Дэймон Найт - Orbit 9

When we got out of the car I said to Janet, “Get rid of Mrs. Durrell as fast as you can. Okay?” She pressed her body against mine and laughed a low, throaty laugh.

I was in a fever of anxiety then, trying to keep from going out into her too soon. Not yet. Not yet. Not until I had Janet in bed, not until I thought that she and Lenny had had time to be at ease with each other again after being left alone. Maybe even in bed. My excitement was contagious. Janet was in bed as soon as she could decently get rid of the sitter, and when my hand roamed down her body, she shivered. Very deliberately I played with her and when I was certain that she wouldn’t notice a shift in my attention, I went out to the other one, and found her alone. My disappointment was so great that momentarily I forgot about Janet, until her sudden scream made me realize that I had hurt her. She muffled her face against my chest and gasped, and whether from pleasure or pain I couldn’t tell, she didn’t pull away.

She was fighting eroticism as hard as she could. Drawing up thoughts of plans, of work not yet finished, of the notebooks that were so much harder to decipher than she had suspected they would be, the time-lapse photos that were coming along. Trying to push out of her mind the ache that kept coming back deep in her belly, the awful awareness of her stimulation from too much wine, the nearness of Lenny and his maleness. She was hardly aware of the intrusion this time, and when I directed her thoughts toward the sensual and sexual, there was no way she could resist. I cursed her for allowing Lenny to leave, I threatened her, I forced her to unfold when she doubled up like a foetus, hugging herself into a tight ball. For an hour, more than an hour, I made love to Janet and tormented that other girl, and forced her to do those things that I had to experience for myself. And when Janet moaned and cried out, I knew the cause, and knew when to stop and when to continue, and when she finally went limp, I knew the total, final surrender that she knew. And I stared at the mirror image of the girl: large dark nipples, beautifully formed breasts, erect and rounded, deep navel, black shiny hair. And mad eyes, haunted, panic-stricken eyes in a face as white as milk, with two red spots on her cheeks. Her breath was coming in quick gasps. My control was too tight. Nothing that she thought was coming through to me, only what she felt with her body that had become so sensitive that when she lay back on the bed, she shuddered at the touch of the sheet on her back. I relaxed control without leaving and there was a chaotic blur of memories, of nights in Karl’s arms, of giving up totally to him, being the complete houri that he demanded of her.

“Bitch!” I thought at her. “Slut.” I went on and on, calling her names, despising her for letting me do it to her, for being so manipulable, for letting me do this to myself. And I brought her to orgasm again, this time not letting her stop, or ease up, but on and on, until suddenly she arched her back and screamed, and I knew. I don’t know if she screamed alone, or if I screamed with her. She blacked out, and I was falling, spinning around and around, plummeting downward. I yanked away from her. Janet stirred lazily against me, not awake, hardly even aware of me. I didn’t move, but stared at the ceiling and waited for the blood to stop pounding in my head, and for my heart to stop the wild fibrillation that her final convulsion had started.

Janet was bright-eyed and pink the next morning, but when she saw the full ashtrays in the living room and kitchen, she looked at me closely. “You couldn’t sleep?”

“Too much to think of,” I said, cursing the coffee pot for its slowness. “And just four days to do it.”

“Oh, honey.” She was always regretful when I was awake while she slept. She felt it was selfish of her.

I could hardly bring myself to look at Lenny, but he took my moods in stride, and he made himself inconspicuous. The machine was gleaming and beautiful, ready to crate up and put in the station wagon. We wouldn’t trust it to anyone but one of us, and I would drive to Chicago on Friday, install it myself Saturday morning, hours before the doors of the exposition opened at four in the afternoon. Lenny, like Janet, took my jittery state to be nerves from the coming show. It was like having a show at the Metropolitan, or a recital at Carnegie Hall, or a Broadway opening. And I wasn’t even able to concentrate on it for a period of two consecutive minutes. I went round and round with the problem I had forced on myself by not leaving Christine Warnecke Rudeman strictly alone, and I couldn’t find a solution. I couldn’t speak out now, not after last night. I couldn’t advise her to seek help, or in any way suggest that I knew anything about her that she hadn’t told us. And although the thoughts of the night before were a torture, I couldn’t stop going over it all again and again, and feeling again the echo of the unbearable excitement and pleasures I had known. When Lenny left for lunch, I didn’t even look up. And when he returned, I was still at the bench, pretending to be going over the installation plan we had agreed on for our space at the exposition. Lenny didn’t go back to his own desk, or his work in progress on the bench. He dragged a stool across from me and sat down.

“Why don’t you like Chris?” he asked bluntly.

“I like her fine,” I said.

He shook his head. “No. You won’t look at her, and you don’t want her to look directly at you. I noticed last night. You find a place to sit where you’re not in her line of sight. When she turns to speak to you, or in your direction, you get busy lighting a cigarette, or shift your position. Not consciously, Eddie. I’m not saying you do anything like that on purpose, but I was noticing.” He leaned forward with both great hands flat on the bench. “Why, Eddie?”

I shrugged and caught myself reaching for my pack of cigarettes. “I don’t know. I didn’t realize I was doing any of those things. I haven’t tried to put anything into words. I’m just not comfortable with her. Why? Are you interested?”

“Yes,” he said. “She thinks she’s going crazy. She is certain that you sense it and that’s why you’re uncomfortable around her. Your actions reinforce her feelings, giving you cause to be even more uncomfortable, and it goes on from there.”

“I can keep the hell away from her. Is that what you’re driving at?”

“I think so.”

“Lenny,” I said when he remained quiet, and seemed lost in his speculations, “is she? Going crazy again? You know she was once?”

“No. I doubt it. She is different, and difference is treated like mental illness. That’s what I know. No more. From demonic possession to witchcraft to mental illness. We do make progress.” His hands, that had been flat and unmoving on the benchtop, bunched up into fists.

“Okay, Lenny,” I said. “I believe you. And I won’t see her any more for the next couple of weeks, whatever happens. And, Lenny, if I’d known—I mean, I didn’t realize that anything of my attitude was coming through. I didn’t really think about it one way or the other. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt her… or you.”

He looked at me gravely and nodded. “I know that,” he said. He stood up and his face softened a bit. “It’s always people like you, the rationalists, that are most afraid of any kind of mental disorders, even benign ones. It shows.”

I shook my head. “A contradiction in terms, isn’t that? Mental disorders and benign?”

“Not necessarily.” Then he moved his stool back down the bench and went back to work. And I stared at the sketches before me for a long time before they came back into focus. The rest of the afternoon I fought against going back to her and punishing her for complaining about me. I thought of the ways I could inflict punishment on her, and knew that the real ace that I would keep for an emergency was her fear of heights. I visualized strolling along the lip of the Grand Canyon with her, or taking her up the Empire State Building, the Eiffel Tower, or forcing her up the face of a cliff. And I kept a rigid control of my own thoughts so that I didn’t go out to her at all. I didn’t give in all week, but I had her nightmares.