Obsession: Tales of Irresistible Desire (26 page)

When Oliver imagined his wife and her lovers, he took her place in the fantasies, feeling the strength and the rough hands on his body. Her men became his hero, every one of them was the gardener’s son—his Kyle reimagined. He wrapped an arm around Hopkins’ shoulder, locking the man’s neck in the crook of his elbow. “Never of her.”

He leaned forward and put his lips on Hopkins’s. The hive swarming at the back of his throat and deep within his belly grew to frenzy. Hopkins’ lips were warm but rigid. Strong hands pushed, and then they shoved. Oliver stumbled back, nearly fell and then regained his balance.

“What’s wrong with you fucking people?” Hopkins yelled. He stepped forward and landed a fist on Oliver’s jaw. The pain and concussion of the blow startled him but it was also exciting.

You liked that? You fucking freak? You rich boy piece of shit?

Kyle had struck him all of those years ago. Shouting obscenities and condemnations, the older boy punched and kicked and spat.

After their beautiful time together, while the resonating pleasure of their encounter still sang in his body, Oliver could make no sense of the abuse. Confused, Oliver fled the shack. He raced through the trees and the shrubs and into the waiting hive of bees.

Oliver tested his jaw, ran a hand over its pained arch. And the first of the white bees flew free of his mouth. It tested the air, bobbing and dipping with wings all but invisible from the speed of their beating. Another followed. Hopkins shouted a curse and turned to run, but he was too close to the door and clipped his brow on the jamb. The blow sent him back a step.

Oliver’s mouth ached from Hopkins’ fist and from the abrading wings and bodies of the emerging swarm. Dozens of the white bees flew from his mouth to fill the gloom. Across the room, Hopkins cradled his forehead, gazing in fearful wonder at the buzzing squadron. One of the white creatures landed on his cheek.

It stung.

The workman’s eyes grew wide; he choked out a plea, and then slapped at the insect, crushing it to a smear of liquid on his already swelling cheek. Oliver watched calmly, his system and mind soothed by the rhythmic beating of thousands of wings. Hopkins backed to the wall, hands up, covering his face, as a vague mumble of panic tripped over his lips.

Oliver lifted his arms and threw a look over his shoulder to the corner by the crates, suddenly alive with activity. A thunderous buzzing filled the room, and Oliver beckoned his swarm.

Oliver walked back to the bed, but in his mind he was running through brush and speckled sunlight.

His face burned with bee sting and throbbed with the beating he’d taken from his former hero. Nearly blind, he stumbled across his backyard to the kitchen door and tripped over the threshold. He cried, then screamed.

A fresh pain shot along his palm, and Oliver looked down to find a stray bee squirming in a gout of pearl-colored fluid. The trapped insect jabbed its barb into the meat at the base of his thumb, protesting its capture.

His father appeared, hovering over him, shouting about Oliver’s stupidity. Oliver held his hand out to show his father the monster that still clung to him, and his father fell silent . . .

Your dad showed me this you fucking freak. And you like it? You rich boy piece of shit. I oughtta kill you and your faggot father.

The old man looked out the kitchen window, over the backyard and perhaps all the way to the back of the property where the tool shed stood. Seeming dazed, red with flush, he told Oliver to wash his hands.

Wash your hands, Boy.

Ignoring his son’s tears and pleas, Oliver’s father walked out the back door. A housekeeper appeared moments later, drawn by Oliver’s cries. She wasted no time in helping him to his feet and to her car. She drove Oliver to the hospital where he spent the night in pain, hallucinating about his father and Kyle and bees.

By the time he was released the following morning, the gardener had packed his family up and left the estate. Oliver never saw Kyle again.

In the dark room, Oliver reclined on the bed. Naked, aching and swollen, he let the roar of wings clear the thoughts from his head. Painful lumps covered his chest and his belly; his cock was raw and misshapen by a dozen stings. A tear of semen dripped from the welted head and upon touching his stomach came to life with fierce movement, wings flapping and tickling his skin before pulling away to join the droning swarm above him. The small white bees speckled the air, crawled over the walls and dove from ceiling to floor. Their scent—bitter honey—filled his nose. On the nightstand next to him, the amber bottle stood empty.

He rolled his head, his swollen ear stinging when it touched the soft cotton pillowcase. Above the cases of liquor in the corner of the room, the ceiling already puckered with the foundation of a glorious shelter. The combed base of the hive was as big around as a serving platter and as white as snow. Drones scurried over the delicate construction, furiously adding material to the nest.

Somewhere below, the party continued. Amanda would be flirting with some new man, seducing him with Oliver’s wealth, while degrading her husband with words of dissatisfaction. Here, though, none of that mattered, because, finally, he possessed something of his own, something his father’s trespass could not taint, something Amanda could not imagine or covet or take. It was wholly his. The Cortland boys proved too weak for this responsibility. But not Oliver.

Like the lovely Evelyn, he would harbor and tend to his hive. He would be their master, their mother, and their shelter.

His swarm would grow in number and strength, and by winter, the walls of the room would run with pearls of honey to be collected and stored. The two cases of bottles would never be enough to hold all of the magnificent liqueur.

“Oh please,” he whispered to the room.

Six of his drones dropped from the platinum cloud to circle above him. Each beating of their wings brought the promise of pleasure and creation. “Please,” he said again, and the white drones descended to penetrate his skin with their barbs. Agony erupted and was quickly numbed. Euphoria followed like an echo of the pain.

Beneath his hand, his anxious shaft, thick with knots, was already close to release. A sharp pain flared behind his ear. Oliver cried out, and the swarm’s number increased.

The whole world is obsessed with the Girl. She’s the smile that tricks you into throwing away your money and your life . . . the eyes that lead you on and on, and then show you death . . . the creature you give everything for and never really get . . . the being that takes everything you’ve got and gives nothing in return . . .

Fritz Leiber, Jr.

All right, I’ll tell you why the Girl gives me the creeps. Why I can’t stand to go downtown and see the mob slavering up at her on the tower, with that pop bottle or pack of cigarettes or whatever it is beside her. Why I hate to look at magazines any more because I know she’ll turn up somewhere in a brassiere or a bubble bath. Why I don’t like to think of millions of Americans drinking in that poisonous half-smile. It’s quite a story—more story than you’re expecting.

No, I haven’t suddenly developed any long-haired indignation at the evils of advertising and the national glamour-girl complex. That’d be a laugh for a man in my racket, wouldn’t it? Though I think you’ll agree there’s something a little perverted about trying to capitalize on sex that way. But it’s okay with me. And I know we’ve had the Face and the Body and the Look and what not else, so why shouldn’t someone come along who sums it all up so completely, that we have to call her the Girl and blazon her on all the billboards from Times Square to Telegraph Hill?

But the Girl isn’t like any of the others. She’s unnatural. She’s morbid. She’s unholy.

Oh, it’s 1948, is it, and the sort of thing I’m hinting at went out with witchcraft? But you see I’m not altogether sure myself what I’m hinting at, beyond a certain point. There are vampires and vampires, and not all of them suck blood.

And there were the murders, if they were murders.

Besides, let me ask you this. Why, when America is obsessed with the Girl, don’t we find out more about her? Why doesn’t she rate a Time cover with a droll biography inside? Why hasn’t there been a feature in Life or the Post? A profile in The New Yorker? Why hasn’t Charm or Mademoiselle done her career saga? Not ready for it? Nuts!

Why haven’t the movies snapped her up? Why hasn’t she been on Information, Please? Why don’t we see her kissing candidates at political rallies? Why isn’t she chosen queen of some sort of junk or other at a convention?

Why don’t we read about her tastes and hobbies, her views of the Russian situation? Why haven’t the columnists interviewed her in a kimono on the top floor of the tallest hotel in Manhattan and told us who her boyfriends are?

Finally—and this is the real killer—why hasn’t she ever been drawn or painted?

Oh, no she hasn’t. If you knew anything about commercial art you’d know that. Every blessed one of those pictures was worked up from a photograph. Expertly? Of course. They’ve got the top artists on it. But that’s how it’s done.

And now I’ll tell you the why of all that. It’s because from the top to the bottom of the whole world of advertising, news, and business, there isn’t a solitary soul who knows where the Girl came from, where she lives, what she does, who she is, even what her name is.

You heard me. What’s more, not a single solitary soul ever sees her—except one poor damned photographer, who’s making more money off her than he ever hoped to in his life and who’s scared and miserable as hell every minute of the day.

No, I haven’t the faintest idea who he is or where he has his studio. But I know there has to be such a man and I’m morally certain he feels just like I said.

Yes, I might be able to find her, if I tried. I’m not sure though— by now she probably has other safeguards. Besides, I don’t want to.

Oh, I’m off my rocker, am I? That sort of thing can’t happen in this Year of our Atom 1948? People can’t keep out of sight that way, not even Garbo?

Well, I happen to know they can, because last year I was that poor damned photographer I was telling you about. Yes, last year, in 1947, when the Girl made her first poisonous splash right here in this big little city of ours.

Yes, I knew you weren’t here last year and you don’t know about it. Even the Girl had to start small. But if you hunted through the files of the local newspapers, you’d find some ads, and I might be able to locate you some of the old displays—I think Lovelybelt is still using one of them. I used to have a mountain of photos myself, until I burned them.

Yes, I made my cut off her. Nothing like what that other photographer must be making, but enough so it still bought this whisky. She was funny about money. I’ll tell you about that.

But first picture me in 1947. I had a fourth-floor studio in that rathole the Hauser Building, catty-corner from Ardleigh Park.

I’d been working at the Marsh-Mason studios until I’d got my bellyful of it and decided to start in for myself. The Hauser Building was crummy—I’ll never forget how the stairs creaked—but it was cheap and there was a skylight.

Business was lousy. I kept making the rounds of all the advertisers and agencies, and some of them didn’t object to me too much personally, but my stuff never clicked. I was pretty near broke. I was behind on my rent. Hell, I didn’t even have enough money to have a girl.

It was one of those dark gray afternoons. The building was awfully quiet—even with the shortage they can’t half rent the Hauser. I’d just finished developing some pix I was doing on speculation for Lovelybelt Girdles and Buford’s Pool and Playground—the last a faked-up beach scene. My model had left. A Miss Leon. She was a civics teacher at one of the high schools and modeled for me on the side, just lately on speculation too. After one look at the prints, I decided that Miss Leon probably wasn’t just what Lovelybelt was looking for—or my photography either. I was about to call it a day.

And then the street door slammed four stories down and there were steps on the stairs and she came in.

She was wearing a cheap, shiny black dress. Black pumps. No stockings. And except that she had a gray cloth coat over one of them, those skinny arms of hers were bare. Her arms are pretty skinny, you know, or can you see things like that any more?

And then the thin neck, the slightly gaunt, almost prim face, the tumbling mass of dark hair, and looking out from under it the hungriest eyes in the world.

That’s the real reason she’s plastered all over the country today, you know—those eyes. Nothing vulgar, but just the same they’re looking at you with a hunger that’s all sex and something more than sex. That’s what everybody’s been looking for since the Year One—something a little more than sex.

Well, boys, there I was, along with the Girl, in an office that was getting shadowy, in a nearly empty building. A situation that a million male Americans have undoubtedly pictured to themselves with various lush details. How was I feeling? Scared.

I know sex can be frightening. That cold heart-thumping when you’re alone with a girl and feel you’re going to touch her. But if it was sex this time, it was overlaid with something else.

At least I wasn’t thinking about sex.

I remember that I took a backward step and that my hand jerked so that the photos I was looking at sailed to the floor.

There was the faintest dizzy feeling like something was being drawn out of me. Just a little bit.

That was all. Then she opened her mouth and everything was back to normal for a while. “I see you’re a photographer, mister,” she said. “Could you use a model?”

Her voice wasn’t very cultivated.

“I doubt it,” I told her, picking up the pix. You see, I wasn’t impressed. The commercial possibilities of her eyes hadn’t registered on me yet, by a long shot. “What have you done?”

Well, she gave me a vague sort of story and I began to check her knowledge of model agencies and studios and rates and what not and pretty soon I said to her, “Look here, you never modeled for a photographer in your life. You just walked in here cold.”