Russell Banks - The Darling

Finally, we three found ourselves standing together at the door to the bedroom Carol shared with Zack. The double bed was unmade, and a harried working mother’s clothes draped from chairs and the dresser.

“Sorry about the mess,” Carol said. “Zack’s such a neatnik and takes care of most of the place, but he refuses to pick up after me in the bedroom. It’s the one thing we fight about.”

Zack crossed in front of us and flopped down in the middle of the bed. “C’mere, you,” he said.

“Who?” Carol asked.

“Both of you.”

“Zack,” I said. “I’m not your type, remember? And you’re not mine.” Carol walked over, and sat down on the edge of the bed. Zack began to stroke her bare arm.

“Yeah, but you’re Carol’s type,” he said. “And she’s yours.”

Carol and I looked at each other. When the object of your past desire is placed in front of you like that, sexual nostalgia can be very powerful. There are so many vague, lingering memories of having once been satisfied and so few specific details that you want to revisit the source.

Zack reached over to the bedside table and lighted a chunky blue candle. I hit the wall switch, and he said, “That’s better. Now, c’mon over here with us.”

I stayed put by the door. “Is a threesome what you’re after?”

“I wouldn’t mind. But if you’re not into that, it’s okay by me. There’s other possibilities.”

“What about you, Carol?”

She shrugged. Zack slowly unzipped the back of her dress, and she looked down and smiled coyly.

“Maybe you’d like to watch me and Carol,” Zack said. “Or maybe you’d like me to watch you and Carol. Like I said, there’s other possibilities. I’ve never seen two women make love before. In real life, I mean.”

“Real life,” I said. “Is this real life?”

“It’s not a movie, man,” he said. “Come on over here. You know you want to.”

I took one step, then two, and then I was standing beside Carol on the bed. Zack slid over to make room. I sat down, my ears buzzing like a teenager’s, and placed one hand over hers. With my other hand, I brushed her hair off her shoulder and touched her throat. She turned to face me, closed her eyes, and kissed me on the lips.

And the rest? Well, you know the rest.

No, that’s not true. You don’t know the rest. You don’t know that Zack and I both made love to Carol. You don’t know that while he fucked her I leaned back against the headboard and watched them and touched myself and for the first time in my life was swallowed whole by sexual pleasure. I left my body behind and merged with theirs and had no thoughts, no awareness of my mind or body. You don’t know that afterwards I felt deep, nearly inexplicable gratitude to Zack and Carol, as if they had gone through a terrible, mind- and body-searing ordeal solely for me, so that I would not have to endure it myself. Though, of course, unlike me, all they had done was take their pleasure.

THE NEXT MORNING, after a breakfast as casual and companionable as if we had been sharing the kitchen for months, Carol drove over to her mother’s apartment in the East End to pick up Bettina, leaving me and Zack for the first time alone in the apartment. I was washing the dishes from breakfast and the night before; he sat at the table smoking a cigarette and reading the sports section of the morning paper. He seemed content. He knew that what happened last night was going to continue for a while, at least until something unforeseen, a factor outside the equation, stopped it. Instead of waiting for Carol and me to betray him in secret and then, after a period of deception, displace him, Zack had right away made me a player in his sexual relations with her. I hadn’t seen that coming. He liked having me watch them make love. It put him in control of the sexual aspect of my relationship with Carol, which was the only part of it that had threatened him.

Zack looked up from the paper and smiled. “So, babe, do you think you’ll go back to Liberia?”

“I have three sons and a husband there.”

“That doesn’t mean you’ll go back, though.”

“No. But I will, as soon as it’s allowed.”

“By whom?”

“The president, Samuel Doe.” I gave him the short version of the events leading up to my departure from Liberia, including the reasons for Charles’s flight and Woodrow’s brief arrest. Mention of Charles brought a wide grin to Zack.

“So my man Charlie is very cool after all,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s true, he skimmed over a million bucks from some fund over there? Him and your husband?”

“Yes.”

“That bastard. I thought he was lying to me. I thought it was all a con.”

“What was?”

“He told me he’s willing to turn a million bucks over to anyone who can spring him from prison and get him out of the country. He’s a very political guy, you know, a guy with large freedom-fighter ideas and big ambitions.”

“No, I don’t know.”

“Yeah, well, he is. A genuine comrade. I was telling him about our years in SDS and Weather, which was naturally of great interest to him. And at some point I told him how Weather had sprung Timothy Leary out of a California prison and got him all the way to Algeria, and Charlie goes nuts for it.”

“Goes nuts for what?” I leaned against the sink and faced him. I wasn’t sure where this was leading, but the conversation made me anxious. I was reasonably certain that Charles was smarter than Zack and probably more cynical, too.

“For having Weather break him out. Doing a Tim Leary. I tell him Weather doesn’t even exist anymore, it’s just a few people still more or less underground, like you, and that’s it. Then he says he’s got a million bucks U.S. stashed in an offshore bank that he’ll turn over to anyone who successfully gets him out of prison and out of the country. He’s got some kind of deal with Ghaddafi, but he’s got to get to Libya, where there’s all these training camps for African freedom fighters looking to liberate their homelands.” Zack looked past me and out the kitchen window to the cloudless, morning sky. “You know, we can do this, babe. You and me.”

“Forget it, Zack.”

“Just hear me out, man. I can’t do it alone, I’m an ex-con and still on parole and can’t get inside to talk to Charles personally and privately. You know, to coordinate things. But you can, Miss Dawn Carrington. Or Musgrave. Or Sundiata. Whoever you are these days. I assume you still know how to cook up a phony passport that would get Charles out of the States.”

I laughed. “Yeah. I can. But tell me why I should do this, Zack. It’s high risk. And for what?”

“For the dough. But also because this guy is the real thing, babe. A Third-World freedom fighter. And he’s got plans for your man, Doe. Big plans. And besides, seems to me you’ve got some interests back there in Liberia that would make you want to get Charles Taylor the hell out of an American prison and back in action in Africa. You’ve got to talk to this guy, man. He’s been through it. He’s the kind of revolutionary we were, only we were in the wrong place at the wrong time. This cat is heavy . If we can help him get back to Africa, then he’ll be in the right place at the right time. Otherwise, I’m telling you, man, with Charles Taylor in jail here and Samuel Doe in power over there, you may never see your husband and kids again.”

“You don’t understand, Zack. Charles thinks Woodrow flipped him to save his own neck.”

“Not true, babe! He told me Woodrow was cool. Actually, the way I read it, Charlie probably flipped Woodrow and feels bad about it. He didn’t say that exactly, but I got the picture. The bad guy in this is Doe. He’s the one your husband’s got to worry about.”