Fear Itself Read online

  Holsteins and Herefords and the occasional longhorn. The wind on the open plain seemed to have sandblasted the color from the landscape and it was as if we had been transported to the screen of a black and white movie except for the pastel of cars traveling the highway. Everything that wasn’t a shade of beige was grey or black or white. But what the panorama lacked in color it made up for with the rich smells of flowering wheat and the sweat of tobacco being dried in large weathered drying bins and the perfume of wildflowers mixed with the fermenting dung left behind by farm animals. The air was warmer and no longer smelled of autumn.

  In St. Louis I cruised to the outskirts of the city before finding a motel in a great enough state of disrepair that I could expect to forgo the identification dilemma. I could have used Mr. Assad’s driver license, and his credit card for that matter, but I knew that that would leave a trail which would eventually have been followed. The Motel Trafalgar, a dump with a Spanish ambiance, was much like the motel in Kentucky in its maintenance and upkeep; however, it was a popular place as cars seemed to be coming and going as though it were a fast-food restaurant. The clerk, a goateed weasel of a man dressed in a silk shirt and designer jeans looked at me with a puzzled stare when I asked for twin beds.

  “All I got is king-size. Do you have two girls?”

  “No, just one.”

  “Then what do you need two beds for man?”

  “I’ll take the king.” I looked through the window at the fading light of the sun and then down at my watch. I could almost hear the sizzle of the sun as it scorched the earth, melting into the horizon like a smoldering ember. And the sizzle seemed to keep time with the loudly ticking second hand of my watch.

  “You want it for an hour?” “What?”

  “The room, you want it for an hour?” “For the night.” I was puzzled. What kind of motel rents by the hour? And then it donned on me that I was not at an ordinary motel. I looked out through the window at a young red-haired girl in an ultra short leather skirt and a bikini top before I measured the sun and determined that I had perhaps an hour before darkness would swallow the sun. I knew that I might not find another dump in time to beat the light. Sarah and I would be behind a locked door if we stayed and there was no chance of being asked for identification. “For the whole night, something at the end, how much?”

  “Eighty bucks.

  I paid in cash and accepted a key attached to a plastic coaster with a young buxom bare-chested woman inviting me to visit GiGi’s Gentleman’s club.

  We ate hamburgers and greasy French fries with chocolate milkshakes which we brought back to our room while I searched for a non-pornographic station on the television. We could faintly hear the girl in the next room being thumped royally, inaudibly moaning that she wished to be thumped a little harder.

  “What’s that noise daddy?”

  “There just having a party in the next room.”

  “I wish they’d be quiet. Can you ask that girl to be quiet?”

  “I don’t think she can.” “Why not?”

  “She’s being thumped.” “Oh”

  And the girl next door thumped until the rhythm eventually carried Sarah into slumber. In fact the girl next door thumped until I drifted off to sleep, at the foot of the bed at two-thirty in the morning.

  9

  I arrived in Wichita in the afternoon of the next day, a Wednesday, and to my amazement we found yet another decrepit motel. I hadn’t known that so many pathetic lodgings existed but as it turned out there was a boundless plethora of such places.

  After we dropped our bags at the motel Sarah and I drove to a park and she played on the swings and climbed up and down the monkey bars like the boy I had made her to look like until she grew bored. All of the children who she might have played with were in school so she had the park to herself but the lack of playmates left her weary. Afterwards we ate sub sandwiches and watched television at the motel until we fell asleep.

  The next morning we took our time getting ready as we were not scheduled to meet Amber until early afternoon. Killing time was becoming a chore but I did enjoy having Sarah as a constant companion.

  At lunch time we ate in the car of the parking lot of our predestined meeting. I listened to a light-rock station and a STYX song was playing “Babe I’m leaving, I must be on my way…”, a song that Catherine had called our song because it was playing on the radio at the local pizzeria on the night of our first official date. As I recall several other songs played before that song but I think Catherine liked “Babe” so much that she waited for it to play so that she could stake her claim to it. I think she liked it because the song romanticized her returning to Kentucky and our time spent loyally waiting for each other. I wondered though, given her unfaithful act, if she had been faithful during our time apart or if it had been a part of her nature all along to be untrue.

  After I had saved the day by putting

  Tony Artino in his place, or at least that is how the story went after I defeated him that fateful day of my youth when I restored the alignment of the planets and reclaimed Catherine as my girl, I worked hard to elevate my self to Teresa’s good graces. Albert was easy. I had slain the dragon. But Teresa saw through my façade, to the flesh beneath my skin; my lust for Catherine’s budding young body; my utter lack of potential and my complete deficiency of confidence. I was the poor kid in the neighborhood and I dressed and walked and acted like the poor pathetic kid that I was. My father was a hopeless alcoholic, my mother a stoic wimp who put up with his abuses. My worth in the world could not have been less. And Teresa had caught me red handed, literally, robbing her niece of her most precious possession: her virginity.

  But after Catherine left at the end of the summer to return to her parents in Kentucky I obtained a job at a local fast food restaurant, working my way from burger-flipper to shift supervisor to part-time (as I was still in high school) assistant manager. I stopped by Teresa and Albert’s house at least a few times a week to report to Teresa my progress and to brag about my ability to save money toward the goal of attending community college. To these accomplishments Teresa would respond with an off-handed remark such as, “It’ll take more money than that to go to college.” Or “City

  College is nothing more than a high school without the discipline.” I would mow their lawn and rake their leaves and shovel their snow but I often heard Teresa chide Albert about my audacity for coming around after what I’d done. Once I even heard her say to Albert, “Why don’t you get that little bastard out of our yard before he steals something?” a reminder to Albert that not only was I below their social class, and thus not good enough for Catherine, but also an insinuation that because I was poor I must also be a thief. Nothing I did altered my image in her eyes. If she had her druthers I would not have been permitted to step foot on their sidewalk let alone date her niece; but I had slain the dragon and Albert reminded her of this in my constant defense.

  One day, however, my dilemma of winning Teresa’s blessing was solved when someone broke into Teresa and Albert’s house, while Albert was working the night-shift at the factory, and bludgeoned Teresa to death with the Louisville Slugger that Albert kept at the side of his bed for protection. I heard Albert whale from all the way across the street, through my open bedroom window, when he found Teresa’s bloodied corpse.

  As far as Albert was concerned the deadly blow that struck Teresa in the bean had felled him with that same single swat. Teresa was Albert’s whole life. She was his mother, his friend and his wife all rolled into one. She had fed him, she had comforted him and she, and she alone, had fucked him; according to Albert she was his one and only love. She told him when to get up and when to go to bed. She gave him permission to play and she punished him when he was a bad boy. Freud would have had a field day studying their relationship.

  Such a crime as Teresa’s violent murder was unheard of in our neighborhood and it put the residents on edge when the police failed to find the killer. And the most puzzling th
ing of all is that the police could not find a single thing missing from the house. The thief had apparently been spooked by Teresa and ran off without taking the time to gather any booty despite the fact that small quantities of cash and a pair of diamond earrings lay on a dresser just a few feet from Teresa’s remains. The police interviewed all of the neighbors, myself included, seeking witnesses to the crime; if not an eyewitness someone who may have seen a suspicious person in the neighborhood. I was no help at all.

  It was immediately after Teresa’s death that my best friend Tommy Sullivan moved away which left a large void in my life; but fortunately for me it was also about the same time that Catherine’s family, having lost their farm in Kentucky due to several years of drought and poor financial planning, moved to

  Cleveland so that her father could work at the factory where Albert, having put in a good word, also worked. This was a dream come true for me. I spent every spare minute of every day with Catherine, who while living several miles away (closer to the city) made regular visits to Albert on the excuse that he needed tending-to since Teresa was no longer there for him. Catherine wove me into her schedule between school and caring for Albert and we took advantage of the many opportunities, when while Albert was out getting drunk at the bar after work, we would sneak into Albert’s guest bedroom and make- out. Catherine having already relinquished to me her virginity let go her inhibitions. Catherine liked to read dirty stories from Albert’s hidden stacks of pornographic magazines and afterwards we tried to replicate the fantasies of the stories as best we could while we made love. Catherine gave herself to me in every conceivable way. Back then, in the burgeoning exploration of our sexuality, in the midst of the sexual revolution, Catherine had a voracious sexual appetite. One time while Catherine and I were busy mussing up the sheets of Albert’s guest bedroom bed Albert walked in on us stinking drunk, a half-dollar size hole burned through the breast pocket of his work shirt, and just stood and talked to us as if he were interrupting a television show instead of two naked teenagers tearing one off. Albert rambled on for several minutes about the Cleveland Indians baseball team needing more starting pitching before Catherine sat up and faced him as though she were not naked and had not been caught in bed with me and coolly asked him how the hole had gotten burnt into his shirt. Albert said that his heart was burning with pain because he missed Teresa so much and that it must have burnt clean through the shirt. Then he walked out of our bedroom and into his own bedroom and collapsed into his bed. We did our best to contain our laughter afterwards, but even if it didn’t register to his whiskey laden brain he must have heard us. Albert died just a few weeks later, heartsick as he was, from having turned too often to alcohol to relieve the pain of his loss.

  Albert’s funeral was a sad affair if only for the sparseness of its attendance. No more than a dozen people showed up for his wake which was arranged by Catherine’s parents.

  Only a few of Albert’s coworkers paid their respects. As nice a man as Albert was he was obviously nothing more than wallpaper to the people with whom he worked and played.

  Catherine and I had Albert’s house all to ourselves for almost a year after Albert’s death while the house was stuck in probate before its eventual sale. We lived a teenagers dream exploring each other’s bodies daily;

  often through the night. It was almost as if we were married. And still, with all of the time we spent together, we never tired of each other’s company.

  But as I sat in my car, Sarah fast asleep, waiting for Amber (my only transgression if truly it was a transgression in so many years of marriage) I could not help but to contemplate the possibilities. I wondered if Amber would actually cheat on her husband as Catherine had cheated on me. I wondered, given the pain I felt at Catherine’s transgressions, if I could do the same to Amber’s husband. I wondered if, after twelve months of build-up, if we would be disappointed in each other, Amber and I, if we did consummate our relationship. I still wasn’t sure of what she would look like. I had sent her an honest photograph of myself, but as for her I did not know. The only picture she had sent to me was a photograph taken of her, she said, several years earlier. In the photograph she was stunning, clad in a shoe-string bikini on a palm littered white-sand beach, her long blond hair cascading down past her shoulders and her curvaceous tanned body perfectly toned and sumptuously beaded with perspiration.

  Amber and I had been talking for almost a year before the day I finally met her. Our first conversation was quite generic; a chance encounter in which I took an application from her for the liquidation of an investment by telephone. Had it not been me that Amber seduced it probably would have been someone else. During our first conversation she talked about how she wanted to withdraw some cash from an annuity in her husbands name because her husband never gave her any money and, she said, he never spent any money on her. After she had completed the application I told her that I would call her later in the day. A few minutes later she called me back. I thought perhaps she had wanted to alter her application. “No, I just wanted to ask you a few questions.”

  “Sure.” I said, thinking she probably wanted to know to whom she was entrusting her finances.

  “What color is your hair?”

  “Brown.” I thought it a strange question.

  “What color are your eyes?” “Blue.” A stranger question still.

  “Has anyone ever told you that you have a really sexy voice?”

  “No.”

  “Well you do.”

  What does one respond to this? “Thank you for saying so.”

  I heard her giggle nervously, as if working up her courage, “How big are you?” she said.

  “What?” I thought perhaps I had misunderstood the question.

  “I said how big is your prick?”

  I paused, stunned by the audacity of her question, “I’m very good in that department, thank you.” I couldn’t help but to laugh uncomfortably as I felt my face warm with blush.

  “Come on now, I know how all of guys measure them. How big is it?” she whispered in a low sultry southern whisper.

  “I can’t really talk about it right now.” My cubicle was far from private. “Why don’t I call you during my lunch hour?”

  “Do you promise?” “You have my word.”

  Since our first conversation we must have spoken to one-another at least a few hundred times; sometimes to vent and sometimes to play; but more often than not just to talk, as friends do, and we seemed to have truly become friends. Amber’s sexual courage reminded me of Catherine’s uninhibited sensibility during our early years together. Sexually, Amber revived me from the dull and effortless love-making which the longevity of twenty-some years of marriage had ultimately reduced our intimacy to.

  As regards my friendship with Amber, I came to know as much about her if not more than her husband could have possibly known. I think that the geographical span that divided us gave Amber the security of knowing that she could tell me literally anything without fear of repercussion. Her husband, as far as I could tell, was a conservative hard working but somewhat immature man who liked to control the purse strings among other things. He was adequate in bed, she said, but he was boring, preferring five minutes in the mercenary position followed by an orgasmic grunt and a nap. Amber was his untamed mare, a spirited girl a bit too wild and a bit too young for him. She had lived a hard life, molested by her father from the age of nine; she left home when she was just thirteen. She grew up in El Paso Texas and she migrated to the city of Dallas at the age of sixteen and she put the only asset she had to use: her body. She obtained a fake driver license which made her out to be eighteen and she went to work as a stripper. She used cocaine recreationally and made extra money on occasion by sleeping with the patrons of the strip-club when she did not find their physical appearance or their company too offensive. Charlie, her husband, was such a patron. He fell in love with her and married her, promising her eternal happiness, and he took her away to a secluded piece of land in
Hutchinson Kansas where they built a home, had three children and lived a somewhat cloistered life, away from the bustling world with which she had become accustomed, and under the shadow of his mother’s rather large, as Amber described it, suspicious nose. Charlie’s mother smelled a rat, or so Amber said, since the moment she flared her nostrils in displeasure when Charlie first introduced Amber to his mother as his fiancée. It may have been that his mother was simply overprotective, as most mothers are, and felt that no woman was good enough for her son, or it may have been that Amber’s unabashed way with words had put Charlie’s mother onto the scent of the risqué life that Amber had been leading. Amber was a very forward girl and they clashed because, as Amber confided to me, “I’m not going to take her shit just because I married her son!”

  Amber liked to do what she considered men’s work; something she claimed her husband was allergic to. The new house they had built was completed, but she taught herself to lay ceramic tile and to finish drywall and to do rough and finish carpentry with the ambition of upgrading the amenities with which the house was originally furnished. She would sometimes call me and tell me that she was performing a manly task which her wimp of a husband couldn’t do; such as the time she was finishing a basement wall with drywall compound while in the nude. She said that it made her horny filling the seams of the gypsum with gobs of white mud. By the time our conversation had ended I had ordered Amber to dab various parts of her body with drywall mud, and ultimately to masturbate to orgasm for me. I think she got her rocks off as much by the fact that she was doing work that her wimpy husband couldn’t do as she did from the sexual act.

  In any event, I sat waiting, my head turning every time a car pulled into view, for our first meeting in the parking-lot of an appointed fast-food restaurant in Wichita Kansas while Sarah picked at the salty french- fries from the carton of her kid’s meal. As much as I had longed to enact a physical encounter with Amber the truth was that given the circumstances I was more concerned with Sarah’s and my future living arrangements; the natural order of human necessity—food-shelter- sex—having predicated my disposition. I hadn’t given Amber much time to make the arrangements and I hoped that she did not intend to place us in some cockroach infested shanty; that is if she was able to make any arrangements at all. My money would not carry me far if I had to continue to pay for motel rooms.