TheRapist (13 page)

Back.

Black.

*

Rex
and TheRapist

Rex was a man with a fat belly and a big heart. The trouble was his heart was filled with pockets and pigeon holes lined with sycophantic layers, laced with neediness, clinginess and furry arteries. He was very well educated, an attorney, Harvard Law Review followed by a year at Oxford that gave him a Phd, but he had no social skills of which to speak. He had been in therapy for more than twenty years, which really hadn’t helped him at all. He still wouldn’t listen, (when listening was an infrequent option) instead he would just talk and talk, droning on and on, emerging from each session the same person he had been at the start. There was no character arc where Rex was concerned. He remained the same, so emotionally, he learnt nothing. In certain spaces in his mind he was brilliant, but he had yet to conquer the girl, instantly loving anyone who would give him a mere slip of anything beyond a hello. He loved politics, was a fervent donkey and on a par, educationally, with the best, though sadly he lacked the charm of Barack, the charisma of Clinton, even the misunderstood quirkiness of Bush and the wisdom of men, oddly less wise than Rex himself. Rex had been married, a marriage which had come about through an affair with an already married woman whose name was Nora. He had met her at a marble kitchen counter of a politic
i
an who had invited a variety of older political students and business people to a fund raiser at her home. And there was Nora, catering in the kitchen. Rex had always claimed to have been ignorant of the fact that she had been someone else’s wife and had consequently felt compelled to marry Nora when her husband had dumped her, leaving her, in fact, for a man. Nora’s first husband had been a hairy, wary man clamped to his worn, warm, brown couch and they had been together for five long, self harming years. It was completely out of character for Nora to commit adultery, but she was, at first, charmed by Rex’s hasty, fervent attention. Their marriage had lasted for eight years. Years where they both grew fat and fell quiet. After the initial excitement of consummating their daring, uncontrollable passion, after the honeymoon, a week in Loughlin, Nevada, beyond the first couple of years when he worked hard and she made the house shine, their relationship dimmed, becoming a slight trickle of water that had lost its way from the stream. They barely spoke, exchanging the odd sentence about dinner or a bill. He still worked hard, making it big in a small law firm but then he left, moved on to a new firm, to try again. His CV could get him into any company, but his social life was shot. He looked forward to his therapy sessions more than anything, never realizing that he wasn’t getting anything out of them. They were just depleting his mind and his bank balance. Nora knew he was going to therapy, never asking him about it, never questioning him about anything. She no longer worked for the catering company, just went to Publix every day to wander the aisles, to find something new and processed and brightly packaged for dinner. Unless she brought home take out. From Burger King or KFC. Chicken strips were good for you, right?  On a Sunday she would get in her car, an aged, beige Lincoln Town car and drive half a block to the golden arches drive-thru to bring home their weekly McFlurries. Nora and Rex would sip at them in silence, fixating on the History Channel, until the paper cups were bone dry and the remains of froth were caught in their matching mustaches. Sex was a perfunctory action on their anniversary. Once a year, a one time fuck. He would lay on top of her, his blubber smothering hers and he would hunt for her vagina, a silent, dry desert encased in a huge mound of twisted hair. His cock curved in a defiant arc, straight to the left, as if was trying to get away from her, as he tried to coax it inside. It was a lot of work. Then she would lay still and he would flap around, pushing and grunting quietly
with eyes glued shut
until he came. She stayed where she was, in the same position as when they had begun and his head was beside hers and his breath was stifled through his dripping nose, caught between the wet sheets and her crispy hair. Sometimes he wondered if she slept through the whole thing? His sperm emerged hastily, gluing them together momentarily, somewhere between the folds of their combined flesh. He would never leave her though. She was his wife.

*

Adrian

West Hollywood. Wednesday morning. Third Street. Adrian sat at a blank wooden table in the window of the little café. He had a half-finished mug of spicy chai tea and the crumbly remains of a half-chewed biscotti strewn across a blue napkin. He stared out of the window, at cafes and boutiques on the other side, the shady side of the street, his heart
feeling
heavy as if it were being weighed down by his mind, as if a one way tunnel ran between the two, depositing all the troubles from his mind straight down on top of his heart. He lingered on in the café, his time free until his Downtown 11am appointment.

The door of the café opened, a cow bell jangling jauntily from the hinge and two girls in their late teens, floated in wearing tiny, ripped denim shorts and plunging necklines, which showed off their brand new, state of the art augmentations, courtesy of the much lauded Dr Rey, to swollen perfection. Unnecessary bras from Victoria’s Secret, in pale pink and mint green satin were bursting at the seams and their brand new cleavages looked so polished that they practically shone. Sunlight positively bounced off of them, bringing reflections of the joyful, hopeful optimism that Hollywood first shines into the eyes of teenage dreamboats. They looked very pleased with themselves, veneers sparkling inside perfect pouts as they laughingly ordered peppermint teas and rice crackers laced with cinnamon.

Adrian grew sullen. A thin veil
of hatred draping
itself invisibly over his face and he sat miserably trapped behind it, sipping his cold tea. Nobody could possibly be aware of the way he was feeling. They never were, as he had learned to hide it so well. He knew how to layer emotion, how to disguise his black feelings with a conscious free counterpane of charm.

The girls took the
next table, so close that their scent of eau de beach tingled at the edge of his nostrils
. Their glossy heads, laden with glorious hair extensions, shimmering in the sunlight that streamed through the window. They casually draped one lean, tanned limb across the other and began comparing notes on their forthcoming auditions. They murmured and laughed, sipping, nibbling, comparing n
ew head shots, checking their iP
hones,
applied gloss
the colour of
freshly cut nectarines to
their
l
ips
and left, wafting away on a perfumed breeze. They looked so young and carefree that by now Adrian was seething.

He wanted desperately to be with
Jezzy
, because he thought that she was his savior. But his body craved Devon. And other things. Things which he did not dare to think about, let alone fulfill. He just sat there, dressed in exquisitely cut Armani pants, slate gray silk T-shirt, Kieselstein Cord belt and shiny, pointed Costume National shoes. His exterior was without blemish, but his mind had begun to rage inside his head. Snakes and poison that he felt were
curdling and
rotting inside his skull. Nobody could tell. Nobody could witness the turmoil that was happening right in front of them.

*

Devon & Mr. Birdman

When Devon regained consciousness she was propped on a

spindly wooden bench in the narrow hallway of the school. Her right shoulder ached and her coat was dusty. Squinting in the dim light, she strained her eyes upwards to look at the stained glass picture above the double front doors. Stained glass in lurid shades of primary colours, depicting a woman with swirly hair and a strange, peculiar animal at her feet. She remembered it so well.

Mr. Birdman’s wing-tipped shoes clattered down the black and white chequered tile hallway, echoing through the empty school in the cool, bitter afternoon. He was carrying a cup of steaming tea in a dainty blue and white ubiquitous willow design china cup with a Garibaldi biscuit on the edge of the saucer. His bony hand reached towards her and she took the cup, sipped it, feeling the sweet, wet liquid warming her body, but
the
biscuit made her want to heave, the smell of it bringing back sensory memories of the sickly sweet smell of his breath, with Garibaldi remnants stuck between his pointed teeth. He sat down next to her, on a long bench with a worn, grey pad fastened to the legs.

‘Are you feeling better now?’ he chirped.

She looked at him and gave a benign, sterile nod.