THE LADY KILLER: intense, suspenseful, gripping literary fiction (7 page)

BOOK: THE LADY KILLER: intense, suspenseful, gripping literary fiction
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“So, God damn it, get to the point,” said Hammond. “They’re not about to sit around all night and indulge in small talk or play tiddlywinks are they? Young people like that don’t. Did the guy get her or not?”

“Sort of,” I said. “Or the other way around you might say. That is she got him.”

“She got…?”

“Well, yes.”

Gloria must’ve taken the attitude ‘do it and get it over with; then it won’t be such a big issue’. She thought maybe the act’d bring her to her senses and whatever else she was she wasn’t a tease. You either did it or you didn’t, but you didn’t play around. Who knows what was on her mind as after the meal was over and Johansson’d helped her wash the dishes, there was no late night movie to watch for she felt TV was beneath her, wouldn’t have it in the house and he said,

“It’s getting late. Maybe I’d better go home. It’s been a great dinner though,” actually blushing.

All of a sudden he’d gotten cold feet. Imagine his surprise when she turned to him, lifted the straps of her dress, slid them off her shoulders and showed her cleavage. They weren’t enormous, of course, maybe a cup size thirty-four or so. But they were upright and they were firm, the nipples bright red. Moreover when she was fifty they’d still be pretty much the same. They weren’t like those of women who, when they’re young have big knockers and when they become older they hang down to their knees… I looked at Hammond challengingly but he gazed off into the distance and I continued. His wife’s were like that. I didn’t elaborate. Human bodies vary as much as knives and forks. That’s how we’re able to tell them apart.

“I was hoping you’d spend the night.”

“You were?” Said the youngster in stupefaction.

Whereupon she grabbed and kissed him. He, of course, needed no further prompting. They both removed their clothes and hopped into her four-poster bed. Almost from the very first penetration, naturally, she realized she’d made a mistake. The foreign body on top of her might just as well have been a robot’s. Nowadays, of course, even those’ll do in some circumstances if they’re programmed right.

She persevered, however. The young man climaxed, she was able to get him off her and turn away from him to her side of the bed. You know how youth is, however, and with something like that in tow, dynamic, not to be stopped. His strong arms naturally turned her over and when she resisted the young Swede said,

“What’s wrong? I thought you said it was OK?”

“I can’t. I just can’t. “Both their faces were touching.

“Why, because of Hartwig?” The kid’d finally brought his rival up. They hadn’t talked about him all night.

“I don’t know,” she said quite honestly and I believe she didn’t.

She was so mixed up she didn’t know anything. Suddenly she ran for the toilet, knelt down in front of it and proceeded to vomit. She was sick. Her entire system was down and as absurd as this seems I believed it was from guilt that she’d somehow let Hartwig down when there was truthfully no pact to that effect between them and never really had been. She was in love with a cut out in other words and it was all in her imagination. Love, as you know, can appear to certain persons in that fashion. Basically what is it anyhow except an extension of ourselves we superimpose upon another. If the other’s not there, you make em, get it.

“I … I hear what you say,” said Hammond. “I’m not so sure I follow you. I’m beginning to wonder whether maybe this story’s begun to affect you and make you a little daffy.”

“No,” I said. “Love is still love whether unrequited or not. It would certainly seem more pleasant if it is, but even if it isn’t the person gets something out of it. Maybe that’ll only be to end in extreme loneliness but it’s something and that something is better than nothing, which also, of course, despite thoughts to the contrary, has its own positive essence. That’s just not emotionally fulfilling.”

When Johansson saw how she was he became concerned and asked whether she needed a doctor. He’d take her to emergency. She’d entered a state of hysterical crying.

“No,” she bleated pathetically, “just leave me alone.”

Of course a man can’t know the guilt he’s going through in a situation like that. And here was a beautiful young body with flowing hair doubled up like an old crone. The insinuation was, however, that the entire episode had been his fault when it’d clearly been a misjudgment on her part. But we live and learn and how do we learn if we don’t try? Johansson, who’d been running around the room naked, put on his clothes, lifted her onto her bed, covered the somewhat calmed hysterical woman, walked to the door and in a timid very insecure voice now, said with a frown,

“You’ll be OK if I leave then? See you tomorrow?”

The dim light that caught the vase of roses on her oak table gave them a surreal cast. And he left. Gloria got through the night, though you wonder how. Saturday, her day off, she took the bus down to Santa Cruz to visit her mother. It’d been a bad night for her, one she regretted and one she assumed she could get over but evidently her troubles had just begun. For, you see, it wasn’t just
her
anymore who made that one mistake and backed off. The young Swede hadn’t taken it so lightly. He’d gone and fallen head over heels in love with her. Evidently one ejaculation with some women’s enough for some men to want to repeat the state, and then he’d been coveting her for over a year.

Once Gloria realized the very solution she thought would break the spell held over her by Hartwig was in fact not only no help but instead a permanent road to self-disintegration, the first thing that became immediately clear to her was although she could still have Johansson as a friend she could never have sex with him again. That was as lucid to her as night and day.

But try to explain that to a young, hot-blooded young man who thinks he’s just made the conquest of his life. He, of course, can’t see any of her thinking. The only fog he can lift from his own eyes shows how he must be deficient in some way for her not to want him anymore. This means he must’ve failed in bed, the greatest insult possible. He who’s had such a great attitude of himself up to that moment wherein women were concerned. And while his assessment lacks accuracy it does possess some sort of truth, which simply was that she was in love with Hartwig. Hartwig in that regard indeed must’ve had something he didn’t to’ve made the act come about, whether it was timing, brains, talent, etc.

As nice as he appeared, however, Johansson had a mean, belligerent streak in him, which surfaced when things didn’t exactly go the way he wanted. He’d been in trouble before the quiescent effect of his job’d taken place, with his drinking and resisting arrest. Being around the object of his quest on an everyday basis didn’t help either. Perhaps if he could’ve just gone off somewhere, put a distance between himself and the situation, which, in fact, he later did. In the meantime, watch out, here comes big blockbuster Swede to run you down or anyone who gets in the way… You know the type.

“It … it’s almost understandable,” said Hammond. “At least I can put myself in the youth’s position. A rake standing between me and…”

“Well,” I said. “Maybe you think you can but maybe you can’t. You’d better listen.”

One good thing that surfaced out of Johansson’s new war was that after Hartwig returned as
hero
of the beach Gloria was so distraught all she could say to him was,

“Where were you? Don’t ever speak to me again.” Which, naturally, left Hartwig mystified for he hadn’t known what the hell’d transpired and she wouldn’t tell him. Know why…?”

“No, why?”

Besides just plain ego, she was afraid if she did Hartwig’d go after the kid and something grave would’ve happened and it just might well have. No, she figured she’d have to suffer this one out alone although she’d’ve been far better off if she’d simply stuck to her declaration of never seeing Hartwig again. She’d been the one who’d gotten herself into the predicament and would have to be the one who got herself out. When truly her thinking’s what fouled her up. Hartwig’d never let a woman
possess
him, that was her wish and she couldn’t understand her own failure. Some women are like that you know. Others don’t want to possess nor do they want to belong to one man only, forever, and the man naturally to her.

“Yes,” said Hammond, “perhaps an old-fashioned idea in light of everything that’s happened where relations have become as diverse as color combinations in a kaleidoscope. But I guess one could say that’s progress. We do say that’s progress. Moreover, it’s something we indisputably need to feel free like men should.”

I made no comment this time.

Chapter Seven

Demonstrating the
reserved
manner he possessed, Hartwig to the contrary, unlike Johansson, didn’t inquire as to the why or wherefore of Gloria’s ‘new attitude’. He figured the reason’d come out sooner or later and he’d deal with it in time. After several days in town he returned to the beach where someone else who now also seemed to have designs on him was waiting. This, of course, was the socialite, Sandy Hightower, who he’d been dating because of the scheme
we’d
proposed to him.

One morning at the breakfast table as the sky over the ocean appeared to compress into individual cloud puffs that scudded inland, Sandy said to Hartwig,

“Today I have a special treat for you. Just be ready to get dressed in one of your suits.” Hartwig looked up from his paper.

“My suit? You’ve got to be kidding. Out here? We must be going to the city. It’s such a nice day I’d rather lounge around …”And he lay back in his chair. He did acknowledge that he had a suit, of course, for since he’d been staying at the beach house he’d moved in some of his clothes.

“We’re not going to the city.”

The two had another minor skirmish, a disposition that just seemed natural to them ever since they’d met. Their bickering had little to do with them. Their personalities just clashed. You know, the smart intellectual and the idiot savant rich girl who couldn’t put anything together but nonetheless remembered
all
in vivid detail. Heaven help you if she once got hold of you and you tried to get away. She’d block your every move or a least try to. She had her way.

At the designated time Hartwig appeared on the deck all spruced up in his blue serge suit, light blue dress shirt and tie, a perfect complement to his blue eyes. Sandy in a yellow sequined flowing concoction that you see women in fall fashion shows wear, appeared and stuck a white carnation she’d bought at the general store in the buttonhole of one of his lapels.

“There,” she said, “now you’ll look just right.”

It was obvious she was proud of his appearance and liked to display it. And despite their age difference of six years they made a normal if not a handsome appearing couple. There are certain brackets where a minimal age difference between couples is barely noticeable. This was one of them. If he’d been fifty and she fifty-six it’d been a different story. I believe Sandy knew this. It flattered her vanity to have a younger boyfriend in tow and she felt no compunctions in that regard of not being able to fulfill her duties as a woman.

“Wait,” said Hammond. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Does that mean starting another family? Hadn’t she had enough? Hadn’t she learned?” He winced, imagining the one child she did have. The one at least we knew about. I broke out laughing.

“Maybe. Maybe not. Should all of us just stop having families nowadays? If we did, you know, the world’d be a better place. It
might
survive.” He looked at me and responded with a guttural growl.

And it wasn’t until the two were in her little Mercedes convertible with the top down driving around the lagoon in the direction of Salinas that she told him where they were headed.

“Julia, Marcus’s sister and her husband are having a christening for their first child, Tod. I’ve been invited and so have you. We’re to be the boy’s godparents. The husband requested it.”

“He …” Hartwig had a little burr in this throat. He knew Stich, the contractor. Not only through Sandy out there but he’d played tennis in the same circles as the man over the hill. Hartwig wasn’t nearly as good and had no end of admiration for the very large individual with the rocket serve who was also a successful businessman. “But …” he continued. “Isn’t Julia your friend June’s adopted daughter Marcus’s half-sister? Where’s June in all this? Shouldn’t she be the godmother…?”

“Shh,” Sandy took one hand off the wheel to put her finger to her lips. “Yes, that’s true but neither of them are very fond of her. She’s just too bossy.”

So though they notified June, they planned the christening when they knew she’d have to be away, apologizing for the timing but claiming it was unavoidable. Something about the priest’s schedule too.

“In other words, bullet proof?” Said Hartwig. “All that for a christening. Maybe June has a right to be miffed.”

“Does not!” Came out of the socialite’s mouth like a high-speed recording that’d omitted the personal pronoun due to some emotional reaction. Perish the thought of her boyfriend taking her girlfriend’s side in anything.

“Why?” Said Hartwig. “Don’t you like June? I thought she was your best friend?”

“You know how that goes between women. Let’s just say we have our differences.”

What Hartwig didn’t know, of course, was that June was a raving blond with more money than Sandy, more education and abstract ability. Perish the thought in a woman. In mentioning her Sandy’d never really described her. On purpose it would seem. Sandy, in other words had been deathly afraid to even introduce her boyfriend to her girlfriend for the very reason he might indeed abandon her for this new find. For a woman so rich and attractive she was unfathomably insecure. Now, today at least her fears had abated and she was about to become a godmother.

The church they’d chosen to hold the sacrament in was barely a church, just as the priest whose parish it was, was barely a priest. He not only had a family out there, which took a lot of his attention, but also a full time job in a brokerage house over the hill.

“A priest, a stockbroker? Come on,” said Hammond. “The next thing they’ll be secretary treasurers but they’re already pretty good at that. They’re better at getting money out of people than the IRS.”

“I didn’t say stock, I merely said broker. I believe he was an insurance broker in some sort of non-profit organization.”

“Oh, that makes it better?’

“It might if you knew him.”

Thomas Bosworth had attended seminary school back east. When he graduated he inherited the small parish from his father who retired. This little enterprise couldn’t afford to sustain itself on its own. The much larger church directly across the street from it easily could. It not only had a priest but a priest’s assistant and a groundskeeper, who lived in the little monastery in the rear. If in a certain season they didn’t do so well, money was funneled in from the greater diocese to tide them over. It was why large organizations survive, little ones don’t. Remember the ancient Hindu law of the fishes wherein the bigger eats the smaller, eats the smaller, and so on. It was something like that.

In fact St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church resembled a tent more than a building for the roof joists overlapped the walls and continued right down to the ground like guide ropes. It was all white inside like a spider’s cocoon, its windows narrow, tall and widely spaced. The pews were hewn of solid oak and the altar consisted of a mere table with a cloth over it, atop which sat a golden crucifix. An ornate wood carved crown that was attached to the wall behind wreathed this and it reached almost to the ceiling. The baptismal font stood to the right and Bosworth’s little change closet was to the left as you came in. The pews extended from one side to the other and were bordered by aisles. There was no center path to the golden altar in this church. Perhaps symbolic, perhaps not. But there was a full kitchen at one end, and a skylight along the roof’s ridge brightened up the place in the daytime while four large multi-faceted globes that hung like Chinese lanterns from the ceiling lit the place at night. It sat sixty or seventy at most, and in the winters Bosworth let the homeless sleep inside, his wife feeding them when she could.

“They … they must’ve loved that,” said Hammond. “Put up and fed in a holy place no less, not bad.”

“Well,” I said, “most of them weren’t basically bad though the priest did lock away the golden cross while they were sleeping over. Brochowitz’d even stayed there for a time before he’d been able to latch onto Sandy. The priest realized how violently disturbed he was and’d tried to help him, but that, I think, was a problem for this priest.”

“Really, why?”

Though young, attractive and well meaning, Ted Bosworth had a very peculiar way about him. You’d ask him a question and he’d turn right around and ask you what you thought the answer was. And that was even if he knew it. He was a man who always seemed to be perpetually perplexed about any and almost everything. Now how can men with an attitude like that help anyone? You need someone to take charge and tell you what to do, a drill sergeant if you must, especially with someone like Brochowitz. You don’t say, ‘what do you think about some men’s hatred for women’ when you’re talking to the greatest woman hater of all time. He’ll just invariably say, ‘I approve. It’s something that gives me great pleasure,’ or deny it entirely and go on to vent his sick passion. You see …?

“Well, no, I don’t,” said Hammond, “but continue. The coronation or baptism or whatever it was…”

“Yes, that got started in the early afternoon and what a surprise it turned out to be.”

The little crowd of Stich’s friends and several distant relations all wearing formal attire, an oddity for that one horse town I can assure you, for as many times as I’d been there I don’t ever recall anyone having worn a suit, gathered before the little chapel under a sunny sky, which was starting to become overrun by an offshore fog bank that having hovered all day had suddenly decided to charge the land. West of them stood the tennis court, which was surrounded by tall fir trees. To the south just across the street, as I said, stood the large Catholic Church which was Gothic, and to the north on the adjacent hillside the gravestones of the small town cemetery were tapestried against the hill.

Bosworth who with his lanky blond hair combed flat to either side of his head and typical blue-eyed looks of his race, who might’ve been mistaken for an actor dressed in priest’s garb, met the father and wife who held the baby at the chapel door. Directly behind them stood the godparents, our friends, attached as it were to the bubble of guests or witnesses. You know in those affairs you’re more of the latter than the former for in that way the church endeavors to gain your patronage as well. You witness their truth … a lot of it has to do with sentiment but what else is faith … strengthening it in the event anyone might be tempted to veer in the other direction(s)… The church employs many kinds of rituals to the same effect, not the least of which is prayer. For all the real good any of it does, as we’ll see. In some circles it’s called ‘brain washing’.

“No, now wait a minute,” said Hammond. “Maybe you’re telling the story but remember, I still go. Wife drags me almost every Sunday. And she prays. I have to hear her at night before we go to sleep. And that’s after she’s said them with the children.”

“Drags, right?” I responded, but his comments went no further.

After a holy solicitation from Hartwig and his girlfriend on behalf of God in the child’s name, Bosworth who wore a purple stole, removed it and, taking the one year old boy from his mother, placed it over the tiny limbed infant with his white booties and dark blue suit with short pants. The little tot, a miniature man, with cupped hands and a wrinkly face, kicked and squirmed, but as to whining, his real forte, it was entirely absent. And its surprise couldn’t’ve been entirely due to unfamiliarity with Bosworth for the parents had brought the boy there to several masses before in its short life. And as you know, even children that young have certain kinds of memory. Bosworth, the doubter, with a benign gesticulation then addressed the crowd.

“If you think it suits you, you might want to leave your conflicts outside this door.” He glanced at the oaken jamb above him as if it were gold for, however naive the priest was, he was faithful to the core. And as in many other religions, I believe, he’d die for his beliefs whether they were false or not. That may be as good as religion gets or anything else for that matter. The mortal bond or blind faith is generally all we humans live by. The little truth there is in the world may indeed have minor import whether it be politics, religion or love.

The priest, still holding the boy, marched inside, directed the crowd to be seated and approaching the baptismal font handed the boy back to the black-scarfed mother while he retreated to his little closet and replaced his violet stole with a white one, which this time he placed on his own shoulders.

“Yes, yes, I remember something like that myself,” said Hammond, “not my own certainly, when I was invited to be a Godparent. And it was in a Catholic church not an Episcopalian. Why the same sort of symbolism? Why the purple for the white anyhow? Why not just all white? Or all violet?’

“You know,” I said. “Now you’re beginning to sound like the priest. How should I know? Why do they do this? The more complexity in rituals, I suppose, the more genuine they’re bound to appear. But listen to this …”

Sandy and Hartwig stood to either side of the waist high marble font facing one another while the priest, who now held the naked infant, crossed its forehead with his forefinger that he’d dipped in the font like a piece of meat
au jus
, then he crossed its breast or
heart
. With that feat accomplished and an adoring crowd looking on, he proceeded to drag the back of the child’s head through the holy water twice in the form of a cross. First it was a cross then the form of a cross. Although Hartwig stared straight up at the raftered ceiling during this procedure, for you know what he thought of religion and must’ve felt that was the best place for his eyes, Sandy stared directly at her handsome date with a look of adoration you wouldn’t believe. It was like the Virgin Mary adoring the Christ child, her own child. In fact she glanced from the child back to Hartwig; then back again.

BOOK: THE LADY KILLER: intense, suspenseful, gripping literary fiction
4.82Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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