A. Homes - The End of Alice

I massage myself through my trousers, pausing to applaud the great performance. “Encore, encore,” I shout, adding to my cry the question, “What time does your mother get home?”

“Not until eight-thirty or nine.”

“And your father?”

“Tuesday.”

“What other roles can you perform?” I ask, standing to stretch, to flip through the remaining outfits, to consider what I’d like to see her in. “Have you got any uniforms?” The truth is, as I glide over the rack, parting the hangers, sending some off to the right, some to the left, with my free hand I’m rearranging matters in my pants.

I rummage through and find a blue satin dress.

“From my sister’s wedding,” she says.

“Matching shoes?”

Nodding, she retrieves a pair of silk pumps hidden beneath her bed — what other goodies might be buried there? She hurries into her cramped cabana, sensing my mounting impatience. In truth I am already hopelessly bored, my air of annoyance is just an affectation, a demonstration of my affliction. I look out the window. It is coming close to seven; my stomach growls. No mention has been made of dinner. And while I’m sure I could all too easily have her whip up something for me, it’s better not to bother. I want to do this and then depart to dine alone, feasting on the memory, on further fantasy, on what I imagine might have happened, if only, if only.

My ruminations, my dubious daydreams, have left me not paying attention, and while I was out to lunch, she must have popped out of the closet, and unfortunately, this time the bovine beast forgot to duck and has knocked her head against the low interior wall with an unbelievably loud ka-thunk, like the metal-on-metal cacophony of a car crash. She has again captured my attention. I snap to and find her falling backward, her legs collapsing beneath her, head landing with a thud on the pink carpet. Out cold. I rush to her side, am instantly upon her. The blue satin dress is hiked up a bit; I raise it farther still, pulling down the panties, exposing the gemstone, which is clearly glowing, beckoning me.

She makes no move, no sound but a soft moan, the result of the blow or my touch?

Alone with such a thing, free to do with it as I please, no watching, no waiting. First, I open it and have a long, slow look, working my eyes more closely, less romantically than I would otherwise be able to do; this is the clinical view. I examine it, amazed, ever in awe, then poke at it with my tongue, paving the way.

It is all about me, my desire.

I fuck her every which way, pulling out just in time to leave my squirt, my hot sealing wax splashed over her lips, gracing her face. When she wakes, she will think it is heavy drool; she has slobbered or seized in her artificial sleep.

A warm rag doll. A living, loving thing, laid back in complete compliance.

I dance around the room, paint my face with her lipstick, and leave strange kisses on her cheeks, which I then rub in, giving her a false blush. I fuck her again, can’t help myself. It is the first time I’ve stolen sex, taken something without asking.

There is no desire other than my own. I think only of myself and it is incredibly liberating.

Truly done, going home, I pull up her underwear, taking the time to tuck her hand down under the band, to spread things so her finger is between those lucky lips — if someone finds her first, she herself will be the prime suspect.

“What were you thinking, dear?” her mother will ask.

Feigned innocence. She’ll shake her head, it will throb from the concussion. She has no idea.

I leave her, soundlessly sneaking down the carpeted steps, darting out of the house, disappearing into the twilight of a spring night. Fireflies blink at me, flashing yellow like caution lights. I pay heed and upon returning to my home, telephone my employer and offer condolences on the occasion of my early and unexpected retirement. I must leave town immediately.

“Sorry to see you go. You were a hit with the customers, never saw a salesman bend balloons the way you did,” he said, referring to my apparently unique ability to twist inflated wands of rubber into sculptural objects to be given to the boys and girls as rewards for good behavior. “Are you sure there’s no circus in your blood? The only people I ever saw who could make rubber curl like that were circus folk.”

“No circus,” I said. “Just practice, much practice. Well, I should be going. Thanks. Thanks again,” I said, hanging up — he could go on for hours.

In my shame, my fear, my deep consternation as regards my apparent loss of control, I respond to the advertisement in the previous Sunday’s Times.

I’ve been to New Hampshire once before with my mother and father when I was three or four. I have no memory of it. I have nothing except a small black-and-white photograph; the three of us in a rowboat. My mother, porcelain and milky glass, fragile, not yet cracked. My father, even seated, towers over everything, as if the picture were a bit of trickery, playing perspective games, making the man look bigger than the boat, larger than the lake he’s floating on. He wears a white shirt. He holds me up, high above his head. I am hanging, hovering, flying. In a striped T-shirt, I am a human bumblebee.

I have come to New Hampshire to repair myself — if such a thing is possible — to piece together the puzzle that is me.

In Philadelphia the girl has come to or worse yet has been found on the floor still disarranged, the box containing her Mary Janes spilled beside her. Someone has called the police. My clever craftiness has caught up with me.

Prison. Captivus interruptus. An enormous clattering, rolling wheels. They have fetched a stretcher and are taking Frazier away. He wheezes his way off-key through an entirely new version of “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

The sergeant stops at my door.

“Busy day,” I say.

“Either it happens all at once or not at all.”

“What time is it?”

“Haven’t got time,” he says. “Are you dressed? Pull yourself together, it’s not a pajama party. They’re coming for you, they’re on their way.”

“Okay, okay,” I say, resenting that he won’t take a moment to tell me the time, resenting his intrusion into my daydream.

In New Hampshire, I start a diary, a kind of daybook, charting my moods, the measure of my madness. On page one I print the plan, the rudiments of my regime. Everything I do will be mandated, part of a prescription: eat, drink, exercise, smoke, etcetera, etcetera. A personal treatment plan. Five times a day I will be required to touch myself, whether I want to or not. Desire no longer has a destiny, the idea being that if I approach it before it arrives, force arousal using only the stuff of my imagination, I will eventually exhaust myself, causing my condition to come under control. The plan is this. Mornings at seven-thirty, reveille. I touch till eight, then the room is tidied. Breakfast is taken, followed by a brisk walk through the woods and twenty minutes of calisthenics. I boil water for tea, read for an hour, and break for a cigarette. At eleven I release myself again, this time dipping into the farthest reaches of my imagination. It takes the full hour. Noon is lunch. One o’clock, swim. Then nap and bath, the order of which is reversible. At three-thirty, the hour when, in the right season, school is typically let out, I am permitted to make an escape, to drive into town and run what errands I must. At six, cocktails are served, and I allow the liberating effects of the libations to lift my libido again, furiously frigging, while the dinner meat marinates. Dinner is served at seven, and at eight, dishes done, I listen to the radio or read until ten, when I prepare for bed, waxing myself once again before dropping off to dream.