Periodically he would go to Richmond for a night or a weekend. He knew what he was looking for, and, thanks to the experience of the summer, he knew how and where to find it.
Warren said, “You’re sure it was Melanie Jaeger.”
“That’s the name she gave. I suppose there could be more than one Melanie Jaeger in Buck’s County—”
“It’s surprising enough that there’s one. The likelihood of two strikes me as infinitesimal. Melanie Jaeger. And she was definitely on the prowl.”
“Absolutely. She had that look in her eye that said she was out to find a man and didn’t much care who he was. And something else, too.”
“What?”
“This is just intuition.”
“Your intuition’s usually good.”
“You say the nicest things. I had the feeling she was ready to let go. That the wilder a scene was, the more she would dig it.”
“Interesting.”
“Yes, isn’t it?”
Warren lit a cigarette. “We haven’t made a scene like that in a good long while, have we?”
“No.”
“I think it might be nice.”
“So do I.”
“There’s a special poetry to it, you know. Sully’s cuckolded half the married men in the county. He’s spent twenty years establishing a reputation of screwing anything with a hole in it. Trading his wives in every five years, fucking his waitresses. Hmmm. It would be very satisfying to pin a huge pair of horns on that ursine head.”
“Ursine?”
“Bearish. As in Ursa Major, the Big Bear. That’s Sully. Big old horny bear! Time to pin a perfect pair of horns on the horny old bear.” He laughed, stretched out on the king-size bed, yawned luxuriously. “I’ll have to find out more about her. I haven’t heard anything, and it’s the sort of thing one would expect to hear. But the possibilities are delicious.”
“They seem to be having an effect on you.”
“How cunning of you to notice. Do you think there’s anything you could do about it?”
“I’ll think of something,” Bert said.
FOURTEEN
Gretchen Vann lay awake in the night, conscious of the warmth of Peter’s still body beside her. She put a hand on his shoulder and he did not stir. She ran the hand across his smooth chest, down over his stomach to his loins. Her fingers encircled him and still he slept.
He was sleeping more lately, and sleeping very soundly. He was stealing her sleep, she thought. Taking the sleep that ought to be hers and adding it onto his own, so that each night she slept less and each night he slept more. He was a sleep thief, filching her rest piece by precious piece.
Across the room in her own small bed Robin turned over in her sleep and made a slight sighing sound. Robin, too, Gretchen thought. Another thief of sleep. The child slept like a child, Peter slept like a child, they all slept like children while she lay awake like—like what? Like an adult? No, not that. Like what, then?
There were no pills. Pills would make her sleep. However far she might be from the brink of sleep, Seconal would rush her to the edge and throw her over, blanketing her in fuzzy darkness for eight or ten hours. Of course it was never true sleep. It was merely a bandage on the wound of insomnia, a couple of stitches in time bridging the gap between tonight and tomorrow.
She had not really wanted pills lately. She found this strange and could only conclude that it meant she really did not want to sleep. Nor was she particularly restless. She did not toss or turn, had no urge to desert the bed and pace the floor or roam the darkened streets. It was easier to lie quite still at Peter’s side while the hours passed, while tonight inch by inch became tomorrow.
Except, of course, that there was no tomorrow. She thought of the song—“There’s No Tomorrow”—heard it in her brain in a rich lush baritone, and thought of the particular truth of its title. Tomorrows never existed. By the time you reached them they had become present time, and the whole concept of tomorrowness was merely a carrot held before the myopic donkey of the present.
The past, on the other hand, not only existed but with each passing day the past became a day larger and longer, another twenty-four hours more oppressive. It did not seem fair: There was no future, and the present kept turning into the past.
Not fair at all.
Her legs brushed Peter’s as she got out of bed. He slept on. She got her cigarettes, went into the bathroom. She left the door open, lit a cigarette, sat on the toilet, and let her water flow noisily into the center of the bowl. When she was done with her cigarette she put it between her legs and let it fall into the toilet. Its end singed the tips of several of her pubic hairs en route, and her nostrils wrinkled to catch the singular smell of scorched hair. Years ago she had read a description of tortures inflicted by French paratroops upon female Algerian insurgents, and still recalled how the paras had butted their cigarettes upon the private parts of the women. On occasion she had tried to make herself burn her pubic mound but had never been able to do it.
Now she remembered a man many years ago who had liked to burn her with his cigarettes. But she could not make herself remember whether she had enjoyed the experience or not. It seemed the sort of thing one ought to remember but her memory had been markedly uncooperative lately, and certainly not to be trusted.
She flushed the toilet and listened to the roar of the water. Peter and Robin slept on without noticing it. Often at times like this she itched to disturb their sleep but could not bring herself to awaken them directly. Instead she left the door open and peed and flushed noisily and clomped heavily around the room, but none of the things she did were loud enough to intrude upon their sleep.
She got back in bed, again brushing her legs over Peter’s, and lay on her back with her hands folded neatly on her flat stomach. Her eyes were wide. After a few moments she let her hands roam over her own body. She touched herself, not to excite but to explore. But her hands were barely aware of the skin they touched, her flesh barely aware of the hands that touched it. There was a partial numbness that had characterized every aspect of her life lately, as though all sensation were experienced through a veil. She could not really see or hear or smell or taste. She was not dead, but neither was she truly alive.
And around her they slept, and stole her sleep.
She seemed to remember a book, a spy novel, about a man who could not sleep. A part of his brain, the sleep center, had been destroyed, and he had not slept in almost twenty years. At the time she had read this as fantasy, but now she recalled it and wondered if it might not be possible. Of course, she was not entirely sleepless. At some indeterminate point after dawn broke she would slip under, and for a couple of hours she would be asleep. It was never good sleep, though. It was just a slightly deeper dream level than she experienced while awake.
So hard of late to know what she had dreamed and what had actually happened. To tell past events of the real world from past events of the almost as real world of dreams. Some days ago Peter had mentioned Warren Ormont in conversation, and she had gaped at him and said, “But Warren’s dead, isn’t he? He was stabbed to death; he picked up a sailor in a bar and was stabbed to death. Wasn’t he?”
Peter had had little trouble convincing her that Warren was alive. Because she had learned not to trust memory, had learned to doubt her own ability to be sure. Warren was alive, though she had dreamed him dead. Her dreams did not have the power to kill.
Perhaps she had not even had that conversation with Peter. Perhaps that too had been a dream—
She got out of bed again and crossed the room to Robin’s side. She knelt beside her daughter’s bed and listened to her steady breathing. Devil’s daughter, she thought. Spawn of the Devil, thief of sleep. How many times had she dreamed Robin dead? How often had she killed her in her dreams? In some dreams Robin ceased to exist entirely; Gretchen edited the past and killed her by an abortion. In other dreams Fate did the deed—Robin would die in a car wreck, or drown in the canal, or be carried
off by a mysterious fever. And in still other dreams Gretchen bloodied her own hands, wringing that little neck, slashing the throat, going berserk and beating the little one to death.
“Oh, baby,” she said softly. “Oh baby, you know what scares me? Someday I’ll think I’m dreaming and won’t be, because I can’t tell the difference anymore. Christ, baby, don’t let me do it—”
Robin grunted softly, shifted position. Gretchen leaned over and kissed her lightly on her lips. pointed her index finger and brought it to her own lips, kissing the tip. “This is a knife,” she whispered. She traced a line across Robin’s throat with her fingertip and dreamed a fountain of scarlet blood. She snapped her eyes shut and the scarlet fountain gushed more vividly; then opened her eyes wide to calm herself with the sight of the sleeping and undamaged child.
“Oh, God,” she said.
She returned to Peter’s side and lay on her back for a few more minutes, trying to will the disturbing image out of her mind. It was difficult to do this. Sometimes they tried to take control and it was very difficult to keep them from overpowering her. She was so afraid of what she might someday do. There would come a night when; instead of believing her finger to be a knife, she would hold a knife and believe it to be her finger. And it was so hard, so unbearably hard, to know what was real and what was not.
Time to be the succubus.
She breathed deeply in and out, in and out. It was indeed time to be the succubus. She always put off this moment as long as she dared because it was the one thing that calmed and reassured her, and thus she would wait until the most desperate part of the night so that afterward she would not have long to wait before sleep saved her. But it was time now, and his sleep was deep and easy, and it was time.
Succubus. Suck. Suck you. Bus, a Greyhound, she herself lean and sleek and spare as a greyhound, the succubus.
First she touched him, her hand fastening immediately upon his penis. For a time she merely held him in her hand, held the soft harmless sleeping cock in her hand Then slowly and carefully she shifted position at his side and breathed her warm breath over him.
The succubus. The devil’s spawn, the succubus, sucking men’s souls from their bodies while they slept. Steal my sleep, Petey, and in return I steal your soul. The succubus, stealing your soul, sucking it out through your sleeping cock.
Her mouth claimed what her hand released. She took all of him into her mouth, at first just holding him for long moments in the moist warmth. There was a time when he seemed on the point of stirring but it passed and his sleep continued as before. Gradually, with her considerable skill, she began to use her mouth to excite him.
This was what she liked best. These special moments, when his body responded while his mind remained utterly unaware of what was taking place. She felt him growing in her mouth and her heart thrilled. Bit by bit he grew until his cock was rigid and pulsing in her mouth. She kept her hands from his body and inclined her head so that only her mouth touched him. She bobbed up and down, sliding him in and out of her mouth, teasing purposefully with her tongue, establishing a single incessant rhythm and matching that rhythm perfectly to the rhythm of his breathing.
Visions burned behind her closed eyelids. Visions of her teeth closing and snapping neatly and effortlessly through his column of flesh, the donkey at last catching the carrot of future time, biting him off and swallowing him and retaining him forever. Visions of her mouth clamped to his emasculated form, greedily and endlessly sucking, sucking blood and liquefied bone through the hole where his cock had been, sucking him inside out until every atom of his being had vanished down her throat to fill her bottomless vacuum.
I am the succubus, thief of souls—
She brought him skillfully to climax, gulped down his soul as it spurted into her mouth. His orgasms were never shattering when she took him in this fashion. They were pure and perfect but unlike his waking climaxes, they involved no part of his mind and little of his body, just its specifically sexual apparatus. He had never awakened at such moments and he did not do so now. He moaned in his sleep as he came and the sound vibrated magically in her ears. But the moan was quickly over and he returned to a sleep as deep as he had been in previously.
She uncurled and lay once more on her back, eyes closed now, mind more nearly at peace. She gave herself up to the taste of his seed, of his soul, the taste of him in her mouth and in her throat. At certain times—this was one of them—she even fancied she could taste him in her belly. His cells, his soul, deep within her.
She did this every night. Took him in sleep and j the soul from him. He had never caught her at it and she had never told him of it afterward. It was, she felt, a perfect unspoken bargain. Every night he stole her sleep and every night she retaliated with the theft of his manhood, his essence. His essential soul.
Now she began to feel herself relaxing, felt her body and brain finding the way to let go. It would not be a complete letting go, of course. That much she knew. Bui it would be a descent into a realm where dreams soon thoroughly overcame reality than in her waking hours. She lay still, eyes closed, hands folded on her stomach, and let herself float on the tide.
FIFTEEN
When the phone rang, Olive answered it. She said, “Just a moment,” and motioned to Linda.
It was Hugh. She listened to him for a few moments. Then she said, “No, don’t be silly. It’s perfectly all right. I understand. No, it’s more important. I think you should stick with it… . Are you sure? Well, all right, but feel free to change your mind.”
She cradled the phone. “There goes dinner,” she said.
“The book takes precedence?”
She nodded. “But he’s definitely going to break by nine o’clock and he’ll pick me up then. In the meantime it’s going well, and he wants to stay with it.”
“What if it’s still going well at nine o’clock?”
“That’s what I was trying to tell him. To stay with it as long as he wants, but he insisted he’ll be done by nine one way or the other. And he will, because he told me to wait outside my building for him and he wouldn’t stand me up. Not after postponing it once already.”
“Unless he just gets so absorbed—”
“No, he’ll be there.”
Olive regarded her quizzically. “You don’t seem furious.”
“Why should I be furious?”
“I don’t guess you should, but not all women have your sort of cool and logical mind. You don’t mind playing second fiddle to a book?”
“No. At least I don’t think I do.”
“Hmmmm.”
“What does that mean, Mrs. McIntyre, ma’am?”
“Just ‘hmmmm.’”
“I heard the word well enough. I was curious about the punctuation. Is that ‘hmmmm’ with a question mark or ‘hmmmm’ with an exclamation point?”
“With a period. No. With three dots.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I have the feeling you’re waiting for me to pry, Linda, but I’m not entirely certain.”
“Neither am I.”
“Where was he planning to take you to dinner?”
“An Italian place in Lambertville. Not fancy but good home cooking, I think that’s how he described it. He said the name I don’t remember it.”
“That sounds like Gus and Josie’s.”
“I think that might be it.”
“Well, come on, then. You might as well have an Italian dinner bought for you. Clem said not to expect him for dinner, and I was just going to have a sandwich down the block and come back here for a couple of hours. I don’t imagine I’ll miss much business closing early.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Of course I don’t, but I want to. I hope you don’t mind walking. I feel like stretching my legs.”
The restaurant was an unprepossessing place on a side street, tucked between a delicatessen and a laundry and across the street from a funeral parlor. All but four of the twenty tables were empt
y. There were long fluorescent lights overhead, patterned linoleum underfoot, glass vases of plastic flowers on the tables. The service, provided by one of Gus Pucarelli’s daughters, was eager if unprofessional. The food—they both had linguine with white clam sauce—was excellent.
They shared a bottle of Soave, with Linda drinking the greater portion of it. The conversation flowed easily and comfortably but remained quite impersonal throughout the meal. When the coffee came Linda lit a cigarette and leaned back in her chair.
“Prying time,” she said.
“You seem a little unsure with our Mr. Hemingway.”
“Unsure? I guess I am.”
“Unsure of him or unsure of yourself?”
Linda frowned. “That,” she said, “is a very good question. An excellent question.”
“And?”
“You know, right now is an impossible time to come to any conclusions about anything. He’s completely involved with this book. He says it’s the best thing he’s ever written, the first important thing he’s attempted since One If by Land. That was his first book—”
“I know.”
“And so he’s completely wrapped up in it. I’m not objecting to this. I honestly don’t think I resent it. In fact I’m sad. For him, and also I think it’s a way to get to know him—I would think a creative person would live more vividly while he’s creating. More intensely.”