Eden's Eyes (21 page)

But, no, she was kidding herself now. She had felt the loathing the way skin feels ice, with a curdling shudder that burns deep inside.

One by one, the cameramen rushed closer. Cass and Albert followed suit, then a swarming mass of well-wishers swept forward, all of them circling Karen as she hurried down the steps from the stage, more anxious than ever to talk to that woman.

The woman was still there, but wheeling slowly away, looking back over her shoulder with that same scalding glare, a Medusa's scowl that froze Karen in a breathless pocket of air. She tried to move but couldn't.

People pressed in. Cass, teary-eyed, took, Karen's hand and squeezed it. Albert hugged her heartily. Karen tried to draw away, tried to go to the woman, but now a fleet of microphones orbited her head; blurted questions throttled her ears. The circle of bodies tightened, and suddenly Karen felt lightheaded. The faces around her slipped out of focus, muddied, some of them sagging into long, funhouse reflections. A queer sensation like a tickling feather commenced at the backs of both eyes. Her heart kicked a jig in her chest. Alarmed, she leaned on her father's shoulder.

"Hey, hon," he said through the din. "You okay?"

"Yes," Karen murmured. . . but she wasn't.

She rose on tiptoes, struggling to clear her vision, trying, to catch sight of the woman over the bobbing heads of the crowd. Then she spotted her, rolling off into an aisle, still staring but smirking now, Karen thought, coldly smirking, as if in possession of some dirty secret Karen needed to know but never would. . . until it was too late.

Her vision continued to distort, the entire room warping as if observed through a fish-eye lens, the woman's face now its leering axis. Her electric eyes seemed to float in her face, like twin nuclei in a malignant cell.

"Let us through," Albert said, his voice sternly raised, Karen's weight listing unstably against him. "She's not feeling well."

Dutifully, the crowd parted.

Albert ushered his daughter to a chair. Freed from the press, Karen dizzily scanned the hall. . .

But the woman was gone.

Chapter 22

A storm was coming.

A cloudburst. Ten, maybe fifteen, minutes away, Danny figured. They came like that sometimes in the spring, swooping in out of nowhere, dropping their payload down a cold chute of wind and then pulling away. To the south of where he sat fishing, on the grassy verge of Whitefish Lake, the sky was a leaden wall of ill-contained fury. Sodden thunderheads played electric leapfrog, roiling one over the other in layers a mile thick, while lightning flickered deep in their dyspeptic bellies.

Yet directly overhead the sky was a peaceable, unblemished blue. The sun beat down with a summery fervor, as if trying to ward off the coming squall; it felt good against the wadded scar that was Danny's neck, killing for a while its maddening itch. The surface of the lake spread away from him flat and clean, doubling the sphere of his bobber in flawless reflection.

In the distance, thunder rolled down a hardwood alley.

Let it come, Danny thought, bitterness seeping like bile into the well of his throat. See if I give a fuck.

He had run his car hard coming down here this morning, booting it up past eighty along the narrow, overgrown side road from the highway. Out of use since before Danny's birth, the road ran straight as an ice pick for five miles before ending at the fallen bridge over Terrance Creek, a rocky, sluiceway at the base of a thirty-foot gorge. At one time the road had joined up with the Twelfth Line, which ran past Danny's house. Sometimes he just walked to the lake from the opposite side—but he enjoyed the drive in. It made him feel like one of those Porsche jockeys on Wide World of Sports. To reach the lake from this side, he had to catwalk across the skeletal remains of the bridge—that, or fight his way through two miles of scrub to reach a spot where the gorge became shallow enough to ford.

This morning, though, bearing down on the bridge at eighty, Danny had felt none of the old exhilaration. In that last possible instant before braking he had considered just letting her go, taking the edge of the gorge like the goddamn Dukes of Hazzard, flattening the car and himself against the opposite rockface. . .

But it wasn't himself he wanted to hurt.

He gazed out sullenly over the surface of the lake. A solitary loon, its long beak inclined skyward, webbed unseen through the field of his vision. It paused briefly, scenting the storm, then dove.

Like the lightning, Karen's image flickered in Danny's mind. He had seen her on the TV this morning, at that meeting of fools, all of them sitting there like celebrity guests on some goofy game show.

"Okay, Mrs. Shitforbrains," Danny thought bitterly. "I want you to look at these four freaks and tell us which one of them has your kid's liver."

Christ, he shivered every time he thought of having another guy's eyes inside of him. He'd sooner be blind. It had to be a sin, cutting up bodies like that—

Something nibbled curiously at his hook. The bobber jerked once—again. . . and was still.

Sighing, Danny poked two grimy fingers into his jean jacket pocket; they came out holding a hastily folded square of paper. This he spread open in the cradle of his lap and read with a knitted-brow, battling dyslexia over each word.

Earlier this morning he had taken advantage of Karen's absence to let himself into her house. She never locked up, unless she was planning to be away overnight, but even when she did getting inside was rarely a problem. That credit card trick he'd seen on TV worked just fine—except that instead of a credit card, which he'd never owned, he used his like-sized Social Insurance card.

But roaming her place this morning had failed to give him the kick it normally did. He hadn't let himself in since way back in April, just after Karen's admission to hospital. Back then, the drab, conventlike simplicity of the place had comforted him. Within its plainness he had been able to imagine himself as Karen's mate and protector. It was a farmhouse then, nothing more.

But now. . .

Now he hardly recognized the place. New wallpaper, new furniture, thick new curtains everywhere (this goaded him most), new clothes in the closet.

Too much color. Too much. . . life.

And worst of all, the kitchen table had been strewn with flyers from a half-dozen different real estate agencies. She meant to buy a new place, move away from him.

Sitting there, sick inside, Danny felt the distance between them widening like a fault in an earthquake. An impotent moan escaped him. The way they were, that's how he wanted things. It hadn't been perfect, but at least he'd been with her, able to watch her as much as he pleased without seeing that look of disgust on her face. Before that damned operation there had always been some excuse to be near her: chores that needed doing, or when her father wasn't around he would drive her into town. . .

No, Danny declared silently. She wouldn't leave him. No way. Not after all these years. He wouldn't. . . no, goddamn it, he wouldn't allow it. He could forgive her for screwing someone else—

Oh, I heard, yes, I heard you through the window that night, talking to that skinny-bitch friend of yours, talking about that pig doctor in Toronto, humping you two and three times a night. But I'd forgive you, I would. . .

He'd kill the sonofabitch bastard if he could, for touching her. But he could forgive Karen. . . if only she'd stay, let things be as they were.

The loon surfaced not thirty feet out, and this time Danny did notice it. The bird's red eye seemed to fix him, as if aware of his thoughts. . .

Then it laughed. Rose up on its tail, flapped its massive checked wings, and laughed, high and mocking.

But the yodeling echo came back off the lofty lead wall of the storm like a scream.

Danny turned back to the paper in his lap. Flipping it open to the middle page, he let out a sigh of longing. He had found the scrapbook on a side table in Karen's workroom and had stolen the Life magazine fold-out, figuring she'd never miss it. There were plenty of other pictures in there. . .

Wedging his rod securely in front of him, he arranged the fold-out with the Before pose facing up. Then he spread himself out on the grass and unzipped his fly. He was already getting hard.

The sun beat down on his neck. Thunder grumbled, closer now, low and plaintive.

Danny gazed into the brown-eyed photo-face of the girl he loved, smiling with affection at the slight out-turn of her left eye, the more pronounced in-turn of her right. He dropped his gaze suddenly as he imagined their warm roundness looking back at him.

But with these eyes she couldn't see him, he reminded himself. No. With these eyes she was his. . . to look at, to love, to wait for.

Danny's cock grew stiff in his hand. That's what he liked to call it. His cock. It was her cock, too, long and hard and hot, and if that sour fuck doctor could ram her three times a night then he could take her six, seven, ten times.

Yes. . . oh, yes.

How would it feel in that pretty mouth? a tormented inner voice asked him. Oh, God, how would that feel?

"'Good," Danny answered aloud. "So good."

The loon laughed again.

And abruptly the sun vanished, swallowed like a pill by the storm. The air grew colder, began to move. A fat raindrop spattered the back of Danny's eagerly pumping hand.

His eyes were on her neck now, drifting down to the sharp edge of the page, closing to slits, filling in the rest in his mind. . .

He saw the twin high, swells of her breasts as she touched and examined them that night in front of the mirror. He saw the smooth white pout of her belly. He saw—(gusts gliding across the lake like phantoms, chattering through the trees, nibbling at the corner of the picture tacked to the grass beneath two outstretched fingers, heralding the ravening windhordes behind)—the dew-flecked tuft of her center. . .

His mouth opened to release a pathetic moan of desire. "Oh, Karen," he breathed, the pressure in his balls heightening in pace with the storm. "Oh, Karen. . .”

He opened his eyes and looked into Karen's. He wanted to see her when he came. He wanted to see the ecstasy in her eyes. . .

Lightning forked, hissing into the trees across the lake. Living wood split with a crack! of agony. Gusts gathered on the opposite shore, grouped and came in low, whooping like strafing aircraft.

The loon dove again.

It's coming I can feel it feel it oh Karen can you feel it. . .

A finger of wind slipped beneath the photo, flipping it over to the After shot—

Then the blue eyes were on him, seeing him, really seeing him, and he read their revulsion, their disgust, their fear. He saw the look she had given him that morning by the woodpile, the look that had sent him off sobbing like a baby and made him dread ever returning to see it again.

Shriveled and cold, his cock lay limp in his palm. His solitary passion, unfulfilled, congealed sickly inside of him.

Then the storm broke.

It swept across the half mile of lake like the V-shaped blade of a plow, churning the water to a high boil. Trees whipped violently to and fro, as if suddenly endowed with articulating spines, and the long-bladed grass crouched flat.

Flung on bracing airblasts, rain pelted the land in shifting, billowing sheets, stinging wherever it fell. Waves lashed the shoreline in explosive succession, sending up spumes of foam; cresting them bravely, Danny's bobber listed and keeled. The crackly, metallic taste of electricity permeated the air.

Momentarily stunned by this abrupt fury, Danny lay utterly still. He was already soaked to the skin. His penis had drawn back like the retiring head of a turtle, and now his hand closed loosely around nothing.

A faint ripping sound snapped him out of it.

"No!" he bellowed against the suddenly ferocious howl, turning in time to see Karen's face tumbling away, first brown-eyed then blue, smiling then leering. "No!" He clambered wildly to his feet, his boots skidding out from under him on the rain-slicked grass. "No!" he roared again. "Come back!"

But the wind grabbed the soggy fold-out and whipped it away. It rose against the gunmetal sky, looping, dipping, glinting like chrome in a lightning-glare before vanishing over the lashing heads of the trees.

Around him the sky fell.

And the cry he uttered, a mad mingling of anguish, fury, frustration, and pain, was lost in an ear-splitting knell of thunder.

That was when his fishing rod splintered, loosed itself from its niche, and slid like a petrified snake into the water.

With feline agility Danny darted to the lake edge and plunged in an arm, snaring the cork handgrip of his rod a heartbeat before it was lost in the fray. For a moment a child's instincts took over, and in awe he wondered what kind of a prize he had hooked. He'd pulled in a couple of big ones down here in the past—pike, pickerel, and once a twelve-pound muskie.

But whatever this was, it had cracked his fiberglass pole. And it fought like a demon.

Danny edged backward up the slippery shingle, away from the churning lake. His father's voice barked a command in his head—Give him slack, damn it!—and Danny obeyed, paying out line at an alarming rate. Whatever he'd snagged, it cut through the water like a torpedo.

Excitement flared darkly inside of him, fueling the heat of his already seething emotions. He was going to land this cocksucker. He was going to land it and gut it right here, in the furious face of God.

As he tripped the anti-reverse lever and began reeling in, the first spits of hail struck Danny's face. To breathe, he had to tilt his head to one side, away from the fist of the wind.

He braced himself and reeled as a cold gray luminosity replaced the last shreds of sunlight, and the sky split to shreds above him.

It was running crazy now, diving, zigzagging, veering back toward shore, and it was all Danny could do to take up the slack in pace. At one point he thought he'd lost it. . . then it struck out again, shallow and close, stressing his line to the limit.

And when it broke the surface not ten feet away, when it burst furiously skyward, black and sleek in an icy-white missile spray, Danny gaped at it in horror, filled with the insane certainty that he'd snagged some winged denizen of hell. . . because it did have wings, and as it twirled madly against the hook in its gullet it spread those wings, began beating them in lunatic four-foot arcs.