He was fourteen years old the first time he ever hurt a girl. The funny thing was, he hadn't planned on it happening at all.
Next door there was a twelve-year-old named Jessica. He'd known for a long time that she had a crush on him. She followed him everywhere and wrote him letters and was always asking him to join various neighbourhood clubs she invented. She also frequently asked him to come over when American Bandstand was on and dance the twist with him. This was in the summer of 1961. Later he would try to figure out why he did what he did, if there were some certain inspiration for doing it. But he could find none. It was a typical summer, a humid and furious green in the wealthy neighbourhood where he lived, and a pastel blue where his family had a cabin and sailed-blue water, blue skies.
There were woods two miles from his house, and sometimes he'd ride his bike over there and go hiking. He liked the woods, the secret hiding places, especially, where he could sit and watch people walk by on the trails below that ran along the edge of the river. The secret hiding places made him feel powerful, and he needed that sense particularly this summer. His parents were getting a divorce.
They'd always fought, but now there was violence. His mother had a lover. His father could not get over this fact. Several times he'd seen his father very savagely slap his mother.
Curiously, though, it was his father who always cried after such violence, never his mother. She went downstairs and had a drink of bourbon and smoked several cigarettes and stared out at the vast rolling lawn kept in shape by a coloured man none of them quite trusted. His father always disintegrated, going into the den and sobbing, the way a boy would sob. He always wanted to go in and put his arm around his father, but he couldn't because his mother would get angry and accuse him of taking his father's side and not hers.
Sometimes he would go downstairs and talk to his mother before she got drunk. "You don't have to go away with that other man, Mother. You can stay here. Things can be like they were. We can be happy again, just the three of us."
"Oh, baby," she'd say, touching his face gently, "baby, you're just too young to understand. But Dad loves you," she'd say. "Dad loves you. That's the only reason he hits you." Then she'd smile and say, "You've got to give Gil a chance. You'll like him once you get to know him. He played for the Vikings one year; did I ever tell you that?"
"You tell me that all the time, and I don't give a shit. I don't want to live with him!"
"Baby, you hurt me when you talk like that; you really do."
Then he'd go upstairs and stand outside the den and listen to his father stretch out on the leather couch. Usually his father would fall asleep. It was as if he could no longer face consciousness, and he'd just tune out.
By nightfall, she'd be dressed up and gone, moving through the summer dusk in the aqua Thunderbird with the white hardtop.
He'd make his father dinner. Oh, no gourmet dining to be sure-usually a chili dog with potato chips and maybe baked beans, the sort of stuff they always ate at the cabin. Then he'd take it up to the den, and he'd knock softly and his father would wake up and let him in. His father's law practice had pretty much gone to hell over the previous four months. He'd heard his father arguing bitterly with one of his partners on the phone about how his father wasn't carrying his load.
So, in the den they'd eat and watch TV shows, such as Perry Mason and Lawman and the Jack Benny and Andy Griffith programs. Both his father and he were big fans of Don Knotts. Whenever Don, as Barney, was called upon to hold down the fort while Andy was off doing something else, you just knew it was going to be a great episode.
And his father would try to explain. Ultimately he understood or thought he understood anyway. Impotence. "Do you know what that means?" his father would ask. "Sorta," he'd say. "Sorta."
They'd been to doctors, and they'd been to psychiatrists, and they'd tried all sorts of methods and techniques, but it hadn't seemed to help. His mother started drinking then and saying that in some way it was her fault, and then things just kept getting worse and worse until now.
Sometimes his father would start drinking, too, and that was the worst, because his father was an even worse drinker than his mother. After several drinks he was like a stranger, angry and violent-his handsome face distorted in rage-smashing things up with his fists and always ending up on the couch crying, crying.
When his father got like this, all he could do was watch. His father's temper was so bad that he was afraid to go up to the man. Afraid of really getting hurt. Sometimes the booze would make his father more or less unconscious. When this happened, he'd turn off the light and stand in the doorway listening to his father snore and then he'd say, "Good night, Dad. I love you." Then he'd close the door and go to his own room.
He usually didn't sleep till his mother got home. Deep into the rolling black night he'd hear the T-bird's engine on the drive below and see the wash of its headlights across his window, and then he'd hear the automatic garage door go up.
She always came in and kissed him goodnight. She always smelled of hard liquor and what he would later recognize as the moist scent of sex. He always pretended to be asleep. He didn't know what to say to her. He wanted to say, "You whore, you whore." But he wasn't sure that was true. He didn't know if it was her fault his father was impotent… or if it was his father's fault.
Six weeks before school was to start, his father made things easy for everybody by driving his new Chrysler straight into a bridge abutment at more than ninety miles per hour. Officially the word was accident, but of course he'd been drunk, and of course he'd meant to do it.
Three weeks later the incident with Jessica took place in the woods.
He had no idea how she'd found his hiding place near the clay cliffs above the water. He was sitting in the shade of a clay overhang, trying to escape the ninety-six-degree heat, when he looked up, and there she was. Dressed in a T-shirt and cutoff Levi's and a pair of white tennis shoes. Hands on hips. Very bold.
"You probably didn't think I knew about this place, did you?"
He shrugged. "Guess not."
"Well, there're a lot of things I know."
"Oh."
He closed his eyes, willing her out of existence. The air was heavy with humidity and butterflies and mosquitoes and bluejays and wrens and robins. Close by, the air smelled of spruce and maple and redbud; of wild ginger and ginseng and bloodroot. He often wished he were a deer and could bound through the bluffs and caves and mineral springs; the lakes and gorges and forests. That was his most profound wish-even more than being like Steve McQueen or Marshall Matt Dillon-to be an animal, to appreciate nature and know nothing of the human heart.
"Is it all right if I sit down?" Jessica asked.
"Guess so."
As she took two steps toward him, he realized again that Jessica was blooming suddenly. Small but distinct breasts played against the white cotton of her T-shirt, and her summer-tanned legs were getting long and shapely. Even her blue eyes had changed somehow-were more knowing, inscrutable. She used to be just a kid. But now she was something more than that, even if she wasn't quite a woman yet.
She brushed sand from a nearby rock and sat down. "I haven't told you how sorry I am about your father."
"Thanks."
"I know how much you loved him."
"Yeah."
She watched him. "You don't want to talk about it, do you?"
"Guess not."
"Are you mad I came here?"
"Guess not."
"I'm not trying to bug you."
"I know."
"You do?"
He looked at her. "Yeah."
After a time she said, "My parents were wondering how your mother is."
"She's doing all right." Both of them were aware of the sudden anger in his voice. "She's with that creep all the time."
"My dad said that her boyfriend used to be a Viking. Is that true?"
"Yeah, but so what?"
"I was just asking. I didn't mean to make you mad." He raised his eyes to hers again. "Why don't you come over here?"
"What?"
"Come over here. Closer to me."
"Really?" She sounded very young just then, as if she couldn't at all believe her good luck.
"Yeah."
"How come?"
"You want to come over here or not?"
"Sure," she said, and with not another word she raised her shapely bottom from the rock and plopped it next to him on the cool grass beneath the overhang.
But at the moment that her venerable dream was at last fulfilled, she found herself not knowing what to do.
For a long time they sat next to each other, silent. There was no more than half an inch between their bodies, but it might as well have been a yard.
Without any warning he slid his arm around her shoulder and pulled her to him. He kissed her directly on the mouth, lips closed.
He could feel her squirm like a joyous puppy against him and hear happy sounds deep down her windpipe. She was so happy, it was almost embarrassing.
"Oh, God," she said when he took his face from hers. "Oh, God."
"Did you enjoy that?"
"Are you kidding? I loved that." She hesitated, looked embarrassed. "Did you enjoy it?"
"Guess so."
"Couldn't you say it kinda better than that?"
"What?"
"You know, say it nice. Like, 'Boy, I really enjoyed that.' You know. Enthusiasm."
"You know I enjoyed it."
"Well, I'm glad."
"You going to tell your parents?"
"Are you kidding? I'm only twelve."
"You going to tell anybody else?"
"Not if you don't want me to."
"Good."
It was then he took the pocket knife from his jeans. It was a Boy Scout knife with a black handle. He opened the longest blade.
As they'd been kissing, he'd been aware that his groin was dead. A lot of times, just lying on his bed and thinking of this girl or that, he'd get so aroused, he'd have to leap up, put a chair up to the door so nobody could break in, and masturbate. He'd close his eyes and imagine the girls he'd glimpsed in Playboy, those swaying breasts and mounds of pink buttocks.
So, he should have been doubly aroused with a real girl in his arms, even if she was only twelve and his next-door neighbour.
But he hadn't been aroused, and he knew that something was wrong. He thought of his father.
"How come you took out your knife?" she said.
"It was kind of poking me in the leg."
"You want me to kiss you again?"
"Do you want to kiss me again?"
"Guess so."
"You'll have to say it better than that."
"Guess I'd like to kiss you."
"How about 'Jesse, I'd really like to kiss you.' "
"Okay."
"Will you say it?"
He shrugged and said it.
She smiled, and he put his arm around her again and kissed her.
This time he pushed his tongue into her mouth. He felt himself begin to tingle. Breath coming a little faster. But still-nothing in his groin. Nothing. Was he going to be impotent, too?
His hand cupped her breast. He felt silken flesh and a little nub of nipple.
But nothing in his groin; nothing.
He wanted to be an animal and run away. Fast. Far.
And then his hand found the knife and almost without realizing it he… cut her and he… pulled the knife a quarter inch down her arm.
She cried out, pushing away from him, furious and baffled and terrified of him now.
"What're you doing?" she shouted, scrambling away backward. "What're you doing?"
It wasn't much of a cut, really. You could get a lot worse than that just getting scraped by a branch.
But it had worked.
At sight of her blood, his crotch had swollen and pained him with a monumental erection.
At sight of her blood…
"It was an accident," he said.
"An accident?" But she was crying then and barely coherent. Somehow she sensed what this was all about, and there was frenzy about her…
He went over to her and sat by her and began to stroke her. Once he had hurt her, once he could see blood, he could be tender with her.
He took her in his arms and held her until her crying stopped, until she turned her face up to his and they kissed again
He was never to see her intimately again. Apparently she never told anybody about that afternoon, because her parents never said a word to him. In the autumn she fell in love with a boy she would ultimately-after breaking up and making up many times-marry and have four children with (this was after the whole family moved away when she was a junior).
But he never forgot the afternoon; nor did he forget the lesson. The sight of dark red blood on soft white flesh, dark red blood on the soft golden down of her arm, dark red blood…
Stu Foster recalled all this on the way over to Brolan's place. When he looked back, there was a direct line running from the afternoon with Jessica to how he'd treated certain women all his life. Certain women. There was a euphemism for you. Whores. Those were the "certain women." He had married well, a really darling if plump girl who'd been a Tri-Delt and a beauty queen runner-up, and whose father had made and lost a fortune in petrochemicals down in Kentucky-and of course he kept his preferences secret from her. Oh, once or twice he'd been tempted to hurt her a little-disguised, of course, as playfulness-during their lovemaking. But he'd been afraid he couldn't stop. So, he'd visited whores. The late sixties and seventies had been a boon for people like him. Sex was everywhere. Everything from weekend clubs to outcall massage parlours, when you were in a strange city and didn't want to leave your hotel room. And almost always when you explained to them what you wanted, what you really wanted, you paid them a little money, and there you were. Commerce, just like anything else. Commerce.
Only once had there been real trouble. New Orleans, it had been. Too much rich food, too much hard liquor, too many women who gave you the impression they'd do absolutely anything if you had the good green Yankee cash. A mulatto woman asked him if he'd ever shaved a woman down there before and he'd said no, that he hadn't really even thought about it. So, she gave him this straight razor and a shaving mug and brush and she lay back on the bed and spread her legs and told him to go ahead. She had some kind of blues on the radio, and she was smoking a joint, and she closed her eyes as if he weren't even there at all. And there he sat on the edge of the bed, looking at the juicy pink meat between her legs with a bone-handled straight razor in his fingers, and then a darkness came over him, and he wasn't even sure what he'd tried to do. All he knew was that soon she was screaming and holding her hands over her sex, and that there was blood, blood streaming between her fingers.
…And he was apologizing and saying he was sorry-"My God, listen, I'm really really sorry; I'll leave you extra money; so sorry; just drunk; please, please just take this money and quit screaming, please." And for a full year he'd been afraid to go back to a hooker. Afraid of what he might do.
But then, the following spring, he met some hookers in Des Moines who knew how to deal with men like him-who knew how to let him get his kicks without ever going too far…
In the backseat, in a brown paper bag, were the clothes he'd worn with the whore Emma and with the whore at the piano bar the other night. You could still smell the blood. A kind of steely tang. Also in the bag was the knife he'd used. Same knife on both occasions.
As he approached Brolan's street, he thought of how his partner had looked when he saw the detective waiting for him in the reception area. The thing was, he didn't really dislike Frank Brolan. So, he'd felt a little sorry for him, seeing that Brolan realized that he was trapped, that forces beyond any of his powers were working against him.
He took the alley. Given the time of day, there were no children around playing.
He drove to Brolan's garage, got out, grabbed the bag, and carried it quickly inside the garage.
Even in winter the interior smelled of car oil from stains on the floor. Sometimes Frank liked to putter around on his own car, finding such work relaxing.
The garage was orderly, almost empty. On one wall hung a manual lawn mower, three rakes, and a lawn seeder. Against the opposite concrete block wall was a tall stack of corded firewood, a kerosene heater, an aluminium stepladder, and several fifty-pound bags of salt for ice. None of these lent themselves to his purposes. He looked around, finally raising his eyes to the two-by-fours that criss-crossed the ceiling. A few pieces of plywood had been laid across the two-by-fours so that things could be stored up there. You could see where the plywood sagged in the middle from the weight. This would be an ideal place for what he had in mind.
He went over and got the ladder and carried it to the centre of the garage. He took the paper bag with the clothes and the knife in it and took it up the ladder. He set the bag far back on the plywood, as if somebody had tried very hard to hide it up there, and then he came back down the steps.
That should work.
Within another minute, the ladder put back, the side door of the garage closed snugly, he was in his car and sluicing through the deep snow in the alley.
Ten minutes later, at a drive-up phone, he stopped and deposited thirty-five cents and called the office. He asked for Kathleen. She came on the line in a minute or so.
"Are you someplace you can talk?" he said.
She hesitated. "Not really."
"Well, I just wanted to let you know that I made my little trip to his garage."
"No problems, then?"
"None."
"Good."
"In about an hour I'm going to call the police and tell them that as an anonymous good citizen, I feel duty bound to tell them that I think he's hiding a body somewhere in his house. That I think I saw him carrying one in the other night." He sighed. "Poor bastard. You should have seen his face this morning."
But he was being sentimental, and Kathleen was almost never sentimental. From all this, she would gain half the agency, taking over Brolan's role. That was all she thought about. Two years before, Foster and Kathleen had been forced' to accompany each other on a business trip to Denver. One snowy night, the client's plane unable to land, they'd endured a dinner together. They genuinely disliked and distrusted each other. Foster saw her as all ambition and cunning; and she saw him as everything she hated about the men's club that still ran most of advertising. But drinks had led to sex and sex to a peculiar relationship. She seemed to hate men in much the same way he hated women. She'd even sensed-that very first night-that for him pain was a part of pleasure. She'd started biting him, hard, almost angrily, to the point of drawing blood. And that night he'd had an orgasm that nearly blinded him with its pleasure… They let people, including Brolan, continue to think that they still hated each other. It lent their real relationship a protective coloration. And after a few months Kathleen started talking about how they could get new clients for the agency. Good, blue-chip clients that so many other agencies were always hurling themselves against uselessly.
"I'm going to have a little talk with Lane first. Brolan's been poking around. He may have figured out some things about our friend Charles," Foster said.
"Good," she said.
"I'll see you at your place around six," he said, and hung up.
In another minute, he was driving again, enjoying the sparkling white snow and the dark branches swinging in the wind.