When I entered the lobby, carrying my three-year-old daughter in the crook of my arm, she -- this woman, not Audrey -- approached me as if she'd been waiting for me all along. She wore this very chic outfit, black leather over red silk, with a swanky pair of high-heeled boots. Her thick black hair was matted and crushed into a snood. She must have had a truck-load of make-up plastered to her face. A pair of wire-rimmed glasses rested on the end of her nose, making her look priggish.
"Pay my hotel bill at the desk," she said in a snappy voice, with a flip of her wrist. She pressed her room key into the palm of my hand. At first I thought she had mistaken me for someone else, or that maybe she was a friend of Audrey's pulling a prank. Whoever she was, I wasn't about to pay her hotel bill. I told her so, respectfully. She didn't even smile. She just said, "Hurry up about it."
I began to laugh, but the laugh got stuck in my throat. I stepped over to the front desk, broke out my Master Card, and without even thinking about it I paid her bill. I didn't have the power to say no.
"Where the hell's your umbrella?" she asked me. I told her that I hadn't been expecting rain. So she said, "I've already packed mine. Go buy one. The largest one you can find."
"What about my daughter?"
"Put her in one of those chairs." She motioned at some plush furniture in the lobby. "Tell her to wait for her mommy. Daddy has something very important to do."
"She's just a baby."
She looked at me with a cool mix of impatience and disdain -- and something else. Something so deep, dark, and dangerous my knees went mushy. It took me a moment to recover.
I sat my daughter on a sofa, entered the hotel's gift shop, laid out sixty bucks for one of those real big golfer's umbrellas with the red and white stripes, and returned to the lobby.
"Pull your car up to the front of the hotel," she said, "then come back inside. Use the umbrella so you don't get wet."
I obeyed.
The rain began to fall in sheets. Steam curled off the pavement. When I came back inside, I said, "Do you want to take my car?"
She sneered at me. "I don't know how to drive."
"Please, just take it."
"Don't be stupid. You'll do exactly as I say."
"I'm here to meet my wife."
"So what?"
"My daughter's only three years old."
"Put my luggage in the car."
I did.
When I came back for her, she said, "There, you see, you're beginning to enjoy this, aren't you?"
I didn't answer. I looked over at my daughter, normally not an exemplary specimen of cooperative behavior, sitting quietly on the sofa. The woman must have done something to her, too.
"All right," she said. "Pay attention. The two of us are going to walk to your car. I'll expect you to hold the umbrella over my head. Don't let so much as one drop of water touch me. Do you understand? Not one drop." She glared at me. I told her not to w orry about a thing. She straightened her skirt, meticulously fastened her rain parka, pulled on a pair of black leather gloves, and clutched my arm.
I did the best I could. Still, just as we neared the passenger door, a car growled by the curb and kicked up a nasty puddle. Some water must have jumped over her fancy boots and snuck in under her parka. She got in the car, slammed the door, and made an a wful whining sound, a little bit like a feline in heat. . .with her tail stuck in the door. . .and the scent of a male in the air. I turned the ignition key and fired up the engine. She kicked off her boots, clawed through her purse, pulled out this green -and-black bandanna, and frantically dabbed the water off her leg. I thought I saw steam rise from her shin. She was in obvious pain. I could have cried for her.
"Swimming," she said, hurling her boots into the back seat. "You people take showers, brush your teeth with it. You drink the dreadful stuff. Water balloons, water slides, water bottles, water fountains, squirt guns, ice cubes, hot tubs, g arden hoses -- urgh -- you make me sick, all of you. Drive! Just drive. I hate this place."
I hated my car, a fuel-efficient, American-made car with a five-year, fifty-thousand-mile warranty. A Chrysler. I had believed in Lee Iacocca. All of the proceeds from his autobiography went to the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. He was a good man, like me, who valued a hard day's work and the solidity of the American family. But suddenly my reasons for buying the car seemed silly. I wanted something elegant, a vintage Rolls-Royce, for her, even though there was nothing elegant about her.
"Where should I go?" I asked.
"Toward the airport. My flight has been delayed. I'll have to spend the night in a motel."
"I'm sorry about the car."
"It will have to do, won't it?"
She yanked closed the drapes. The sound of rainfall became muted, less precise. A low-flying airplane shook the walls. An old column radiator kicked in with a cast-iron clank and a soft hiss, nowhere near as quaint an effect as it should have been.
She stepped to the foot of the bed and opened her robe. I caught a whiff of her. Tangy, like the bottom of a ferret's cage. My gut groaned like I'd swallowed one too many raw clams.
Her skin, when I touched it, reminded me of one of those Florida grapefruits my Aunt Ester and Uncle Gerard used to lug back from their yearly excursions to Tampa -- cool and pimply and slick. I almost got the feeling I could peel it off, but I was afraid of what I might discover underneath.
I couldn't accuse her of possessing any great beauty, or grace, or softness, but she did have a certain presence.
"You'll do exactly as I say," she said without inflection, without so much as a clue to what she might be thinking or feeling, although she seemed pleased to be in control of me. "You will touch me where I tell you, when I tell you, how I tell you. You wi ll follow my instructions explicitly."
What kind of a woman, I couldn't help thinking, could possibly take pleasure in any of this?
"Good morning, my precious," she said in a shrill voice, throwing back the drapes, opening her arms to the clear, cloudless, morning sky. "No more nasty water."
There was a crispness in her voice, a mocking lilt that filleted me like I was some helpless pan fish plucked out of the Wakarusa River. I began to fear she might never let me go. "I think I should probably be heading home," I said, nowhere near as noncha lant as I had intended.
"Don't worry," she said, suddenly surly. "Nothing in this miserable world is worth keeping, least of all you. You will take me to the airport, pay my plane fare, give me all of your money, and then you'll be free to go." She began to dress, stabbing at he r clothes with her arms and legs.
I should have been worried, of course, about how I was going to explain this to Audrey, pull my family together, keep my sanity intact, but instead I was worried about this woman's welfare.
"Stop staring," she said. "You're pathetic. You humans are all alike. Sanctimonious cretins." She cringed, trembling, vulnerable for a moment, and I suddenly noticed standing before me not an ugly woman but a very beautiful child -- precious and innocent and peaceful -- no different from you or me or any other child for that matter. Then I watched her vulnerability twist slowly into one of the most hateful expressions I'd ever seen.
"I started such a pretty little fire in that numskull's straw," she whispered, "and then, then that stupid girl -- that idiot -- that ignorant little twit -- they think I'm dead -- they all think the water killed me -- the fools -- I melted -- melted down -- down to this miserable place, to her world." She smacked a gnarled fist into the palm of her hand and pointed her nose in the air. She had quite a large snout, I noticed.
"Oh, I promise promise promise I'll find my way back," she said, her voice gaining strength. "It's only a matter of time. Wait and see. Wait and see! Then I'll destroy their precious city and show them all a horse of a different color. And don't think I'v e forgotten about that pathetic excuse for a sister of mine. I'll teach her never to meddle in my affairs again. I'll torture her to within an inch of her worthless life and then, when she begs me to kill her, I'll let my monkeys gouge out her eyeballs."
I sat up straight in bed, tugging the sheets along with me. "I don't believe you," I told her. "I don't believe a word you're saying."
As I drove her to the airport, a cloud cover moved in rapidly, unexpectedly, and again it looked like rain. The wind picked up several MPH northwesterly -- so said the radio. Our drive was conversationless.
She purchased her ticket at the American Airlines desk. Before she boarded the plane I asked her if there was a spell or something she might be willing to perform on my behalf, seeing as I had been so kind and cooperative during our brief interlude.
She chuckled in a way that might have been mistaken for playful. "You want me to fix things for you? Wake up, stupid. I've already given you something far more valuable than an incantation. Knowledge," said she, "of yourself. . .and others."
Her flight departure was announced. I handed over my last thirty-seven dollars and twelve cents. She slipped the money into her purse and said, "Don't be afraid of knowledge. You'll survive. It's just a melting process. Someday you might even thank me for it."
She flashed me this catchpenny smile, and walked briskly, awkwardly away. People brushed by me, all of them in a hurry. I barely noticed them. I stared at her as she vanished into the crowd. Funny, I couldn't actually say I was glad to see her go.
Then it hit me.
I could have turned away from her in the lobby of that hotel. I could have stopped at any time , and left her alone in that motel room. I had the power. I always had the power. She'd known that. She'd exploited my fatal flaw. That's how she got me. Suddenly I could foresee some of the things that must inevitably occur in my future. The truth, the exact truth, would be out of the question. 'I was with a woman,' I'd say to Audrey. This would be confirmed by the reservations clerk at t he hotel where I paid the bill; Master Card would have a record of it as well. The night manager at that flea-bag motel would produce the register with my signature. All nice and neat for the lawyers.
With time, Audrey might have been able to overlook it, but she'd never forgive me for endangering our child. She'd say that she didn't know me anymore, and of course she'd be right. There'd be an ugly divorce. People would get hurt.
I couldn't very well go back to Kansas, could I? Not when there was another person inside me, a person who could abandon his wife and child and make love to a stranger and, well, I guess I had to admit it, enjoy himself.
Thank you, Oh Great Wicked One, for melting me.
A woman approached me, a chubby young thing with a round, bright face. She looked concerned. Her two pudgy kids, a boy and a girl, hand-in-hand at her knees, stared at me with disinterest. "You all right?" the woman said, tugging at my elbow. "You look fa int."
"Yeah...fine...actually...no. I guess not. I'm tired. And hungry. I don't have any money."
A moment of confusion for her, as if she hadn't expected me to be straight with her. I hadn't expected it myself. But she didn't let it throw her, this Kansas woman born and bred with her hard-working Kansas husband probably waiting for her somewhere in t he lobby, and her delightful little Kansas family at her hip, not to mention generations of immutable Kansas piety to call upon for moral reinforcements. All very proper. So I asked her, "What are you doing for dinner?"
She wanted to laugh. Then came the shift. Suddenly she couldn't. I felt sorry for her.
"I think you're going to buy me a little something to eat," I told her.
She nodded.
"I'll need some money to tide me over, of course, not much -- well, whatever you can spare -- whatever you've got , actually."
She nodded again. She'd gone a shade or two pale. "Don't be afraid," I told her. "It's just a melting process. Before you know it, it'll be over. Someday you might even thank me for it."
NICHOLAS A. DICHARIO
