Red Dragon

  He took her to his big chair. He sat on the couch.

  There was a charge in the air. Like fluorescence in the sea, it limned movement; she found a place for her drink on the stand beside her, he put on music.

  To Dolarhyde the room seemed changed. She was the first voluntary company he ever had in the house, and now the room was divided into her part and his.

  There was the music, Debussy as the light failed.

  He asked her about Denver and she told him a little, absently, as though she thought of something else. He described the house and the big hedged yard. There wasn’t much need to talk.

  In the silence while he changed records, she said, “That wonderful tiger, this house, you’re just full of surprises, D. I don’t think anybody knows you at all.”

  “Did you ask them?”

  “Who?”

  “Anybody.”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know that nobody knows me?” His concentration on the tongue-twister kept the tone of the question neutral.

  “Oh, some of the women from Gateway saw us getting into your van the other day. Boy, were they curious. All of a sudden I have company at the Coke machine.”

  “What do they want to know?”

  “They just wanted some juicy gossip. When they found out there isn’t any, they went away. They were just fishing.”

  “And what did they say?”

  She had meant to make the women’s avid curiosity into humor directed at herself. It was not working out that way.

  “They wonder about everything,” she said. “They find you very mysterious and interesting. Come on, it’s a compliment.”

  “Did they tell you how I look?”

  The question was spoken lightly, very well done, but Reba knew that nobody is ever kidding. She met it head-on.

  “I didn’t ask them. But, yes, they told me how they think you look. Want to hear it? Verbatim? Don’t ask if you don’t.” She was sure he would ask.

  No reply.

  Suddenly Reba felt that she was alone in the room, that the place where he had stood was emptier than empty, a black hole swallowing everything and emanating nothing. She knew he could not have left without her hearing him.

  “I think I’ll tell you,” she said. “You have a kind of hard clean neatness that they like. They said you have a remarkable body.” Clearly she couldn’t leave it at that. “They say you’re very sensitive about your face and that you shouldn’t be. Okay, here’s the dippy one with the Dentyne, is it Eileen?”

  “Eileen.”

  Ah, a return signal. She felt like a radio astronomer.

  Reba was an excellent mimic. She could have reproduced Eileen’s speech with startling fidelity, but she was too wise to mimic anyone’s speech for Dolarhyde. She quoted Eileen as though she read from a transcript.

  “‘He’s not a bad-looking guy. Honest to God I’ve gone out with lots of guys didn’t look that good. I went out with a hockey player one time—played for the Blues?—had a little dip in his lip where his gum shrank back from his bridge? They all have that, hockey players. It’s kind of, you know, macho, I think. Mr. D.’s got the nicest skin, and what I wouldn’t give for his hair.’ Satisfied? Oh, and she asked me if you’re as strong as you look.”

  “And?”

  “I said I didn’t know.” She drained her glass and got up. “Where the hell are you anyway, D.?” She knew when he moved between her and a stereo speaker. “Aha. Here you are. Do you want to know what I think about it?”

  She found his mouth with her fingers and kissed it, lightly pressing his lips against his clenched teeth. She registered instantly that it was shyness and not distaste that held him rigid.

  He was astonished.

  “Now, would you show me where the bathroom is?”

  She took his arm and went with him down the hall.

  “I can find my own way back.”

  In the bathroom she patted her hair and ran her fingers along the top of the basin, hunting toothpaste or mouthwash. She tried to find the door of the medicine cabinet and found there was no door, only hinges and exposed shelves. She touched the objects on them carefully, leery of a razor, until she found a bottle. She took off the cap, smelled to verify mouthwash, and swished some around.

  When she returned to the parlor, she heard a familiar sound—the whir of a projector rewinding.

  “I have to do a little homework,” Dolarhyde said, handing her a fresh martini.

  “Sure,” she said. She didn’t know how to take it. “If I’m keeping you from working, I’ll go. Will a cab come up here?”

  “No. I want you to be here. I do. It’s just some film I need to check. It won’t take long.”

  He started to take her to the big chair. She knew where the couch was. She went to it instead.

  “Does it have a soundtrack?”

  “No.”

  “May I keep the music?”

  “Um-hmmm.”

  She felt his attention. He wanted her to stay, he was just frightened. He shouldn’t be. All right. She sat down.

  The martini was wonderfully cold and crisp.

  He sat on the other end of the couch, his weight clinking the ice in her glass. The projector was still rewinding.

  “I think I’ll stretch out for a few minutes if you don’t mind,” she said. “No, don’t move, I have plenty of room. Wake me up if I drop off, okay?”

  She lay on the couch, holding the glass on her stomach; the tips of her hair just touched his hand beside his thigh.

  He flicked the remote switch and the film began.

  Dolarhyde had wanted to watch his Leeds film or his Jacobi film with this woman in the room. He wanted to look back and forth from the screen to Reba. He knew she would never survive that. The women saw her getting into his van. Don’t even think about that. The women saw her getting into his van.

  He would watch his film of the Shermans, the people he would visit next. He would see the promise of relief to come, and do it in Reba’s presence, looking at her all he liked.

  On the screen, The New House spelled in pennies on a shirt cardboard. A long shot of Mrs. Sherman and the children. Fun in the pool. Mrs. Sherman holds to the ladder and looks up at the camera, bosom swelling shining wet above her suit, pale legs scissoring.

  Dolarhyde was proud of his self-control. He would think of this film, not the other one. But in his mind he began to speak to Mrs. Sherman as he had spoken to Valerie Leeds in Atlanta.

  You see me now, yes

  That’s how you feel to see me, yes

  Fun with old clothes. Mrs. Sherman has the wide hat on. She is before the mirror. She turns with an arch smile and strikes a pose for the camera, her hand at the back of her neck. There is a cameo at her throat.

  Reba McClane stirs on the couch. She sets her glass on the floor. Dolarhyde feels a weight and warmth. She has rested her head on his thigh. The nape of her neck is pale and the movie light plays on it.

  He sits very still, moves only his thumb to stop the film, back it up. On the screen, Mrs. Sherman poses before the mirror in the hat. She turns to the camera and smiles.

  You see me now, yes

  That’s how you feel to see me, yes

  Do you feel me now? yes

  Dolarhyde is trembling. His trousers are mashing him so hard. He feels heat. He feels warm breath through the cloth. Reba has made a discovery.

  Convulsively his thumb works the switch.

  You see me now, yes

  That’s how you feel to see me, yes

  Do you feel this? yes

  Reba has unzipped his trousers.

  A stab of fear in him; he has never been erect before in the presence of a living woman. He is the Dragon, he doesn’t have to be afraid.

  Busy fingers spring him free.

  OH.

  Do you feel me now? yes

  Do you feel this yes

  You do I know it yes

  Your heart is loud yes

  He must keep his
hands off Reba’s neck. Keep them off. The women saw them in the van. His hand is squeezing the arm of the couch. His fingers pop through the upholstery.

  Your heart is loud yes

  And fluttering now

  It’s fluttering now

  It’s trying to get out yes

  And now it’s quick and light and quicker and light and . . .

  Gone.

  Oh, gone.

  Reba rests her head on his thigh and turns her gleaming cheek to him. She runs her hand inside his shirt and rests it warm on his chest.

  “I hope I didn’t shock you,” she said.

  It was the sound of her living voice that shocked him, and he felt to see if her heart was going and it was. She held his hand there gently.

  “My goodness, you’re not through yet, are you?”

  A living woman. How bizarre. Filled with power, the Dragon’s or his own, he lifted her from the couch easily. She weighed nothing, so much easier to carry because she wasn’t limp. Not upstairs. Not upstairs. Hurrying now. Somewhere. Quick. Grandmother’s bed, the satin comforter sliding under them.

  “Oh, wait, I’ll get them off. Oh, now it’s torn. I don’t care. Come on. My God, man. That’s so sweeeet. Don’t please hold me down, let me come up to you and take it.”

  With Reba, his only living woman, held with her in this one bubbleskin of time, he felt for the first time that it was all right: It was his life he was releasing, himself past all mortality that he was sending into her starry darkness, away from this pain planet, ringing harmonic distances away to peace and the promise of rest.

  Beside her in the dark, he put his hand on her and pressed her together gently to seal the way back. As she slept, Dolarhyde, damned murderer of eleven, listened time and again to her heart.

  Images. Baroque pearls flying through the friendly dark. A Very pistol he had fired at the moon. A great firework he saw in Hong Kong called “The Dragon Sows His Pearls.”

  The Dragon.

  He felt stunned, cloven. And all the long night beside her he listened, fearful, for himself coming down the stairs in the kimono.

  She stirred once in the night, searching sleepily until she found the bedside glass. Grandmother’s teeth rattled in it.

  Dolarhyde brought her water. She held him in the dark. When she slept again, he took her hand off his great tattoo and put it on his face.

  He slept hard at dawn.

  Reba McClane woke at nine and heard his steady breathing. She stretched lazily in the big bed. He didn’t stir. She reviewed the layout of the house, the order of rugs and floor, the direction of the ticking clock. When she had it straight, she rose quietly and found the bathroom.

  After her long shower, he was still asleep. Her torn underclothes were on the floor. She found them with her feet and stuffed them in her purse. She pulled her cotton dress on over her head, picked up her cane and walked outside.

  He had told her the yard was large and level, bounded by hedges grown wild, but she was cautious at first.

  The morning breeze was cool, the sun warm. She stood in the yard and let the wind toss the seed heads of the elderberry through her hands. The wind found the creases of her body, fresh from the shower. She raised her arms to it and the wind blew cool beneath her breasts and arms and between her legs. Bees went by. She was not afraid of them and they left her alone.

  Dolarhyde woke, puzzled for an instant because he was not in his room upstairs. His yellow eyes grew wide as he remembered. An owlish turn of his head to the other pillow. Empty.

  Was she wandering around the house? What might she find? Or had something happened in the night? Something to clean up. He would be suspected. He might have to run.

  He looked in the bathroom, in the kitchen. Down in the basement where his other wheelchair stood. The upper floor. He didn’t want to go upstairs. He had to look. His tattoo flexed as he climbed the stairs. The Dragon glowed at him from the picture in his bedroom. He could not stay in the room with the Dragon.

  From an upstairs window he spotted her in the yard.

  “FRANCIS.” He knew the voice came from his room. He knew it was the voice of the Dragon. This new twoness with the Dragon disoriented him. He first felt it when he put his hand on Reba’s heart.

  The Dragon had never spoken to him before. It was frightening.

  “FRANCIS, COME HERE.”

  He tried to shut out the voice calling him, calling him as he hurried down the stairs.

  What could she have found? Grandmother’s teeth had rattled in the glass, but he put them away when he brought her water. She couldn’t see anything.

  Freddy’s tape. It was in a cassette recorder in the parlor. He checked it. The cassette was rewound to the beginning. He couldn’t remember if he had rewound it after he played it on the telephone to the Tattler.

  She must not come back in the house. He didn’t know what might happen in the house. She might get a surprise. The Dragon might come down. He knew how easily she would tear.

  The women saw her getting in his van. Warfield would remember them together. Hurriedly he dressed.

  Reba McClane felt the cool bark of a tree trunk’s shadow, and then the sun again as she wandered across the yard. She could always tell where she was by the heat of the sun and the hum of the window air conditioner. Navigation, her life’s discipline, was easy here. She turned around and around, trailing her hands on the shrubs and overgrown flowers.

  A cloud blocked the sun and she stopped, not knowing in which direction she faced. She listened for the air conditioner. It was off. She felt a moment of uneasiness, then clapped her hands and heard the reassuring echo from the house. Reba flipped up her watch crystal and felt the time. She’d have to wake D. soon. She needed to go home.

  The screen door slammed.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  His keys tinkled as he came across the grass.

  He approached her cautiously, as though the wind of his coming might blow her down, and saw that she was not afraid of him.

  She didn’t seem embarrassed or ashamed of what they had done in the night. She didn’t seem angry. She didn’t run from him or threaten him. He wondered if it was because she had not seen his private parts.

  Reba put her arms around him and laid her head on his hard chest. His heart was going fast.

  He managed to say good morning.

  “I’ve had a really terrific time, D.”

  Really? What would someone say back? “Good. Me too.” That seemed all right. Get her away from here.

  “But I need to go home now,” she was saying. “My sister’s coming by to pick me up for lunch. You could come too if you like.”

  “I have to go to the plant,” he said, modifying the lie he had ready.

  “I’ll get my purse.”

  Oh no. “I’ll get it.”

  Almost blind to his own true feelings, no more able to express them than a scar can blush, Dolarhyde did not know what had happened to him with Reba McClane, or why. He was confused, spiked with new fright at being Two.

  She threatened him, she did not threaten him.

  There was the matter of her startling live movements of acceptance in Grandmother’s bed.

  Often Dolarhyde did not find out what he felt until he acted. He didn’t know how he felt toward Reba McClane.

  An ugly incident as he drove her home enlightened him a little.

  Just past the Lindbergh Boulevard exit off Interstate 70, Dolarhyde pulled into a Servco Supreme station to fill his van.

  The attendant was a heavyset, sullen man with muscatel on his breath. He made a face when Dolarhyde asked him to check the oil.

  The van was a quart low. The attendant jammed the oil spout into the can and stuck the spout into the engine.

  Dolarhyde climbed out to pay.

  The attendant seemed enthusiastic about wiping the windshield; the passenger side of the windshield. He wiped and wiped.

  Reba McClane sat in the high bucket seat, her legs crossed,
her skirt riding up over her knee. Her white cane lay between the seats.

  The attendant started over on the windshield. He was looking up her dress.

  Dolarhyde glanced up from his wallet and caught him. He reached in through the window of the van and turned the wipers on high speed, batting the attendant’s fingers.

  “Hey, watch that.” The attendant got busy removing the oil can from the engine compartment. He knew he was caught and he wore a sly grin until Dolarhyde came around the van to him.

  “You son of a bitch.” Fast over the /s/.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?” The attendant was about Dolarhyde’s height and weight, but he had nowhere near the muscle. He was young to have dentures, and he didn’t take care of them.

  Their greenness disgusted Dolarhyde. “What happened to your teeth?” he asked softly.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Did you pull them for your boyfriend, you rotten prick?” Dolarhyde stood too close.

  “Get the hell away from me.”

  Quietly, “Pig. Idiot. Trash. Fool.”

  With a one-hand shove Dolarhyde sent him flying back to slam against the van. The oil can and spout clattered on the asphalt.

  Dolarhyde picked it up.

  “Don’t run. I can catch you.” He pulled the spout from the can and looked at its sharp end.

  The attendant was pale. There was something in Dolarhyde’s face that he had never seen before, anywhere.

  For a red instant Dolarhyde saw the spout jammed in the man’s chest, draining his heart. He saw Reba’s face through the windshield. She was shaking her head, saying something. She was trying to find the handle to roll her window down.

  “Ever had anything broken, ass-eyes?”

  The attendant shook his head fast. “I didn’t mean no offense, now. Honest to God.”

  Dolarhyde held the curved metal spout in front of the man’s face. He held it in both hands and his chest muscles bunched as he bent it double. He pulled out the man’s waistband and dropped the spout down the front of his pants.

  “Keep your pig eyes to yourself.” He stuffed money for the gas in the man’s shirt pocket. “You can run now,” he said. “But I could catch you anytime.”