Текст книги "Cages and Those Who Hold the Keys"

Автор книги: Gary A. Braunbeck

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Текущая страница: 29 (всего у книги 31 страниц)

3. “...She Was Alone

When I Got There.”

Amanda finished giving her statement to one of the police officers on the scene (who failed to ask for her address and home phone number until she volunteered the information) and was getting ready to leave when she saw the man who'd taken her spot in the booth. His shirt was spattered with dried blood and his face was three shades whiter than pale. He looked up from his shaking hands for a moment, through the swirling visibar lights and milling patrons, past the police officer who was taking his statement, and stared at her.

It seemed to her that she ought to say something to him—but what?

Before she could come up with an answer she found herself walking across the parking lot and coming up next to him. He was no longer looking at her—if he actually had been in the first place. He ran a hand through his hair and turned toward the officer beside him.

“You say she just doubled over suddenly?” asked the officer.

“Uh, yeah, yeah. It was weird, y’know? We're sitting there talking and then she starts...blinking. I'm thinking to myself, ‘Oh, Christ, she's lost a contact lens,’ then she bends over, real violently, like maybe she's gonna throw up or something and I moved out of the booth to, y'know, help her get out and over toward the bathroom but she's making this sound, this awful sound like she's choking and now I'm shaking 'cause I've never had to Heimlich someone but she sounds in pain, serious pain, and I reached over to grab her and she pulls away and covers her eyes with her hands, and now she's groaning and wheezing and people around us are looking, so I reach for her again and that's when I see there's all this...blood coming out from under her hands. It was fuckin' horrible.”

The officer finished writing something down, then said, “Was there anyone else in the booth with her?”

“No. She was alone when I got there.”

Amanda turned away, biting down on her lower lip as if that would be enough to shield her from the invisible fist that had just rammed into her gut, and half-walked, half-ran to her car where she checked her eyes—no, not her eyes, not hers at all—again in the rearview mirror, then turned the key in the ignition, backed out, and drove away.

She had no idea how long or how far she drove, only that she had to stay in motion while the numb shock of realization ebbed into a dull thrum of remorse. She hadn't meant for anything to happen to the woman, not at all, but—

–Was there anyone else in the booth no she was alone when I got there no she was alone no she was ALONE—

–bastard had bumped right into her. Right into her.

Twenty deadened minutes later, feeling very much like an etherized patient on the anesthetist's table, she parked in front of a church, stepped out of the car, then walked up the steps and through the doors, pausing only to dip her fingers in the marble font of holy water and make the Sign of the Cross over her forehead and bosom, then strode down the aisle, through a set of small wooden doors, lowering to her knees as she pulled the doors closed and a small overhead light snapped on—

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."

Kneeling in the confessional, her voice that of a disembodied ghost, Amanda felt as if she were being operated by remote control, only vaguely aware of the words coming out of her mouth, mundane sins—cursing, lusting, small acts of thievery like sometimes not putting a quarter in the box at work when she got a cup of coffee, sins of omission, white lies, I meant no harm, then she was whispering, humiliated, about impure thoughts that still moved her blood faster and still took her to a private place where moist fantasies waited for her...

...and in one of these private places where plain-faced fantasies lay hidden, she was as beautiful as she wished to be and with a man who not only loved her but desired her as a result of that love, his lips moving down the slope of her breasts, his tongue tracing soft circular patterns around her nipple– She was suddenly, awkwardly aware of the claustrophobic silence in the confessional, and wondered how long she'd been quiet. On the other side of the screen the priest asked, "Are you all right?" She pulled a compact from her purse, opening it to examine her eyes in the mirror. "No."

"What’s really wrong?" His voice was soft and velvety, like Burt Lancaster’s in Atlantic City. She wondered what the priest looked like; maybe he was young, perhaps handsome and—

–stop it right now, you're bordering on pathetic.

She almost rose but hesitated for some reason, and in that moment the soothing male voice on the other side said, "Please, ma'am—uh, miss—if you can, try to forget that you’re talking to a priest. I know that sounds trivial but you might be surprised how much it helps some people. You could pretend I'm a close friend—" "—don't have any real close friends—” “—then your mother or father, maybe a sister—" "—my parents are dead and I don't—" She blinked, realizing something. True, she had no siblings, had been an only child– —but she did have sisters, nonetheless.

In restaurants, in the lobbies of movie theaters, standing in the checkout line at the grocery store or wandering the aisles of video rental stores twenty minutes before closing, they were there, her sisters, waiting for something that would probably never come along, waiting alone, always looking toward a place not imagined by the beautiful or ugly, a spartan, isolated place reserved for the plain, for those never noticed, not bothered with; every so often their eyes would meet her own and Amanda would detect a glint of recognition in their gaze: I know just how you feel and just what you're going through, and I'd smile if I could but it’d probably look awkward, if not absurd, so I’ll just go on my way and promise you that I’ll remember your face, one much like my own, and I’ll wish you well, and good luck, you'll need it.

Then it was through the checkout, down the next video aisle, into the darkness of the movie theater, or out of the dining room and into the night, never speaking, never allowing for a moment of tenderness, keep that guard up because it's all you've got, and it should be enough, that guard, but sometimes it wasn't, sometimes it slipped and something painful leaked inside, or something ugly slipped out—

–she was snapped out of her reverie by the ghost of her voice.

"When I was a child my mother used to play this one record over and over, I don't know where she got it, Dad had bought the record player for me—it was one of those models that came in a carrying case, it had this really heavy arm—but Mom, she had this one record, the only one she owned, an old ‘78, a Nat King Cole song called ‘There Will Never Be Another You’ or something like that. It was one of the sappiest songs I ever heard, I never understood why she liked it so much. But she did, she loved it, and she used to have a few shots of whiskey after my dad went to bed, then she'd play that record over and over, until she got this dreamy look on her face, sitting there in her chair and listening to that song and pretending she wasn't who she was. Sometimes I could see it in her face, that wish. She was someone else and the song wasn't on a record, it was being sung to her by some handsome lover come to court her, to ask for her hand and take her away to a better life than the one she had, the kind of life she'd dreamed of when she was the age I am now. I used to sneak downstairs and watch her do this, and I'd laugh to myself, you know? I'd laugh at her because I knew that my life was going to turn out differently, I'd never be so stupid as to wind up marrying a man who didn't really love me like a husband should but I stayed with him anyway because that's what the Church told me I was supposed to do. I'd never do that. I'd never spend my days working around the house, doing the dishes and the laundry and the dusting, having no life of my own, no hobbies, no interests, spending half the afternoon fixing dinner, then half the evening cleaning up afterward, only finding time for myself after everyone went to bed and I could sip my whiskey and play a goddamn record by Nat King Cole about there never being another me. I mean, I was just a kid, I was only in grade school, and Mom was old and used up and kind of funny at those times. But now it's twenty years later and here I am, just like her– hell, I even have that record of hers! It’s the only thing that was really hers that I have, just like my dad’s old straight-razor. A couple of award-winning keepsakes, huh? I look at these things of theirs, then I look at my life and...I try to keep the bad feelings at bay but sometimes it doesn't work. I've turned into her. There's no man who loves me, all I've got is my work, and instead of whiskey and Nat King Cole I've got two weak cocktails on Friday night after work and Jane Eyre or well-thumbed collections of poetry or a ton of videotapes, most of them romantic comedies. My God, if I had any kids they'd be laughing at me now, sneaking down after I think they're asleep and watching Mom get all teary-eyed over a book or movie or poem. They'd look at me and laugh and say, 'Look at her, she thinks she's Katherine Hepburn or something.' Most of the time I can get by but on nights like tonight I...I feel so lonely I could scream, so I tell myself that at least there's my job, at least there's a place I can go where I won't have to think about how I feel, except now I work with a bunch of other people, most of them women—and younger than me—and they all want to tell me about their love lives. 'You've got a kind way about you,' they say, or 'You're such a good listener.'

"Oh God, when I hear them going on about their love lives, how it's so hard being in a relationship because they don't agree on...on what kinds of toppings to get on a pizza or who should make the first move or how truthful they should be or why they don't feel comfortable making a serious commitment just yet...when I hear all this, I really want to slap them sometimes, you know? They have no idea how it feels to be the 'nice' girl who's always there, always willing to listen, the girl you can call anytime because she's always home, who's friendly and reliable like an old dog or five bucks from Grandma in your birthday card every year. I know I'm not the most stunning woman ever to walk the face of the Earth, but...." She reached into her purse for a tissue to wipe some of the perspiration off her face. Unable to find one, she kept searching around while she spoke.

"It's amazing how relaxed a man can be when he's in the presence of a woman he thinks doesn't need or want passion. I don't know how many times I've had a guy I know make a mock pass at me, then we'll both laugh like it was no big thing. I'm not feeling sorry for myself, that's too damned easy, and I know that I'm plain, but the thing is, because I'm plain, I'm safe. And safe means being rendered sexless."

She took a breath, weighing the truth of that word.

"Sexless. And sometimes I'd like to pull all these people aside who are so overwrought about their shaky sex lives and whisper that word to them, because it's a feeling they'll never know. Because with all their whining and crying and bitching and all their melodramatic romantic suffering, they'll always be able to find someone who wants them, even if it's just for one night. And I'd like to know how it feels from their side, just once. To be wanted that way just once, to be that beautiful for just one night."

She looked toward the small tinted glass separating her face from the priest's, caught sight of her face, saw the azure eyes, and remembered the other woman's screams.

"It hurts, Father. Sometimes it physically hurts! I don't know how but I...I did something tonight, caused something to happen. I didn't mean for her to get hurt, to suffer like she did, but I—" The words clogged in her throat when her hand brushed against something inside of her purse. Something small. Soft. Moist. And round. "What is it?" asked the faceless priest. Amanda couldn't answer. She opened the top of her purse wider, then slowly looked down inside, tilting it toward the dim light. Then she saw them.

Saw them and gasped and snapped closed her purse and leapt from the confessional and ran down the aisle sobbing, the sound of her grief echoing off the wide arches above as she kept running, wanting to rip the purse off her shoulder and throw it away and never look inside again, wanting to close her eyes—not her eyes, not hers at all, just different eyes in her head—close them forever and not have to face her reflection or see the way other people looked at her, close the eyes and make everything go away, deny that what had happened was real and make everything better by that denial but she knew it was true and didn't understand why, and now she was outside the church, running down the stone stairs, the priest following and calling for her to stop, please, stop, but she couldn't, she was too frightened as she threw herself in the car and flung the purse into the back seat, slammed the door, and pulled away, the houses and street signs blurring as she sped past, lights melting, images flowing into one another like paint on an artist's canvas, blues into tears into yellows into aches into reds—

...Talking of Michelangelo....

–into greens into curses and back to blues, signs guiding her way, STOP, YIELD, ONE WAY, ROAD CLOSED AHEAD, rounding the corner, finding detours, familiar trees, lonely trees and this empty street, dark houses, dirty fences, take a breath, there you go, calm down, take another breath, slow down, breathe in, out, in, out, that's good, that's a good girl, slow it down, pull it over, close to the curb, there ya go, here we are, home sweet, ignition off, keys out, all stopped, all safe, alone, alone, alone.

She stared at the front of her house, then turned around and lifted her purse as if she had only—

–only—

–only one way to know for sure. She took a deep breath, exhaled, then opened her purse and looked inside. Silence; stillness. She calmly reached in and took them out, holding one in each hand like a jeweler examining uncut diamonds. They were still quite moist, sheened in corneal fluid. No sparkle now. But still a striking enough hazel. She felt a pang of remorse, for until this moment she'd never realized how pretty her old eyes had been. "God, I'm gonna miss you," she whispered.

Then looked up into the night sky, into the depths of a cold, unanswering, indifferent heaven, where no angel of the plain-faced looked back down.

4. Discards

One afternoon, shortly after moving back home, she had wandered down to a local flea market and found a table covered with dolls. Among them was a set of mismatched nesting dolls ("Matryoshka dolls," said the old woman sitting behind the table. “You must always call them by their proper name."); the largest was the size and shape of a gourd, the second largest was almost pyramid-shaped, the next was an oval, the fourth like a pear, and the last resembled an egg. What surprised her was that each of them, despite their disparate shapes, was able to fit neatly inside the next, and the next, and so on, until there was only the original matryoshka holding all the rest inside.

She carefully examined the largest doll, somewhat shaken that its face bore a certain resemblance to her own. The artist had captured not only the basics of her face but its subtleties, as well: the way the corners of her eyes scrinched up when she was smiling but didn't want anyone to know what she was smiling about, the mischievous pout of her mouth when she had good news to tell and was bursting for someone to ask the right question so she could blurt it out, the curve of her cheekbones that looked almost regal when she chose to accent them with just the right amount of rouge—all these details leapt out at her, impressive and enigmatic, their craftsmanship nothing short of exquisite, as if the hand which painted them had been blessed by God.

She looked away for a moment, then looked back; no, she hadn't imagined it. The thing did look a little like her.

As she was paying for the set, the old woman behind the table told her, "The old Russian mystics claimed that the matryoshka had certain powers, that if a person believed strongly enough in the scene the dolls portrayed when taken apart and set side-by-side-by-side, then it would come true. A lot of old-country matchmakers used to fashion matryoshkas for the women of their village who were trying to find a husband and start their own families. It's said that someone created a set for Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt that showed her marrying Nicholas II and having several children."

"Wouldn't it be nice if that were true?" said Amanda.

"But this set here, I have no idea what someone would want with it. Especially a young girl like you. None of the dolls resemble one another. It's like a bunch of riffraff, discards. Though it's odd, isn't it, how all of them fit together so well?"

"I like discards," Amanda replied. "It's nice to think that even the unwanted can find others like themselves and become a family." "But these're all women." "Then they're sisters. A family of nothing but sisters." The old woman nodded her head. "I like that. I like that right down to the ground." Amanda smiled. "Me too."

5. Galatea and Pygmalion

Once back inside her house after fleeing the church, Amanda quickly put the eyes in a large-mouthed mason jar containing a mixture of water and alcohol, then set the jar on the top shelf of the upstairs linen closet. She stood for a moment, watching them bob around, turning this way, then that, one eye looking toward the front while the other glanced behind it; finally they looked at her, then slowly, almost deliberately, turned toward each other.

Hey, babe, haven't I seen you somewhere before?

Why, yes, sexy, you do look sort of familiar.

Amanda closed the door, leaning her head against the frame. She gave up trying to invent a rational explanation because there wasn't one.

She went into the bathroom and washed her face. Looking up into the mirror, she stared at her new eyes. They were so perfect, so sparkling and bright, eyes that would cause anyone to stop and take notice, eyes that gave her face a luster it had never possessed before, eyes that would make people realize that maybe this particular package wasn't so plain, after all.

Then she remembered the woman's bloody face as it came through the window of the pub and at once cursed herself for being so narcissistic. She blinked, then took one last glance at herself—

–her nose.

Ohgod, her nose. It was different. Not so wide, so pug anymore; it was slender and perfectly angled, not rounded on the end but sharp like– —like—

–like Sandy Wilson's nose. Sandy, who was the receptionist at the office, who'd gone out with half the men working there, men who smiled at her every morning as they passed by her desk, and Amanda began to shake as she remembered this afternoon when she was leaving she'd looked at Sandy and thought: The reason her face looks so good, so delicate and chiseled and playful, is because of her nose, it's a really sexy nose, it accents her features without drawing attention to itself and makes her face seem all the more friendly and God, what I wouldn't give to have—

–she covered it with her hands, hands that seemed to be folded in prayer, or were clamping down to rip this thing off her face so she could stand here and watch her old one grow back, and for a moment the image struck her as funny but she didn't laugh—

–she whirled around and went out into the hall and yanked open the door of the linen closet, looking up at the jar—

–her old eyes had company.

Slamming the door, her heart triphammering against her ribs, she ran downstairs and grabbed her purse and dumped its contents onto the kitchen table, frantically sifting through the debris until she found her small phone number/address book, then quickly looked up Sandy's home phone number, grabbed the receiver off the wall, and dialed the number. A voice—not Sandy's—answered on the third ring. "H-HELLO?" Whoever it was sounded nervous and panicked, damn near hysterical. "Is...May I speak with Sandy, please?"

Amanda heard two other voices in the background, one of them Sandy's, the other an older man's, probably Sandy's father because she still lived with her parents, didn't she, she was only twenty and why in God's name was she wailing like that?

"There's b-b-been an accident," said Sandy's mother, her voice breaking. "Please call back tomorrow."

Click. Amanda pulled the receiver away from her ear, stared at it for a moment, then slowly started to hang up– —and saw her hands. Slender, with long, loving fingers; artist's fingers.

She remembered the woman who'd been sitting on a bench in the small park behind the Altman museum downtown a few days ago, sketching that incredible sculpture of those grieving women that was attracting so much attention lately. Several people had gathered to watch what this artist was doing. She'd been in her early thirties, with strawberry-blonde hair, lovely in a hardened, earthy way. Amanda had stood unnoticed among the admirers—mostly men—staring at first the woman s face, then her thick but not unattractive neck, and, finally, her hands.

Her strong yet supple, smooth hands....

Amanda fell against the kitchen table shuddering, the contents of her stomach churning, and tried very, very hard not to imagine what was—or rather, wasn't—dangling from the ends of that woman's arms right this second.

Back in the bathroom, she looked at her face again.

The lips this time, full and moist and red and alluring as hell.

Jesus Christ, whose lips are they?

Numbed, she checked the jar.

Getting pretty crowded in there.

She filled a portable cooler with ice and water and rubbing alcohol, pried the hands out of the jar and tossed them into the cooler; they hit the ice with a sickening, dead plop! and lay there like desiccated starfish.

She slammed closed the lid, then vomited.

Over the next two hours, it only got worse.

Her legs were next, model's legs, long and slender and shiny, with extraordinarily subtle muscle tone. Amanda wondered who she'd seen them on, and where, and what the woman must look like now.

Wondered, then wept.

As she did with everything else:

Breasts, full and firm, even perky, with tan aureoles so precisely rounded they seemed painted on, nipples so pink and pointy, and nowhere were there any blue veins visible on their surface, only a few clusters of strategically placed freckles that fanned outward from the center of her chest, creating teasing shadows of cleavage; then her hips were next, not the too-wide, too-sharp hips she'd been born with, not the hips that made it almost impossible for her to find blue jeans that fit comfortably, but hard, rounded hips, not wide at all but not too small, either, lovely hips, girlish hips, God-you-don't-look-your-age hips and a now-size-8 waist—

–the cooler filled up quickly and she had to go to the bathtub, adding water, ice, and alcohol to keep everything moist and sanitary—

–next was the stomach, not the slightly sagging thing she'd been carrying around for the last ten years but a deliciously flattened tummy, its taut, aerobicized, Twenty—Minute-Workout muscles forming a dramatically titillating diamond that actually undulated when she moved, a bikini stomach if ever there was one, abs of steel; then came her jaw, elegant and chiseled, the jaw of a princess, Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday; her neck became slightly longer, thinner, sculpted, losing the threat of a double chin that had been hovering for the last couple of years, the muscles flowing down toward the sharp, perfect “V” in the center of her collarbone, something she'd always thought was unbearably sexy—

–the bathtub was quickly filling but that was all right, there couldn't be too much left at this point—

–then, after a while, her bone structure began to change: ribs not so thick, shoulders not so wide or bony, knees not so awkward and knobby—

–the rest of her body began altering itself with each new addition, her features and limbs molding themselves to each other like sculptor's clay, an organic symbiosis, her forced evolution, heading toward physical perfection until, at last, her skin itself blossomed unwrinkled and creamy, sealing around everything like a sheet of cellophane.

Amanda was sitting on her bed when she felt the last of it take place, then rose very slowly—the pain of each change had grown more and more intense, the last few minutes becoming almost unbearable—and looked at herself in the full-length mirror hanging on the inside of her closet door, not sure whether to smile or simply die. She had become both her own Galatea and Pygmalion. No other woman she'd ever met or seen could compare with what stared back at her from the mirror. She was completed, breathtaking, beautiful.

More than beautiful; she was Beauty.

And Beauty always has her way.

She told herself not to think about it, then went into the bathroom and pulled a bottle of prescription painkillers from the medicine chest, downing two of them before turning to face everything.

The remnants of Old Amanda.

There was arranging to be done.

By the time she finished there were four full Mason jars, as well as a full bathtub, sink, cooler, and toilet tank. The bones went into the laundry hamper along with several wet towels, and the skin, well-soaked, was draped over the shower curtain rod. She nodded, thinking to herself that it all looked very tidy, indeed.

She suspected that her mind would crumble soon—how could it not, after all this?—but hopefully the painkillers would kick in and she'd be nicely loopy before it got too bad.

She looked once more at her reflection in the mirror and thought, Why not enjoy it while you can?

Then it hit her: How in hell was she going to explain this at work on Monday?

Like my new clothes? I think they make me look like a new person, don't you?

She rubbed her temples, realizing that she had chosen to keep her own hair.

She liked that very much; liked it right down to the ground.

The pleasant, seductive numbness of the painkillers began to pour over her body, and she decided to go lie down for a little while.

She was just putting her head onto the pillow when she noticed that all six matryoshkas were displayed across the top of her dresser. She tried to remember when she'd taken them apart and arranged them this way.

She stared at them, noting after a few seconds that their shapes were now oddly uniform, all like gourds growing progressively smaller, right down to the baby who was no longer a baby but Amanda as she'd been at four years old; the next showed her as she'd been this morning; the next, as she'd been a few hours ago; the others, so silent and still, illustrated the rest of the stages of her transformation, the last and largest of them a sublime reflection of the woman who now lay across the room staring at it.

She felt so soft...

...In the room the women come and go...

...and it was so good to feel this soft, and sexy...

...Talking of Michelangelo...

...no guard now, no hardness, my sisters, I understand how you feel...

...a breath, a sigh, then—drained and exhausted—she felt herself falling asleep—

–in the room the women come and go—

–and was startled back to wakefulness by sounds in the upstairs hallway; slow, soft, almost imperceptible sounds; tiptoeing sounds.

She breathed slowly, watching her breasts rise and fall in the shadows, imagining some lover passionately kissing them, tonguing the nipples—

–the front door opened, then closed.

She sat up, holding her breath.

Looking around the room, she saw that her closet door was now closed; it had been open when she’d fallen asleep, and her bedroom door, closed before, was now standing wide open.

Jesus Christ, she hadn’t been out for very long, just a few seconds, wasn’t it? Just a moment or two but the time didn’t really matter a damn, ten minutes or ten seconds because someone had been in here while she was asleep! She jumped off the bed and ran into the hall, saw that the bathroom light was on, and kicked open the door. No one was inside– —but the sink was empty. Just like the bathtub. And the laundry hamper. And the toilet tank and the portable cooler and all of the mason jars. She stormed back into her bedroom and snapped on the overhead light, then flung open her closet door.

She stared at her wardrobe and knew instinctively that something was missing; she couldn’t say what, specifically, had been taken, but she knew that the whole didn’t match up quite right.

She sat down on the bed and stared at her reflection in the mirror hanging on the inside of the closet door.

Damn if she wasn’t still a stunner.

Then she saw the matryoshka dolls behind her. No longer uniform in shape, they had returned to their original, disparate forms—a gourd, a pyramid, an oval, a pear, an egg, a seashell—but each of them now had one thing in common, one characteristic they hadn’t shared before:

None of them had a face.

Amanda took a deep breath, then checked the clock.

It was only twelve-thirty. The clubs didn’t close for another two hours and she wanted to be seen, to be admired, to feel pretty and wanted on this night.

It was nice to actually have the option for once.

She thought she knew what was happening, maybe. Maybe it would only be a matter of time, less than a few hours, and maybe she had all the time in the world and would be this gorgeous for the rest of her life, but either way she was going to make this evening count, goddammit!

She dressed quickly, purposefully choosing a pair of old jeans and a blouse that she knew she’d outgrown over a year ago.

Both fit wonderfully, hugging her form tightly, accentuating every wonderful curve. She threw an old vest on as well—which did wonders for emphasizing her bust—then unbuttoned not one, not two, but (for the first time in her life) three top buttons of her blouse, showing just enough of her freckles and cleavage and the slope of her breasts to make anyone want to see more. She checked her face in the bathroom mirror, under the harsh, unforgiving glow of the fluorescent light. No wrinkles, no bags, no blemishes; she needed no makeup. She looked...delicious. That made her smile, and brought a sparkle to her eyes. “What say we go out there and win one for the Gipper, eh?” She giggled, then Sparkle Eyes Amanda flowed out into the night.