Cockpit

  As I talked, some of the children turned pale; others trembled and cried, begging me not to denounce them. They whimpered that they would do anything for me. The older ones, with what they considered adult arguments, pointed out that, after all, Indians never went to church or to the movies or to shopping centers and didn’t send their kids to school, but just drank and slept all day, living off the taxes of the whites who worked.

  I hesitated for a long time, as if deep in thought, then told them I had reconsidered my decision and decided to protect them for the sake of their families. I promised that the body would never be discovered. The children flocked about me, sobbing with relief. After they calmed down, I said I wanted to take one final photograph for my own private album.

  Willingly, the children now formed a tight circle around the Indian. Great hunters displaying their kill, they smiled proudly at the camera. I promised that, in a day or so, I would leave a photograph for each child in a plastic bag under the oak tree near the main gate. To protect the cover-up, I said, I would keep the negatives in my bank vault. One after another, they swore themselves to secrecy and thanked me for what I had done.

  I suggested that, in case we were being watched by the Indians, they should not leave the Park together. They scattered obediently, some through the gate, others by the dunes and beach.

  I buried the dummy near the guest house, developed the film and made dozens of wallet-sized prints of each picture. As promised, I left the photographs in plastic bags near the gate, and the next morning, through my binoculars, I watched the children come one after another to collect them. Later in the day, a few of the older ones sneaked back to the Park to make certain no traces of their crime remained.

  In the following days, I continued to lead a quiet life, going into the village only when necessary. But, whenever I drove my convertible through town, men and women waved to me, and I knew I was considered a member of the community, like it or not.

  Soon, I discovered the children had not kept our secret. One man complimented me on my handling of the young intruders in the Park. A couple remarked how generous I, a newcomer, had been to the neighborhood kids. A local door-to-door cosmetics saleswoman gave me two complimentary sets of her men’s products, as a reward for what she called a “communal service.”

  One weekend, I went to the local bar where men were spending the evening sitting in front of their beers, hypnotized by the flickering image on the television set suspended high over the bar. Although we had never met, the bartender shook my hand. He poured me a double and said it was on the house. All the men turned toward me, and those sitting in the back moved closer to get a better look. Others kept on toasting me and slapping me on the back. I toasted them in return, downed my drink and left. Five of them left with me. Outside, their spokesman launched into a speech of gratitude. He said that he was the father of one of the children that I had saved. Everyone realized, he told me, that it was only to protect the children that I had put the fear of God into them.

  Looking to the others for approval, he announced that all five men were members of a group devoted to civic betterment. Whenever any group member needed help, the others rallied round him. My deed entitled me to become one of them. I told him I was grateful, but that I was shy and tended to avoid groups in favor of more intimate contacts. They again assured me that they would be standing by if I ever needed them. We parted like old buddies.

  I spent the entire week in the main house, cleaning a bedroom, checking the wiring of my hidden microphones, repairing furniture and hanging curtains on many of the windows. I stocked the refrigerator and the liquor cabinet and bought rubber floats and beach blankets.

  When the house and the beach were ready for guests, I returned to the city and moved into a section of town known for its gay bars. I visited one coeducational gay bar every night, and, after a while, picked out a striking couple whom I began to follow.

  One was a pale, handsome woman in her thirties, over six feet tall, with short blond hair. She usually wore a man’s suit, complete with shirt and tie. Her lover was a small, delicate black girl with large breasts, not much over twenty. She dressed in ankle-length skirts, embroidered blouses and sandals.

  After I had been watching them for a week or so, I introduced myself as a retired insurance broker who had been admiring them both. At first, they snubbed me, but I persisted. Eventually, I suggested we all have dinner and then go to a very fashionable gay cabaret. The younger woman urged her companion to accept.

  At the restaurant, when a couple of drinks had put them at ease, I told them that I admired them because they seemed to live without camouflage. Only recently, I said, had I admitted to myself that I’d long been drawn to women who love each other. Now, I confessed, I’d decided to pursue that fascination. I told them I lived alone on a large estate not far from the city and would be pleased to have them stay with me for as long as they chose to. They would have access to a large house, a boat and a car, and I would, of course, cover all their expenses.

  The women stared at me incredulously, waiting for a catch, then flipped through a dozen color snapshots of the Park I showed them. I pressed forward, reminding them that the entire house would be theirs. I suggested they might wish to verify that the estate was really mine, and gave them the name and phone number of the realtor, as well as my own number at the Park. By the end of dinner, it seemed settled that they would visit me.

  I returned to the Park. Within a week, the couple phoned to say they would be arriving in the morning. I met them at the railroad station, pleased to see they were dressed as oddly as they had been in the city. It was a warm day and I drove back to the Park along the community road with the car’s top down. With both of my passengers sitting on top of the back seat to see better, I proceeded slowly through the residential area bordering the Park. Some of the men from the bar were working around their lawns, and when they waved at me I waved back, as did my passengers. When we entered the Park, they were impressed with how large the estate was.

  After inspecting all the bedrooms in the main house, they settled on a second-floor corner room, whose windows faced the guest house. When I pointed out that through my fieldglasses I could easily spy on them from my attic, Alex, the elder one, stroked Linda’s hair and said they wouldn’t mind. After all, she said, I had admitted from the outset that I was fascinated by women in love. She asked whether, given the chance, I would be more excited by listening or watching. I replied that I would rather hear them. Since they might at some point discuss me, I would learn things about myself, as well as about them, whereas by watching them I would be completely uninvolved.

  Our daily schedule depended on the weather. On cloudless days, they sailed around the peninsula on the sailboat I had rented for them. From my attic, I watched their boat and listened to their conversations over a transmitter hidden inside it.

  On cloudy mornings, Linda and Alex strolled around the Park, picking mushrooms and wildflowers and looking for foxes, which hid in the dense underbrush. Always, I listened to their talk.

  Later in the day, they would often drive to the shopping center or walk along the ocean to the far end of the peninsula. Occasionally, I went with them, aware of the curiosity we aroused. At sunset, we would sit on the porch of the main house, drinking and talking. I would photograph them from time to time, and eventually they stopped paying attention to the camera. For a change of pace, I would urge them to dress up in their most outrageous clothes, and we would go to dinner in one of the big restaurants.

  The three of us were becoming a familiar sight, and one night I took them to the bar where earlier I had been toasted. Alex was wearing a form-fitting man’s suit that emphasized her small waist and slim thighs, and Linda’s full breasts were shown off by her semitransparent dress. As we entered, every man instantly stopped talking and stared at us. Acknowledging the impact, Alex swept off her hat and bowed theatrically to the astonished men, who quickly looked away. I led the girls through the crowded room
to a corner table. As we had our drinks, the bar was silent.

  On our way out, men winked knowingly at me. I whispered that both women were recent acquaintances staying at the Park for a few days, and implied that they were drifters whose perverted life interested me just as it would any other man.

  The following day, while Alex and Linda sunbathed naked, the monitor alerted me that the Park was being invaded. Through my binoculars, I sighted several men crawling across the dunes toward the beach. My receiver picked up their whispers as they cautioned each other to be quiet until the women started making love. They swore at the heat and at the insects, but refused to abandon their stake-out. When the women got up and walked to the boat, the disappointed men crawled away.

  From then on, the men often sneaked into the Park or hung around the beach. Alex and Linda told me that one afternoon their sailboat was almost swamped by men in two motor launches. Another time, as the women made love on the porch, I spotted two men watching them from the edge of the woods.

  One night, five men came close to the main house. I listened in as they outlined a scheme to abduct the women and drag them down to the beach for what they called “fun and games.” The men argued for a long time until they agreed which room the girls slept in and which staircase would offer the easiest access to it.

  After the men left, I went over and knocked on the couple’s bedroom door, calling to them to get up. I explained that the locals were planning to raid the house and rape them. Alex, who was adept in karate, was sure the three of us could easily deal with the intruders. But I insisted the risk was too great. Reluctantly, they agreed to leave.

  Helping them pack, I suggested playing a trick on the men to get even. The two of them could help me by leaving me some of their clothing and make-up. They were glad to donate a bra, an old blouse, some bikini underpants and several other items.

  I drove the women back to the city well after midnight. When I returned to the Park, I took the can of remaining imitation blood, soaked several pieces of the women’s clothing in it and splashed it all over their mattress and sheets. I dragged the mess into the heaviest undergrowth, dug a grave big enough to have held both my guests, and buried the bloodied clothes, sheets and mattress, planting the underpants almost on the surface. Smoothing the raw earth, I covered it with bushes uprooted from another part of the Park. Then, I rigged up a set of directional microphones in a nearby tree.

  I washed down the women’s bedroom, using a disinfectant with a pronounced odor, making sure that a little “blood” had dribbled between the floorboards. I placed Linda’s bra on the path to the grave.

  Late that afternoon, my monitor detected the five men, cautiously approaching the main house from the dunes. One kept watch, while the others crept up the stairs to the women’s bedroom. When they discovered that the women were gone, they were enraged. They strode around the room, making crude jokes about how the women could make love without a mattress. When somebody mentioned the pine smell of the disinfectant, commenting that the girls kept a very clean floor, another noticed the traces of blood. Now they all became excited and raced downstairs. Outside, they had no difficulty following the trail, and it wasn’t long before they reached the grave site.

  By then, the men had reconstructed the events according to my plan, but they could not decide what to do with their knowledge. One suggested the police. Another countered that once the press and television got hold of the story the Park would become a tourist attraction. A third pointed out that they had no business being there themselves, a fact that was certain to be noticed. They fell silent. After a few minutes of indecision, they decided to leave things as they were for the time being, and left.

  The monitor woke me well past midnight. Through my binoculars, I could make out six or seven men heading for the grave. The glow of their high-powered lanterns dimmed as they moved deeper into the woods, but I picked up their voices as if I had been only a foot away. They began digging at once. In a few moments, they must have reached the blood-covered mattress, because I heard a horrified groan. When they did not find the women’s bodies underneath, they began to argue among themselves. What was under the mattress was clearly virgin soil. I heard a cigarette lighter click, and a voice suggested that a new possibility had now to be considered. The two dykes could be anywhere on the Park’s two thousand acres—next to the dead Indian, for instance. One by one, they began to imagine what would happen if the police exhumed the body of the man their children had killed. Anxiously arguing about what they should do, they decided to burn the mattress, sheets and clothes. As soon as the bonfire died down, the men buried the ashes in the grave and left.

  They came back the next day, claiming they were looking for a lost dog. I welcomed them. They crisscrossed the Park several times. On my monitor I overheard their excited comments when they found a scarf buried in the dunes. They burned it on the spot, then left.

  That evening, I went to the bar. The regulars nodded, but this time they were less than cordial. One of the men edged over and asked about my girl friends. I smiled sadly and said that they had sneaked off, taking some of my things. The theft wasn’t worth the sheriff’s time, I said. I added that, when it came to picking my next lovers, I would be two women wiser.

  A man casually asked if I knew how to get in touch with my guests. I answered that they had been with each other for some time and probably had no other friends. I doubted I could find them even if I had to. As an afterthought, I added that, in the next few days, I myself planned to leave the Park and travel abroad.

  On the following day, I dismantled the rest of my network of monitoring equipment and resold it to the supplier in the city. Toward the end of the week, as I lay sunbathing, I heard cars pull up. The sheriff and two of my midnight visitors got out and greeted me. I invited them to have a drink, and asked what had brought them.

  The sheriff announced that the community was concerned that during my absence the Park might become a squatter’s haven. To discourage this, and to facilitate a police patrol, his two companions had volunteered to enlarge the Park’s narrow paths and even clear some new ones. Naturally, he agreed, I, as a tenant, would have to make the final decision. I said I could not answer for the legal aspect of the matter. But aside from what the old lady’s will stipulated, I could only welcome such changes.

  We drank in silence, watching a solitary turtle calmly crossing the grass in front of the house. Forcing a smile, the sheriff asked if I was lonely without my young companions. I replied that our arrangement had not turned out to be what I had hoped for. Apparently, I sighed, I still had a lot to learn about women. The men laughed uneasily, finished their beers and were off.

  Later in the day, my helpful neighbors returned with two tractors. I watched the machines pass over the main road and head for the gravesite. I heard the engines strain and whine as plows ripped through the dense greenery, building a network of roads and high, hard-packed hills where low dunes had been only shortly before.

  The next morning, just as the sun was coming over the humped, pitted sand, I noticed the sheriff’s blue car slow down as it passed. I wondered if he noticed how naturally the new mounds joined the rolling dunes that stretched all the way to the Indian reservation.

  I left my apartment one day just as people began pouring out of their offices for lunch. A group of teen-agers in shabby orange robes and sandals with broken leather straps moved through the crowd beating drums and chanting. Some of them accosted passersby, offering leaflets that people took and promptly crumpled up. Office workers sunned themselves in the plazas of high-rise buildings, eating sandwiches, smoking and ignoring the chanters. On the sidewalk, the dense, rapidly moving crowd forced the young people back to the curb, where they continued dancing and chanting.

  One girl dancing near me had straggly hair and acne-marked skin. The loose armholes of her oversized robe revealed her flat breasts. With head thrown back and eyes closed, she was chanting in unison with the rest. I touched her arm to ask
where she was from, and she muttered, “Chicago,” without stopping her swaying.

  “And the others?”

  She answered without looking, “New York, the Rockies, Texas, California. We’re from everywhere.”

  “Why do you do this?” I pursued. “All these people rushing past you—all of us, we think you’re crazy!”

  The girl wiped the sweat off her neck with the edge of her robe. “We don’t care what you think,” she told me, and went back to her chant. A Japanese tourist stepped between us to get a good photograph of the dancers against the bustling midtown backdrop. I strolled on.

  Within a few blocks, I discovered a sex peepshow that guaranteed a variety of new twelve-minute porn films, each one divided into three-minute segments. I went inside.

  A few businessmen were wandering around the darkened room, jingling the change in their pockets and studying the film descriptions posted outside each booth. I chose one, went in, and paid my quarter. The film had been playing for a minute or so when I heard the sounds of a struggle coming from the adjoining booth. I stepped out and peered into it. In the light flickering from the screen, I saw a tall sailor wrestling an old man to the floor. I took out my spray pen and squirted a drop at the sailor’s neck. He immediately slumped down.

  The old man scrambled to his feet, stuffed his shirt into his trousers and zipped his fly. He must have thought I was from the vice squad, because he seemed as frightened of me as of his assailant. “He attacked first. He broke my glasses,” he shouted, pointing at the sailor, who was tossing around on the floor, mumbling and groaning and swearing.

  Meanwhile, other customers scurried out of the nearby booths, and, without checking to see what had happened, they fled the theater.

  The theater manager hurried over to us. “I run a clean place here and I’m calling the cops,” he said nervously.