Closet Case (Robert Rodi Essentials) (32 page)

Bob hooked his foot through the strap of Yolanda’s bag and dragged it over to him. Yolanda made a lunge for it, coming out of her crouch like a panther. Seeing this Magellan cried,
“Whoa!”
which provoked Becca to jump even more furiously while bleating,
“What? What?”

Bob immediately pressed the spear against the hollow of Lionel’s throat. “Nuh-
uh,”
he said to Yolanda; “mustn’t get out of line! Not unless you want your boyfriend to reap the consequences.” He grimaced. “In fact, I think your dip in the lake is a tad overdue.
Isn’t
it, Lionel?” He applied greater pressure until Lionel thought he might embarrass himself by releasing his bladder.

“Bob!” Yolanda said, stamping her foot. “This has gone too far. Stop it at
once
.”

“Why?” he said, his voice breaking, his head whirling to face her. “Why
should
I?”

“Because this will go against you! You will be arrested and imprisoned!”

“Why should I care what happens to me?” His voice was raw, like a radio station not entirely dialed in. “
You
don’t.”

Her shoulders dropped and she cocked her head. “Oh, Bob. Of course I do.”

He shuddered. “You do?”

She nodded. Then, just as he was lowering the spear, she added, “Just not very much.”

The spear bit into Lionel’s skin again, and Bob, his jaw set with new determination, said, “Tell her to go in, Lionel.” He mumbled something, he himself didn’t know exactly what; and as he did so, the spear broke his skin, and a pearl of blood trickled down its chiseled head.

Yolanda gasped, clutched her own throat, and said, “
Jesus! Maria!
Look what you’ve
done
!”

“Look what
you’ve
done,” Bob countered, not moving the spear. “This is all on
you
, and you
know
it!”

Panicking now, Yolanda said, “Very well, I am going,” and she bounded over to the edge and dove in, sending a sheet of water over her hostess that left her entirely drenched. Wilma emitted a low, animal whine, like a cat in heat.

Bob at last lowered the spear and, nodding at his prisoner’s wound, said, “Sorry, Lionel. Get you a Band-Aid for that soon enough. It’s just a prick. Shouldn’t leave much of a scar.” He now used his spear to tip out the contents of Yolanda’s bag, which spilled all about his feet.

“Look, this has gone far enough,” said Magellan in his most thundering tones. Lionel couldn’t see his arms or legs, but his neck was knotted with tension and clotted with muscle. “I want you
off
this dock and
off
this property. I don’t care who you are or what
Lionel’s done. This is an
outrage
. I mean it.
Out
.”

Bob ignored him, and sifted through Yolanda’s things with his toe.

Becca, who couldn’t see this, looked at Magellan and said, “
That
didn’t work did it? Tough guy? You’re responsible for our safety, here. You’re the property owner. We could sue.”

“Becca, for Christ’s
sake
,” her husband stage-whispered, unable to ignore her any longer. “Show some goddamn manners! Babcock’s our
host
!”

She sneered at him. “Were you this pathetic a brown-noser in school, or is it something you picked up later?”

“Stand under the dock,” Peg insisted, trying to shove her husband in that direction. “It’s out of the sun’s rays.”

“Cut it out,”
he cried. “There’s stuff
growing
under there — it’s all
slimy
.”

All at once, Bob exclaimed,
“Ah!”
and they all looked up at him (except Wilma, who still clung trembling to the post, and Becca, who repeatedly launched herself out of the water, vainly trying to see what the others were taking in). From the contents of the bag, Bob produced a tube of spermicidal jelly. “The smoking gun!” he trilled, displaying it to the others as though they couldn’t help finding it as damning as he did. He turned to Lionel and said, “
Still
care to tell me you’re not sleeping with her?”

Lionel looked to Yolanda; this was her secret to divulge. She was just finishing wringing out her hair (with every male eye closely following the endeavor); she twisted out the last bit of moisture and said, “I do not deny that I am seeing someone; I just deny that it is Lionel.”

“You said the man you were seeing wasn’t here,” crowed Bob. “Well, if he’s not here, what do you need
this
for?” His toe teased something else out of the bag, then he plucked it up and displayed it. “Or
this
?” It was a jar of sexual lubricant.

“What?”
Becca wailed, plunging in and out of the water.
“What? What? WHAT?”

“He is not
here
here,” said Yolanda, “but he is
here
 … oh, Lionel, this is growing ridiculous. We
must
tell him the whole truth.”

“What
whole truth?” Bob said, tossing the lube back into the pile of Yolanda’s belongings.

Lionel shook his head; he was resolute. He and Yolanda had reached an impasse. He was fighting
her
now, as much as he was battling Bob.

“What is going
on
down there?” A new voice.

They all turned to see David at the far end of the dock. He stood next to a packed suitcase, his hands on his hips, his mouth hanging open. “I came to say goodbye. What the hell? Who’s the loser with the javelin?”

Lionel was struck dumb. His tongue grew too big for his mouth. His knees began knocking like the engine of a ’48 Packard. And despite having a spear aimed between his eyes — despite nearly everyone who had any kind of bearing on his life now staring at him with varying degrees of blame and contempt — despite the fact that his terrible secret was seeping out like vinegar from a dribble glass — despite all this, there was but one thought, one dreadful epiphany that seized his mind and refused to let go:

David … was … leaving.

“Now is the time,” Yolanda coaxed him, her body swaying almost imperceptibly as Lake Gilbert tugged at her thighs. “While David is here, Lionel —
now
is the time for the truth!”

“Finally,”
said Becca, who had managed to chin herself up to the dock, legs kicking wildly, and now hung there like a damp Christmas stocking, surveying the confrontation with wild-eyed ecstasy.

“The
truth
, Lionel,” Yolanda repeated, but her voice had a faraway, dreamlike quality. He could focus on nothing but David.

“
What
truth?” Bob demanded, and he actually stamped his foot, setting the dock to shaking and causing Becca to lose her grip and slip into the water again. (Half a curse was drowned as she plunged beneath the surface.) “I’m getting pretty sick of asking this. Come
on
!”

“Lionel,” Yolanda pleaded, “
tell
him!”

David … was … leaving!

“Why is he staring at my boy like that?” Magellan said. “What’s he got to do with any of this? I don’t like this. This is not making me happy.”

“
Hush,
Babcock,” said Yolanda. “Let Lionel explain. Lionel! … Lionel, I know you can hear me.
Lionel!
”

David … was … leaving!

Julius and Peg Deming had managed to slip a dozen yards down the shoreline and were now trying to make their way up to the house through a dense thicket of brambles. Julie wailed like an ambulance while Peg kept reassuring him, “Don’t worry about any scratches, I have tincture of Merthiolate.”

“Lionel,
stop staring at my son,”
Magellan barked. “It’s
creepy
.” He apparently didn’t notice that David was just as intently staring back.

For Lionel had managed to catch his eyes, and refused to let go. It was as if he somehow held him in thrall. David scowled and frowned and pretended to be immune to the telepathic pleading Lionel sent his way, but he wasn’t budging from the spot, and Lionel knew that unless he looked away, or lowered his gaze, David
couldn’t
move; he knew it as surely as he knew his own name. He had locked him in place. He’d lost David once through the interference of other people; if he lost him now, he’d have no one to blame but himself.

Then something happened — or rather, didn’t happen. In what seemed like a moment, all the passions were swept from the dock as if by a great wave, and Lionel felt as though he and the others were suspended in time. It was his eyes, he realized; inertia seeped from them like an odorless gas. It had gripped David first, but had spread like a haze and now wrapped its sinuous fingers around Magellan and Yolanda and Perlman, all of whom watched like a Greek chorus gone mute. Down the beach, Julius and Peg Deming still lived in real time, sniping their way through the brambles. Beneath the pier, Wilma and Becca still muttered and whined, immune to his power. But here, above the dock, there was dead calm, a hypnotic lull — and a fragile one, that begged to be broken, but couldn’t be.

Not till Lionel blinked.

The strain was beginning to tell, and Lionel thought, as he held and held and
held
David’s surf-green gaze,
I know what love is, I know it at last, and this is it, this right here, this eyestrain, this willingness to go blind rather than look away, to let my eyes wither in their sockets rather than let him go.

But he was only human; and the moment inevitably came.

He blinked.

A second passed glacially; no one moved.

Then David shook his head, as if clearing it from a miasma, and said, “I’ve got a bus to catch.”

“You’re leaving your father at the mercy of some lunatic with a
spear
?” howled Magellan. “You ungrateful little ingrate!”

“That’s redundant,” said David, picking up his suitcase. “But don’t worry, I’ll call the police from the house.”

“The liiiines are cut,” sang Bob triumphantly. “No one’s calling
anybody
.”

Something wonderful occurred to Lionel. In a perfectly even voice, he said, “Yolanda, where are my car keys?”

“What?” she asked, astonished. “Lionel, what kind of question is that for a moment like —”

“Where are my car keys
, please?” he repeated, more insistently.

“What does it matter?” Bob said, perplexed. “Even if I
let
you get to your car, you know you can’t get out of the driveway. I’m blocking it.”

Yolanda, sensing the iron in Lionel’s voice, said, “They are in our room, on the dresser.”

And suddenly Lionel was halfway up the deck, running like he’d never run before. “Outta the way, honey,” he gasped at David as he flew past him.

“HEY,”
screamed Bob.
“NO FAIR! GET BACK HERE!”

Lionel erupted into the house and burst into his and Yolanda’s room, and made straight for the dresser. They’d only been here two days, but Yolanda had managed to cram a week’s worth of debris up there— chewing gum wrappers, sunglass cases, a checkbook, a paperback with a bald woman riding an orange turtle on its cover …

Lionel could hear Bob stomping up the dock after him, yelling his name. He had only seconds left.

He swept Yolanda’s stuff off the dresser, handful by handful, until he came across his keys. He scooped them up and darted back to the main room, just as Bob entered from the deck, his face flushed vermilion and his teeth gnashing. “STAY PUT, DARN IT!” he commanded. “I CAN THROW THIS!”

Lionel emitted a little hiccup of fear. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught the dull bronze shine of the fireplace implements. He made a mad grab for a poker, then turned on his heels and bolted away. He escaped through the kitchen door to the front of the cabin, then flew around the side to the back deck just as the Demings were emerging from the underbrush, looking very much the worse for wear. They gaped at him as he passed, wielding his poker like a harpoon, and from behind him he heard Peg say, “We missed something.”

He fairly leapt across the deck, which was a good thing, because Bob was coming through the glass door after him now, swinging his spear like a Watusi warrior and bellowing incoherently. By the time Lionel reached the dock, everyone had climbed back up or been pulled out of the water, and they were all standing with their arms around their shoulders, shivering and dripping. David hadn’t budged an inch from his place beside his suitcase.

Lionel tossed him the keys.
“Use my car phone to call the police,”
he rasped. Then he tore away again, because Bob was closing in on him. His pause to pass the keys had cost him precious seconds.

As David disappeared around the side of the house, Lionel tried to run up an incline and thus avoid the paved walkway to the dock, but after only a few yards he turned his ankle on a knotty eruption of tree root, and he fell. The poker flew from his hand and landed a good four yards away.

And almost instantly, Bob was standing over him, nostrils flaring. Then, with one wild swing of the spear, he managed to bite into Lionel’s shoulder and tear away a piece of his flesh.

Yolanda’s hands flew to her face. She shrieked.

Perlman stopped shivering for a moment and looked at her. “That
scream
,” he said, almost to himself.

Lionel gasped in pain and clutched his arm. Blood oozed through his fingers.

Peg was nearly hopping with excitement. “IT’S ALL RIGHT, LIONEL,” she called from the deck of the house, waving her arms in a frenzy of self-congratulation. “I HAVE TINCTURE OF MERTHIOLATE!”

The bloody blow had cost Bob, too, however. The force of it had thrown him off-balance, and he had hit the ground hard, landing on his bony rump. Lionel scrambled to his feet, retrieved his poker, and after a spasm of pain, considered kicking Bob in the face, but held back. He wouldn’t play by Bob’s rules. The only reason he even kept the poker was to use defensively.

“
That
was a lost opportunity,” Bob said as he clambered back to his feet. “You could’ve had me, there.”