Empties (25 page)

“Yes,” he stammered.
 

“Now, I’m not so bad, am I? You like me, don’t you?”
 

“Yes, yes,” he sobbed, grasping her waist.
 

“And you’ll do anything for me, won’t you?”
 

“I will, I will,” he mumbled into her lap as if vomiting the words.
 

“If you’re not lying I’ll make you very, very happy.”
 

He was weeping, she told herself, only because he knew that he would not die right now. What else could it be? He was no more capable of love than she was. He could lie just as easily as she could. Love, she thought, if there was such a thing, no one knew what it meant, only that they felt it.
 

“You’ll see, Bill,” she said softly, stroking his head and feeling protective. “You’ll see. There’ll be no end to what we’ll do together, nothing we can’t do. My power will be your power. I will be yours, and you will be mine.”
 

She tensed as he reached for his gun and put it on the floor.
 

22

She kept her eyes closed when she awoke the next morning and reached over to touch him, remembering the sea drift of their motion together and wondering if she might get pregnant by him after all. His skin was very warm as she ran her hand along his shoulder to his moderately hairy chest, and pressed her palm against it to feel the rise and fall of his breathing. She had calmed him into a peaceful, sexless sleep, from which they had both awakened with desire, and then returned to oblivion. He would get used to her. Much easier than love.
 

Opening her eyes, she saw him staring sadly at her, his head on the pillow, and realized that she might have emptied him in her sleep, as she had Ricardo, and wondered what had restrained her. Had he softened her that much? Perhaps she had simply disliked Ricardo, but cared enough for Bill to hold back even in her dreams. Some third part of herself mused that she was falling apart into two people, walking across an abyss on an invisible bridge that might disappear at any moment, but she didn’t care.
She
was that third part, trying to float free from the other two. They could think and feel as they pleased, and it wouldn’t matter.
 

She wondered again if she could ever remove an eye or a liver, maybe a kidney, and why it had been so difficult with hearts. Why was it brains? It should be anything, but the skill seemed set on brains. Suddenly there was nothing in the victim left to know what had happened. With other parts of the body, the victim knows as he bleeds to death. He has time to think about why he is dying and to regret his possible complicity. One day she would have to try harder for eyes, livers, and kidneys. Slower deaths produced more suffering, and pain was the point of infliction. Taking brains was too quick, too merciful.
 

The look on his face did not change as she gazed back at him, and it seemed to her that it was now an accepting look, maybe even a you-and-me look, rather than the one of appeasing resignation with which he had started to make love to her in the night; but she had no sense of what he might be thinking, and did not much care that he mistrusted and feared her. Well, perhaps not so much any more. That might be too bad, because taking the fear out of him might make him a less enjoyable sexual partner, but the others within her did not care about romance.
 

“Tomorrow’s the first of the month,” she said to his pale mask. “You can collect my rents from the tenants, and I’ll go see your Captain Reddy.”
 

“Why not just call him?” he asked, reaching out and brushing his hand on her throat. “So perfect,” he said to her skin.
 

They were honeymooners starting out on their daily routines.
 

“Better to see him,” she said. “Much more convincing. I’ve ruined your life, so I have to fix it.” Her words startled her as he touched her breasts and explored.
 

“The tenants don’t know me,” he said at her belly.
 

“I’ll leave messages to expect you.”
 

He nodded and reached into her. Waves of warmth spread through her belly, and she wondered if it was a sign of fertility. Rolling over, he pried her legs open and entered her. She searched his face for something beyond male inevitability, but saw only a slavish resignation to his desire. She might just as well have let him take her from behind, so she wouldn’t have to see it, but the wave took her and she lost all caring.
 

His rhythm was good, almost as if he were thinking of her pleasure first, and she seized her own after only a few moments. He seemed unaware of it as he finished and tumbled away from her into his own deeps, where she could not follow. This was all it was, always promising a deeper union for which some other act was needed, one that required wakefulness and attention, not the spasm that rewarded the completion of a deposit. She almost laughed, imagining giving out a teller’s receipt with a ratings number on it. One out of ten, or a hundred? Fool, her other regions said to her.
 

She got up, feeling slightly dizzy, and started to dress, selecting a simple blouse, blue skirt, and tweed jacket. She smiled to herself as she put on her underwear. Captain Reddy’s detective third class was a success, open minded enough to have pursued the impossible and unmasked it; but Benek was a failure in the captain’s eyes, and in a larger view he was right. The impossibility had revealed itself to Benek, and he didn’t know what to do about it; he would never know what to do about it. If anything could be done, Benek had come closest, and no one would ever do better; he deserved some reward for that. Let’s sit around, said her threesome, and debate the problem.
 

When she was ready, she looked in on Benek and saw that he was asleep again. His eyes fluttered.
 

She came to the precinct annex at lunchtime, hoping that the place would be relatively quiet. The desk sergeant sent her up to the second floor, where she knocked on Captain Joseph Reddy’s door.
 

“Come in,” he said loudly.
 

She opened the door, stepped inside, and closed it carefully behind her.
 

He was at his desk, white shirtsleeves rolled up, wrinkled suit jacket hanging behind him on the chair. “I hope we won’t be disturbed,” she said as she walked toward him, “because what I’ve come about is very personal.”
 

He looked up and nodded, gave her an irritated look, then motioned for her to sit down. “I don’t have much time,” he said. “Activity at this annex drops off to almost nothing at this hour. We can sometimes get some work done while the precinct proper continues to take the load. I have a few things to take care of before lunch is over, so I hope this won’t take long.”
 

“Thank you for your time,” she said, stepping forward.
 

“Why have you come here, Ms. Matera?” he asked sternly as she sat down in front of him. “Haven’t you already told me everything we needed?”
 

“Detective Benek shouldn’t lose his job because he fell in love with me,” she replied, looking directly at him. “You see, we’ve settled our differences... and we love each other very much. I want Bill to resume his job, after a leave, of course, so that we can begin building our future together. He’s put in enough years to go the rest of the way. He deserves the chance.”
 

Reddy sat back and started to roll down his shirtsleeves. “I see,” he said, buttoning his cuffs. “And this is why you’re here?” She was sure that he didn’t like her, and saw her as somehow responsible for his detective’s sorry state of mind. “That’s very constructive of you.”
 

His phone rang, and he seemed about to answer it, but grimaced and muted it. “Maybe we could make an appointment for another time,” he said.
 

“Now—please,” Dierdre said. “I felt it important that I take care of this personally, so that you would know the truth and we could settle it.” She looked into his freckled, skeptical face. “Is something wrong, Captain?”
 

“I’m impressed that you’re so thoughtful,” he said.
 

“Why?”
 

“Few people are.”
 

“Then what is it?” she asked, seeing him hesitate. “What are you thinking about me?”
 

“But with you it’s just too much over too little. It’s not certain that Benek will lose his job. We don’t like to separate people from the force unless it’s absolutely necessary. I mean, for genuine just cause.”
 

She crossed her legs. “I’m glad you’re hopeful about his recovery.”
 

“Do you have anything to add?” he asked. “He told me a strange story about you, you know. Do you know what he told me?”
 

“Well, he had taken some medication...”
 

“What kind of medication?”
 

“A tranquilizer of some sort. And some blood pressure medicine. And we were drinking. The state he was in after our argument...”
 

“What was the argument about?” Reddy asked.
 

“Marriage, children, property, the future—that sort of thing.” It was all true, she realized.
 

Reddy looked at her closely, without once glancing at her legs. “Do you think he mistrusts women?” he asked.
 

“You’re making me nervous, Captain.” She was beginning to suspect that he half believed Benek’s story, or was thinking that there had to be something else to investigate, and suddenly regretted coming to see him. It might have been better to have left Reddy alone. Still, Reddy knew her and might one day revisit the story he had been told. That mattered, and that was why she had come here—to protect herself; even if the chance of his believing the story were small, he knew it, and that might be too much of a chance for her to take. Knowing it anyway, even as a delusion, was too much for him to know.
 

“What’s wrong, Ms. Matera?” he asked. “Having second thoughts about covering up for him? I’ve seen this sort of thing before— women trying again and again with abusive men, dropping complaints and charges after one romantic reunion, only to end up even worse off. What do I tell them? Be more skeptical, think of protecting yourself. You should at least avoid Bill Benek until... he’s a lot better. But he may never get better, you know.”
 

His concern for her was convincing; he believed every word. An honest man of this sort was dangerous.
 

She gazed into his eyes, smiled, and said, “Violence is not our kind of problem, Captain,” then glanced down at her handbag and felt that he was about to launch into a lecture about the empowerment of women and the consequences of denial in a physically abusive relationship. He was a boy scout. His underwear was clean, his armpits deodorized, his shaved stubble splashed with scented alcohol, his socks fresh, and his mind free of prurient thoughts.
 

“You don’t like me, do you, Captain?” she asked.
 

“I don’t know you,” he said, “but liking or disliking people is not my job.”
 

“But doesn’t your reaction to a person suggest anything about them? I mean your liking or disliking them.”
 

“Can’t ever be sure of such reactions,” he said. “No telling what they might mean.”
 

“You don’t think much of Bill.”
 

“But I do,” he said. “What is it, Ms. Matera?”
 

“Nothing, Captain. Just feeling a bit faint. You should know that Bill has softened considerably since meeting me. I think I’m good for him.”
 

Reddy nodded as if agreeing and sat back, and she knew that, for now at least, his suspicions about her were minor. But one day, she reminded herself again, that might not be enough. He was too smart, she realized, closing her eyes and twisting her will into a knot.
 

She heard a gasp as she opened her eyes and saw his brains come through his face like a ghost. Her resolve pulled at him, and she leaned forward, opened her handbag, caught the bloodied organ, and snapped the bag shut as Reddy slumped forward across his desk, dripping blood from his ears. He twitched for an instant, then was still.
 

The slowness of the action disturbed her; fear of being caught in the act still nagged at her, even as she reminded herself once more that an observer would have to be told in advance what he would see, and have the connection demonstrated repeatedly to convince a skeptic that it was not some kind of trick.
 

She sat still with the bag in her lap. We were talking and he just collapsed, she would say if someone walked in, and no one would question her. There was no mark on him. The record would show that she had been present when he died, and that would prove nothing.
 

She would no longer have to worry about Reddy digging around in her basement. Atalanta, Ricardo, and Ivy would sleep in peace...