Douglas Kennedy: Woman in the Fifth

‘Push you around? You follow me everywhere—’

‘You have no proof of that—’

‘—you trap me in a burning building. And then, having told me that I would be in a situation where I’d have no choice but to cry out for you and demand your help, I do find myself in a situation where I have no choice but to cry out and demand your help. And what happens?’

She smiled and lit a cigarette.

‘You have no proof of that.’

‘The cops said a woman phoned them.’

‘Maybe she did. And maybe you should have made more copies of this.’

She reached into the pocket of her robe and pulled out a black floppy disk.

‘You stole that from my room …’

‘It’s just a floppy disk. One of many millions. And it doesn’t have an identifying label on it. Who’s to say that it’s yours?’

‘You knew that the only reason I went back to that hellhole of an office was to retrieve the disk of my novel because—’

‘The cops impounded your computer after they raided that building?’

‘There! That’s my proof you’ve been following me—’

‘But you still have no actual proof … except that you think that I started the fire near the ventilation shaft on the second floor of the building, and added half a bag of sulfur which I later hid in the Internet cafe to make certain that the entire business was pinned on that bastard Delik—’

‘Stop playing with my head.’

She came toward me, opening her robe. She had nothing on underneath.

‘But I like playing with your head,’ she said, reaching for my pants. ‘It’s so easy.’

I tried to pull away, but she grabbed hold of my belt and forced my crotch against hers.

‘If you think I’m going to fuck you—’

‘I do think that,’ she said, popping the buttons on my fly.

‘I’m not interested,’ I said, trying again to push her away.

She reached in and took hold of my now erect penis.

‘Liar,’ she said. ‘And don’t give me any crap about your scorched lungs.’

She grabbed the back of my head and shoved her tongue down my throat, then pushed my pants down. I threw her on to the bed. I was inside her immediately. She became violent, pulling my hair, biting into my neck. But I didn’t resist, instead drilling into her with angry ferocity. I came fast. So did she. But as soon as it was over, I too felt something close to derangement. Standing up, I touched my neck and felt blood.

‘Just think,’ she said, reaching for her cigarettes. ‘You’ve just fucked a dead woman who made you bleed.’

I pulled on my jeans.

‘Going so soon?’ she asked.

‘What do you want from me?’

She laughed.

‘What do I want from you? Quel melodrame, Harry. You know what I want. Our little rendezvous every three days. Nothing more, nothing less. You come here at the specified time. We make love — or “fuck” if you prefer. We drink a little whisky. We talk a bit. You leave at eight, comme d’habitude. I don’t care who you see or what you do when you are not here. Go where you want, sleep with who you want … as long as you are here at the times agreed. And in exchange for your visits — your fidelity to our rendezvous — I can promise you—’

‘ What? ‘ I asked. ‘Eternal life?’

‘Oh, you will die … like everyone. That’s something completely beyond my power. But one thing I can promise you is that, for the rest of your life, you will have someone watching your back at all times, smoothing the way for you. As I said last time, I cannot manipulate things to give you fame and fortune. Getting your novel published, for example …’

‘Have you read it?’

‘Well, I do have the disk …’

‘But no computer.’

‘I have access to any computer I want — as long as the person who owns it isn’t using it at the time. Anyway, I read it. It’s clear you have talent, Harry. Abundant talent. Your turn of phrase, your sense of place, your ability to describe a character’s attributes and complexities. All very admirable. The problem — for me, anyway — is that you cannot simply tell the story and let us discover your cleverness. You have to remind us all the time how clever — and faux-poetic — you are …’

‘Faux-poetic?’

‘Don’t take it so hard, Harry … but the narrative is swamped by this absurd lyricism, this need to over-explain, this terrible portentousness—’

‘Everyone’s a fucking critic, aren’t they?’

‘Are you talking about the inspector?’

‘So you were there in the hospital room when he told me—’

‘—that he had the first chapter of your novel translated? You have no proof that I was there, but—’

‘Can I have the disk back?’

‘By all means,’ she said, reaching into the pocket of her robe and tossing it on the front of the bed. ‘But honestly, you should either rework the entire narrative, cutting out all the posturing, the—’

‘I don’t want to hear anymore of this—’

‘As you like …’

I picked up the disk.

‘I’m never coming back here.’

A weary sigh as she sat up and closed her robe and reached for her cigarettes.

‘Harry, why make trouble for yourself when I ask so little and offer so much?’

‘Because you’re insisting I be indentured to you for—’

‘ Three hours twice a week! You call that being “indentured”? Think of your current predicament. No job. No prospects. And what do you have saved from that awful night job? Twenty-eight hundred euros. All right, you’ll eke out a few weeks in that one-star hotel on the rue du Dragon. But then … ?’

I put my face in my hands, as again I heard that voice in my head: She is everywhere … she knows everything.

‘I’m not coming back … and that is final.’

‘Fool.’

‘I don’t care what you do to me.’

‘Yes, you do. And yes, you will …’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘It will matter to you.’

‘Torture me, ruin me some more, even take my life …’

‘Harry, you don’t know what you’re saying.’

‘I know exactly—’

But I couldn’t finish that sentence, as I suddenly doubled over, coughing wildly. Phlegm filled my mouth and, for a few moments, I felt as if I was drowning. Margit stood up and guided me into the toilet where she held me as I coughed up black gunk into the sink. Then she led me into her kitchen area and opened a cabinet and handed me a canister of oxygen. Check that: the exact same make of oxygen which had been given me in hospital. I took it from her with relief and pried off the cap and clasped the mouthpiece in my teeth and took two deep blasts of the oxygen. It helped. After a third blast, my breathing eased.

‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘You got the canister at the hospital where I was recovering from your pyrotechnics?’

‘Perhaps …’

I stood up, tucking the canister under my arm.

‘You should leave that here for the next time,’ Margit said.

‘There’s not going to be a next time.’

‘Yes, there will.’

‘Don’t count on it.’

‘You’ll be here — because you’ll have to be here. But Harry — think carefully before you decide to terminate your minor obligations—’

‘ Obligations? I’m not indebted to you for anything.’

‘You called out for me when you were about to die … and then you didn’t die.’

‘You are not my savior, and you are not seeing me again.’

‘Don’t make me force you back here.’

‘Do whatever you want to do,’ I said. And I left.

Half an hour later I was back in the hotel, curled up on the bed, a blanket over me, the plastic wastebasket from the bathroom near me in case I had another phlegm attack. But I now expected to have the roof of my room collapse on me, or to be attacked by a platoon of poisonous bedbugs, or to start spitting up internal organs (surely she couldn’t orchestrate something so invasive). I touched my neck and felt the still-moist wound she had made with her teeth. ‘ You’ve just fucked a dead woman who made you bleed .’ I covered my head with a pillow. This can’t be happening. I also thought of a lifetime of afternoon liaisons stretching out in front of me — all in service of some surreal notion that I had a permanent guardian angel lurking in my corner, as long as I screwed her twice a week. You have no proof. How she taunted me with that phrase. But my anguished attempts at disbelief were quickly superseded by a realization that had taken hold of me in hospital and had only been reinforced by my encounter with Margit that afternoon: This was all very real. And I did take seriously her threats to bring further harm to me if I didn’t meet my ‘obligations’ to her. But I didn’t care anymore. Let her take my life. It meant so little to me now.