Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil (98 page)

She looked up, her high brow shining above the dark eyes. “You mean I’d
get
to have real sex with you?”

“No.”

“Even if we were married?”

“That would stay the same.”

“Why?”

“You don’t want real lovemaking.”

She sneered, “Oh,
I
don’t want it.” I said nothing, my hand still offered in marriage. She studied my fingers, smiled and asked in a sweet tone, “What do you do afterwards? Go home and masturbate?” I lowered my hand and sat down. “Is that what you imagine?”

“Do you wish I was really a little girl? Is that what you did at your clinic—molest little girls?”

“You’re the only girl I’ve ever read bedtime stories to.” She straightened, arched her back and made one of her composite noises. Mostly, I heard disgust. “You’re just a sick motherfucker who likes to play power games,” she said. “I love you,” I said. “You’re scared to really love me.”

“I love you,” I said.

“When Didier was here he asked me to become his mistress.”

“You told me.”

“He said I should move to Paris and we’d run the European division together.”

“King Didier and Queen Halley.”

“You’re laughing, but he means it.”

“What did Stick think of that offer?”

“I—” She shut her mouth and pushed off the bed as if she were a gymnast dismounting, landing on the balls of her feet, arms akimbo. “I haven’t told him yet.” She walked slowly, watching her feet as she put one in front of the other, to the window. “The pool looks nice,” she said, her mouth against the glass. It fogged up. “Let’s go swimming.”

“It’s been almost a week. Why haven’t you told Stick?”

Halley turned my way. “I could run the European division.”

“I know.”

“You know what my friend, Paula Robeson at IBM, told me? Their head of marketing got a sneak peek at the Centaur 800 ads and flipped out. They think we’re going to—”

“You told me this morning.”

“I did? Oh, right …” She leaned on the window frame, studying her feet. “You know everything,” she said softly.

“I love you,” I said.

She shut her eyes, pressed her full lips together, and said between clenched teeth, “Stop saying it.”

“Why? It’s the—”

She held on to the window frame and stamped her feet, shouting, “I’m ugly!”

“
You’re
ugly?”

“I mean—
it’s
ugly.”

“Loving you is ugly?”

“It’s a lie!” She came over to my chair and dropped to her knees, hands in her lap. She was praying to me. “I know when a man loves me. He wants
me.
He wants me to tell him how great he is, he wants to tell me how scared he is, he wants to hear that he’s too nice—’You should be stronger, people are taking advantage of you,’” she talked with perfect sincerity in her deep voice to an invisible lover.

“Flattery disguised as criticism,” I said. “It’s an excellent technique.”

She reached for my knee shyly, touching lightly with two fingers. “You’re a genius,” she said softly. “I mean a real genius. I’m not flattering you.”

“Don’t touch me,” I said.

She pulled back as if burned. Her eyes seemed to cross and she snapped, “I hate you.”

“I’m glad,” I answered gently, as if she had presented me with an endearment.

“You don’t care what I feel.”

“Yes I do.”

“You don’t care what I say.”

“You can say anything you want. That doesn’t mean I don’t care.”

“You don’t care what I do.”

“I want you to do what you want.”

Still on her knees, with no transition, she said angrily, “I can make Jack leave his wife if I want.”

“I’m sure you can,” I answered.

She stood up, hands on her hips, and challenged me, “I know what you did.”

“What’s that?”

“You told him to take his family on the West Coast trip.”

“I never discussed that with Jack. I recommended a reading tutor for his son, that’s all.”

“I can’t fuck them anymore!” she shouted and turned her back. She bent over—giving her ass to me—and picked up the penny loafers. “It’s too goddamn boring.” She straightened and carried them in one hand toward the door. “Get your bathing suit on. I want to go swimming.” She looked at me over her shoulder and flowing raven hair, resting a hand on the doorknob.

“I’ll sit by the pool and watch you. I have to make notes for the sessions.”

“What is it? You’re covered with a disgusting rash?”

“You want me to put on my bathing suit?”

“Yes.” She hissed the
s.

“Okay.”

“Oh goody,” she mocked. She opened the door, eyes still on me. She paused. “I just want you to know I could do it.”

“Do what?”

“Get Jack to leave his insipid wife.”

“I know you can get rid of rivals. The oldest child is very good at dealing with siblings.”

She let go of the doorknob and frowned. “What does that mean?”

“When my father remarried he got his new wife pregnant. I was with him in Spain, remember? I told you?”

“Yeah …” Her mouth hung open, eyes glazed. I was talking to her subconscious, a kind of shallow hypnotism.

“That’s why I ran away and testified against him. Remember? I told you I got him exiled from the U.S. I ruined his life because he had the nerve to replace me. I was the one and only heir. I had to be that or I would be nothing at all.”

Halley put her back against the door. It shut quietly. She slid down until she was on the floor. “What does that … ?” She frowned, put on one of the penny loafers angrily, the leather snapping against skin. “What does that have to do with Mr. and Mrs. Truman?”

“It was an illusion. Not what I wished, but what I
did.
Do you understand?”

She put on her other shoe, this time fitting it on her foot gently. “I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

“I didn’t kill my brother, but I know what it feels like to wish he was dead.”

She stared. Her mouth trembled. “You bastard,” she whispered.

“It’s not your fault, Halley. All you wanted was to be the most important person in the world to your father. But that’s impossible. So now you want to be the most important person alive to everyone you meet. I guess most people would think that’s a crazy ambition, but it isn’t really, it’s just a waste of your time. I know you can get Jack to want you so badly he’ll sacrifice anything. I know it, you know it, Stick knows it. Even Jack knows it. So what’s the point? Do
you
want him? If you want him, then there’s a point.”

Halley bent over, as if she were doing a stretching exercise, forehead pressed to the pine floor. She put both hands down and pushed up, hopping to her feet. Her mouth was set, talking tight. She was imitating Stick again, only this time it wasn’t conscious mimicry. “I didn’t do what you think. Okay? I didn’t do anything to Mikey.” She turned to the door ready to go, then wheeled back, adding, “I’m not a heartless bastard like you. I don’t know what Gene told you—he really loved me so I could talk to him, I could tell him things about Mikey and Dad and he wouldn’t throw it back at me so ugly—so many fucking ugly words! You asshole! I can’t believe you said that to me.” This was the closest I had seen her come to genuine rage. She forgot her self-possession. Her shoulders were hunched, her brow wrinkled, her beautiful lips in a snarl.

I was calm and unmoved. I said matter-of-factly, “All I’m saying is that they’re no match for you. Of course you can do what you want with Jack, of course you can pretend to become Didier’s mistress and end up running Europe. You could also run the U.S. and Japan. Even Stick is not your equal. That’s why I’m surprised he suggested you get to know Edgar. I thought he was smarter than that.” I slapped my thighs and stood up. “Well, I guess we should change and go down to the pool.”

“You know, you’re a sexist. That’s all. That’s all it is. You don’t think I can accomplish anything unless I take a man into my bed.”

I smiled, stood up, crossed to her, put my hands on her shoulders, turning her to the door. She jerked back stubbornly and called out, like a kid in the schoolyard, “Sexist pig, sexist pig …”

“You’re not taking them to your bed, Halley. Come on. That’s not what you do.”

“They don’t fall in love with me! That’s romantic bullshit men use as an excuse—”

I laughed over the rest of her tirade, opened the door and pushed her out, saying, ‘I know you don’t have to fuck them to get ahead. You’re the one who doesn’t.” She peered at me from the hall, listening skeptically.
“I
know you don’t have to make them love you.
You
don’t.” I patted her on the head. “I love you,” I said, casually closing my door. “Meet you at the pool.”

The conversation was satisfying—the less I gave her a real human being to play upon, the more she reacted to me with real feelings. But the toll on me seemed worse every day. I took three Tylenol (after all, I’m a big man) for my headache—the same sort of migraine-like pain I had been suffering from after the incest sessions. Those I attributed to mere physical frustration; if so, why did a talk session provoke one? The pain was nauseating. I bent over the bowl, but nothing happened. I drank some water and felt a little better. I put on the nylon shorts I used for tennis; actually, they were sold as a bathing suit. There was something worrisome about wearing them, and it concerned me that I was so drained from the scene with Halley I couldn’t make the association. The shorts were a hideous turquoise and black—perhaps I was reminded of Stick’s space-age tennis outfits. I also put on a white polo shirt. I was hardly less dressed than when I wore shorts and a work shirt to the office, so I expected Halley to be disappointed.

She was. By the time I met her at the pool, her anger had vanished, of course. She had recollected her false self. Anyone seeing her, small, slim and brown, hair slick, walking out of the shallow end, and greeting me—“Come in! The water’s great.”—would have thought we were the best of friends. In fact, we had no audience. There was a couple sunning by the deep end, but they seemed to be asleep.

“I’m gonna sit here and watch you,” I said.

She stood in a foot of water. She kicked some at me. “Oh come on. Don’t be a scaredy cat.”

I reclined on a white plastic lounge chair, and flipped my legal pad. “I’ve got work to do.”

She pouted and slunk backwards into the water, lewdly rocking her hips. “At least take off your shirt,” she called.

I ignored her. She began to do laps, slowly, savoring each stroke, the way she did everything, with tantalizing concentration and grace. I stared at the pad. The sun glared off the yellow paper and hurt my head, which was still throbbing. I decided that, since only nine people were coming to the retreat, there was no point in dividing them. The question was whether I could accomplish what I wanted with Stick in a group that large. Also, wouldn’t it be better to remove Halley? She might defend him at a crucial moment. But she was also on the verge of challenging him, my ultimate goal. She still hadn’t informed him of Didier’s offer, not significant because of the offer itself, merely her new secrecy. If she had really kept it secret. She was still capable of lying to me …

The tedium of checking and rechecking every word for manipulations tired me out. I drifted off, although my dream began at the pool, with Halley swimming, so I didn’t know at first.

She was in a yellow pants suit. I meant to shout that she shouldn’t be wearing her mother’s clothes in the water; instead I said, “I’m in a bathing suit.”

Then I knew I was dreaming because Halley was out of the pool, kneeling beside me at the white plastic lounge chair. She had an enormous version of my penis in her mouth. Her lips were distended as they widened to swallow the gigantic phallus. Her eyes watched me and crossed. “You’re a kosher pig,” she said, although talking should have been impossible.

“That’s not mine,” I said, meaning the penis.

A phone rang and Albert answered, telling the caller I wasn’t available. He told me to sleep and tiptoed out, shutting the door gently. It was night. I felt a cool breeze—I knew that was real—but in the dream the breeze was a relief because it was dark and close in the room. My mother was painting the walls of Andy Chen’s office, painting them a bright white that was fluorescent in the gloom. I was a very little boy, on the floor, looking up at her. There was a red X on her back. She glanced my way with a loving smile, an enchanting look that made me long for her to be real. She commented, “Remember, you don’t know.”

“How did you paint the X?”

“You don’t know how to drown,” she said and pointed the thick bristles of the brush at her face. A drop of white paint dripped onto her eye.

“No!” I cried out to stop her from painting her face because then she would disappear. And she did. I had become Francisco; he was chatting with Halley and the sleeping poolside couple, only we were on Grandma’s porch in Tampa, “Well,” Francisco asked, “what does political action mean in the context of physical bravery or cowardice? I am brave as to principle, a coward in kindergarten. I’m scared of my father.”

Halley said, very clearly, “He’s sleeping.”

That’s real, my conscious voice yelled to me. Wake up. That’s real.

“What’s he got planned?” Stick said.

You’re in trouble. Get up. I pushed against the heavy chlorinated water of the dream, dragging me down to cool sleep. I jerked to the surface. Panting, I broke the skin of consciousness, blinking at the shadow staring down at me. “What?” I cried, terrified.

The head answered, “Sorry to wake you, Rafe. I just checked in.”

The dream was over. That was Stick’s head. Halley, wrapped in a large brown towel, was in a chair. Next to her, on a small table, was a glass of iced tea. She had a paperback mystery in her hand. “You slept for three hours,” she said.

Stick moved out of the sun. “I’ll change into my trunks,” he said. “I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s sessions. Sorry I woke you.”

I nodded. I watched him wander toward Green Mountain’s stone building. My mouth was dry, the throbbing in my head gone, although at my temples there were remnants of pain.