Jonathan Nasaw - When She Was Bad

“Hey! Anybody ever tell you it was rude to stare?”

“I wasn’t…I mean, I didn’t mean to…“stammered Max, as Lyssy; if he could have forced a blush, he would have.

“Just messing with you,” said the girl. “You like?”

“What’s…what’s not to like?”

“You want?” Taking his hand in both of hers, she pressed his scarred palm between her breasts, against her heart, which was thumping a mile a minute. Gone was the little girl whisper; the alter’s true voice was low-pitched, with a husky, thrilling catch in it.

Staring directly into her eyes now, he cupped his palm under her right breast, stroked the stiffening nipple with his thumb. “I wouldn’t throw you out of bed for eating potato chips,” he whispered, using his own voice, the one that sounded like acid eating through glass, for the first time that day.

“Okay then,” she said. “But there’s something you have to do for me first.” Her breath was moist and sweet, her eyes so dark there was no border between pupil and iris.

“What’s that?”

“Get me out of this fucking loony bin.”

For three hours, Irene perched uncomfortably on a hard stool under hot lights, talking about things she’d just as soon have forgotten. She was disappointed to learn that Sandy Wells, the show’s host, would not be present-she’d pictured him sitting across from her wearing one of his trademark leather jackets, his eyes narrowed like a gunslinger’s and his bulldog jaw out-thrust, with not a hair of his gray, razor-cut head out of place.

Instead, questions and prompts were tossed at her, flat-voiced, by one of Wells’s flunkies, Marti Reynolds, from a canvas-backed director’s chair. Minutes into the taping, Irene realized that she and Ms. Reynolds had conflicting agendas. Irene would have preferred to discuss her kidnapping and subsequent ordeal from a psychiatrist’s point of view-it was fascinating stuff, as far as she was concerned: a close, extended, and unprecedented look at dissociative identity disorder, with a side trip into psychopathy-and to remain emotionally detached while doing so.

But what Wells, Reynolds, and presumably the television audience, wanted to hear about was how it felt to be kidnapped, held hostage during an extended killing spree, and threatened with rape and murder-in short, what was it like being a victim? Within that context, of course, Irene was expected to present herself in a courageous light-Wells and his audience liked their victims spunky-although a few reluctant tears wouldn’t have been unwelcome.

In the end, the only thing that made the interview tolerable for Irene was the advice Pender had given her: if you don’t like a question, ignore it-answer the question that should have been asked instead. So when Reynolds wanted to know how Irene had felt when she came within a whisker of being murdered by the homocidal alter known as Kinch, she responded with, “Kinch? Oh, Kinch was a real piece of work. Pure id, pure rage. All the anger Lyssy felt at his years of abuse, but was unable to express for fear of retaliation, seemed to have been concentrated in the persona of Kinch. When the alter known as Max killed, it was for necessity, convenience, or sheer enjoyment; when Kinch killed, it was because he couldn’t do otherwise. He was more of a weapon than a viable personality. Kinch, I’ve been told, means blade in Gaelic, and in a very real way, Kinch was little more than the continuation of the knife in his hand.”

They broke for lunch at noon-Irene was invited to fill a plate from the backstage buffet known for some reason as the crafts table. After eating, she took her cell phone outside and tried calling Lily again. The room phone rang and rang, then kicked back to the switchboard. Irene left yet another message, then asked to speak to the director, reached his secretary instead, and left a message with her.

By this time her disaster-movie screenwriter-you don’t have to be a multiple to have one-was hard at work coming up with various explanations for the communications failure. Lily had switched alters; escaped; turned catatonic or autistic; was trying to reach Irene but being held incommunicado to prevent her from revealing Corder’s methods; and so on.

Then Irene’s scenarist turned to her other current project. What Happened Last Night? was the working title. Please don’t let me have made a fool of myself again, she thought as she selected Pender’s cell number in her own phone’s address-book file, then pushed Call.

“Hello?”

“Pen?”

“Oh, hi, Irene. How’s the interview going?”

“Not bad-as long as I don’t pay any attention to the questions, of course.”

Pender laughed. “As my sister Ida would have said, ‘Truer words were never.’” Then: “Any particular reason you called, Irene?”

“Nothing important. I was just wondering…?”

“Unh-hunh?”

“About last night…?”

“Unh-hunh?”

“Did, did I…? did we…? I mean, did anything…?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold it right there,” Pender interrupted her. “We’re two consenting adults, you don’t have anything to apologize for. I admit, I thought it was a bad idea when you invited the maid and the room service kid to take off their clothes and join us, but I have to confess, I really enjoyed it.”

A few seconds ticked by. Irene’s sandwich turned to mucilage in her mouth. Then the light dawned. “Damn it, Pender, you really had me going there for a minute.”

Pender chuckled. “You passed out about halfway through Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and three-quarters through your fourth shot of Jim Beam. Your last words, as I recall, were something like, ‘This stuff kinda grows on you.’”

Irene shook her head ruefully. “You’re a bad influence, Pen.”

“And proud of it. Have fun this afternoon.”

“You too,” replied Irene. She pressed the End Call button, then returned to the address-book screen and tried to reach Lily one more time.

The girl was waiting with Patty Benoit at the same table as before, her back to the roomful of loonies and staff and her creamy dark hair all tumbled down over her shoulders.

As Max limped toward them carrying his lunch tray, his features arranged into Lyssy’s chuckleheaded grin, suddenly it struck him, with a sense of irony about as subtle as a bowling ball, that he had no idea whether this was Lily, the simpering original personality, or Lilith, the alter he’d met a few hours ago. And when she looked up and met his eyes, he realized-here came that bowling ball again-that she must be wondering the same thing about him.

“We probably should have worked out a password,” he whispered, a good deal more casually than he felt, as soon as they were alone-Patty had joined Wally at a nearby table to give them their privacy.

Whoosh. The tension left her body like air rushing out of a punctured balloon. “I was just thinking the same thing.”

“Did you hear? Corder gave the okay for you to come to my party tonight.”

“I heard. The bad news is, Mullet Woman there is coming with me.”

“You think you can handle her?”

“If I could handle Swervin’ Mervin, I can handle her. But we won’t have much time for pin the tail on the donkey. According to Patty, we’re only gonna be there two hours, tops, and the way I figure, we’re gonna need most of that for a head start.” Lilith glanced over to the psych techs’ table to see how closely they were being watched, then took a big, two-handed bite out of her juicy-rare cheeseburger. “What’s the matter? You look disappointed,” she said with her mouth full.

“I’ve been looking forward to my payback for years,” he replied. “There is no conceivable way I’m going to rush it, head start or no head start.”