Black Widow (36 page)

I stood again, seeing halos over the lights while colors strobed behind my eyes. “It can’t be the same drink.”

Norma took the glass, sniffed it, then tasted. She took another drink before she said, “You’re right. This is stronger. It’s good—” She drank again. “ — but it’s been brewed a lot longer. Maybe something added, too. I wouldn’t drink any more if I were you.” She thought about it, then said, “I wonder why the maids put this in your room.”

“It wasn’t here when I left. They don’t put it in all the rooms?”

"Not as strong as that, they don’t. Just the little bit I had, I can already feel.”

I said, “Wait here a second.”

I went to the bathroom, turned on the shower to cover the noise, and made myself vomit. I thought it would help. It didn’t.

"MARION? HOW LONG are you going to stay in there?”

Norma’s voice. Startling. I’d lost track of time. I searched the walls, the ceiling to confirm. Yes, I was still in the bathroom.

I’d made myself vomit again, ran cold water over my head. Now I was looking in the mirror, brushing my teeth. A stranger looked back . . . then blurred . . . then my own face appeared. My emotions oscillated in synch, sad . . . happy . . . sad . . . happy . . . introspective.

I studied the scratches on my face: four plowed rows of missing skin. Fabron had taken part of me with him when he fell into the sea. The combination of flesh and death, the orderly geometrics of my wound, struck me as indefinably profound. Then Fabron came into my mind. His wild eyes, the way he’d screamed for his mother as he fell.

I felt sad, thinking about his mother. I’d once had a mother. A father, too. Video of a boat exploding played in my mind as the name of my parents’ killer turned to ashes in my lab.

What did it matter? Everyone died. We all left behind family to deal with the pain, to reassemble broken pieces. It was cruel. Abandonment. Maybe I would write a letter to Fabron’s mother and break the news her son wasn’t coming home. A mother deserved to know. An anonymous letter, couldn’t use my name . . . maybe invent a nice thing to say about her son because it would ease the mother’s pain . . .

Say something nice?

I took four deep breaths . . . held each for four seconds, released them slowly . . . and the fog cleared for a moment.

Why would I write a letter that eulogized a rapist? Fabron was an asshole, a sadist, a menace. It’s the drug. Remorse is irrational.

Irrational — the right word. Yes, the drug again . . . effects getting stronger.

I forced myself to focus on what was rational. I was like a drunk climbing a ladder, giving elaborate attention to the rungs. Okay . . . why is an emotional reaction to Fabron’s death irrational? I managed to recall another maxim hammered out on a long-ago jungle night:

Unless a man is in mortal danger, hitting a woman is contrary to evolutionarydesign.The man should be confined for the welfare of the species. A man who rapes a woman breaches the laws of natural selection. He should be euthanized to protect the integrity of the species.

Laws of nature have no pity. Fabron got what he deserved. Same with Wolfie, the dog fancier.

I clung to that rational thread. It was like walking a tightrope as my brain struggled to distance itself from the effects of the drug by recalling what I’d read about MDA. There were similarities.

The drug doesn’t increase motor activity like most stimulants, it suppresses inhibitions ... causes feelings of affection even between strangers. Produces a warm glow that radiates into the penis or clitoris.

I had all the symptoms — some getting stronger even as I reviewed them. The effects of the drug would pass, I told myself. All I had to do was wait it out.

I leaned over the sink, washed my face, knotted a towel around my waist, then returned to the bed, and stood facing Norma as she said, “I have to go. Can I borrow a shirt and maybe those sandals? I have to be down the mountain before it gets light.”

I said, “You’re staying here.”

“I thought you’d tell me to go away. Now you don’t want me to leave. Funny thing is, I almost didn’t come. I knew the rooms you’d been assigned, but I thought the English woman was here, and you were over there. I finally figured it out.”

I said, “Senegal Firth is an incredible woman,” and knew it was the drug talking. “You’re both incredible women. She’s got to meet you.”

Norma said, “Uh-huh,” the way people do when talking to a drunk, and put her bottle of water on the nightstand. She looked up . . . let her eyes move from my face to my feet, then to my face again. “You’re all scratched to hell. Why don’t you tell me the truth? You scared Fabron off. I heard men swearing and fighting. I’m thinking it was you. You saved me. The only reason you’d lie is if—” She paused, her attention inward, putting it together. “ — the only reason you’d lie is to protect me. Or protect yourself.”

I was thinking:
My God, the woman’s brilliant. Brilliant and beautiful
.

“Marion? Be honest. Were you at the Lookout tonight?”

I nodded. “Where I saw the boats recovering your nephew’s body.”

The woman flinched. “Did you see Fabron?”

“Only for a minute or two.”

“You didn’t stand there arguing with him? I know I heard men arguing.”

“I didn’t stand on the cliff with Fabron. I swear.”

“A lot can happen in a minute or two at that place,” Norma said, eyeing me as she thought about it, probably picturing different scenarios, seeing herself wrapped in the carpet, the long drop to the water. She let it go, now thinking of her nephew.

“Paul,” she said, still inside herself. “That poor, sweet boy. He never got his chance in life. Had a daddy who stole orchids for money. He came to a bad end, too. It was like it was in the boy’s blood.”

I thought,
Was the boy’s name Paul or Rafael
? But then Shay came into my mind, a woman troubled by her own blood linkage to a brutal father. Dexter Money would have lined up Fabron, Wolfie, Ritchie, and the others and shot them without remorse — but not because he loved Shay. Dexter had a killer in him. Some people are born to it.

“I’m sorry about your nephew.”

“You showed that. You’re a good man. I think I owe you more than you’ll ever tell me.”

I was patting the woman’s leg, reassuring her, but also feeling her thigh, skin taut beneath the sheet, and thinking,
Such a sensual body
, seeing her face, the way her eyes converted light into liquid amber.

“You’re gorgeous. One of the most gorgeous women I’ve ever seen.”

She said, “Uh-huh,” again, but I saw the flush of a woman unaccustomed to compliments.

“Did they try to kill you because you warned me this afternoon? It was sweet and brave of you to warn me, Norma—”

“That’s not the reason,” she said, looking at her hands. “It was something else. Can we not talk about it?”

I was stroking her hair again. Couldn’t help myself. “Whatever you want. I want you to be happy . . . and safe. You deserve to be safe.”

The woman smiled. “I don’t know if that’s the Divinorium speaking, or you. But it doesn’t matter. Drunk or sober, it’s a damn short life, and you’ve got to take comfort where you find it. The sound of those waves coming through the speakers — you recognize those sounds in the background?”

I tilted my head, saying, “Birds?” trying to pay attention to the sound track instead of the woman’s face, and her contours beneath the sheet.

“Not birds. Listen close. It’s from a tape someone made over on Saint Lucia where all the honeymooners stay. There’s a few jungle parrots calling, but mostly it’s honeymooners making love in the morning.”

I forced concentration. The yelps and whistles of birds were redefined as the primate sounds of lovers. A brilliant idea — an idea I’d heard somewhere before. Audio pornography. Subtle, subliminal. Impossible to ignore as it radiated through the ears to the abdomen as a warm, engorging glow.

I stood, staring, stroking her hair as Norma shifted her position on the bed to face me. “You may not think therapists are experts. But I am.” She grinned. “One look, and it’s obvious your ching chi toxins are elevated. But I want you to understand something.” Done with the joke, Norma turned her grin to a soft, sad smile that squeezed my heart. “This is different for me. This isn’t a job. It’s for pleasure now, Marion. Then I’m leaving. Okay?”

Norma reached and touched her fingers to the towel around my waist. She tugged the knot free. At the same time, she released the bedsheet, showing herself to me.

DOOR OPENS. Shadows absorb a shadow — Norma-sized. Door closes
— click —
the sound of a secret sealed.

Door opens. A figure clothed in white appears. Door closes
— click —
and displaced air floats an odor to my bed. A hooded face stands above me.

Lips where bugs might feed say: “I’ve been watching you. You remind me of a feral orchid — all pistil, no stamen. Yes . . . pretend this is a dream.”

Norma’s lips, swollen with wanting, warn me: “I don’t drink that stuff because it gives me dreams.”

Dream . . . dreams . . . dreaming. I drift in and out of sleep, uncertain what is real, what isn’t.

I’ve been watching you ...

“Men — she likes men. The Widow picks her favorites, watching them on a monitor, and they don’t even know they’re being watched. I’d bet she’s seen all of you there is to see . . .”

I’ve been watching you ... all pistil, no stamen ...

Fingernails from a dream explore my face, then shoulders. Fingernails flex — cat claws dig, drawing blood.

“Ouch!”

Dream melts into nightmares that are old familiar scars: napalm flames, the stink of flesh . . . my index finger twitching on a trigger as, nearby, young men lay frozen in their innocence, alive, terrified, eyes fresh with homecomings; haylofts, ghettos.

The stink ... that sickening smell, where’s it coming from?

A woman’s masculine voice tells me: “I am a child of the church. A disciple of the Holy Virgin. Through the sacrament of blood, I will judge the purity of your heart. Are you shocked that I crave sin?”

Touch of a rough-tongued cat licking my neck. Cat claws flex deeper.

“Get away!”

A dream, Ford, stand easy. You’re only dreaming.

There is no helmsman when we sleep. The brain becomes a default computer, organizing random data into familiar patterns. Sparks leap synapse gaps; neurotransmitters arc. Chemical film snippets play on the backside of our eyes. Meaningless.

A woman’s masculine voice tells me: “Desire is pain if you love the church. Pain is the path to redemption. We are born to suffer through the grace of our Holy Mother, the Virgin Mary. Spread your legs now. I want to touch you . . .”

Mary.

A familiar voice reminds me, “The only woman who impressed my mother-in-law was a dead virgin named Mary. The perfect Catholic girl — kept her knees together, but still gave birth to a saint like Michael.”

A familiar voice says, “My family has done business in the Caribbean for years . . .”

A familiar voice says, “A couple of his aunts invested in Father’s project. . . . I’ve met Isabelle Toussaint four or five times in Paris.”

A familiar voice says, “I thought Shay rented the house through the Internet. But maybe she asked around for advice . . .”

Images of orchids and empty white cribs drift through darkness as another familiar voice says . . . says
. . . what
?

What does the familiar voice say?

The chain of logic vanishes in a putrid blossoming of human breath. I struggle between dream and reality, remembering:
Life conforms to a statistical pattern. Coincidence is inevitable. Multiple coincidences are not
.

White crib, white crib, white crib.

What is the significance of a white crib?

Blue cribs are for boys. Pink cribs are for girls. White cribs are for . . .”

As cat claws stroke my inner thigh, the hooded face leans to kiss my lips. Breath is gaseous, metallic-scented with tobacco, and the ferrous stink of red corpuscles.

Blood.

Blood? My blood.

Enough
! I bust through dream’s fog into a room cloudy with light and cheroot smoke, yelling, “Get the hell away from me!” as I roll naked from bed to the floor.

Wearing nothing but her nun’s hood, Isabelle Toussaint stands aghast, her face rouge-painted like a clown. Her hands are up, fingers spread like claws, fingernails red with my skin and blood.

She screams, “You can’t see me! I’m not real! I’m not real!” Then whispers, “I’m the Maji Blanc.”

She slaps her hands in modesty, or shame, over her crotch, covering a miniature penis and deformed vagina. The penis resembles an infant’s pinky. The vagina is hooded, the labia fused, shaped like the petals of an orchid.

She screams, “You left the dream, you fool! Why? So you can say my body disgusts you? That I’m abnormal? It’s your death warrant!”

Because I understand what I am seeing, the left side of my brain overwhelms the drug-murked right side, and I tell the Maji Blanc,“You’re not abnormal.”

I am thinking:
Growing up in the church had to be hell for a hermaphrodite
.

CARIBBEAN DAWN, rain-forest wind. Black water floats a buoyant sun. Sun’s elliptic pushes Venus, Saturn, Jupiter into the failing darkness of the Southern Cross.

Sunrise rising illuminates the blue of an old morning sea.

Parrots scream from humid shadows.

Parrots.

Parrots . . . the noise I heard as I awoke. Their wild bickering pounded a timpani skin that was the back of my brain.

I sat. I stood. I was in a cell that smelled of water on rock. Mold and rodents. A spear of sunlight touched my face. I squinted at the room’s lone window. The opening was the size of a brick, slightly higher than my head.

I got up on tiptoes and looked out. I could see the stone façade of Toussaint’s château. Far below, the sea was cobalt blue. My cell, I realized, was built into the side of a hill, part of the foundation of the woman’s house.