“Like having an abortion,” she repeated. “You’re right – I deserved that.” Silence. “Maybe no sane woman. Or no decent woman.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. You’ve got to stop beating yourself up like that. Anyway, do you want to hear the story or not?”
“Sure. Why not. After all this is over, I’ll just have to take up karaoke.”
“Yeah, right. Anyway, nothing happened for a very long time. I kept up my training and prepared for a war that never seemed to come. I began to think that I was wasting my time – that we were all wasting our time. I didn’t realize that the Adversary was also preparing – reading the same books, learning the same martial arts, marshalling support among the other ang-, uh . . . people.
“And it all came to a head at some point?”
“Yes. I received a summons, and found myself addressing the largest army I had ever seen. My army. My army to command. I looked out at them, and I saw the jealousy in the eyes of my generals – far older and more experienced than me – and heard them whisper to each other. This kid? I got passed over for this kid? What kind of joke is this?”
“And I looked at the soldiers, and I looked in their eyes. And I knew that they figured that here was a kid whose only wounds were the paper cuts he had received from his books. And all I wanted to do was walk away. Turn around and walk away.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. I didn’t. I knew they wanted me to speak – to say something to inspire them. They knew that the forces against them were well-trained and equipped – and the Adversary was noted for his ability as a general. A brilliant leader – and charismatic.”
“And what did you say?”
“I opened my mouth, and a croak came out. I sounded like you after the blueberry scent had taken hold. So I took a sip of water and tried again. My voice cracked, and I thought I was going to wet my pants.”
“You were that afraid?”
“Yes, that afraid. I wasn’t afraid of death, you understand, or even of failure. I was afraid that I might succeed.”
“Evelyn looked at him. “Now I really don’t understand.”
“Until then I had always believed that it was all temporary. They would find out that the threat wasn’t real. Or it would be real, and we would take care of it and go home. But when I was standing up there, I realized that, if I succeeded, I would be a hero. I could never go home again – never write a song, never look at the clouds without calculating whether they would produce too much rain for the cavalry. The thought of losing, the fear of losing, was unbearable – but the idea of winning was almost more than I could bear.”
Silence. “Do you suppose that the other men sensed it?”
“They certainly sensed something. By the time I had managed to move my voice into a reasonable register and start to say something that was vaguely inspirational, I could see that a few of the soldiers in the back were slipping away. The officers – I don’t know what they thought. A few of them told me later. The whole thing was pretty embarrassing.”
“It sounds horrible.”
“I couldn’t walk through the camp without people nudging each other and whispering. If the Adversary had had any spies in the camp, he was probably rolling on the ground laughing when he heard their reports.”
“No doubt.”
“Maybe that was the idea. I don’t know. I do know that there were at least 5 generals who were far better qualified for the job than I was. If it had been any other group, I would probably have suffered a convenient accident before the battle, but God’s troops don’t operate that way.”
“I would suppose not.”
“I thought that I might get some advice from God himself, but he seemed to be busy with the construction project. At the time I thought that it was the most bizarre thing in the world – to be preoccupied with a construction project while an upstart warrior is threatening to dethrone you. But there is an advantage to working for someone who can see the future, and the whole thing worked out very well.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll tell you after lunch. Let’s stop here.”
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Saturday, September 5, 2009
The Scent of the Blueberry -- 15
Evelyn laughed ruefully. “Well, it would be pretty damn inconvenient if you didn’t have it.”
Michel smiled. “True. But let me go on. We usually select a new body, but there are times that we borrow one that’s already in use.”
“Now that sounds a lot like the plot of a bad sci-fi movie.”
“Maybe, but it’s not fiction. You know how sometimes they talk about someone being possessed?
Well, it’s something like that. That’s the alternative. The possessing spirit generally leaves the body when it’s killed. The only thing is that the spirit can’t repossess the same body. ”
“That sounds kind of arbitrary.”
“No, I think it has something to do with the activation of an immunity function. That’s the current thinking anyway. We have a bunch of R&D scientists working on that.”
“Somehow I’m not surprised,” she said dryly.
“Anyway, on with the story. When I was still young and in training, they took me away from my parents and removed me from the school.”
“Who is ‘they’?”
“It doesn’t really matter. They were acting under orders. You see, if you’re religious, you believe in something called ‘the will of God’. That’s the ultimate authority, and the ultimate reason for doing anything. Part of the purpose of life would be to discern the will of God, and to follow it.”
“Not in my book.”
“You and a lot of other people. But, anyway, they told my parents and the school officials that it was the will of God. And, of course, they let me go.”
“And this was all because you were different? Because you were some kind of child prodigy or something?”
“Not in any way that I could see. Now this is the funny thing about God – the thing that I have never figured out. One of the things, at least.”
"If I had been a human being, a regular human being, the government or someone might have come to my parents, or to the school, and said, ‘Look. This kid is really good in math. Or music. Or tiddlywinks, whatever. We want to take him aside and put him with other kids who are also good at that.’ You see what I mean? I would never have had to learn basketball, or French, or anything else – because the community had a whole bunch of other people who could do that. Besides, they probably would have pulled out anybody who was especially good at basketball or French, and they wouldn’t have had to study music or math. You know what I mean?’
Evelyn nodded.
“God doesn’t work that way – it’s like he has an entirely different set of rules. So I get pulled out, and I receive specialized military training. Martial arts.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense. I mean, if God were God, you’d figure that he would do smart things. So how smart is that?”
“I don’t know how smart it is. But I do know that he does it pretty consistently – pick people to do things that really weren’t the most likely individuals. David to fight Goliath, almost any one of the Apostles, Mohammed – take your pick. If humans had been creating a short list, none of those people would have been on it. But hey, you know, it does seem to work out in the end.”
“Did it work out in the end for you?”
“In the end, yes. For the divine will anyway.” Michel smiled. “For the divine will – definitely. For me, well, maybe that doesn’t matter so much.”
“So how did it work out?”
“It went on for a long time, especially if you measured it in the way that humans measure time. Martial arts on a spiritual level are different from martial arts on a human level – but the underlying ideas, the essence, is still the same. Discipline, self-deprivation, self-sacrifice, respect for authority. . .”
“Doesn’t sound like an easy program for a little boy. Especially a little boy who loves to hear his mother sing around the house.”
Michel paused. “Or who loves to look at the clouds and the stars. No, there was no more of that, and no more singing around a house, as you put it. It was all about the drill. Each day had its structure, and we never deviated from it.”
“So they wanted you to become a little soldier. But why? I mean, God is supposed to be so powerful, right? Why would a God need a little boy, a little mathematical prodigy, to become a soldier?”
Michel smiled. “Well, you do have to realize that the Almighty doesn’t always confide in me.”
Evelyn whistled through her teeth. “Well, at least that’s one piece of disbelief that I won’t have to suspend, eh?”
“But, the way it turned out, there was a real danger, a real threat. I don’t know if that threat was powerful enough to pose any kind of real danger to God himself – I mean, if you’re Almighty, I figure that you don’t have to worry about that kind of thing. But there was a threat to God’s creation and, of course, he saw that long before it actually developed.”
“But if the author of this threat had free will, it wouldn’t have been predetermined – so God couldn’t have foreseen it. Right?”
“You’ll have to ask God about that one,” Michel smiled. “I don’t know. All I know is that he saw it coming, and my training was part of the preparation.”
“I still don’t get it. If God knew everything, he would see it coming. Then, if God, your God, I should say, was almighty, no offense but he wouldn’t need you to stop it. Right?”
“You’re right. What I mean is, you’re right when you say that you don’t get it. It just doesn’t happen that way – don’t ask me why. God had decided that I was going to be the person who’d take care of this for him.”
“Kind of a hit man.”
“What?”
“You know – like a hit man for the Mafia. You’re telling me that God had a problem, and wanted you to fix it for him. You work for a God who doesn’t take out his own dirty laundry – he takes little boys, little boys who love music, the clouds and the stars, away from their mothers. That’s what you’re telling me.”
“Look, I’m not judging it. I’m not in the position to judge God.” Michel paused. “And neither are you.”
Silence. “You’re right, I suppose,” Evelyn admitted. “And I didn’t mean to attack your religious beliefs. I think that everyone has a right to worship and believe the way they want. Everyone that is,” she looked down at her ankle chain, “until it interferes with the freedom of others. I guess maybe you could see why I wouldn’t believe in this God of yours.”
Michel sighed. “As I said, the existence of God doesn’t depend on our belief.”
“Alright. We’ve gone around in one big circle. So, before I had so rudely interrupted you. . . okay, maybe that’s not fair. Look, Michel, I’m sorry if you feel as though you were taken from your mother like that. Whether or not it’s by a God, there’s really no excuse for that. And I’d feel sorry for your mother as well. You didn’t have any sibs?
“No.”
“No one to sing to. That’s something I would miss. I never thought of a baby as someone to sing to. Maybe God is a man after all. No woman would ever do that – take her child away like that.”
“Like having an abortion.” Michel regretted the words the moment they left his mouth.
Michel smiled. “True. But let me go on. We usually select a new body, but there are times that we borrow one that’s already in use.”
“Now that sounds a lot like the plot of a bad sci-fi movie.”
“Maybe, but it’s not fiction. You know how sometimes they talk about someone being possessed?
Well, it’s something like that. That’s the alternative. The possessing spirit generally leaves the body when it’s killed. The only thing is that the spirit can’t repossess the same body. ”
“That sounds kind of arbitrary.”
“No, I think it has something to do with the activation of an immunity function. That’s the current thinking anyway. We have a bunch of R&D scientists working on that.”
“Somehow I’m not surprised,” she said dryly.
“Anyway, on with the story. When I was still young and in training, they took me away from my parents and removed me from the school.”
“Who is ‘they’?”
“It doesn’t really matter. They were acting under orders. You see, if you’re religious, you believe in something called ‘the will of God’. That’s the ultimate authority, and the ultimate reason for doing anything. Part of the purpose of life would be to discern the will of God, and to follow it.”
“Not in my book.”
“You and a lot of other people. But, anyway, they told my parents and the school officials that it was the will of God. And, of course, they let me go.”
“And this was all because you were different? Because you were some kind of child prodigy or something?”
“Not in any way that I could see. Now this is the funny thing about God – the thing that I have never figured out. One of the things, at least.”
"If I had been a human being, a regular human being, the government or someone might have come to my parents, or to the school, and said, ‘Look. This kid is really good in math. Or music. Or tiddlywinks, whatever. We want to take him aside and put him with other kids who are also good at that.’ You see what I mean? I would never have had to learn basketball, or French, or anything else – because the community had a whole bunch of other people who could do that. Besides, they probably would have pulled out anybody who was especially good at basketball or French, and they wouldn’t have had to study music or math. You know what I mean?’
Evelyn nodded.
“God doesn’t work that way – it’s like he has an entirely different set of rules. So I get pulled out, and I receive specialized military training. Martial arts.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense. I mean, if God were God, you’d figure that he would do smart things. So how smart is that?”
“I don’t know how smart it is. But I do know that he does it pretty consistently – pick people to do things that really weren’t the most likely individuals. David to fight Goliath, almost any one of the Apostles, Mohammed – take your pick. If humans had been creating a short list, none of those people would have been on it. But hey, you know, it does seem to work out in the end.”
“Did it work out in the end for you?”
“In the end, yes. For the divine will anyway.” Michel smiled. “For the divine will – definitely. For me, well, maybe that doesn’t matter so much.”
“So how did it work out?”
“It went on for a long time, especially if you measured it in the way that humans measure time. Martial arts on a spiritual level are different from martial arts on a human level – but the underlying ideas, the essence, is still the same. Discipline, self-deprivation, self-sacrifice, respect for authority. . .”
“Doesn’t sound like an easy program for a little boy. Especially a little boy who loves to hear his mother sing around the house.”
Michel paused. “Or who loves to look at the clouds and the stars. No, there was no more of that, and no more singing around a house, as you put it. It was all about the drill. Each day had its structure, and we never deviated from it.”
“So they wanted you to become a little soldier. But why? I mean, God is supposed to be so powerful, right? Why would a God need a little boy, a little mathematical prodigy, to become a soldier?”
Michel smiled. “Well, you do have to realize that the Almighty doesn’t always confide in me.”
Evelyn whistled through her teeth. “Well, at least that’s one piece of disbelief that I won’t have to suspend, eh?”
“But, the way it turned out, there was a real danger, a real threat. I don’t know if that threat was powerful enough to pose any kind of real danger to God himself – I mean, if you’re Almighty, I figure that you don’t have to worry about that kind of thing. But there was a threat to God’s creation and, of course, he saw that long before it actually developed.”
“But if the author of this threat had free will, it wouldn’t have been predetermined – so God couldn’t have foreseen it. Right?”
“You’ll have to ask God about that one,” Michel smiled. “I don’t know. All I know is that he saw it coming, and my training was part of the preparation.”
“I still don’t get it. If God knew everything, he would see it coming. Then, if God, your God, I should say, was almighty, no offense but he wouldn’t need you to stop it. Right?”
“You’re right. What I mean is, you’re right when you say that you don’t get it. It just doesn’t happen that way – don’t ask me why. God had decided that I was going to be the person who’d take care of this for him.”
“Kind of a hit man.”
“What?”
“You know – like a hit man for the Mafia. You’re telling me that God had a problem, and wanted you to fix it for him. You work for a God who doesn’t take out his own dirty laundry – he takes little boys, little boys who love music, the clouds and the stars, away from their mothers. That’s what you’re telling me.”
“Look, I’m not judging it. I’m not in the position to judge God.” Michel paused. “And neither are you.”
Silence. “You’re right, I suppose,” Evelyn admitted. “And I didn’t mean to attack your religious beliefs. I think that everyone has a right to worship and believe the way they want. Everyone that is,” she looked down at her ankle chain, “until it interferes with the freedom of others. I guess maybe you could see why I wouldn’t believe in this God of yours.”
Michel sighed. “As I said, the existence of God doesn’t depend on our belief.”
“Alright. We’ve gone around in one big circle. So, before I had so rudely interrupted you. . . okay, maybe that’s not fair. Look, Michel, I’m sorry if you feel as though you were taken from your mother like that. Whether or not it’s by a God, there’s really no excuse for that. And I’d feel sorry for your mother as well. You didn’t have any sibs?
“No.”
“No one to sing to. That’s something I would miss. I never thought of a baby as someone to sing to. Maybe God is a man after all. No woman would ever do that – take her child away like that.”
“Like having an abortion.” Michel regretted the words the moment they left his mouth.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
The Scent of the Blueberry -- 14
It’s not all that personal a question. Are you religious? Do you believe in God?”
“I used to,” she said sadly. “I really used to. I was raised that way.”
“Why did you stop? Stop believing in God?”
Silence. “Because God stopped believing in me.” Evelyn paused for a moment. “You’re not one of those born again people are you? Someone who’s going to give me a big conversion speech? Because if you are, I think you’re going to have to keep me in chains for a long time.”
“No, I was just trying to explain things. You see, none of this stuff depends on our individual beliefs to exist. What I mean is, God is going to exist or not exist because he does or doesn’t – not because we believe or don’t believe in that existence.”
“No offense, but I think I’m sorry I asked.”
“But that’s the issue, don’t you see? I can’t give you the answers you’re looking for because you won’t believe me.” He paused. “What do you say that we try an experiment?”
“What kind of experiment?”
“You ask, I answer, and you suspend your disbelief – at least for enough time for you to see the whole picture. It’d be like when you go the movies – or read a book. You don’t say, “That guy could never have survived that fall from the building." You just kind of go along with it without being critical – just to see where it takes you. You can always withdraw your belief later – you haven’t committed yourself to anything. What do you say?”
“Sounds a little crazy,” Evelyn said. Still, what did she have to lose? “Okay. What is this all about?”
“First I have to tell you who I am – where I came from. Nothing else makes sense if you don’t understand that.”
“There’s two parts – body and spirit. The spirit came first.” Evelyn winced.
“Remember, suspension of disbelief,” he said.
“Okay.”
“The spirit had its own birth – really before time began. My first memories are of the sky – the movement of our clouds and our stars. They weren’t really clouds or sun, of course. Everything that I’m going to tell you in this part of the story is metaphor. It’s not true, but it isn’t false, either – only translated into terms that we can use words to discuss. Do you understand?”
“Please don’t talk to me like I’m the village idiot. Okay, sorry – yes, I took high school English lit. I know what a metaphor is.”
“Okay. Like I said, the clouds and the stars – and the patterns that they formed. And then I heard music for the first time – my mother would sing as she walked through the day, and her voice was soft and true and divided the silence. And I learned chess, and intuited calculus, and understood the common language that they spoke. I’d lie on my back by the hour, composing music in my head that matched the rotation of the stars. I didn’t speak a word until I went to school – everyone thought that I was defective somehow, but why would you feel the need to speak when the heavens sang in your head every hour and every moment of the day?”
“You were different – did people make fun of you?”
“No – or at least, if they did, I wasn’t aware of it. Everyone pretty much left me alone. It was the happiest time of my life.”
“Because you were alone?”
“Because I was alone with the music and mathematics of creation. I felt the music and mathematics inside myself. Some people – a few rare people – see music in colors. I saw music in shapes, mathematical shapes, and heard music when I played chess. Mathematical formulas – they were simply the words, the language of the shapes, the music – and they ran through my head like water droplets flow down a river.”
“How old were you?”
Michel paused. “It’s difficult to speak of age in a metaphorical sense. I was in training, so I still would have been in the equivalent of an early part of school.”
Evelyn frowned. “And all of this took place before you had a body? When you were only a spirit?”
“You have to understand that the body is an arbitrary factor. You were probably surprised when I wasn’t more emotionally upset at Allen’s death.”
She nodded.
“Allen’s death only affected his body. It was a setback, because now his spirit has to find a new body, so he’s temporarily unavailable for this mission. But it is temporary – he will find a suitable body – either an old one or a new one – and he will continue his existence as the same spirit.”
“What do you mean when you say ‘either an old one or a new one.’”
“Well, usually the spirit will select a new one. We have a certain number of new bodies that are available to us. They’re kind of like blanks – we have to fill them in. For example, when I assumed this body it didn’t have muscles that were well-defined or highly-developed, and it didn’t have any particular knowledge of security procedures. I had to develop those capabilities – I had to learn and train – the same as anyone else.”
“Wait a minute – suspension of disbelief is one thing, but I think you were born like everyone else. I mean, I don’t know what kind of relationship you had with your parents, but they had sex, and then they had you.”
Michel stopped and said, “Wait a minute. Look at this.” He raised the front of his shirt. “What do you see?
She shrugged. “A belly button. A navel – just like everyone else.”
“Look closer. Ignore the scar tissue.”
She did. Michel’s navel was perfect – a perfectly round hole in his abdomen. But Evelyn knew that navels are not perfectly round or symmetrical like this one was. She had to admit that she hadn’t thought about it much but, like snowflakes, she realized that each navel would have to be individual – different from other navels. At the very least, they tended to be slightly elliptical – at the very least, not perfectly round. And this one was.
“I don’t get it.”
“My navel. It’s the result of a surgical procedure.”
Well, they’re all the result of surgical procedures. I mean, I’m not going to go into all the details, but there’s the placenta and the umbilical cord that gets cut and tied off and, presto chango, instant navel. Right?”
“Wrong. This one is entirely cosmetic – surgically added after the selection of the body. My body is. . . a convenience.”
“I used to,” she said sadly. “I really used to. I was raised that way.”
“Why did you stop? Stop believing in God?”
Silence. “Because God stopped believing in me.” Evelyn paused for a moment. “You’re not one of those born again people are you? Someone who’s going to give me a big conversion speech? Because if you are, I think you’re going to have to keep me in chains for a long time.”
“No, I was just trying to explain things. You see, none of this stuff depends on our individual beliefs to exist. What I mean is, God is going to exist or not exist because he does or doesn’t – not because we believe or don’t believe in that existence.”
“No offense, but I think I’m sorry I asked.”
“But that’s the issue, don’t you see? I can’t give you the answers you’re looking for because you won’t believe me.” He paused. “What do you say that we try an experiment?”
“What kind of experiment?”
“You ask, I answer, and you suspend your disbelief – at least for enough time for you to see the whole picture. It’d be like when you go the movies – or read a book. You don’t say, “That guy could never have survived that fall from the building." You just kind of go along with it without being critical – just to see where it takes you. You can always withdraw your belief later – you haven’t committed yourself to anything. What do you say?”
“Sounds a little crazy,” Evelyn said. Still, what did she have to lose? “Okay. What is this all about?”
“First I have to tell you who I am – where I came from. Nothing else makes sense if you don’t understand that.”
“There’s two parts – body and spirit. The spirit came first.” Evelyn winced.
“Remember, suspension of disbelief,” he said.
“Okay.”
“The spirit had its own birth – really before time began. My first memories are of the sky – the movement of our clouds and our stars. They weren’t really clouds or sun, of course. Everything that I’m going to tell you in this part of the story is metaphor. It’s not true, but it isn’t false, either – only translated into terms that we can use words to discuss. Do you understand?”
“Please don’t talk to me like I’m the village idiot. Okay, sorry – yes, I took high school English lit. I know what a metaphor is.”
“Okay. Like I said, the clouds and the stars – and the patterns that they formed. And then I heard music for the first time – my mother would sing as she walked through the day, and her voice was soft and true and divided the silence. And I learned chess, and intuited calculus, and understood the common language that they spoke. I’d lie on my back by the hour, composing music in my head that matched the rotation of the stars. I didn’t speak a word until I went to school – everyone thought that I was defective somehow, but why would you feel the need to speak when the heavens sang in your head every hour and every moment of the day?”
“You were different – did people make fun of you?”
“No – or at least, if they did, I wasn’t aware of it. Everyone pretty much left me alone. It was the happiest time of my life.”
“Because you were alone?”
“Because I was alone with the music and mathematics of creation. I felt the music and mathematics inside myself. Some people – a few rare people – see music in colors. I saw music in shapes, mathematical shapes, and heard music when I played chess. Mathematical formulas – they were simply the words, the language of the shapes, the music – and they ran through my head like water droplets flow down a river.”
“How old were you?”
Michel paused. “It’s difficult to speak of age in a metaphorical sense. I was in training, so I still would have been in the equivalent of an early part of school.”
Evelyn frowned. “And all of this took place before you had a body? When you were only a spirit?”
“You have to understand that the body is an arbitrary factor. You were probably surprised when I wasn’t more emotionally upset at Allen’s death.”
She nodded.
“Allen’s death only affected his body. It was a setback, because now his spirit has to find a new body, so he’s temporarily unavailable for this mission. But it is temporary – he will find a suitable body – either an old one or a new one – and he will continue his existence as the same spirit.”
“What do you mean when you say ‘either an old one or a new one.’”
“Well, usually the spirit will select a new one. We have a certain number of new bodies that are available to us. They’re kind of like blanks – we have to fill them in. For example, when I assumed this body it didn’t have muscles that were well-defined or highly-developed, and it didn’t have any particular knowledge of security procedures. I had to develop those capabilities – I had to learn and train – the same as anyone else.”
“Wait a minute – suspension of disbelief is one thing, but I think you were born like everyone else. I mean, I don’t know what kind of relationship you had with your parents, but they had sex, and then they had you.”
Michel stopped and said, “Wait a minute. Look at this.” He raised the front of his shirt. “What do you see?
She shrugged. “A belly button. A navel – just like everyone else.”
“Look closer. Ignore the scar tissue.”
She did. Michel’s navel was perfect – a perfectly round hole in his abdomen. But Evelyn knew that navels are not perfectly round or symmetrical like this one was. She had to admit that she hadn’t thought about it much but, like snowflakes, she realized that each navel would have to be individual – different from other navels. At the very least, they tended to be slightly elliptical – at the very least, not perfectly round. And this one was.
“I don’t get it.”
“My navel. It’s the result of a surgical procedure.”
Well, they’re all the result of surgical procedures. I mean, I’m not going to go into all the details, but there’s the placenta and the umbilical cord that gets cut and tied off and, presto chango, instant navel. Right?”
“Wrong. This one is entirely cosmetic – surgically added after the selection of the body. My body is. . . a convenience.”
Sunday, August 30, 2009
The Scent of the Blueberry -- 13
The weak Winter sun tried its hardest to stream though the passenger window as Evelyn struggled back from the scent. She tried to reach the throbbing part of her head but, when she lifted her right hand to touch the spot, her left hand came with it. Opening her eyes, she saw that she was sitting in the passenger seat of the Corolla – metal cuffs on her wrists connected by a 6-inch chain which was itself connected to an 18-inch chain that fastened her ankles. The seat belt and shoulder harness completed the restraint. “Oh,” she moaned.
“Sorry about the restraints,” Michel said from the driver’s seat. You obviously didn’t believe the explanation that I gave you back at the apartment. It was all true – I swear that it’s all true – but I couldn’t take the chance that you might do something. . . do something stupid while I’m driving. You understand, don’t you?”
“I understand that my head hurts like hell.” She was back to full croak mode.
Michel smiled. “You can’t blame me for that one. That was entirely your doing, slipping and falling on the ice like that.” Evelyn closed her eyes. “Maybe I wouldn’t have believed me either,” he admitted. “I guess I can’t blame you for trying to run away – so we’re back to the manacles for now.”
“For how long?”
“We’ll see. I think that the ones on your wrists can come off when we stop. The ones on your ankles may have to stay for a while. It’s just that you can’t seem to trust me, and I can’t seem to trust you to trust me.”
“My head hurts. Don’t make everything so complicated.”
Right, he thought. I wish this whole situation were as simple as it was supposed to be.
“Where are we, Michel?’
“You’ve been out cold for about an hour. We’re out of the city.” Evelyn really looked out her window for the first time – bare trees, with mountains in the background. She looked around – not a lot of other cars.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see. I hope you feel up for a hike – we can’t drive all the way.”
The drive passed quickly. Evelyn seemed to perk up a bit as time went on – her head probably felt better, and the immediate cognitive effects of the blueberry scent were wearing off. And she didn’t make any further attempts to escape. For his part, Michel took care to obey the speed limit. He did not want to risk the opportunity of explaining his chained companion to a state trooper.
Finally she said, “Michel, do you have any money?”
“Why?”
“Well, I didn’t have the chance to get to the ATM yesterday. You can’t usually get very far without money.”
Michel looked at her. “That’s funny. I don’t remember seeing an ATM card in your apartment.”
“It was most certainly there. If I didn’t have people pawing all through my things, I might be able to find them. It wasn’t like it was there for you to see anyway.”
“Okay, point taken. Sorry. Don’t worry about money.”
They were both quiet for a few minutes. Finally Evelyn said, “So how far are we from a rest room.”
“A rest room?”
“Yes, a rest room. I have to go.”
“We’ll be stopping in a few more minutes.”
And, true to his word, they did. Michel hit the right-hand directional signal – who he was signaling to was anyone’s guess, Evelyn thought, since she hadn’t seem another car for at least 20 minutes, and headed down a dirt road for about half a mile into the woods. The road dead-ended in a meadow.
Michel turned to at her and handed her roll of toilet paper. “You have your choice of about 50 million trees to kill.”
“Thanks a lot.” She unbuckled the seat belt, opened the door and shuffled to the nearest tree.
When she had finished, she shuffled back to the car. “I suspect that there isn’t anyone around for at least what? Maybe 30 miles?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe,” she echoed. “Makes a girl feel pretty safe, you know? Makes her feel that she might not need so much protection – at least, not from a guy who tells her how he isn’t going to hurt her, then knocks her out twice, ties her to a bed, then throws her in a car, shackled hand and foot, and drives her off into the woods. I mean, with that kind of protection, a girl gets to thinking that maybe she’d be safer,” she turned to him, “in a tank full of pirhana.”
“Yeah, okay. I know, I know. But aren’t you leaving out one important detail?”
“And that would be?”
“Allen.”
Evelyn shuddered. “Yes, Allen. But who is Allen? Or, at least, what is Allen’s connection to me? This enemy of yours – of yours, not mine – uses me as a pretext to find Allen’s address in your pocket – then goes to kill him. I mean, I am sorry about your friend, Michel but, even if all of this is true, exactly how does any of this affect me? Seems to me that the only way I’m in danger is if this enemy of yours finds me next to you.” Evelyn lifted her hands to rattle the chains demonstrably. “And if he finds me like this, I really will be up shit creek without a paddle.”
Michel took a deep breath. “Evelyn, do you really suppose that it was a coincidence that we met in the bar that night, or that I moved into an apartment upstairs from yours, or even that we modeled together that night?
“No,” she said (croaked) evenly. “I don’t think that it was a coincidence at all. You’ve been stalking me.”
Michel shook his head. “We can’t stay here all day and hash this out. I’ll try to explain it to you on the way.”
Evelyn looked around. “On the way where? This is a dead-end.”
“From here we walk.”
Evelyn objected that the hike would be easier without the shackles. Michel reasoned that there was little that she could do to hurt him, but that she might waste valuable time by trying to run away again. So he removed everything but the ankle restraints – deciding that they would enable her to hike, but not to run. Of course, she objected – saying that, if she were truly in danger, she might find herself in the position where she might have to run from the “bad guys” ( a term you used with more than a slight trace of sarcasm), but Michel knew better.
“So you know all about me.” Evelyn had been walking in front of Michel for about 10 minutes.
“No. Not all about you.”
“Have you been following me?”
“No.”
“Did you read the letters from my sister, Karen? The ones that were in the drawer?”
“Yes,” he admitted. He had read them before she had, of course, but didn’t see the need to offer that tidbit of information.
“And you know what I told you in the bar.”
“Yes.” So where was this going?
“So you know all this stuff about me. Not very attractive, is it? So I’m in danger. I need to be protected. I didn’t hire you – you’re not a cop. I don’t think you’re my guardian angel. So why would you care?”
“It’s my job.”
“Come again?” she said quickly.
“It’s my job.”
“Explain.”
Michel didn’t say anything.
“Explain. In what way am I your job? Are you saying that someone hired you to do this to me? That all of this is about somebody paying you money to do this to me?”
“No,” he sighed. “It isn’t like that at all.
“It isn’t like that at all,” she echoed. “Well, then. Exactly what is it like?” You heard me – what is it like?” Silence. “Dammit, mister, you owe me some answers!”
“Okay, okay. It’s just that you haven’t believed a single word that I’ve said to you so far. I can give you answers – all the answers you want – but I don’t really think that you’re going to believe them anymore than you’ve believed anything so far. So what’s the point?”
Silence. “Okay, that’s true enough. Maybe I wouldn’t believe you. Or maybe I’d believe you if you said something believable.”
Silence. “Michel?”
“What?”
“You know all this stuff about me. All this stuff. What about you? You said that this is your job – that you were hired to do this. I don’t think this has anything to do about modeling. What exactly do you do?”
“At this point, I provide security.”
“So you’re like a security guard?”
“No, it’s like security in the broad sense. A long time ago I was in the military, but there seems to be more of an opportunity to get involved with things on a case-by-case basis, as opposed to full-fledged wars.” Michel paused. “Sometimes it involves working as a bodyguard – which is pretty much what I’m doing here.”
“The protection thing.”
“Yes, the protection thing. And sometimes it involves training, or providing advice, or interfacing with other members of a given team.”
“Like Allen?”
“Like Allen.”
“Had you known Allen for a long time?”
“Oh, yes – in a sense.” Silence. “A while back, you asked me if I was religious.”
“Did I?”
“Yes, you did. I think you could say that I am. One thing that I don’t know about you – are you religious?
“What do you mean?” Evelyn asked sharply.
“Sorry about the restraints,” Michel said from the driver’s seat. You obviously didn’t believe the explanation that I gave you back at the apartment. It was all true – I swear that it’s all true – but I couldn’t take the chance that you might do something. . . do something stupid while I’m driving. You understand, don’t you?”
“I understand that my head hurts like hell.” She was back to full croak mode.
Michel smiled. “You can’t blame me for that one. That was entirely your doing, slipping and falling on the ice like that.” Evelyn closed her eyes. “Maybe I wouldn’t have believed me either,” he admitted. “I guess I can’t blame you for trying to run away – so we’re back to the manacles for now.”
“For how long?”
“We’ll see. I think that the ones on your wrists can come off when we stop. The ones on your ankles may have to stay for a while. It’s just that you can’t seem to trust me, and I can’t seem to trust you to trust me.”
“My head hurts. Don’t make everything so complicated.”
Right, he thought. I wish this whole situation were as simple as it was supposed to be.
“Where are we, Michel?’
“You’ve been out cold for about an hour. We’re out of the city.” Evelyn really looked out her window for the first time – bare trees, with mountains in the background. She looked around – not a lot of other cars.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see. I hope you feel up for a hike – we can’t drive all the way.”
The drive passed quickly. Evelyn seemed to perk up a bit as time went on – her head probably felt better, and the immediate cognitive effects of the blueberry scent were wearing off. And she didn’t make any further attempts to escape. For his part, Michel took care to obey the speed limit. He did not want to risk the opportunity of explaining his chained companion to a state trooper.
Finally she said, “Michel, do you have any money?”
“Why?”
“Well, I didn’t have the chance to get to the ATM yesterday. You can’t usually get very far without money.”
Michel looked at her. “That’s funny. I don’t remember seeing an ATM card in your apartment.”
“It was most certainly there. If I didn’t have people pawing all through my things, I might be able to find them. It wasn’t like it was there for you to see anyway.”
“Okay, point taken. Sorry. Don’t worry about money.”
They were both quiet for a few minutes. Finally Evelyn said, “So how far are we from a rest room.”
“A rest room?”
“Yes, a rest room. I have to go.”
“We’ll be stopping in a few more minutes.”
And, true to his word, they did. Michel hit the right-hand directional signal – who he was signaling to was anyone’s guess, Evelyn thought, since she hadn’t seem another car for at least 20 minutes, and headed down a dirt road for about half a mile into the woods. The road dead-ended in a meadow.
Michel turned to at her and handed her roll of toilet paper. “You have your choice of about 50 million trees to kill.”
“Thanks a lot.” She unbuckled the seat belt, opened the door and shuffled to the nearest tree.
When she had finished, she shuffled back to the car. “I suspect that there isn’t anyone around for at least what? Maybe 30 miles?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe,” she echoed. “Makes a girl feel pretty safe, you know? Makes her feel that she might not need so much protection – at least, not from a guy who tells her how he isn’t going to hurt her, then knocks her out twice, ties her to a bed, then throws her in a car, shackled hand and foot, and drives her off into the woods. I mean, with that kind of protection, a girl gets to thinking that maybe she’d be safer,” she turned to him, “in a tank full of pirhana.”
“Yeah, okay. I know, I know. But aren’t you leaving out one important detail?”
“And that would be?”
“Allen.”
Evelyn shuddered. “Yes, Allen. But who is Allen? Or, at least, what is Allen’s connection to me? This enemy of yours – of yours, not mine – uses me as a pretext to find Allen’s address in your pocket – then goes to kill him. I mean, I am sorry about your friend, Michel but, even if all of this is true, exactly how does any of this affect me? Seems to me that the only way I’m in danger is if this enemy of yours finds me next to you.” Evelyn lifted her hands to rattle the chains demonstrably. “And if he finds me like this, I really will be up shit creek without a paddle.”
Michel took a deep breath. “Evelyn, do you really suppose that it was a coincidence that we met in the bar that night, or that I moved into an apartment upstairs from yours, or even that we modeled together that night?
“No,” she said (croaked) evenly. “I don’t think that it was a coincidence at all. You’ve been stalking me.”
Michel shook his head. “We can’t stay here all day and hash this out. I’ll try to explain it to you on the way.”
Evelyn looked around. “On the way where? This is a dead-end.”
“From here we walk.”
Evelyn objected that the hike would be easier without the shackles. Michel reasoned that there was little that she could do to hurt him, but that she might waste valuable time by trying to run away again. So he removed everything but the ankle restraints – deciding that they would enable her to hike, but not to run. Of course, she objected – saying that, if she were truly in danger, she might find herself in the position where she might have to run from the “bad guys” ( a term you used with more than a slight trace of sarcasm), but Michel knew better.
“So you know all about me.” Evelyn had been walking in front of Michel for about 10 minutes.
“No. Not all about you.”
“Have you been following me?”
“No.”
“Did you read the letters from my sister, Karen? The ones that were in the drawer?”
“Yes,” he admitted. He had read them before she had, of course, but didn’t see the need to offer that tidbit of information.
“And you know what I told you in the bar.”
“Yes.” So where was this going?
“So you know all this stuff about me. Not very attractive, is it? So I’m in danger. I need to be protected. I didn’t hire you – you’re not a cop. I don’t think you’re my guardian angel. So why would you care?”
“It’s my job.”
“Come again?” she said quickly.
“It’s my job.”
“Explain.”
Michel didn’t say anything.
“Explain. In what way am I your job? Are you saying that someone hired you to do this to me? That all of this is about somebody paying you money to do this to me?”
“No,” he sighed. “It isn’t like that at all.
“It isn’t like that at all,” she echoed. “Well, then. Exactly what is it like?” You heard me – what is it like?” Silence. “Dammit, mister, you owe me some answers!”
“Okay, okay. It’s just that you haven’t believed a single word that I’ve said to you so far. I can give you answers – all the answers you want – but I don’t really think that you’re going to believe them anymore than you’ve believed anything so far. So what’s the point?”
Silence. “Okay, that’s true enough. Maybe I wouldn’t believe you. Or maybe I’d believe you if you said something believable.”
Silence. “Michel?”
“What?”
“You know all this stuff about me. All this stuff. What about you? You said that this is your job – that you were hired to do this. I don’t think this has anything to do about modeling. What exactly do you do?”
“At this point, I provide security.”
“So you’re like a security guard?”
“No, it’s like security in the broad sense. A long time ago I was in the military, but there seems to be more of an opportunity to get involved with things on a case-by-case basis, as opposed to full-fledged wars.” Michel paused. “Sometimes it involves working as a bodyguard – which is pretty much what I’m doing here.”
“The protection thing.”
“Yes, the protection thing. And sometimes it involves training, or providing advice, or interfacing with other members of a given team.”
“Like Allen?”
“Like Allen.”
“Had you known Allen for a long time?”
“Oh, yes – in a sense.” Silence. “A while back, you asked me if I was religious.”
“Did I?”
“Yes, you did. I think you could say that I am. One thing that I don’t know about you – are you religious?
“What do you mean?” Evelyn asked sharply.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
The Scent of the Blueberry -- 12
But the sun was beginning to come through Evelyn’s window, and the glare from the reflection from the new snow promised a particularly bright day. Today was not a day for training, not a day for self-flagellation – it was show-time. But first Michel had to talk to Evelyn – and he was not looking forward to delivering the message that had been Allen’s to deliver. He would have preferred the self-flagellation.
Evelyn was awake – she turned her head toward him as he walked into the bedroom.
“Ah, I see you’re awake.” A brilliant opening gambit, Michel thought sarcastically. Might as well have said, “Nice day, huh?”
“Michel, we both know that this can’t go on.” Her voice hadn’t recovered yet, Michel noted.
“I’ve been thinking about this, Michel. I mean, I’ve had a lot of time to just lie here, and I’ve been thinking about this a lot.”
“The way I see it – and you can tell me if I’m wrong – well, I don’t know what you had planned, but I’m guessing that, whatever it was, it hasn’t happened. Or, at least, it hasn’t gone the way you had originally planned. I mean, you seem like a reasonably intelligent guy, and it just doesn’t seem too likely that you would do this to me, then just leave me chained to a bed indefinitely. There must have been more to the plan than that – something more than re-carpeting my bedroom,” she said, indicating the rug that still remained at the side of the room. “Here’s my proposition – not just think about it for a second before you answer. No one has been hurt yet, right? I mean, I have been inconvenienced a bit, I know that, you know that, but I’m willing to let bygones be bygones. You release me, just let me go, and none of this ever happened. It was all a dream – gone, kaput. Over.”
“ And, be honest with yourself, now – if any of this had to do with you having any kind of, well, feelings about me, well, we can look at that. You seem like a nice enough guy. You had me in your power, and you didn’t do anything to me – you were kind of like a gentleman. If that has anything to do with it, I’m flattered. Maybe we could get to know each other a bit. Like we did that night at “The Hole”, you know? That’s how people usually do it. I wouldn’t mind that at all. I’d actually kind of like it. But this isn’t the way to do it. You know it, I know it, and I know,” she looked him right in the eye, "I know that you know it. So what do you say?”
It was a nice speech, carefully rehearsed and eloquently presented, Michel thought. Too bad it was total bullshit. And too bad that I don’t have a correspondingly rehearsed and eloquent response. Guess I’d better cut to the chase. Allen would never have done that, but I’m not Allen.
“Evelyn, do you remember yesterday when I told you about your being in danger, and that I was going to protect you?”
Evelyn hesitated for a heartbeat, then swallowed and nodded.
“Well, I’m going to show you what I mean.” Michel walked to the rug and unfurled it. Allen’s bound and lifeless body rolled onto the floor, coming to rest face-up and staring at the ceiling. At least, it would have been staring at the ceiling if the eyeballs had remained in their sockets. The corpse was also missing the nose and both ears, while the pants and underpants had both been lowered to Allen’s bound knees with the apparent intent of facilitating the amputation of the penis and scrotum. Michel’s eyes never left Evelyn’s face.
Evelyn stuffed almost her entire hand into her open mouth and shrank to the opposite side of the bed.
Michel said, “I really didn’t want to show you this – but I had to. I had to show you to convince you that this isn’t a game – that I’m serious when I say that you need my protection. This is Allen – or was Allen, at any rate. He was the one who was supposed to take care of you from here – but they found out where he lived. Do you remember the Jerk in the bar?”
Evelyn nodded wordlessly.
“Well, after he left I noticed that I was missing a small slip of paper from my pocket. Allen’s new address was written on the paper. Now I doubt that he told them anything – Allen was trained to the point where he could resist just about any kind of short-term torture – but, if these people found us, I think that the results would probably be equally unpleasant.”
“Equally unpleasant? The guy is practically. . .” – her voice trailed off into a croak.
Michel leaned forward to close the deal. “Evelyn, I’m going to do exactly what you asked me to do. I’m going to release you. But here’s the thing – these guys can find you. The cops can’t help you on this. I’m the only one who can deal with these people. I can protect you. But you’ve got to trust me. You have to come with me and stick close. Like you say, I haven’t hurt you, and I have no intention of ever hurting you. I promise to explain more of this as we go along – we just don’t have time now – but I will tell you that I have been training for this task. I’ve taken these people on before, and I swear to you that I’ve come out on top. But I need you to trust me. I knew Allen for a very long time, and I don’t want to lose two of you like this.”
Michel studied her eyes and reminded himself to breathe. Whatever else he had said, he knew that he had no intention of releasing her unless she was willing to go with him. Refusal would have meant that Michel would have had to go to Plan B -- and there was no Plan B. He only knew that failure of a Level 5 operation, his Level 5 operation, was totally inconceivable.
Evelyn swallowed and nodded. “What do I have to do?”
“I’ll unlock the manacles. You should just take a few minutes to grab a quick breakfast and put a few clothes and some food into a backpack. It’s likely to be a little cold where we’re headed.” She nodded.
Michel produced a key. “You’ve made the right decision. Just do everything I say, and everything will be fine.”
Forty-five minutes later, Michel was still waiting impatiently while he heard the shower running in the bathroom. He sighed. He was pretty sure that Allen hadn’t talked – hadn’t revealed their location, but was also fully aware of his opponent’s resourcefulness. I mean, it’s not like we’re going to the prom, or something. Let’s go!
Ten minutes later Evelyn came out of the bathroom wearing a white bathrobe and brushing her long hair with a large bath towel. “Okay, I know that we’re in a hurry,” she said. “But I just felt so grimey. I promise not to hold us up on the road. Where did you say we’re going?”
“I didn’t,” Michel said.
“No, I guess you didn’t. Please turn around so I can get dressed.”
But Michel had no reason to trust her yet. “I don’t have to turn around. I saw you for 3 hours that night with your clothes off.”
Evelyn looked surprised. “That was different. Don’t you understand how that was different?” She paused. “Oh well, I suppose it’s better if you don’t understand. How do I explain all of this to my boss at the department store?”
“If we don’t get out of here soon, you won’t have to explain it to them. They’ll see you on the evening news – and you’ll look a lot like Allen.”
Evelyn shuddered. “But what about Allen? What do we do with him?”
“He’ll be okay here for the time being. We really don’t have too much choice – anything that we did with the body right now would slow us down too much. Besides, it’s only his body – his spirit is elsewhere.”
“Hmm, are you religious?”
“You might say so.”
There was something too calm about Evelyn, Michel thought. Like she didn’t really believe that she was in danger, or that Allen’s body was a real body, or that any of this was real. It reminded Michel of certain adventure shows he had seen when he was a kid – when the hero or heroine had been captured by the bad guys but, even though they were in mortal danger, they still were capable of witty repartee with the head bad guy. Either they had ice water in their veins, Michel had thought, or they had already seen the script – and known that it all turned out right in the end. Well, he thought that Evelyn was a perfectly regular human female being – with blood, rather than ice water, in her veins – and was reasonably certain that she hadn’t read the script – since there was no script. One possible explanation was that she had not really bought Michel’s story and would attempt to escape at the first reasonable opportunity. Or it was possible that she was clinically depressed – that the aftermath of the abortion had left her unable to feel or, at any rate, express her feelings in a normal way?
Michel would never have the opportunity to discover whether depression was part of the explanation, but the deception was definitely a factor. Evelyn made her escape attempt when she first set foot outside the door, racing off down the sidewalk and yelling “Help!” as loudly as possible. Michel’s eyes flashed with anger – the stupid idiot might as well send an engraved invitation to his Adversary – but was relieved when she almost immediately slipped on the ice and fell on the sidewalk – cracking her head on the side of a trash receptacle. Momentarily dazed, she didn’t resist as Michel picked her off the sidewalk and carried her off to the car that he had rented for the occasion. As she revived, she wondered sleepily why a new car smell should so closely resemble the scent of blueberries – and fell back into unconsciousness.
Evelyn was awake – she turned her head toward him as he walked into the bedroom.
“Ah, I see you’re awake.” A brilliant opening gambit, Michel thought sarcastically. Might as well have said, “Nice day, huh?”
“Michel, we both know that this can’t go on.” Her voice hadn’t recovered yet, Michel noted.
“I’ve been thinking about this, Michel. I mean, I’ve had a lot of time to just lie here, and I’ve been thinking about this a lot.”
“The way I see it – and you can tell me if I’m wrong – well, I don’t know what you had planned, but I’m guessing that, whatever it was, it hasn’t happened. Or, at least, it hasn’t gone the way you had originally planned. I mean, you seem like a reasonably intelligent guy, and it just doesn’t seem too likely that you would do this to me, then just leave me chained to a bed indefinitely. There must have been more to the plan than that – something more than re-carpeting my bedroom,” she said, indicating the rug that still remained at the side of the room. “Here’s my proposition – not just think about it for a second before you answer. No one has been hurt yet, right? I mean, I have been inconvenienced a bit, I know that, you know that, but I’m willing to let bygones be bygones. You release me, just let me go, and none of this ever happened. It was all a dream – gone, kaput. Over.”
“ And, be honest with yourself, now – if any of this had to do with you having any kind of, well, feelings about me, well, we can look at that. You seem like a nice enough guy. You had me in your power, and you didn’t do anything to me – you were kind of like a gentleman. If that has anything to do with it, I’m flattered. Maybe we could get to know each other a bit. Like we did that night at “The Hole”, you know? That’s how people usually do it. I wouldn’t mind that at all. I’d actually kind of like it. But this isn’t the way to do it. You know it, I know it, and I know,” she looked him right in the eye, "I know that you know it. So what do you say?”
It was a nice speech, carefully rehearsed and eloquently presented, Michel thought. Too bad it was total bullshit. And too bad that I don’t have a correspondingly rehearsed and eloquent response. Guess I’d better cut to the chase. Allen would never have done that, but I’m not Allen.
“Evelyn, do you remember yesterday when I told you about your being in danger, and that I was going to protect you?”
Evelyn hesitated for a heartbeat, then swallowed and nodded.
“Well, I’m going to show you what I mean.” Michel walked to the rug and unfurled it. Allen’s bound and lifeless body rolled onto the floor, coming to rest face-up and staring at the ceiling. At least, it would have been staring at the ceiling if the eyeballs had remained in their sockets. The corpse was also missing the nose and both ears, while the pants and underpants had both been lowered to Allen’s bound knees with the apparent intent of facilitating the amputation of the penis and scrotum. Michel’s eyes never left Evelyn’s face.
Evelyn stuffed almost her entire hand into her open mouth and shrank to the opposite side of the bed.
Michel said, “I really didn’t want to show you this – but I had to. I had to show you to convince you that this isn’t a game – that I’m serious when I say that you need my protection. This is Allen – or was Allen, at any rate. He was the one who was supposed to take care of you from here – but they found out where he lived. Do you remember the Jerk in the bar?”
Evelyn nodded wordlessly.
“Well, after he left I noticed that I was missing a small slip of paper from my pocket. Allen’s new address was written on the paper. Now I doubt that he told them anything – Allen was trained to the point where he could resist just about any kind of short-term torture – but, if these people found us, I think that the results would probably be equally unpleasant.”
“Equally unpleasant? The guy is practically. . .” – her voice trailed off into a croak.
Michel leaned forward to close the deal. “Evelyn, I’m going to do exactly what you asked me to do. I’m going to release you. But here’s the thing – these guys can find you. The cops can’t help you on this. I’m the only one who can deal with these people. I can protect you. But you’ve got to trust me. You have to come with me and stick close. Like you say, I haven’t hurt you, and I have no intention of ever hurting you. I promise to explain more of this as we go along – we just don’t have time now – but I will tell you that I have been training for this task. I’ve taken these people on before, and I swear to you that I’ve come out on top. But I need you to trust me. I knew Allen for a very long time, and I don’t want to lose two of you like this.”
Michel studied her eyes and reminded himself to breathe. Whatever else he had said, he knew that he had no intention of releasing her unless she was willing to go with him. Refusal would have meant that Michel would have had to go to Plan B -- and there was no Plan B. He only knew that failure of a Level 5 operation, his Level 5 operation, was totally inconceivable.
Evelyn swallowed and nodded. “What do I have to do?”
“I’ll unlock the manacles. You should just take a few minutes to grab a quick breakfast and put a few clothes and some food into a backpack. It’s likely to be a little cold where we’re headed.” She nodded.
Michel produced a key. “You’ve made the right decision. Just do everything I say, and everything will be fine.”
Forty-five minutes later, Michel was still waiting impatiently while he heard the shower running in the bathroom. He sighed. He was pretty sure that Allen hadn’t talked – hadn’t revealed their location, but was also fully aware of his opponent’s resourcefulness. I mean, it’s not like we’re going to the prom, or something. Let’s go!
Ten minutes later Evelyn came out of the bathroom wearing a white bathrobe and brushing her long hair with a large bath towel. “Okay, I know that we’re in a hurry,” she said. “But I just felt so grimey. I promise not to hold us up on the road. Where did you say we’re going?”
“I didn’t,” Michel said.
“No, I guess you didn’t. Please turn around so I can get dressed.”
But Michel had no reason to trust her yet. “I don’t have to turn around. I saw you for 3 hours that night with your clothes off.”
Evelyn looked surprised. “That was different. Don’t you understand how that was different?” She paused. “Oh well, I suppose it’s better if you don’t understand. How do I explain all of this to my boss at the department store?”
“If we don’t get out of here soon, you won’t have to explain it to them. They’ll see you on the evening news – and you’ll look a lot like Allen.”
Evelyn shuddered. “But what about Allen? What do we do with him?”
“He’ll be okay here for the time being. We really don’t have too much choice – anything that we did with the body right now would slow us down too much. Besides, it’s only his body – his spirit is elsewhere.”
“Hmm, are you religious?”
“You might say so.”
There was something too calm about Evelyn, Michel thought. Like she didn’t really believe that she was in danger, or that Allen’s body was a real body, or that any of this was real. It reminded Michel of certain adventure shows he had seen when he was a kid – when the hero or heroine had been captured by the bad guys but, even though they were in mortal danger, they still were capable of witty repartee with the head bad guy. Either they had ice water in their veins, Michel had thought, or they had already seen the script – and known that it all turned out right in the end. Well, he thought that Evelyn was a perfectly regular human female being – with blood, rather than ice water, in her veins – and was reasonably certain that she hadn’t read the script – since there was no script. One possible explanation was that she had not really bought Michel’s story and would attempt to escape at the first reasonable opportunity. Or it was possible that she was clinically depressed – that the aftermath of the abortion had left her unable to feel or, at any rate, express her feelings in a normal way?
Michel would never have the opportunity to discover whether depression was part of the explanation, but the deception was definitely a factor. Evelyn made her escape attempt when she first set foot outside the door, racing off down the sidewalk and yelling “Help!” as loudly as possible. Michel’s eyes flashed with anger – the stupid idiot might as well send an engraved invitation to his Adversary – but was relieved when she almost immediately slipped on the ice and fell on the sidewalk – cracking her head on the side of a trash receptacle. Momentarily dazed, she didn’t resist as Michel picked her off the sidewalk and carried her off to the car that he had rented for the occasion. As she revived, she wondered sleepily why a new car smell should so closely resemble the scent of blueberries – and fell back into unconsciousness.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
The Scent of the Blueberry --11
Michel knew that he would have to bring Evelyn to the predetermined meeting place by himself. This, of course, wasn’t his preference – but Allen’s absence meant that Michel would have to pull double-duty. So the next step was to stop by his own apartment to quickly pack for the trip.
Since he was carrying a corpse in a rug, Michel knew that he didn’t want to encounter any of his neighbors, so he took the stairs to his apartment. Of course he realized that, if he had bumped into anyone who lived there, they might wonder why anyone would carry a rug up the stairs when they could have taken the elevator, but Michel didn’t really expect that to happen. And, miracle of miracles, for once that evening everything went smoothly, and Michel leaned the Allen-filled rug against the wall while he fumbled for his keys. He could have picked the lock rather easily, but that would have been showing off.
Michel’s apartment was similar in size and lay-out to Evelyn’s, but it did not betray the slightest concern related to the different effects of earth colors and the cooler portion of the spectrum. No tables, no lamps, bare walls, a mattress on the floor of the bedroom. An old mattress. Next to the bed was a chess set – standard Staunton design – a dog-eared copy of “The Art of War,” and a single manila file folder (containing photocopies of Karen’s recent letters to Evelyn. Michel’s security-related abilities included an easy familiarity with the locks on the apartment building’s mailboxes.) A few clothes were piled on the floor. The only grace notes were a bulging bookcase in the living room – prominently featuring works on physical fitness, nutrition and military history – and a 110 pound set of barbells in the far corner. The bathroom featured a single copy of the King James version of the Bible, as well as Michel’s laptop computer – primarily used to view the video from the secret camcorder that he had installed in Evelyn’s apartment in September.
At this point, all of this stuff seemed totally irrelevant. If the trip went well, Michel knew that there would be plenty of time to come back and tie up the loose ends. If it did not go well, none of the loose ends would matter. To tell the truth, Michel thought wryly, not much else would matter, either. So he stuffed some clothing into the backpack along with some trail mix, filled his old Army canteen with water, threw the “Allen rug” back over his shoulder, and wondered whether a man carrying a rug with a corpse and a backpack on the stairway would seem any more suspicious than a man merely carrying a rug with a corpse. At some point, maybe he could pose that question in a discussion group but, in the meantime, Michel adjusted the positioning of the rug on his shoulder and descended the stairway to Evelyn’s apartment.
Evelyn, surprisingly enough, was asleep. Sound asleep. This gave her a new respect in Michel’s eyes – he suspected that most women, drugged, manacled and left alone by their captors, would be far too hysterical to do anything as logical as renewing the stamina to deal with whatever lay ahead. Waking her was out of the question, he thought – the sleep was absolutely necessary for her to deal with the journey and, even though he had trained his own body to accept the strains of challenges that he faced, he had to admit that lugging Allen around the city, not to mention up and down the stairs, had left him just a little tired as well. A few hours of sleep wouldn’t hurt – particularly since the Adversary seemed to have no idea where they were, and Michel felt that they would blend into the city’s population more easily in the daylight, anyway. So he left the carpet on the floor in Evelyn’s bedroom, stretched out on the sofa in the living room, and fell into a deep sleep.
1,943. . . 1,944. . . that was the wonderful thing about push-ups, he thought. Such a simple exercise, such a remarkably simple exercise, but so easy to modify to escape the boredom and multiply the positive effects. Move the hands slightly out or slightly in – and you attack the muscle groups from a totally different angle. Fingertip push-ups, thumb push-ups – shifting easily from one variation to the next like a guitarist changing chords. 1, 950. Time for crunches.
The hours before dawn – he dreaded the expectation. His living room window faced the southeast—every day he finished the morning exercises at 5 minutes before dawn. Then he would sit on the floor in front of the window—holding the stick in his hand. The stick was shaped like a wooden billy-club with five 18- inch lengths of chain attached to the far end. Each link of each chain had a different type of barbed wire attached. Michel had made the stick himself – researching and replicating the different types of barbed wire used by the ranchers in the American West to mark the borders of their land. Every day the sun would rise, and every day Michel would raise his arm. 6. . . 7. . .8. Left hand, right hand. The back, the front, the legs. The had been a time when Michel – or more precisely, Michel’s spirit – would have found the practice barbaric, would have screamed and cried and well, it didn’t matter at this point. At this point, Michel only knew that it was necessary. A minor inconvenience, a mosquito bite, compared to what he might be called on to endure in the real world without flinching.
As he did every day, Michel thought of Bud Grant. Bud Grant had been the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings in the National Football League. In the days before domed stadiums, football games in Minnesota played in December or January could be extraordinarily cold – dangerously cold. The players could not, of course, wear mittens or overcoats – they would have to play in the middle of an open field that provided no protection against a wind-chill that would frequently fall well below zero degrees Fahrenheit. None of the visiting teams looked forward to playing in Minnesota and, to tell the truth, the hometown heroes weren’t thrilled about it, either.
To try to combat the effects of the cold, the teams would built makeshift shelters, almost like tents, on the sidelines, and have hot air blown into them. That was, at least, the players could keep warm – relatively warm, anyway – while they sat on the bench. After all, when they were on the field at least they were moving around and were directly involved in the game – on the bench, it was a different story.
All the teams, that is, except the Vikings. Bud Grant would have none of it. Grant reasoned that a player who had been toasty warm on the bench would not be prepared and would not perform as well when he ran on to a field that featured a minus 20 degree wind-chill factor. On the contrary, at least some of the players would want to get back off the field as quickly as possible – back to the relative warmth and comfort of their heated bench. Grant had decided that that was no way to win football games – so his players would freeze on the sidelines, while their opponents encountered far fewer cases of frostbite.
Of course, maybe it was because he had superior talent but, in those days, Grant’s Viking teams won a lot of football games. And Bud Grant, as the coach, stayed on the sidelines with his players for the entire game – freezing his ass off, leading his troops, without ever changing expression.
Michel knew that he might not always have a superior team – not like that day so long ago. He knew that preparation was key and, if a little pain was involved well, so be it.
But Michel wasn’t in his apartment anymore – or even on a frozen football field in Minnesota. He was posing with Evelyn, morphing into the long, incredibly difficult poses that were part of his discipline.
Michel wasn’t too worried that Evelyn would notice, let alone question, the scars associated with the creation of his navel. There were too many scars all over his body, he knew, for any particular mark to draw a lot of attention. He was concerned that she was close enough to see them at close range – far closer than anyone had ever been to his naked body before. Michel realized that they appeared to be more prominent under close examination. He fully realized that the condition of his skin was probably the subject of a certain amount of idle gossip among the artists – that was to be expected, and Michel did not believe that this posed a threat to his privacy. But close examination might be more revealing to a trained eye, and Michel’s limited surveillance opportunities had furnished no clues as to whether Evelyn would react to his condition.
The other issue was that, other than the night they posed together, Michel had never been this close to an unclothed woman before. He did not have, nor did he fear, any kind of involuntary physical reaction to this situation. He knew that his training would protect him against that temptation. At the same time, he did have a deep, not to mention surprising, feeling of . . . what? Pity? – well, not exactly. It was born from an understanding of a kind of history – a history of the pain that was associated with this particular female. The sexual and emotional pleasure that had been so surprisingly transformed into her pain – multivaried: physical, emotional, spiritual, psychological. A systemic reaction that Michel channeled in a very personal, visceral way – even more visceral than his own daily floggings. He didn't know an English word for this feeling -- although there was a word from an ancient language in another galaxy that came close to describing it. He felt a strong and immediate urge to hold her, to tell her that he would take her pain and simply add it to his own burden. Then he would lie to her, and tell her that everything would be alright.
And that was the real temptation, he thought.
Since he was carrying a corpse in a rug, Michel knew that he didn’t want to encounter any of his neighbors, so he took the stairs to his apartment. Of course he realized that, if he had bumped into anyone who lived there, they might wonder why anyone would carry a rug up the stairs when they could have taken the elevator, but Michel didn’t really expect that to happen. And, miracle of miracles, for once that evening everything went smoothly, and Michel leaned the Allen-filled rug against the wall while he fumbled for his keys. He could have picked the lock rather easily, but that would have been showing off.
Michel’s apartment was similar in size and lay-out to Evelyn’s, but it did not betray the slightest concern related to the different effects of earth colors and the cooler portion of the spectrum. No tables, no lamps, bare walls, a mattress on the floor of the bedroom. An old mattress. Next to the bed was a chess set – standard Staunton design – a dog-eared copy of “The Art of War,” and a single manila file folder (containing photocopies of Karen’s recent letters to Evelyn. Michel’s security-related abilities included an easy familiarity with the locks on the apartment building’s mailboxes.) A few clothes were piled on the floor. The only grace notes were a bulging bookcase in the living room – prominently featuring works on physical fitness, nutrition and military history – and a 110 pound set of barbells in the far corner. The bathroom featured a single copy of the King James version of the Bible, as well as Michel’s laptop computer – primarily used to view the video from the secret camcorder that he had installed in Evelyn’s apartment in September.
At this point, all of this stuff seemed totally irrelevant. If the trip went well, Michel knew that there would be plenty of time to come back and tie up the loose ends. If it did not go well, none of the loose ends would matter. To tell the truth, Michel thought wryly, not much else would matter, either. So he stuffed some clothing into the backpack along with some trail mix, filled his old Army canteen with water, threw the “Allen rug” back over his shoulder, and wondered whether a man carrying a rug with a corpse and a backpack on the stairway would seem any more suspicious than a man merely carrying a rug with a corpse. At some point, maybe he could pose that question in a discussion group but, in the meantime, Michel adjusted the positioning of the rug on his shoulder and descended the stairway to Evelyn’s apartment.
Evelyn, surprisingly enough, was asleep. Sound asleep. This gave her a new respect in Michel’s eyes – he suspected that most women, drugged, manacled and left alone by their captors, would be far too hysterical to do anything as logical as renewing the stamina to deal with whatever lay ahead. Waking her was out of the question, he thought – the sleep was absolutely necessary for her to deal with the journey and, even though he had trained his own body to accept the strains of challenges that he faced, he had to admit that lugging Allen around the city, not to mention up and down the stairs, had left him just a little tired as well. A few hours of sleep wouldn’t hurt – particularly since the Adversary seemed to have no idea where they were, and Michel felt that they would blend into the city’s population more easily in the daylight, anyway. So he left the carpet on the floor in Evelyn’s bedroom, stretched out on the sofa in the living room, and fell into a deep sleep.
1,943. . . 1,944. . . that was the wonderful thing about push-ups, he thought. Such a simple exercise, such a remarkably simple exercise, but so easy to modify to escape the boredom and multiply the positive effects. Move the hands slightly out or slightly in – and you attack the muscle groups from a totally different angle. Fingertip push-ups, thumb push-ups – shifting easily from one variation to the next like a guitarist changing chords. 1, 950. Time for crunches.
The hours before dawn – he dreaded the expectation. His living room window faced the southeast—every day he finished the morning exercises at 5 minutes before dawn. Then he would sit on the floor in front of the window—holding the stick in his hand. The stick was shaped like a wooden billy-club with five 18- inch lengths of chain attached to the far end. Each link of each chain had a different type of barbed wire attached. Michel had made the stick himself – researching and replicating the different types of barbed wire used by the ranchers in the American West to mark the borders of their land. Every day the sun would rise, and every day Michel would raise his arm. 6. . . 7. . .8. Left hand, right hand. The back, the front, the legs. The had been a time when Michel – or more precisely, Michel’s spirit – would have found the practice barbaric, would have screamed and cried and well, it didn’t matter at this point. At this point, Michel only knew that it was necessary. A minor inconvenience, a mosquito bite, compared to what he might be called on to endure in the real world without flinching.
As he did every day, Michel thought of Bud Grant. Bud Grant had been the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings in the National Football League. In the days before domed stadiums, football games in Minnesota played in December or January could be extraordinarily cold – dangerously cold. The players could not, of course, wear mittens or overcoats – they would have to play in the middle of an open field that provided no protection against a wind-chill that would frequently fall well below zero degrees Fahrenheit. None of the visiting teams looked forward to playing in Minnesota and, to tell the truth, the hometown heroes weren’t thrilled about it, either.
To try to combat the effects of the cold, the teams would built makeshift shelters, almost like tents, on the sidelines, and have hot air blown into them. That was, at least, the players could keep warm – relatively warm, anyway – while they sat on the bench. After all, when they were on the field at least they were moving around and were directly involved in the game – on the bench, it was a different story.
All the teams, that is, except the Vikings. Bud Grant would have none of it. Grant reasoned that a player who had been toasty warm on the bench would not be prepared and would not perform as well when he ran on to a field that featured a minus 20 degree wind-chill factor. On the contrary, at least some of the players would want to get back off the field as quickly as possible – back to the relative warmth and comfort of their heated bench. Grant had decided that that was no way to win football games – so his players would freeze on the sidelines, while their opponents encountered far fewer cases of frostbite.
Of course, maybe it was because he had superior talent but, in those days, Grant’s Viking teams won a lot of football games. And Bud Grant, as the coach, stayed on the sidelines with his players for the entire game – freezing his ass off, leading his troops, without ever changing expression.
Michel knew that he might not always have a superior team – not like that day so long ago. He knew that preparation was key and, if a little pain was involved well, so be it.
But Michel wasn’t in his apartment anymore – or even on a frozen football field in Minnesota. He was posing with Evelyn, morphing into the long, incredibly difficult poses that were part of his discipline.
Michel wasn’t too worried that Evelyn would notice, let alone question, the scars associated with the creation of his navel. There were too many scars all over his body, he knew, for any particular mark to draw a lot of attention. He was concerned that she was close enough to see them at close range – far closer than anyone had ever been to his naked body before. Michel realized that they appeared to be more prominent under close examination. He fully realized that the condition of his skin was probably the subject of a certain amount of idle gossip among the artists – that was to be expected, and Michel did not believe that this posed a threat to his privacy. But close examination might be more revealing to a trained eye, and Michel’s limited surveillance opportunities had furnished no clues as to whether Evelyn would react to his condition.
The other issue was that, other than the night they posed together, Michel had never been this close to an unclothed woman before. He did not have, nor did he fear, any kind of involuntary physical reaction to this situation. He knew that his training would protect him against that temptation. At the same time, he did have a deep, not to mention surprising, feeling of . . . what? Pity? – well, not exactly. It was born from an understanding of a kind of history – a history of the pain that was associated with this particular female. The sexual and emotional pleasure that had been so surprisingly transformed into her pain – multivaried: physical, emotional, spiritual, psychological. A systemic reaction that Michel channeled in a very personal, visceral way – even more visceral than his own daily floggings. He didn't know an English word for this feeling -- although there was a word from an ancient language in another galaxy that came close to describing it. He felt a strong and immediate urge to hold her, to tell her that he would take her pain and simply add it to his own burden. Then he would lie to her, and tell her that everything would be alright.
And that was the real temptation, he thought.
Friday, August 14, 2009
The Scent of the Blueberry -- 10
Michel hated this part of the assignment – truly hated it. He knew what Evelyn must think of him and that her confinement was for her own good. Women were not Michel’s specialty – sometimes he felt like he had missed the class that covered female human psychology, assuming that there was such a class. He did know that he did not enjoy causing her distress. From their conversation in the bar, Michel had concluded that Evelyn had already encountered sufficient trouble in the recent past – he had no desire to add to it. He was relieved that he would soon pass his responsibility on to Allen – that was much more of an Allen-type task anyway. Michel felt perfectly comfortable when he dealt with the enemy – he had long since observed that his real problems tended to be caused by his friends and allies. Let Allen handle the subtleties – Michel would be glad to handle any type of rear guard action.
But, speaking of Allen, why hadn’t he returned Michel’s call? That wasn’t like him. Michel fully realized the risks associated with leaving the apartment at this point, but he also fully appreciated the important of Allen’s role in this particular operation. And, of course, this was a Level 5 operation in a universe that was not designed to support Level 5 operations. And Allen knew that. So where was he?
Michel had not expected to find good news at Allen’s apartment – and he was not disappointed. The body was, of course, just that – a body. Just another corpse – Michel was used to it. How could he be so careless? How could they have been so complacent?
Of course -- the man in the bar. The original piece of scrap paper that Allen had given him with his new address. Michel had put the paper in his pocket, but hadn’t been able to find it later that night. “The jerk in the bar” hadn’t been interested in Evelyn after all -- he had been interested in Michel’s information. Michel had inadvertently led the guy to Allen.
Michel shuddered as the guilt hit him. How could he be so stupid? But, then again, how could his adversary have been so stupid? He obviously didn’t know who Evelyn was yet. She was the ultimate prize – not Michel or Allen. He had had her in his grasp – without even realizing it.
And where was King? King was Allen’s Siberian husky – “King” – kind of like “Rex”. No matter. Had Allen decided to board King is the kennel while he moved to the new apartment? King usually stayed in the bedroom in Allen’s apartments, but there was no sight of the animal. If King had not been in the kennel – if somehow his adversary had not noticed the dog in the bedroom – but the bedroom window was closed. It didn’t seem likely that Allen could have used King to escape. But Michel decided to check the kennel on the way back to the apartment. Not that he had much time for side trips – if the Adversary was around and about, it was especially important to return to the apartment.
Michel had a thought. This was definitely not his area of expertise – Allen would have known better – but it occurred to Michel that a bound body of a murdered Allen might frighten Evelyn just enough to get her to cooperate with the next phase of the operation. In any event, he certainly had no intention of leaving Allen’s body there for the police – an inquisitive medical examiner might discover that Allen’s navel, like Michel’s, was surgically created, and who could predict where that line of inquiry could go? So Michel wrapped the body in an area carpet, hoisted it onto his shoulder and walked out the door.
The trip back to Evelyn’s apartment was just long enough for Michel to revise the overall plan. Originally he was simply supposed to deliver Evelyn to Allen, leaving the explanations and travel considerations to his friend. This made sense, he thought, since his (Michel’s) specialty was security and martial tactics, while Allen was more entrepreneurial in his approach and capabilities. Allen’s death, then, was not just a personal loss for Michel – it thrust him well out of the comfort zone of his self-perceived capabilities. The idea of arranging and providing for Evelyn’s transportation was definitely not appealing – particularly under game conditions. Positive self-talk, Michel thought. Maybe he should try it.
Next stop was the kennel. The kennel owner was certainly not paranoid, given the simplicity and antiquity of his security treatment. Michel knew that he had another advantage – the dogs in the kennel would not pick up a scent from either Michel or Allen’s body – aside from visual contact, and any inadvertent noise that Michel might make, the dogs treated the intruders as though they were two stuffed animals.
No – no huskies at all – let alone King. This was a good outcome. If King wasn’t in Allen’s apartment, and wasn’t in the kennel, then maybe – just maybe – Allen had found a way to transfer his spirit to King at the moment of his death.
Michel knew only too well that the process of trans-species spirit migration was still highly experimental. The R&D department had been working on that project for, well, seemingly forever – and there had been numerous failures along the way. Still, technological progress was always necessary, especially since it was well known that the Adversary had an active development group as well. Contrary to popular opinion, the opposition’s talent pool wasn’t limited to former lawyers and politicians.
So Allen – more precisely, Allen’s spirit – might have escaped from the apartment – might still be out there. The possibility suggested that Michel should leave a trail for Allen to follow. If he had assumed the body of a dog, it would seem logical that he would possess the tracking abilities of that species. The problem was that, if Michel let a trail for Allen/King to follow, the Adversary would be able to follow it too. Michel’s knowledge of and experience in security issues had made him fully aware of that possibility and, as he made his way through the deserted, snowy streets of the city, Michel frequently doubled back and covered his tracks to ensure that he wasn’t being followed.
George couldn’t believe it – as Michel drunk? When he realized that Michel was merely trying to ensure that he wasn’t being followed, George couldn’t decide whether to laugh at the incompetence. He had come out on the short end of his dealings with Michel before, and the very idea that he could ever have been defeated by such an idiot, such a buffoon, such a moron – it was almost too much for George to bear. After killing Allen, George reasoned, it was natural to expect that Michel would have eventually shown up at Allen’s apartment. George could simply have hid in the apartment and waited – Michel was an unusually capable fighter, but George would have had the advantage of surprise. He was quite sure of his likely success but, attractive as the possibility seemed, he suspected that Michel could inadvertently lead him to the Woman. Michel – well, that was revenge, that was personal. The Woman, whoever she might be, was the real objective. Now, if there was even the slightest possibility that he might have a shot at both Michel and the Woman. . . now this would make his day. Year. Century. Millennium. Eon. The perfect tonic for his chronic boredom.
So instead of ambushing Michel in Allen’s apartment, George had simply inserted a small tracking device under the skin of the corpse. Almost insulting in its simplicity, in its obviousness, George thought. If anyone had ever tried to pull such a blatantly obvious trick on him, he would have been extremely insulted. But George was counting on the inelegant nature of the plan to help it to succeed. He had a well-deserved reputation for deviousness and complexity of planning, and he gambled that Michel would never associate the simple use of a tracking device with George. It was so easy that George almost felt guilty, but guilt was something that George generally caused in others – without ever making it on to his personal play-list.
Sometimes, though, it does seem that bad things also happen to bad people. In the midst of George’s lexical search for words to describe the vegetative state of Michel’s mind, the low battery light began to flash on George’s receiver. George’s mood changed for the worse – instantly. Traveling light, he had not packed a spare set of batteries and, while a more objective individual would have reflected on the irony of labeling a fellow creature as an imbecile literally moments before running out of batteries himself at a critical moment on the most important mission in a celestially long time – a Level 5 operation, no less -- George was totally lacking in that brand of objectivity. He barely managed to summon the self-control necessary to prevent himself from hurling the unit to the pavement. Instead, he confined his outburst to simple cursing -- and set off in search of an all-night drugstore.
Friday, August 7, 2009
The Scent of the Blueberry -- 9
Slowly, Evelyn came out of her reverie but, as she did, she began to realize that something was wrong. Her leg, yes, her right leg, seemed heavy and cold. Not like “pins and needles” – not like you feel when you’ve been lying on your arm and can’t move it anymore. She could move it – but it was somehow heavy. But she wasn’t prepared for what she saw when she opened her eyes.
There was a thick metal ring or bracelet of some sort, almost like a single handcuff, around her right ankle. She could indeed move the leg freely but, judging from the length of chain that seemed to attach it to the bed, she didn’t have more than a foot or two of slack to play with.
Mentally, she ran a quick check of herself. She was in her own bedroom – a usually safe place. And she didn’t seem to be restrained in any additional way. She was wearing the clothes she had worn earlier that evening – she had no sense of having been molested or hurt. But she was chained to her own bed. Huh?
Michel. What about Michel? He had been making the phone call, there was the tea and the smell of blueberries. Where was Michel? Was he OK? She really didn’t know much about him – with all the scars, had he been somehow involved with some people who had put her out of the way so they could do something to him? Or. . . was he the cause? Was he just another guy like the jerk – or the bastard. Did he want to rob her? Of what – a TV? She didn’t have much else. . . blueberry tea. . . or did he have some kind of weird, sick ideas in mind? She remembered the scars again, and shuddered. Who the hell was Allen, anyway?
And then she realized that her room had acquired a new piece of furniture. Over in the far corner, Evelyn squinted to see it, yes – it was definitely a portable toilet. Evelyn knew that she had accumulated a certain amount of junk, but she knew damn well that she did not own a portable toilet. Correction, she thought – she did now. And she wondered whether its presence implied an extended stay. Maybe it meant that no one was going to hurt her. But it also seemed to suggest that this whole chain of events had been planned – and Evelyn definitely didn’t like that idea at all.
In any event, Evelyn had to decide whether to play the one card that she thought she might have. Unless her captor had a hidden camcorder somewhere in the room, he (or maybe she?) didn’t know that Evelyn was awake yet. With her foot firmly attached to the bed, she wasn’t sure how she could convert that advantage in information into something more concrete. The question was: Should she call out in the hope of being heard – maybe even rescued? Or would that make the invisible captor(s) angry? And wasn’t that kind of obvious – what kind of stupid captor would go to this much trouble, and totally overlook the possibility of her screaming? But, then again, how else was she going to get any answers to her questions about her predicament? Maybe it wasn’t so bad. They hadn’t hurt her – maybe she could talk to them, assuming that no one heard her scream and rescued her. Certainly no one could blame her for trying.
So Evelyn opened her mouth and screamed – loudly. Unfortunately, the sound that came out of her mouth was not nearly as loud as she had intended. Actually, it sounded more like a croak. So that’s why they’re not worried about a rescue, she concluded. However, it did attract someone else’s attention.
Michel – yes, Michel walked though the door, carrying a tray of sandwiches and water. He didn’t seem injured, or in captivity – he seemed perfectly fine. “Are you feeling OK? Hungry?”
Evelyn censored the obvious response, “Just peachy-keen, you shithead! Get this fucking bracelet off my ankle before I get really pissed!” No, that didn’t seem like a good idea. What had that cop said on TV that time? “You have to connect with him. He sees you as an object. Get him to see you as another human being. Empathy.” (On the other hand, it could’ve been a quote from “Silence of the Lambs.”) Anyway, it sounded like a plan. Maybe she’d even recover her voice in the meantime.
Evelyn cleared her throat and croaked, “Michel. We have to talk – please have a seat. . . not there”, she said as he went to sit on the bed with her. “Over there, on the chair, please.”
“I realize that you must have a million questions, and I wanted to assure you that my intentions are totally honorable,” Michel said, as he sat on the indicated chair.
Did he actually say, “totally honorable”? But Evelyn let it pass – she had an agenda.
“Look at me – please Michel. Now I realize that you’ve met me 2 times in the past. The first time I was naked in front of a group of people and the second time I was half drunk in a bar. Now I realize that first impressions do count for a lot, but I just wanted to tell you that, well, I’m not just that.” Her voice remained steady even though still a croak. “What I mean is, I know I’m not perfect but, you see that picture on the dresser over there?” Michel glanced in the indicated direction, looked back at her, and nodded.
“Well, that’s a picture of my sister, Karen and my mother. Karen is the person who wrote the letter to me – the one I retrieved from the mailbox.” Michel nodded.
So far, so good. No outbursts, no violence. Evelyn took a deep breath and continued.
“Michel, these people love me. They don’t see me as something that people draw, or as something that absorbs alcohol. They see me as a person, a real person – just like you. And Michel, I love them. A lot. They mean everything to me. And he’s not in the picture, but there’s a dog, too. A lab, a black lab named Rex. Kind of a common name for a dog, I know, but he loves me, too.”
“And Michel, I have hopes – hopes and dreams of my own. I know that I probably didn’t sound like I had much going for me in the bar but, even though you know that things didn’t work out the first time, someday I want to meet the right guy and have a family. And a career, too – maybe not the President of the United States, but I think that I can do some good in this world. For somebody. Deep down inside, is that so different from what everyone wants? Is that so different from what you want? Michel, are we really that different?”
Michel exhaled, looked at her, and in a quite voice said, “Evelyn. You have no idea how different we are from each other.”
“Look,” he continued, as her heart sank. “I’m sure that a million things are going through your head right now. I realize that you have absolutely no reason to believe me about anything. About the only thing that I can assure you of right now is that I have no desire, and absolutely no intention, of hurting you. Not going to happen. But, you see, if I had just come to you out of the blue and told you that you were in danger, that you had to trust me, that I had to keep you out of sight for a while, you would have thought that I was totally crazy. Dangerously crazy. Right?”
Exactly what I think now, she thought.
“Probably exactly what you think now,” Michel said. “But my job is to protect you. That’s all I want to do."
“Protect me? From myself? Michel, who’s going to protect me from you?! You’ve got me chained to the bed! Do you realize how many years in prison that would buy you?” Evelyn regretted those words the moment she’s blurted them out. “Look, nobody’s been hurt, right? Just let me go, and we can write all of this off as a bad dream. Believe me, I’ve had more than my share of bad dreams lately. What’s one more?”
“Sorry, no can do. Look, I've got to go out for a while. I’ve given you a portable toilet – I’ll move it over by your bed. You have food and water on the bureau. There’s nobody else around, so you’ll have plenty of privacy. And don’t worry about your voice. As you’ve probably already figured out, it’s related to the blueberry scent – it should be back to normal in about 12 hours.”
“Michel, please. Anything that’s in the apartment. Take it – it’s yours.”
“You weren’t listening. It’s about protecting you – think of it as a kind of protective custody. Anybody who wants to hurt you is going to have to come through me.”
“You said you’re going out? ‘Through you’, but you won’t even be here. What if there’s a fire? You say you want to protect me but, if there’s a fire, I’d never get out of here alive.”
Michel paused. “That’s true, but, I hate to alarm you, but the possibility of fire is the least of your concerns. Trust me. The least of your concerns.”
“Michel, this isn’t about the abortion, is it? This isn’t about, somehow, trying to punish me for doing that, is it?” But she didn’t say that – she didn’t want to know the answer.
And then he was gone. Dammit. She hadn’t even had a chance to ask him how she was supposed to get to her job at the store in the morning. She supposed, though, that that really was the least of her concerns.
She wasn’t giving birth to a baby – the doctor was pulling it out of her. He almost had it out – but the baby had grabbed on to her and was holding on by his fingertips. He looked down and the baby looked back at her – old and bearded, with rotting teeth. He opened his mouth to scream, but only formed a soundless word with his lips as he stared at her. “Why?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
There was a thick metal ring or bracelet of some sort, almost like a single handcuff, around her right ankle. She could indeed move the leg freely but, judging from the length of chain that seemed to attach it to the bed, she didn’t have more than a foot or two of slack to play with.
Mentally, she ran a quick check of herself. She was in her own bedroom – a usually safe place. And she didn’t seem to be restrained in any additional way. She was wearing the clothes she had worn earlier that evening – she had no sense of having been molested or hurt. But she was chained to her own bed. Huh?
Michel. What about Michel? He had been making the phone call, there was the tea and the smell of blueberries. Where was Michel? Was he OK? She really didn’t know much about him – with all the scars, had he been somehow involved with some people who had put her out of the way so they could do something to him? Or. . . was he the cause? Was he just another guy like the jerk – or the bastard. Did he want to rob her? Of what – a TV? She didn’t have much else. . . blueberry tea. . . or did he have some kind of weird, sick ideas in mind? She remembered the scars again, and shuddered. Who the hell was Allen, anyway?
And then she realized that her room had acquired a new piece of furniture. Over in the far corner, Evelyn squinted to see it, yes – it was definitely a portable toilet. Evelyn knew that she had accumulated a certain amount of junk, but she knew damn well that she did not own a portable toilet. Correction, she thought – she did now. And she wondered whether its presence implied an extended stay. Maybe it meant that no one was going to hurt her. But it also seemed to suggest that this whole chain of events had been planned – and Evelyn definitely didn’t like that idea at all.
In any event, Evelyn had to decide whether to play the one card that she thought she might have. Unless her captor had a hidden camcorder somewhere in the room, he (or maybe she?) didn’t know that Evelyn was awake yet. With her foot firmly attached to the bed, she wasn’t sure how she could convert that advantage in information into something more concrete. The question was: Should she call out in the hope of being heard – maybe even rescued? Or would that make the invisible captor(s) angry? And wasn’t that kind of obvious – what kind of stupid captor would go to this much trouble, and totally overlook the possibility of her screaming? But, then again, how else was she going to get any answers to her questions about her predicament? Maybe it wasn’t so bad. They hadn’t hurt her – maybe she could talk to them, assuming that no one heard her scream and rescued her. Certainly no one could blame her for trying.
So Evelyn opened her mouth and screamed – loudly. Unfortunately, the sound that came out of her mouth was not nearly as loud as she had intended. Actually, it sounded more like a croak. So that’s why they’re not worried about a rescue, she concluded. However, it did attract someone else’s attention.
Michel – yes, Michel walked though the door, carrying a tray of sandwiches and water. He didn’t seem injured, or in captivity – he seemed perfectly fine. “Are you feeling OK? Hungry?”
Evelyn censored the obvious response, “Just peachy-keen, you shithead! Get this fucking bracelet off my ankle before I get really pissed!” No, that didn’t seem like a good idea. What had that cop said on TV that time? “You have to connect with him. He sees you as an object. Get him to see you as another human being. Empathy.” (On the other hand, it could’ve been a quote from “Silence of the Lambs.”) Anyway, it sounded like a plan. Maybe she’d even recover her voice in the meantime.
Evelyn cleared her throat and croaked, “Michel. We have to talk – please have a seat. . . not there”, she said as he went to sit on the bed with her. “Over there, on the chair, please.”
“I realize that you must have a million questions, and I wanted to assure you that my intentions are totally honorable,” Michel said, as he sat on the indicated chair.
Did he actually say, “totally honorable”? But Evelyn let it pass – she had an agenda.
“Look at me – please Michel. Now I realize that you’ve met me 2 times in the past. The first time I was naked in front of a group of people and the second time I was half drunk in a bar. Now I realize that first impressions do count for a lot, but I just wanted to tell you that, well, I’m not just that.” Her voice remained steady even though still a croak. “What I mean is, I know I’m not perfect but, you see that picture on the dresser over there?” Michel glanced in the indicated direction, looked back at her, and nodded.
“Well, that’s a picture of my sister, Karen and my mother. Karen is the person who wrote the letter to me – the one I retrieved from the mailbox.” Michel nodded.
So far, so good. No outbursts, no violence. Evelyn took a deep breath and continued.
“Michel, these people love me. They don’t see me as something that people draw, or as something that absorbs alcohol. They see me as a person, a real person – just like you. And Michel, I love them. A lot. They mean everything to me. And he’s not in the picture, but there’s a dog, too. A lab, a black lab named Rex. Kind of a common name for a dog, I know, but he loves me, too.”
“And Michel, I have hopes – hopes and dreams of my own. I know that I probably didn’t sound like I had much going for me in the bar but, even though you know that things didn’t work out the first time, someday I want to meet the right guy and have a family. And a career, too – maybe not the President of the United States, but I think that I can do some good in this world. For somebody. Deep down inside, is that so different from what everyone wants? Is that so different from what you want? Michel, are we really that different?”
Michel exhaled, looked at her, and in a quite voice said, “Evelyn. You have no idea how different we are from each other.”
“Look,” he continued, as her heart sank. “I’m sure that a million things are going through your head right now. I realize that you have absolutely no reason to believe me about anything. About the only thing that I can assure you of right now is that I have no desire, and absolutely no intention, of hurting you. Not going to happen. But, you see, if I had just come to you out of the blue and told you that you were in danger, that you had to trust me, that I had to keep you out of sight for a while, you would have thought that I was totally crazy. Dangerously crazy. Right?”
Exactly what I think now, she thought.
“Probably exactly what you think now,” Michel said. “But my job is to protect you. That’s all I want to do."
“Protect me? From myself? Michel, who’s going to protect me from you?! You’ve got me chained to the bed! Do you realize how many years in prison that would buy you?” Evelyn regretted those words the moment she’s blurted them out. “Look, nobody’s been hurt, right? Just let me go, and we can write all of this off as a bad dream. Believe me, I’ve had more than my share of bad dreams lately. What’s one more?”
“Sorry, no can do. Look, I've got to go out for a while. I’ve given you a portable toilet – I’ll move it over by your bed. You have food and water on the bureau. There’s nobody else around, so you’ll have plenty of privacy. And don’t worry about your voice. As you’ve probably already figured out, it’s related to the blueberry scent – it should be back to normal in about 12 hours.”
“Michel, please. Anything that’s in the apartment. Take it – it’s yours.”
“You weren’t listening. It’s about protecting you – think of it as a kind of protective custody. Anybody who wants to hurt you is going to have to come through me.”
“You said you’re going out? ‘Through you’, but you won’t even be here. What if there’s a fire? You say you want to protect me but, if there’s a fire, I’d never get out of here alive.”
Michel paused. “That’s true, but, I hate to alarm you, but the possibility of fire is the least of your concerns. Trust me. The least of your concerns.”
“Michel, this isn’t about the abortion, is it? This isn’t about, somehow, trying to punish me for doing that, is it?” But she didn’t say that – she didn’t want to know the answer.
And then he was gone. Dammit. She hadn’t even had a chance to ask him how she was supposed to get to her job at the store in the morning. She supposed, though, that that really was the least of her concerns.
She wasn’t giving birth to a baby – the doctor was pulling it out of her. He almost had it out – but the baby had grabbed on to her and was holding on by his fingertips. He looked down and the baby looked back at her – old and bearded, with rotting teeth. He opened his mouth to scream, but only formed a soundless word with his lips as he stared at her. “Why?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
Monday, July 27, 2009
The Scent of the Blueberry -- 8
Two candles – that seemed right. Actually, “right” wasn’t good enough – it had to be perfect. Evelyn had spent all day at the grocery store, the bakery, the liquor store – it had to be just the way it should be. The white table cloth with the red napkins in the red napkin rings. The red wine ready for the 2 crystal glasses that Karen had lent her for just this occasion. Even the lustrous red sunset – still early in mid-February – seemed to promise the perfect Valentine evening.
And after the dinner, if he had not already guessed that something was different because she wasn’t sharing the wine with him, she would tell him. And she would see the look in his eyes – the same look she had fantasized about since the moment the results of the pregnancy test had been confirmed. He would be surprised, ask questions like “When?” Or even “Are you sure?” And take her in his arms and hold her – and tell her that he would be there for her – and . . .
And then it wasn’t that way. Funny, she couldn’t seem to hear the words. His mouth moved, his face contorted. Evelyn couldn’t get the words, but she did get the message. And it had absolutely nothing to do with being there for her – nothing to do with her, or the baby, at all. Nothing to do with the two of them. Only himself. And it was then that she knew that there would be no baby, no one to tell her when to breathe during labor, and no “white house with the picket fence” for her.
She knew that she couldn’t do it alone. The morning sickness, the diapers – Evelyn didn’t harbor any romantic illusions. She couldn’t count on much help either -- Karen had her own life to lead, her mother was, well, her mother, and . . . well, at least the nurse had understood. When Evelyn had originally received the pregnancy confirmation at the doctor’s office, the nurse had asked her whether this was what Evelyn had been hoping for. At the time, she hadn’t been able to believe her ears. Yes, of course, what do you think I am? Yes, this is exactly what I had been hoping for. So, a few days later, feeling like a total fool, Evelyn went back to the office, found the same nurse, and told her that it just wasn’t going to work out. The nurse hadn’t seemed to judge her – in fact, she smiled gently and helped Evelyn to set up the appointment for the procedure.
You might think that would signal the end of the problem. No – not on a couple of fronts. The motherfucking bastard kept calling, kept stopping by, kept trying to give her flowers, candy, everything except the one thing she had wanted. She wondered whether he did not actually understand the language – she thought that the phrase “fuck off” lacked the apparent ambiguity that he seemed to perceive. Finally she had to tell him that the next step was a restraining order. Later she heard that the motherfucking bastard had told his friends that he had broken up with her because she was frigid. That she needed help – God knows he had tried his best -- and he truly wished her the best of luck in the future.
Then there were the television shows. She would turn on the TV and the host of the program would open the manila envelope and say to the young man sitting there, “The DNA testing shows that you. . . are. . . the father. And the girl sitting between them would start jumping up and down, screaming, “I (bleeping) known it, you (bleeping bleep bleep). No way you ever gonna see that baby, even you git down on your knees an’ kiss my (bleeping) ass!” And the host would pull her aside and say. “Think of your baby, Yolanda. Every child needs a father. At least talk to Devon.”
And, by the end of the next commercial break, Yolanda and Devon would be just so cool with each other that Evelyn wanted to throw up.
And, of course, there was Grace at work – the department store job. Grace would simply disappear at certain times of the day – everyone knew that she and her husband were going through the world’s most complicated and expensive infertility treatments. Every month Grace looked just a little more like her world was coming to an end. To make matters worse, Evelyn had struck up something of a friendship at some point, and Grace seemed to look for Evelyn to provide support and strength as she careened from one disappointment to the next – all in the name of potential motherhood. But what Grace wanted most in the world, Evelyn had given up – and there was no way that Evelyn could bear to listen to Grace’s troubles. And that just added to her guilt.
It wasn’t just that. It was every day. Every woman she passed on the street was pregnant, or was pushing a stroller, or was pregnant and pushing a stroller. Even worse, sometimes, there would be a man, obviously a spouse or significant other, and he would be obviously linked to the child. It get to the point where Evelyn couldn’t even set foot in an art museum or look at an art book – there were too many Mary Cassatt pastels and Raphael Madonnas. It was everywhere.
Already Christmas in the department store was starting to drive her crazy. Or crazier, she supposed. Mothers bringing their children in to see Santa. Manger scenes on church lawns – every Mary had a Joseph.
Thank God for Karen. Karen understood – at least Karen loved her. And the latest letter from Karen had said – what had it said? That’s right, she hadn’t read it yet. There was Michel, and the phone call, and the blueberry tea, and the overwhelming scent of blueberries. . .
And after the dinner, if he had not already guessed that something was different because she wasn’t sharing the wine with him, she would tell him. And she would see the look in his eyes – the same look she had fantasized about since the moment the results of the pregnancy test had been confirmed. He would be surprised, ask questions like “When?” Or even “Are you sure?” And take her in his arms and hold her – and tell her that he would be there for her – and . . .
And then it wasn’t that way. Funny, she couldn’t seem to hear the words. His mouth moved, his face contorted. Evelyn couldn’t get the words, but she did get the message. And it had absolutely nothing to do with being there for her – nothing to do with her, or the baby, at all. Nothing to do with the two of them. Only himself. And it was then that she knew that there would be no baby, no one to tell her when to breathe during labor, and no “white house with the picket fence” for her.
She knew that she couldn’t do it alone. The morning sickness, the diapers – Evelyn didn’t harbor any romantic illusions. She couldn’t count on much help either -- Karen had her own life to lead, her mother was, well, her mother, and . . . well, at least the nurse had understood. When Evelyn had originally received the pregnancy confirmation at the doctor’s office, the nurse had asked her whether this was what Evelyn had been hoping for. At the time, she hadn’t been able to believe her ears. Yes, of course, what do you think I am? Yes, this is exactly what I had been hoping for. So, a few days later, feeling like a total fool, Evelyn went back to the office, found the same nurse, and told her that it just wasn’t going to work out. The nurse hadn’t seemed to judge her – in fact, she smiled gently and helped Evelyn to set up the appointment for the procedure.
You might think that would signal the end of the problem. No – not on a couple of fronts. The motherfucking bastard kept calling, kept stopping by, kept trying to give her flowers, candy, everything except the one thing she had wanted. She wondered whether he did not actually understand the language – she thought that the phrase “fuck off” lacked the apparent ambiguity that he seemed to perceive. Finally she had to tell him that the next step was a restraining order. Later she heard that the motherfucking bastard had told his friends that he had broken up with her because she was frigid. That she needed help – God knows he had tried his best -- and he truly wished her the best of luck in the future.
Then there were the television shows. She would turn on the TV and the host of the program would open the manila envelope and say to the young man sitting there, “The DNA testing shows that you. . . are. . . the father. And the girl sitting between them would start jumping up and down, screaming, “I (bleeping) known it, you (bleeping bleep bleep). No way you ever gonna see that baby, even you git down on your knees an’ kiss my (bleeping) ass!” And the host would pull her aside and say. “Think of your baby, Yolanda. Every child needs a father. At least talk to Devon.”
And, by the end of the next commercial break, Yolanda and Devon would be just so cool with each other that Evelyn wanted to throw up.
And, of course, there was Grace at work – the department store job. Grace would simply disappear at certain times of the day – everyone knew that she and her husband were going through the world’s most complicated and expensive infertility treatments. Every month Grace looked just a little more like her world was coming to an end. To make matters worse, Evelyn had struck up something of a friendship at some point, and Grace seemed to look for Evelyn to provide support and strength as she careened from one disappointment to the next – all in the name of potential motherhood. But what Grace wanted most in the world, Evelyn had given up – and there was no way that Evelyn could bear to listen to Grace’s troubles. And that just added to her guilt.
It wasn’t just that. It was every day. Every woman she passed on the street was pregnant, or was pushing a stroller, or was pregnant and pushing a stroller. Even worse, sometimes, there would be a man, obviously a spouse or significant other, and he would be obviously linked to the child. It get to the point where Evelyn couldn’t even set foot in an art museum or look at an art book – there were too many Mary Cassatt pastels and Raphael Madonnas. It was everywhere.
Already Christmas in the department store was starting to drive her crazy. Or crazier, she supposed. Mothers bringing their children in to see Santa. Manger scenes on church lawns – every Mary had a Joseph.
Thank God for Karen. Karen understood – at least Karen loved her. And the latest letter from Karen had said – what had it said? That’s right, she hadn’t read it yet. There was Michel, and the phone call, and the blueberry tea, and the overwhelming scent of blueberries. . .
Saturday, July 25, 2009
The Scent of the Blueberry - 7
“I can’t come to the phone right now but, if you’ll leave your name, phone number and a brief message, I’ll return your call as soon as I can.”
Allen wryly reflected on both the veracity and newly-found irony of his own recorded message. Allen could most definitely not come to the phone at that point, since he was securely bound at the wrists, ankles, knees, toes, thumbs. . . and, if he had been able to make it to the phone despite this predicament, the gag would have discouraged useful conversation. Of course, that might have led to his rescue, but his captor had just been pointing out all the reasons why there was no hope of escape. Allen wished that he’s just get it over with – the gloating was really too much for him to bear. No class, he reflected.
Ah, yes, his captor. . . George (previously known as The Jerk at Evelyn’s bar.) Allen’s ringing phone had interrupted George. . . and George hated interruptions.
“Really, Allen. You could have shown me the courtesy of disconnecting your telephone before your capture. I was in mid-sentence – there is absolutely no excuse for this type of rudeness. I think the world is slowly going to hell, don’t you think?” Allen just stared at him. “Oh, I think so. Slowly going to hell. Well, I do believe that it is my responsibility to accelerate the process. Wouldn’t you agree?”
By then Michel was leaving his message and George said in a low voice to no one in particular, “I’m sorry, but your little friend can’t come out to play right now. He is . . . indisposed.” He turned back to Allen. “Now, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, the twine that binds your thumbs is my new signature motif. Much more effective than merely securing your wrists. However, time grows short, so I must regrettably end our conversation. (Thank God, Allen thought.) After all, your friend may be on the way over, and it would be premature for me to conclude my business with him. You understand, don’t you?”
Allen did indeed understand – only too well.
George paused. There was a time that killing Allen would have a cause of celebration, a triumphant event. He would have carefully considered the procedure – Allen fully deserved a unique and aesthetically pleasing death, and George would have lovingly lingered over every detail of the execution. The truth was (although George wasn’t ready to admit it) that he was beginning to find all of this just a trifle . . . boring. Even the prerequisite torture no longer held the excitement for George that it once had. It was all old, just too old – like eating the finest Swiss chocolate several times a day for countless years. George craved strawberry . . . or even vanilla. Allen, well, in the end, Allen was just another hapless victim.
So where to start? He did want to act quickly, but also create a unique experience. George pulled the knife from its sheath. Usually he held it in his right hand – at last count, 63% of the time. So this time he would use his left hand. (He briefly considered using his left foot, but he had actually already done that before – and he remembered that it had been distinctly uncomfortable.)
George decided that, as he lifted his arm to strike, he would curl his hand slightly behind his head. He knew that he had done that 38% of the time overall, but only 16% of the time when he was using his left hand. And he had screamed “Out, out, brief candle!” at the moment of death only 8% of the time – probably because George loathed Shakespeare – but had he ever done that when he was using his left hand and curling it behind his head first? He couldn’t remember doing it before but, if he did it now, he had to consider the effect of not being able to use that particular technique in the future. But since he really couldn’t see any downside to that future exclusion, he went ahead and did it (after taking the ingenious and reasonable precaution of translating the Shakespearean line into German. Best to save the original English for a future occasion.)
Allen had been pleasantly surprised at the absence of torture. He knew that George had been short on time, but had fully expected at least a few excruciating moments. His last thought as he saw the knife descending toward his heart was that he didn’t have the vaguest idea why George was screaming when he was the only one who had the apparent right to scream. Actually, his very last thought was to wonder what George was screaming. Allen decided that he would try to pick up a little German next time.
As George considered the flow of blood from Allen’s chest, he shivered slightly. Not from guilt or remorse or declining adrenaline. George did not like the cold, and the situation with Allen and the telephone and the execution had distracted him from the fact that his apartment seemed unusually cold. Then a possibility occurred to George that he really didn’t like, and he walked into the bedroom. Yes, the bedroom window was open. Not wide open, but this was a ground floor apartment – so was it possible that anyone on the outside had heard anything? George was relieved that he hadn’t taken the time for any torture – the dialog could have been mistaken for the script of a television program – his only concern, he reflected wryly, should be German fans of Shakespeare. Peering out the window, he did not see anyone at all – let alone potential fans of arcane Elizabethan translations. Still, it was evidence of carelessness on his part, and the consistent success that had given rise to George’s boredom did not come from carelessness.
So it was time to go – but first he would leave a small calling card.
Allen wryly reflected on both the veracity and newly-found irony of his own recorded message. Allen could most definitely not come to the phone at that point, since he was securely bound at the wrists, ankles, knees, toes, thumbs. . . and, if he had been able to make it to the phone despite this predicament, the gag would have discouraged useful conversation. Of course, that might have led to his rescue, but his captor had just been pointing out all the reasons why there was no hope of escape. Allen wished that he’s just get it over with – the gloating was really too much for him to bear. No class, he reflected.
Ah, yes, his captor. . . George (previously known as The Jerk at Evelyn’s bar.) Allen’s ringing phone had interrupted George. . . and George hated interruptions.
“Really, Allen. You could have shown me the courtesy of disconnecting your telephone before your capture. I was in mid-sentence – there is absolutely no excuse for this type of rudeness. I think the world is slowly going to hell, don’t you think?” Allen just stared at him. “Oh, I think so. Slowly going to hell. Well, I do believe that it is my responsibility to accelerate the process. Wouldn’t you agree?”
By then Michel was leaving his message and George said in a low voice to no one in particular, “I’m sorry, but your little friend can’t come out to play right now. He is . . . indisposed.” He turned back to Allen. “Now, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, the twine that binds your thumbs is my new signature motif. Much more effective than merely securing your wrists. However, time grows short, so I must regrettably end our conversation. (Thank God, Allen thought.) After all, your friend may be on the way over, and it would be premature for me to conclude my business with him. You understand, don’t you?”
Allen did indeed understand – only too well.
George paused. There was a time that killing Allen would have a cause of celebration, a triumphant event. He would have carefully considered the procedure – Allen fully deserved a unique and aesthetically pleasing death, and George would have lovingly lingered over every detail of the execution. The truth was (although George wasn’t ready to admit it) that he was beginning to find all of this just a trifle . . . boring. Even the prerequisite torture no longer held the excitement for George that it once had. It was all old, just too old – like eating the finest Swiss chocolate several times a day for countless years. George craved strawberry . . . or even vanilla. Allen, well, in the end, Allen was just another hapless victim.
So where to start? He did want to act quickly, but also create a unique experience. George pulled the knife from its sheath. Usually he held it in his right hand – at last count, 63% of the time. So this time he would use his left hand. (He briefly considered using his left foot, but he had actually already done that before – and he remembered that it had been distinctly uncomfortable.)
George decided that, as he lifted his arm to strike, he would curl his hand slightly behind his head. He knew that he had done that 38% of the time overall, but only 16% of the time when he was using his left hand. And he had screamed “Out, out, brief candle!” at the moment of death only 8% of the time – probably because George loathed Shakespeare – but had he ever done that when he was using his left hand and curling it behind his head first? He couldn’t remember doing it before but, if he did it now, he had to consider the effect of not being able to use that particular technique in the future. But since he really couldn’t see any downside to that future exclusion, he went ahead and did it (after taking the ingenious and reasonable precaution of translating the Shakespearean line into German. Best to save the original English for a future occasion.)
Allen had been pleasantly surprised at the absence of torture. He knew that George had been short on time, but had fully expected at least a few excruciating moments. His last thought as he saw the knife descending toward his heart was that he didn’t have the vaguest idea why George was screaming when he was the only one who had the apparent right to scream. Actually, his very last thought was to wonder what George was screaming. Allen decided that he would try to pick up a little German next time.
As George considered the flow of blood from Allen’s chest, he shivered slightly. Not from guilt or remorse or declining adrenaline. George did not like the cold, and the situation with Allen and the telephone and the execution had distracted him from the fact that his apartment seemed unusually cold. Then a possibility occurred to George that he really didn’t like, and he walked into the bedroom. Yes, the bedroom window was open. Not wide open, but this was a ground floor apartment – so was it possible that anyone on the outside had heard anything? George was relieved that he hadn’t taken the time for any torture – the dialog could have been mistaken for the script of a television program – his only concern, he reflected wryly, should be German fans of Shakespeare. Peering out the window, he did not see anyone at all – let alone potential fans of arcane Elizabethan translations. Still, it was evidence of carelessness on his part, and the consistent success that had given rise to George’s boredom did not come from carelessness.
So it was time to go – but first he would leave a small calling card.
Monday, July 20, 2009
The Scent of the Blueberry -- 6
Michel grinned at her, then studied the floor like a kindergarten kid. “I totally screwed up. I locked myself out of my apartment and I can’t find the super.” Michel’s voice dropped. “And I really have to go to the bathroom.”
Evelyn smiled. “Well, I guess I can help you out. Does anyone else have a key?”
“Well, my friend Allen does.” (Evelyn smiled – “friend Allen” – of course, suspicion confirmed.) “But my cell phone battery died on me. I could go down to the pay phone at the corner, but I thought I would check to see whether I could use your phone. I hope it’s not inconvenient.”
“No, even a prisoner gets a phone call. And we can’t have you leaking all over the hallway.”
“Thanks, I really appreciate it. And my bladder will be eternally grateful.”
“Another one of my childhood ambitions achieved. But. . . your apartment, the super. . . Jorge? Do you live in this building?” Evelyn asked as she rummaged through her bag for her own key.
“Since September. Fourth floor – near the end of the hall. I hadn’t realized that you lived her until I saw you at the mailboxes last week. By the time I got there, you were gone. But your name was on the mailbox.”
Evelyn realized that she had no idea that Michel knew her last name – she certainly didn’t know his. She wasn’t sure that she liked that – it seemed to give him a slight advantage. He already knew far too much about her. Still, she realized that she was being silly. After all, Evelyn had no intention of knowing him well enough to ever care what his last name was. He would use his bathroom, call Allen, and be on his way. And she would feel that at least part of her debt would be repaid – and at a relatively low cost. No big deal – the low-fat Oreo cookies would keep for a few more minutes. Let’s see – the chocolate came from the brown vegetable food group – but what the hell was the white stuff in the middle? Well, it couldn’t be too bad, she thought – after all, it was low-fat.
As Evelyn let them into the apartment and flipped on the light switch, she reminded herself of the undeniable fact that, no matter how screwed up the rest of her life might be, she did have a point of refuge in her apartment. Her original décor had featured a kind of “impoverished college student” motif, but Evelyn had been upgrading the furnishings and décor in one room at a time . . . Living room, kitchenette, bathroom, separate bedroom. . . everything but the prerequisite cat. Her sister had visited one weekend, and they had spent most of the time rummaging through catalogs, the Internet and various furnishing stores. That one weekend – that one magic weekend – had done her more good than all the Scotches in the world, she thought. Fiber wall hangings, a sofa, everything in earth colors: browns and yellows and reds and oranges. The bedroom – now that was blue. A room for every mood, she supposed. But the place was always warm – these old apartments were always overheated, and she always felt that she could curl up on the sofa with a book and cup of tea until bedtime. Then she’d simply transport both book and comforter to the bedroom – where the curling process would be intercepted by the sleep process. If only the sleep hadn’t been interrupted by the dreams – the repetitive dreams – but maybe those would diminish in frequency and intensity as time went by. Evelyn had been told that time healed all wounds – well, she thought, she was definitely going to put that cliché to the test.
Michel emerged from the bathroom and Evelyn gave him her cell phone. “I don’t have a land-line, but the battery on this thing should be OK.” Michel nodded, “Thanks”, flipped open the phone and started to punch the keys while Evelyn went to the stove to put on the kettle. She thought that she might invite him to share a cup – it had been a while since she had cooked for a man, but maybe a cup of tea didn’t quite count as cooking. Still, she wasn’t sure where that would lead – maybe she wouldn’t play the gracious hostess. She was still debating the point when she realized that Michel had reached Allen – and reminded herself that nothing would lead anywhere with this one.
In a few moments, Evelyn overheard Michel’s explanation to Allen, but it lacked the pauses that generally characterize a conversation. Michel was leaving a message – maybe that circumstance took the decision out of her hands. Fortunately she didn’t have any plans – aside from her modeling gigs, her evening calendar seemed free for at least the next two centuries, she reflected. She went back into the living room just as Michel was flipping the phone shut.
“I’m really sorry, Evelyn. I can’t imagine where he’s gone. I’m sure he’ll be back in a few minutes. I really feel much better now, anyway. Thank you for the use of the bathroom.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble. But look, I’ve just put some tea on. You’re really not interrupting anything if you want to wait here and try again in a few minutes.” Not Evelyn’s preference but, really why not? She would probably work off all of her debt to Michel this way, and he was a good listener. And, if he said no, well that was up to him. So maybe this was a good situation, after all.
“Well, if you’re sure that it’s no trouble.”
“Absolutely sure. Do you drink tea? Herbal tea. I was planning on having some blueberry.”
“They make tea out of blueberries?” Evelyn nodded. “Well, I guess that makes sense. No limit to what you can make tea out of. OK, sure. As long as you’re sure that you don’t mind.”
“No, it’s fine. Have a seat and make yourself comfortable.”
Evelyn turned back to the stove, and thought that this process would seem much easier with a glass of Scotch than with a cup of tea. Still, it wouldn’t be so bad. She opened the box of tea bags, and the usually faint scent of the blueberries came spilling out. Usually faint but, in this case, unusually strong – almost fragrant, like a strong perfume. The room was warm, and the scent of blueberry combined with that warmth to fill her nostrils, to make her eyelids feel heavy. She lurched toward the chair, but Michel caught her before she hit the floor.
Evelyn smiled. “Well, I guess I can help you out. Does anyone else have a key?”
“Well, my friend Allen does.” (Evelyn smiled – “friend Allen” – of course, suspicion confirmed.) “But my cell phone battery died on me. I could go down to the pay phone at the corner, but I thought I would check to see whether I could use your phone. I hope it’s not inconvenient.”
“No, even a prisoner gets a phone call. And we can’t have you leaking all over the hallway.”
“Thanks, I really appreciate it. And my bladder will be eternally grateful.”
“Another one of my childhood ambitions achieved. But. . . your apartment, the super. . . Jorge? Do you live in this building?” Evelyn asked as she rummaged through her bag for her own key.
“Since September. Fourth floor – near the end of the hall. I hadn’t realized that you lived her until I saw you at the mailboxes last week. By the time I got there, you were gone. But your name was on the mailbox.”
Evelyn realized that she had no idea that Michel knew her last name – she certainly didn’t know his. She wasn’t sure that she liked that – it seemed to give him a slight advantage. He already knew far too much about her. Still, she realized that she was being silly. After all, Evelyn had no intention of knowing him well enough to ever care what his last name was. He would use his bathroom, call Allen, and be on his way. And she would feel that at least part of her debt would be repaid – and at a relatively low cost. No big deal – the low-fat Oreo cookies would keep for a few more minutes. Let’s see – the chocolate came from the brown vegetable food group – but what the hell was the white stuff in the middle? Well, it couldn’t be too bad, she thought – after all, it was low-fat.
As Evelyn let them into the apartment and flipped on the light switch, she reminded herself of the undeniable fact that, no matter how screwed up the rest of her life might be, she did have a point of refuge in her apartment. Her original décor had featured a kind of “impoverished college student” motif, but Evelyn had been upgrading the furnishings and décor in one room at a time . . . Living room, kitchenette, bathroom, separate bedroom. . . everything but the prerequisite cat. Her sister had visited one weekend, and they had spent most of the time rummaging through catalogs, the Internet and various furnishing stores. That one weekend – that one magic weekend – had done her more good than all the Scotches in the world, she thought. Fiber wall hangings, a sofa, everything in earth colors: browns and yellows and reds and oranges. The bedroom – now that was blue. A room for every mood, she supposed. But the place was always warm – these old apartments were always overheated, and she always felt that she could curl up on the sofa with a book and cup of tea until bedtime. Then she’d simply transport both book and comforter to the bedroom – where the curling process would be intercepted by the sleep process. If only the sleep hadn’t been interrupted by the dreams – the repetitive dreams – but maybe those would diminish in frequency and intensity as time went by. Evelyn had been told that time healed all wounds – well, she thought, she was definitely going to put that cliché to the test.
Michel emerged from the bathroom and Evelyn gave him her cell phone. “I don’t have a land-line, but the battery on this thing should be OK.” Michel nodded, “Thanks”, flipped open the phone and started to punch the keys while Evelyn went to the stove to put on the kettle. She thought that she might invite him to share a cup – it had been a while since she had cooked for a man, but maybe a cup of tea didn’t quite count as cooking. Still, she wasn’t sure where that would lead – maybe she wouldn’t play the gracious hostess. She was still debating the point when she realized that Michel had reached Allen – and reminded herself that nothing would lead anywhere with this one.
In a few moments, Evelyn overheard Michel’s explanation to Allen, but it lacked the pauses that generally characterize a conversation. Michel was leaving a message – maybe that circumstance took the decision out of her hands. Fortunately she didn’t have any plans – aside from her modeling gigs, her evening calendar seemed free for at least the next two centuries, she reflected. She went back into the living room just as Michel was flipping the phone shut.
“I’m really sorry, Evelyn. I can’t imagine where he’s gone. I’m sure he’ll be back in a few minutes. I really feel much better now, anyway. Thank you for the use of the bathroom.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble. But look, I’ve just put some tea on. You’re really not interrupting anything if you want to wait here and try again in a few minutes.” Not Evelyn’s preference but, really why not? She would probably work off all of her debt to Michel this way, and he was a good listener. And, if he said no, well that was up to him. So maybe this was a good situation, after all.
“Well, if you’re sure that it’s no trouble.”
“Absolutely sure. Do you drink tea? Herbal tea. I was planning on having some blueberry.”
“They make tea out of blueberries?” Evelyn nodded. “Well, I guess that makes sense. No limit to what you can make tea out of. OK, sure. As long as you’re sure that you don’t mind.”
“No, it’s fine. Have a seat and make yourself comfortable.”
Evelyn turned back to the stove, and thought that this process would seem much easier with a glass of Scotch than with a cup of tea. Still, it wouldn’t be so bad. She opened the box of tea bags, and the usually faint scent of the blueberries came spilling out. Usually faint but, in this case, unusually strong – almost fragrant, like a strong perfume. The room was warm, and the scent of blueberry combined with that warmth to fill her nostrils, to make her eyelids feel heavy. She lurched toward the chair, but Michel caught her before she hit the floor.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
The Scent of the Blueberry -- 5
That had occurred during the few days before receiving Karen’s letter. Evelyn was in the local watering hole, a relatively harmless local bar appropriately named, “Your Local Watering Hole” and commonly referenced as simply “The Hole”, nursing a Scotch that she really didn’t need and really couldn’t afford. Not an uncommon occurrence, but this time it was followed by 2 other distinctly uncommon occurrences.
The first was that a guy hit on her. Most people would not have found this surprising. Unlike fashion models, there is no real requirement that artists’ models be physically attractive. But most of them are reasonably so -- maybe because most people apparently have to possess a basic sense of physical self-esteem before disrobing in public.
Evelyn was no different – most people would consider her to be reasonably attractive, maybe beyond that with the right clothes, hairstyle and make-up. The truth was that, at the age of about 13-14, it looked like she was going to become an usually beautiful woman. Hollywood beautiful, Sports Illustrated swimsuit beautiful -- stunning. But then Evelyn had developed an unfortunate case of adolescent acne and, by the time the zits had graduated to zit heaven, somehow her facial features had developed in an ever-so-slightly uncoordinated way. Nothing that you could put your finger on but, after the age of 16 or so, she only achieved her previous potential – her features only rhymed – when she smiled. At that specific moment, the moment of smiling, she could be truly and unabashedly stunning. But Evelyn hadn’t smiled much lately.
Other than that -- medium build, figure that was, as the more traditional personal ads say, appropriate for height, long dark hair – it was quite reasonable to expect that a guy would hit on her in a bar. (Hell, some guys would hit on Norm or Cliff in a bar.) That was why Evelyn generally wore a wedding ring when she stopped by the club – a cheap band that she had picked up in a flea market for just such an occasion. After all, one fucking bastard at a time was plenty.
But this guy was an overt pain in the ass, insistent and obnoxious. He was obviously not impressed by the wedding ring, and seemed to realize that a telephone number with a 555 exchange was a phony. It would have been nice, at least convenient, if there had been a knight in shining armor to shield her from this latest manifestation of fucking bastardism but, even more surprisingly perhaps, an unexpected substitute appeared.
“I see that you’ve met my wife”, Michel casually said to the man as he slid in between them. Michel rested his elbow on the bar and flexed his right bicep ever so slightly, but also ever so impressively. “So, honey, are you going to introduce me to your new friend?”
The jerk responded immediately. “Unfortunately, ah, I have to catch my bus. Maybe a rain check?” But the last sentence was barely audible, since the man had already begun to make his way to the door.
“Honey?” Evelyn said.
“Sorry. You didn’t really know the guy, did you?” She shook her head. “Good. I’ve been accused of not picking up on these cues all the time, but it did seem that you could use a little help with him. Sorry for the familiarity – the “honey” part. Probably kind of corny, huh?”
Evelyn smiled – for the first time in a while, she realized. Too long, maybe. “That’s OK. And thank you.”
“So. You come here often?”
She laughed. “OK. I didn’t mean to issue a permanent corniness permit. On the other hand, no . . . no, I guess I don’t want you to think that I spend a lot of time alone in bars, swigging Scotch and setting myself up as a target for every asshole who comes down the pike.”
“It’s none of my business, but I just figured that maybe there had been a. . . well, maybe, unpleasant moment with your real husband. Happens to everyone sometime. Nothing unusual there.”
Evelyn looked down at the fake wedding ring. “No, Michel. That’s a fake wedding ring. Or, then again, maybe it’s no more fake than I am.”
“Beginning to sound like maybe you do come here often. Why don’t you grab your drink and we’ll move to a table.”
Evelyn thought that was just about the lamest pick-up line that she had heard for a long time, but Michel was, well, he wasn’t the guy who had just been chased out of the bar. Maybe he was just as lonely as she was – hell, judging from the scars, he could probably match her hurt for hurt, even if the story of his pain was physical rather than emotional. Last but not least, the Scotch said, “Why not?”
But over the next hour or so, a really unexpected – no, make that remarkable – thing happened. Michel hadn’t tried to pick her up. He had joined her at the table with his freshly poured ginger ale, and spent the better part of an hour actually listening to her. Listening to a semi-drunken diatribe about how men sucked, how the fucking bastard sucked, how positive self-talk sucked and, most remarkably of all, a fairly detailed account of the pregnancy and abortion – and how they both most definitely sucked. And he sat there, not seeming to judge her, offering the occasional word of sympathy or encouragement, without once even remotely suggesting that his interest was in any way directly linked to his penis. Evelyn decided that Michel had to be either gay or a saint. Or maybe both: a gay saint. Either way, she didn’t care. She couldn’t believe that she was actually sharing all of this with this semi-total stranger, even as she continued to tell him everything.
So yes, Evelyn did have mixed feelings about Michel. She did see him as strange, but she was also embarrassed that she had told him things that were so totally personal and private. And she was grateful that he had been there that evening, both in terms of the jerk he had chased off and the way he had listened to her story. But seeing him also reminded her of that story, reminded her of the jerk and the fucking bastard, and reminded her of her inability to deal with either of them – or the abortion – by herself, And she felt guilty because she knew that she owed him, but also wished that he would just go away. It wasn’t fair, but it was true.
“Hi, Michel. This is a nice surprise. What brings you here?” Nice recovery, she complimented herself.
The first was that a guy hit on her. Most people would not have found this surprising. Unlike fashion models, there is no real requirement that artists’ models be physically attractive. But most of them are reasonably so -- maybe because most people apparently have to possess a basic sense of physical self-esteem before disrobing in public.
Evelyn was no different – most people would consider her to be reasonably attractive, maybe beyond that with the right clothes, hairstyle and make-up. The truth was that, at the age of about 13-14, it looked like she was going to become an usually beautiful woman. Hollywood beautiful, Sports Illustrated swimsuit beautiful -- stunning. But then Evelyn had developed an unfortunate case of adolescent acne and, by the time the zits had graduated to zit heaven, somehow her facial features had developed in an ever-so-slightly uncoordinated way. Nothing that you could put your finger on but, after the age of 16 or so, she only achieved her previous potential – her features only rhymed – when she smiled. At that specific moment, the moment of smiling, she could be truly and unabashedly stunning. But Evelyn hadn’t smiled much lately.
Other than that -- medium build, figure that was, as the more traditional personal ads say, appropriate for height, long dark hair – it was quite reasonable to expect that a guy would hit on her in a bar. (Hell, some guys would hit on Norm or Cliff in a bar.) That was why Evelyn generally wore a wedding ring when she stopped by the club – a cheap band that she had picked up in a flea market for just such an occasion. After all, one fucking bastard at a time was plenty.
But this guy was an overt pain in the ass, insistent and obnoxious. He was obviously not impressed by the wedding ring, and seemed to realize that a telephone number with a 555 exchange was a phony. It would have been nice, at least convenient, if there had been a knight in shining armor to shield her from this latest manifestation of fucking bastardism but, even more surprisingly perhaps, an unexpected substitute appeared.
“I see that you’ve met my wife”, Michel casually said to the man as he slid in between them. Michel rested his elbow on the bar and flexed his right bicep ever so slightly, but also ever so impressively. “So, honey, are you going to introduce me to your new friend?”
The jerk responded immediately. “Unfortunately, ah, I have to catch my bus. Maybe a rain check?” But the last sentence was barely audible, since the man had already begun to make his way to the door.
“Honey?” Evelyn said.
“Sorry. You didn’t really know the guy, did you?” She shook her head. “Good. I’ve been accused of not picking up on these cues all the time, but it did seem that you could use a little help with him. Sorry for the familiarity – the “honey” part. Probably kind of corny, huh?”
Evelyn smiled – for the first time in a while, she realized. Too long, maybe. “That’s OK. And thank you.”
“So. You come here often?”
She laughed. “OK. I didn’t mean to issue a permanent corniness permit. On the other hand, no . . . no, I guess I don’t want you to think that I spend a lot of time alone in bars, swigging Scotch and setting myself up as a target for every asshole who comes down the pike.”
“It’s none of my business, but I just figured that maybe there had been a. . . well, maybe, unpleasant moment with your real husband. Happens to everyone sometime. Nothing unusual there.”
Evelyn looked down at the fake wedding ring. “No, Michel. That’s a fake wedding ring. Or, then again, maybe it’s no more fake than I am.”
“Beginning to sound like maybe you do come here often. Why don’t you grab your drink and we’ll move to a table.”
Evelyn thought that was just about the lamest pick-up line that she had heard for a long time, but Michel was, well, he wasn’t the guy who had just been chased out of the bar. Maybe he was just as lonely as she was – hell, judging from the scars, he could probably match her hurt for hurt, even if the story of his pain was physical rather than emotional. Last but not least, the Scotch said, “Why not?”
But over the next hour or so, a really unexpected – no, make that remarkable – thing happened. Michel hadn’t tried to pick her up. He had joined her at the table with his freshly poured ginger ale, and spent the better part of an hour actually listening to her. Listening to a semi-drunken diatribe about how men sucked, how the fucking bastard sucked, how positive self-talk sucked and, most remarkably of all, a fairly detailed account of the pregnancy and abortion – and how they both most definitely sucked. And he sat there, not seeming to judge her, offering the occasional word of sympathy or encouragement, without once even remotely suggesting that his interest was in any way directly linked to his penis. Evelyn decided that Michel had to be either gay or a saint. Or maybe both: a gay saint. Either way, she didn’t care. She couldn’t believe that she was actually sharing all of this with this semi-total stranger, even as she continued to tell him everything.
So yes, Evelyn did have mixed feelings about Michel. She did see him as strange, but she was also embarrassed that she had told him things that were so totally personal and private. And she was grateful that he had been there that evening, both in terms of the jerk he had chased off and the way he had listened to her story. But seeing him also reminded her of that story, reminded her of the jerk and the fucking bastard, and reminded her of her inability to deal with either of them – or the abortion – by herself, And she felt guilty because she knew that she owed him, but also wished that he would just go away. It wasn’t fair, but it was true.
“Hi, Michel. This is a nice surprise. What brings you here?” Nice recovery, she complimented herself.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
The Scent of the Blueberry -- 4
Well, OK, Evelyn knew who it was – it was Michel. It’s just that she saw Michel as being a little strange. Not especially bad strange – not ax-murderer strange – but, well, eccentric.
Michel. Evelyn remembered the first time she had met him. He was a male model, and Arthur, the community center life drawing coordinator, had inadvertently booked them both for the same session.
Arthur had been upset about it. He knew that, like most models, Michel and Evelyn weren’t in the game necessarily for the love of the activity – they needed the money. So Arthur’s solution was, as he tritely put it, to make a lemon into lemonade. He had them pose together.
Evelyn had had her doubts – she had never posed nude with a man before. But the rent had been due the following week and, with an assistant district attorney seated approximately six feet away, she figured that there wasn’t any real danger involved. Although, looking at Michel’s muscular body after he had discarded his robe, she did wonder whether a little danger might not be just what the doctor ordered for this girl. No, what am I thinking? Remember the fucking bastard! (He had still been the “fucking” bastard at that point.)
But it was OK. Michel had not touched her at any point during the evening and, much to her relief, had been enough of a professional to not develop a hard-on. Not even a little one. Probably gay, she figured. The ones with the muscles – they often seem to be. Probably wouldn’t be interested in me, well, not me personally, of course. Probably just doesn’t like girls. Thank God. (That’s one thing about modeling – even during the short poses, she had plenty of time to let her mind wander in any direction she wanted. Usually that involved self-talk – but not during that session. Evelyn let her mind wander in directions that would have totally freaked her out if she had thought for a single moment that Michel could know.)
But Michel did seem to be off in his own world. He was different – definitely different. Most of the male models tended to have well-developed bodies, Evelyn knew, so this wasn’t a surprise. But Michel – well, to begin with, there was the almost total absence of body fat. Usually the guys who lack any body fat may still be muscular, but they would still be kind of slender. Maybe “lithe” would be the right word. But there was nothing slender about Michel – he was built like a linebacker. Whenever he shifted even a fraction of an inch in the pose, different muscles – hell, entire groups of muscles that Evelyn couldn’t begin to name -- would pop out of his body, while others would retreat into hiding to make room for their newly-evident friends.
But there were 2 other things that were really unusual about Michel.
There was the scar tissue. All over his body, old and new, apparently random – they didn’t look like the results of surgery. Someone had really done a job on this guy – and not just once. Evelyn closed her eyes and tried to imagine the physical pain that had to be associated with that type of scarring, but her only real reference point was the emotional pain that she had been undergoing. And that was not a pleasant recollection. . . so she let that train of thought go. Still, she wondered. Did it hurt when he stretched? Did it hurt when someone touched him? Some of those scars looked recent. Maybe, just maybe, he enjoyed it. But that didn’t seem fair, and she felt guilty for even allowing her thoughts to wander in that direction. But, of course, posing is inherently boring, and there was plenty of time for her mind to wander all over the place.
The other unusual thing about Michel was his selection of poses. A session of so-called short poses for figure drawing generally consisted of a series of progressively longer poses, punctuated by breaks. So a model might take about 20 2-minute poses, take a break, then several 5-minute poses, then take a break, then 4-5 10-minute poses, then another break, then finish the 3-hour session with a few 15-minute poses. Evening sessions tended to be less intense than daytime sessions, and sessions at the community center were particularly laid back because a few of the artists had severe nicotine addictions that demanded considerable break time.
So the most common strategy for the models was to reserve the more strenuous poses for the first part of the evening, with simple reclining poses for the end. The strenuous poses were, of course, easier to hold for the shorter periods of time, and the relatively quick changes enabled the model to stretch and utilize complementary muscle groups. By the end of the evening, the artists understood that it was the end of the day, you had put forth a good effort, and that you couldn’t be expected to hold anything outrageous for 15 minutes anyway. Once Evelyn had even fallen asleep during the last reclining pose – she had awakened when Arthur announced the end of the session, only after a moment remembering why she was stark naked in front of a roomful of people. In retrospect, she had been glad that she hadn’t screamed – although she did wonder if she had snored.
Anyway, Michel didn’t play by the unwritten rules. Rather than assuming easier poses as the evening wore on, he pushed to assume more difficult ones. He hadn’t pushed her to go along with his posing regimen, thank God – it was obvious that Michel was used to playing a solo act. She had felt lazy, somehow unworthy, when she had assumed a simple reclining pose at the end of the evening while Michel was standing over her, weight almost entirely on one foot, arms stretched to the ceiling without quivering. That’s when she wondered whether he enjoyed pain, whether the genesis of the scars involved something that was not entirely against his will. Studying his muscles over the course of the evening or, more precisely, his control of his muscles, Evelyn wondered how easy it would be to get this man to do anything that he didn’t really want to do.
Evelyn’s next encounter with Michel was more intimate – at least, in the emotional sense. That had seemed incongruous at the time – the idea that sitting down with someone and talking could be more intimate than wordlessly cohabiting a model’s platform for 3 hours without any clothes on. But it was true.
Michel. Evelyn remembered the first time she had met him. He was a male model, and Arthur, the community center life drawing coordinator, had inadvertently booked them both for the same session.
Arthur had been upset about it. He knew that, like most models, Michel and Evelyn weren’t in the game necessarily for the love of the activity – they needed the money. So Arthur’s solution was, as he tritely put it, to make a lemon into lemonade. He had them pose together.
Evelyn had had her doubts – she had never posed nude with a man before. But the rent had been due the following week and, with an assistant district attorney seated approximately six feet away, she figured that there wasn’t any real danger involved. Although, looking at Michel’s muscular body after he had discarded his robe, she did wonder whether a little danger might not be just what the doctor ordered for this girl. No, what am I thinking? Remember the fucking bastard! (He had still been the “fucking” bastard at that point.)
But it was OK. Michel had not touched her at any point during the evening and, much to her relief, had been enough of a professional to not develop a hard-on. Not even a little one. Probably gay, she figured. The ones with the muscles – they often seem to be. Probably wouldn’t be interested in me, well, not me personally, of course. Probably just doesn’t like girls. Thank God. (That’s one thing about modeling – even during the short poses, she had plenty of time to let her mind wander in any direction she wanted. Usually that involved self-talk – but not during that session. Evelyn let her mind wander in directions that would have totally freaked her out if she had thought for a single moment that Michel could know.)
But Michel did seem to be off in his own world. He was different – definitely different. Most of the male models tended to have well-developed bodies, Evelyn knew, so this wasn’t a surprise. But Michel – well, to begin with, there was the almost total absence of body fat. Usually the guys who lack any body fat may still be muscular, but they would still be kind of slender. Maybe “lithe” would be the right word. But there was nothing slender about Michel – he was built like a linebacker. Whenever he shifted even a fraction of an inch in the pose, different muscles – hell, entire groups of muscles that Evelyn couldn’t begin to name -- would pop out of his body, while others would retreat into hiding to make room for their newly-evident friends.
But there were 2 other things that were really unusual about Michel.
There was the scar tissue. All over his body, old and new, apparently random – they didn’t look like the results of surgery. Someone had really done a job on this guy – and not just once. Evelyn closed her eyes and tried to imagine the physical pain that had to be associated with that type of scarring, but her only real reference point was the emotional pain that she had been undergoing. And that was not a pleasant recollection. . . so she let that train of thought go. Still, she wondered. Did it hurt when he stretched? Did it hurt when someone touched him? Some of those scars looked recent. Maybe, just maybe, he enjoyed it. But that didn’t seem fair, and she felt guilty for even allowing her thoughts to wander in that direction. But, of course, posing is inherently boring, and there was plenty of time for her mind to wander all over the place.
The other unusual thing about Michel was his selection of poses. A session of so-called short poses for figure drawing generally consisted of a series of progressively longer poses, punctuated by breaks. So a model might take about 20 2-minute poses, take a break, then several 5-minute poses, then take a break, then 4-5 10-minute poses, then another break, then finish the 3-hour session with a few 15-minute poses. Evening sessions tended to be less intense than daytime sessions, and sessions at the community center were particularly laid back because a few of the artists had severe nicotine addictions that demanded considerable break time.
So the most common strategy for the models was to reserve the more strenuous poses for the first part of the evening, with simple reclining poses for the end. The strenuous poses were, of course, easier to hold for the shorter periods of time, and the relatively quick changes enabled the model to stretch and utilize complementary muscle groups. By the end of the evening, the artists understood that it was the end of the day, you had put forth a good effort, and that you couldn’t be expected to hold anything outrageous for 15 minutes anyway. Once Evelyn had even fallen asleep during the last reclining pose – she had awakened when Arthur announced the end of the session, only after a moment remembering why she was stark naked in front of a roomful of people. In retrospect, she had been glad that she hadn’t screamed – although she did wonder if she had snored.
Anyway, Michel didn’t play by the unwritten rules. Rather than assuming easier poses as the evening wore on, he pushed to assume more difficult ones. He hadn’t pushed her to go along with his posing regimen, thank God – it was obvious that Michel was used to playing a solo act. She had felt lazy, somehow unworthy, when she had assumed a simple reclining pose at the end of the evening while Michel was standing over her, weight almost entirely on one foot, arms stretched to the ceiling without quivering. That’s when she wondered whether he enjoyed pain, whether the genesis of the scars involved something that was not entirely against his will. Studying his muscles over the course of the evening or, more precisely, his control of his muscles, Evelyn wondered how easy it would be to get this man to do anything that he didn’t really want to do.
Evelyn’s next encounter with Michel was more intimate – at least, in the emotional sense. That had seemed incongruous at the time – the idea that sitting down with someone and talking could be more intimate than wordlessly cohabiting a model’s platform for 3 hours without any clothes on. But it was true.
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