Topping From Below (7 page)
After a while—she wasn’t sure how long—she heard footsteps. Turning her head to the left, she listened intently, and when something brushed against her thigh, she jerked her leg, swallowing a scream.
“Spread your legs,” she heard a voice. It was Michael’s voice, and she wanted to cry or laugh—she wasn’t sure which—with relief. She had the feeling he was kneeling in front of her.
“Spread your legs,” he repeated, sternly now.
She opened them a little. He placed his hands on the insides of her knees and he spread them further. She knew, even with a blindfold on, what she looked like without pubic hair: completely open and vulnerable, her labia pulled apart, as gaping as any wound.
He took her right ankle and placed it on the outside of the chair leg. She felt him lashing her leg to the chair, the rope tight against her flesh. Then he tied her left leg. Her heart beat faster, she could feel the pounding in her chest, and her breathing came in short, anxious gasps. She tried to close her legs, just a little, but couldn’t. He had tied her too securely.
Michael put his hand on the inside of her thigh, gripping her flesh firmly, making her wince. “You’re very naughty,” he said. “I told you not to wear the robe.”
Franny got a sinking feeling low in her stomach. She had forgotten about the robe.
“Someday you’ll learn to pay more attention to my requests,” he told her. “I’m going to discipline you. You need to learn to follow my orders.”
Franny felt the ropes around her legs, holding her open. A wave of panic rushed through her.
“Please, Michael,” she said. “Don’t—” but then he stuffed a gag in her mouth, and her words came out as a muffled slur.
NORA
BEFORE I CONTINUE …
At this point, I feel I must meet M. I’ve learned all I can from Franny’s diary, and now it’s time to deal directly with the man himself. I wish I could quit now, but an indefinable force pushes me forward. Franny wrote of an instinctive pull toward her natural surroundings. I also feel drawn, not to nature but to her—her secret life, her death, the mystery surrounding her death. I have a tropism for revelations, it turns out. Like people chasing down fire trucks, like passersby craning to see the accident victim, I have a powerful need to know. It’s involuntary, it’s inexorable. I must find out what happens next; I must, at any cost, know how and why Franny died, and bring her killer—whoever he is—to justice.
Yes, my trepidations are great, but still, deep down, I feel I will prevail. I am not the shy, timid girl that Franny was, and in me M. will find his equal. Surrendering meekly is not my style: I do not, nor shall I ever, give in without a fight.
I have been watching M. for months now. I follow him around town, I know his routine. He shops at Nugget Market, usually on Saturday afternoons, he eats out frequently, spends a lot of time at home, jogs three days a week in the early mornings with his dog, a full-grown Great Dane. This quarter he’s teaching classes four days a week, and before he drives on campus he stops at Fluffy Do-nuts in the University Mall. Occasionally, he’ll have a glazed doughnut, but normally he only has coffee, two cups, black, and sits at a booth to read the newspaper. He subscribes to two papers,
The Sacramento Bee
and
The Davis Enterprise
. He reads the
Bee
at Fluffy’s in the mornings and the
Enterprise
, presumably, at home.
I’ve seen him on campus many times, and Franny was right—he is a popular teacher. I’ve followed him around, overheard his conversations, and both the faculty and students seem to like him. He has several friends, men, whom he sees regularly. They play golf on the municipal course, eighteen holes, once a week; occasionally they drive up to Tahoe to gamble. M. plays only blackjack. His relationship with women is more difficult to describe. As far as I can tell, he stays away from female students, which I’m sure has more to do with practical concerns than moral ones. He’s been with various women since I’ve been observing him—some middle-aged, some young, all of them attractive—but he never stays with any of them for very long. Whether he ends the relationship or they, I have no idea. And, unlike his treatment of Franny, he does see them socially: dinner, theater, weekend trips. He doesn’t know it yet, but I shall be the next woman in his life.
A few words of clarification and regret:
In all honesty, I must say I dismissed Franny’s sexuality. It never occurred to me that she had a boyfriend. I thought of her as a neuter, without sensual feelings, as asexual as a piece of furniture. How could she have gotten involved with a man like M.? How could I have not noticed the changes in her? Was I so self-absorbed, as she hinted, that I saw nothing? I think back, I rack my brain, I try to remember: when we met for dinner, were there ever any bruises on her arms or wrists? I’m ashamed to say, I never noticed.
I was also unaware of Franny’s close ties to Mrs. Deever. They had formed a symbiotic relationship that had served them both, and yet Franny failed to mention her to me except in the most casual of terms. Not once did she say she was coming to think of Sue Deever as a maternal figure, as a sort of ersatz mother. Or did she? She may have dropped subtle hints of their symbiosis that passed me by. Perhaps
symbiosis
is too clinical a term to describe their connection. I admit I have a tendency to view the world in an empirical manner, filtering my observations through the objective lenses of scientific methodology. I am infinitely more comfortable with detached observation than subjectivity. But perhaps I need to step out from behind the magnifying lenses so I can see more clearly the extent of her intimate ties with others, binding ties, apparently—a subject with which I have little personal experience.
But the diary reveals how I have failed her. I had no idea Franny was still suffering from the loss of our parents, desperate to have someone take their place, still longing for, still needing, unconditional parental love. When she came to live with me, she was so quiet and well-behaved, always doing well in school and never causing any trouble, that I thought she had adjusted to our parents’ death. I thought she was okay. Several months before he died, my father had called me and said Franny was misbehaving. She was acting like a tomboy, he said, and he hinted about an incident involving stolen bicycles. But when she came to Sacramento, Franny was docile, quiet, timid. There was no misbehavior, no tomboyish activities. She stayed close to home, did her schoolwork, and watched TV. Other than gain weight, each month putting on a few pounds, she seemed relatively normal. How was I to know she was so unhappy? I tried my best to take care of her, but my best wasn’t good enough. I can see that now.
I’m meeting M. at Fluffy Do-nuts this morning, located in the University Mall across the street from the UCD campus. Fluffy’s is almost a landmark in Davis. It’s long and narrow, with plate-glass windows facing the Safeway grocery store, and, in the mornings, it’s probably the busiest place in town. I don’t know why. There’s a plastic look to it—functional, hardbacked Formica booths, laminated tabletops, overhead lighting that glares, a worn linoleum floor—but the doughnuts and coffee are good, and over the years it’s become a sort of unofficial gathering place for Davis residents.
I don’t jog—I prefer low-impact, high-intensity aerobics—but I’m wearing a pink-and-gray jogging suit so it will appear that I do. I want to attract M., I want him to assume we have activities in common. Attracting men has never been a problem for me, but this morning, as I dressed in the jogging suit—a recent acquisition from Macy’s —and white Reeboks, I was worried. I needed to impress M. I took special care with my makeup, and was pleased with the result. I have a pleasant face, attractive but not beautiful, just beginning to show the wear and tear of thirty-five years—a few lines around the eyes, skin not quite as elastic as it once was. But I still wear a size eight, even if I have to work out at the gym six days a week to do so. My hair is jet black—no gray, yet—muscles toned, ass firm, and my breasts still bounce rather than sag. All in all, I look pretty good, and when I finished dressing for M. this morning, I looked in the full-length mirror and was pleased with what I saw—an attractive woman in her midthirties, tall, athletic-looking in a sexy way. I admonished myself for worrying; I shouldn’t have any problem with M.
Through the plate-glass windows I see him near the back of Fluffy’s, reading the paper and drinking coffee. I enter the building and stand in line. The place is noisy. Around me, people are talking loudly, the two girls behind the counter are ringing up doughnut orders, people are shuffling in and out the door. After I pay for my coffee, I look around, feign annoyance that there isn’t an empty booth, then head for M. I don’t know why Franny found his appearance so intimidating. He seems deep in thought as he reads the newspaper, his posture erect, his face serious. He is swarthy, good-looking, if you like that type, slimly muscled and dark-complected, with an angular face that could have been sculpted—strong chin, high cheekbones, a long, straight nose. But he’s close to fifty, and it shows in the deeply lined forehead and in the permanent wrinkles set around his eyes. He’s distinguished-looking, in a professorial way, and, for Davis, he’s overdressed. Davis is a casual town; people ride bicycles, they vote Democratic, they wear Birkenstocks or tennis shoes. Everyone in Fluffy’s is dressed informally, in jeans, sweatpants, and rumpled jackets. Even the older people are dressed in everyday wear they’d lounge around in at home. But M., he looks … English. He’s wearing a brown sports coat and tan slacks—common enough—but on him they appear tailored and a bit formal. He has the well-groomed appearance of a country gentleman, and is, as Franny said, well put together.
When I approach his booth, I see he is reading the business section of the Bee. The other sections are scattered across the table, and his coffee cup is almost empty. I discover I’m nervous.
“If I refill your coffee, can I share your booth?” I ask him.
He looks up at me, tilts his head to one side, smiles slightly.
“There aren’t any empty tables,” I say, by way of explanation.
“Of course,” he says, clearing off one side of the table. “Have a seat.”
I put my coffee down, then go back up to the front counter where two coffeepots and one pot of hot water are warming on a three-plate burner. I get the coffeepot, return to his table, and fill his cup. Then, on the way back to the counter, I fill several other patrons’ cups. Fluffy’s is that kind of place: you help yourself, you help others. I slide into his booth.
“Nice morning, isn’t it?” I say. The air outside is cool and crisp, perfect weather for jogging—if I jogged.
Behind me, a man coughs hoarsely and rustles his newspaper. M. drinks his coffee, regards me over the rim of his cup.
“Yes,” he says finally. “It is a nice morning.” He sets down his cup, a calculated move, then leans back in the booth, waiting, it seems, for me to say something. I introduce myself. I tell him my name is Colleen, which happens to be my middle name. I don’t give him my last.
“Colleen,” he says, an amused glimmer in his eyes. We talk about the weather, our mutual enjoyment of jogging, the news on the front page. He tells me he’s a music professor at UCD; I tell him I’m a physical chemist, working on a project to separate the length and charge effects that occur with DNA undergoing electrophoresis.
“By itself,” I tell him, “the project doesn’t amount to much; however, it’s another piece in the puzzle. Its main interest will be to the people who are designing fluorescent molecules for the next generation of sequencing technology being used in the Human Genome Project. Also, from the basic science point of view, this work will be of interest to the theoreticians working on electrophoresis.”
M. looks mildly interested; he nods as if he knows what I’m speaking about, a faint, droll smile appearing and disappearing quickly. I wonder if I imagined it.
“To my knowledge I’m the only person who has ever systematically modified the charge on DNA and looked at its effects on DNA mobility in agarose gels.” This is accurate, of course, but a lie. I am appropriating the life of a scientist I interviewed several years ago, adopting his work as my own. I hope M. won’t question me further, and he doesn’t. He finishes the last of his coffee.
“I’m glad all the tables were full this morning,” he says. “I enjoyed talking to you.” He gathers his paper, stacks the sections together and folds the bundle in half. “I’d like to finish our conversation,” he continues, “but I must leave. I have a class at nine.” He pauses, looking at me from across the table. “Would you like to go out to dinner sometime this week?”
Inwardly, I sigh with relief. I thought it might be difficult to get to M., but he’s proving to be less complicated than I imagined. “Sure,” I say. “I’d like that.”
He stands up and I join him. We walk out the front door and stop on the pebbled sidewalk. Patchy clouds mottle the sky in a pearly-gray tessellated pattern. This early, there are few cars in the parking lot and the mall, normally busy, is deserted except for Fluffy’s. Two bicyclists, both college students with black backpacks strapped on their shoulders, ride up and park their bikes. They lock them to a metal bike rack, and enter the doughnut shop. A cold late-winter wind suddenly starts up and tosses my hair.
“The day after tomorrow?” he asks. Then he frowns. “No, that won’t work for me. How about tomorrow night? Will that be a good time for you?”
With my hand, I brush the hair out of my face. “Tomorrow would be fine.”
He pulls out a pocket notebook from inside his coat. “Great. If you’ll give me your address, I’ll pick you up at seven.”
I don’t want him to know where I live, that I rented a house only a few blocks from his. “I have a better idea,” I say. “Why don’t you give me your address. I’ll meet you there at seven and you can cook me dinner.”
