Ed Gorman - Nightmare Child

As she finished washing off the girl's face, Diane noticed again how ominously silent the girl was. She listened to every word. You could see that by the way her expression changed as she listened. But she never spoke. Diane had the unnerving sensation that the girl wasn't human at all, but rather some life-size doll.

Drying her off, Diane said, "Now, why don't I take you over to see your sister?"

Anger shined in Jenny's gaze as she shook her head. "But, Jenny, why don't you want to go home?" Exasperation tightened her voice once more.

Jenny shook her head for a second time, then, seeming about to cry, ran out of the bathroom.

It took twenty minutes to find her. As a younger girl, Jenny had often come over to Diane's and played hide-and-seek, her favorite game. This time she hid in a cedar chest in Charlie's old office.

When Diane opened the trunk, she had the terrifying feeling that Jenny had died. She lay so still, hands folded across her chest, eyes closed tight, that that was the impression she gave.

Diane decided not to mention Mindy for a while. "You must be starving."

Getting out of the cedar chest, Jenny nodded.

"How about a turkey sandwich on rye and some potato chips on the side?"

Jenny nodded again.

"Whatever happened to that talkative little girl I used to know, anyway?" Diane said on the way downstairs to the kitchen.

Jenny ate two turkey sandwiches, a healthy wedge of cheesecake, a half-cup of spinach, and drank two glasses of milk.

They sat in the sun-splashed kitchen. Two tomcats sat across from them, watching.

"Autumn's my favorite time," Diane said. She realized she was chattering. It was her way of compensating for the fact that Jenny said nothing at all. "When I was your age, I liked to walk through the woods and smell leaves burning. It was the most exotic aroma I'd ever smelled. And I loved Halloween. I loved to dress up like a ghost and jump out from behind trees and scare my big brother, who always liked to pretend he was so brave."

As if to comment on her reverie, one of the cats yawned.

She stopped herself and looked across the butcher-block table at Jenny. "I wish you'd talk, hon. Are you afraid to talk?"

Jenny stared at her.

"Did they tell you they'd hurt you if you tried to talk?" Jenny shook her head.

"Do you know what happened to your kidnappers?" Jenny went back to staring.

Diane dropped her gaze. Sighed. "Maybe I'd better go call Mindy now."

A snake could not have moved faster than Jenny's hand. It clamped onto Diane's wrist, hurting her. It was obvious she did not intend to let go.

"Jenny," Diane said through her pain, "why don't you want me to call your sister?" Then: "Please, Jenny, you're hurting me."

Jenny let go at once.

Rubbing her wrist, letting the worst of the pain dissipate up the length of her arm, she said, "Then will you let me call a friend of mine, Jenny? He's a policeman. Chief Clark. Do you remember him?"

Jenny nodded.

"Is it all right if I call him?"

Jenny took a full minute thinking it over.

Finally, a wisp of a sigh escaping her small mouth, she tilted her head forward, meaning yes.

It was known as the Hubba-Hubba Room. Located in the dusty, shadowy basement of the Foster Dawson Agency, the ten-by-ten room was furnished in Salvation Army modern, equipped with a small wet bar and, most important, it could be used only by the four executives who had keys to it. In the era of liberation; this meant one female and three male vice-presidents. The room was used for "quickies," as the executives were prone to call them.

This afternoon, the Hubba-Hubba was being put to struggling use by Jeff McCay and a most appealing young woman named Brenda Kohl, who was an assistant art director and had been Jeff's lover for the past seven months. Red of hair, green of eyes, sumptuous of body, Brenda could most often be found straddled on top of Jeff in the overstuffed chair. As now.

"Oh-oh-oh," she said, tossing her head back, closing her in eyes in what Jeff took to be ecstasy.

"Oh-oh-oh," Jeff said right back, closing his own eyes in what he took to be ecstasy.

Finished a few minutes later, the skirt of her fashionable gray Jaeger suit pulled into place with fierce modesty, she said, as she always said, "Did you get a chance to talk to Barney yet?"

Now they were seated sensibly across from each other. She held a Coca-Cola, he a Diet Pepsi.

He smiled. "I'm sorry, babe."

"God, you did it again."

"Oh, I'm sorry. 'Babe,' you mean?"

"Yes. I hate that."

"I'm sorry."

"And stop apologizing. It's so…unmanly."

Jeff McCay had long had this dream of having an uncomplicated relationship with a woman. Other men, over drinks, always told him about their uncomplicated relationships with women. But somehow it never happened for Jeff. Certainly not with Mindy, who could be like living with an entire psychiatric ward all at once. And certainly not with the ten-or was it twelve? — women at Foster Dawson with whom he'd had "things" over the past four years. A little hot, quick, garter-snapping sex; that was all he asked for. But it quickly became so much more, sunk in that morass of failed expectation and enmity. Take gorgeous Brenda, here. She was one of those women who seemed basically to hate men. But, knowing it was men who more than not still dominated the business world, she was not in the least averse to sleeping with one of them now and then to get what she wanted.

And what she wanted was simple enough in agency terms: a full art directorship with all the commensurate salary increases, the real and imagined perks, and the real and imagined prestige that went with such a position.

In the beginning, part of his seduction scheme, Jeff had hinted (but was careful not to promise) that he would talk to Barney Graves, the Chief Art Director, and put in several million good words for Brenda. But all along, Jeff knew that he would not do this because he kept his own job only because the agency's largest client was his uncle-in-law. He was resented enough already; if he started getting his girlfriends promotions, he would be in dangerous waters indeed.

The second problem was that he was in love with Brenda and did not want her to get the promotion because once she did, she'd say good-bye for sure. In love. He thought about that as he stared across at her perfect white legs and her perfect white posture and her perfect tumbling red hair. God, he did love her; she could destroy him he loved her so much, and that made him feel both wonderful and terrible-wonderful because she made him feel so good, and terrible because he knew, deep down, that she'd dump him without a care and he would be maimed in some spiritual way forever.

"I checked his calendar," Brenda said.

"Oh?"

"Yes. He's free for lunch tomorrow."

"Oh-you mean Barney and-"

"Barney and you."

"Oh."

"Why do you keep saying `oh'? It's almost as annoying as your saying 'babe.'"

"I'm sorry."

"God. There you go again."

Each time now, her distaste for him was more apparent. He wanted to have some kind of personality transplant-Why not? They were transplanting everything else these days-and emerge from surgery as just the kind of non-annoying man Brenda Kohl liked.

"I'll talk to him."

"When, Jeff?"

"Tomorrow."

"How about today?"

"If I get a chance."

"You're that busy?"

"I'm afraid I am."

"I'm tired of your lies, Jeff."

Hearing her harsh words, seeing the anger in her green gaze, he thought again of how other men, particularly in bars, spoke and felt about women: as breasts, as bottoms, as legs and as laughs. Leave it to Jeff McCay to fall in love with a woman who essentially hated him.

"Why can't we be the way we used to be?" he said.