Sacrifice Read online

  Holly sat down on the edge of the high, wood-posted bed. “Hmmm,” she said. “Well, I’m sorry. I guess that’s my fault for not considering the worst-case scenario.”

  Alice, still standing at the watch room’s door, didn’t quite get her meaning. “I did everything you told me to do, and it turned into—”

  “A nightmare,” Holly completed. “Right?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Because that’s exactly what happened. It’s rare, but it does occur. The reason I asked you to dredge up those memories shortly before bedtime is because that’s when you’re closest to a theta brain-wave state, and that’s when you’re the most vulnerable to consciously induced suggestions.”

  “But I still don’t understand,” Alice said. “I tried really hard to attach a fantasy ending to what actually happened, and it all turned crazy. After a point I lost all control over what was happening.”

  Holly, strangely, nodded. “That’s because you fell asleep.”

  “Fell asleep? I…don’t think I did.”

  “You must have. That’s the only explanation. In the middle of the memory you fell asleep. You began to dream, and then the dream took over and invented its own ending. It’s called hypnopompic imagery; hypnopompia is the mind state that immediately proceeds the first stage of sleep. As the dream took over your attempt to create a fantasy ending, it progressed into what we call a waking night-terror. As I said, it’s rare, but it happens. And it probably isn’t a good idea for you to try the technique again. There are a number of other, safer techniques we can try.”

  “Like what?” Alice asked.

  “There’s no rush; give me some time to decide which is best for you. In the meantime, though, I’ve got an idea.”

  Holly’s vague grin looked vulpine in the sunlight.

  “This I can’t wait to hear,” Alice said with more than a smidgen of sarcasm.

  “Though your next official session isn’t until tomorrow,” Holly said, “I think it’s time we had a special session. Call it—well, let me think…Call it a socialization interface.”

  Alice rolled her eyes. “Holly, you really have a way of using language to the point of being absolutely irritating.”

  Holly laughed. “Let me make a preludial, then. Your sense of self-esteem has been devastated by your willingness to remain in a constrained mode of socialization. Sooner or later you’re going to have to confront this, and I will make you confront this if need be. You’re going to have to apply that same willingness to break the constraints that you’re letting yourself be smothered by. Do you understand?”

  “No!” Alice, now thoroughly aggravated, came close to yelling. “I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

  Holly seemed to enjoy these games. She leaned back on the bed, widening that vulpine grin of hers. “Let me put it in simpler terms, then. Socialization interface? That means you and I are going out on the town tonight.”

  Alice tapped her foot, her arms folded under her bosom. “What on earth for?”

  “To meet men,” Holly said.

  — | — | —

  7

  Stygian, and in its bed of rot, the thing nearly sighed.

  Ether and the sweetbread of lies wrung its malformed head.

  You will be mine, it thought to itself.

  Memory revived it, ancient shadows intense as orgasm…

  Ours will be a love scribed in steaming blood.

  Unloose me! From this pale and icy place, take me out!

  Revere me, my love. Stroke my aching breasts in ardor. Caress my shale-skin and come with me. Come with me.

  Come…

  Your heart will be my food. Your pain my wine, your despair a rich ambrosia that I lick off your lips.

  I will show you sights you have never imagined, offer you sensations you could never conceive. I will take you past the lackluster bedrock into earthworks of the blackest bliss…

  Take my hand. Let me drink of thee.

  Let me have your sadness for my bathwater.

  Let me daub my hair with the perfume of your broken love.

  Yes. Take my hand. And let me…show you…

  …everything—

  ««—»»

  Alice turned in front of the oval, full-length mirror. Had she heard something? A voice?

  Someone outside, she thought.

  She’d been thinking, as she dressed, about Steve. How could someone be like that? How could someone lie so completely to someone else? Why? Why, Steve? What did you get out of it?

  She couldn’t imagine, as she carefully applied her eyeliner. She guessed most of it had to do with her salary—a very pretty penny compared to what he made. Was that all she was to him?

  Money? A meal ticket?

  She supposed, now, that she should’ve known all along. Love could be so deluding, couldn’t it? “When you’re in love you’re wearing blinders; you don’t see what’s right in front of your face,” Holly had told her during one of their first sessions. Alice couldn’t help but agree. Thinking back, after the fact, there’d been so much wrong with him, just lots of little things that never quite added up. He worked in a store that sold boat supplies, for little more than minimum wage, yet he drove a new car and lived in one of the more expensive apartment complexes. Alice had not questioned this at the time, and she’d been all too eager to help him out financially when he was short of money; she’d insisted upon it, in fact. Sucker, she thought now. He kept odd hours, too, and someone named Charlie seemed to leave a lot of messages on his answering machine. “Just a friend,” Steve had said. But if this Charlie was a friend, why hadn’t Steve ever introduced him to her? Come to think of it, Steve had never introduced Alice to any of his friends. Another thing that irked her—though she dismissed it as her imagination at the time—was that he seemed to have a secret racist streak. Sometimes he’d mutter slurs under his breath in traffic. Once she came over while he was watching football and heard him yell, “Goddamn nigger! Go back to the cotton field!” just as she was about to knock on the door.

  Yeah, she thought now. Holly was right. Love is like wearing blinders. You never see the things you really should until it’s too late.

  And the rest, of course. The total lie he had so keenly projected on her. The total, premeditated deceit.

  How could anyone be that evil?

  A chill traipsed up her spine at the thought, but it was a weirdly pleasant chill. It was nearly…sexual.

  The observation bid another question: When was the last time I made love?

  Last winter, wasn’t it? When she was still with Steve?

  Yes, the night before the accident.

  The night before she’d lost her—

  Hurry up! She put a blade to the thought. Holly would be here soon, and she wanted to be ready. Don‘t dillydally!

  But still, the awful memories persisted. How many times had he said, “I want us to be together forever, Alice,” as his pelvis stroked between her thighs?

  He’d never used condoms. I want to make love to you; I want to come in you every night, darling. I want to make you pregnant. Wouldn’t that be wonderful, Alice? To have children? To have our own family someday? Please, please let me come in you. I want you to be the mother of our children. Wouldn’t that be…so wonderful?

  That was about all it had taken. He’d said everything she’d wanted to hear, had promised her all the things she wanted most in her life. How could I have been so stupid, so naive? she asked herself now, fussing with her white-blond hair. No, she’d never asked him to use a condom. He’d sworn to her that he’d never been promiscuous, and that he had no diseases. Alice, you stupid, gullible fool. She’d let him manipulate her for his own pleasure. I let him use me, she realized. When she’d been in the hospital they had tested her for all the sexually transmitted diseases; fortunately she’d come up negative. You believed all his bullshit, Alice. You were putty in his hands…

  Outside, a car horn honked. Shit! Alice gave herself a last quick gl
ance in the mirror, and thought, This is as good as it’s going to get. She’d almost had to lie on the floor to squirm into the skintight Guess jeans, but once she got them on she thought they looked pretty good. The same, too, for her scarlet kidskin heels and the beige Picone blouse that made no secret of her ample breasts but didn’t trumpet them either.

  She barely limped at all when she left the watch house and strode down to the street, where Holly waited.

  “I knew it, I knew you’d wear jeans,” Holly cried. “You’re so afraid; I can’t believe it. You should’ve worn a nice dress, nice nylons…Your prosthesis is part of you now, Alice. You shouldn’t hide it.”

  Oh, Holly, fuck you, Alice thought, getting into the car. The old lady Dr. Greene had sent, her “fitting” technician, had said identical things. But her weariness shone plain on her face. “Look, just once, just tonight, can’t we just be like two friends going out to a bar?”

  “Sure,” Holly said. “That’s a step in the right direction, at least. You’re making clear conative assertions. I like that very much.”

  Clear conative assertions, Alice thought, just as wearily. Oh, well. But almost at once she enthused, “What a great car!”

  Holly drove a midnight blue Maserati Biturbo convertible.

  “I guess psychiatrists do pretty well,” Alice observed.

  “Well, even we shrinks have our societal veneers,” Holly replied as she pulled down Federal Street. “I’m the first to admit, driving a nice car is pretty silly, but what the hey?”

  “So why don’t you drive an Escort?”

  Holly shrugged. “This has much better suspension when I’m driving over all the cobblestones in this town.”

  Alice withheld her smirk. But it is a nice car, she concluded at once. The plush leather seats seemed to caress her, and the engine revved without sounding boisterous. The vehicle seemed to glide down Federal Street to the light as if on a gust of air.

  Something unconscious itched at Alice’s psyche. “Where are we going?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Oh, I thought we’d go to the Underc—”

  “Not the Undercroft, Holly!” Alice insisted. “You know I don’t like that place! You’re doing this on purpose!”

  “Of course I am,” Holly replied so matter-of-factly, it sounded rude. Then she parked the Maserati in the tavern’s gravel lot. “And don’t whine. I realize that this is the place where you met Steve, and that’s why you don’t want to go in. You’re afraid of being reminded of him because being reminded of him reminds you of your accident. But what I’m trying to do is get you to confront your fears. And this is where we’re going to start.”

  Alice sat glowering. What does she know?

  “Come on, Alice,” Holly insisted. She got out; the car door chunked closed. She tapped her foot, waiting. “You can’t sit in the car all night.”

  I wish I could, Alice thought. Then, with every reservation she could imagine, she got out of the car and proceeded toward the tavern with Holly. Her limp felt more noticeable than ever.

  Once inside, she felt ancient. The crowded tavern seemed to revel in youth, in vitality. I must be ten years older than these people, she thought dourly. Yet Holly, who was ten years older than she, didn’t seem to flinch at the obviously younger set. Some techno song beat from speakers in the corner. A Tom Cruise look-alike behind the bar tended three beer taps at once while simultaneously pouring trays of exotic shooters. Alice tried to wend her way toward a distant table, but Holly, as always, insisted that they sit right up at the bar. To increase my sense of socialization, no doubt, Alice thought and frowned. To help me confront my societal fears. It all sounded like so much crap to her, so much rhetoric.

  “This place is a real dichotomy,” Holly observed after ordering two soda waters from the preposterously handsome barkeep.

  “What do you mean?” Alice asked.

  “The place itself is so old, yet it’s filled with young people.”

  The Undercroft was indeed old—over two hundred years old, probably the oldest bar in the city. Alice easily noted the structural similarities between the tavern and the Taylor Watch House. The wall’s old tabby bricks and original mortar looked identical, the design of the doorway and transom, the fashion in which the windows were set. She’d read that most of the buildings here in the city’s heart had been built in the same period. She thought back to Holly’s comment. “Yeah, it’s filled with young people, all right. Except for us.”

  “No,” Holly came back. “Including us. You have a really self-defeating perception of age, Alice.” Holly sipped her drink, looking around as she added, “I’m not talking about the birthdates on our drivers’ licenses, for God’s sake. Youth is spiritual.”

  “Yeah, I know. You’re only as young as you feel.”

  “Exactly.”

  And if that’s the case, Alice thought, right now I feel about as old as this building.

  Flirty girls fussed with the handsome bartender. Laughter and loud talk threatened to drown out Alice’s thoughts—or was it something else, yet another thing that she, as Holly liked to insist, was refusing to confront? More and more, of late, Alice could easily recognize her raging envy toward the people around her, people whose happiness was obvious. Like right now, for instance. The Undercroft seemed jammed with couples. Some singles bar, she thought, trying to hide her dejection. Anywhere she might glance, she saw them—the happy couples, the lovers: holding hands, kissing, laughing, coming and going arm in arm. Every gesture seemed a celebration of love. Someone else’s love; the thought weighed her down. Not mine. Never mine…

  She simply didn’t want to see this. She didn’t want to be here.

  And there was yet one more fear…

  Her frequent, furtive glances must’ve been obvious.

  “What are you looking for?” Holly asked.

  “Well…”

  “Steve, right?”

  “Well, yes. He comes here sometimes,” Alice said, and glanced around again. “Christ, I hope he doesn’t—”

  “You hope he doesn’t come here tonight? Why? What would you do, Alice? What would you do if he walked in here right now, right this minute?”

  “I’d… leave,” Alice whispered back.

  Holly glared in a way that left Alice grateful that looks couldn’t kill. “That really is sad,” the therapist sniped. “You have just as much right to be here as he does, yet you’d let him run you out. How could you let anyone— even a former lover—have that kind of power over you?”

  Was that what it was? Power? No, she realized. I’m just…afraid. I’m afraid of the memories.

  “Not that it would really matter,” Holly added. “I wouldn’t let you leave. That would be counterproductive.”

  Rather than sit and bicker, Alice excused herself to go to the ladies’ room, which, unfortunately, required that she walk up a short flight of stairs. By now the Undercroft was so crowded that several patrons stood conversing in the hall. This made her feel even less at ease, more aware of her limp. She was certain she was being stared at from behind, whispered about. Holly would say I’m being paranoid, she grumbled to herself. The limp, however slight, felt like a mallet striking the floor, and regardless of how completely she tried to deny it, she could’ve sworn that her left leg itched.

  Coming back down, she had to squeeze through clusters of people. Between backs and shoulders, she saw Holly engaged in animated conversation with the bartender, which soured her at first. Who am I going to talk to? she asked herself. Or am I supposed to just stand here on my peg leg and look at the ceiling? A moment later, someone tapped her on the shoulder.

  “Alice? Alice Sterling?”

  A pleasant enough looking man faced her when she turned. Mid-thirties, she guessed; nice slacks and shirt, dark shortish wavy hair. He obviously knew her, and… He does look familiar, she realized, but couldn’t place him.

  “I’m Bob Gibson. I guess you don’t remember me,” he said, offering his hand. “I was an associ
ate at your firm a while back. We worked on the Jax Avionics trial together.”

  “Oh, yes, of course I remember you, Bob,” Alice said, fibbing only partly. She did remember him, but it remained a vague recollection. “So where are you now?”

  “State attorney’s office, which always was more my specialty. Airline lit never was my bag… Say, I think I see an open table. You want to sit down and have a drink?”

  Alice’s pause was only momentary, yet it seemed to last long minutes. Excuses came instantly to mind: Oh, I can’t; I’m with a friend, or I’m just on my way out, or Maybe some other time. But then another voice rose in her head, a seemingly sensible one, that said, Have a drink with the guy, for God’s sake. What’s the big deal?

  “Sure,” Alice said.

  They shouldered through to a table in back, beside a great, old colonial brick mantel. Every so often she’d glance past Bob’s shoulder and see Holly continuing to converse with the barkeep, and once or twice Holly glanced back and winked at her. I sort of thought she’d approve, Alice thought, then joked to herself in Holly’s terms. I’m addressing my need for socialization!

  When Bob nagged the waitress Alice decided to order a gin and tonic, despite Holly’s censure; her med dose was very low now, and certainly a drink or two wouldn’t hurt. Besides, other doctors had said she could drink lightly even on this particular prescription. And once her drink arrived she quickly noticed that it took the edge off her nervousness, and soon the nervousness was gone altogether. More and more, too, she reclaimed her memory of Bob Gibson. For the short time they’d worked together at the firm she remembered his being a very effective attorney. She also remembered his being very married. This made her wonder what a married man was doing in a singles bar, until he got around to mentioning that his wife had divorced him several years ago. He remained upbeat, talking about it even though the story itself was quite sad.

  “Well, as you know,” he said, “the money’s pretty good in most if the big private firms. But like I said, I wasn’t really happy there. I never felt I was cut out for that sort of practice. I wanted to be where I could do the kind of litigation I was best at—criminal litigation. So I moved to the state attorney’s office. All of a sudden I was really happy, but of course, I had to take about a sixty percent pay cut. That was no big deal to me, but my wife had a big problem with it. My new salary wasn’t enough to suit her tastes, so that was that. She’s married to a stockbroker now.”