Punishment with Kisses (21 page)

As soon as I did, I felt like I had been hit over the head. I fell to the ground and passed out and when I awoke, it was dark inside and I was cold and damp, still lying on the floor. I gave my eyes a few moments to adjust then I crawled to the table in search of a lamp to flick. As soon as the apartment was flooded with light, I remembered why I was instantly struck. It wasn’t a bop over the head that did me in. It was the sight of the larger than life shrine to my sister. There were photos of Ash everywhere, along with some of her jewelry and trinkets, and right at the center of it all were Ash’s two missing diaries that were stolen from my apartment. I felt like I was in a horror movie, my own
Silence of the Lambs,
with mementos from the murder victim all around me. Had Father and Tabitha lured me away from the apartment with that bullshit lecture so Tabitha could break in and steal these things? Why were there vestiges of my sister everywhere in this loft?

I stayed in the apartment the rest of the day, rifling through the drawers and cabinets. I tossed through the closet, a veritable smorgasbord of outfits and disguises that would fit Tabitha and my sister both. While the front room was an Ash shrine, the bedroom was an erotic play land. The armoire held leather couture of all sorts, whips, floggers, masks, even a face mask with a leather dildo attached where the mouthpiece would normally be. How could that even work? Handcuffs and feathers and oils and tons of silicone toys were strewn about. There were erotic magazines, including dozens of old copies of a black and white lesbian magazine called
On Our Backs.
There were more than a couple of Pookie Michaels films, each emblazoned with my sister in all her glory on the front of the box. My God, my stepmother knew about my sister’s porn past. What else did she know? What did Father know? Had he been here? Or was this apartment Tabitha’s secret love nest?

I read through the remainder of Ash’s journals, the ones that were taken from me and another I had never seen before. She talked about lesbian play parties and orgies and showing a group of women how to have anal sex with some girl named Tristan. Clearly, there was pathos in there, a desire to titillate and shock the reader—which was who? Tabitha? Me? But so much of it was matter-of-fact. I couldn’t help but be turned on, and the one way I could stick it to Tabitha for stealing my sister was to masturbate in her bed. I grabbed the red dress from the other night and put it on. It smelled of Nana de Bary perfume and perspiration and desire and maybe a little shame. Or maybe that was just me. I didn’t know, but I was aroused by the magazines and the movies and the orgies and I plunged my hand between my legs and just started rubbing like crazy until I felt everything constrict and I began to scream like a banshee.

Only, this time I didn’t feel good afterward. I felt…guilty. I was at the foot of a shrine to my sister, in my stepmother’s dress, in the house of a killer—maybe—and I was feeling jealous and aroused and focusing on having an orgasm? What kind of monster had
I
become?

I was so aghast at what I had done, what I had become, that I did the only reasonable thing: I demolished the apartment. I took all of my rage out on the furnishings. Nothing would wash away my guilt like showing Tabitha I was on to her, on to them. I slashed the sheets with her scissors, tore up the sofa pillows, and emptied all the dresser drawers. And then I did the most devastating thing: I destroyed the shrine to my sister’s memory. I tore down the photos, threw all the trinkets in the fireplace, and shoved the journals into my bag. I stood there in the middle of the room, knee deep in destruction, and wanted more. I wished I could see Tabitha’s face when she walked in and found what I had done.

But like any artificial high, my demolition-fueled delirium ended abruptly and sent me spiraling into the seven rings of self-deprecation. How could I have done what I did? Where did that violence, that
hatred
come from?

I thanked all things holy that Tabitha had not been there during my annihilation frenzy, because I feared what I might have done if she’d been in the room. Would Tabitha have ended up in little pieces on the floor, mixed in with the shredded remnants of her loft? Was this the same impetus that had led to my sister’s death?

*

I did not see Tabitha’s face when she discovered what I had done to her loft. We did see each other at dinner not too long after and she was as stone-faced and cordial as ever. Father was as cold and withdrawn. He lectured me about the deficient career choices I had made and the dire economic impact I could expect to harvest from such poor selections. Apparently, Father did not approve of his surviving daughter becoming a journalist, especially not one who regularly wrote about having sex. I had had no idea he even read my column. While he was intent on belittling me, I was feeling rather pleased with myself for having garnered his attention. Who knew that was all it took. Maybe Ash started filming pornos for the same reason. Could she have felt as invisible in this house as I had?

No. I didn’t think so. As Father continued to belabor the point, I pushed my chair closer to Tabitha’s. In doing so, the back of my hand brushed her thigh. A charge of electricity snapped between us like static cling and then was gone. Perhaps I’d imagined it. Tabitha sat prim and proper with perfect posture in her chair as though nothing had happened. Maybe it hadn’t. Or were her cheeks just a little rosier than they’d been a moment before?

“Just how safe are all these…um…” Father struggled for the appropriate couth wording. “These
dealings?
How safe are they, Megan?”

Having long lost interest in his paternalism, I allowed Father to drone on. I wasn’t about to ease his consternation regarding my column, but the truth of the matter was that my own interest in the subject was waning. I didn’t think I’d be Portland’s adventure slut much longer. My passion was too big to be bridled by this city’s handful of underground erotic adventures. I needed to be a pioneer in a different way, to open up a new sexual frontier. Just how, I didn’t know yet. I imagined Tabitha opening up to me like a desert flower, and it was my turn to blush.

“You don’t want to end up like your sister,” Father concluded.

With that, I came back to the conversation. “You mean dead on the pool house floor? I can’t imagine how that would happen to me, Daddy-O. Don’t you agree, Tabitha?”

I winked at her. I was bolder now, too. I wasn’t just little Megan, peering out a window at my sister’s Sapphic fun. I was the master of my domain and I was the one calling the shots in life now. Tabitha should fear me, because I was on to her little game. Maybe she even wondered why I hadn’t already told the cops about her secret double life. But I was keeping something for myself.

Still, when the color drained from her face, I instantly regretted the flippant way I’d recalled that traumatic night. I didn’t see Father raise his hand. Rather than warning me, the light breeze on my face only confused me. For a millisecond. Until his palm reached my cheek. The slap was so fierce it rattled my fillings loose and knocked my molars akimbo, the way earthquakes displace fence lines. I was sure it left an angry, crimson handprint behind, far outshadowing the pink of my blush.

Tabitha inhaled so sharply it sounded like the door of an airplane being ripped off mid-flight and passengers were being sucked out by the vacuum it created. “Bradford Thomas Caulfield!” She shrieked like an angry mother condemning and errant child. “Apologize!” Tabitha yelled.

“I’m sorry,” I responded automatically.

Tabitha ignored my authentic act of contrition.

“Bradford.” She demanded.

Oh, my God, I realized, looking at the determined set of her jaw, this woman was fucking
hot.
There was something about courageous women that turned me on. No, not courage. It wasn’t bravery that lead a diminutive female of the species to stand up to my father and demand an apology—it was recklessness, a sheer and utter disregard for one’s personal safety. And I’d never seen anything sexier.

Father did not apologize. He had never once acknowledged personal wrongdoing in all the time I’d known him. When things went so unbelievably wrong that he could no longer ignore them, he always managed to find a convenient patsy to blame it on. I wasn’t even that alarmed by the whole scene. I had changed from the kid who wanted only to please her father and fall under the radar, in my sister’s shadow. I was older and bolder and less interested in making Father—or anyone else for that matter—happy. I left the table with Tabitha still glaring at Father. They would probably fight for hours over the disagreement, but for me it was water off a duck’s back. I needed to get my beauty sleep. I had more spying to do in the morning.

*

Cassandra, who I bored of after a week or two of tumbling and floor exercises, was just embarrassed enough about dipping her pen in the company ink, that she allowed me the freedom to make my own hours at the paper—as long as they were opposite to her own.

So I started working from my home or the coffeehouse nearly as frequently as I made it to the office. That gave me more time to watch Tabitha. The funny thing was, the more I followed her, the more intrigued I was by the woman. She was such an enigma to me. Every day there was something unexpected in her life. Last week, it was Taboo—an adult store where she spent an hour, while I waited for her to leave, keeping tabs on the door from the parking lot across the street. What could a woman do for an hour in an XXX video store? Did she actually watch the films there?

Yesterday, she disappeared into a house on 82
^nd
Avenue that had a giant sign outside announcing it as a business named Honeysuckles, and billing itself as a “lingerie experience for men.” What the hell was Tabitha doing at all these places? I thought
my
sexuality was aberrant, but hers, well, it made me look like a castoff from
Little House on the Prairie.

The more I saw Tabitha in these playlands, the more intrigued I became. I wanted to know Tabitha—not just biblically, but as a person. I wanted to know what brought her to these places, what her fantasies were, and who she wanted to share them with. Just who was this woman? Did my sister find out about her secrets? Was that why she was killed?

It’s an old adage that often the truth isn’t what we are truly seeking. I was starting to think that might be the case for me. I had been following Tabitha for weeks now and I was noticing that I was feeling as enraptured by her as other women were over my sister. I started inconspicuously following her to stores, cafés, and even to a strip club, although I could never go in to these venues for fear of being caught spying on her. Instead I hunched down behind the wheel of my rental car, eating Doritos and watching. Watching to see how long she was inside and when she did come out whether she was still alone. Tabitha remained alone—going in and coming out.

Soon, watching from afar just wasn’t enough. It was no longer giving me the thrill I’d had when I originally started stalking her. I decided to escalate. I managed to “bump” into her at a few establishments she fraternized, the ones where I could randomly imagine turning up.

To my surprise, Tabitha didn’t seem frightened to see me. Quite the opposite. She seemed genuinely happy to have happened upon me. Usually she’d invite me to lunch or out to the house or just to finish up her shopping with her, the latter of which I did enough times that I was starting to enjoy it.

“Try these!” Tabitha smiled and threw another set of trousers at me.

“Ooo, me likey…” I trailed off. Could this be considered spying? When she had insisted upon tagging along with me and I was enjoying myself this much?

After a few shopping trips turned into lunch, I started thinking of Tabitha not as my stepmonster or even a relative, but more like my friend. Okay, maybe not that close, but maybe the intimacy one would have with a sister’s ex-girlfriend.

Tabitha was charming and sophisticated, but she could also be really goofy and sweet. When she would pull her hair off her neck, sweeping the long blond strands to the side and titling her head just so to the right, I would think about kissing that beautiful smooth neck. The more I got to know Tabitha, the more I couldn’t hate her, and the more I couldn’t imagine her as my sister’s killer.

Still, in these afternoon get-togethers, which had become an almost daily thing, Tabitha never explained nor did I ask about her curious romps in Portland’s sexual underworld. Strip clubs? Porn stores? How could this lovely, soft-spoken woman even venture into places like that, places I was so comfortable with because of my experiences, when she had been saddled with Bradford and the ’burbs since she was nineteen?

Had Ash taken her to these places? Was she revisiting their past? Or were there just…hidden depths?

*

“Megan, would you like to meet me for brunch tomorrow?” Tabitha was hoping to expand our get-togethers to a weekend apparently. “Bradford’s out of town.” She instinctively answered my unspoken question.

“Sure, but if Father’s out of town, would you like to do something tonight instead? You could stay in the city with me and we can do brunch at Old Wives Tales tomorrow.” I wasn’t sure why, but suddenly it was crucial that Tabitha stay the night at my apartment. The thought of an all night gab session was more than appealing. I could truly get to know this lovely woman I had never given the time of day before.

Tabitha paused so long I had to ask if she was still on the line.

“Yes, of course, I’m still here. I’d love to get together tonight. I’ll be there around seven. How’s that?”