Punish Me with Kisses (19 page)

"It's an ugly story."

"Tell me anyway."

"OK." He was silent for a moment, then began to speak.

"At first I really wondered. Everyone was saying I must have killed her, everyone was accusing me, and I wondered if maybe they were right. I didn't remember all that much. That night was so strange, and that dope we smoked, the same stuff we found tonight in her stash, scrambled up everything in my head."

"When you arrived I was watching you. You stood still suddenly, as if you were worried, or hesitating about going in."

"Yeah. I remember that. I thought I heard something. Maybe it was the intruder. Maybe he was down there even then."

"What happened when you went inside? I only heard some snatches now and then. You danced—I saw that."

"Yeah, and then we screwed. After that we smoked quite a bit of her stuff, and then, I remember, she started getting nasty, said she wondered if I'd performed as poorly with you as I had with her. I remember saying, 'Do you have to be such a bitch, Suzie? Do you have to be such a bitch?' And I remember her smiling when I said that as if it pleased her, and then asking me: 'I really am a bitch, aren't I? I really am—right?' 'Yeah,' I said, 'and you're some piece of ass, too.' And she said: 'If I'm a bitch, then you're a dog, because only a dog would fuck a bitch.' And so I said: 'OK. I'm a dog.' And then she started in. 'Come, Fido—be a good doggy, a good doggy-
woggie
. Come here! Lap at bitch's pussy! That's a
good
dog. Oh, yes you
are
!' That sort of stuff, all that dog motif crap, until suddenly we're into this male dog, female dog routine, this weird doggy game, and it's crazy, we're crawling around on the waterbed on all fours, sniffing at each others' crotches and behinds. I try to mount her, she wriggles away, and all the while we're making these dog sounds—not barks, but little whines, snorts and growls. It's pretty funny and fairly sexy, and we're laughing away, but I wasn't sure just how funny it was to her, because even when Suzie laughed that crazy jaw-boned laugh of hers, there was something serious underneath, like maybe it was more to her than just a game. I don't know. I guess what I'm saying is that her laughter didn't ring very true that night. There was something cruel about her, too, I remember, like maybe she really did think of me as a dog.

"Funny—I could barely remember what we did right afterwards. It was very fuzzy and all I could recall was how incredibly stoned I was. But being there tonight, being in there, even though the room was empty, made it all start coming back. I could almost see us crawling around that huge waterbed, which made me seasick, I remember, the way it swayed and rippled and you never could get a steady hold. That weed of hers was really potent, and made it all unreal, like we were floating loose on a raft way out at sea, playing dog-and-bitch, or whatever she called her little game. Then later I remember she had her fingers around my neck. 'My fingers are your collar,' she said. 'My arm's your leash.' And I'm still crawling on all fours, and she's leading me toward the door. 'Bark!' she orders. 'No,' I say, 'I don't want to bark.
Someone'll
hear.' 'Good,' she says, 'let them hear. I don't give a shit. Who cares, right?
Right
?' Then we're outside and I'm flapping away at the water, and she's throwing this tennis ball at me, telling me to fetch-and-swim. 'Fetch, Fido,' she says, and, believe it or not, fetch is what I did. She turns on the pool lights, the ones under the water, and there I am swimming around in that huge aquamarine tub, swimming after a tennis ball for Christ's sake. Suddenly she's not a dog-bitch anymore—she's a
human
bitch, which was how we got started on the whole trip in the first place."

He paused and looked at Penny. "I guess you saw some of that."

She nodded. The lights of an oncoming car made streaks on the rain-soaked road.

"I must have been a pretty sorry sight. I remember feeling really nauseous, and that grass was so strong I was getting more and more stoned out. Then finally I remember grabbing the tip of the diving board with my hands, pulling myself up until just my legs were in the water. And I was still holding that damn tennis ball in my mouth. It's hard, you know, to hold a tennis ball in your mouth. Try it some time and see. I was so tired by then I couldn't even chin myself up, so I just hung there, and then I guess she saw her little game was over because she said something nasty like 'Gee, this is
really
interesting. I'm going back to bed, OK?'—something sarcastic like that. Then she went back into the cottage and turned off the pool lights, and there I was, just hanging there in the dark, feeling like a fool, with this damn tennis ball still stuck in my mouth.

"I didn't stay like that very long, maybe a few seconds. Then I spat out the ball and tried to hoist myself up. Couldn't do it, so I just let myself sink back into the water, then I swam round to the ladder, climbed out, got back on the diving board and just lay on top of it on my back. I remember the feel of that board, the rough sort of rope-like texture of it. That's when I should have left, of course, gotten on my motorcycle and charged right out of there with or without my clothes. But I didn't, I fell off—everything sort of goes blank around that point. I was wet and cold, I remember, but I didn't care. I wasn't going back into that cottage; I wasn't going to follow the bitch back in there. I remember thinking that, and then I don't know how much time went by. I heard something. Something woke me, like a dog whimpering, maybe even the sort of sound a dog might make while being fucked. I didn't know, but I could hear it was coming from the cottage, and I thought maybe she was just trying to tempt me back. I was still dazed. The dope had taken hold, and it wasn't giving me any room. And then everything's very vague. All I know is that I suddenly realized she needed help."

He stopped.

"Then what?"

"It gets sort of ugly."

"Tell me." He shook his head. "Come on," she said. "You can't stop now."

"Well, I don't remember whether she actually cried out. I do know I was in the pool again before I realized something was going on. So I guess I was on my way back in there anyway, had decided to swim leisurely back, try and clear my head, then join her on the bed again. It's then that all the madness began. I swam across, pulled myself out of the water and stumbled toward the door. Then there was that beam in my eyes, that light shining right in them. I couldn't see. 'Turn it off, Suzie,' I said. Then I was conscious there was another person in there, and, a second later, I was hit. It happened very fast. There was this moment just before he knocked me down. I don't remember what it was exactly, except that there was something strange. Anyway there was contact. I was straight-armed in the chest, and I was off balance so I went down, and then I was on the floor crawling toward the bed. The floor was all wet and—listen, you don't want to hear anymore."

"Yes, I do," she insisted.

He groaned. "I was crawling around looking for her, and everything was sticky. I was crawling on top of her, feeling for her face, and then I suddenly realized she was gurgling blood. There was water all over the place, and stickiness, and then I caught hold of those shears, and suddenly I started screaming, screaming like crazy, and then the lights came on, and the siren sounded, and you know the rest. And the thing was—I wasn't sure. They said I did it. Had I really seen that flashlight? Had someone really knocked me down? I had her blood all over me. I was holding those lousy shears. The police came and took me away, and it wasn't until the next day when I heard that you were saying you'd
seen
someone, too, that I was positive I hadn't freaked out, that that dope of hers hadn't turned me onto violence and made me kill her—" He shook his head.

"That doesn't make any sense. You must have known you hadn't done it." Penny looked at him. "You couldn't have—you must have known that."

"Don't be so sure, babe."

"How could you even
think
that?"

"Because I thought maybe I could."

"That's ridiculous—"

"No—I think I could." He looked at her, then back at the road. "Everyone else thought so. So—why not?"

"Look," she said, "I don't understand. It's as if you want me to agree with that."

"Don't you?"

"No!"

"But you were worried when I came up with that flashlight, and especially when I shined it in your eyes." She didn't answer. "Weren't you?"

"Yes. All right. For a moment I was scared." She looked at him. "What are you doing? Playing some kind of mental game?"

He grinned at her. "I'm an actor. I'm into little scenes."

"You're toying with me. I don't understand."

"I wanted to test you, see if I could shake you up."

"
But why
?"

He shrugged. "You were the only one who ever believed me. I wanted to see if maybe I could get you to change your mind."

"It isn't true I was the only one. There was Schrader and all the jurors."

He shook his head. "It was you they believed. Not me."

"It's the same thing. You got acquitted."

"No, it's not the same."

"What are you trying to tell me, Jared?"

His face became serious. "Just that I think I'm guilty in a way." He looked at her, then back at the road. "I didn't kill her. Of course I didn't kill her. But, and this is the truth, I
could
have—given the right set of circumstances I
could
. She was asking for it. I've always had that feeling about that night. And I could have done it if I'd taken her seriously. I have that in me. That's why I understand what went on inside the flashlight guy. Think of it—stabbing someone you hate over and over again, someone who's tortured you. It's all gone then—all your anger. And what are you left with? Guilt, remorse, maybe punishment. But you're free of tension. You're free. She was asking for it and I could have done it. That's all I've been trying to say."

She felt for him then, his anguish, understood finally why he'd been acting so resigned. He felt guilty. For this perverse reason he felt that he deserved all the bad breaks he'd had. Being there that night with Suzie, going on trial for her murder, all that had broken something inside of him, and though he'd been cleared, he hadn't really felt cleared at all.

"OK," she said, "you've convinced me. You could have done it. You feel like you did. I got all that. So let's drop it now.
OK
?"

He turned and looked at her. "It's funny," he said, "for a minute I thought—"

"What?"

"Nothing really. You sounded just like Suzie then, that's all."

It was true; she realized it the moment he pointed it out. Unconsciously she'd done an almost exact imitation of Suzie's pattern of speech. A strange thing, she thought, considering she'd never used that "
OK? All right?
" mannerism before. She closed her eyes and tightened her grip on the diary in her lap. She tried to sleep.

They stopped for coffee a couple of times at deserted fluorescent-lit fast-food joints. It was impossible for both of them to read the diary at the same time so they took turns reading it aloud. Penny found it terrifying. She was entering her sister's mind, finding a new Suzie, familiar yet strange, a Suzie who mockingly described her own debasements, then cried out in vulnerability and pain.

S
ome of Dr. Bowles' patients were hanging around the brownstone when they drove up. A black van was double-parked in front of the house, and the patients, young men and women with sensitive faces, had formed a line and were busy passing boxes of cat food and sacks of litter fire-brigade style until they formed a neat pile beside the curb.

"Jesus," said Jared, "if you think we've had a creepy day, just take a look at them."

L
ast night was the night. Jamie arranged my "scene."

"We're going to cauterize your wounds," he told me. Then, waving a finger: "Remember, whatever happens, YOU asked for it. It's all being done for YOU."

Cindy came by for the afternoon. Can't stand school, she said. Wants to drop out and room here with me. "It was a big mistake, leaving college," I told her. "Don't be a jerk Stick it out Get your degree." Her face fell. She just wants to be close, so cloying, such a whimpering pathetic little thing. Reminded me of myself. Am I that much of a turn-off, that ridiculous, that much of a royal pain to him?

She stuck around, ironed some blouses. "Look," I told her, "I got an important date tonight Maybe you better go back to Bronxville now." No—she wanted to wait up for me. Finally I got cruel "Leave me alone,
Cin
—Jesus! Can't you see I'm not into it? OK?"