“What do you mean to do?” She turned to the madman who sat across from her in an armchair in his entire naked splendor. “Keep me captive?”
“I just don’t want you to leave.” He wouldn’t commit himself. The good captor never does. Of course you can’t keep watch over someone all the time. Someone has to sleep. The two’d slept just a little. But that was together. Unless you tie your captive up or shackle them they’ll run off, but this wasn’t Brochowitz’s style. He had a better way.
“If you want to see your son again?”
“What? Are you threatening me now? I’ll have you arrested. I…”
“Sandy,” the madman drew himself up full stature his muscles flexing involuntarily. “You don’t want to ever say that or think that way. I was just saying you’re not to leave. We’ve got plenty of food. There’s nothing we need.”
She sat back frustrated wondering what she’d just gotten herself into. But wasn’t that easy to admit now? What about the side that’d just surrendered to him. The fact that she liked the killer type? Some women do you know. They say they can’t have any other or even if they can’t say it they act accordingly. Now … now that it was over, she wanted the nightmare to end. She was in love with Hartwig. In other words she’d bounced from a bad guy suddenly back to a good guy if you’d call Hartwig that.
“So,” said Hammond. “What’d she do? She certainly must’ve known by that time she couldn’t call the police or her life was in jeopardy. With that nut and his buck knife he’d carve her to shreds. He…”
“The two had breakfast,” I said.
Brochowitz slipped acid into her orange juice figuring, I suppose, if he could only keep her
drugged
she wouldn’t go anywhere at the same time he helped himself to another dose. Sometimes those people took that stuff like water day in and day out. At the end of a month they don’t know themselves. At the end of two they became crazy and were institutionalized, some permanently. I honestly don’t know whether she’d ever had it before either which can be a frightening experience if you don’t know what’s happening to you. For LSD is a psycho mimetic; in other words it induces or mimics a state of psychosis. At any rate as you know the day didn’t end too well for her or the patient either. Oceanview was never the same; a town never is after a maniac like that runs loose through it.
Towards noon, of course, the two were back in bed but now things were a little different. Not just one of them was out of it, they both were. Imagine sex like that. The greatest release in the world only now magnified a thousand fold, the human orgasm.
“You imagine it,” said Hammond. “I’d rather not. They were both just crazy.”
“What else is that but crazy,” I answered him. “It’s certainly not like any other state of ours. You can hallucinate as much as you want but without that special feeling of
release or surrender
…?”
“And so,” said Hammond, “did they both experience that?”
“They did indeed but not like you’d expect. At least not like Brochowitz the ardent and possessive lover did. Or for that matter perhaps her either.”
Believe me I don’t know all the holds they used. The Kama Sutra discloses some of them but basically there’s penetration and reception, the old story of the universe, the simple explosion into the endless realm of darkness that’s in turn set aglow, acted right out in the bedroom. You call out the other’s name like it’s the logos or the word of God. And believe me that’s important or at least was in this case.
“San … dy,” you can hear the madman’s echo through the universe…”
“And hers, what’d she say or cry should I put it? … Jeffrey.” Hammond thought he was being cute.
“That,” I said, “was just the problem.
No, it wasn’t Jeff or Jeffrey in fact. And she did utter the name all right which obviously was the name of the person she did have in mind, who didn’t happen to be the one on top of her. It was, of course,
Louis
or perhaps
Louie
according to you. And that was Hartwig’s first name obviously, not Brochowitz’s. At a crucial time that, of course, that constitutes the biggest insult in the world to the lover who in this case was Brochowitz. Remember Plato’s two steeds, the black and the white, the lover and the beloved. It was something like that only run amuck this time. The ultimate betrayal by the beloved at the very moment it could strike the most, at least to someone as crazy as Brochowitz and in his altered state of sensitivity. No, my good man those are or rather that is a word you want to kill for. You see, in his passionate approach at conquest Brochowitz, by his bullying, had come to think he was Godlike. He not only discovered he wasn’t, he wasn’t even one of two or three or four perhaps. Somewhere, somehow in her drug-induced passion Sandy’d switched off her submission to the powers of darkness (that Brochowitz literally always claimed to possess and be able to wield), and accepted Hartwig’s gentler power shall we say. She’d finally come around like we who want to get along with others and survive in the world
generally
do. And probably shall until we’re no more. There’ll always be good versus evil among us only more good, a lot more good. It’s never really a question of the devil’s taking over (though he might cause enough confusion to bring about our demise in the end). We’ll still know basically what humanitarian consideration (public opinion?) is (we’ll take it to our collective grave) though false Gods can blind and destroy us if we let them. Die, yes, but with a smile on your face.
And that insipid, blissful expression on the countenance of the simple socialite was just what he saw ‘right after’, the look of ultimate satiety, as her head lay against the pillow, her knees were slightly raised and her lower torso inflamed with goose bumps. She in other words had landed on the Elysian plains and he hadn’t put her there.
“And him?”
“The ninth circle in hell I presume.”
“What’d you just say?”
He confronted her with fierce slanting eyes and rigid jaw like Fujiwara the Japanese war God. She, of course, was too comatose to reply. As her arms groped out for something, he realized it wasn’t him. And the way she wiggled her fingers along with her sated smile got him pretty pissed off. He couldn’t reach her and he knew it and he hadn’t. He hated his own mother more than anyone on earth. She hadn’t been play-acting that time. She’d outright become her. You’d’ve thought that’d’ve been enough to do her in right there but evidently it wasn’t. Seems even the devil can sometimes become confused.
“OK,” he said to the recumbent naked figure. “You won’t answer me. I’m taking your car.” He stood up, slid into his cutoffs and grabbed the keys off the dresser just as she was coming around.
“I’m taking your car, can you hear me?” He was so confused he really didn’t know what he was doing.
“You’re what? No, don’t take my car. You can’t have my car,” she said. Which, I suppose, is all he wanted to hear. High as a kite, evidently, pink elephants, Chinese dragons or whatever was fleeting through his incited brain, he started it and drove away. Remember this man was off his medicine and high on perhaps the most potent drug known to man. And after taking a double dose he was driving away. Where, to Arcturus? It might just as well have been in this case. He could join Lindsay.
“At least,” said Hammond, “the madman was gone. It gave her time to get away.”
“Are you kidding, in her condition? She still didn’t know where she was. She, in fact, was still in seventh heaven though she did manage to call the police and report her car stolen. That turned out to be her downfall.”
“Really,” said Hammond. “I know she was murdered but how?”
Not really having anywhere to go or moreover a particular destination, Brochowitz headed around the lagoon to Salinas. He was just out joyriding he’d been away so long. I believe he also wanted to talk to the priest if he could find him at home or perhaps the reason was to buy more drugs, as if he needed any. And in any other circumstance it would’ve been a beautiful drive.
The day was sunny, the reeds on the lagoon were in full bloom and the muddy islets were covered with nesting seals that resembled cigar butts lying in staggered order. Then off to the right stood the old white house, which had been turned into the Audubon reserve where egrets mated and nested in the fir trees of the canyon. Their white protuberances sat vertically on the limbs like the Christmas ornaments of an order. One came to farms, farmhouses, the old lumber company and the nursery. The last structure before one entered the small town was the schoolhouse. Children were at school, adult visitors birdwatched at the reserve.
And, of course, in another venue (but in their midst) was the madman high as a kite, flying around the lagoon with the top down, luxuriating actually as for him for it’d been years since he’d had a car of his own and quite a while since he’d driven one. All that time he’d lived at the beach house Sandy’d never let him drive hers. She hadn’t trusted him and now he was free and out driving. You’ve no idea how that feeling can exhilarate people. Once horses, now cars. That alone justifies their use unless by not putting the brakes on them we eliminate ourselves. Then there’ll be nothing to become exhilarated about for there’ll be no one left. Seems Brochowitz’d not only taken her car but also her credit cards. Time to fill the gas-guzzler up.
“Yes,” said Hammond. “And to drive a long ways away. To … to the Southland if that’s his bent. Anywhere but here.”
“Funny,” I said, “that you’d bring that up for I think that’s exactly what would have happened if…”
But then, remember, the madman didn’t see things like we do. He didn’t normally (for him) and high on drugs he really didn’t. If you think of how that little curvilinear drive around the lagoon whereupon entering one town (either) you can look back out over the water and see the other is pleasing to one in his ordinary senses, think how impressive it must’ve been to someone in a super extraordinary state. Remember, this man was nearly psychedelic to begin with. With a little help he was in the hyper conscious realm. Every seed, every tree and every blade of grass stood out to him as though the entire prairie were under a microscope of the electron sort where one has virtual three dimension recognition of the atomic parts of being. The trouble is, of course, you don’t know when to let them go. They’re all out there at once and instead of feeling like you’re moving, one finds himself running in place. Time in other words stands still.
So just before Brochowitz was to enter Salinas and he looked back across the lagoon at the bay shore highway over which he’d just come, no great distance but an abnormal one for picking out individual items, guess what he saw like it was right in front of him, clear as day.
“I … I have no idea,” said Hammond. “What’s more I’m not really sure I care. Maybe it was the Black Monk.” He put his elbow on the sideboard and rested his head on his hand.
What else, I said, but the red flashing lights of a sheriff’s car over three miles away. It naturally, was speeding over his previous course undoubtedly in his direction. Believe me it didn’t take long for him to put two and two together especially in his heightened paranoiac state. He knew they were after him. They always were; he could sense it. Could his fate’ve been anything else? Sandy’d called them. This presented him with two warring moods.
“Which were?” Said Hammond whose interest had once more been aroused.
One of utter fear, for even he was able to recognize incarceration whether a nuthouse or a jail, was the worse place to be, perhaps worse than death, the other was an outrageous anger along with an intense feeling of betrayal against that very person who’d just squandered his trust. That, of course, was Sandy. He … he wanted at that point more than anything to get back to her and teach her one final lesson for doing that to him.
“Which,” said Hammond, “was really nothing for he’d done it all to himself.”
“But,” I said, “you try to tell a madman that. He’ll call you crazy. Or maybe just anyone would, the person doesn’t even have to be mad, just in disagreement. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll want to kill but damn near it. And in some cases they will. Again, look at history.”
“But this imbecile or idiot if you’ll let me call him, who’s flying through the nether world in a Mercedes, how can he get back to her with the patrolman behind him, if of course, the flashing lights are indeed meant for him. It’d be like running a roadblock. They’d just turn around and fall on him. There’s no other way out is there? Unless there’s another road, but how…?”
“Ahh,” I said, “that’s just how he did it.”
There was another road. Brochowitz’s mind was computer savvy and was working just like one, a giant machine. You see there’re two ways into Salinas one is from the north; one the south over which Brochowitz’d come in. The two exits from the main highway constitute a fork or triangle, which meets about a mile before the town. With almost instant reasoning like a pilot might make in the air, Brochowitz somehow knew the patrolman’d take the shortest route to overtake him, which was the southern exit over which he’d just come. He’d seen where the car’d been along the lagoon and reasoned perhaps to within seconds just how long it’d take to reach where he’d stopped to turn around. Believe me, Newton’s fluxions had nothing on him. He calculated if he took the back road the patrol car would indeed miss him on the triangle, he could then speed down the highway towards Oceanview and reach Sandy’s home. This he did.
Of course, there was always the chance that the patrol car might have taken the north exit. Brochowitz knew that wouldn’t happen or felt it with such certainty to him it was a tautology … and even if he did make it back to the highway he might run into another patrol car coming out from Oceanview. Or he might run into another car that’d been coming from the north and taken the back exit. All that and maybe they weren’t even after him. The sheriff’d been chasing a speeder. With all these confusing thoughts to go on the madman made his move. He took the back road, waited a few minutes at the intersection of the highway before speeding along to Oceanview. And you know how those things are. You see them at the football games or anywhere kids gather where there’re cops about, symbols of defiance they’re called. The screwed up Brochowitz then stood up several times behind the wheel to look back across the lagoon and as if there were a cop to see it, he held up a finger of defiance. He … he raved and shook his fist while he cast imprecations at the far away vehicle as if it’d receive them.