Prayers to Broken Stones (51 page)

All humans feed on violence, on the small exercises of power over another. But few have tasted—as we have—the ultimate power. And without the Ability, few know the unequaled pleasure of taking a human life. Without the Ability, even those who do feed on life cannot savor the flow of emotions in stalker and victim, the total exhilaration of the attacker who has moved beyond all rules and punishments, the strange, almost sexual submission of the victim in that final second of truth when all options are canceled, all futures denied, all possibilities erased in an exercise of absolute power over another.

I despair at modern violence. I despair at the impersonal nature of it and the casual quality that has made it
accessible to so many. I had a television set until I sold it at the height of the Vietnam War. Those sanitized snippets of death—made distant by the camera’s lens—meant nothing to me. But I believe it meant something to these cattle that surround me. When the war and the nightly televised body counts ended, they demanded more,
more,
and the movie screens and streets of this sweet and dying nation have provided it in mediocre, mob abundance. It is an addiction I know well.

They miss the point. Merely observed, violent death is a sad and sullied tapestry of confusion. But to those of us who have Fed, death can be a
sacrament.

“My turn! My turn!” Nina’s voice still resembled that of the visiting belle who had just filled her dance card at Cousin Celia’s June ball.

We had returned to the parlor. Willi had finished his coffee and requested a brandy from Mr. Thorne. I was embarrassed for Willi. To have one’s closest associates show any hint of unplanned behavior was certainly a sign of weakening Ability. Nina did not appear to have noticed.

“I have them all in order,” said Nina. She opened the scrapbook on the now-empty tea table. Willi went through them carefully, sometimes asking a question, more often grunting assent. I murmured occasional agreement although I had heard of none of them. Except for the Beatle, of course. Nina saved that for near the end.

“Good God, Nina, that was you?” Willi seemed near anger. Nina’s Feedings had always run to Park Avenue suicides and matrimonial disagreements ending in shots fired from expensive, small-caliber ladies’ guns. This type of thing was more in Willi’s crude style. Perhaps he felt that his territory was being invaded. “I mean … you were risking a lot, weren’t you? It’s so … damn it … so
public.
”

Nina laughed and set down the calculator. “Willi
dear,
that’s what the Game is
about,
is it not?”

Willi strode to the liquor cabinet and refilled his brandy snifter. The wind tossed bare branches against the
leaded glass of the bay window. I do not like winter. Even in the South it takes its toll on the spirit.

“Didn’t this guy … what’s his name … buy the gun in Hawaii or someplace?” asked Willi from across the room. “That sounds like his initiative to me. I mean, if he was
already
stalking the fellow—”

“Willi dear.” Nina’s voice had gone as cold as the wind that raked the branches. “No one said he was
stable.
How many of yours are stable, Willi? But I made it
happen,
darling. I chose the place and the time. Don’t you see the irony of the
place,
Willi? After that little prank on the director of that witchcraft movie a few years ago? It was straight from the script—”

“I don’t know,” said Willi. He sat heavily on the divan, spilling brandy on his expensive sport coat. He did not notice. The lamplight reflected from his balding skull. The mottles of age were more visible at night, and his neck, where it disappeared into his turtleneck, was all ropes and tendons. “I don’t know.” He looked up at me and smiled suddenly, as if we shared a conspiracy. “It could be like that writer fellow, eh, Melanie? It could be like that.”

Nina looked down at the hands in her lap. They were clenched and the well-manicured fingers were white at the tips.

The Mind Vampires.
That’s what the writer was going to call his book.

I sometimes wonder if he really would have written anything. What was his name? Something Russian.

Willi and I received telegrams from Nina:
COME QUICKLY YOU ARE NEEDED
. That was enough. I was on the next morning’s flight to New York. The plane was a noisy, propeller-driven Constellation, and I spent much of the flight assuring the overly solicitous stewardess that I needed nothing, that, indeed, I felt fine. She obviously had decided that I was someone’s grandmother who was flying for the first time.

Willi managed to arrive twenty minutes before me. Nina was distraught and as close to hysteria as I had ever seen her. She had been at a party in lower Manhattan two
days before—she was not so distraught that she forgot to tell us what important names had been there—when she found herself sharing a corner, a fondue pot, and confidences with a young writer. Or rather, the writer was sharing confidences. Nina described him as a scruffy sort with a wispy little beard, thick glasses, a corduroy sport coat worn over an old plaid shirt—one of the type invariably sprinkled around successful parties of that era, according to Nina. She knew enough not to call him a beatnik, for that term had just become passé, but no one had yet heard the term
hippie,
and it wouldn’t have applied to him anyway. He was a writer of the sort that barely ekes out a living, these days at least, by selling blood and doing novelizations of television series. Alexander something.

His idea for a book—he told Nina that he had been working on it for some time—was that many of the murders then being committed were actually the result of a small group of psychic killers, he called them
mind vampires,
who used others to carry out their grisly deeds.

He said that a paperback publisher had already shown interest in his outline and would offer him a contract tomorrow if he would change the title to
The Zombie Factor
and put in more sex.

“So what?” Willi had said to Nina in disgust. “You have me fly across the continent for this? I might buy that idea to produce myself.”

That turned out to be the excuse we used to interrogate this Alexander Somebody during an impromptu party given by Nina the next evening. I did not attend. The party was not overly successful according to Nina, but it gave Willi the chance to have a long chat with the young would-be novelist. In the writer’s almost pitiable eagerness to do business with Bill Borden, producer of
Paris Memories, Three on a Swing,
and at least two other completely forgettable Technicolor features touring the drive-ins that summer, he revealed that the book consisted of a well-worn outline and a dozen pages of notes.

He was sure, however, that he could do a treatment for Mr. Borden in five weeks, perhaps even as fast as three weeks if he were flown out to Hollywood to get the proper creative stimulation.

Later that evening we discussed the possibility of Willi simply buying an option on the treatment, but Willi was short on cash at the time and Nina was insistent. In the end the young writer opened his femoral artery with a Gillette blade and ran screaming into a narrow Greenwich Village side street to die. I don’t believe that anyone ever bothered to sort through the clutter and debris of his remaining notes.

“It could be like that writer,
ja,
Melanie?” Willi patted my knee. I nodded. “He was mine,” continued Willi, “and Nina tried to take credit. Remember?”

Again I nodded. Actually he had been neither Nina’s nor Willi’s. I had avoided the party so that I could make contact later without the young man noticing he was being followed. I did so easily. I remember sitting in an overheated little delicatessen across the street from the apartment building. It was not at all difficult. It was over so quickly that there was almost no sense of Feeding. Then I was aware once again of the sputtering radiators and the smell of salami as people rushed to the door to see what the screaming was about. I remember finishing my tea slowly so that I did not have to leave before the ambulance was gone.

“Nonsense,” said Nina. She busied herself with her little calculator. “How many points?” She looked at me. I looked at Willi.

“Six,” he said with a shrug. Nina made a small show of totaling the numbers.

“Thirty-eight,” she said and sighed theatrically. “You win again, Willi. Or rather, you beat
me
again. We must hear from Melanie. You’ve been so quiet, dear. You must have some surprise for us.”

“Yes,” said Willi, “it is your turn to win. It has been several years.”

“None,” I said. I had expected an explosion of questions, but the silence was broken only by the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece. Nina was looking away from me, at something hidden by the shadows in the corner.

“None?” echoed willi.

“There was … one,” I said at last. “But it was by accident. I came across them robbing an old man behind … but it was completely by accident.”

Willi was agitated. He stood up, walked to the window, turned an old straight-back chair around and stradled it, arms folded. “What does this mean?”

“You’re quitting the Game?” Nina asked as she turned to look at me. I let the question serve as the answer.

“Why?” snapped Willi. In his excitement it came out with a hard v.

If I had been raised in an era when young ladies were allowed to shrug, I would have done so. As it was, I contented myself with running my fingers along an imaginary seam on my skirt. Will had asked the question, but I stared straight into Nina’s eyes when I finally answered. “I’m tired. It’s been too long. I guess I’m getting old.”

“You’ll get a lot
older
if you do not Hunt,” said Willi. His body, his voice, the red mask of his face, everything signaled great anger just kept in check. “My God, Melanie, you
already
look older! You look terrible. This is
why
we Hunt, woman. Look at yourself in the mirror! Do you want to die an old woman just because you’re tired of using
them? Ach!
” Willi stood and turned his back on us.

“Nonsense!” Nina’s voice was strong, confident, in command once more. “Melanie’s
tired,
Willi. Be nice. We all have times like that. I remember how
you
were after the war. Like a whipped puppy. You wouldn’t even go outside your miserable little flat in Baden. Even after we helped you get to New Jersey you just sulked around feeling sorry for yourself. Melanie
made up
the Game to help you feel better. So quiet!
Never
tell a lady who feels tired and depressed that she looks terrible. Honestly, Willi, you’re such a
Schwachsinniger
sometimes. And a crashing boor to boot.”

I had anticipated many reactions to my announcement, but this was the one I feared most. It meant that Nina had also tired of the game. It meant that she was ready to move to another level of play.

It had to mean that.

“Thank you, Nina darling,” I said. “I knew you would understand.”

She reached across and touched my knee reassuringly. Even through my wool skirt, I could feel the cold of her white fingers.

My guests would not stay the night. I implored. I remonstrated. I pointed out that their rooms were ready, that Mr. Thorne had already turned down the quilts.

“Next time,” said Willi. “Next time, Melanie, my little love. We’ll make a weekend of it as we used to. A week!” Willi was in a much better mood since he had been paid his thousand-dollar prize by each of us. He had sulked, but I had insisted. It soothed his ego when Mr. Thorne brought in a check already made out to
WILLIAM D. BORDEN.

Again I asked him to stay, but he protested that he had a midnight flight to Chicago. He had to see a prizewinning author about a screenplay. Then he was hugging me goodbye, his companions were in the hall behind me, and I had a brief moment of terror.

But they left. The blond young man showed his white smile, and the Negro bobbed his head in what I took as a farewell. Then we were alone.

Nina and I were alone.

Not quite alone. Miss Kramer was standing next to Nina at the end of the hall. Mr. Thorne was out of sight behind the swinging door to the kitchen. I left him there.

Miss Kramer took three steps forward. I felt my breath stop for an instant. Mr. Thorne put his hand on the swinging door. Then the husky little brunette went to the hall closet, removed Nina’s coat, and stepped back to help her into it.

“Are you sure you won’t stay?”

“No, thank you, darling. I’ve promised Barrett that we would drive to Hilton Head tonight.”

“But it’s late …”

“We have reservations. Thank you anyway, Melanie. I
will
be in touch.”

“Yes.”

“I mean it, dear. We must talk. I understand
exactly
how you feel, but you have to remember that the Game is still important to Willi. We’ll have to find a way to end it
without hurting his feelings. Perhaps we could visit him next spring in Karinhall or whatever he calls that gloomy old Bavarian place of his. A trip to the Continent would do wonders for you, dear.”

“Yes.”

“I
will
be in touch. After this deal with the new store is settled. We need to spend some time together, Melanie … just the two of us … like old times.” Her lips kissed the air next to my cheek. She held my forearms tightly for a few seconds. “Good-bye, darling.”

“Good-bye, Nina.”

I carried the brandy glass to the kitchen. Mr. Thorne took it in silence.

“Make sure the house is secure,” I said. He nodded and went to check the locks and alarm system. It was only nine forty-five, but I was very tired.
Age,
I thought. I went up the wide staircase—perhaps the finest feature of the house—and dressed for bed. It had begun to storm, and the sound of the cold raindrops on the window carried a sad rhythm to it.

Mr. Thorne looked in as I was brushing my hair and wishing it were longer. I turned to him. He reached into the pocket of his dark vest. When his hand emerged, a slim blade flicked out. I nodded. He palmed the blade shut and closed the door behind him. I listened to his footsteps recede down the stairs to the chair in the front hall where he would spend the night.