Strange Wine (32 page)

Of life as Willis Kaw, life on the pleasure planet.

I’m particularly proud of having written this story. Not that it’s an earthshaker or the most inspired narration I’ve ever lucked into, but because
I
wrote it and neither Ray Bradbury nor Frank Herbert did.

That may seem a weird thing to say, but on a day several years ago when Frank and Ray and I wound up all together on the same lecture platform, and we were kicking around ideas and memories of our childhood, I popped this idea–“How about a story in which there’s a doctor who gives you periodic injections of death, so you build up a tolerance to it, and cannot die?”–and all three of us rolled our eyes and said WOW!

And we all three vowed, in front of that huge audience, to write the story, and it was to be a race to see who could get it set down on paper first.

And three or four years went by, and none of us did it; and then one day I remembered the idea and plopped down behind this very typewriter at which I now sit, and in nine straight hours of typing I wrote this story.

I sent a copy to Frank and I sent a copy to Ray.

They haven’t responded. You think they’re mad at me?

“Ordinarily my ratio of concerns is something like this: Fifty per cent work and worry over work, 35% the perpetual struggle against lunacy, 15% a very true and very tender love for those who have been and and are close to me as friends and as lover. But [sometimes] the ratio changes to something like this: Work and worry over work, 89%; struggle against lunacy (partly absorbed in the first category) 10%; very true and tender love for lover and friends, 1%. A stranger would doubt this, but you have known me and observed me for a long time. Surely you see how it is!”

Tennessee Williams

The word beautiful simply did not do her justice. She was quantum leaps beyond merely beautiful. Exquisite, perhaps: carried to the nth degree. She sat behind her desk and Romb hoped she wouldn’t stand up; he wasn’t at all sure he could handle an unobstructed view of her, full length. She was purely the most breathtaking human being he had ever seen. He thought she would look perfect standing on a pedestal in Thrace somewhere.

“You’re staring, Mr. Romb,” she said. Gently. With amusement.

He felt his face grow warm. He was in his thirties, very slick, good moves–and he wasn’t used to being embarrassed by women. It was usually the other way around. “Oh, excuse me, Doctor; I was thinking about what you said. Then it
is
possible?”

“Oh, yes. It’s possible. It
can
be done. But it comes at a premium, of course.”

“I expected as much,” Romb said. He had vague feelings of danger: contracts signed in blood, loss of immortal soul, less nameable tremblings. He wore tinted aviator glasses and his hair had been styled by an Italian. His suit had been purchased in Savile Row. “Just
how
much is the question.”

“Ten percent of what you realize.”

“I have no idea how much that might be.”

“Payment deferred. I can wait. My patients are unfailingly grateful. I’ve never had to sue for collection.”

“Patients? You’ve used these treatments before.”

“Occasionally. When the circumstances have been, er, extraordinary, shall we say. A high degree of confidentiality is, of course, imperative.”

He thought about that for a moment.
Imperative
was as inadequate as
beautiful
. He had come to the office of Dr. D’arqueAngel as a final act of desperation. He had heard whispers among a strange group of his acquaintances who were involved with witchcraft…a silly bunch of people, really, but on occasion he found them amusing. And they had been talking about her one evening at what they called their “coven,” though it was more like a social tea for over-age singles than a coven as he had read about such things. The whispers had been incomplete, hardly specific; but if what they said about her was accurate, she might be the answer to his nightmarish dilemma.

Simply stated, it didn’t
sound
all that desperate:

Charles Romb wanted to murder his wife.

The actuality of the situation, however, was a quantum leap beyond desperate. Beyond nightmarish. It was, simply stated, a life sentence in a living Hell.

“Mr. Romb?”

He realized he had been staring again. These lapses into preoccupation had been coming more and more frequently. He had been staring into the middle distance, thinking about Sandra, thinking how monstrous his even
being here
seemed in retrospect. But he
had
come here, he
was
sitting across the Saarinen desk from her, and he
had
confided his desire…to a total stranger.

An exquisite, disturbing stranger he had heard about only in whispers.

“I’m sorry. I still can’t believe I’m here saying these things to you. The whole idea is so crazy…but I’m so damned miserable…”

“I understand perfectly, Mr. Romb. You can be completely open with me.” She didn’t say it, but the unspoken next sentence was certainly,
You can trust me; I’m a doctor
.

“But it works?” He felt like a fool pressing her; she had already said it worked, had said it several times.

“Oh, it works very well indeed. As well as snake venom. Same principle, really.” She steepled incredibly slim fingers. He watched her hands in fascination.

“I’m not sure I understand that.”

“Consider,” Dr. D’arqueAngel said, “if you were to be injected with infinitesimal doses of, say, the venom of the black mamba–
Dendroaspis polylepis
–every other day for a year or two, with the dosage increasing just slightly with each inoculation; by the end of the second year if you were on a visit to, say, Zaire, and you were struck by a black mamba, instead of almost instant paralysis and death within seconds, you might become very ill…but you wouldn’t die. Your tolerance level would have been built up so your system would fight the venom. Do you understand the parallel to my treatments?”

He understood. But could not believe it.

“And that’s how you’ll keep me from dying? You’ll give me periodic injections of snake venom?”

She smiled, a mysterious and entrancing smile. “No, Mr. Romb: I’ll give you periodic injections of death.”

“That’s unbelievable. It’s impossible. Look: I’m going to do it, I’m going to have you give me the treatments; no matter what; I’m just about at the end of my sanity, so I’m
going
to do it. No matter what. But tell me the truth. If it’s a con job, if it’s just craziness, then tell me. I know that sounds loony, but even if you tell me it’s all a made-up story, I’ll make the deal and I’ll pay you what you ask.” He heard himself speaking and knew it sounded hysterical, lunatic, stupid in the extreme. And he knew he couldn’t stop, knew the thin line of concern that ran vertically between his eyebrows when he was on the edge this way was there now. But he couldn’t help himself.

“Mr. Romb,” she said, getting up and coming around the desk, “it’s real, it works, I won’t tell you it’s a myth, because I can do it. You can trust me.”

And she leaned down and took his face in her exquisite hands and she brought her incredible face to his and she kissed him deeply.

He felt his stomach drop away. He was light-headed and unable to breathe. For the first time in his life he felt blood pulsing in parts of his body he’d never even known had the power to send back such messages to his spinning brain. The touch of her mouth on his had stunned and awed him.

And instantly the thought of being kissed by Sandra flooded in on him.

He tried to speak, to ask her why she had done that, why she had withered his soul with a kiss, this unbelievably beautiful woman with the power, the power, the
power
to stave off death! But only sounds came. His hands moved in aimless patterns. Sounds, dumb sounds, helpless and lost.

“It works,” she said again, whispering the words close to his face. The scent of her skin was warm and swift and strange.

“But…”

He wanted to ask her how it was possible, how she could put death in a needle and send it into someone’s bloodstream.

She seemed to sense what he wanted to know. But she didn’t answer the unspoken question. She held his face and she stared at him and then she said, “It doesn’t matter how I’ve done it. Can you understand that? If you’ve come to me, and told me what you wouldn’t dare tell anyone else, then you’ll never need to know
how
I’ve done it. Just that I’ve done it, and no one else can duplicate it. I’ve found the secret. The process that distills the essence of death, to fractionate it, to create the antitoxin for death.”

Her touch was cool and his skin beneath her fingers felt as though it was being carbonated, shot full of minute bubbles of energy. “Who are you?” he whispered, barely able to control his trembling.

“I’m your doctor,” she said. “Shall we begin your treatments now?” And she kissed him forever once more.

When he pulled into the driveway and the gates swung closed behind the Bentley, he saw Sandra standing on the portico, waiting for him. The usual nausea welled up in him. She was always waiting for him. And it was in moments like these, with her loving arms merely instants away from his flesh, that he despised himself most.

He knew he had no one to blame for his nightmare but himself. A lifetime of believing merely being pretty and being smooth entitled him to ease and plenty had put him where he was. Pretty, he had met Sandra and pursued her. Smooth, he had known every thrust and vector of the dance of desire, and he had caught her. Pretty, he had conned his way into the family; and smooth, he had conned his way into her father’s corporation. Smoothly, prettily, he had worked his way up in the superstructure of an international conglomerate and–patiently–which entailed considerable amounts of both qualities–he had waited for the old man to die. Now he was fully and wholly in the burning center of the nightmare. No less smooth, no less pretty than he had ever been. But now in the molten core of hell, burning endlessly.

He had everything patience and several other qualities could buy. Wealth, position, security, freedom, material possessions…and Sandra.

Sandra, who loved him. More than life itself, Sandra
loved
him. First thing in the morning, himself mirrored in her eyes, she loved him. Last thing at night, the smoke of undiminished passion clouding those loving eyes, she adored him the more. Endless touches, caresses, murmurings of ardor; and always the paralyzing, certain knowledge that tomorrow she would love him a little more than today; and the day after tomorrow more than the day before. Certain, paralyzing knowledge: as one with the venom of the black mamba: instant paralysis, death within seconds.

The idea of death became the only sanity in his lunatic nightmare burning hell of an existence.

Sandra’s death.

By poison. By gunshot. By swift sweet steel. By fire, incinerated, reduced to ashes and the ashes scattered over the private lake that formed the eastern border of the family estate.

All this, as Sandra grew in his windshield eye, and he grew in the eyes of his loving wife.

And one thing more. The touch of the lips of Dr. D’arqueAngel. Still with him, even as the serum she had injected into his arm was with him.

It would, she had said, produce a small death. He need not worry.

Before he could step out of the Bentley, Sandra was there, opening the door, leaning in to kiss him. His stomach did not drop away; it merely heaved. He did not grow light-headed nor was his breathing impaired. A splitting headache
did
make itself felt, however; and as for breath, hers made him ill. The touch of her mouth on his was an abomination.

And the worst part was that there was absolutely nothing wrong with her. She was fine, she was just simply fine, he
knew
that. It was all of his own making, all the abhorrence.
And he wanted her dead
. No less than dead. Gone. Dead. Out of his life. Out of the world. Dead.

“Where have you been, darling? I’ve been waiting for hours. I called the Elliots and begged off. It would’ve been dreary anyhow. Wouldn’t you much rather just spend a quiet, cozy evening at home with me…?”

Dead! Only one thought, a frozen bit of survival in the molten core of hell. Dead!

And in bed that night, as she moved beneath him, demanding her daily ration of his life-essence, she heard him murmur, as if from far away, “Who are you?” and she put her moist mouth beside his oddly warm and distressingly warm ear and she said, “I’m your wife.”

And in the night, he had a small heart attack; the shortest, tiniest punch of a thrombosis. But he did not die. It was a little death.

The office of Dr. D’arqueAngel was dimly lit from hidden banks of rose-tinted lights behind the moldings of the walls. He lay on her wide couch and ran his left hand down the length of her pale body, learning for just a moment the mythic contours and timeless silkiness.

In the seven months of his treatments, he had become drunk with the sight and touch of her. There was always an injection, of course; but there was also–always–the hour of insensate passion. And he had grown stronger as the months went by. More strongly able to sustain the life with Sandra–against the time when she would be gone. And stronger in his relationship with the doctor. She said very little, but her need for his body had hardly required vocalizing. Now he felt like his old self again: dominant with women, secure, smooth. And extremely pretty.

She moved out from under his hand and stood up. The sight of her, stretching in the semidarkness, sent waves of expectation through him. But in a moment, even though she was naked, he knew her professional manner was in the ascendant.

“Your system is quite remarkable, Charles.”

“Oh? And how is that?”

“You’ve come along at almost twice the normal speed of past patients. I’d say your tolerance is at the level of others who have been under treatment for thirteen months.”