Incubi - Edward Lee.wps (25 page)

The disappointment was thick in his throat. "You're failing, Ms. Polk. I guess I was wrong about you."

He must see the anguish on her face. She could think of nothing else that might allow the image of herself to transpose. She would never be able to do the painting now. Quit, she thought. You're a failure, so quit. You're not an artist, you're only pretending to be you're a fake. You can't see, you can't even see yourself. Quit the whole business. Go back to Jack, get a normal job, lead a normal life. What good is an artist who can't see past her own nose?

"Try again," Khoronos said more softly. "Look deeper. If you visualize your rightful place in the dream, the image will transpose into what it must be in order to create it. Try again."

She remained standing, her head back and her eyes squeezed shut. She wanted to bolt. She wanted to grab her clothes, find Ginny, and get the hell out of this crackpot madhouse of foreign studs, carnival mirrors, and art-weirdo philosophy.

But Try again, she thought.

The dream is black, but she is bright within it: she is almost luminous in the explicit clarity of her flesh. It's a black grotto, some subterranean fissure of her id. She is waiting for someone. That is the key. Whoever she is waiting for will make the image transpose. She will find her transposition through the acknowledgment of her passion not fantasies or past sexual experience.

Real passion. Passion which transcends. She knows one thing; whoever is waiting for her is her passion.

The grotto's empty black space thickens with heat. The rough pocked walls begin to tint, tongues of wavering orange light growing bright. Out of nothing, the burning man rises, the man made of flames. The fire-lover.

She sees him. His body is beautiful and sculpted of millions of tiny points of flame. He is hissing. His large, delineated genitals are pulsing for her, rousing. In his fire-eyes, she sees all the passion of history.

Then she sees herself. She is more than herself. The splendor of her passion transcends her flesh.

In this bright, hot unreality, she is now more real than she ever has been or ever could be. Her spirit now transposes with her flesh. It has made her greater, more beautiful, truthful, and real than all the sum of her worldly parts.

She is arching back. Her arms are rising as tears are squeezed out of her eyes.

"I can see it!" she whimpers.

"Yes."

The burning man approaches her. The proximity of all that passion burns her into a state of ecstasy. She is coming, reeling, nearly screaming in bliss.

The fire-lover takes her hand and leads her away forever.

«« »»

Veronica's knees went out; she collapsed to the smooth mirror floor. Sweat ran off her in rivulets, and her sex was throbbing down. She tried to rise to her hands and knees but collapsed again.

Seeing herself transposed into the dream siphoned off all that remained of her strength. Her sweat left a print of herself on the glass.

She rolled over on her back. Her wet hands reached up for Khoronos.

Khoronos was no longer in the room.

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Susan lay back in her plush bed and stretched like a cat. Desire existed for a reason—to be sated so why should she feel bad? The two young men administered her from either side; she felt like a dynast on a bed of feathers, with these two as her sex slaves. They were irresistible. She had no inhibitions about leaving the lights on. "We want to see you, Susan," the short-haired one had said. "Fine," she'd said. She wanted to see them too. The best sex must slake every sense, like the best poetry.

They'd come on to her at the Undercroft. She'd shot the shit awhile with Craig, who she'd been putting the make on for months. As usual he'd politely declined her rather forward suggestion.

"Know any good plumbers, handsome?" she'd asked. "I have a drain that needs to be snaked."

Craig had very kindly given her the local number for Roto-Rooter. It didn't matter, though.

Perseverance always paid off. She'd have his gorgeous ass in bed one of these days, and then she'd show him what a real woman could do. Yes, sir, she'd suck his balls right out the hole in his knob.

Then there was that lush cop Jack something. The poor fucker had been plowing one Scotch after the next. She'd heard he was a county homicide cop on the skids. He looked like shit: crushed slacks, coffee-stained shirt and tie, and hair longer than Jesus. At eleven o'clock sharp he went facedown on the bar. Craig and another keep had carried him out.

That's when Susan had been just about to leave. Damn good thing I didn't, she thought now, and giggled as a pinky slipped up her anus. Because that's when Fraus and Philippe had walked in.

Where'd guys this young get money for suits like that? These two were dressed to the max. Rich European daddy's boys, Susan had concluded from their accents and mannerisms. By now Susan had heard every bar come-on line in the book. These guys, though, they had it down. "Miss," the bigger one had said, "you may find this hard to believe, but I have psychic tendencies." They stood on either side of her, smiling and beautiful in their crisp Italian suits. "Oh, yeah?" she challenged. "Tell me something about my life." "You are a poet," he said.

She'd been taken aback. It was true. She'd dabbled in poetry since college, had even had some published. Most of her stuff was clearly derivative of Anne Sexton (Susan preferred to think of it as emulation), descanting stanzas of free verse which depicted the finding of oneself through sexuality. Sex, she believed, was power, and her poetry detailed that power, often quite explicitly. Her favorite thus far was called "Female Utilitarian Coronation in Knowledge," which had been published with some others in The Tait Literary Review.

"I am Fraus," he said. "And this is my friend Philippe. He is also a poet."

Susan found them immediately fascinating, these two beautiful suave boys. They'd talked for two hours, about theology, poetical dynamics, and the philosophy of sex. Philippe claimed to be published in Métal Urbain and Disharmonisch, renowned European art journals.

"What do you write about?" Susan had asked.

"La beauté des femmes."

"What?"

"The beauty of women."

Hmm, she thought. "And you? What do you do?"

"I sculpt," Fraus said. "On the same theme."

"Do women pose for you?"

"Not in the traditional sense. I do not sculpt by looking at a model. My models must be women I have loved. I sculpt by the memory of touch, from what my hands have touched in passion."

Their approach refreshed her. So what if it was phony? It was different and unique. She drank Cardinals through their trialogue of creative innuendos. They drank beer called Patrizier Z.A., which was nonalcoholic. When she asked about it, Fraus replied, "Neither of us partakes in alcohol. The creative spirit is quickly corrupted through the flesh."

"Drink is not a very edifying pursuit," Philippe added.

"There are better things to do than drink."

Now you're talking, Susan thought. But this proposed a problem. Who would she go home with?

Philippe or Fraus? Unless they were roommates, she couldn't very well go home with both of them.

"Hurry up, please, it's time," Craig quoted T.S. Eliot to announce last call. "Or to put it more eloquently, everybody get the fuck out of the bar!"

Susan finished her Cardinal. Immediately she felt even more aroused her panties must be soaked.

Perhaps the pressure of choice spurred her libido further. They paid her tab and theirs, and looked at her, their faces forlorn, beautiful.

Which one do I want? she struggled.

Then came the simplest answer of all.

Both.

"Follow me," she said. "The blue Miata convertible."

She hadn't quite made out their car. It was big and black, like a Caddy. The headlights behind her could've been the light of their expectations, which was fine with her. Her own expectations were beginning to drench her. She hoped she didn't soak through her dress to the suede seat. Once on a whim she'd picked up a middie at the Rocks, whose own rocks hadn't lasted long enough for her to get it in her mouth. Kids, she thought. They never last. The nut stain on her seat would last, though. For sure.

The complex was dark. In the elevator they'd assailed her, kissing both sides of her neck.

Philippe played with her breasts while Fraus stuck his hand up her skirt. She giggled almost embarrassingly as her hands drifted to their crotches, then she giggled again. The elevator wasn't the only thing going up.

None of them had wasted time on preliminaries. She'd never done two at once before, but as horny as she felt right now, she thought she'd do just about anything.

And that had been that.

Philippe's pinky slipped out of her anus; she flinched. They bathed her with their tongues. Fraus went down on her like a famished animal brought to a full trough. She gasped at the abrupt avalanche of sensation. Her first orgasm went off like a bomb in her loins, and she shrieked.

"Shh," Philippe whispered. He straddled her chest as Fraus kissed circles of afterglow around her sex.

The first one always flattened her; it made her feel run over. She lay back in descending bliss.

She'd only need a little time to be ready again, and this thrilled her. Most guys would've been finished by now, but these two were just starting. Refraction, the sex books called it. After a first big bang she could start having multiples. And Philippe's penis between her breasts would give her something to do in the interim.

Then, for the first time, the question occurred to her. "How did you guys know I was a poet?"

"Your aura," Philippe said, gently pinching her nipples.

Fraus kissed the nest of trimmed black hair. "Creative people give off a light, like a halo. You have a beautiful halo."

What lovely bullshit this was. Of course, she didn't believe they were psychic. They'd obviously read some of her local poetry, and someone had pointed her out to them downtown somewhere.

"If you were for real," she said to Philippe, "You'd write a poem about me."

"I will. I'll call it ‘Lady of the Halo.'"

"And I will do a sculpture," Fraus added.

"Of me?"

"Of this." His hand cupped her pubis. A finger ran gently up the groove. "I will call it ‘Adoration.'"

"And I'll write a poem about you guys," she said. "I'll call it ‘Bullshit Artists with Style.'"

All three of them laughed.

Soon it would be time to play sandwich. They'll be the bread, and I'll be the cheese. She'd seen it in a movie once, Room for Two, not exactly an Oscar winner, but the idea had always titillated her. Many things did, in fact. She felt alight with lust; nothing occurred to her then but her desire, not condoms or morality, not danger. Just the pinpoint, knife-sharp edge of the sensations that demanded to be loosed.

She pressed her breasts together and let Philippe stroke between them. "I'm a little disappointed, though," she joked. "I was hoping you guys really were psychic."

"Are you ready to go on?" Philippe asked.

"We'll be the bread," Fraus said. "You'll be the cheese."

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Jack woke up in his clothes. Aw, Jesus, not again. He staggered to the bathroom, groaning, and threw up. Only when he staggered back did he notice Faye sitting there.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Her detached gaze was the worst response he could fathom.

"I broke my promise."

"You sure did," she concurred.

"Something happened. I..." Only shreds of memory flitted back. He sat down on the bed and rubbed his eyes. "Somebody told me something about someone. I guess I couldn't handle it, and I got drunk."

"It's that girl, isn't it? Veronica?"

Jack nodded.

"You were calling out her name in your sleep."

When Jack Cordesman fucks up, he thought, there are no half measures. How could he explain this? "I'm an alcoholic, Faye. I have been for a while, I guess. When I'm faced with something I can't deal with, I drink."

"That's supposed to be an excuse? How long do you think you can go on like this? This was the second night in a row you've had to be brought home. You're not in control of your own life."

"I know, I can't help it." He said. "I'm a drunk."

"If that's what you think, then that's all you'll ever be." Faye got up and walked out of the bedroom.

He followed after her. "Why don't you give me a chance!"

She turned at the door with her briefcase. "A chance for what?"

"You know."

"No, I don't know. What are you saying?"

What was he saying? "I thought that when this Triangle thing is over, we might, you know "

"Don't even say it, Jack. Three nights ago you told me you still loved Veronica. Now you're saying you don't?"

Jack sat down in the middle of the stairs. "I guess I don't know what I'm saying. I'm trying to get over it, that's all."

"So what am I? The consolation prize?"

"That's not what I mean at all and you fucking know it. You ever been in love, Faye, and have it not work?"

"Yeah," she said. "Once."

"And all you had to do was blink and you were over it?"

"No, of course not."

"How long did it take you?"

She looked at him. Her anger fizzed away. "A year," she said.

"And if something happened to that person, say he disappeared, say he got in some kind of trouble, wouldn't you still be concerned about him, even if it happened after the relationship fell apart?"

Her pause drew out. "Yeah, I'd still be concerned."

"All right, fine. That's what's happening with me right now. So why don't you cut me a little "