Eric Lustbader - Blood Trust

Xhafa was silent. Not daring to meet the Syrian’s eyes, he stared fixedly at the bowl of fruit, which now seemed to him to be seeping a dark, viscous poison. He watched, almost paralyzed, as the Syrian’s hand dipped into the bowl.

“Here is a blood orange,” the Syrian said, holding the fruit on his fingertips. “Shall we bite into it now? Of course not. The bitter skin will spoil the sweet meat inside. However—” Here he began to peel the skin off. “—if we are insightful enough to pare away the bitter coat, see what delight awaits us.” He broke off two sections, offered one to Xhafa, then took the other between his lips, chewed, and swallowed.

“Now think of Caroline Carson as this blood orange. If I had insisted she cover herself up in the strict Islamic tradition, I would never have found the delightful skills awaiting me.” He peeled off another segment and ate it. “And just as this orange is a metaphor for Caro, so, too, is Caro a metaphor for modern Western culture. It isn’t evil, it does not want to destroy us. This is the argument used by the fanatics among us—and believe me, Xhafa, when I tell you that fanatics are the same the world over. They cannot cope with reality, so they retreat to their mountain lairs and strike out at everyone and everything that had cast them out.”

Another segment disappeared into his mouth, while Xhafa still held his as if it might come alive and bite him.

“But there is evil in the world—plenty of it. Correctly identifying it is the real trick. There are individuals who are evil, individuals who want to destroy us, and it is here that we can make our mark, it is here where we can do some good, it is here we will find success.”

His eyes lowered to the piece of blood orange Xhafa still held. “So here’s what I say to you, Xhafa. Either you believe me, or you don’t. Either you eat that, or I will.”

Xhafa did not move, did not utter a sound. But when the Syrian tried to pluck the blood orange from his fingers, he resisted.

The Syrian’s frightening gaze was insistent, pitiless. “Now is the time, Xhafa. There will be no other.”

BEFORE MAJOR General Peter Conover Hains designed the Tidal Basin, and it was installed, Washington’s drainage problems were so monumental that on certain dog days, when the air was still and leaden, the stench from the marshes on which the city was built was overwhelming. The major general died in 1921, but his name lives on in Hains Point, a spit of land at the confluence of the Potomac River and the Washington Channel. The point is actually at the southern tip of East Potomac Park. Quite fittingly, it overlooks both Fort McNair and the National War College, which are across the channel on the eastern shore.

It was to Hains Point that Gunn had directed Willowicz and O’Banion.

Who has more fun than I do? Vera Bard thought as she drove into East Potomac Park. Gunn was curled inside the trunk of the Saab. He’d very cleverly rigged a cord that would keep the trunk from popping open yet afford him enough fresh air.

She drove slowly and carefully while her mind turned over the sequence of events and her part in them as Gunn had outlined them to her. She only had to be told once; she was an instant study. This ability would have vaulted her to the top of her class at Fearington were it not for Alli Carson. No matter what she tried her hand at, Alli always did her one better. Though they were roommates and Vera made certain that they became friends, she deeply and irrevocably envied Alli. And, with Vera’s psyche, it didn’t take long for envy to curdle into hate. Of course, she told all this to Gunn, and, at some point—she could not now recall precisely when—he had taken more than a passing interest in her roommate. Then, a week ago, he’d asked her if she’d like an assignment. Intrigued, she’d said yes. That was how Alli’s fingerprints had gotten onto the vial of roofies, the contents of which Vera had taken herself.

Not a problem. She was used to self-abuse, having spent her prepubescent years cutting herself on her inner thighs so as not to be caught. She had had constant weight problems, and self-image discrepancies. When she looked at herself in the mirror she saw a fat clown, or worse, a misshapen reflection in a funhouse mirror. She used to have nightmares about the awkwardness of her physicality. Her sleeping mind constructed a haunted house so vast it became an entire world. It was festooned with staircases that went sideways as well as up and down, contained rooms that changed shape and content each time she entered them, foiled her at every turn. She came back time after time. Sometimes it was a school, at other times a hotel, an office, or apartment building, though from the outside it always looked like Norman Bates’s Victorian house in Psycho.

When she was seven, she had spied on her father fucking his protégé in the master bedroom, though neither of them ever knew. All she could think of that night was the woman leaving her intimate spoor on the sheets for Vera’s mother to lie in. She got sick twice. Once she made it to the toilet in time, once she didn’t.

Understandably, then, she cleaved to her mother. When her father complained to his wife of his daughter’s coldness, she replied that it was only natural for daughters to bond with their mothers. To which he’d replied, I wish we’d had a son.

Time passed, but Vera’s nausea at life did not. On the contrary, it grew like an infestation, infecting her with its poison until she had only her mother in whom she could find comfort. Understandably, she hated boys, and she found the girls at school shallow. Friendships with them were, in her opinion, senseless.

Inevitably, she got into trouble, mostly fistfights with girls in her class who teased her, but occasionally boys, too. After her first bloody nose, she befriended a Thai girl who was a kickboxer. Her mother was surprised when Vera brought home the Thai girl, even more so when her daughter asked to take kickboxing lessons. She happily gave her money and her blessing. Six months later, Vera sought out the boy who’d bloodied her nose. She let him pick a fight with her, then nearly stove in the side of his head with her first kick.

That little stunt got her suspended for thirty days and a visit to the school shrink, but it was worth it. No one ever bothered her again. Better still, she got an insight into how to turn her loathing of males to her advantage. She now evoked in them fear and awe, vulnerabilities she quickly learned to exploit. As she began to manipulate the boys in her class—and, increasingly, older ones—her self-image reversed itself. Now she could look at herself in the mirror and instead of cringing see what she was really made of. She was a beautiful girl, but not in that icky girl-next-door way. She exuded sex appeal; it oozed through her pores like attar. And the boys were drawn to her like bees to a just-opened flower.

And then, one day, the ultimate betrayal: Her mother suffered an aneurism and died instantly. She had been making breakfast for Vera, had just set down a plate of blueberry pancakes. She kissed her daughter on the top of her head, said, Eat up or you’ll be late for school, turned around, and simply collapsed onto the kitchen floor. No blood, no pulse. Emptiness.

Vera went into shock and was still sedated in the hospital when her mother was buried. Afterward, she was so infuriated that she never went to her mother’s grave. She never spoke about her again to her father, or to anyone. Outwardly, it was as if she had never existed, but inside, the grieving never ceased, the wound festered, never healed; it continued to bleed into her own life, altering it forever.

All this flashed through her mind as she drove through East Potomac Park, where her mother had often taken her on sunny Saturdays and Sundays, while her father worked or was out of town. It had always been a special place to her, the place where her dream house was situated, where it still abided somewhere in the recesses of her subconscious.