Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 04 - BOY ON TRIAL - A Legal Thriller (35 page)

“Amy, your mother is a drug addict.”

“No, she’s not a drug addict.”

“You told me she was.”

“I told you she did the twelve-step program.”

“And failed it. She was stoned when she stabbed you, wasn’t she?”

“Drunk.”

“Amy, do you want to be like her?”

“I’m not like her. But I can smoke a joint now and then, can’t I? If it doesn’t do me any harm?” She looked annoyed. She produced a book of matches and lit what I knew right away was a joint, not a
bidi
. The tip glowed a ragged cherry-red.

I was her friend, and I didn’t want to be the kind of friend who’s always saying, “Don’t do this, don’t do that.” I had to take her as she was, just as she did me. But that didn’t mean that I had to smoke.

“No, thanks,” I said.

“You scared?”

“I guess so.”

“It didn’t do anything good for you when your brother gave it to you, right?”

“That’s true.”

“Did it do anything bad to you?”

“No.”

“So what are you scared of now?”

Maybe she was right and it would help me to sleep through the heat, cool down my dreams.

Amy took a toke, sucked slowly, and then handed it to me. I wasn’t sure how to hold it the right way. The first thing I did was drop the joint on the bed. The ash came off and burned a little reddening hole in the sheet.

I smothered it with the end of my T-shirt. I’d ruined a good quarter-inch of Humboldt County Big Bud.

I thought Amy would be annoyed. But she smiled and said, “Billy, you’re nervous.”

“Well, maybe.”

“Just relax. Here, take it. Don’t squeeze so hard with your fingers. Let me light it for you.” She scratched a match on the box. “Now, suck it down. Real slow. Slippy-slide.”

I tried. It was so hot and sharp in my lungs that I broke out coughing.

“You got some in there,” Amy decided.

“… Did I?” I could hardly speak.

She took another hit, then offered the joint to me again. Although my lungs felt like they were on fire, I tried a second time. This time it was easier.

Now there comes a period that I’m not so sure about. It crept up on me. At first I felt nothing, just heat spreading throughout my chest. Then I thought, oh, wait… something’s happening. Oh, that’s interesting.
Ooooh
. Wow. I felt dizzy and it seemed a good idea to lay down on the bed. Things became very colorful. A high-speed electric can opener seemed to be whirring around inside my brain, peeling off layer after layer of brain cells. This happened at a level beyond dizziness. I flew above the earth. I landed in the wooden belly of a ship at sea. The ocean was a powerful purple color. I gripped my oar.

I don’t know how much time passed.

“You all right, Billy?” Amy’s voice came to me from far away.

“I’m doing fine.”

“You sure?”

“I’m having a great time on this ship,” I said. “But it’s hard work rowing. How about you?”

“I’m not so good.”

“Why not?”

In a quiet voice she said, “I think I’m going to die, Billy.”

“What?”

“I think I’m going to die.”

It took a while for the words to register and make sense. I worked my head up a bit, and then I propped myself up on one elbow. The room — or my mind — was veiled in a violet-colored mist.

“Amy, what did you say?”

“I’m cold.”

I could see her now. I didn’t know how much time had passed or how many hits of the joint she’d taken. She was curled up in a chair, pulling her knees as close as she could to her chest so that Madonna’s face on her T-shirt was all scrunched up, making as tight a ball of herself as was possible. Amy was always pale; she had tender-looking skin. Now she was so white she looked transparent. Not good. I thought about it for a while.

“Get under the covers,” I suggested.

“I can’t move.”

All I wanted to do was go back to my ship and that cool dark blue ocean, but I knew I couldn’t do that. I had to put that on hold. I lurched over to Amy. She leaned her head against me. I felt the chill of her forehead against my ribs.

“Are you still cold?” I asked.

“I’m freezing, Billy.”

I got my arms under her and hauled her across the floor to the bed. She didn’t resist but she didn’t help. She was dead weight and hard to move. I dragged her across the wooden floor and across a bit of wrinkled carpet and managed to shove her up on the bed, and then I worked for a time with the sheets until I spread them over her, while she curled up again in a ball. On the floor I found the pale blue nylon blanket that I’d tossed off the bed the night before, and I doubled it and draped it over her.

“Better?”

“Don’t put me in there,” she said.

“I’m not putting you in anywhere.”

“It’s so cold,” she whispered. “My blood’s turning to ice. The blood in my hands and feet is ice-cold and it’s moving toward my heart. Inch by inch. I can feel it coming for me.” She spoke to me quietly, patiently, as if she were a teacher explaining some simple scientific matter to a child. “In the wrist now. Real slow. But I can’t stop it. When it gets to my heart, my heart will freeze. Then I’ll die. You understand what I’m saying?”

I knew that what she described wasn’t true but I also knew that she’d convinced herself it was true, and so it might happen.

“Where’s the Princess? Can’t she help you?”

“She’s cold, too.”

“I’ll keep you warm,” I said. “Then you won’t freeze. You won’t die.”

“Yes, Billy.”

I didn’t know if she meant “yes, I’ll die” or “yes, keep me warm.” And it didn’t matter because I was clawing through the violet mist that was all around me, doing what I had to do to save her. Moving made my head ache. That can-opener was still peeling out levels of gray matter. I’m going to pass out soon. If I pass out, Amy might die. I can’t pass out. I have to help her.

Have to fight.

“The Princess was made of glass,” she said. “When they locked her up, she cracked.”

Can’t give in. Don’t give in.

I snugged into bed with her and reached out to hold her in my arms. She didn’t resist. I was hot and she thought she was freezing. I felt her forehead with my palm. It was true: she was scarily cool. She shuddered. But I believed that if I gave her all my heat, she wouldn’t die.

My heartbeats were so strong, so deep, so loud, that I was frightened by them. I began to boil. I was a kettle of water on the stove. I felt the sweat drip from my head into her hair. My sweat made her hair grow wet.

“See? Now you’re warm, Amy. I’m giving you heat. Do you feel it?”

I wiped my forehead with the sheet. If I sweated on her too much she’d get wet, colder.

I don’t know how long we lay like that. The lamp was still on so it was light enough for me to see my watch but I couldn’t make sense of where the hands were. I heard the merengue and the chatter from La Perla so it couldn’t have been too late. Odors of fried things and hot sauces floated in the air. Time seemed like a long slow wind blowing across a humid plain.

“Can you get me something to eat, Billy?”

I might have been asleep, because my whole body jerked when Amy said those words.

“What?”

She asked me again if I could get her something to eat.

“Are you still freezing?”

“I’m cold but my blood’s not so icy now. I don’t think I’m going to die. But I almost did. I’m hungry. Is there any food?”

“I’ll have to go upstairs and get it. I’ll have to leave my oar.”

I was willing to do that, and I climbed out of bed. I was in my underwear, damp from head to toe. I took a few cautious steps. I didn’t hear any sounds in the house. Everyone who lived in the house must have been out partying.

I crawled up the two flights of stairs on my hands and knees.

In the kitchen I foraged for food: I found a cold duck leg, the cold roast potatoes, a chocolate cupcake and a jelly donut from Uncle Bernie’s stash, and a bottle of apple juice. I didn’t know how to carry everything safely down so I dumped it all in a paper bag I found under the sink. The walls of the kitchen were circling around me. Whoo-ee. I worked my way down the two flights of stairs. I did it sitting down. Bump bump bump.

I had forgotten knives and forks. Amy and I stuffed the food into our mouths like animals. I knew that Amy was all right now, that she was saved from whatever demon that had clutched at her and made her believe that her heart would freeze. I lay down on the bed. To save Amy, I had kept my own demons at bay. Now I could face them. Let them do their worst. The water poured in on me. The water was everywhere. It stretched as far as I could see.

I was an oarsman. The ship belonged to Christopher Columbus and it was pitching and tossing on an ocean without wind, but until the wind blew again my mates and I had to row. I didn’t understand that because the ships of Columbus had sails and they hardly ever rowed. But that’s the way it was. My hands hurt and the muscles of my back ached from the labor. I looked through the porthole at the foam of blue water, and I saw that the ocean was composed of a heavenly choir of brown-haired maidens who swayed and sang while their long hair floated in the air around them. I called up to Christopher Columbus on the quarterdeck: “Chris, head more north. You can make your landfall on Long Island. And I can go home. And you can discover America instead of that place you called San Salvador. Chris?”

I heard Amy say, “Billy?”

“Uh-huh?”

“You’re calling out for someone named Chris.”

I tried to explain that I was in the galley of the
Santa Maria
, headed for the Bahamas, and she was a fat, slow ship. We’d run out of wind.

I sprang up from the bed. Amy was sitting next to me with her hand on top of my hand. Our hands were greasy from the duck. The bedside lamp cast interesting shadows. I couldn’t hear the people chattering and the cutlery clattering across the street in La Perla. I was hot again. I yanked off my Jockeys and left them in the bed. I was naked. So what? I was broiling alive.

“What time is it, Amy?”

“Quarter to three.”

“Whoo-ee.”

I looked out the window facing Rivington Street. I turned to face Amy — I had lost all shyness. I said, “Hey, I know exactly where I am. I smoked a joint with you and I got stoned. That’s why I thought I was rowing across the Atlantic Ocean. I’m not a galley slave. I’m not in the
Santa Maria
. We’re here in this house in SoHo and across the street there’s a Puerto Rican restaurant called La Perla. We had dinner tonight with Uncle Bernie and Ginger. I roasted two ducks.” I took a deep breath of the night air, which seemed to weigh more than usual. “But if all that’s true, Amy, can you tell me why I’m looking out the porthole and all I can see is the ocean, and it’s made up of a heavenly choir?”

Amy laughed. She didn’t know I was serious. And it’s a fact that the waves were receding. The choir began to grow fuzzy, fade from view.

I gripped my head with both hands. “I’m hot.”

“Jump into the ocean,” Amy said.

“Good idea.”

I ran into the bathroom, pulled the tub’s shower curtain aside, climbed in, and turned the cold knob all the way. The water spat a few times, then beat down hard. I flinched when it ran down the small of my back but it felt wonderful. I soaped away all the duck grease and jelly donut that had dripped down my face.

A few minutes later I climbed out and stood on the tiles and toweled down, but not so much as to heat up my skin with friction. I was thinking more clearly now. Before I went back into the bedroom, I wrapped the damp towel around my waist.

Amy had turned off the lamp but enough light bled up from the street so that I could see. Amy was still in bed, the sheet pulled up over her. I threw off the towel and got into bed with her, groping to find my Jockeys. I touched Amy’s skin. She had peeled off her jeans and T-shirt plus whatever had been underneath them. She hadn’t a stitch on.

“You saved my life, Billy. I almost froze to death.”

She threw back the sheet and took hold of my dick with her stubby fingers and started moving it up and down.

The blood rushed to my head. I had difficulty speaking. The best I could do was whisper — no, squeak — her name.

“Amy, hey…”

“I want to do it for you.” Her voice was quiet and determined.

“Amy, you…”

What I wanted to say was “Amy, you
can’t
,” but I couldn’t get the last word out. And I knew she
could
. Shouldn’t, but could. I grew hard so fast that it scared me. My dick began to weep. It shot up rigid, crying huge tears. It was small, it was tearful, but it was incredibly resolute.

“You have a slippery rock there, Billy.”

Taking my hand, she placed it flat on one of her tiny swollen breasts, and she leaned over and kissed me. I felt her tongue on my teeth. I convulsed; I groaned like I’d been stabbed. The groan sprang from a feeling that’s hard to describe, because as much as I felt pain and shame, I also felt thrilled. I spurted. From the corner of one barely open eye I saw milky white rockets, one after another, shoot halfway toward the ceiling, where they burst and fell.
O say can you see…

Amy squealed. She had seen. “Billy,
wow
. That waw awesome!”

Before I could speak, or even move, she swung on top of me, straddled me, raised her skinny haunches, grabbed hold of me, and pushed my dick up into the center of her. I met no resistance. I was small but still pencil-hard, and we were both sopping wet. I smelled roast duck fat, salty marsh. She thumped up and down, and she laughed; she was having a good time. I saw her belly ring jiggling. She circled and twisted with a measured and happy assurance. She was not a beginner.

I hurt from the throbs. I could feel my heart pump. I couldn’t help myself. Like a machine pistol, I shot again. I fired off the whole magazine.

A cry, as soft as the coo of a dove, broke from Amy’s throat, and she tumbled to my side.

Chapter 32