Chapter 42

They had gone almost three miles on the Golden State Freeway when the engine of Jerry’s Chrysler coughed and stalled. Paul braced himself as traffic behind them braked and screeched and Jerry jabbed at the emergency flasher and drifted the car perilously over one lane and onto the shoulder.

“Shit,” Jerry spat. “The goddamn thing just out of the shop, new generator—goddammit! Wish we’d of taken your car like you offered.”

Wryly remembering when he had wanted Carolyn to take her car instead of Val Hunter’s, Paul shrugged. “Happen to anybody, Jerry. Maybe it’s something simple.”

They examined the engine connections, found no obvious problem. “Goddammit, shit. Sorry Brother, always swear my head off when I’m mad.”

“Relax.” Paul gripped his shoulder. “There’s a call box right behind us.

An auto-service truck arrived an hour later on that Sunday afternoon. The burly young driver buried his head under the hood of Jerry’s car and emerged to announce, “Carburetor.”

“Shit,” Jerry said. “Goddammit.” He kicked at a tire in rhythmic fury.

“Know a place you can tow it?” Paul grinned at the young driver, who was chewing gum and gazing indifferently at Jerry.

“Yup. Get it fixed up for you today.” He jerked a thumb at Jerry’s car. “Only take a minute to hook her up.”

With the Raider game blasting in the cab of the truck, they rode down Western Avenue in Hollywood, Jerry’s Chrysler rattling behind them. Jerry peered out at peeling billboards, dilapidated buildings. “Shit, this don’t look too good.”

“You want a mechanic on Sunday,” the driver said imperturbably, you take what you can get.” He turned into an ARCO station.

A few minutes later a tall, gaunt man, the name Lamont stitched on the breast pocket of his coveralls, toweled grease from his hands and stated, “Need to take the carburetor apart, see what’s choking that baby. Cost you a hundred-forty.”

“Holy Jesus shit,” Jerry sputtered.

“No checks. Cash or credit card. Up to you—take it someplace else. Ten bucks a day storage till you get it out of here.”

Jerry glared at him, turned to Paul. Paul shrugged. Jerry’s shoulders sagged. “How long will it take?”

“Be ready after five.” He waved at the neon words blinking under the ARCO sign. “We’re open twenty-four hours.”

To circumvent further profanity, Paul said hurriedly to the mechanic, “You have a loaner we could have? To rent?” he added. “Nope, last one’s gone.”

“Shit,” Jerry said. “There goes the goddamn Raider game.”

The mechanic was filling out a form attached to a clipboard. He touched a foot to Jerry’s car, to the license frame which read North Hollywood Chrysler-Plymouth. “You guys from the Valley?”

“Burbank, close by Glendale,” Paul answered, looking around for a pay phone. He would call Carolyn.

“Let me check with Mike; he’s the morning man. Lives out that way. He’ll drop you if he’s going straight home.”

“No big deal, Jerry,” Paul said soothingly as Jerry pulled his Raider ticket from his shirt pocket and waved it in disgust. “We’ll get out to another game.” Fat chance, he thought. “Maybe see a better team than Denver.”

“I wanted to see Elway,” Jerry said mournfully, accepting the clip-board from the mechanic and signing the paperwork. “Brother, you mind running me back in here to pick up the car? I hate to ask.”

Mentally, Paul cursed. “Sure, Jerry.”

“You’re a hell of a guy, Brother. Damn good neighbor.” Jerry crumpled his Raider ticket and threw it into a trash receptacle.

Sitting in the high cab of Mike’s pickup, Paul glimpsed Val Hunter’s battered tan Volkswagen as soon as the truck turned onto his street. His chest constricted; the pain was swift and crushing.

Jerry said, “Come on in, Brother. We’ll have some beers and watch Dallas on the tube.”

“Don’t think so, Jerry.” His temples throbbed, his chest hurt. He nodded thanks to Mike and dispiritedly walked down the driveway and let himself into the garage. He would take his car, go for a drive.

No, goddammit. He slammed a fist on the roof of his Buick. Why should he go anywhere? It was his house, his wife, that Amazon bitch wasn’t driving him away from his own house and his own wife. But he walked around the car several times in frustration and indecision, then bent down to finger a chip on the door of Carolyn’s Sunbird. He straightened. He would stay outside—assuming they were inside—and work on the pool, maybe go for a swim. He went out through the side door of the garage into the yard.

He heard a sound from the slightly raised window of the guest room. He had never heard such a sound before, yet he knew with a prickling sensation along his scalp that it was Carolyn’s voice. The sill was at eye level, only two steps away.

For an instant he thought Carolyn was being attacked, and in that moment he rose onto the balls of his feet from the force of the adrenaline rushing through him. Then he saw that Carolyn’s arms were locked in fierce embrace around the massive nude body of Val Hunter, that Carolyn’s mouth was fastened to hers, that Val Hunter’s hand was within Carolyn’s legs.

Hair stirred on the back of his neck; his head swam with vertigo.

Carolyn made the same sound, a moan from deep in her throat; and her arms released Val Hunter. Val Hunter moved down her body. Carolyn’s thighs rose to imprison Val Hunter’s face between them; then her body arched as if struck by an electrical charge.

He steadied himself with a shaking hand against the side of the house, and looked around, his eyes momentarily dazzled by sunlight glancing off the blue water in the pool. He walked a few steps away, conscious of the ground yielding slightly under his feet, remembering that he had watered the grass only this morning. He stared at towels on the grass above the pool decking, imprinted by two bodies which had lain close together; and clothing in careless disarray on a chaise—jeans and a T-shirt, Carolyn’s new silk shirt, her new pants; and beside the steps at the shallow end, panties and bras.

“God oh God…

As if hypnotized, as if his feet were lead weights dragging him, he returned to the window.

Carolyn’s body was spread-eagled, Val Hunter’s hair a disheveled darkness between her thighs. Val Hunter’s hands were under Carolyn’s hips, slowly rotating them; Carolyn’s head was flinging from side to side, her hands clutching at the bedspread, her breathing like sobs.

“Val...”

Her body stilled, drawing into itself, her shoulders rising, her head bending back between the shoulder blades, clenched fists lifting the spread from the bed. A sound began, was choked off. Her face was a rictus of ecstasy.

The hands released the bedspread; she sank back onto the bed. Val Hunter lay motionless, her face resting on Carolyn’s thigh. She wiped her face on the bedspread as Carolyn reached down for her, groping blindly.

She gathered Carolyn into her arms, rocked her. Carolyn gasped something he could not hear and Val Hunter murmured back indecipherably.

“Yes,” Carolyn uttered. “That. Now.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, stood swaying.

“Beautiful...Val…”

Seemingly of themselves, his eyes opened.

Val Hunter, hugely naked, knelt astride Carolyn’s delicate shoulders. Carolyn’s hands avidly gripped, glided over the white globes of hip; she reached up with both hands to seize with rough eagerness the massive breasts. Her arms circled Val Hunter’s hips, convulsively tightened. Val Hunter’s hands cradled the head between her columns of thigh. Carolyn’s arms pulled Val Hunter down to her. Carolyn’s rigid legs rose slightly from the bed, the toes pointed, the feet quivering.

Val Hunter flung her head back. The powerful hips became undulant. “Carrie,” she moaned, “darling Carrie…”

The words galvanized him into motion. He pulled himself away from the window and strode quickly across the yard.

He sat before the television set in Jerry Robinson’s family room holding a beer, staring at a football game, remembering accounts he had read of people declared clinically dead on the operating table who claimed later that they had hovered over themselves before their vital signs returned. He seemed to be somewhere outside himself, watching as he sat in the Robinson house looking calmly at the TV and speaking normally.

He found himself on his street with no memory of leaving the Robinsons, or of any conversation exchanged with them. He belched the sour taste of beer he could not remember drinking. How long had he been with the Robinsons? He peered at his watch, could not focus on the gold hands. What difference did it make? Val Hunter’s car was still outside his house.

He crossed the street. He paced with long even strides as if he were an automaton, and watched his house. When the front door finally opened he stepped quickly behind the broad peeling trunk of a palm tree.

The figure of Val Hunter shimmered in his vision, outlined in red. He blinked rapidly but still the redness framed her. She strode across the street, her faded jeans riding low on her hips, a manila envelope under her arm.

How she would sneer if she could see him hiding from her. How she must be gloating, he raged as he watched her jaunty stride. She had been laughing at him for months—how she would love to laugh in his face. She—a woman—she had seduced his wife.

He rocked savagely back and forth as he watched her, visualizing her face under the soles of his jogging shoes. He stared unblinkingly as she opened her car door, as she bent to fold her burly body within.

A leviathan, a freak. She was no woman—look at that hard elephant ass on her. Real women were soft, vulnerable. Soft skin, velvet pussies, wonderful soft asses. Men’s asses were flat and solid but a woman’s ass was lush, the epitome of everything soft and vulnerable. She was grotesque—a mutation of a woman.

A vampire. She was a pseudo-woman who seduced real women into her despicable ranks to perform her despicable practices.

Words reverberated through him: Beautiful…Val…

The tan Volkswagen started with an authoritative roar and moved off down the block, out of sight.

He was pacing again, around his block, around and around. More words: Yes. That. Now.

A voice, low and resonant: Carrie…darling Carrie.

A vampire. But she was real, not a legend. She was lethal. Not enough that she had her own kind, she had to corrupt real women, prey on his innocent Princess.

He paced until his calves cramped. Then he opened the front door of his house, holding for a long moment the warm smooth brass door-knob, thinking of Carolyn’s breasts, how tenderly he had always held them.

All l ever did was love you.

She sat in her usual corner of the sofa, a book in her lap. The heavy blonde hair was groomed, the lips lightly lipsticked. The neat pants and shirt were those he had seen in a discarded heap in the yard.

She was looking at him with a puzzled frown. “Jerry was over a few minutes ago looking for you. You had trouble today with his car? What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” He was amazed; his voice was normal. “Nothing important.”

She glanced at the clock over the fireplace. “Where’ve you been? Jerry said you left their house an hour ago.”

An hour? Had it been an hour? “Walking,” he said. “Thinking.”

“I’ve been thinking too.”

Her voice was cautious, her face turned so that her glance at him was sidelong, a mannerism he knew well. He knew so many things about her so well, her facial expressions, her gestures, the fidgety, intense way she led up to a discussion of anything important to her: all her mannerisms. He had thought he knew her completely.

“Yes,” he said.

“We’ve been having our problems over these past months, Paul.”

The formal use of his name, emphasizing that this issue was of unusual significance. She waited now—as he knew she would—for his reaction to the ball she had lobbed so carefully into his court.

“Yes,” he said, and leaned against the bar.

A minimal return, but sufficient. She said forcefully, “The last thing I want in this world is to go on hurting you. I think…I think a separation would be wise.” She took a deep breath, exhaled.

An image seared his mind: Her body, spread-eagled.

“Wise for both of us, Paul. To give us more breathing space.” A note of pleading came into her voice. “To give us a chance to…get things straightened out. If you’d like us to see a marriage counselor I’d agree to that.”

He shook his head, trying to drive off the images of her. “Tell me something,” he said, and his mind was swept clear as if speaking had been an exorcism. “The whole time we’ve been married, did you ever have an orgasm?”

The words had come from a molten depth. Focused acutely on her, he saw first the shocked glance, then the jaw that dropped almost comically, then the eye-shift. Then heard the words: “What, why—” she blurted, “of course.”

“All the time? Or some of the time?”

“Why are you asking? If you think—”

“You’ve answered the question.” Congratulating himself on the pleasantness of his tone, he smiled.

She frowned; two distinct creases centered between her eyes, “I have not answered the question,” she stated. “It’s an impossible question—whatever I say you’ll challenge or take the wrong way. If you could understand that that’s not an issue. Yes, I wish we could have talked…but even so—Paul, if you think my wanting a separation is because of—it’s got nothing to do with—”

He cut in sharply, “What this is all about is the same thing that’s been going on for months. You’d rather be with that Amazon than with me.”

“That’s not true.” Some of the color had left her face.

“It is true. You’d rather be with her than me. You’d rather be with a woman than a man.”

“What I want at this moment is to be by myself.” Her voice was as flat and definite as her statement. “And you’ll soon find out that that’s exactly the truth.”

His head suddenly throbbed fiercely. She had spoken with perfect conviction, as if the evidence of his own eyes, her passionate loving of that creature in a room not a dozen steps from him, were a nonfact. It was the same device she had used these past months to deceive him, confuse him, make him crazy. She had drawn him into a realm of irrationality where lies were made into truth.

The game was over.

He looked at her. The green eyes were veiled, impenetrable. He remembered trying vainly to see into them after lovemaking, to penetrate the barrier that limited, ended intimacy.

Another image flash-froze behind his eyes: Her body arched, her face contorted.

“The truth is,” she said, “I simply want a separation. I’ll do anything I can to—to…”

She looked away from him. Her hands were clenched tightly in her lap, a mannerism he had seen rarely in his marriage, its meaning clear: the finality of her decision.

“I want a separation now,” she said quietly. “I think it’s best.”

THIS IS BEST.

Every woman in his life had defrauded and betrayed him, punished him.

Why?

Why had she abandoned him? Those long evenings away from him. That Saturday she had been gone all day claiming the car had broken down. Months of afternoons to herself because of that job she’d insisted on having. Refusing to let him touch her, making him think it was all his fault. All that time pretending she loved him, when she was in the arms of that…that…All the time that creature was sneering at him, knowing she’d won.

All women were vampires, all of them treacherous, their rules unfathomable. They were all vampires, feeding off him, draining him.

Every last living one of them—even the woman he had chosen as the most precious among women, the woman he had thought would be his Princess forever.

“All I ever did was love you,” he said, and walked toward her, the knowledge of what he would do growing in him, cold and implacable.

As he saw the fear gathering in her, as she shrank back into the sofa cushions, he slowed his pace deliberately, wanting to examine the dimensions of this unexplored power.

Unhurriedly, he reached down for her, pulled her from the sofa by her silk shirt, and with deep satisfaction heard the fabric rend in his hands.

“Paul,” she said in an appalled whisper.

There was a sharp snap of sound; the flesh of her cheek stung his palm. Again there was the snap of sound, and his raised hand threatened her a third time; he would not listen again to that voice saying his name. The voice choked off; the eyes were wide and stunned with shock.

This was her fault. It was her fault she had ever had to know that this was in him.

He flung her backward. Her body glanced off the coffee table, landed heavily on the floor. He lifted her by the shoulders, spun her, propelled her toward the bedroom. She hit the doorframe, fell again.

He picked her up and sent her sprawling across the bed. With her nails clawing at his face he tore the silk blouse into tatters. Seizing her bare shoulders he shook her; her head flopped like a puppet’s head, the blonde hair churning across her face. When he released her she lay limp; but he took her wrists and held them in one hand and clamped her legs down with a knee; and with his free hand proceeded with his task, pulling her pants down over her hips.

In a moment he would be in her; he was hard, stone hard knowing that nothing could stop him, he would do anything he wished, she was helpless beneath him. He unzipped his pants to free his erection. He had never known such power and potency; he would rear like a stallion in her. She had never felt anything from anyone as she would feel him now.

Her face was contorted from the force of her screams. The image formed of her arched body, that face…The imprinted images flooded him, as if through a rent in his mind. He forced her clothing down to her knees.

He clapped a hand over her mouth and his voice hissed from him: “I saw you today. I saw you I saw you…” He turned her over onto her stomach. “I saw you I saw you I saw you.”

“Paul don’t do this. God oh God—”

The words impaled him: God oh God.

He plunged into her. A hand clawed back at him. He grasped her wrists again, pulled them around behind her. Hearing her shrill screams, forcing his way into the unyielding flesh tensed in revulsion of him, he yanked her head up by her hair and roared his rage. She had to receive him, to feel him.

Her face was a hideous mask of horror. He slammed her head down, screaming with the flaming pain that engulfed him, pushing the face and its horror with all his force into the pillow.

“Paul! Paul!”

It was not her voice. There was a piercing, insistent shrill—the doorbell.

“Paul! Brother, what’s going on in there?” The doorbell shrilled continuously.

Carolyn was limp beneath him. He rolled off her, ripped the pillow away. Her head lolled; she lay utterly still.

“Paul! Answer me, Brother! Do you need me to get help?”

He understood that if he did not answer the door Jerry would call the police. He leaped from the bed, pulling his pants closed, yanking his shirt down as he ran to the front door.

Jerry Robinson took a rapid stride backward. “Uh, Brother is everything…I uh, heard uh—” He was staring at Paul’s cheek. “I mean all these weirdos around, uh—God, the things you hear—”

Paul brushed at his cheek, saw a faint smear of blood on his palm. Carolyn…Carolyn…did I…

“None of my business, didn’t mean to disturb but I never knew you two to—” Jerry Robinson backed down the steps. “Forget the car, I’ll—”

Paul threw the door closed, ran back into the bedroom.

The bed was empty. He staggered, faint with relief; then looked wildly around. Where was she? He glanced in the bathroom, then ran into the living room. She was in the house—somewhere, hiding from him.

The drapes over the glass door to the backyard were swaying. He hesitated. Had the door been open when he first came into the house? She often left it open…Were the swaying drapes from the breeze or—

He jerked the drapes aside and ran into the yard. It was empty…But she could have gone out the gate and down the path alongside the house…Her instinct would be to run but she couldn’t be far.

He raced into the house, into the bedroom. The sight of green silk shreds scattered over the bed and carpet filled him with sick dread.

Christ, she must have run out of the gate while Jerry was here. She was out in the neighborhood half naked. Jerry saw blood…Christ, let me find her.

Yanking his keys from his pocket he ran for the garage, flinging the front door shut behind him. As the electronic garage door slowly rose, as he backed the Buick down the driveway, he glimpsed Jerry Robinson on the Robinsons’ front lawn. Rolling down the electric window on the passenger’s side he yelled, “You see Carolyn?”

Jerry gaped at him, his face pale.

An idiot, the man was a fucking moron. All this was his fucking fault, if he hadn’t rented that fucking guest house…He backed out with a squeal of tires.

He cruised slowly down the block, turned at the corner, cursing in his impatience, his anxiety, straining for any sign of a moving figure. She could be anywhere, behind any tree or shrub, in someone’s backyard…Maybe she’d already run into someone’s house or found someone to pick her up. All he could do was look, and hope. If he couldn’t find her in the next few minutes he might as well go home and wait for the police, wait for the whole goddamn fucking world to come to an end.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 549