Reprisal

by F. Paul Wilson

  Will smiled again. Lisl had told him so many times how much she thought she owed him for opening the worlds of philosophy and literature to her. If she only knew. She had done more for him than he could ever do for her. Her unstudied combination of sweetness, innocence, intelligence, and vulnerability had gone a long way toward restoring his faith in humanity, in life itself. When all had seemed blackest, she had provided a ray of sunlight. And as a result, Will's whole world was brighter now.

  Lisl left the campus early that afternoon. The days were getting shorter and she reveled in the autumn coolness. When she reached Brookside Gardens, she realized she didn't want to be in her apartment. She sat in her car in the lot and wondered what to do with the extra time she'd found this afternoon. She told herself she should invest it in her paper for Palo Alto, but that didn't appeal to her. Too restless to sit in front of a computer terminal. Restless. Why?

  Then she knew.

  Lisl didn't feel like being alone today.

  This wasn't like her. She'd always been a loner, always with so much on her mind that she could keep busy enough not to miss human company. But not now. Today she felt the need to be with someone else.

  And not just anyone.

  A memory of what she had come to think of as " Metropolis night" wafted through Lisl's mind and she shuddered. She and Rafe had spent many other nights together since then, all of them wonderful, but that particular night remained special because it was the first, and because it had awakened an almost-overwhelming appetite in her, one that could be temporarily sated, but never for long. She was a sexual being now, a whole person, and she reveled in it. And Rafe Rafe was like a satyralways ready.

  Probably ready even now.

  Instead of restarting her car, Lisl got out and began walking toward the park. She cut across its grassy southwest corner to Poplar Street. From there it was four short blocks to Rafe's condo in Parkview, the town's haven for yuppies who either didn't want or couldn't yet afford their own home.

  But as she entered the development and walked among its contemporary two-story row house condos finished in blue-green stained cedar clapboard, a tiny knot of apprehension began to form in her stomach. He might not be there, of course, but that wasn't it. This was going to be a surprise visit. What if she were the one who wound up surprised? What if she found him there with another woman? What would she do then?

  Part of her said she'd die right there on the spot. And another part of her whispered that she wouldn't die at all. Why should she? She'd been betrayed beforein spades. And being betrayed by someone like Rafe would be no more than she should have expected, no less than she deserved.

  Stop it ! she told herself. Negative thinking. Rafe had warned her time and again about tearing herself down like that. And Lisl tried. But it was a habit. And lifelong habits were difficult to break.

  Once a nerd, always a nerd.

  And what was a nerdy broad like her doing trysting with a younger man like Rafe Losmara? Handsome, brilliantwhat could a man like that see in her?

  Yet he did see something in her. Had to. They'd been a "thing" on campus for almost a month now. They did their best to keep it a discreet, off-campus affair, but it was impossible to hide a relationship as intimate as theirs in such a close-knit community.

  Lisl was sure some of her fellow faculty members and their wives tsked and shook their heads when they saw them together downtown, but no one had told her to cool it and drop him. She was sure it would have been a different story if Rafe were doing graduate work in her department. Their relationship then would be perceived as a blatant conflict of interest and she had no doubt that Harold Masterson, as chairman of math, would have come down on her like a ball of fire. But since Rafe's work was overseen by the psychology department, their relationship was tolerated, viewed not with disdain, but rather with wonder and astonishment.

  Go ahead and stare , she'd think with a smile. I've got mine, you get yours .

  But did she really have hers? Or was she only fooling herself?

  She loved him. She didn't want to. She hadn't wanted to place herself in that vulnerable position again, but there was no helping it. And she couldn't help but wonder how he felt about her. Was he stringing her along, playing with her?

  Lisl paused as she stood before Rafe's door, unannounced. He was so youngshe could not let herself lose sight of that fact. Would he tire of her? Could he ever be truly satisfied with her? Was somebody else inside with him now?

  Only one way to find out.

  Taking a deep breath, Lisl knocked. And waited. No one came to the door. She tried again with no result. Maybe he wasn't home. Or maybe he wasn't answering the door because

  Better not to know.

  But as Lisl was turning away, the door opened. Rafe stood there with dripping hair and a bath towel around his waist. He seemed genuinely surprised.

  "Lisl! I thought I heard the door but I never dreamed"

  "If-if this is a bad time"

  "No! Not at alü Come in! Is anything wrong?"

  The whiteness of his condo never failed to strike herthe walls, the furniture, the rugs, the picture frames and most of the canvases within themwhite.

  "No," she said, stepping in. "Why should there be?"

  "Well, it's just that this is so unlike you."

  She felt her confidence draining off. "I'm sorry. I should have called."

  "Don't be ridiculous. This is great!"

  "Are you really glad to see me?"

  "Can't you tell?"

  She glanced down at his towel and saw how it was tented up in front of him. She smiled, her spirits lifting. That was for her. All for her. Hesitantly, she reached out and loosened the knotted portion of the towel at his hip. It fell away.

  Yes. For her. Just for her.

  She stroked him ever so gently with her fingernails, then knelt before him.

  "I don't deserve this," Lisl murmured.

  "Don't deserve what?" Rafe whispered in her ear.

  She sighed. She was so happy and at peace now she could almost cry. The exhausted afterglow of their lovemaking was almost as delicious as the lovemaking itself.

  "Feeling this good."

  "Don't say that," he told her. "Don't ever say that you don't deserve to feel good."

  They lay side by side, skin to skin, on his white king-size bed. The waning sun was beaming through the window, suffusing the pallor of the room with red-gold light.

  "Want me to pull the shade?" Rafe said.

  Lisl laughed. "A little late for that now, don't you think? Whoever's out there looking has already gotten quite an eyeful."

  "No worry about that."

  Right. Rafe's bedroom was on the second floor. There were no other windows in sight from the bed.

  Making love in the day or with a light on had bothered Lisl at first, back when she had been a pudgette. She'd preferred then to cloak the excess fatty baggage on her body in darkness. But now that she had slimmed down some, she didn't mind. In fact, it was kind of exciting to exhibit her new, trimmer proportions for him.

  "You've lost more weight," he said, running a hand along her flank.

  "You like?"

  "I like you any way you want to look. What's more important is how you like the thinner you."

  "I love it!"

  "Then that's all that matters. I'm for anything that gets you thinking better of yourself."

  "And I'm for anything that makes you enjoy looking at me as much as I enjoy looking at you."

  Lisl loved looking at Rafe. He'd told her that his mother had been French, his father Spanish. His features favored the Spanish sidehis almost-black hair, the thick lashes around his eyes, and the irises of a brown so very dark they, too, seemed almost black. His smooth caf6 au lait skin was utterly flawless. She could have resented that skin. Its perfection was almost feminine. She could have wanted it for herself.

  But there was nothing feminine about the way he approached sex. Lisl had only made love to one other man in her li
fe: Brian, who she considered, in her limited experience, to be good a lover. After her first night with Rafe, she had learned just how limited her experience had been. She thought that maybe there was some truth after all to that old cliche about Latin lovers.

  He put his face between her breasts.

  "You're a Prime. You deserve to feel good about yourself. You've allowed the host of lesser creatures around you to determine what you think of yourself."

  PrimesRafe had called them Creators when he'd broached the subject after Metropolis in the Hidey-hole Tavern, but that had been for simplicity's sake. In private he divided the world into Primes and everyone else. Primes, he'd told her, were unique people, like prime numbers, divisible only by one or by themselves. It was his favorite topic. He never tired of it. Always pointing out examples. After weeks of listening to him, Lisl was beginning to be convinced that it might have some validity.

  "I'm not a Prime," she said. "What have I created?"

  Rafe was a Prime, no doubt about that Homo superior in every way. But Lisl? Not a chance.

  "Nothing yet, but you will. I sense it in you. But let's get back to what you think you don't deserve. What don't you deserve? And why not?"

  "Don't you think" she began, then paused as Rafe nuzzled one of her nipples and sent new chills up and down that side of her body, "a person should have to do something special to merit feeling so happy and content? It's only fair."

  Rafe lifted his head and looked into her eyes.

  "You deserve the best of everything," Rafe said. "As I said, you're a Prime. And after the kind of life you've had until now, after what you've put up with, you're long overdue for some good feelings."

  "My life hasn't been so bad."

  Rafe flopped onto his back and stared at the ceiling.

  "Right. Sure. A lifetime of being knocked down and kicked around by the people who should have been supporting you and encouraging you to keep going. That's a long way from 'not so bad.'"

  "Since when do you know so much about my life?"

  "I know what you've told me. I can guess the rest."

  Lisl rose up on one elbow and looked down at him.

  "Okay, wiseguy. Tell me all about me."

  "All right. How's this? Nothing you ever did really pleased your parents."

  "Wrong. They"

  Rafe overrode her. "They were always on your case, weren't they? Even though all through grammar school and high school you got straight A's. Right?"

  "Right, but"

  "And I'll bet your project took first place at the science fair, didn't it? Even though you did it all on your own. With no help from your folkswho always seemed to have better things to doyou beat out all those other kids whose fathers and brothers and uncleswho also had better things to do, by the way, but who gave a damndid most of the work for them. And how did your folks respond when you came home and showed them your blue ribbon? I'll bet it was 'That's nice, dear, but do you have a date for the prom yet?' Am I far off?"

  She laughed. "Oh, God! How do you know?"

  "And I'll bet your mother never let up on you. 'Put down that book, get up, get out, meet boys!'"

  "Yes, she did! She did!" This was uncanny.

  "What single phrase during your developing years most typified her attitude toward you?"

  "Oh I don't know."

  "How about, 'What's the matter with you?'"

  The words pierced her. That was it. God, how many times had she heard that through the years?

  She nodded. "How?"

  "Your mother never paid you a single compliment, I'll bet. An insecure bitch who couldn't bring herself to say that you looked nice, couldn't stoop to bolster your confidence. You got the message: 'Sure you're a brainy kid, but so what? Why don't you date more? Why don't you dress more in style? Why don't you have popular friends?'"

  Lisl was getting uncomfortable now. This was striking a little too close to home.

  "All right, Rafe. That's enough."

  But Rafe wasn't finished yet.

  "And when it wasn't something they said or did that cut you off at the knees, it was what they didn't say, didn't do. Never went to parents' night to hear your teachers gush about you. I'll bet they never even went to the science fairs to see how your project stacked up against the others."

  "That's enough , Rafe."

  "But somewhere along the line, late in the game, I'll bet, your father became a believer. Throughout most of your adolescence he was afraid you'd become a spinster schoolmarm and hang around the house forever. Then somebody told him that your SAT scores made you prime scholarship material, that you could qualify for a free ride at one of the state universities. Epiphany! Suddenly he got religion and became Lisl's big booster!"

  This was becoming too painful. "Stop it, Rafe. I mean it."

  "Suddenly, for the first time in his life, he was bragging about his daughter, how she was going to tap into the state for big bucks and get him back some of the taxes he'd been paying all those years."

  "Shut up!"

  It was truetoo true. She'd seen it then, she'd known it all along, but she'd never faced it. It had hurt so much she'd buried it in some deep, dark recess. But now Rafe was digging it up, rubbing her nose in it. Why?

  Rafe smiled. "Suddenly Daddy was standing foursquare behind his precious little academic meal ticket!"

  "Damn you!"

  She swung a fist at him. He didn't turn, didn't try to block it or fend her off. She felt her knuckles land square on his chest with a meaty impact, saw him wince.

  "He was a creep!" he said.

  She hit him again. Harder. Again, he took the blow.

  "He drained off your self-esteem like a drunk guzzles beer. So what did you do? You hooked up with a creep in college who was the same. Good old Brian! He proposed and you accepted. He let you support him through med school and then he dropped you the first time a pretty nurse smiled at him!"

  Lisl was almost blind with fury now. Why was he doing this? She rose to her knees and began slapping at him, scratching him, pounding on him. She couldn't help herself. She hated him.

  "God damn you!"

  But Rafe wouldn't stop.

  "They all dumped on you! And you know why? Because you're a Prime. And all those petty nothings who raised and educated you hate Primes. But worse than that, you're a woman! A woman who dares to be intelligent! Who dares to think! You can't do that! You can't be better than them! Not unless you're a guy! And even then, don't be too much better!"

  Lisl kept slapping, scratching, pounding. Rafe flinched with each blow, but took it all.

  "Go ahead," he said in a lower tone. "Get it out. I'm you're mother. I'm your father. I'm your ex-husband. Beat the shit out of me. Get it out !"

  Like smoke in a gale, Lisl's anger suddenly dissipated. She continued striking Rafe, but the blows were fewer and lacked their previous force. She began to sob.

  "How could you say those things?" -

  "Because they're true."

  Lisl gasped when she saw the scratches, welts, and bruises on his chest.

  I did that ?

  "Oh, Rafe, I'm so sorry! Did I hurt you?"

  He glanced farther down and smiled. "Not so's you'd notice."

  Lisl followed his gaze and gasped. He was erect again. Hugely so. She let him pull her atop him. He kissed away her tears as she straddled him, then he slipped smoothly inside her. She sighed as her turbulent emotions faded and became lost in the misty pleasure of having him so deep within her. She couldn't be sure, but he seemed bigger and harder than ever before.

  "I can see we've got a lot of work to do," Rafe said as Lisl got dressed.

  Lisl's hands shook as she rolled her panty hose up her legs. Never had she experienced anything like their second bout of love-making today. Numerous smaller eruptions had led to a final explosion that had been, well, almost cataclysmic. She was still weak.

  "I don't know about you, but I think we've got that down pretty near perfect."

  Rafe burs
t out laughing. "Not sex! Anger!"

  "Who's angry?"

  "You are!"

  Lisl looked at him. "Rafe, I've never been happier or more content in my entire life."

  "Perhaps." He sat down beside her on the mattress and put his arm around her. "But way down deep inside, where you don't let anybody go but you, you feel you really don't deserve it and you're convinced it's not going to last. Am I right?"

  Lisl swallowed. He was right. He was so right. But she didn't want to admit it to him.

  "Lisl, you've said as much, haven't you?"

  She nodded.

  "And you don't want to feel that way, do you." It was not a question.

  She felt a tear form in each eye. "No."

  "It makes you angry, doesn't it."

  "I hate it."

  "Okay," Rafe said. "Now we're getting somewhere. You 'hate' it. That's the key, Lisl: anger. You're riddled with it. You seethe with it."

  "That's not true."

  "It is. You've bottled it up so well behind this placid exterior of yours that even you don't know it's there. But I do."

  "Oh, really?" His know-it-all psych grad student attitude was beginning to annoy her now. "How do you know?"

  "Recent experience," he said. "Like maybe half an hour ago."

  She glanced at his chest. The wounds she had inflictedthe scratches, the welts and bruiseswere almost completely gone. She ran her fingers over the near-normal skin.

  "How?"

  "I'm a fast healer," he said quickly, pulling on a T-shirt.

  "But I hurt you!" She stifled a sob. "Oh, Jesus! I'm so sorry!"

  "It's all right. It's nothing serious. Forget about it."

  How could she forget about it? She frightened herself.

  Maybe Rafe was right. Now that she thought about it, she did resent her parents for the way they had managed to denigrate all her interests and cheapen her accomplishments. And BrianGod knew she had reason enough to hate her ex-husband.

  "It'll never happen again, I swear it."

  "I didn't mind, believe me. As a matter of fact, I want you to take some of your anger out on me. It's good for both of us. It binds us more closely to each other."