After Claude (20 page)

“I shouldn’t,” I whimpered. My heart was pounding, and I was concerned that considerably more than Roger had counted on was occurring.

“You must. Listen to your body. Be kind to it. It deserves care and love. It’s demanding love. Open your eyes, look at me, baby; let me see how happy you’re making yourself, please.”

I forced my eyes open and saw Roger’s pale face gleaming over me. He sat like a remote, smiling statue, his hands clasping his knees. I saw that his eyes were bloodshot, the rims speckled with white flakes, his face drawn with a profound fatigue. He didn’t move, but held my eyes trapped in his.

“Don’t stop,” the statue spoke.

But I was past stopping. My finger, frantic inside of me, had the separate persistence of a machine strapped to my body.

“Tell me you’re happy. Tell me how happy you are. Tell me you’re happy,” he crooned over and over again.

“I am I am I am I am I am.”

I was afraid the spasms would possess me forever, and when they began to subside and weaken, I shut my eyes and tried for at least one more. After that I couldn’t open my eyes. A leaden, an irresistible drowsiness held them closed.

I heard Clarissa ask, “Did you get it on tape?”

“Be quiet, Clarissa.”

“Victor should get off behind that. Ahhh,” she yawned. “Good night, genius.”

I sat up and faced Roger. “You taped it?” I said, hardly able to say or believe my words.

“Oh, Christ, aren’t you sleeping?”

“You taped it,” I repeated, my eyes swimming with tears. It was as though I’d snapped out of a trance to find myself stark naked, beside a total stranger. My head started to shake. My skin was sticky and cold. I shivered. The chill of the air conditioner penetrated into my bones, and I grabbed for my bundle of clothes. I slipped my T-shirt over my head and frantically forced my clammy legs into my white jeans.

“Easy,” Roger said. “Easy, baby. You’re wigging. You’re undoing all the benefits of untensing your body. Stop beating yourself, Harriet.”

“I wish I could beat that tape,” I cried, “and forget I ever met you. You drugged me. You planned it all. I know you’re all laughing at me, you and your pack of degenerates, so you can drop that act of being so concerned about my tensions.” I couldn’t look at Roger. All I could think of or see was the seclusion of my solitary cell. I swore to myself that I would never ever again leave it.

Roger grabbed my hand. I knew I was cold, but I didn’t realize I was freezing until I felt the warmth of his dry touch. He pulled me down next to him.

“You’re like ice. Now, listen to me. I want you to listen to me. You can give me a minute of your time and trust. Be the beautiful, soft, open woman you are. You came like an angel. Smooth and full, you let it all out. I’m proud of you, baby.”

“I’m not,” I wailed.

“Let me play it back for you, sweetheart. Hear how beautiful you are.”

“No,” I screamed, covering my ears in self-defense.

“Just listen to it once, for me,” he bargained with intensity.

“Never!” I yelled. I could hear Clarissa’s nasty chuckle. “How could you,” I wailed. “I thought you liked me.”

“How could I what?” He stuck to his perplexed act.

“You tricked me,” I cried. “It was all arranged. I can’t stand it. I’ve never done anything like that before. You should be locked up. Rapist. Pervert.” I wanted to pound my fists against his smooth, hairless chest.

“Stop that racket, Harriet. What is this number you’re pulling? You force yourself into my room; you hang in, panting down my neck, snooping around for some action; you have yourself a ball; and then you start screaming bloody murder. What’s your game, baby?”

“It wasn’t like that,” I protested and started to cry. Shades of Libby fell across my mind. “Oh, God,” I heard myself moan.

“Is this how you get your real kicks,, with regret, guilt? What the hell is this whole remorse scene about?” Roger demanded. “Let me in on your tragedy.”

“You know what you did, you pig.”

Roger’s voice, became softly menacing. “Nobody calls me a pig. Remember that for future reference. And while you’re at it, try remembering that nobody forced you into anything. You were raring to go. Is that what the hysteria is about? You think your mama wouldn’t approve of her horny little girl? Her baby virgin didn’t get permission to jerk off under the covers?”

“Don’t say that.” I covered my ears again. “I didn’t do that. It just happened.”

“Got it,” Roger snapped back. “That’s the scenario. You’re alone in your room, minding your own business, and things just happen. You’re not even there when they happen. Wow,” he said with another shake of his head, “was I taken in by your performance. Congratulations. It’s been a long time, many moons, since a chick pulled me into her movie.”

“What are you talking about?” I yelled, confusion steaming my brain into a soupy fog. “What does all that garbage have to do with you making a fool of me?” The soup oozed out of my eyes. “Tricking me into making a spectacle of myself to entertain your cronies and some freak called Victor.”

“Is this ridiculous fuss about the tape, that erotic masterpiece?” He laughed. “Why, I have tapes and films of Henny Penny climbing the wall that make yours sound like choir practice.”

“Henny Penny,” I shrieked, “is not my idea of feminine perfection.”

“What?” a half-awake voice called out.

“Go back to sleep,” Roger told her. “Henny Penny is beautiful,” he informed me. “Nothing comes between her and her gratification. You could take a few lessons from her. She’s totally in touch with herself, not into some idiotic never-never land where things just happen. She takes charge of what happens, and she takes pleasure, full, uninterrupted pleasure in her scene. That’s her trip. She’s on an ecstasy trip. It’s not for every chick. If you can’t make it, Harriet, that’s cool. But don’t go around asking for it, pretending you’re up for it, and then hollering rape. You’re not going to make friends that way.” He smiled, his teeth a dark band across his pallid face.

He stood up, stretched, and exercised his fingers. He switched off the hanging red bulb. At first I was blind, but then Roger and the room were outlined by a dull gray light coming from the bright, blank television tube. There was also the beginning of daylight, smothered behind the closed drapes. Roger walked to the window and pulled back one of the drapes. A stingy light settled on the chilly, shabby room. I hoped he would turn off the air conditioner, but he didn’t.

“We’ll have to split soon,” Roger mumbled to himself. “It looks like more rain.” He came toward me, his white torso glistening, his jeans slipping down his narrow hips. He adjusted them with a pull on his heavy leather belt. He was leaner and taller than my mental picture of him. He sat down in the recliner and lifted the tape machine onto his lap. I watched him, riveted to my place at his feet.

“Here,” he said, throwing a spool of brown tape to me “Catch. A present from me to you. Destroy the evidence and stick to your story that things just happen; or better yet, pretend that nothing happened. Now, take yourself and it out of here.”

The tape landed next to me on the worn rug. I couldn’t touch it. I couldn’t use it. A crazy irrelevancy went through my mind, to wit, that I couldn’t play it on a can opener. Claude had a tape recorder. Roger had a tape recorder. Only
I
was lingering in a dead century, with nothing. I thought of the tape recorder I didn’t have in the filthy cage across the hall. I strained my mind, trying to recall the significance of the tape. Of course it wasn’t the crucial issue. What mattered was the unbearable change in my relationship with Roger. I needed time to explain that to him.

“Fuck off,” Roger said, his arms folded sternly in front of him. “What are you waiting for, a military escort?” Instead of time, I was getting an enemy, forcing me out.

I pressed my legs into my body and held on to them as if to protect myself from being knocked over. “Please, Roger, let’s talk. I don’t want to pretend nothing happened between us. I’ve had more rapport with you in the past few hours than I’ve felt in six months, a year, make it five years. Let’s discuss it like two adults. You’re not even listening to me.” I sobbed. “Please, be fair.”

There was a long silence, and a kind of frenzy seized me that Roger wasn’t going to grant me an answer. I became almost sick, waiting for an answer.

“Fair,” he exploded. “What would be fair in your book, Harriet? If I shot myself? Or would it satisfy you if I took your mindless guilt trip? Suppose I apologize for sitting up all night helping you do your thing and give you my word of honor that nobody will ever hear from my lips that you’re a dirty little girl who can’t stop whacking off. Will that get me off the hook?”

“Don’t,” I whispered. “Why are you so angry at me?”

“Why am I angry?” he repeated bitterly. “Should I be a good sport about servicing a cripple, a disaster who barges in here howling for help, and after she’s drained my last drop of blood, makes wild accusations about my motives?”

I couldn’t defend myself. I felt blindly around my allotted space and located my Marlboros. The crushed pack felt empty, but fortunately it contained two flattened cigarettes. I lit one, and with the first inhale, my heart began to palpitate and some monstrous hand began to shake me.

“Oh, fuck,” Roger protested, and I detected an edge of concern in his voice. “I can’t believe this chickenshit scene you’re laying on me. I can’t handle it. Feed me my lines, sweetheart. I don’t enjoy hurting you. I know you’re not responsible for your insane hang-ups, but I’m only human. I confess, flat out, the workings of your uptight mind are a mystery to me. Tell me what I’m supposed to say and I’ll say it. Spell it out for me. Maybe I am being unfair. From where I sit, there are two people arguing. One of them came, the other one didn’t, and the one who came is bitching. Do you hate to come?”

“No.”

“Look at me when you talk.”

“No,” I repeated, looking into his face. As the room got lighter, his face got older.

“That’s good news. Did my company, my touch, my smell offend you?”

“No,” I said promptly, “of course not.”

“Well, we’re getting somewhere, but don’t ask me where,” Roger said.

“It’s the tape,” I said softly, moving cautiously around his explosive temper.

“But I gave you the tape,” he said, exasperation resonant in his voice. “Look, there it is next to you, a gift, on the house. Now, can we please adjourn this fucking trial?”

Dawn was becoming daylight. I had a glimmer of what it must feel like to await one’s execution.

“Wait,” I pleaded. “Stop. It’s not the tape. Of course I don’t mind about the tape.” I couldn’t continue. Somewhere near the center of my chest, next to my heart, there was dull, persistent pain that intensified with each breath I took. It was weird, as though a separate, injured creature had taken up residence inside my lungs.

“Hurry it up, Harriet, you have my attention. I wasted an entire evening, but I’m not going to give you the day, too.”

“It was the shock.” My face hurt from the effort of keeping my head steady.

“What shock?” Roger demanded.

“If you had told me what you were doing while I was trying to …” I couldn’t complete the thought, much less the statement. Again, the unwelcome tenant squatting in my chest writhed in its independent agony.

“Now, wait a minute, Harriet. You knew what I was doing. You watched me turn the machine on.” He leaned forward, his expression tense with controlled rage.

“I didn’t,” I cried, fighting off a dim memory.

“Baby,” he warned me, in a voice hissing with irritation, “I’m trying to get at what’s eating you. I believe I’m being extremely patient, but I absolutely draw the line at lying.”

“I’m not lying, Roger. I swear, I never lie.”

“No, of course not. You don’t lie. You just invent. In your fantasy world things either happen or don’t happen, depending on which version serves your convenience. I’m nuts, right? That’s what you’re telling me? It’s my imagination. I was dreaming that you watched me turn on the machine.”

A shimmering but vivid mirage of Roger bending over the tape recorder flashed between us.

“But that was earlier, for Libby,” I said, my remaining shreds of outrage dissolving into frustration and despair.

“And you’re claiming that when you took center stage, I turned it off?”

“No, no, no,” I protested, “but I forgot.”

“Is that why I’m getting the third degree? Because you forgot? Is that the reason for this interrogation? That you have the memory of a three-year-old? Well, answer me, Harriet, or are you running out of paranoid accusations?”

“I can’t think when you’re so mad at me,” I said in a high, thin, unfamiliar voice. “It’s just that I thought it was private, between us, and when Clarissa mentioned Victor,” I was racing my tears, unable to remember why Clarissa’s congratulations had affected me so intensely, “I thought I would die.”

“You don’t have far to go,” Roger said furiously.

I knew then he was never going to forgive me. I had only the vaguest recollection of my crime, but the guilty verdict was clear. Roger sat and watched me. I felt the waves of his contempt crashing into me. I couldn’t endure his contempt. I lowered my head to my knees and let the waves engulf me. It was a relief to sink under them. I heard the frantic cries of a drowning person, but I didn’t lift my head to look for her. I sank without resistance. Powerful hands reached under my arms and lifted me out of my descent. My rescuer pulled me up onto his lap. I lay against his chest, choking, my lungs bursting. He held my head in the curve of his neck.

“Let it out,” he urged me. “Let it go.”

Trapped groans filled my throat. I opened my mouth wide to make passage for the bereaved creature inside of me.

“Good, good,” Roger’s firm voice guided me. “Let the demons out.”

My jaw ached. My gaping mouth stretched wider, and an eerie, inhuman sound rushed out of me. It kept coming in an endless stream, as though whatever it was had been coiled tightly around every organ of my body. It pulled itself out of my intestines, crawled through my stomach, slid through my lungs, and it fled, leaving me gasping for air. My head fell loosely against Roger’s shoulder, and I became part of the silence in the room. Roger stroked my hair. I breathed in his smell. His skin smelled faintly of ammonia. I felt him tuck my hair carefully behind my ears.