Thirty - Jill Emerson [39]
I return to the bedroom. I hand her a glass, keep one for myself. We drink them straight down. It is the same liquid he has given me before. The scent is of rose petals, the taste sweet and sour.
I set my glass aside and light a cigarette.
“Susan?”
“What is it?”
“I want to make love to you.”
“In a few minutes.”
“Would you like that?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I wish I knew what was in this drink.”
“Something kicky.”
“Some kind of drug.”
“Uh-huh. You really never made it with a girl before?”
“Never.”
“It’s good, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“It’s not as powerful as with a man, you dig what I mean? No thrusting and heaving and everything. Nobody getting under your skin. Can you dig it? A man gets inside of you, he gets under your skin. Girls, it’s different, girls just get themselves together, like.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know which is better. You were so many things when I ate you.”
“What do you mean?”
“In my head, like. The different hats you wore. You were my mother and my sister and my daughter, you know, all those female roles.”
“Oh, I see.”
“I tend to trip out that way. Role playing and sex. I’m a little crazy, I guess.”
“Who isn’t?”
“There’s a question. Nobody I know.”
“Eric?”
“I don’t suppose you could really understand Eric. Not you, personally. I mean like anybody.”
“Do you understand him?”
“Not for a minute.”
“You’ve known him a long time.”
“All my life, it feels like. Three years, not quite. More like three hundred years. I don’t know him at all.”
I draw on the cigarette, inhale. The smoke unaccountably makes me slightly dizzy. I breathe out, butt the cigarette in an ashtray on the bedside table.
I say, “What does he do?”
“Eric?”
“I mean for a living. Does he work?”
“No.”
“Did he inherit money or something?”
“I don’t think so. I think—”
“What?”
“He never said this, it’s just a guess, and maybe I shouldn’t say anything, so if you’ll keep it quiet that I said it—”
“Of course.”
“I have the feeling, it’s just a feeling, that he’s like some kind of a criminal.”
“That’s what I think.”
“Really?”
“But I don’t know what makes me think so.”
“Neither do I. He goes away on these trips. He doesn’t say anything, he just goes away. And then he comes back. I get the feeling that he steals money on these trips, or gets money illegally one way or the other. Maybe it’s just that I couldn’t picture him doing anything else. You know, he’s a man who when he wants something like he takes it.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“And I don’t think he would do anything respectable. He would never work for somebody.”
“God, no.”
“And he wouldn’t have a business. He’s not the type. I’ll tell you one thing, though.”
“What’s that?”
“I would never cross him.”
“No.”
“I would not want him to be upset with me.”
“I have the feeling, Susan, he would just kill anybody who displeased him.”
“He could do that, yes.”
“Without a second thought.”
“Don’t even say it, it gives me chills. I can’t stand that.”
“What?”
“Talking about that kind of thing. About killing or dying. The whole idea of death. I wouldn’t smoke a cigarette because of the idea that I might die of cancer fifty years from now. Fifty years is like forever but even that far off I can’t stand to think about death. And when you say like that about Eric, and I think about him killing a person, and then inside my head it becomes me that he’s killing, and it does things to me, it makes things happen in my head. Look at me—” holding out a hand, straight out, the fingers spread, and the tips it is true are trembling “—look at me, I’m actually shaking, that’s what this kind of talk does to me. Now that’s not normal, is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“To be that frightened. I mean you would have to be sick not to be frightened of dying, but to be this frightened of it for no good reason, that has to be a kind of a sickness too, right?”
“It’s something you’ll grow out of.”
“Do you think so? I hope so. Jan—”
I kiss her.
“Oh, groovy. Yes, let’s love each other. When that happens all