Rona Jaffe - Mazes and Monsters

She’d been in love. Everyone at Grant said that if a love affair lasted more than five months you were living on borrowed time. They all knew they were growing, changing, finding different goals, and you couldn’t expect to be the same person you were several months ago — so how could you stay in love, or the other person stay in love with you? Love was dangerous because unless you were very lucky one of you was bound to get hurt. At least, you got hurt the first time. After that you learned. “They break your pretty balloon just once,” her last year’s roommate had said.

Dawn, the beautiful American Indian girl who Kate had thought would be such a confidante. “I’d never tell you my problems,” Dawn had told her. “It would hurt me too much to see you get upset.”

How could you answer that? No, I won’t get upset, I won’t care about you? Please upset me, that’s what I’m here for? Kate wondered if Dawn was just saying that so she wouldn’t have to listen to her complain. If so, Kate couldn’t blame her for that; who wanted to listen to a lot of troubles? You fell in love alone because you were supposed to be grown-up, and if it didn’t work out then you got over it alone.

So last year Kate had been in love, and it had lasted six months, and everyone knew it would eventually end, except her. She had really believed in that romance. Steve … funny, charming, a good writer, a shit. He just got bored with her. He was on to other things. She was expected to understand. He didn’t want to get married, neither did she; he didn’t want to live with anybody, neither did she; he wanted to go to Nepal. Then he would do something else, he’d see. She could come to Nepal if she wanted, but she’d just be dead weight. It was over. Besides, she didn’t have the slightest desire to go to Nepal.

So she nursed her broken heart and kept silent, and tried to think about the bad parts of the relationship so she could get over it faster. Remember how there was never enough room in the narrow dorm bed for the two of them to fall asleep properly. How he hogged it all anyway. How he threw his underwear on the floor, the slob. How he never made plans, so they always got to the last show at the movies after the opening credits. How he kissed her so sweetly and left little love notes in her clothes and made her feel beautiful and special.…

People were gathering their books and papers and standing up; the class was over. She had dreamed her way through it. That was another thing love did; it ruined your concentration. She hoped Robbie had taken enough notes for both of them.

“Do you want to buy some food and go have a picnic?” Robbie said. “There won’t be many more terrific days like this one.”

“No … I don’t know.”

He looked hurt. “Are you all right?”

“Sure. I have to study this afternoon.”

“Okay. I’ll see you at dinner then.”

She went off toward the library and then when she knew he was gone she walked back and sat on the ground under a tree. Students were sitting in pairs and groups on the strips of lawn between the large, red-brick class buildings, enjoying the last good weather of fall. She had been mean to Robbie, but she couldn’t help it. She didn’t want to have a picnic with him on a beautiful fall day, storing up memories, feeling open and mellow and vulnerable — not yet, anyway.

And she didn’t know how she would feel about having sex ever again, after the long-buried but never forgotten Incident in the Laundry Room. No one had been allowed to touch her since then, and if anyone did she didn’t know if she would be able to stand it.

It had been the night she knew it was all over with Steve. For a while she had pretended, but finally she knew he didn’t even want her for a friend. She didn’t want to brood, she wanted to keep busy. There was laundry piling up that needed to be done. It was Saturday night, when almost nobody used the laundry room. She wouldn’t have to wait for a machine. Everybody else was having a good time with the person they were in love with. She went down to the laundry room and found herself alone.

She separated the whites from the colors, dumped the clothes, sheets, and towels into two machines, poured in the detergent, and was fishing in her handbag for quarters when the lights went out. Suddenly the room was plunged into pitch darkness. It was weird because there was not one machine on, not even a dryer. It was absolutely still. She wondered if a fuse had blown. She turned around, but it was so dark after the previous fluorescent brightness that she couldn’t even see where the door was. Then she heard the tiny click of a cigarette lighter.

She saw the flame, and saw it glint off the sharp, shiny point of a switchblade knife. That was all — just the blade, held high — and then she heard the sound of the breathing.

Soft, soft, quick excited breathing. She couldn’t even hear footsteps, so silent was his tread, but the knife blade, shining gold and silver, came nearer, and so did the breathing. She knew without any doubt that it was a man, and that he was going to rape her.

The most terrifying thing in the world was a knife. A gun had a certain unreality to it; it could even be a toy. But you could not pretend a knife was a toy. And this one was long and sharp. The hand that held it was not trembling at all. Only the breathing was ragged: soft, excited, almost like sighs of ecstasy. She realized then that he probably would kill her, either before or after he raped her, and that her blood and pain would be part of his pleasure. She could feel her heart pounding so violently it seemed to fill the dark room. She crouched and ran, silently, away from that glittering blade, toward the tall dryers. He followed her, still in that wordless grim silence which was even more frightening than any words could have been.

Hide … hide. She was small and slim, she could slip into narrow spaces. But the bank of dryers stood there locked together, flush against the wall. Kate ran her hands across them, feeling for a space, wondering if she could crawl into an open dryer, knowing she would be more trapped inside than she was now.

There was a small air space behind the bank of dryers, between them and the wall, for the heat to escape. She slid into it, hearing his breath coming closer. Her eyes were becoming accustomed to the dark and she could make out shapes. Then she realized that at the end of this little passage there was a wall, and if he were small enough to follow her she would be trapped and he would slash her to death.

Carefully, silently, she turned around and crept out again, then ran, too close … feeling her heart turn over as he took a swipe at her. She felt wetness trickling down her arm. She began to sob, in silence, choking back the tears and her tiny, terrified animal sounds so he could not hear her and find her. She hit one of the ironing boards and fell, too frightened to feel any pain, and then jumped up again and ran, trying to get to the exit door before he did. Then he snapped off his cigarette lighter so there was no light at all. Now he and his knife could be anywhere.

Running swiftly down the line of ironing boards, Kate knocked them all over, leaving them on their sides or backs with their metal legs held high. Let him trip over one, make him fall, please God.… Where could she run now? If she ran into him he would grab her, slit her throat.…

She knew she was going to die and that there was no point to it, no purpose, only the unfairness and cruelty of it. She felt everything inside her seem to empty out: the hope, the love, the feeling. She was a shell, an object. She was nothing.

Then the door to the laundry room burst open and there were voices, perplexed, annoyed, and the silhouettes of three other women illuminated by the light in the hall.