Flesh Wounds, page 15
A call to an old friend in the purchasing department got him a list of every copy machine at Promart. There were forty-seven of them, not counting a dozen personal copiers used by company executives. Too many for a stake-out operation, even if he recruited Jeremy.
Tuesday’s Xerox was an upper arm and shoulder, with the erotic, alabaster-smooth side of one breast revealed in the gap between shoulder and triceps. Closing his eyes, he imagined her removing her blouse and brassiere, leaning over the copy machine with her arm folded across her chest, her heart racing as she worried that someone might catch her. He took the photocopy home and pinned it to the bulletin board over the computer—beside the shot of her hair, the first image that he’d bothered to save. Looking at the photocopies, he found himself wishing that he’d saved the first two. He was pondering the significance of that when the phone rang.
“Are you missing me at all or are you still so completely self-absorbed that you’ve hardly noticed I’m gone?”
His heart did a double-take. He felt a sudden rush of guilt over the copies on the bulletin board, a chagrin akin to that time his mother had caught him with Playboy. “Where are you, Peg?”
“Florida. You’d love my tan.”
“Come home, Peg.” Iforgive you, he wanted to add, but the words caught in his throat. Yes, he wanted her home, but he wasn’t at all sure that he forgave her.
She sighed. “I’m not ready for that, Glen.”
“Are you...” He took a deep breath. “...still with him?”
“Look, Glen, that’s really none of your business. What I need right now is my share of the money in our bank account. You have no right to deny me that money.”
“What about all the charges you ran up? What about your car that I’m still making the payments on?”
“Ah, get off it, Glen. I’ve only been gone a week and a half. You act like it’s been months. What’s wrong, running out of clean underwear? Haven’t figured out how to run the washer yet? Tired of microwave dinners?”
“Peg—”
“Never mind,” she interrupted. “I should have known better than to call. Sell the goddamn car if you want. I’m not coming home.”
The line went dead.
gmatthews [to Sex_Kitten]: She says she’s never coming home. I don’t know what she expects from me. Should I offer her an apology when she’s the one trying to ruin our marriage?
Sex_Kitten [to gmatthews]: She’ll be back, Glen. Trust me on this.
gmatthews [to Sex_Kitten]: I wish I could. Uh, not that I don’t trust you, Kitty. I do. You’ve been really swell through all of this.
*** Sex_Kitten purrs and rubs herself on gmatthews’ leg.
gmatthews [to Sex_Kitten]: In fact, I can’t remember another woman with whom I’ve ever been able to talk like this. I really want to thank you.
*** Sex_Kitten kicks off her shoes and snuggles closer to gmatthews, making sure he has a good view down her blouse.
Sex_Kitten [to gmatthews]: How much do you want to thank me, dear? You up for a little of what led your wife astray?
gmatthews [to Sex_Kitten]: What do you mean?
Sex_Kitten [to gmatthews]: Cybersex, darling. You ever made love in cyberspace before?
gmatthews [to Sex_Kitten]: I think I’d better go.
Sex_Kitten [to gmatthews]: Glen?
Sex_Kitten [to gmatthews]: Glen? Are you there?
Wednesday’s was a thigh. One smooth, sculpted, leanmuscled thigh fading off toward a knee and just the slightest curvature of her ass. Glen stared at it for some time with his mouth hanging open. Then, hearing footsteps approaching down the row of cubicles, he stashed it in his desk before anyone else could see it. He took it home that evening and pinned it to the bulletin board beside her hair and her shoulder. He stared at the three images for a long time, his mind conjuring up the missing elements.
But his mind kept betraying him by giving her Peg’s face.
“You don’t owe that bitch an apology,” Jeremy had told him at lunch. “She ran out on you, man. Fuck her!”
“Yeah, I...” He paused, his mind catching on something. A movie. He’d once seen a movie where...
“What is it?” Jeremy asked.
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “Japanese mafia.”
“What?”
“What are they called?”
“Who?”
“The Japanese mafia, what are they called?”
“You mean, like, the yakuza?”
“Yeah, that’s it!” He smacked his fist on the table. “There was a movie once, back in the seventies I think, starring Robert Mitchum. It was called The Yakuza.”
“Don’t tell me you think the Japanese mafia’s behind the photocopies?” Jeremy chided. “I think Mitchum died a couple years ago.”
Glen ignored him. “There was this thing they did to apologize to the mob boss when they’d failed him.” He set his hand against the edge of the cafeteria table and extended his pinky so that it lay on the Formica by itself. He raised his other hand over the pinky as if he were about to chop down on it with something. “They would take their knives—”
“Tanto,” Jeremy interjected.
“What?”
“The shortest of the Japanese swords. There’s the katana, the wakizashi, and the tanto.” He shrugged. “Sorry, my head’s just full of trivial bullshit. Go on.”
“Yeah. Right.” Glen frowned. “Where was I?”
“I believe you were going to cut off your little finger,” Jeremy chuckled.
“Right! The yakuza would cut off his little finger and offer it to his boss as an apology. Leastwise, they did it in that movie.”
“And this means... what?”
Glen stabbed the photocopy of the mystery woman’s thigh with his imaginary knife. “This is some sort of weird apology.”
Jeremy snorted. “You’re losing it, buddy.”
“No, think about it. She’s offering me pieces of herself.”
“I think she’s heard what a cold fish you are. She’s trying to get you all boned up, so that when she finally walks up and introduces herself to you, you’ll look like Tripod Man.”
“God, Jere, is that all you ever think about?”
“Well, it beats the hell out of daydreaming about crazy ass yakuza conspiracies—which, by the way, the finger bit is hardly unique to the Japanese. I can think of two others without even straining any brain cells. The plains Indians used to cut off a finger when they lost someone really close to them. Find a picture of an old Injun from one of those government internment camps in the eighteen hundreds, and you might notice he’s minus most of his fingers. I think the little finger was taken in mourning a child. The ring finger was for your wife. And the others were for your parents.”
“No shit?”
“No shit. Want to hear the second one?”
Glen had folded the thigh picture and put it back in his pocket. He was sick of listening to Jeremy. He also resented the fact that Jeremy, whom he took for mostly being a prurient idiot, seemed to be so goddamned smart.
“The second one’s an Inuit legend. You know, Eskimos. In their mythology, Sedna is the goddess of the sea. Legend has it that she spurned all suitors and married a bird. Outraged, her father killed her husband and took Sedna home in his boat. On the voyage, Sedna angered him. He threw her overboard. When she clung to the side of the boat, he cut off her fingers. Each finger as it sank became a creature of the sea, a whale, a dolphin, and so on. Hey, where are you going?”
“I’ll see you later, Jeremy.”
“Sure.” And as he was leaving the cafeteria, Jeremy shouted, “Just don’t ever play against me in Trivia Pursuit, bucko!”
Her stomach arrived the next day, flat and satiny smooth, with the sexiest little mole next to her belly button. He could count her first three ribs, visible just before the image faded at the top edge. At the lower edge, there was a wisp of dark hair trailing down off-image toward her groin. He hung the copy with the other three, stared at them throughout most of the evening, and finally masturbated.
Sitting there before the computer, warm semen running through his fingers, feeling more frustration and anger than relief, he noticed something for the first time. In the top right-hand corner of each photocopy there was a tiny hairline crack. A flaw in the glass of the copy machine. A mark as distinctive as any signature.
gmatthews [to Sex_Kitten]: I know how to find this woman now.
Sex_Kitten [to gmatthews]: Are you sure that you want to?
gmatthews [to Sex_Kitten]: Why wouldn’t I want to, Kitty? This whole thing is just too bizarre to let it continue. I mean, where will it end? When she runs out of body parts to Xerox, is she going to start sending me real flesh and blood?
*** Sex_Kitten frowns at her friend.
Sex_Kitten [to gmatthews]: I think you’re attracted to this mystery woman. I think maybe you’re falling in love with her.
gmatthews [to Sex_Kitten]: That’s ridiculous!
Sex_Kitten [to gmatthews]: You want to find her because you want more than she’s offering. You want the whole woman.
gmatthews [to Sex_Kitten]: I want to put a stop to it.
Sex_Kitten [to gmatthews]: So you say. Just remember what I told you before.
gmatthews [to Sex_Kitten]: What’s that?
Sex_Kitten [to gmatthews]: Any virtual relationship is 99% fantasy, Glen. Make sure you want to destroy this fantasy before you confront this woman.
Friday’s mail brought him her bare breasts, pressed flat against the glass. Glen thought they were the most perfect breasts he had ever seen. He touched the paper, felt the slight welts of the toner lines, and imagined he was touching her.
That afternoon, he roamed Promart, looking at copy machines. There were forty-seven of them, their locations designated on the inventory list he’d obtained from his friend in Purchasing. He checked the glass on twenty-eight of them before he found the one with the telltale crack. It was located in Marketing... where he swore he didn’t know a soul.
As closing time drew near, he loitered near a water cooler. When he thought most everyone had left, he ducked behind some filing cabinets where he had a clear view of the copy machine. Waiting, he tried to figure out what he was going to say to her. Should he introduce himself? Obviously, she’d know who he was. Surely she hadn’t just chosen someone at random. She must know him on sight. Perhaps she’d seen him in the cafeteria or in the parking lot or any of a hundred places around Promart. Perhaps she knew that his wife had left him, and that had started this weird form of pursuit.
He’d been there about fifteen minutes when a short, balding man crept from between the rows of office cubicles. After looking around and verifying that there was no one in sight, the man dropped what looked to be about a hundred pages on the copier and proceeded to make and collate twenty copies. Great, thought Glen, if I want I can jump out and scare the bejesus out of this guy making illegal copies. While he waited (and fumed because he believed the stubby little prick might have ruined the mystery lady’s chance to use the copier), he guessed at what the guy was copying. He was a wannabe writer, sneaking in after work to make copies of his latest masterpiece so that he could bore all his friends with it. He was a cub scout leader, running off copies of the errata for their manual. He was secretly working down the road for Kinko’s and skimming money by making copies at Promart.
By the time the guy left, Glen’s stomach was growling for dinner and his legs were tired. He rubbed a sore spot on his shoulder where he’d been leaning against one of the file cabinets. He was thinking about calling it a night.
And then she appeared.
He had no idea who she was. Sandy blonde hair. Eyes that were green or dark blue—he couldn’t tell without getting closer. She had a great figure, but her face was actually rather homely. She was dressed smartly (but you expect that in Marketing) in blue velvet pumps and a matching business suit. The calves beneath her knee-length skirt were quite attractive, exactly as he’d imagined to match the photocopy of the thigh. He suspected it was her when she approached the copy machine, scanning the area just as the previous guy had done to make sure no one was about, with absolutely nothing in her hands. He was certain that it was her a moment later.
Bending at the knees, she took the hem of her skirt and pulled it up around her waist. Holding it there with one hand, she tugged down her panty hose with the other. Glen had a brief glimpse of her rear before she launched herself up on the glass of the copy machine. While he was still fighting to suppress the urge to laugh out loud, before he could think of what he could possibly say, she punched the copy button. A wave of neon-white light washed up around her thighs. Then she was down, tugging up her hose and straightening her skirt. The machine spooled out her copy. She snatched it up and disappeared down the rows of cubicles.
Glen allowed himself to breathe.
Leaving Marketing, he passed their employee bulletin board. Her picture was there. Employee of the Month, three months running. Cindy McKenna. Marketing analyst.
He stole the picture off the board.
Peg showed up on Sunday. “Don’t get any ideas,” she told him, “I still don’t think you and I stand a chance.”
“Then why are you here?” he asked.
Ignoring him, she stomped up the stairs to the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.
He sat for a couple hours in front of the computer, staring at the images tacked to the bulletin board. When he logged on to the computer, Sex_Kitten was there, just as he knew she’d be.
gmatthews [to Sex_Kitten]: My wife is back.
*** Sex_Kitten shrugs her sexy shoulders.
gmatthews [to Sex_Kitten]: I thought you’d at least want to say “I told you so.”
Sex_Kitten [to gmatthews]: I might always be right, but I’m not necessarily happy about it. I suppose you won’t be getting online anymore?
gmatthews [to Sex_Kitten]: I don’t know.
Sex_Kitten [to gmatthews]: Are you happy she’s home?
gmatthews [to Sex_Kitten]: I don’t know.
Sex_Kitten [to gmatthews]: Seems to me you need to figure these things out, Glen.
gmatthews [to Sex_Kitten]: I know.
Sex_Kitten [to gmatthews]: And what about your mystery lady?
gmatthews [to Sex_Kitten]: You were right.
Sex_Kitten [to gmatthews]: About what?
gmatthews [to Sex_Kitten]: That she should remain a fantasy.
He switched off the computer and began to tear it down, neatly coiling all the cords and placing them in the box that he’d brought in from the garage. He took the copies and Cindy McKenna’s photograph down from the bulletin board, placed them in a manila envelope and put them in the box as well.
Peg had left him, but he still felt that he owed her some apology. It takes two to destroy a marriage, to let the fantasy die. He would mourn the loss, but like the life born of Sedna’s fingers, he knew this was just a beginning in disguise.
There were pieces of her that he would always carry with him. There were pieces he would leave behind, whether she wanted them or not. They’d been a part of each other, and you can’t just walk away from that clean. You can’t expect to get away without a few flesh wounds. He was reminded of an apocryphal slogan of the Irish Republican Army: “Now is the time for a futile gesture.”
He set his ring finger atop the kitchen counter, took the largest knife from the block on the dishwasher, and sawed down. It hurt more than he expected it to. The brittle crunch of his finger bone breaking beneath the blade, coupled with the pain, nearly made him retch. He thought for a minute he was going to pass out, but then he got a dishrag wrapped around the stub and sat down with his head on the kitchen table.
His finger lay on the counter like a discarded sausage. Only the fingernail and the wedding band—below which he’d made his cut—spoiled the image.
I’ll just rest here a minute, he thought, at least until this quits bleeding so much. Then I’ll go. He’d already packed everything he needed in the car. In the morning, when he made a photocopy to send to Cindy, he’d have to give her a shot of his right hand. Wouldn’t want her to think that he was less than perfect.
And he hoped that his hand wouldn’t hurt too much to type.
Thunder of the Water
A hat spun lazily in the swift current of the Niagara River. From the shore of Goat Island, Jason Sparrowhawk cursed and cast about for something with which to snag the bright bit of flotsam. He immediately found a water-logged sapling on the bank, but even fully extended, it was too short. The sapling was easily the longest object in sight and the hat was moving downstream at a considerable pace.
“This is not good,” he said aloud, his voice stifled by the roaring drone of Horseshoe Falls. He raced along the bank, pacing the drifting hat, searching the rocks and brush for anything that might help him recover it. There was nothing.
The hat wasn’t Hawk’s... well, not exactly. In a way it was, just as everything he’d given the river that day had belonged to him in the end. It was in fact a woman’s hat, a high-society type affair, not really a bonnet, but close enough as it spun there in the diamond-glitter on the surface of the river.
His or not, it was paramount that he recover the hat. To allow it to drift past Goat Island, over the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, and eventually into Lake Ontario where some vacationing fisherman or camper might find it... well, that would spell disaster for Jason Sparrowhawk.
He knew the course the hat would follow. He was, in fact, quite intimate with it for he had traveled it in his dreams more than once. Dreams sent him by the river god Thunder of the Water—Niagara in the Iroquois tongue.
Hawk was Indian, an unprecedented mix of Iroquois, Chippewa, and Tuscarora. He’d lived between the two Great Lakes all eighteen years of his life, watching the Earth enfold his people one by one until it seemed there were few left. He’d never been accepted in school, an Indian who wanted the old ways, the days his grandfather sang about so often. He dropped out of high school. Scarred from years of abuse dealt by younger children, he was incapable of coping with those near-adults. Hawk’s grandfather tried to talk him out of it, telling him to stand fast, that all things pass, even as the water flows from Erie to Ontario and from Ontario down the Saint Lawrence to the sea where the great cycle of life begins.
