Bedbugs (18 page)

Her low, bubbling scream continued to rise, stifled by my hand. I was afraid I would have to kill her before I could finish. It usually happened that way, no matter how hard I try to keep them quiet. Marianne thrashed with frantic resistance, but I wouldn’t stop—I
couldn’t
stop. I had to have her! I had to lay claim to the source of my passion! I was only dimly aware of her long, agonized screech as my cheeks, working like strong bellows, pulled harder and harder until—at last—something warm, round, and jellied popped into my mouth. I nibbled on it until I felt the resilient tube of her optic nerve between my teeth and then bit down hard, severing it. A warm, salty gush of tears and blood—an exquisite combination—flooded my throat. I moaned softly with satisfaction, dizzy with ecstasy as I reached down to the car floor for the jar I kept under the seat for nights such as this. I found it and spun open the top, and then spit her eyeball into it. Then I went back to draining the empty socket dry of tears and blood. Precious drops dribbled from the corners of my mouth, but I eagerly wiped them up with my fingertips.

“I . . . love . . . you,” I gasped.

With one hand still covering her mouth, I sat back and wiped my chin on the back of my wrist. Then, moaning softly, I shifted over to her left eye and clamped the suction of my mouth over it. She struggled again, harder now, writhing and screaming in pain and terror; but my weight held her fast as I dragged the tip of my tongue hard against her closed eyelid, lapping up more of her tears.

Finally, unable to hold back any longer, I sucked her other eyeball out of its socket and spit it into the jar. For long, dizzying minutes, I sat there, pressing her down against the seat while my tongue tenderly probed both empty holes for the last traces of her tears. After a while, her body shivered and then lay still as her heart quietly slowed . . . slowed . . . and then stopped. My rapid-fire pulse eventually lessened, as well.

But all of this happened nearly four weeks ago, and I can feel it coming on me again. I have to go out again tonight. That urge, that demanding, thirsty need is raging strong inside me, like the irresistible pull of the ocean’s salty tide.

—for J. N. Williamson

H
er hands felt small and cold in mine as we walked the rain-slick streets of Quebec City that night. We were going back to her apartment, and I remember thinking as we walked along about the time when I was a young boy, and I had caught a barn swallow in the hayloft of my Uncle Walt’s barn. Trying desperately to escape, the bird had fluttered frantically against the dusty, cobweb-draped window. The instant I closed my hands around it, its fragility had terrified me. Yes, terrified. Small and warm, it lay trembling in my cupped hands, its heart beating so fast I couldn’t possibly count the rate. I was afraid that even the slightest bit of pressure would crush the life out of it.

But her hands had none of the heat and pulsing life of that small bird. Her hands were cold, and she shivered as she leaned hard against me and gripped my hand almost desperately with both of hers. She laced her fingers between mine and cupped my hand just as I had once cupped that terrified bird.

I also remember the cold sting of the silver rings she wore. Four on each hand. I’ll never forget that she wore so many silver rings. It’s significant, I think.

We followed a winding pathway through back alleys and along uneven cobblestone streets that seemed strangely deserted. The bright lights of downtown Quebec City fell behind us, looking oddly distant, like the dim memory of another city, another world. The night’s chilled dampness drifted in off the St. Lawrence River and closed around us, seeming to bond us, making my flesh hers, and hers mine.

You have to understand one thing right from the start. That’s what I had been looking for all evening. Someone who wanted to bond her flesh to mine, so to speak, to “make the beast with two backs,” as Shakespeare so elegantly phrased it. It was Spring Break, and rather than spend two straight days driving from Maine to Fort Lauderdale, a few friends and I had decided to head up to Quebec for a week of hell-raising. I’d left my buddies back at some strip joint and had ended up—I’m not even sure how—in a small cafe. That’s where I met her. I can’t recall that the place even had a name. I didn’t notice a sign outside, either when I was going in or, later, when we walked out together.

She spoke very little English. She never even told me her name. But I remember that her voice had an oddly accented lilt to it. When I try to recall it now, though, I can only approximate it in my memory. It remains tantalizingly distant, but the teasing memory of it fills me with a deep, nameless yearning. Even when she spoke French, her words sounded strangely accented, as though she were speaking a form of French from a different part of the country or from a different era.

But it wasn’t just her touch or the sound of her voice that enchanted me. It was her eyes. Moist and dark, they glistened in the candlelight like rain-slick streets shimmering with silver rivers of shifting light and darkness. They were eyes you could get lost in. Eyes that I
did
get lost in though I kept reminding myself not to feel too much. I certainly wasn’t looking to fall in love that night. Far from it.

I was looking for one thing and, although we never mentioned it directly, I assumed that she knew exactly what I wanted, and that she was looking for the same thing that night.

We first touched hands there at the table in the cafe. I commented on her silver rings and then boldly reached across the table to grasp her hands and inspect them. Her fingers were long and slim, delicately tapered like white church candles. I won’t say that the first touch was electric. It was somehow more than that. Deeper. Stronger. It was like taking tentative hold of a high-powered electric cable and knowing that a charge of electricity strong enough to kill you in an instant was rippling dangerously just below the surface. Even then, in the cafe, I noticed that her hands were cold, but I could also sense some indescribable power in them.

Turning her hands over in mine, I made a show of studying each of her rings although, in fact, none of them were anything more than plain, ordinary silver bands. But they flashed in the orange glow of candlelight, reflecting bright spikes of light that dazzled my eyes. I jokingly asked if the ring on her left ring finger was her wedding band. I wasn’t sure if she even understood me until she replied in mixed English and French that they were
all
wedding bands, and that if she accumulated many more husbands, she would soon be wearing silver rings on her toes. I’m fairly certain that the word she used meant
husbands
. My French wasn’t even as good as her English. She might have meant
lovers
.

Of course, that’s what I wanted to be—her lover, at least for the night. One of the friends I was with had taught me what he said was the only sentence in French I needed to know:
Voulez vous coucher avec moi?
But that night in the cafe, I never had to say it. Simply touching her hands, I experienced a level of unspoken communication unlike anything I had ever experienced before or after. I was certain that she felt it, too.

After sharing a bottle of red wine, I paid the tab, and we got up to go. As we walked toward the door, I remember how the other patrons of the cafe—mostly scruffy, elderly men gathered in small groups around dark tables—watched us, shifting their eyes and hardly moving their heads. I could feel their envy and their barely disguised desire, wishing they were young enough and handsome enough to be walking out of there that night with someone like her. I experienced a thrill of pride and grew almost dizzy with elation as we stepped outside into the rain. The cafe door swung softly shut behind us.

She directed me along dark, narrow streets. By the time we found where she lived, I was disoriented enough to have no idea what part of the city we were in. Smiling and squeezing my hand tightly, and still leaning her head against my shoulder, she directed me up the narrow, darkened stairway to the second-floor landing. After fishing a key from her purse, she unlocked the door and opened it to allow me to enter the apartment first.

Her place was small and dark, but what I could see of it in the dim light looked quaint, charming in an old-fashioned way. I remember, as soon as I entered, that I was almost overwhelmed by a curious aroma. It was an exotic mixture of scented wax candles, cloves and other spices, and something else . . . something much more elusive that stirred memories buried deep within me.

I stood there in the doorway, waiting for her to turn on a light. Without a word, she walked into the kitchen. Suddenly a sputtering tongue of flame flared out of the darkness as she struck a wooden match and touched it to the wick of a candle on the small kitchen table. The blossoming orange glow filled the small apartment like a sliver of sunrise.

She indicated for me to sit down at the table. Still without speaking, she took down from the cupboard a bottle of red wine and two crystal cut glasses. I remember noticing how the wine looked thick, almost black in the candlelight as she poured it. Taking my glass, I held it aloft, waited a moment, and then said, “To the night’s beauty,” as we clinked glasses and then drank.

She smiled before she sipped her wine although I wasn’t entirely sure that she understood what I had said.

Taking the candle from the kitchen table in one hand and my hand in the other, she led me into the living room. Distorted shadows shifted at odd angles across the walls as she placed the candle on the coffee table. Side by side, pressing close, we sat down on the couch, our knees brushing against each other as we drank and talked. The wine went to my head quickly. I can remember little of our conversation in broken English and halting French, but I was caught up simply listening to the gentle lilt of her voice. The living room window overlooking the city. The dark slash of the St. Lawrence beyond was dimpled with rain that refracted and distorted the candlelight into dizzying patterns.

She smiled and laughed at our attempts to communicate. For some reason, her laughter—light and airy—reminded me again of the barn swallow I had caught so long ago when I was a boy. I wanted to tell her about this but didn’t know enough French to explain the significance, if there was any. I’m not sure I know the significance even now, much less then.

Before long, though, we had no need of talk. She laughed at something I said in French and then reached out to touch my face. Her hand was warm now as she caressed my cheek and then ran her fingertips lightly down my neck and inside the collar of my shirt. We embraced and kissed tenderly. There was none of the passionate, almost desperate groping I usually felt when I’m with women. When she took my hand and led me into her bedroom, I remember wondering if it was a cultural thing—that French girls knew more subtle ways of making love—or if it was something else . . . something deeper.

The wine was still buzzing in my brain, whispering like a soft breeze blowing through a field and pressing down the grass like a huge, invisible hand. Her touch and the feel of her skin against mine sent thrilling shivers of ecstasy through me. Lulled by the soft patter of rain on the window, we folded together and were transported to places that I, at least, had never been to before.

I awoke to see the dawn streaking the sky with pale fingers of gray clouds. It was Sunday morning. The rain had passed, and I could sense, even without going outside, the bracing freshness of the day. I rolled over in bed to look at her, to admire her beauty, to kiss and touch her again, but was surprised to see that she was not there. Thinking that she might have gotten up early, possibly to go to church, I swung out of bed. Wrapping the bed sheet around me like a toga, I walked into the kitchen.

“Hello . . .
Bon jour
,” I called out softly, but there was no reply.

I realized that I was alone in the apartment. I had no idea why she had left or where she might have gone. Even if she had left me a note on the table, which she hadn’t, it no doubt would have been in French, and I wouldn’t have understood it.

Shivering, I went back to the bedroom and hurriedly dressed. Then I walked back into the kitchen and sat down at the kitchen table, absorbing the subtle, quiet atmosphere. For several minutes, as the apartment steadily brightened with strengthening daylight, I wondered what to do next. I was hungry, and I considered helping myself to the contents of her refrigerator. Maybe I’d even prepare breakfast for both of us in case she returned soon. But I gave up that idea because it struck me as something a crass American might do, and I wanted to preserve the otherworldly delicacy of her place.

After a while, I got up and walked into the living room, looked around, then sat down on the couch. A small clock on a table by the window filled the room with a faint
tick-ticking
. In the gray light of dawn, the apartment looked much older than it had appeared by candlelight the night before. I sniffed the air but could catch no lingering trace of the spicy, scented aromas of last night. All I could smell was an antique mustiness that reminded me of how my grandmother’s house used to smell. I noticed a thin patina of dust coating everything like gray shadows. The candle she had lit the night before was still on the coffee table. It had burned out, but even the glass candle holder and the waterfall of melted wax appeared to be coated with a fine layer of dust.

I sat there on the couch and watched as the sun rose over the shimmering river, all the while wondering when she would return and if I should sit here and wait for her. I was fairly certain that my friends wouldn’t be worried about me. They would no doubt assume that I had “gotten lucky” and would show up back at the hotel sometime before noon, which was when we planned to head back to the States.