Punish Me with Kisses (33 page)

Back at home Penny found her apartment smelling of cats, filled with the acrid odor of their urine.
Sometimes I hate the damn things
, she thought, as she flushed the litter down the toilet, scrubbed out the box, refilled it, and set out the bowls of water and of food.

James was staring at her. He knew what she'd been doing. "Wasn't so bad," she whispered to him. "Lot better than some of the slobs I've had." James blinked, arched his back. A sign of recognition, she thought. She reached out to pet him, but he hissed and then recoiled. "Screw you, James," she said. "Screw you and go to hell."

S
he wondered what the Chapman security men thought as they followed her to the burial grounds. She spotted two of them in a Chevrolet crossing the George Washington Bridge, tried to imagine their report: "11:04—subject and two young women carrying aluminum suitcases, subject's landlady, and two young men carrying shovels drove black van toward New Jersey, destination unknown—"

The dead cats were in the suitcases; each had been wrapped carefully in silver foil, labeled and stored in Dr. Bowles' enormous freezer until enough had accumulated to justify a trip. At first it felt strange accompanying a load of dead cats to the country, but after a while the sincerity and friendliness of her companions pushed the macabre aspect of their mission out of her mind. To the Chapman men following the van, she thought, they probably seemed a convivial group out on a weekend outing, perhaps a nature walk.

The burial grounds were in a state park. It took them nearly an hour to hike their way in. It was a cold winter's day; the chill burned her ears. When they finally reached the site Wendy showed her little piles of stones which marked the other graves. The two boys, Tom and Doug, set to work digging a hole in the nearly frozen ground. Penny helped Wendy weed around the older markers, then searched out stones to mark the new remains. When the hole was finally dug, the suitcases were opened and the sausage-shaped silver packages were placed in a row on the ground. Tom and Doug stood in the hole while Penny and Wendy passed the bodies down. The boys arranged them neatly at the bottom of the grave, then they all stood with bowed heads while Dr. Bowles read the names:

" 'Peanuts,' female, three years old, dead of unknown causes; 'Lucy Blue,' female, daughter of 'Big Sylvia,' stillborn; 'Mike,' much beloved king-cat of Richard, sire of numerous kittens, dead at seven years—" Sometimes Dr. Bowles paused in her reading to recount a little incident about one of the cats. Penny was surprised the psychiatrist could keep them straight—she seemed to know them as well as she knew her patients. The compassion of this woman never ceased to astound her—she was always available to listen to one's troubles, usually cuddling a kitten, or nursing one while she talked. She often gave Penny special tidbits which she thought her kittens might enjoy, and
catfood
cookies she made up specially for James.

When the reading of the list was completed the five of them stood in silence for a time. Then they each tossed a little bit of earth upon the foil-wrapped carcasses, and then the boys filled up the hole. Penny erected the marking stones, having studied the pattern at the other graves. It was late afternoon and extremely cold when they were finished. Dr. Bowles put her arm around her, embraced her as they hiked back to the van.

"I saw you shared our anguish," she said. "I'm glad you helped us bury our fallen little friends."

"
L
ook what I got," said Lillian on Monday morning. She came into Penny's office waving a telegram. "A classic author's missive. Jesus, what a nerve! I saved this guy's book, edited out all the artsy-
fartsy
stuff, got it down so maybe somebody would want to read the thing. Now he tells me he wants all his precious prose restored. Threatens to withdraw if it we don't print every word." Lillian was one of those editors who seemed to have a special loathing for writers, hating them for their vanity, their complaints, their demands for expensive lunches, their requests for gratis copies of other B&A books. ("They think because we're their publishers we're a free bookshop or something. Yuck!") Penny nodded as Lillian ranted on, but she knew the author was right, that Lillian had harmed his book, didn't know the difference between functional writing and graceful prose.

She spent the day brooding over her miseries, felt herself becoming unhinged. The glow she'd had after the cat burial trip was superseded now by anxiety. Some madness was driving her, but she didn't know toward what.
MacAllister
, noticing her lack of concentration, spoke brusquely to her for the first time since their affair. When she looked up at him to apologize he asked her what was wrong. "You've got tears in your eyes."

"It's nothing, Mac. Just the weather, I guess."

He looked at her, nodded. "Yeah—the Februaries." He told her to go home early so she wouldn't have to face the rush hour. She stayed until five-thirty anyway. The elevator felt claustrophobic when she rode it down. The men who always followed her were waiting in the lobby. Noises were too loud. The city shrieked. The subway seemed to scream.

That night she sat in front of her TV and watched the awful news: more on a mass cult suicide and a madman in Chicago who was torching winos on
skidrow
. The whole country, except for the eastern seaboard, was blanketed in snow. A professor of meteorology came on, said the weather patterns were changing, that within a hundred years the earth would enter a new ice age which would drive populations to the tropics and cause unprecedented famines, social dislocations, political upheavals and strife.

So—the whole world was going crazy. What else is new, she thought. She couldn't bear being cooped up, being stared at by James, knowing that Chapman security men were waiting downstairs for her in their cars. She wanted to go out, but there was no place to go. Aspen was out of the question; Cynthia lived too far downtown, and anyway she wasn't in the mood for that. She thought and thought: whom could she call? There wasn't anybody—she had no lover, no friends. For the first time in many weeks she thought of Jared, wished he were back, wished he were there to hold her in his arms. Finally, tired of self-pity, she pulled out her copy of Suzie's diary, flipped through it, read passages, wondered as she had so many times just what it really meant.

There was something too cruel about the way Suzie mocked her lovers, their ineptitude, their incompetence in bed. Penny wondered whether all this overstatement had a purpose, whether these mockeries had been written with a particular reader in mind. Her father? Could Suzie have been addressing the diary to him? There was something about its tone that made her feel it had been written for her father's eyes. It was the same feeling she'd had about Suzie's actions—the too-deliberate overheated way she'd carried on those final weeks. Could the diary, too, she wondered, have been part of Suzie's plan to make her father jealous, try and win him back?

She pulled out the old worn wallet, the one with the photos and the keys she and Jared had found in Maine. She spread the photos out on her bed, studied the shot of her father in his bathing suit. He was poised to dive into the pool, his body extended, muscled, sleek. She hated him for being so attractive. No wonder Suzie had let him drive her to despair.

She lay back on the bed, the photo in her hand. Then she became lost in a reverie. Memories started pouring in: her father lifting her when she was a child, putting her on his shoulders, walking with her on the beach. That time they'd all gone to Switzerland, ascended the mountain in the cable car, then met the young Swiss photographer with the
Leica
, and the four of them had sat for him as a perfect American family posing on a mountain top. She'd loved her father. He used to come to her room to kiss her good night. He brought her
her
first two-wheel bicycle, put it out on the back terrace of the Greenwich house, then took her hand, led her to it, and there it stood, the best bicycle in the world, with a big red ribbon tied around the handlebars and an oversized card: "Happy Birthday, Kiddo. Love from Dad."

Yes, she thought—she
could
imagine Suzie making love to him, she could imagine that his body would be fine to touch. How had it started? Perhaps he'd come into her room to say good night, had stroked her cheek, kissed her lips. Perhaps
Suzie'd
complained she was sore from tennis and asked him for a massage, then had raised her top so he could knead her back.

Penny closed her eyes, tried to imagine the scene. Suzie had known intuitively how to arouse a man, and there was her father, lusting after her, ready to take advantage the moment he saw an opening, as he'd always done in business and in life. He would have been affectionate. That was his attraction—that for all his aura of power and control he could be fatherly and sweet. Yes, she could imagine it all, could imagine Suzie's pleasure, her aroused sexuality, as the massage turned into love-making, the kneading fingers beginning lightly to caress.
Suzie'd
have known what was happening, but she'd have let him go on. There was that tantalizing mystery about any new lover—what would he do? Where would
he
touch her next?

Yes, she could imagine it, could imagine him turning her, his mouth suddenly crushing hers, then his body pushing her down against the bed. He would reach for her, slowly gently stroke her breasts, then take one of her hands and press it upon the swelling hardness between his legs. He'd let it rest there, let her feel his desire. After that she would be his. She'd lay back, let him take over, let him do with her what he wished. He'd lie on top of her, his strong body heavy on hers, his beautiful arms, the arms she'd always admired when they played squash, wrapping her, pinioning her, then his cock, so big, so long, suddenly revealed—she'd feel it prodding, would move and twitch to help it finds its way, would gasp as suddenly it slipped inside, would feel it filling her, would push against him, begin to sigh and moan.

Afterward, it took her some time to realize what she had done—she had let Suzie take her over. She had indulged in an incest fantasy inconceivable a few minutes before.

T
hink things are coming to a head now, though hard to say for sure. Now suddenly I got a sideshow on my hands: Child mooning around over her actor; him creaming in his jeans over me. Forget that! First things first! There's a new element, something I didn't suspect, something dangerous, maybe wild and out of control. Feel it coming—the crack-up. A
shitstorm
maybe. Well—isn't that what I want? We all dig our graves in the end—

L
ater she would look back and think that the next ten days were the craziest of her life.

The day after she imagined Suzie making love with her father she left work early, used the freight elevator to give her tail the slip, then took the IRT to Fifty-First Street, walked a block to Park Avenue, and stood in the frigid air. Her ears were covered by her ski cap. Her winter coat was huddled around her neck. Arctic winds ripped down between the buildings, freezing the moisture on her cheeks.

She stood across the street from Chapman International watching the workers storm out at five. Her father's limousine was parked in front. She could see his chauffeur inside. She had no idea when her father left work, whether he stayed at his desk until late. She wanted to see him without his seeing her, so she waited a full hour in the doorway of a bank until the sky was dark and the rush-hour mobs were gone. Just before six the chauffeur opened the back door of the limousine. She caught a glimpse of her father stepping in, a quick look at him through the window as the car sped uptown, toward the FDR Drive, she assumed, and the highways that led to Connecticut and home.

The next night she waited for him again, arriving later, losing her tail in the subway, hoping her father would still keep to his routine. She was in place at a quarter to six, this time on the same side of Park Avenue as the Chapman Building, positioned so she could see him better when he strode out the door at six. He was punctual, his walk firm. She saw him nod to the driver, then settle back in the cushioned seat. As the car pulled out he was staring straight ahead.

The third night she asked herself what sort of madness it was to hang around outside his office, to catch these fleeting glimpses as he came striding out. This time she leaned against the Chapman building just beside the revolving door, and again he was punctual, walking within three or four feet of where she stood. She felt her heart quicken as he came by, so close she could have reached out and caught his sleeve. She stood there a long time after the Cadillac sped away.

There was something elating about the strangeness of it all, giving her shadows the slip, spying on her father as she waited for him the fourth night in a row. It was an elation she recognized from the past, the thrill of the voyeur, the spy. She'd watched Suzie, suffered but still had watched. Now, lingering in the shadows of the Chapman Building, feeling it was important that she see her father from as many angles as she could, she experienced that same infusion of power and of pain that had filled her in her rocking chair those summer nights.