In a sing-song plaint, in that teeny little-girl voice sweet carnival candy, and while her plump little fingers massaged my blanketed knee, she said, “It’s like you’re leaving me out. It’s like you’re making all the rest of it lies and tricks, not wanting to make out with me. Words don’t ever mean much. How am I supposed to feel? Jesus, Travis! Am I such a terrible pig you couldn’t stand touching me? They were going to kill me. I don’t feel safe at all. Please, honey, hold me. Make love to me. So than I’ll really and truly belong to you and it will all come out fine for us. Please!”
The thing that astounded and disheartened me was to find a very real yen to take a hack at this spooky little punchboard. There had been a lot more to Vangie in both looks and substance, but she hadn’t tingled a single nerve. I wanted to grab at this one. Maybe everybody at some time or another feels the strong attraction of something rotten-sweet enough to guarantee complete degradation. I wanted to pull her down and roll into that hot practiced trap which had clenched the life out of fourteen men. And there was the big shiny rationalization. It’s the way to make her trust you, fella. Go right ahead, lull the broad. It’ll take about nine minutes out of your life. You’re a big boy. A broad is a broad is a broad, and who’ll know the difference? You will, McGee. For a long long time.
But she had to have some gesture. She had to have some assurance. So I sat up, hitched toward her, put my arms around her, tucked her face into my neck. “Everything’s going to work out fine, kiddy.”
Her sigh was deep and shuddering. She had shucked herself out of that jama thing, and her skin felt whisper-soft, super-heated. She clung hard and said, “Hurry, dear. Gee, I’m so ready I’m practically there already.”
“No, honey. Let’s wait and make it in style. I have a thing about the right time and the right place, and waiting just makes it a better blast. Why do we have to rush anything? Once we’re off this nervous boat and tucked away safe, we’ll spend days in bed.”
“We can have that too.”
I knew the quickest way to cool me off. That fat little mouth made me squeamish. So I kissed it hard enough and long enough to creak her neck, mash the lips against her teeth, bend her rib cage.
She was puffing like a little furnace when I let her loose, hoisted her off my bed, turned her and welted that behind with a pistol-crack slap.
“Hey! Ow!”
“Back to your own sack, kiddy.”
She made grumbling sounds, but once she was in her own bed she giggled. “Anyways, I got proof you’re not lavender, dearie.”
“Try to get some sleep.”
I guessed that the exhaustion of fear would catch up with her. I gave her what I hoped was enough time, then got up and dressed swiftly and silently. I leaned over her and heard slow deep buzzing snores, bee sounds that came up from the deepest part of the pool of sleep. I locked the door behind me when I left.
Meyer, squinting as he opened his door for me, looked like a sideshow bear in his awning-stripe pajamas in green, black and orange. He yawned and sighed, sat where the light was best and read Del’s confession. There was no more yawning and sighing. He gave it his total attention, as if he had forgotten I was there. When he finished it, he refolded it, took it over and put it into the inside pocket of his suit jacket in the locker.
As he turned, he frowned beyond me, saying, “It is too absurd a simplification, Travis, to try to relate her actions to moralistic terms. Wickedness. Heartlessness.”
“For God’s sake, Meyer!”
“We can find a more appropriate answer in a book written by a woman whose name escapes me at the moment. It’s called, I believe, The I and the Not-I. It is an extension and interpretation of one facet of Jungian theory.”