Rona Jaffe - Mazes and Monsters

“What the hell? Why are the lights out?”

One of the women switched on the overhead fluorescent light. It was blinding. Kate blinked. And when she opened her eyes again, in that instant before he fled, she saw the face of her would-be rapist-murderer clearly. He was in his early thirties, lean and feral: a drifter or someone who worked in the town. He was no one she knew.

Afterward she never really could figure out why he hadn’t killed all four of them, herself and the three other women who had come to do their wash. She’d read about incidents like that in the newspapers, one maniac holding a whole dormitory of women in his power. But he had chosen to run away instead, and she was alive.

She and the three other women put a notice on the dorm bulletin board. BE CAREFUL — THERE IS A RAPIST WITH A KNIFE AROUND THE CAMPUS. HE WAS LAST SEEN IN THE LAUNDRY ROOM OF HOLLIS EAST. DO NOT GO ANYWHERE ALONE WHERE YOU COULD GET TRAPPED.

The cut took six stitches. She told the doctor she had been mugged. There was nothing else she wanted to tell. She was sure she wouldn’t be able to identify him if she saw him again; she’d been too frightened. She told Dawn to watch out, but never expressed any of the conflicting emotions that were tearing her apart. She did not tell her mother, because she didn’t want to upset her. She signed up for a karate course, which she continued all summer when she went home to San Francisco. Her instructor, who was a woman teaching all-women classes how to defend themselves from men, told Kate she had the fastest reflexes she’d ever seen in a student.

During the weeks and months after The Incident in the Laundry Room, as Kate began to think of it, it began to seem as if part of the nightmare had been her fault. She shouldn’t have been so stupid and careless to go down there alone when she knew it would be deserted. It was also Steve’s fault. If he hadn’t left her they would have been together that night and she wouldn’t have been alone and available to be murdered. Her father had left her too, abandoned her … every man she’d ever cared about had turned out to be untrustworthy and selfish. You hoped happiness would last, you loved and believed in them, and then they said good-bye. You couldn’t trust anyone but yourself. Maybe that was the lesson life was meant to teach you.

It was then she began to realize everything she had ever written was childish and superficial. The Mazes and Monsters game, which she had played innocently and pleasantly with her friends, began to become more important. It became her release and her social life. She had no dates — treating the men in her dorm and classes casually, keeping them as friends and discouraging anything more. Friends didn’t desert you. She trusted Jay Jay and Daniel; they were like brothers to her, even though Daniel was so sexy and attractive to other women.

After a while the pain of the remembered night became dulled, lying at the back of her mind, pushed aside for other things. She tried to live her life day to day. Nobody ever suspected she was upset at all.

Kate got up from where she had been sitting under the tree, and began to walk slowly to the dorm. Still time to grab some lunch and then get part of this week’s required reading out of the way. She thought of Robbie’s sweetness, his growing dependence on her, and wondered what she wanted to do. Maybe he would be the one, at last, who would love her and not go away. Then she could let out all the feelings she’d been saving up; her love and warmth and giving sexuality. But first she would have to test him, and she didn’t know how to do that. Maybe it would be better just to withdraw for a while so she wouldn’t have to deal with any of it.

Robbie couldn’t figure out why Kate had suddenly become so distant. He felt hurt and confused. He’d thought she really liked him as much as he liked her; they’d had fun together and were always able to make each other laugh. From the first minute he saw her, at Jay Jay’s party, his feelings for her had grown. He’d been trying to get up the courage to move their relationship to the next level — love and sex and maybe even sharing a room together — but now she had cut it all off without a word of explanation.

When he tried to talk to her about it she was always busy. It seemed as if lately he was always chasing after her and she was rushing away somewhere. He didn’t want to make a fool of himself, but he didn’t know what to do, and he couldn’t stand the thought of losing her without ever understanding why.

They continued to play the game, but there they were in another world, not Kate and Robbie, so it was different; and whenever they had finished playing for the night she would run to her room. One night Robbie waited until he was alone with Daniel and then asked him.

“Daniel, is Kate mad at me?”

“Not that I know of.”

“She’s acting different. I feel like that guy in the commercial: you tell me to change my toothpaste and then she’ll like me again.”

“Was something going on that I missed?” Daniel asked.

“I don’t know,” Robbie said, feeling miserable. “Maybe I imagined it.”

“Kate had a hard time last year,” Daniel said. “She broke up with the guy she was going with and it left her kind of defensive.”

“Is she still in love with him?”

“Oh, no.” Daniel gave him an appraising look. “You’re really interested in her, aren’t you.”

Robbie shrugged.

“You are,” Daniel said. He smiled. “Well, if it works out, the two of you can share a room and then we’ll have the extra room to play the game the way we planned last year.”

“Very funny. If you wanted some girl it would work out that way. Not with me and Kate.”

“Maybe it’s just as well,” Daniel said calmly. “If the two of you did get involved and it didn’t work out, it would fuck up our game.”

“Don’t you ever stop being so logical?”

“Nope.”

It was hopeless. Robbie thought of putting a note under Kate’s door, but that seemed childish. He tried to think of something funny to do, the sort of nutty thing Jay Jay would think of, but he didn’t have that sort of imagination. He thought how ordinary he was, and he decided Kate was right not to care about him. He had probably bored her.

Then one day she came into his room, looking contrite and timid. “I’m sorry,” she said.

His heart leaped. Kate … “Why have you been keeping me out?” he asked. “What did I do?”

“It wasn’t you. Can we start again?”

“ Yes ! You want to go to the movies tonight?”

“I’d love to.” She smiled. “There’s a lot of stuff I haven’t seen. Let’s drive into town and get the paper.”

They went to see a double feature of Halloween and When a Stranger Calls, because they both liked scary movies, and afterward they went to Fat City, the only halfway decent cheap restaurant in town, where most of the college students hung out. The walls were dark wood, with old movie posters hanging on them, and the lights were dim. There were booths as well as tables, so you could sit and talk in privacy. Because it was late and a weeknight the place was quite empty. The jukebox was playing for free.

Robbie and Kate sat across from each other at a booth in the corner. All evening she had been the same old Kate again, laughing and comfortable to be with. He ordered a hamburger and beer, she ordered white wine and her usual health food salad.

“I’ve got to get you off that stuff,” she said, gesturing at his hamburger. She picked a French fry off his plate and popped it into her mouth. “Don’t you know that when they slaughter an animal it gets scared and its system gets filled up with fight-or-flight hormones, and they get into your system?”