Thor'sday Night - Paranormal Erotica (13 page)

As Carmen efficiently pulls out all the
necessary equipment and chemicals, she toys with the idea of
calling Carol, but they are not as close as they used to be, and
what she is experiencing is at once too intense and too subtle to
try and express. It is as if a bomb went off that night in the
Grove that is still spewing desires like shrapnel and hopelessly
clouding her mind.

She begins with a thorough vacuuming. It has
been snowing cat hairs over her rug all week, and she wants to make
the atmosphere of her home a bit less poisonous for Jay.

Will had kissed her goodnight without getting
out of the car as politely as if they had never stopped anywhere
between her apartment and the gallery. He had invited her to the
wedding he was attending today, an expensive affair out at Viscaya
Palace for a daughter of the Chief of Police. She had politely
declined, and he hadn’t insisted, just promised to call her
sometime during the week. Then he teased her with another, deeper
kiss, pulling her close to him on the seat and pressing her hard
against him before he casually let her go again, and drove off.

When she pulled the vacuum cleaner out Sage shot
under the bed, and the minute she turned it on the kittens joined
her. For a while Carmen gratefully drowns her thoughts in the
vacuum’s roar, her restlessness somewhat assuaged by the rhythmic
back and forth motion. Yet the vacuum’s beastly noise is still not
as loud as the echo of Mike’s voice in her head saying, ‘Let’s do
lunch.’ He has never asked her out to lunch before, and the
invitation coming so soon after her transgression in his office…
but pursuing this thought feels as dangerous as throwing gasoline
on a fire. It is a threat to the present comfortable structure of
her life, because if she gets involved with her boss, she will be
out of a job.

Part of her feels so guilty about betraying Jay
last night, and then Will with Jay, that she can’t even think about
it. Her sexuality suddenly feels like a fire being dangerously
stoked from every possible direction.

Jay left a little before two o’clock in the
morning. She had wanted him to stay, and had made this clear by
clinging to him. Curled up naked against his black coat she was as
pale as her own ghost in the dark room. He had brushed her off as
easily as snow, and gotten up to go. She asked him why he didn’t
want to stay, and he coolly explained that he was in no mood to
cuddle. He then said, ‘Be good,’ and left. Her gut instinct had
been to follow him to the front door and secure a goodbye kiss – an
official seal on everything that had been said, the joint signature
of their lips on the contract of a relationship – but she resisted
the impulse by vicariously fulfilling it through Sage, who let out
an annoyed meow when he apparently left without petting her
goodbye.

Once she stores the vacuum back in a closet her
felines slink cautiously out from under the bed. She then puts
three CD’s into her player, presses Random, and starts cleaning all
the glass in the house, from the TV screen to the mirror over her
medicine cabinet. Next she polishes all the wooden surfaces, even
going so far as to remove the books from the shelves where they
might as well have taken root. Then she cleans the bathroom sink,
the toilet and the bathtub.

It is after one o’clock when Carmen falls back
across her bed, utterly worn out but satisfied with the result of
her efforts.

She closes her eyes, rolls over onto her side,
and curls up on the angel’s wing of her comforter. Thousands of
feathers stuffed between two sheets help her forget how heavy her
bones are, and how tightly her muscles cling to them… they ache to
let go, but she is too afraid of the darkness waiting beyond this
frail skeletal fence around her soul…

Moaning, she shifts restlessly over onto her
other side, trying to get comfortable…

…She can’t forget that flaming arrow. She has
seen it a thousand times in her dreams, just before she lands on
the solid shore of her waking mind again. The burning shaft arcs
beneath the white sky of her skull as her heart races with an awe
that betrays her. She has never managed to stay beneath the surface
of consciousness long enough to see land curving beneath the cold
white fur of the fog, like the pale hips and shoulders of a woman
sleeping with her back to the world… a cruel and beautiful goddess
at odds with the compassionate warmth of the sun, and of the one
God who offers salvation to all men except these…

Carmen sits up abruptly, and a tidal wave of
blood drowns her thoughts. The rush is so intense she holds on to
her head as if it might float away. Finally, she is able to focus
on her room.

Through the open door she sees sunlight flooding
her small living room like molten gold being poured into a
mold.

She makes an effort to remember what she was
dreaming about, but the harder her thoughts try to grasp the
emotionally powerful images, the faster they slip like water
between her fingers, eluding her.

Her body is refreshed by the brief nap, but her
brain feels as groggy as a sodden sponge, and a strange feeling of
unease is trickling down her spine. It is at once imperative and
impossible for her to remember what she was dreaming.

She gets out of bed, splashes cold water on her
face, and brushes her hair. She needs to get out of her apartment
for a while.

She quickly peels off her cleaning clothes,
slips into a pair of tight black shorts, and tucks a short-sleeved
white cotton shirt into them. She puts on her black-and-white
sneakers, pockets a handful of credit cards along with her keys,
slips on her sunglasses, smiles at her sleeping cats, and steps out
into the radiant afternoon.

For an instant that separates itself from the
flow of time like a water drop, her ability to do whatever she
wants to thrills her. She has finished her chores, and now she can
just enjoy herself. For some reason this freedom strikes her as a
miracle, like a golden baby chic in her hands, a precious pocket of
time she should cherish, not kill.

She decides to walk to Miracle Mile, and on the
way she passes a large park with a baseball diamond in one corner.
The whack of a bat hitting the ball carries so far in the crisp
November air that she almost feels the impact in her chest. It is
followed by screams of encouragement, drowned out by the urgent
rush of a sports utility vehicle speeding by like the cry of
seagulls lost in the crash of surf…

…The sea. In her dream she was on a ship. She
recalls the contrast of dark planks with the intangible whiteness
of mist…

Her own cry snaps Carmen back to reality in the
form of a Rottweiler’s bared teeth. He growled and ran straight at
her, but fortunately a chain yanked him back, intensifying his
frustration at not being able to rip her throat open for daring to
come so close to his territory.

A few more blocks bring her to the playground
behind the Coral Gables Elementary School. The beautiful old trees
that surround portions of the Spanish style building were recently
trimmed, meaning half their branches were hacked off in a
landscaping version of a buzz-cut. It still hurts her to look at
them. She hopes whomever ordered the mutilation had a damn good
reason, because they didn’t appear to be threatening the school’s
structure, and the long vines hanging from their branches had
probably inspired many a young Tarzan. Maybe that was why the
silent, regal life forms had been crippled – to protect the young
of another species from their dangerous hunger for adventure, to
curtail a human child’s natural urge to explore dark and twisted
pathways in their dense green brush.

She turns right at the
school, then left on Ponce, and finds herself in the heart of the
Coral Gables business district, deserted on this glorious Sunday.
At three o’clock in the afternoon no one is entering or leaving one
of the many little restaurants. Once she passes the open doors of
the Colonnade Hotel’s shadowy bar and reaches Coral Way, however,
she becomes just one of the many bodies out to enjoy the day by
spending it inside stores.

Her destination is her favorite bookstore, and a
cup of coffee. She hasn’t eaten anything since breakfast, just an
English muffin with strawberry jam she wolfed down before the god
of housekeeping possessed her, so she believes she will treat
herself to a cappuccino with lots of whip cream…

Like the mist in her dream, roiling, endless.
She can still feel its cold caress penetrating her dark brown
cloak…

Suddenly finding herself on the other side of
Miracle Mile, she glances back at the rushing current of traffic,
concerned by how completely unaware of it she was.

The brisk walk has warmed her up, which makes
her glad of the arctic air conditioning inside the bookstore.

She buys her coffee, then walks leisurely
towards the History section. She knows exactly where it is even
though she has no idea what she is looking for.

All sorts of
intriguing spines catch her eye:
Of Gods Graves & Scholars; Egypt In The Time of the
Pyramids; Daily Life in a Medieval Castle; Serpent In The Sky. She
needs to read more. Growing up she was always reading something.
Now it seems she doesn’t have time for anything except working,
exercising, shopping, cleaning and cooking. Her family no longer
does most of these things for her. She is on her own, and as a
result of the last few days, suffering an identity
crises.

Being the only one in this particular aisle, she
is free to stand there sipping her coffee while gazing at all the
books she will probably never read, and wondering what exactly
makes her who she is. When she was a little girl, it was all the
dreams she had of the future that embodied her unique identity.
Now, dangerously close to thirty, she has been reduced to a
statistical skeleton. In the eyes of the world she is just another
female Hispanic-American college graduate employed as a secretary,
single and childless. At least she is an attractive statistic, but
not forever. One day, she will be just another old woman.

Then she sees the spine
she has been looking for, thin and black, with two italicized white
words at the top: The Vikings. It is the only book on the crowded
shelves devoted to the fierce Norsemen whose gods still live in the
days of the week all over the English speaking world.

She grabs the heavy paperback, and goes in
search of a chair.

She finds half an
empty couch, sets her paper cup down on the coffee table, and
settles down with
The
Vikings.

She flips through striking color photographs of
jewels and artifacts, ignoring the glances of the man sitting in
the chair across from her. He doesn’t seem to be doing much
reading, but then again, neither is she. Her attention span isn’t
what it used to be. She can’t help thinking about everything that
has happened to her in the last few days, and that doesn’t help her
concentration much either. It seems all she cares about at this
point in her life is men.

With the book on the Vikings splayed open on her
lap, she reaches for her coffee. The whip cream has dissolved into
the muddy brown liquid, which is only lukewarm now and a little too
sweet.

She studies a picture of a dagger with a rough,
corroded blade…

She had never seen a man beat another man
senseless.

She had never let a man slap her. Violence.
Forceful, politically incorrect men. Will’s badge was taken away
when he inadvertently caused the death of three innocent people.
Jay is seriously into Bondage and Domination. Mike, let’s face it,
is probably harming the environment. He is vice president of a
company that owns dozens of oil rigs and hundreds of ships, so God
knows how many animals and plants and marine life he is indirectly
responsible for killing.

Is this why she is looking through a book on the
Vikings on a luminous Sunday afternoon? So many other people
attended church today, got in touch with their compassionate,
spiritual sides. She, on the other hand, is thinking only about men
and sex, violent sex, with more than one man.

She tosses the empty cup into a wastebasket
behind the couch, closes the book, and moves out of sight of the
man who finds her legs more interesting than anything else going on
in the world.

Her sudden interest in the Vikings can be
explained by the exhibit at the art gallery; Mike and Will were
both there. And when she first interviewed for the position of Mike
Peterson’s personal assistant, she remembers thinking he looked
Scandinavian. That, and her vivid imagination fueled by her
knowledge of history, can account for why she saw those spilled
toothpicks as runes. Obviously, her subconscious mind is always
hard at work weaving things together in intriguing ways.

She buys
The Vikings and heads for
home.

*

She has just finished
dinner – linguini with fresh clam sauce accompanied by half a
bottle of Kenwood Sauvignon Blanc while flipping through The
Vikings – when the phone rings.

She deliberately takes the time to wipe her
mouth and drain her glass before getting up to answer it.

‘Hello?’ she asks in her sexiest voice.

‘Hey there.’

‘Hi, Will.’

‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine. How are you?’

‘My, aren’t we formal this evening.’

‘Actually, I’m a little drunk,’ she admits.

‘I’ll be right over.’

She laughs. ‘I don’t think so.’

He asks mildly, ‘Why not?’

‘Because, I’m really tired.’ This is actually
true. ‘All I’m good for now is a hot shower and bed.’

The silence on the other end of the line has
begun to feel dangerously bottomless when he finally says, ‘I’m
sorry you’re not feeling well.’

‘I didn’t say that, I’m just tired. How are
you?’ she asks again.