Norman Partridge - Slippin' into Darkness

Marvis squinted. His green eyes zeroed in on a tangle of crisp blonde hair framed by a square of black shadow. The giggles spilled into full laughter. A pair of lips were trapped in the black shadow frame.

But these lips couldn’t laugh. It was impossible.

Stiff fingers entered the shadow-frame and caressed the waiting lips, twisting them into a dull purple smile. Marvis didn’t breathe. The girl’s long legs were beautiful, her fingers slim and eager, her skin as pale as a winter moon. A naked foot traveled her smooth calf as her fingers danced. Two perfect knees came together, then parted. And then she laughed again, her firm belly shuddering as she sat up. Straight, long hair swept a face that seemed nothing more than shadow. But Marvis didn’t need to see this face to recognize it. It was locked in his memory.

Blonde cobweb strands tickled her hardening nipples. The net of shadows embraced her, slicing her arms and legs at the joints, turning her torso into a complex jigsaw. The shadows were only a trick of moonlight and window sashes. Marvis knew that, just as he knew that the shadows had transformed the girl into something both obscene and pathetic-a living, breathing butcher’s diagram.

But she wasn’t living. Not this girl. She wasn’t breathing.

Her face was nothing more than a shadow.

He was seeing-

Her laughter was the only thing that lurked in the shadows.

He was hearing-

She was a ghost.

Somehow, Marvis managed to choke back his scream. But it stayed with him, a secret locked in his chest, even when she turned on the lights.

She closed the drapes, still laughing. “Well, it’s what you get for leaving your front door unlocked. Anybody could have wandered in.”

Something witty. Marvis knew that he was supposed to say something witty. That was the game. But he couldn’t think of anything to say.

“You should have seen yourself,” she said.

He was still frightened. She wasn’t a ghost. That’s what he kept telling himself. She wasn’t a dead girl. She was only Shelly Desmond, a fifteen-year-old piece of meat who stood naked in his living room, thinking that she was funny.

“I mean it, Marvis.” She giggled. “Oh, man, the look on your face.”

He glanced away sharply. At the ebony videocassettes on the white pine floor. At his whiteboy loafers, his faded black jeans. At his black hands hanging there before him, long fingers still trembling.

Negro hands. African-American hands.

No. Not quite. His hands were the sweet color of butterscotch. Come August, any redneck had darker skin than his.

“And your eyes.” Shelly wiped away tears of laughter. “Your eyes were as big as saucers.”

Marvis glared at the girl. “As big as saucers.” The words were ice on his tongue. “Like a spook butler in some old movie. Is that what you mean. Shelly?”

She crossed her arms over her breasts, as if exasperated. “I didn’t mean… Geez, Marvis, why do you say things like that? It’s the nineties. Wake up. All that stuff happened a long time ago. Do you think I’d even be here if I was like that?”

“There’s the money.”

“That hurts, Marvis.”

She pouted, and, of course, that made her a magnet. Marvis came to her. His fingers encircled her tiny wrists. Gently, he moved her arms to her sides, forced her hands against the cold brass rail of the pool table. “You can’t imagine, Shelly.”

She didn’t look away, and that struck him as particularly brave. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what color-”

His grip tightened. “But you like my color, don’t you. Shell? You’re the one who told me that I’m the man with the sweet butterscotch skin.” She giggled, and for a moment her arms relaxed. “But what if my skin was darker? And what if my eyes weren’t green? What if they were as brown as dirt? What if my skin was black as unsweetened chocolate? Would you still want a taste of me?”

The muscles in Shelly’s arms became knots of nervous tension. The pool table shuddered, and Marvis caught sight of the eight ball teetering on the edge of the corner pocket nearest him.

Teetering there, on the edge of a pit of shadow. An ebony sphere on the brink of a pit. A bottomless pit like the shadow-face he’d imagined seeing earlier…

No, that face belonged to Shelly. Shelly, and a few shadows. And now the shadows were gone and Shelly wasn’t so frightening. Or brave. She looked away-not daring to struggle, actually blushing if that could be believed-and it was Marvis’s turn to laugh. He released her wrists and stroked her rosy cheeks with his sweet butterscotch fingers.

“You’re red, Shell,” he said. “You’re a little Indian.”

“A little Native American,” she corrected, and they both laughed.

His fingers left her cheeks, traveling more familiar territory.

“Don’t you want to get the camera?” she asked.

“Maybe we’ll do this just for us.”

“You want to do it here? On the pool table?”

He thought of the dead girl as he looked into Shelly’s eyes, and he had to laugh at the misplaced fear that he’d felt just a few moments before. “Yeah.” His fingers smoothed the cool green felt that surrounded the eight ball, never quite touching the ball itself. “It’s something I’ve always wanted to do.”

“I don’t know…” Shelly was looking over his shoulder now, not looking at him at all.

He sensed someone behind him, watching. In an instant the fear was back with him. There were plenty of self-righteous cops in the world and there were plenty of people in his business who were much more dangerous than any self-righteous cop.

He turned quickly, confronting nothing more dangerous than an old hand-tinted wedding photo of his father and mother that hung on the wall.

Marvis smiled. So this was the source of Shelly’s unease. He had always thought the photo told the truth. His father’s skin so black, his mother’s so white. In the wedding photo, Marvis’s mother was almost as white as her dress. In reality, his mother’s skin had been the color of a honeycomb still slick with sweetness. Marvis was nearly that light, though his hair was darker than his mother’s.

“It’s like they’re watching us,” Shelly whispered. “And your father looks so angry.”

“Of course he looks angry,” Marvis said flatly. “He was a cop. Cops always look angry, especially when they’re off duty.”

“Oh, Jesus.” She giggled. “You’re kidding, right?”

Marvis shook his head.

“Did he know? I mean, did he know what you do? How you make your money?”

“He died when I was in college. A junkie slit his throat three months before he was due to retire. My mother’s heart gave out a few weeks later. All they knew was that I wanted to open a camera shop.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. Marvis knew that she wanted to say more, so he didn’t say anything. “That must make it so hard for you. Knowing what they’d think.” She stared at the picture, trying to find something of Marvis in his father’s face. “If he knew that someone like me was in his house…I mean, he’d hate me.”

Marvis stroked her pale breasts, inhaled her perfume. God, she even smelled white. “No, he wouldn’t hate you.” The conclusion was simple, logical. “Not my father.”

Marvis turned the photograph to the wall, but Shelly couldn’t bring herself to look away. “Maybe we could use a little something to take the edge off,” she suggested.

Marvis nodded. Shelly slipped from the table and started toward the hallway, but he stopped her with a single glance.

“I know where it is,” she said. “Remember? You showed me-the very first time, when we did it in the bedroom.”