The Kissing Game (15 page)

He bends over me while I unknowingly hold the
front of my skirt down with both hands. I don’t realize I’m doing this until he
takes one look at my hands and smiles, as if we’re joking. Then his lips are on
me. While he kisses me, he removes my hands from my skirt so he can rest his
entire weight on me. His jeans feel rough against my bare legs. My body wiggles
beneath him. Am I kissing him back? I’m not sure this matters to him. All I can
think is that ruining his life has given him a taste for mindless vengeance.

 “A little more effort would be appreciated.”

“You’re drunk!”

“I’m saner than I’ve ever been in my life.” He caresses
my thigh as if he likes me, but his mouth feels bent on revenge. “I’ve had an
epiphany, Caroline, enduring you for two years, listening to your ‘Yes Roberts’
and ‘What-do-you-need Roberts,’ forcing you to wear pants so I won’t have to
suffer through your bare legs, treating you like chaff and finding fault so I
won’t drag you into a vacant office and lose my job, all that--only to find out
you think I’m some imbecile you can play, you can ruin.” I can see the vein
that stretches from his temple to his scalp. So near to me, his stark black
eyelashes can’t hide the lividness in his blue eyes.

While I began to understand the fight-or-flight
syndrome that so often causes bunny rabbits to flee, Robert fumbles with his
jeans. And I begin to understand why he wants this. Revenge. He wants revenge
sex. He wants to get even by screwing me.

I’m sure he’s wearing underwear, but I can’t
see them. His mouth comes back to mine; only this time my lips mumble,
“Robert!” Wiggling underneath him is fighting a tidal wave. Without restraint, he
kicks his pants to the floor and feels as though every muscle in his body tenses
against me. He smells of salt and soap and alcohol.

“Now, your clothes,” he demands, as if they are
payment. He weighs a ton while fisting both sides of my skirt.

“Stop!” I screech, launching my arm muscles to
life. Bending one knee, I deadeye him in the groin and feel the soft fabric of
his underwear on my bare knee, the yield of bare flesh beneath it. As if a trap-door
opens, Robert topples off the couch onto the floor, an expression of wounded
animal on his face.

“You evil little tease!” he chokes.

“You’re drunk!” I yell, standing and pulling
down my skirt. Adjusting my sweater, I make a dash to pick up my shoes off the
floor before Robert takes another go at me. I don’t even bother to put them on.
I clutch them like little scraps of dignity and dash barefoot toward the front
door, where I decide to turn around and say something to him, something really
mean and awful, something so bitingly cruel that he’ll remember it while
cringing on his deathbed. But when I see his blue eyes glowering up at me from
the floor, I’m struck frozen.

Even now, while he’s intoxicated and rendered
harmless, one look from him has the power to reduce me to a girl who cries like
a cow. Instead of speaking, I take two steps backward and grab the doorknob
with one hand. Better to flee the scene as soon as possible. However, my shoulder
grazes the light switch and I accidentally turn the light off, leaving him in
darkness. A glimmer of courtesy tells me to turn the light back on, but then I
think that leaving him in darkness is what he deserves.

So I step out into the night and slam Robert’s
front door behind me.

“Del plato a la boca se cae la sopa.”

There´s many a slip between the cup and the
lip.

Outside in
front of Robert’s house, the fog makes misty orbs of lampposts on every corner
and rolls thickly like thunder-heads above me. When the wind kicks in, my
sweater can’t hide me from a cold beating. Since I was in a hurry to get out of
Robert’s house, I haven’t fully put on my shoes. Instead I let them smack
against my heels like flip flops as I cross the street, round the corner, and
scurry past the hamburger place.

On the train ride home, I don’t bother to sit
down. I just hold onto the pole and watch lights in the dark tunnels streak past
the window. My bus ride home is full of endless mental articulating in which I
berate myself for having gone over to Robert’s. What was I thinking would come
out of that? Did I think he would forgive me, shake my hand amicably, and ask
me to come back for a game of chess sometime?   

From my bus stop to my apartment, I hear the interminable
buzzing of the freeway growing nearer and feel the heaviness of trouble like
smokestacks. The flog clips over the tops of tall apartment buildings in my
neighborhood, leaving the upper lighted windows looking like hazy headlamps of
oncoming vehicles. I pass new graffiti painted in black on a concrete fence
outside of a small church. It reads
The Devil owns you.

Soon I stride across the grass toward my
apartment. Ted’s apartment is dark, so I assume he is out for the night. For
some reason, this is a relief. The darkness from Ted’s apartment makes my steps
tenuous toward the stairwell, but just as I turn to ascend the stairs I hear a
sound like footsteps and pause. The whole neighborhood remains perfectly still
minus the constancy of cars on the freeway, and I gasp as I feel an arm come
around my waist and I’m instantly rearranged, turned completely around. About
to scream, I hear Ted’s whisper, “Come for a minute.”

“Jesus, you scared the hell out of me,” I say,
as he shushes me and swirls me into his apartment, closing the sliding glass
door behind us and pulling the tan mesh curtain across the glass.

“The police were at your apartment looking for
you earlier,” he says. “They’ve been out in their car after pounding on your
door. I think they’re waiting for you. Are you wanted by the law now?” He
smiles in the dark, all white-toothed and tanned, and then peeks through the
curtain to watch the street. His apartment is utterly black, aside from the
vague outline of his furniture and kitchenette in the black.

The thought slips like silver into my veins.
They’ve come to arrest me for breaking into the Chairman’s house. “Oh no.”

“What?”

I put my backpack down on the floor and sit on
the sofa, the compulsion to cry not connecting to my tear ducts but present
nonetheless. “This is it. I’m going to jail. Can you believe it? Me, going to
jail.”

Ted looks at me as if I’m speaking a foreign
language. “Back up a little here. What did you do?”

And so I tell him. I explain the whole
situation, how I wanted to ruin my boss’s life, how I conspired to make the
tape, how I kissed Robert in the elevator, how I mailed the tape to the Chairman,
how I broke into the Chairman’s house to get it back and failed, and how the Chairman
likely now has security footage of my breaking into his house. Meanwhile, Ted
leans on the wall near his sliding glass window, listening to me with increased
intensity in his face.

“Caroline,” he says after I finish, pacing over
and sitting down on the couch next to me. “You’ve broken into a house
and
you’ve attempted to steal mail, which means you’ve broken both state and
federal law. You could be charged in state and federal court. Do you realize
what this means? The police probably didn’t come to just question you. They
came to arrest you. You know how serious this is, don’t you?”

“Of course I do.” While Ted looks around the
room as if trying to piece me together, I contemplate the implications of my
predicament. Initially, I embarked on this voyage like a passionate amateur on
the seas of revenge. Now I’m stuck on an island, an imbecile with no hope of
return. Can I run? Am I the type of person who packs her bags and runs?  

“You kissed your boss?” Ted asks, disbelief coloring
his cheeks white. “You actually kissed him?”

“Uh-huh.”

            “I thought you hated him. How could
you kiss him?”

            “You know, that’s really not the
point at the moment. The point is that I’m going to jail.” I stand up and put
my trembling hand over my chest. My breath comes in short and I feel as though
I’m choking. “I haven’t just lost my job. Now I’m … I’m a criminal. After they
arrest me and I serve my time, I’ll have a criminal record. I’ll never be able
to get a job again.”

            “Well, that’s not necessarily true.
After seven years, you could get your records sealed, assuming you don’t break
any other laws,” Ted says.

I’m not sure if he’s joking. The room is too
dark to tell, and I feel a little faint as if oxygen exists only on other
planets.

“What’s wrong?”

“I feel like I can’t breathe.”

“You’re just having a panic attack. My mother
used to get them all the time.”

“How do you make them stop?” I try to swallow
away the feeling.

Ted stands and glides over to me like a
missionary on a mission. He puts his hand on my back. “My mother had a
therapist, cognitive behavioral therapy, but since we don’t have time for that,
take deep breaths.”

“I can’t.”

“So you kissed him?” Ted asks as though still
processing the thought.

“What?” I gasp, the darkness only seeming to
exacerbate my need for air. My mind isn’t focused on what Ted’s saying. The
light from outside hits the door handle of Ted’s refrigerator, reminding me of
bars in a jail cell, and suddenly I’m imagining the people in jail who have
committed crimes like selling drugs, murdering their spouses, robbing banks. The
people in prison run with a different crowd than I do. They speak a different
language. I’m not part of that culture. It’s absurd to imagine myself living among
criminals. Will I have to study up on prison etiquette? Is there a book for
such a thing?

“You kissed him,” Ted repeats, factually.

“Yeah. Look, can I stay here for a few hours? I
need to figure out what I’m gonna do. I can’t go to my apartment, not now at
least.”

“Sure, stay as long as you like. Or,” he says,
pausing and tilting his head, as though some brilliant thought just lands in
his brain. His voice rises a notch. “Or, we could go away together. There’s
this bed and breakfast about three hours up the coast in Fort Bragg. It’s
reasonable, and they have the best blueberry pancakes.”

“And how do you propose we get there?” I ask.
“Neither one of us has a car.”

“We could rent one.”

My lungs stow away air, offering no room for
new oxygen. “I don’t think so. I don’t know. I just need to think.”

“Look, just sit down with me and let’s think
this over.” Ted hooks his fingers around my elbow and guides me to the couch.
We both sit down in the dark.

But before I have time to contemplate anything,
I notice two shadows outside Ted’s sliding glass window. They walk in tandem,
jingling as they approach. Ted must notice them too because he thrusts his hand
over my mouth and shoves me on my back on the couch, before launching his whole
body on top of mine. “Shhh,” he whispers.  Ted smells like honey-scented
shampoo, and his knee feels like a rock gouging my shin. It’s déjà vu suddenly.
A man on top of me on the couch.

Smack. Smack. Smack. Sounds like rocks hitting
the window rather than a fist rapping on glass.

“It’s those policemen looking for you,” Ted
whispers so quietly in my ear that I feel his warm breath more than I hear his
words. “Don’t move.”

Smack. Smack. Smack. Smack.

Ted and I lie there prostrate, unmoving, the
weight of him less than that of Robert, but still heavy enough to make me sink
far into the couch. I can hear the policemen’s radios talking loudly, feel
Ted’s hot breath on my ear, feel the panic dragging and moaning inside my chest,
culminating into a firelight of dread until my brain reaches for something
soothing, something to calm that sensation that threatens to completely deprive
me of oxygen. And for no apparent reason, I think only of Robert. In my mind, I
see him. Robert at his desk looking like a suited deity while mere mortals
schlep by, Robert with his hands defensively in front of him after I’ve just kissed
him in the elevator, Robert in his office babbling about land claims to Judge
Herrington while his hand touches my knee, Robert trembling and leaning over his
father’s hospital bed, Robert acting like a madman while his hand rises up my
skirt. And instantly I feel it. The room closes around me in a razorous calm
while a crimson revelation rises vast and shivering, pricking millions of cells
inside me with tiny tinctures of truth. I love him. I love Robert, not the kind
of love that clouds judgment and waivers at the slightest provocation, but the
kind that passes through the broken ruins and ugly villages that exist inside
all of us and still loves despite that unsightliness, the kind that rides
across the infinite breadths of space and time, armored and impenetrable by the
savagery of speculation or words or weapons. It’s not the pale revelation that
dissipates but the kind of knowledge that serenades like the soprano of boneflutes
until it becomes you, until it
is
you. 

In this moment of life-altering reflection, I
feel Ted’s lips on my cheek, and then my neck, and then my cheek again, his
hand seizing my hair while the other hand still covers my mouth. Meanwhile, the
officers rap on the sliding glass door again, and I can’t yelp or squeal for
fear of being discovered, so I lie there feeling the violation of Ted’s mouth.
Ted Bundy, the serial kisser, and I, his victim. And yet, I want more than
anything to climb out from under Ted, grab my cell from my bag, and call Robert
to tell him I love him, however foolish that may be. As Ted attempts serial
seduction, I listen intently to the sounds of the officers as their radios
stride away, back towards wherever they came from before I steal Ted’s hand
away from my mouth, shove him off me, and roll off the couch onto the floor. I
scramble from my knees into a standing position.

“What’re you doing?” I demand breathily in the
dark.

“What do you mean? I’m kissing you, obviously.
I like you, Caroline. This can’t be a surprise,” Ted states, sitting there on
the couch looking accused. “Why do you think I come to see you so often? Why do
you think I’m always outside when you’re on your way to work in the morning?
You think I like the freeway noise? The ambiance of our ghetto neighborhood?
Why else would I want to help you now? Because I like you. I’ve liked you for
some time. I want to be with you, spend time with you, help you, especially
now.”

His murky apartment feels sinister and confined,
the white walls like a jail cell. His small kitchenette nearby reminds me of that
of some seedy motel.

 “Ted, look, the thing is, I appreciate your
friendship,” I say while Ted wheezes. “I really do. I like you, too, but not …
not in that particular way. Don’t get me wrong. You’re … you’re very very attractive,
and I’m sure you could get any girl you want. It’s just that I can’t … I
don’t…”

“Why? Because of him? Because you’re into him,
aren’t you? Your boss?” Ted asks, his lower jaw extending forward.

“Why would you say that?”

“How can you care about him when he clearly
treats you like shit?” Ted demands. His face looks small and cavernous
suddenly.

“How do you know?”

“The walls are thin, Caroline. I hear you
talking about him to your friends on the phone. I know the stuff he does to
you.”

“You listen to me through the walls?” I take a
step backwards. Ted rises and walks toward me.

“Yes, I do. I listen to you through the walls.
I know what kind of person you are. You’re kind, forgiving, generous. You
deserve someone much better than that monster.” Ted steps close enough to me to
kiss me again, and I briefly fear him the way you fear serial killers who want
to sodomize you.

I put my hands up in front of me, while Ted
puts his arms around my waist and pulls me into a kiss, this one on the mouth.
His tongue is wet and watery and suddenly I have the urge to pee, perhaps out
of fear, shock, or just plain need. I’m not sure. Like a rabid lesbian, I shove
him away from me. “Look, Ted, really, you’re great, but I really have to use
the bathroom.”

His face briefly looks as though he’s dying
before he says, “Sure,” and points down the hall.

In the blackness of his apartment hallway, I
run my fingers along the uneven surface of the plastered wall until I reach the
bathroom, step inside, and close and lock the door before flicking on the
light. In the mirror, my hair is a red cataclysm, my skirt is wrinkled, and my
shirt uneven. I don’t care. I sit down to pee when I realize the toilet paper holder
is empty. Classic bachelor bathroom. After reaching over to open the cabinet
under his sink, I rummage around to find a new roll when several magazines
spill onto the floor. On the covers of these magazines are red-haired women,
all big breasted and mostly without clothes. The titles of the magazines say it
all:
The Natural Red, Redheaded Ladies, Red on Red.
The magazines are
tattered and frayed at the corners. Finally, my fingers find the softness of a
roll and I yank it out.