Rafael Yglesias - Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

Halley let go and walked around me into the room. I shut the door. She was in jeans, a pink polo shirt, feet bare in black penny loafers. She flopped onto the four-poster bed and said, “I guess I’ll have to fuck Jack.”

“You told me that was over.” Weeks ago, she confessed they had had many more than the one encounter she originally claimed.

“He’ll want to. Every trip I’ve taken with Jack he gets horny. He leaves home promising himself he’ll be good, but I talk him out of it. You know what he likes? He likes to order room service while I’m giving him a blowjob.”

“Are you enjoying talking dirty to me?”

She lay down, hands behind her head. She kicked off her shoes. One dribbled onto a throw rug. The other tipped on its side, the cream-colored interior looking at me. “You said I had to be honest or you wouldn’t be nice to me.”

“I said as long as you were honest I would love you.”

She ignored that. “I’ve been in meetings all week preparing the pitch for our 800 operators. I’m ready to scream. All I could think about driving here was your lovely hands, your big brown eyes, and that I’ll probably get to see your buns in a teeny-tiny bathing suit. You really believe in this retreat?” she asked without a transition.

“I doubt much can be accomplished in two days. Less than that, really. Just two mornings.”

“So what are you going to do to us?” She sat up and pulled her legs under her. “Finger painting? Oh, I know. We’ll close our eyes, fall backwards and see if we catch each other.”

“No. The nearest hospital is fifteen miles.”

She smiled. “My room is next door. We have three nights.”

“No,” I said.

“You know what the Great White Father wants?” That was the nickname for Stick she used with her lovers. I understood the contempt expressed didn’t mean she was disloyal to him in action or thought — Gene and others, unfortunately for them, did not. Her use of it inspired a thought for the sessions and I considered asking her to leave.

“No,” I said. “What does Stick want?”

She kicked at the shoe on the bed. It tumbled down, bumped into its twin and rolled off the rug onto the pine floor. “He thinks I should get to know Edgar.”

That stopped me from sending her away. “He puts it to you that bluntly?” I asked.

“What?” She looked up. “What do you mean? Oh … No, that’s not what he says, you pig. He says I should move in his quote, circle, unquote. He says Edgar would be happy to include me in his glamorous New York social life.” She set her jaw to copy Stick’s stern face and barely moved her lips to imitate his ominous style of talking, “‘You’d make lots of good contacts, Hal.’”

“What he really wants is for you to have an affair with Edgar.”

“That’s ridiculous. Edgar can buy any piece he wants. And he already has a trophy wife.”

“Your father has a higher opinion of you than that.”

Halley winked at me. “Do you?”

“Do I think Edgar would have an affair with you?”

“No!” She frowned. “Do you have a higher opinion of me than that?”

“Than what?”

“Than …” Halley shook her head. “You’re confusing me.”

“Do I have a higher opinion of you than that you’re more than a trophy wife or a piece of ass?”

“That’s it.”

“Is that what you think of yourself?”

“That’s what men think of me.”

I shook my head and commented quietly, “You hate yourself.”

She watched me. Her black eyes seemed to cross a little. She dropped a hand down to her right foot and squeezed her big toe. “Let’s get married,” she said in her deep, absolutely earnest voice.

I stood up, offering my hand. “Okay. We can do it right now. Burlington’s only a half hour away. We’ll go to their city hall and see if they’ll waive the waiting period.”

“I mean it,” she said.

“So do I. We can pack up and fly to Vegas.” I beckoned with my hand. “Come on.”

“You would really marry me?”

“Of course.”

Halley kicked her legs over the edge of the bed, hands on its edge, staring at the small throw rug. She thought for a moment. “Where would we live?”

“We would live where you want. We would do everything exactly the way you want it.”

She looked up, her high brow shining above the dark eyes. “You mean I’d get to have real sex with you?”

“No.”

“Even if we were married?”

“That would stay the same.”

“Why?”

“You don’t want real lovemaking.”

She sneered, “Oh, I don’t want it.” I said nothing, my hand still offered in marriage. She studied my fingers, smiled and asked in a sweet tone, “What do you do afterwards? Go home and masturbate?” I lowered my hand and sat down. “Is that what you imagine?”

“Do you wish I was really a little girl? Is that what you did at your clinic — molest little girls?”

“You’re the only girl I’ve ever read bedtime stories to.” She straightened, arched her back and made one of her composite noises. Mostly, I heard disgust. “You’re just a sick motherfucker who likes to play power games,” she said. “I love you,” I said. “You’re scared to really love me.”

“I love you,” I said.

“When Didier was here he asked me to become his mistress.”

“You told me.”

“He said I should move to Paris and we’d run the European division together.”

“King Didier and Queen Halley.”

“You’re laughing, but he means it.”

“What did Stick think of that offer?”

“I—” She shut her mouth and pushed off the bed as if she were a gymnast dismounting, landing on the balls of her feet, arms akimbo. “I haven’t told him yet.” She walked slowly, watching her feet as she put one in front of the other, to the window. “The pool looks nice,” she said, her mouth against the glass. It fogged up. “Let’s go swimming.”

“It’s been almost a week. Why haven’t you told Stick?”

Halley turned my way. “I could run the European division.”

“I know.”

“You know what my friend, Paula Robeson at IBM, told me? Their head of marketing got a sneak peek at the Centaur 800 ads and flipped out. They think we’re going to—”

“You told me this morning.”

“I did? Oh, right …” She leaned on the window frame, studying her feet. “You know everything,” she said softly.

“I love you,” I said.

She shut her eyes, pressed her full lips together, and said between clenched teeth, “Stop saying it.”

“Why? It’s the—”

She held on to the window frame and stamped her feet, shouting, “I’m ugly!”

“ You’re ugly?”

“I mean— it’s ugly.”

“Loving you is ugly?”

“It’s a lie!” She came over to my chair and dropped to her knees, hands in her lap. She was praying to me. “I know when a man loves me. He wants me. He wants me to tell him how great he is, he wants to tell me how scared he is, he wants to hear that he’s too nice—’You should be stronger, people are taking advantage of you,’” she talked with perfect sincerity in her deep voice to an invisible lover.

“Flattery disguised as criticism,” I said. “It’s an excellent technique.”

She reached for my knee shyly, touching lightly with two fingers. “You’re a genius,” she said softly. “I mean a real genius. I’m not flattering you.”

“Don’t touch me,” I said.

She pulled back as if burned. Her eyes seemed to cross and she snapped, “I hate you.”

“I’m glad,” I answered gently, as if she had presented me with an endearment.

“You don’t care what I feel.”