Mirror Image (28 page)

He ran his fingers down through the stubble on his chin, scratching. He hated being unshaven; it was practically the first thing he did each morning, and usually again just before dinner. He had shaved this morning, surely he didn't need to shave again? He stopped, and then stepped out of the bathroom to look at the red glowing figures on the digital clock on the nightstand.

Two minutes past midnight.

He stared at the clock, watching the digits change from two to three. Where had the time gone? It had seemed to slip away while he'd been staring into the mirror watching the naked woman make love to the fat man before she killed him. It was a dream, nothing more, except … except that it had been so real. So vivid.

He looked at the bottle of blood again. He must be out of his fucking mind to even consider it!

But he had seen something in the mirror, he reminded himself. And now he was going to see if he could see it again. He was conducting a scientific experiment. If nothing happened he could feel stupid, and he could curse himself for being seven sorts of a fool. But he had seen what blood did to the mirror; this was not going to fail.

Wincing with the ache in his left arm, working slowly and painfully, he cleaned up the bathroom, wiping away all traces of the blood, flushing the evidence down the toilet. As he came out of the bathroom he glanced at the clock again.

Twelve thirty.

He had the house to himself. Manny had gone out, and he doubted he'd see her again before dawn, so he had plenty of time. He'd spend an hour or so with the mirror, and then give it up. He looked at his wife's dressing table, and wondered where she was, whose arms she was in. Well, if everything went according to plan, he'd soon know.

He began to giggle then, the sound high-pitched and hysterical in the empty house.

 

62

S
HE'D BEEN
married about seven years when Celia Frazer had her first affair. Wasn't it men who were supposed to get the seven year itch? Celia had a lot of time on her hands then: the nanny looked after Emmanuelle during the day, Jonathan had been busy building up and expanding the business. She'd been bored and it wasn't entirely her fault: Jonathan was as much to blame.

That first flush of passion that had brought them together had worn off and Jonathan seemed quite content to allow it to bubble along at a simmer. But she needed him to be a little more responsive, a little more demonstrative, in showing his love for her. A peck on the cheek in the morning, another at night when he came in from the store and by bedtime, he was usually too tired for lovemaking, except on the weekends.

But on the weekends she usually arranged a dinner party or organized a night at the theatre with friends or a movie with the result that when they returned home,
she
was usually too tired—or too drunk—for lovemaking.

They had also become a little bored with one another.

So, given the combination of circumstances, was it any wonder that she looked outside her marriage for satisfaction? Her first lover had been a neighbor, a foreign diplomat stationed in Los Angeles. His wife spent much of the time abroad and he'd been lonely. Theirs was a purely physical relationship and it had lasted on and off for nearly three months, and had taken place right under Jonathan's nose—although she was quite convinced that unless he had actually come home and found them making love in the bed, he wouldn't have noticed. The affair ended when her lover was posted abroad, and Celia Frazer was just as pleased, she was becoming bored with him anyway.

It had been a year before she'd had another lover, this time on the first vacation she'd taken on her own. He had been a French student, about ten years her junior, waiting tables to earn money to put himself through college for the coming term. The sex had been unsophisticated but his staying power had been phenomenal.

The following year there had been another holiday romance, and then after that, well, it became almost a habit. Jonathan's idea of a vacation and hers differed tremendously, and once the precedent had been set that they should vacation apart, that became the pattern. Finding a lover for the duration of her two or three or four week vacations was now part of the fun.

This year had been a little different, however. She had met Colin, a young surfer dude who had come to Hawaii to experience big surf. He'd offered to help her improve on her surfing skills, and while she had little interest in surfing, his toned and muscled body attracted her. He had planned to leave a few days before her vacation was due to end, but she persuaded him to stay on as her guest … not that he needed very much persuasion. Colin was a glorious and accomplished lover, always careful to ensure her own satisfaction first, before taking his own. They'd flown home together and he had invited her to join him up in Lake Tahoe where he was a ski instructor for the winter months.

It was an invitation she didn't want to refuse, but she couldn't justify taking off on another vacation having just come back from one. Could she?

But when she arrived home, Jonathan had been in shock at the death of that horrible Farren man. He'd been stamping around the place in a foul temper; there'd been police everywhere, and while the social circuit had suddenly rediscovered her, she knew they were only looking for tasty bits of gossip. She needed to get away for a bit, so she finally decided: hell, why not? She could go off to Lake Tahoe and enjoy herself with someone she liked, or she could stay at home, miserable, with someone she didn't really care about one way or another. Maybe that was what was wrong with their marriage: they didn't really care for one another, weren't really interested in one another, they had become too bound up in their own lives, their own petty interests. Where had the sharing gone?

She'd still hesitated about making the final decision to go to Tahoe—because she felt that in some ways it might be
the
final decision. But when Jonathan started actually sleeping in the guesthouse, well then, it was an easy decision to make.

At least with Colin she knew where she stood. Their relationship—if that's what you wanted to call it—was almost purely physical. He was eight years younger than her, and his energy and boyish enthusiasm made her feel like a teenager again.

She was still young. She should be out there enjoying life. Maybe it was time to start thinking about a divorce.

At least while there was still money to be split.

*   *   *

C
ELIA FRAZER, PLEASANTLY
sated by the two bottles of wine they had drunk over dinner, lay back on the bed and watched the young man undress. Colin Mariner was tall, perpetually-tanned, broad-shouldered, and slim-hipped. Nine months on the water ensured toned six-pack abs and his shoulder length hair was bleached golden blond. And Jonathan—skinny, pale-skinned, short, graying black hair, with the beginnings of a paunch—compared very unfavorably with him. In fact, there was no contest.

Kicking off the single sheet, she turned her head to look at herself in the dressing table mirror, running her hands down her naked body. She thought she kept herself in pretty good condition. A good body, maybe a little too slim, small firm breasts, a flat stomach and narrow waist. The muscles in her thighs were clearly delineated now from all the surfing which made her seem slightly out of proportion … maybe she'd go to the gym and work on her shoulder and chest muscles. She brushed the palms of her hands up across her flat stomach, aware now that Colin was watching her. Maybe she'd think about slightly bigger breasts, too, the new implants were apparently absolutely amazing.

Celia turned back to Colin, cupping her breasts provocatively. “What would you think if I had them made bigger?”

The young man laughed. “I like them just the way they are,” he said, climbing onto the bed between her outstretched legs, leaning forward to delicately kiss each nipple. “Besides,” he added with a startling white smile, “anything more than a mouthful is a waste.” His mouth opened wide, then closed around most of her breast.

Closing her eyes to the sensation, Celia allowed herself to drift. It wasn't her fault she was having affairs, it was Jonathan's, if he'd paid her as much attention as he'd lavished on his precious antiques …

 

63

T
HE BLOOD
had already begun to turn sticky and tacky by the time he reached the guesthouse and settled himself before the mirror, squatting about a foot away from the glass. With infinite care he uncorked the glass jar and the dry air of the guesthouse was immediately tainted with the meaty copper stench of blood. Lifting the bottle, he poured the thick liquid—now black and tar-like in the wan light—onto the sponge. The pale cratered bath sponge turned dark and heavy, and he immediately pushed it against the glass, squeezing it when it touched the surface, liquid snaking down the glass in twisting runnels. He rubbed the sponge in a quick circular motion, slicing through the grime, opening a window at about eye level. Wincing with the pain in his left arm, he reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a small color photograph of Celia and held it up before his face, squinting in the dim light at the vague picture. He dropped the sponge and splashed blood directly from the glass beaker across the glass, creating a shallow arc that dripped blood down its length. Jonathan Frazer vigorously rubbed the blood onto the mirror, concentrating intently on Celia, squeezing his eyes shut in an effort to visualize her clearly, to
see
her face, her eyes, her hair … but the picture wouldn't come. How could you live with someone for so long and not be able to visualize their face? When you stopped seeing them, he realized, when you stopped looking at them. He opened his eyes and looked at the photograph again. It had been taken late last year at that skiing resort she'd gone to in the French Alps. She was wide-eyed, smiling, looking tanned and relaxed: the way she always looked after lovemaking.

A rainbow flicker shivered the length of the glass, blue and red and green.

Frazer lowered the picture and quickly threw more blood onto the glass.

The second ripple moved far more slowly down the mirror and coalesced around the spot where he'd rubbed in the blood. The colors and twisting shapes reminded him of oil on water, and then, as he watched, the thick black blood disappeared, absorbed into the mirror, leaving tiny dark flakes in its wake.

There was a small amount of his blood left and he was just about to throw it onto the glass when Celia Frazer's face appeared.

It was the face in the photograph, wide-eyed, smiling, tanned, relaxed, but larger, life-sized, three-dimensional.

It was staring at him.

And then the eyes blinked.

The mouth twisted into an ugly smile, showing long yellowed teeth. The eyes blinked and the head dipped, until all he could see was the top of her dyed ash-blond hair, the roots black and coarse. Then the head came back up again and grinned at him, the mouth working to form his name.

Jonathan
.

Frazer fell back away from the mirror, flinging the sponge at the image in the glass. His foot struck the glass jar, sending it crashing against the frame, the bottle shattering, blood staining the wood.

The face in the mirror leered and grimaced. It was still Celia's face, but subtly altered, changed. The tanned skin had assumed a leathery appearance, the eyes seemed deeper in the skull, further apart, the cheekbones more prominent, the teeth longer, the expression mocking, long moist tongue licking lasciviously at cracked lips.

He understood, on some deep unconscious level, that it was still Celia he was looking at, but now he was seeing another aspect of her, as if the mirror had stripped away layers of deceit and subterfuge, revealing her true character.

The face abruptly shrunk in size, falling away from him, drawing him forward, until his face was inches from the glass. The spreading oil of colors obliterated everything and then twisted, and shifted, curling into shapes, resolving into a series of tiny pictures which fluttered past like wind-blown leaves. There were images, faces, pictures: a woman, a naked body, an infant, a face with long waving hair, Celia's face convulsed in ecstasy, Edmund Talbott's, Manny's, a tanned youth, blood, and flames. Abruptly they stopped and solidified into one image on the glass.

He was looking into a bedroom: a hotel bedroom judging by the furnishings and decor. The angle was low, a few feet off the floor, and looking directly onto a bed on which two naked figures writhed together, arms and legs locked around one another. He frowned, wondering what he was supposed to be seeing, and then he heard the high-pitched gasping pants of a woman approaching orgasm.

It was Celia's voice.

A smile of something like triumph locked onto his face, pulling his lips back from his teeth. The experiment had worked … was working. He pressed up close against the glass, staring deep into it, wishing he could be closer to the bed, trying to make sense of the angle, wondering how he was seeing them, trying to make sense of it in relation to his own position in the room. He looked around; what was missing from the picture of the room? And then he suddenly realized that he was looking
through
the dressing-table mirror!

The woman's gasps had now been augmented by a man's panted grunts, and Frazer was forced to sit, watching and listening to the couple reach their orgasm together and then finally collapse in a heap on the bed, where they lay breathless and gasping for a few moments, until the woman rolled out of the bed and approached the mirror.

Maybe he had been hoping—desperately hoping—that his mind had been playing tricks with him, and that it wasn't Celia who'd been in the man's arms, making love to him with an abandon and energy she'd never shown with him. But it was Celia, the smile of sated satisfaction back on her lips now, her skin flushed with the after-effects of orgasm.

Bitch, bitch, bitchbitchbitch, fucking bitch.