Days of Utter Dread, page 17
‘Cathy? You are Cathy, aren’t you?’
The doll-like woman nodded.
‘Holy Christ, Cathy, what’s happened to you? Did you get involved in another auto wreck?’
Cathy sat down in the chair next to him. ‘No,’ she said, in a strangely hollow voice, as if she were speaking through a megaphone. ‘Nothing like that.’
‘Then what? What’s happened to your face?’
‘I did it myself, Robin. I did it for you. Well, that’s not really true. I did it for us.’
‘I don’t understand, Cathy, You did what for us?’
‘You said you didn’t want to see me again because you were going to turn out to be a monster and I was pretty.’
‘I know,’ said Robin. ‘I know I did. But I only wanted to be fair to you. You shouldn’t have to spend the rest of your life a gargoyle like me when you could pop your fingers and have any man who takes your fancy.’
‘That’s why I did it,’ said Cathy. ‘I love you, Robin. You and me, we’re soulmates. Now we’re more than that. Now we look like each other, too.’
With that, she reached behind her pressure mask and unfastened it. She bent her head forward and carefully eased it away from her face, and then looked up at Robin, her brown eyes bright, her lips smiling.
Robin couldn’t speak. He simply stared at her in revulsion. Her brown eyes may have been bright and her lips might have been smiling, but there was nothing but two triangular caverns where her nose had been, and she had no ears. She looked like a ghastly parody of Lon Chaney playing The Phantom of the Opera.
‘That’s not all,’ she said, and she eased herself up so that she could lift her dress and show him the purple braided scars between her legs. ‘No other man is going to want me now, Robin, so you don’t have to worry about me. We can be together forever.’
Robin said, ‘Cathy, pull your dress back down. And, please, put your mask back on.’
‘Aren’t you happy?’ said Cathy. ‘Aren’t you pleased I did this? I still have a whole lot surgery to go through. But they’re treating me here at the Bridgeport too. I come here two or three times a week, so we can see each other all the time.’
‘What in God’s name have you done to yourself?’ said Robin.
‘I did it for you, Robin. I thought you’d be pleased. You are pleased, aren’t you?’
‘Cathy – just because I look like this doesn’t mean that I want a partner who looks like this. I might be a freak myself but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to be attracted to another freak.’
Cathy’s eyes filled with tears. ‘What are you saying? You’re not saying that I shouldn’t have done this? Robin – I did it for you!’
Robin closed his eyes for a moment. While he did so, Cathy replaced her pressure mask and fastened it. When he opened his eyes, he said, ‘I’m going to have to be truthful with you, Cathy. What you’ve done to yourself, I think you must be psychotic. You look inhuman, and that’s the kindest thing I can say. And don’t blame me for it.’
He reached across and pressed the bell beside his bed. After a few moments, Nurse Wing came in.
‘I think visiting time’s over,’ said Robin. ‘I don’t know what to say to you, Cathy. I’m totally shocked.’
Nurse Wing came across and helped Cathy to stand up. Cathy’s shoulders were quaking with grief, although she wasn’t audibly sobbing.
‘I don’t know what’s going to happen to you now, Cathy,’ said Robin. ‘All I can do is wish you the best of luck, and say that I’m very, very sorry for you.’
‘So there’s no chance at all?’ said Cathy, in a choked voice.
Robin shook his head and lifted one of his bandaged stumps towards Nurse Wing. ‘Me and Megan, we’ve got really close. She’s been taking care of burns patients all of her life, and they don’t put her off. And I have to say that she’s beautiful, like you used to be.’
Holly was waiting for Cathy in the reception area. She didn’t say a word as they walked out into the windy afternoon, and across the parking lot to Holly’s car. She could guess what had happened, and she didn’t want to say ‘I told you so’.
They were speeding back to Fairfield on the turnpike when Cathy said, ‘Well. It seems like I have only two choices now. I could join a circus. You know roll up, roll up! Come and see the Noseless, Earless, Unfuckable woman.’
‘Oh, Cathy. What’s the other choice?’
Cathy sat quite still for a while with her hands in her lap. Then she unbuckled her seat belt, opened the car door and threw herself sideways out of the car and onto the road. She bounced, and bounced again, her arms and legs flying, and then she was hit by a huge Mack truck and disappeared from sight.
Later, when the police and the ambulance had arrived, Holly went over to the truck driver, who was sitting on the steel divider in the middle of the road, still badly shaken.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Holly told him.
The truck driver shook his head. ‘Never seen nothing like it. Your car door come flying open, and do you know? It was like the Angel of the Lord plucked her out of there, in person.’
EPIPHANY
The instant she stepped out onto the sidewalk, the sky cracked open and thunder echoed all around the office buildings like a car bomb. A few large spots of rain started to patter onto the concrete, and so she ran to the corner of 49th Street and waved frantically for a taxi. She was wearing her new cream linen suit and her new Manolo Blahnik shoes and she had just had her hair cut at Vidal Sassoon.
Like a happy miracle, a taxi with a lighted FOR HIRE sign came jouncing down Lexington Avenue towards her, and she stepped out into the road with her arm still lifted. As she did so, however, a sandy-haired man in a loud green summer suit pushed right out in front of her and let out a piercing two-fingered whistle. The taxi pulled over and the man opened the door, just as the rain began to lash down in earnest.
‘Excuse me!’ Jessica screamed. ‘Excuse me! That’s my cab!’
The man was half-in and half-out of the taxi door. He blinked at her as if he couldn’t understand what she was talking about.
‘This is my cab,’ Jessica repeated, possessively gripping the top of the door. The rain was clattering onto the taxi’s yellow roof and soaking her shoulders.
‘Your cab?’ The man looked around in mock-bewilderment. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t see your name on it anyplace.’
‘It’s mine because I hailed it first – the driver was slowing down for me.’
‘Listen, I think I was nearer to the cab than you were. What do you want me to say?’
Still she clung onto the door. ‘You asshole. You unmitigated asshole! You know this is my cab.’
‘Hey, lady, you getting in or what?’ the taxi driver wanted to know.
‘You saw me first, didn’t you?’ Jessica demanded. ‘You were stopping for me.’
‘I just want to get the hell out of here, all right?’
Jessica tried to seize the sandy-haired man’s shoulder but he twisted his arm away and slammed the door, breaking her middle fingernail. The taxi pulled out into the traffic and sped off down Lexington, leaving her standing in the middle of the road.
She tried to hail another taxi, and there were dozens of them, splashing across the intersection like shoals of bright-yellow dolphins, but the rain was really hammering down now and every one of them was occupied. She had never hated anybody in her life, not really, but when she saw those smug, dry people sailing past in their taxis, she wished they would all have cardiac arrests over their lunch tables, or choke on a fishbone. Her linen jacket was almost transparent, her strappy little shoes were filled with water, and her hair was sticking to her forehead. There was another flicker of lightning, followed by a deafening thunderclap.
Miserable, furious, she retreated to the nearest doorway. Even here the rain bounced against her shins and the temperature was beginning to drop so that she started shivering. She turned around to see if she could find any shelter inside the building. It was a small private art gallery with heavy glass and stainless-steel doors. She pushed her way inside and immediately found herself in a world that was hushed and warm, thickly carpeted, with bronze mirrors all around, and elegant arrangements of arum lilies in glass Japanese vases. The walls and the furnishings were pale and beige and restful.
She took off her shoes and wiped the insides with a Kleenex. Three hundred and eight dollars, and they were ruined.
Two young men were sitting talking at a creamy marble desk, both of them dressed in expensive suits, their shirts gleaming white and their hair glossed back. The taller one turned and stared in surprise at her bare feet. ‘Ye-e-es? May I help you?’
‘I, er… I just came in to take a look around, if that’s okay.’
‘Please do… you’re more than welcome. My God, you poor thing, you’re soaked! Listen – why don’t you go to the restroom and dry yourself off. We have some lovely Turkish towels in there.’
‘Well, thank you, I appreciate it.’
She went into the silent, expensively fitted restroom. The mirror was tinted a flattering pink, but she still looked as if the coastguard had just fished her out of the East River with a billhook. She opened her purse and tried to comb her hair, but her feathery brunette bob had been ruined, and all she could do was slick it straight back in a style that was strangely reflective of the two young men.
When she came back out the two young men were waiting for her, smiling. ‘Better?’
‘Much, thanks.’
The taller one opened a drawer in the desk and took out a thick shiny catalogue. ‘Here… you’ll probably want one of these. Seventy-nine fifty, I’m afraid.’
‘How much?’
‘Oh, don’t worry. It’ll be worth twice that in six months’ time.’
She took the catalogue and somehow she felt like a Dayak tribeswoman being handed a Manhattan telephone directory.
The young man smiled and said, ‘The prints are all for sale, too, starting at twenty-five.’ He gave a little cough and added, ‘Thousand.’ Then: ‘Each.’
Jessica looked down at the catalogue. On the front cover there was a black-and-white photograph of a young Mexican man. He had gappy teeth, and he was smiling wide-eyed and mocking at the camera. About twenty feet behind him, on a wide verandah, a silver-haired white man in a light-grey suit was looking over a garden of impossible lushness, crowded with orchids and ferns and amaryllis. The brochure was entitled: Queer Nation: the photography of Jamie Starck.
Oh my God, she thought. She had read about this exhibition only yesterday. Jamie Starck had been a protégé of the notorious homosexual photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, and this exhibition had been furiously and publicly condemned by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. The mayor had tried to close it down, but there had been demonstrations in Gracie Square by hundreds of gay rights activists, and in the end the mayor had been forced to give way. Or at least to come up with the grudging acceptance that ‘graphic depictions of alternative lifestyles, in context, may not be wholly deleterious to the city’s moral fabric’.
‘I ah – I seem to have made a mistake,’ she said, trying to hand the catalogue back.
‘Of course you haven’t,’ the young man replied. ‘Or, even if you have, how will you know unless you see for yourself?’ He was handsome in an other-worldly way and perfectly groomed. His skin was exfoliated and honey-tanned, and his fingernails were lightly polished. His necktie was silk, an Impressionistic splash of carmine and gold. His spectacles were fashionably lozenge-shaped, and immaculately clean. He wore a loose gold wristwatch by Jaeger-LeCoultre and a spicy and expensive cologne. Jessica could imagine that his underwear was Calvin Klein, blindingly white, without a single stain.
‘I’ve come to the wrong gallery, that’s all.’
But the young man said, ‘Does it matter?’ and took hold of her arm, and guided her towards the exhibits.
‘Honestly,’ Jessica protested, ‘I only came in here to shelter from the rain. I really didn’t…’
It was then that she saw the first photograph. It was black and white, as all of them were, taken on a high-intensity film that gave startling clarity to every single hair, every single goose bump, every single blemish. It was a picture of two young men – one black, one white, facing each other with their arms loosely linked over one another’s shoulders. They were both slim, muscular, and almost laughably good-looking. Both of them had fully erect penises, and their glans were touching each other, almost kissing each other. The photograph was labelled Racial Accord.
Jessica stood and stared at it for nearly ten seconds. Then she turned to the young man in the lozenge-shaped spectacles and looked in his face for an explanation.
‘You’re looking for a meaning,’ he said, as if he could read her mind.
She shook her head in confusion. ‘I never thought that—’
‘I know. This exhibition strikes everybody the same way, men and women both. They come here with all kinds of preconceptions, “I hate queers” or “I’m straight but curious”, but they all walk out enlightened. Like Saul, you know, on the road to Damascus.’
Jessica moved to the next photograph, and the young man followed her, although he kept his distance. The photograph depicted a naked Arab, kneeling in the desert, his cheek pressed against the hot sand as if he were listening for the sound of distant hoofbeats. On the far horizon there were sand dunes, ribbed by the wind, and a cluster of palm trees. Close to the palm trees stood a white-bearded man wrapped in Bedouin black, holding the halter of a highly uninterested camel.
The Arab was pulling apart the cheeks of his bottom to expose his anus, in a gesture of extreme submission. His penis was erect and the glans was seasoned with grains of glittering sand. The title of the photograph was Abid.
‘In Arabic, abid means “slave”,’ said the young man, although he still kept his distance.
‘I, ah – I think I should go now,’ said Jessica.
‘Well, that’s up to you. But you’ll never see anything like this again, ever. Jamie’s dying of AIDS, and he’s already lost eighty per cent of his sight.’
As if she were dreaming, Jessica moved to the next picture. It showed a very thin middle-aged man lying naked on a chaise longue. His eyes were half-closed as if he were dozing, and his hair was long and blond and wavy, like a woman’s. On the elaborately tiled floor beneath him lay a Borzoi dog, sulking, as Borzois do. A young Moroccan man in a huge, top-heavy, silk turban was kneeling next to the chaise longue. His turban was draped with strings of pearls and he wore large dangly earrings. The young man’s lips were closed around the Englishman’s penis, while one long-fingered hand was cupping his testicles. The young man wore an embroidered waistcoat, but he was naked from the waist down, and semen was dripping like strings of pearls down his thighs.
‘What does it mean?’ said Jessica. ‘Is it just perversion, or what?’
The man in the glasses gave her a strangely confidential smile. ‘Perhaps it means that people should be free to express themselves in whatever ways they wish, no matter how bizarre.’
‘Oh, yes? And perhaps it’s nothing but hard-core porn, masquerading as art.’
The man approached the photograph, and said, ‘You see it though, don’t you? Each picture is a mystery but each picture is also an answer.’
‘So what’s this picture an answer to? Some bony old faggot’s prayer?’
The man laughed. ‘I like you… you’re very direct. That’s unusual.’
‘I think I should leave now,’ said Jessica. ‘I recognise the quality of this photography, and I guess it’s arguably art. But if you really want to know, I find it embarrassing.’
‘All right. At least you’re honest.’
She gave him the catalogue back. ‘Good luck, anyway.’
On her way out, she caught sight of a photograph that she hadn’t seen before, because the light had been shining on the glass, and obscured it. She stopped, even though she didn’t really want to. The man in the glasses waited so close behind her that she could hear his measured breathing. I’ll bet that even the hairs in his nostrils are immaculately trimmed, she thought.
The photograph had been taken on the landing of a grand marble staircase, with high leaded windows that let in a thin, restrained light. A young man of nineteen or twenty, naked except for thong sandals, was leaning languidly against a marble pillar. He looked Thai, or Cambodian, and his hair was fastened with chopsticks in a geisha-like bun.
His skin shone with a silky, almost unearthly radiance. His nipples were like ripe sultanas. His penis was half-erect, with a foreskin that looked as if it were just beginning to slide back, and his scrotum was the texture of crumpled silk. A single sparkling drop of liquid quivered on the end of his penis, like a diamond.
More than anything else, though, it was the expression on his face that caught Jessica’s breath. He had high cheekbones and large, dark, unfocused eyes, as if he were drugged, or hypnotised. He was utterly exquisite.
‘Ah,’ said the man in glasses. ‘All our women fall in love with Lo Duc Tho.’
‘That’s his name? Lo Duc Tho? Who is he?’
‘He was actually Viet Namese. Jamie found him in a grand house in Paris, next door to the apartment building where Marlene Dietrich used to live.’
Jessica approached the picture and touched one finger lightly against the glass. Lo Duc Tho stared back at her enigmatically. Each picture is an answer, but each picture is also a mystery.
‘What was he doing in Paris?’ she asked.
‘He was a toy. I think that’s the best description. The house was owned by a very wealthy lady whose father had made a fortune in Viet Nam when it was still owned by the French. After the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, when the French were forced to give up all of their possessions in Indo-China, her father came back to Paris – bringing not only his daughter but also the orphaned son of one of his servants, a child of ten years old, and that was Lo Duc Tho.
