Her companion said nothing.
“How many times have you seen people crawling for their lives?” she asked him, interrupting herself.
“I never counted,” he said. He was just watching her.
“I don’t mean in real life. Oh, I guess with you, it is, actually. But you see it all the time in the movies. It’s my least favorite thing. My leash favorite. Lease favorite. There was some movie about neighbors where one’s a serial killer and one woman has been injured and she’s crawling away from another one with a knife, but she doesn’t make it. And she kills her. And then there was, I think, it was a Billy Baldwin movie, about a crime scene cleaner girl, but he’s a serial killer and he’s going after a woman, and she’s either drugged or stabbed and she’s crawling on the patio to get away.” She stopped, as if seeing it again.
The man nodded to himself.
“But she doesn’t,” she continued. “The only one where it works out is
Terminator
, where she terminates him with that crunching machine. But that’s rare. It’s just that once you’re down, you’re helpless and – oh, wait, the other scene in
Terminator.
Where her roommate is shot by him, and she’s crawling to get away, but she doesn’t. So it’s in that one, too. There’s just so many. I hate seeing that. When someone’s crawling, and they’re never going to get away. And they know it. You know it.”
“You think that’s you,” he asked softly.
“It’s any of us,” she said. “If someone wants us in that position. You can be in a group of people you know or you don’t know and someone has a stun gun, and they can get you down and you’re helpless. Or they can rufey you, and you’re helpless. Or they can just punch you and knock you out like in
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
. And once they have you, they can do anything they like. They can cut off your nipple, like in
In the Cut
. Did you read that book? I just read the end part, but I couldn’t get it out of my head. And it’s not like the movie. She fucking dies. Or the
Hostel
movies or what’s the other one, with Jigsaw? I can’t watch those, but it’s all about being helpless. And it’s so easy to become helpless, to be made helpless, and then once you are, your misery can be made to go on forever. I hate people sometimes. I hate the living.” And she seemed to have run down.
The man next to her said nothing.
She wasn’t done. “Or you can be in bed with someone, even someone you love. Think you love. And wake up tied up. Their prisoner. And they can do anything they want to do. Any terrible thing.” And her voice rose on the word “terrible.” “TERRIBLE things happen in this world,” she added. “Because this world is a TERRIBLE place. Mostly because people can be TERRIBLE. And then you end up trying to crawl away. And they laugh. ‘Cause you can’t. And then they kill you.”
And she sniffed in. She was crying yet again, and he hadn’t even hit her.
“You’re right,” he said finally. “It’s a terrible place.”
“But no matter what,” she said. “You have to crawl the crawl. Even if you know it’s pointless. You still have to do it. You have to try. Don’t you?”
“Your husband didn’t.”
“No, you’re right. He didn’t. I envy him. I’ll be crawling here for the rest of my life, and even though I know the outcome, I’ll still do it.” She stopped crying. “Funny, isn’t it?”
“Hysterical,” was all he said.
She was quiet for a couple of moments. “So anyway,” she said, in a different tone, “then Jesus says again: ‘Paul, Paul. Come here, come here to me.’ And Paul, with his last ounce of strength pulls himself forward with his arms alone and finally makes it to just under where Jesus is. ‘What is it, Lord? What is it?’ And Jesus says: ‘Paul, Paul. I can see your house from here.’”
He looked at her. She chuckled for a minute.
“Amusing,” he said. “And why did you feel the need to tell me that?”
“The houses, across the bay. Made me think of it. Did you get it? You didn’t get it,” she said. “Criminals think they’re pretty smart. Don’t even know what a joke is. That’s sort of from David Byrne.”
“You never cease to amaze me.”
She groaned. “Ok, what do
you
want to talk about?”
“Let me think.”
She shivered suddenly, just a little.
“You’re not cold,” he said.
“No. Wow. That was weird. I haven’t felt like that in so long.” Her voice became a little dreamy. “I had a boyfriend once. Yes. No. Well, he wasn’t a boyfriend, actually. He just acted like one. And sometimes when I was—. A long time ago. When I was in bed next to him, I would get this feeling. I haven’t thought about this in forever. I’d get this feeling where I’d want to jump out of my skin. Jump out. But I couldn’t.”
“Why was that?”
“I don’t know. It jush happened sometimes. I guess maybe I felt trapped in something. Except I’m the one who wanted to be there. Well, he did at first. Until I really did. Then he kind of didn’t. He wouldn’t fuck me as much as I wanted him to.”
“Well, I’m certainly canceling out that disappointment, aren’t I?”
“Seriously. Once he could see I was wanting him to be my boyfriend, he didn’t want to have sex so much. He was amazing. I mean boys are supposed to wake up wanting it, but when he was waking up next to me, he could wake up without even an erection. Boy, did that make me feel great. Oh, yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Men, how funny you are. How he said once, after we did have sex but his cock was still, you know, a little hard, and we were supposed to go out amongst people. Amongst, good word. He said: ‘I know how to hide.’ And I remember thinking. What an interesting way to put it. Hide. He meant camouflage it. An interesting concept. What boys say. You must know how to hide. When you’re at your accountant’s desk, and you’re daydreaming about the women you’ve raped.”
“Yes.”
“Hmmmm,” she made a little sing-song sound.
“Why didn’t he want to be your boyfriend?”
“I had picked him, so to speak, because he didn’t. Didn’t want romantic relationship. But I changed my mind. Wasn’t fair to want him to change his.”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“There never
is
an answer to that question. And I’ve asked! Then again, there aren’t too many men for me because I’m so weird.”
“Your husband was one.”
“Yes, he was.”
“How did you meet him?”
“We worked together. Sort of. Well, I was analysis. He was operations. He had just managed to kill someone a lot like you. But he couldn’t talk about it with anyone else. But you know, how you look in someone’s eyes, and it’s all really right there, right at the start, whether you can trust them or not.”
She stopped talking for a moment.
“If you met me, out of the blue,” he asked, in the same tone of voice as always. “Do you think you would be attracted to me?”
“That’s the funny part. But only if I could forget this. I’d have to forget all this.”
“I guess that’s probably not going to happen.”
“Wouldn’t be prudent,” she said. “Dana Carvey,” she added. “Haven’t thought about him in a while, either.”
“But you could conceivably be attracted to me. Theoretically.”
“But then again. Maybe not. Your eyes, I mean. Because, of course, you’re a homicidal maniac.”
“Stop, you’ll make me blush.”
“With a sense of humor that makes you even more disturbing.”
He said nothing for a few moments.
“Damn,” she said, suddenly. “I almost remembered. My dream the other night. I know I had an interesting dream, but it’s gone. I can’t remember. Why is it that it’s always just beyond reach unless you just catch it right after?”
“I don’t know,” he said, watching her.
“Why is this,” she asked, again in that dreamy tone, “so much more real than that? One’s night, one’s day, why is this so much more real? That I can’t forget the things from the day, and I can’t remember the things from the night?”
“Except the night when I’m here.”
“Yes, I remember that. I won’t forget.”
He did not reply.
“You know what this is like?” she asked.
“What?”
“Marijuana. I’ve only done it a few times. It was fun, but you can’t control its effect, you know. For a certain amount of time, you’re not in control.
It
is. And you just have to go with it. Like you.”
He smiled.
“Your husband,” he said.
“Yeah. Him.”
“What exactly did he do?”
“Are you showing curiosity? I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.” She laughed. “What do you care anyway? You don’t care about why.”
“You loved him, and he killed people.”
“Did I say that?”
“Yes. You did.”
“Slip of the tongue. Anyway, that was a long time ago.”
“You worked for an agency.”
“An agency. Or a company. Or a firm. Or a force. Or a contractor. Or a consultant. What’s the difference?”
“Then you
have
met people like me before.”
She looked at him then, seriously. “No. I have never met anyone like you before.”
“Maybe this
is
about you.”
“What do you care? I thought you didn’t give a fuck. Anyway, this is really all about you!”
“It’s interesting talking to you when you’re drunk.”
“I’m not as drunk as you think I am. No, wait, that’s wrong. I meant, I’m not as think as you drunk I am. I always love when they say that. But I screwed it up.”
“Because you are as drunk as I think you are.”
“Just a little bit, because I don’t have anything in my stomach. What are you going to do with me, now that I’m drunk? Take advantage of me?” She collapsed in laughter, but looking at her closely, as he was, he could see that she was crying at the same time.
He smiled, too. “I guess I am,” he said. And he did, yet again. He thrust hard, very hard, into her, so that it would penetrate the slightly shrouded quality of her mind. And he didn’t stop until he heard her moaning in pain, a sound that gradually became less and less dreamy and more and more aware.
Like many a man, he turned to drink
. Turned her to drink, that is. But that was just a delaying tactic, as far as she was concerned. Maybe he thought he could get something more from her to guide him to his goal. Maybe he’d just try to embarrass her some more.
She was light and starving. It hit her very fast.
Well, ok, it wasn’t her idea. What could she do? If she couldn’t think, she couldn’t think. That’s ok, she’d tell him just what she thought. Boy, he really did want to ruin just everything that was fun, didn’t he?
Funny. She hadn’t thought about that guy, the non-boyfriend boyfriend for a long time. She had been pretty young back then. Too old for that sort of behavior, but pretty young overall. Anyway, it was inevitable someone like her would make a few wrong moves on the way to finding Mr. Right. And she had found him. She had always believed that she would. And that he wouldn’t be like anybody around her. The problem was, as it turned out, there was only one of him. And now he might as well have been a dream. Except the memories were too strong. They never faded the way that dreams did. Memories of him and of what they’d made and lost.
Helplessness. Helpless to change anything. Why was she talking about this? She didn’t want him thinking about this. It would just give someone like him ideas. Not that he needed her help on that score.