Monstrous Affections (28 page)

She sounded sad, but what did Mitchell know?

“Nothing went wrong, did it?” said Trudy.

“Traffic,” said Lesley, “was the shits. Wouldn’t move faster than
a slow walk south of Tenth Line. I was afraid it would wear off and
she’d wake up at a red light.”

“But it didn’t,” said Trudy. “She didn’t.”

“Would I be here if it did?”

Stefan came out of the kitchen with a tall glass of wine. Lesley
took it and sipped at it. “The cameras?” she said.

“All taken care of,” said Stefan.

“And — ?”

“Upstairs,” said Stefan. “Right above you.”

Lesley started like something bit her, and looked around and
then up. Her eyes were wide, then narrow. They weren’t smiling.
“Hello,” she said after a few seconds. She held up her wine glass and
tinkled it back and forth. “Want a sip?”

“He doesn’t drink,” said Trudy.

“I didn’t ask you,” said Lesley, not taking her eyes off Mitch.
“Well, Mitch? How about it?”

Mitchell moved to the spiral staircase and climbed down. He
stood face-to-face with Lesley Woolfe. She stood five inches taller
than he did and she still did not smile. But she offered him the wine
glass, and he took it by the stem. He swirled the red liquid, looked
at it, sniffed it like he’d seen rich men do on television. It smelled a
bit rotten, but Mitchell sipped at it anyway. It tasted sharper than it
smelled, but it wasn’t so bad. He took another sip, bigger this time.

“Now,” she said, her eyes widening and her nostrils flaring,
“we both die.” She paused for a heartbeat. “Poison,” she said. “Very
painful.”

Mitchell dropped the wine glass. It hit the side of a table then
clinked on the tile floor, and somehow it didn’t break. Mitchell
stepped back, staring at the wine spill spreading along the skinny
grout lines, holding onto his chest, drawing a breath.

Lesley finally smiled. Smiling, she threw her head back, so the
dark geometries etched on her throat were in full view, and laughed,
then twisted her head to the side and she smiled even more, and
looked back at Mitchell, and said:

“Mmmm, look at him. So scared of dying.”

“Why wouldn’t he be?” said Trudy. She looked at Mitchell. “She
was kidding.”

Mitchell had worked that out. About the same time that he
worked out that he hated Lesley Woolfe. He bent down and picked
up the wine glass, and looked around. The faces looking back at him
might as well have been smooth skin, no eyes or mouths or noses,
staring in blank, blind disapproval. Like mannequins.

One of the mannequins came over with a roll of paper towels
and bent to his feet, spreading them over the spill so the wine
stain blossomed in fractal majesty over the bumps and divots. The
mannequin turned its head and presented its blank face to Mitchell.
Then it swiped up the paper towel and crumpled in its hand, and
replaced it with a fresh one.

“What’s going on with him?” said a mannequin from the living
room.

“I think,” said the voice of Stefan, “that he’s having an episode.
Good fucking going, Les.”

Another voice: “Is this, like — dangerous?”

“Of course it’s dangerous,” said Lesley fucking Woolfe’s voice.
“That’s why we chose him. Delectable Delilah. For Dangerous
Mitchell. That’s the point.”

Someone giggled. Someone else said, “Shut the fuck up,” and
someone else said, in a whisper, “Will you fucking
look
at him?” and
then the mannequins fell quiet.

Mitchell took a breath and closed his eyes. This had happened
before: often enough that he’d been to doctors for it. They had tried
drugs and other therapies but mostly drugs, until Mitchell started
gaining weight and breaking out and doctors started worrying about
his penis maybe not developing properly. His mom finally went to a
woman who taught transcendental meditation out of her basement,
and Mitchell had learned a mantra, and at bad times he found that
helped. So he started to say his mantra, which was a secret, and he
said it again and again with his eyes closed until he thought he could
open his eyes.

Stefan looked back at him from a dining room chair that he’d
pulled over. The rest of the mannequins — the people — were gone.
But Stefan was there, arms folded over his skinny chest, hard to say
whether he was smiling or not.

“Where did everybody go?” asked Mitchell.

“Lesley took them across the hall.”

“Mr. Piccininni’s apartment.” Mitchell didn’t know Stefan had a
key. “What for?”

“A little show and tell,” said Stefan, “before the show. You doing
okay now?”

“What are they looking at?” said Mitchell.

Stefan motioned over his shoulder to the Media Centre. Mitchell
looked. It was a view from another security camera. But this one
wasn’t in the lobby — it looked to be mounted on the ceiling of a
bedroom filled with nice dark furniture and with the painting of
a waterfall on one wall. There was a big double bed on the far side
of the room, covered in a thick comforter. Something was moving
under it, just a little bit. Mitchell stepped closer to get a look, but
the picture was fuzzy and then someone stepped in front of it and
he couldn’t see the bed. Then other people stepped around the bed:
Shelly, the bald guy . . . Lesley Woolfe, her arms crossed and chin
pressed down against her collarbone so it wrinkled and puckered . . .
Trudy.

Trudy stepped around between Lesley Woolfe and what looked
like a dresser, then leaned over the bed. She looked at Lesley and
said something, and Lesley shrugged, and Trudy reached over to the
comforter, and lifted the edge of it, and with her other hand covered
her mouth and her eyes went wide. But she smiled so whatever she
saw must have been okay.

“You’re welcome,” said Stefan.

“Pardon?”

Stefan leaned over to him. “Look at that grin. You know what’s
coming, don’t you, pal?”

Mitchell looked at Stefan, who was grinning broadly. “It was
supposed to be a surprise. That’s what Lesley wanted to do. Just
bring you in there, and
voila
! Leave you to your devices. But I know
you, Mitch. You don’t like surprises. They make you squirrelly.”

“Squirrelly.”

Stefan wiggled his fingers by his ears. “You know. Buggy.
Nutzoid.”

“Oh.”

“I’d have told you sooner,” he said. “But I figured it was better
to wait until at least the police had talked to you. You know, just in
case. You know the saying: ‘what you don’t know — ’”

“‘ — can’t hurt you.’”

Stefan pointed at Mitchell with his index finger, twisting at the
wrist, and he winked. “Just lookin’ out for you, bro.”

Mitchell pointed back at Stefan. “Back at you,” he said, and Stefan
laughed.

Stefan reached over the back of the sofa and picked up a remote,
and turned the Media Centre off.

“Just try to act surprised,” he said.

“Okay.” Mitchell stepped around the sofa and sat down beside
Stefan, who inched away but kept smiling.

“You’re doing better now,” he said, “without the big group.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s part of it with you, isn’t it? Big groups.” Stefan shook his
head. “Man, high school must just be hell for you.”

“Yeah.” Mitchell looked into the empty wine glass, which he was
still holding onto. “Just hell.”

“That where you first met her?”

“Her?”

“Her. Delilah.”

“Oh. No. Not high school.”

“Grade school?”

“Yeah. Grade Three. She was pretty and strong. She stuck up for
me when these guys tried to beat me up.”

Stefan let out a long, low whistle. “Grade Three. That’s pretty
serious.”

Mitchell shrugged, starting to feel impatient. He’d told Stefan
about all this stuff weeks ago, in the chat room. “Where’d you
meet?” he asked.

“Me?”

“You. You and Trudy. You meet in Grade Three?”

Stefan grinned and slunk down on the sofa. “Oh no. Not Grade
Three. Not my Trudy. We met through the news group. Started
posting on the same topics, you know? Started IMing each other,
built up, you know, a rapport. We actually saw each other face-to-face the first time Lesley called a meeting. After fucking AOL shut
us down.”

Mitchell held the wine glass up to his eye. The distortion at the
base of the glass made the very narrow stem seem huge, a concentric
storm of glassy circles. The middle, though, was perfectly clear. He
could see the fabric of his jeans through it, made tiny by the four-inch lens the stem made. “She’s beautiful,” he said.

Stefan nodded. “Trudy’s a hottie,” he said, staring at the blank
Media Centre screen. “She’s also real compatible, you get what I
mean. Not every woman knows what to do with a guy like me . . . But
she can be a fucking cunt sometimes. Not like your Delilah.”

“My Delilah.” Mitchell turned the wine glass onto its side. He
examined the stem, looked through it. Everything was squashed
down and stretched out: it made the living room unrecognizable.

“My Dee-Lie-La,” said Stefan. “She’s sweet. So fuckin’ pure. Can’t
fault your taste. Man, she was a sweetie. I can’t tell you how it was to
hold her, to put my arms over her shoulder . . . the feel of that sweet
butt, the way she went limp when I put the cloth over her face . . .
Knowing, man, knowing she was for you.”

“For me.”

“I was sorry to let Lesley take her, but that was the deal, and she
wasn’t for me. But you. In a few minutes — man, you’ll be able to live
your every dream.”

Mitchell held the glass in two hands, brought the stem closer to
his eyes, so he could see the whole world. It looked like nothing he’d
ever even dreamed. “She’s not a cunt,” he said softly.

“What?” Stefan leaned forward. “What are you doing? You are
so fucked up, Mitch. It’s what we like about you. I can’t tell you how
long it took us to find a fucked-up kid like you.”

Mitchell bent the stem. Except that it didn’t bend because it was
glass; it snapped, right at the base. He turned to Stefan, who was
right beside him, and lifted what was left of the glass and jammed
the stem into the inner tear duct of his right eye, past there against
something that was probably bone. Stefan shouted “Fuck!” and
grabbed at him, but Stefan was a fair bit weaker than Mitchell
Owens.

A moment later, Mitchell wiped his hands on his jeans and pulled
the TV remote out from underneath Stefan’s twitching thigh. He
turned on the Media Centre.

The bedroom was different now. The comforter had been pulled
aside, and it was all twisted to the right of the bed. The bald man was
sprawled across the under sheet. He was clutching his face and there
looked to be blood coming out. He was rolling slowly back and forth.
The bedside lamp had been knocked over — or maybe thrown — and
beside it, Shelly was slumped, her neck at a funny angle. The blond
fellow was on the other side of the bed, in the corner, his shoulders
hunched and his head down. He was trembling. Mitchell looked at
the remote, and pressed a couple of buttons, and he was looking at
the parking garage elevator door, which was opening. Mrs. Lesley
Woolfe was in there. Her eyes were wide and she looked like she was
concentrating. When the door finished opening, she stuck her head
out, looking to the left and the right, and then hurried off camera.
He clicked again and again, but nowhere could he find any sign of
Trudy.

Mitchell looked up. Somebody was pounding on the door to the
apartment: pounding and pounding and pounding. Pushing Stefan’s
head aside, so he was lying on the sofa rather than sort of sitting up,
Mitchell went to the door and looked through the peep-hole. “Oh,”
he said. “You.”

He opened the door, and Delilah Franken pushed through. “Oh
thank God! Oh thank God!” she said and fell into the apartment,
and Mitchell put his arms over her shoulders. She smelled awful,
like she’d peed herself, and her streaky-blonde hair was matted, and
he could see that there was blood on her shirt. “Call the police!” she
said. “Call the police!”

Mitchell helped her into the apartment. He steered her away
from the sofa, but sat her down in the dining room and stepped
away. She looked at him with wide eyes and a frown, like she was
mad but not exactly.

“Y-you,” she said. “Mitchell . . . Mitchell Owens? Your mom and
my mom were friends. You remember me — right?”

Mitchell nodded. “Delilah Franken,” he said.

She leaned forward, wiped a greasy strand of hair from her eyes,
and with shaking voice spoke slowly. “Mitchell, I don’t know what
you’re doing in a place like this, but I am
so
glad that you’re here.”

Mitchell didn’t know about that: she didn’t look particularly
happy. She looked like she was . . .

Concentrating.

“Now you have to listen carefully,” said Delilah. “The people in
the next apartment kidnapped me. They’re some fucking internet
sex cult. I think they planned the fucking thing, for a long time . . .
I don’t know, but that’s what I think. But whatever — they grabbed
me from behind and knocked me out, and took me to a farmhouse
somewhere north of here, and they kept me there for three days.
Then they injected me with something and brought me here. I got
away — I hit a lady with a lamp, and scratched this guy’s eyes, and
a bunch of them just yelled and took off. One of the women locked
herself in the bathroom and she didn’t seem to be coming out. But
I’m afraid she might come . . .” She looked up suddenly. “Shit. Is the
door locked?”

Mitchell went over to the door. “I got to call the police,” said
Delilah, and Mitchell shouted, “Okay,” as he looked through the
peephole again. The hallway was empty, but the door on the opposite
side stood ajar. “Where’s the phone?” said Delilah.

Mitchell didn’t answer. He watched for a moment longer, then
opened the door and stepped to the other side.

“Oh. Never mind. I see one by the sofa,” she said.

Mitchell shut the door behind him and crossed the hall between
the two apartments. He ignored the shout of surprise that came
from behind him. It was not a shout that interested him. It was, in
spite of what Stefan and Mrs. Lesley Woolfe and the rest of them
thought about him and his infatuation, a shout that had interested
him less and less over the past few weeks.