separate person was embodied in the way he wrote his name. It was so unlike the way I would write my own.” My heart was pounding. Perhaps I was going too far, reminiscing too vividly. I felt like a suicidal person stepping up to a precipice and then pulling herself back.

  “What did you do with that first letter?”

  “I put it in the top dra
wer of the desk. A day later, it was gone.”

  “Maybe you had just misplaced it.”

  “No. Richard had emerged and found it. He told me so in his next letter and asked … no,” I said pausing and smirking, “ordered me not to keep any correspondence.”

  “What was he afraid of?”

  “Someone like you, perhaps.”

  “Or you,” the detective countered. That was good; that was brilliant. I looked at him with different eyes. This man wore many faces. I was beginning to think that he lived within a prism and it wasn’t possible to see clearly who he really was. Perhaps that came from his work, his need to win the confidence of those he questioned and suspected.

  I wanted to warn him of the dangers, tell him that it was possible to lose track of who you really were. You could spend your whole life looking into mirrors, searching for the truth of your identity and seeing only one false face after another. Visual amnesia could terrify your very soul, for without a name, the soul would wander aimlessly from door to door, never sure which one opened on home.

  The waiter, a dark-haired man with a face as pale as an unlit candle, brought our food. His lips were so red, I was sure he had painted them with a trace of lipstick. I could see he made the detective uncomfortable. Mayer sat back and looked the other way while we were being served.

  “So many of your kind are not sure if they want to be male or female,” I told him when the waiter left us. “Why should you be surprised at learning about the Androgyne?”

  “You’re right. Did you see that guy’s fingernails?”

  “Maybe it’s a woman.” It wasn’t, but I wanted him to wonder.

  “Christ. You sure this place is sanitary?”

  I threw my head back and laughed.

  “Sexual deviation doesn’t make its home in filth. Some of the fags, dikes, homos, gays—whatever term you want to use—are the most immaculate people I know.”

  “I suppose,” he said and cut into his veal. I dipped my spoon and fork into my angel hair.

  “What are you thinking about or remembering now?” he asked.

  “Why?”

  “You’ve been sitting there, smiling and twirling your angel hair for nearly a minute.”

  “I was remembering rushing to school to see Alison the day after Richard had emerged and hunted.

  “Of course, she knew instantly. We simply stood there, staring into one another’s eyes. The corridors were usually so noisy in the morning: students rushing in from their buses, lockers slamming, people shouting to one another, teachers monitoring the halls and demanding less roughhousing and noise, bells ringing. Yet, we heard none of it; only our own voices.

  “‘His name is Richard,’” I said. She nodded, her eyes filled with happiness for me. ‘But tell me,’ I asked her quickly, ‘did Nicholas leave anything for you to read?’ You should have seen the look on her face, the envy.

  “‘To read?’ she said. ‘What?’

  “‘A letter? Advice?’

  “‘No.’ She was practically in tears. Of course, I regretted telling her immediately, but how was I to know? Of course, I thought that everything happening to me had happened to her.”

  The detective nodded, chewing harder.

  “I told her Nicholas would surely leave her notes or letters, too, but instinctively I knew he wouldn’t. I knew that what had begun between Richard and myself was unique, even to Androgyne; and I sensed that I should be more discreet about it. The others wouldn’t understand and might even feel threatened by it.”

  “Threatened? Why threatened?”

  “Unusual or uncharacteristic behavior might lead to discovery, exposure. There was and has never been any doubt what would happen then.”

  “What?”

  “Your kind would hunt us down, exterminate us. Consequently, we don’t tolerate deviants in our race.”

  He nodded, thoughtful. Then his eyes brightened. I knew what he was going to ask.

  “What about you?”

  “It’s complicated,” I replied. I finally lifted my angel hair to my lips. “But after a while, you will understand and appreciate why I am doing this.”

  “I appreciate it already,” he kidded. “This food is fantastic. I’ve got this Italian buddy whose mother makes the best baked lasagna I ever ate, but even she can’t make food like this. I mean it’s not what you would call authentic Italian. It’s … it’s…”

  “Gourmet,” I said.

  “Yeah, gourmet.” He ate from his pasta side dish, rolling his eyes to indicate how much he enjoyed the food.

  “Anyway,” I continued, “right from the beginning, I felt a great need to protect Richard. There would be secrets between us, secrets I would share with no one until I had met William, because I sensed he was no threat.”

  “What do you mean? Why wasn’t he a threat?”

  “He was in the autumn of his androgynous life. The spirit in the blood had slowed down. He rarely went on hunts anymore. The change was more for the sake of visiting himself than anything else. And he had taken a sort of grandfatherly interest in me. There was no competition between us.

  “Not that competition is bad, you understand. It’s natural, good. Young Androgyne are like two wild horses, challenging each other’s endurance, speed. It sharpens them both.”

  “So this envy of Alison’s didn’t damage your friendship?”

  “Hardly. She wanted to know what sort of advice Richard had given me. I told her it was advice to the lovelorn. And then I added, ‘the nerve—him giving advice to me as if men know more than women when it comes to sex.”

  “I bet Alison liked that.”

  “Very perceptive. She loved it. Once again, we were allies.

  “‘Nicholas wouldn’t dare impose his views on me,’ she declared.

  “I told her after a while, Richard wouldn’t either.

  “We laughed, pressing our shoulders against each other. Mr. Thornbee, a math teacher on morning hall duty, saw us together. His gray-black eyebrows lifted and the wrinkles in his forehead deepened into dark incisions. His lower lip looked much smaller than his upper to me because he had a small chin and a face that looked as though someone had squeezed it between a powerful forefinger and thumb while it was forming.

  “Although he was nearly sixty-five and almost asexual to me, I sensed a male’s interest and curiosity in the way he looked at us now. Something dormant had been stirred in him. Perhaps it was only the memory of what it had once been, but it was enough to bring a flush to his face and a brightness to his eyes.

  “‘Girls,’ he finally said and then paused as though he had forgotten why on earth he had said it. ‘I … you had better get a move on if you don’t want to be late for homeroom.’

  “‘Oh yes. Thank you, Mr. Thornbee,’ I said. There was something in the way I turned my shoulder and gazed back at him that brought a smile to his lips. Alison sensed it too.

  “Then we both swept our hair back and walked down the corridor, side by side, strutting with so much androgynous confidence that those who stood before us stepped back to let us pass, remaining some distance behind us. It was almost as if they could sense there were four of us and not two moving through the school hallway.”

  I went back to my food. The detective sat staring at me for a few moments, his face locked in a gentle, almost loving smile. It was as if he could feel what it was like to be a young girl and have a close friend, one with whom you could share your thoughts and feelings, your fears and dreams. You could pass your most intimate thoughts between you as easily as you could pass lipstick. That was a wonderful thing, a wonderful time. Free of inhibitions, we marched brazenly into each new day, unafraid of being naked, eager to do whatever we could to bring the quiver of ecstasy into our flesh.

  After a moment Detective Mayer emptied his wine and sat back.

  “This has been one of the finest meals I have ever had,” he said.

  “It’s the company.”

  He laughed.

  “M
aybe.” He looked about. “I like this place; I really do. I didn’t think I would when we first came in, but now … it sort of wears on you like a new pair of shoes. You break them in and never want to give them up. It’s that way with everything that’s new I suppose.”

  “Very much so. William put it another way. He said, ‘Be careful how you lose your virginity, for you will feel that exact moment first, each and every time you make love after.’

  “Freud said it another way,” I continued. “He said there are four people in every love affair, the woman the man first fell in love with and the man the woman first fell in love with, as well as each other. Do you understand?”

  “How the hell did you get all that out of my new pair of shoes?”

  “Everything, one way or another, relates to sex. Did you ever have a foot massage?”

  “No.”

  “Well, if you did, you would see how slipping your foot into a shoe that fits comfortably is a very erotic thing.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Take your shoe off,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “Go on. Take off your shoe and sock and give me your foot under the table.”

  “You’re kidding.” He looked around to see if anyone had overheard. Even if anyone had, they wouldn’t have shown it. “Should I?”

  “Do something dangerous, Detective Mayer. Go for it,” I taunted. He thought for a moment and then leaned down to slip off his shoe and his sock. I felt for his naked foot and placed it in my lap. Then, slowly, I began to massage his sole. He closed his eyes.

  “Oh man,” he moaned. “I never would have believed it could feel so good.”

  The detective insisted on paying for our dinner. He claimed he could write it off on his expense account.

  “Despite my exposing my very sole to you,” he punned, “this is an investigation.”

  “Every time a woman and a man make love or merely caress, it’s an investigation,” I told him.

  I didn’t drive straight home after we left Antonio’s. First, I took him up the coast, driving very fast so that the wind whipped around us. The moonlight was so bright on the water; it was like a long finger of fire burning from the beach to the horizon. About ten miles north of Malibu, I pulled off the highway where there was enough room on the shoulder of the road to park and gaze out over the water.