Immoral Certainty (16 page)

There was a screen across the room, with a goat head on it, a black goat head with yellow eyes. All the witch people were humming. You had to be very quiet and keep your eyes open now.

From around the screen came the devils. Three of them were dressed in black robes and masks, with horns and red tongues. One of them was naked, with a black goat head instead of a real head.

Carol Anne heard a child scream and then a slap and a stifled whimper. Carol Anne didn’t make a sound. She knew this wasn’t the scariest part.

The devils and the witch people were moving around, humming and singing and making smoke come out of a swinging ball. Some of the children began to cough, the smoke was so thick.

Now one of the devils was standing at the head of the black table, singing very loud in a high voice, like she was calling somebody:
Zariatnatmits! Tabots! Membroth! Aorios! Bucon! Minoson!

A big gong rang and the Monster came out from behind the screen carrying a naked little girl in his arms. The girl was tied up and had something stuffed in her mouth so all she could make were little squeaking sounds. The Monster had an animal head too, like a pig, but hairy and with long fangs. He was naked too, and his skin was white, like Crisco. The little girl’s skin was brown.

The Monster tied the little girl to the black table, an arm or a leg to each candle holder. The grownups started humming and shaking and singing and the naked devil came around and jumped up on the table on top of the tied-up little girl. Carol Anne could see his butt bouncing up and down. All the grown-ups were shouting now and beating on the gong.

Then the devil got off the little girl. There was blood coming out of her. The other devil, the one who had yelled out the names, took out a small curvy knife and began to cut marks in the little girl’s skin. The girl jumped around every time she got cut. The other devils came around and poked at the girl. Carol Anne couldn’t see what they were doing, but after they were finished, the little girl didn’t jump around any more. You could still hear her breathing, though, a whistling sound, thin and high.

She was dripping with blood. The devil with the knife brought out a silver cup and collected some blood and pulled the mask away from its face and drank it. Then the other devils and the witch people all drank some and sang more and beat the gong.

The Monster went up to the end of the table where the girl’s head was and did something to her neck. The whistling breath stopped. Carol Anne was glad, because that meant it was almost over. She felt a little sorry for the girl, but that was what happened when you were really,
really
bad, and told. Besides, that little girl wasn’t a friend of hers.

Now the Monster held up the girl’s hand by one finger. In the other hand he held a big scissors. He cut off the finger and ate it, putting it into the pig mouth of the mask. The girl’s hand flopped down on the table. They beat the gong. The grown-ups hummed and the devils and the Monsters went behind the screen. The witch people took the children out and washed them up and took them to the nap room, all the time telling them that if they said anything about what they had seen the same thing would happen to them as had happened to the little girl behind the red door.

All the children lay on their cots in the nap room. Some of them were eating the candy they had been given, after. Nobody was talking. In a while, parents came by and picked them up. Carol Anne saw her own mother come in. She got off her cot and walked over to her. Her mother gave her a hug and looked in her face. Carol Anne could see she was worried, she had that little wrinkle between her eyes.

“Everything OK, honey?” her mother asked. “You all right?”

“Fine,” said Carol Anne.

“Did you have a good day? Anything special happen?”

“No, just regular,” said Carol Anne.

Felix had never called Anna at the school before, and the tone of his voice and his frenzied insistence that she meet him immediately were unprecedented as well. After telling the school office she was ill, she hopped a cab and headed for a rendezvous at Larry’s. In the cab, she was aware of a feeling of satisfaction beneath her concern: With all his friends and connections, Felix had called
her
when he was in trouble. He needed her.

But she was badly shaken when she saw what Felix in trouble looked like. Even in the dim light of the lounge she could see the dark bruises on his face and hands. He was unshaven and his hair was matted. And he was drunk. He looks like a bum, was Anna’s first involuntary thought. In shame she suppressed it and rushed to sit by his side.

“My God! Felix, what happened to you?”

“What does it look like? I got in a fight.” This was said so curtly that Anna drew abruptly away. Seeing this, Felix said in what he imagined was a more genial voice, “Yeah, a crazy thing. I was jogging in the park and I saw a bunch of guys hassling this woman. So I went over to talk to them, and they jumped me. I put three of them away, but then one of ’em must have popped me with a rock, because I went down and they started dancing on my head. What a jerk, huh?” He uttered a self-deprecating chuckle.

“No, I don’t think that was jerky, Felix. I think that was a wonderful thing.”

“Ah, that’s nice, baby. I knew you’d understand.” He stretched and winced. “Damn! I could use a good hot soak. They only have a shower where I’m staying.”

Which was Anna’s cue to invite Felix back to her place, because she had a big tub, and in short order Felix was soaking away, with Anna sitting on the edge of the bath, admiring her hero, and plying him, on request, with iced beers, cigarettes, and sandwiches.

Eventually, Felix got out of the bath and stood naked and dripping on the bathmat. From where she sat, Anna could see that he was bruised also on the thighs and midsection. She felt a wave of pity and admiration for him. Felix made no move to dry himself off. He just stood in front of her, with his groin at the level of her mouth. “Hey,” he said and jerked his hips, so that a drop of bathwater jumped from his stiffening penis to splash on her face. Blissfully, she closed her eyes and took him in.

Anna sat in a chair watching Felix snoring on her bed. It was close to midnight. He had walked in and plopped down immediately after getting sucked off, and had been out ever since. Felix was not one for tender afterglows. He had a brutal streak: no, not brutal, she edited, strong, vigorous, masculine. It excited her, she had to admit; he was so different from the male schoolteachers and administrators she mixed with every day, or the floorwalkers at the department store. They were rabbits compared to Felix. Imagine, taking on a gang of thugs singlehanded!

He stirred and rolled over. She hoped he would wake up and make love to her. She had stripped and put on a bathrobe to make it easier. Fuck me, she thought, concentrating hard. Get up and fuck me! She felt herself blushing. What’s happening to me, she thought. I’m becoming a sex-crazed schoolteacher. The thought struck her funny. It’s true. She didn’t know how much she would give up to have a nice warm, hairy man in her bed, but she knew they hadn’t got there yet. The thought struck her as so funny that she chortled out loud.

At the sound, Felix popped his eyes open. His body tensed as it always did when he awakened. “What? What’re you sitting there for?” he demanded.

“Nothing. Just looking at you.”

He scowled and swung out of the bed and walked to the bathroom, saying nothing more. Anna turned the lights low, turned on the radio to a soft music station, lay down on the bed and stretched out in what she thought was a fetching pose. But when he returned he had his pants on and he was buttoning his shirt. Her face fell.

“What’s the matter?”

She summoned up a weak smile. “Nothing. I just thought you’d, you know, stay.”

He seemed to look at her for the first time, taking in her bathrobe and the way she was lying on the bed. A wolfish look came over his face and he bent over and shoved his hand roughly between her thighs. “Oh, can’t wait for it, huh?” he said, his face close. He still smelled of the whiskey. “Hey, baby, I’ll be back real soon. I’ll jam it in you good. But now I gotta go. My friend Steve’s getting off his shift at one and he’s gonna lend me his car so I can move my stuff over here.”

“Your stuff? What are you talking about, Felix?”

“What do you mean, ‘what am I talking about’? I’m gonna move in here, today, like we said.”

“We didn’t say, Felix. I said you could stay here when you got lonely, but we never talked about you moving in.”

“Fuck that!” he cried. “I’m moving in. What is this shit now!”

Anna recoiled at his tone and at the frightening expression on his face. Immediately, all Anna could think about was her last conversation with Stephanie. Her rational doubts about Felix and what he really was came rolling forth, like freeze frames from a movie: the funny credit cards, the sleazy bars he took her to, the vague and grandiose “business” he was in, the fight he got into last night. Anna was skilled at unraveling the lies of naughty fourth-graders and now she began to apply her skills to Felix.

She got off the bed, flicked on the lights and snapped the radio off. “Felix,” she said sternly, facing him, “we have to talk. I mean moving in together is serious business. And, you know, we never talk seriously. We go out, we have dinner, we jump into bed, and bang!, you’re out of here. Not that it’s not great, in bed and all, but I don’t really know anything about you. Like, I tried calling you last night, the number you gave me, and this guy was really nasty to me, he said you’d be out all night.” She looked at him appealingly and held out her hands, palms up. “Felix, what am I supposed to think? Maybe you’re seeing other women … ?”

Without warning, Felix hit her across the jaw. She staggered back against the wall and brought the bedside lamp crashing down. He grabbed the front of her robe, pulled her upright and backhanded her again. She screamed, “Felix! Stop! For God’s sake …”

“Shut up, you lying cunt!” he screamed back. He punched her hard in the stomach, a neatly executed
chudan oi zuki,
and she crumpled to the floor, gasping. He kicked her in the side, still yelling at the top of his voice, “Bitch! Cunt! I’ll kill you.”

She crawled on her hands and knees toward the kitchen. When she got some breath back, she started crying, and between sobs screaming herself. Somebody started pounding on the other side of the bedroom wall with a solid object. Dimly, Anna heard a woman’s voice yelling, “Stop that noise or I’ll call the cops!” Anna screamed louder and kept crawling.

He followed her into the kitchen, lashing out with his foot every couple of steps. He might have hurt her more, but he was still stiff from the beating at the dojo. She crawled under the kitchen table, and curled up beneath it, with her head covered by her arms, weeping and listening to Felix smash up her kitchen.

The table was a solid pine job, built into the wall and anchored to the floor at the outboard end. Felix yelled, “Don’t hide from me, cunt! Don’t hide from me! You’re gonna get it, you lying bitch! Bitch! You’re gonna wish you never been born,” as well as similar statements that quite undermined the image of the suave international executive he had tried so hard to cultivate. He blamed Anna for this loss of face, too, and his inability to get his hands on her flesh at this instant redoubled his fury.

After he had broken everything in the kitchen he could reach, he got down on his side and grappled under the table, hoping to haul her out, but Anna flailed her legs so wildly he couldn’t get a good purchase. Besides, his bruises really hurt in that position. He stood up and, good black belt that he was, began to smash the top of the table, accompanied by the traditional grunts and yells.

He had succeeded in breaking through one plank, when there came a loud knock on the door, and a voice: “Police, open up!”

Felix took a deep breath, brushed back his hair, went to the door and opened it. There were two cops standing there.

“We had a report there’s been a disturbance here,” said the nearest of the two, a square-faced blocky man of about forty-five. His partner was dark, skinny, and much younger. Felix noted that they both carried two-foot-long black flashlights. He said calmly, “No, there’s no problem here, Officer. Who sent in the call?”

“You mind if we take a look around?” said the first cop, and before Felix could object they were both in the kitchen. Anna had crawled out from under the table and was sitting on a chair, her head in her hands, sobbing.

“Just a little argument, Officer,” said Felix, smiling, the lord of the manor. The older cop made Felix with a two-second glance: a scumbag, he concluded, and probably not the husband. The place is torn up, he observed, and in his experience it was mostly the boyfriends who tore up. The hubbie wasn’t going to rip out the shelves and then when he made up with wifey, he has to put them back again. The hubbies take it out on the wives and kids. On meat.

He turned his attention to the woman. “Everything OK, ma’am?” he asked politely. She seemed to have difficulty finding her voice. “Yes,” she croaked. “No.” Then, “Could you ask him to leave, now?”

“This your apartment, ma’am?”

“Yes, it is.”

Felix moved in Anna’s direction and she flinched. The cop’s arm came up slightly as he moved between them, and Felix could feel the skinny cop move into position behind him. Those fucking flashlights. He had to be cool.

“Anna,” he said. “Honey … God, I’m sorry … I’m sorry.”

“Felix, I’d like you to leave now, just go, just leave me alone.”

“You heard the lady, Felix,” said the older cop. “Let’s get dressed, OK?”

Felix went into the bedroom and got his shirt and jacket on, and his shoes and socks. The skinny cop followed him in and watched from the doorway, impassively. Felix ignored him. He went into the bathroom and combed his hair. Then he picked up his attaché case. In his imagination, briefly, he played out for himself a scene where he whipped out his new bowie knife, slashed the skinny cop’s throat, ran into the kitchen and gutted the other one, and then got to work on Anna again. He’d have to tie and gag her first, to keep her quiet, so he’d have time for a really good job. He’d start on her tits …