Totentanz (10 page)

But that hadn't stopped him from acting that
way around his parents. He despised them, in a way. They were rich
and weak. His father was president of the largest bank in town, his
mother a social butterfly who headed the various committees that
ladies of her sort were always creating or chairing. The funny part
about it all, to his mind, was that they had never tried to blame
him for their misfortune in child-rearing; they had always blamed
themselves for producing a son neither good-looking nor conversant
in the social graces they supposed their social standing required.
Pup was big and awkward, with an unathletic body and a
non-intellectual mind. The way his parents continually flogged
themselves around him, and their sad looks and half-veiled
allusions to "weak genes," only made him hate them more. At an
early age he had learned of their imagined failure in him, and he
had quickly discovered how to make them pay for it. They paid in
money and in continual mental anguish; and Pup found that by merely
pointing or throwing a fit, he could have whatever he wanted. For
them, it was easier to give in than to try to understand. For Pup,
that was just fine.

But now he was furious because they had said
they didn't know if he could be the first one in the new amusement
park when it opened.

"You mean,” Pup had shouted at his spotlessly
dressed father, "that you don't control the damn thing?"

"No,” came the reply.

"Well. I want to be first in there anyway,”
Pup had said. And then he had stalked to his room, slammed the door
and begun to brood.

When Pup brooded, he did nasty things. Once,
when he was four years old, his parents had told him that he had to
get rid of a frog he had captured from Mailer's Pond and was
keeping in a jar by his bed. They said it was dirty, that it would
die in the house and that he would have to get rid of it because
they knew he wouldn't take care of it. Pup went into a rage. Before
he went to bed, he screwed the lid of the jar on tight, plugging up
the air holes he had put in it, and in the morning he had flushed
the dead frog down the toilet. When he got home from school that
day, he screamed and pounded on the floor, accusing his mother of
destroying the frog while he was away. "You killed it. How could
you!” he wailed, and his mother had stood by helpless, unable to
understand what had happened to the frog and unable to calm down
her son. In the end they had bought him a dog.

And a curious thing happened with that dog.
Pup found himself becoming attached to it. And now, nearly ten
years later, his dog Sprinkles (so named because the night his
father had brought the puppy home he had, with his typical lack of
grace outside of business, held the dog so clumsily that it fell
from his arms and into a bag of groceries, spilling a canister of
chocolate sprinkles all over the floor; when his mother began to
scream, Pup had only laughed, watching the puppy lick up the tiny
candies. He had made sure the dog got all the sprinkles he wanted,
and later, when the dog was sick in his room, he had cleaned up the
mess himself and not let anyone else know about it) was the only
creature outside of his friends Jack and Reggie whom he
tolerated.

"Sprinkles," he called, and the dog climbed
ponderously up onto the bed and laid its head in his lap. There
had been a time when the dog could have leaped onto the bed, but
that was past. He was getting old, and when he ran, he sometimes
panted. When he had gotten sick the year before, his mother had
timidly hinted that maybe it was best not to let the vet do the
small operation on him that was needed—that maybe another dog, a
new one, would be better. After a few days of Pup's spite, she had
begun to think differently and the dog had been delivered home,
patched but alive. There hadn't been any talk about another dog
after that.

The problem now, though, was what to do about
the new amusement park. Pup wanted badly to be the first through
the gates when it opened; wanted to parade himself and his two
friends through all the exhibits and rides, maybe even get a
private showing of all the equipment from the manager. But if his
father was unable to arrange this, other plans had to be devised.
Pup burned with desire for the place; he had been watching it
through his telescope all day.

"Stay, Sprinkles," he said, moving to the
window and swiveling the scope back toward the amusement park. He
had wheedled the instrument out of his parents after seeing the
stars one night through Jack's, and he had used it for nothing but
spying on other people and watching downtown from his upper window.
Through it, he had once seen Lavinia Crawford undress. He had
missed nothing, and ever since then, he had had the scope pointed
in the direction of her house four blocks away.

It was getting late in the day, but there was
still plenty of light to see by. He slipped in a
higher-magnification eyepiece and focused on the top of the Ferris
wheel, jutting like a big eye over the row houses between himself
and the park. The top seat of the Ferris wheel looked as though it
was swaying back and forth. . . .

He gasped at what he saw and for a moment
pulled his eye away from the scope. He regained his composure and
looked through the instrument again. For a second he saw nothing
but the swaying side of the red-enameled seat, a silver stripe
running around its upper edge, and then—yes, again he saw
something. A bare arm above the edge, then a long, slender, naked
back, and then the hint of a breast and then Lavinia Crawford
turned full-face toward him. She seemed to look straight at him as
she stood up in the car completely naked, her mouth open and thrown
back, panting, her breasts high and rounded just as they were that
day he had seen her undress. Both her hands were down between her
legs, the fingers playing in and out. . . .

And then, all at once, she was gone. She
slipped, snakelike, down into the open car, and Pup could not find
her anymore. He realized he was breathing fast, and he quickly
swiveled the telescope away from the Ferris wheel and to Lavinia's
house. The bedroom window was open, as it normally was, but there
was no one there. Pup angled the scope back to the top of the
Ferris wheel. But now he saw only the red seat swaying gently back
and forth, back and forth. . . .

He kept the scope trained on the seat for
five full minutes but there was nothing else to see. Only that
unnatural swinging of the car. He could have sworn it was Lavinia
Crawford and a chill ran up his back as he remembered how she had
seemed to look straight at him. Of course she couldn't have been,
but that was the way it had looked.

Systematically he swept the instrument over
all the rest of the amusement park that he could see and found
nothing of interest. It looked more like an attraction closed for
the winter than something getting ready to open soon.

One last time Pup swung the barrel of the
scope up to the top of the Ferris wheel. His heart skipped a beat.
There, once more, was Lavinia Crawford, looking into his eyepiece,
a languid smile on her face. Pup knew she was looking at him: there
was nothing else for her to be looking at. And then once again she
was gone, sliding down into the car. One long, nude leg appeared,
slim foot flexing, and then this too disappeared.

"Come on, Sprinkles." Pup said, pushing the
telescope out of his way and picking up his golf jacket. The old
dog looked at him uncomprehendingly, but when he spied Pup turning
up his collar, he bounded from the bed and gave a weak yelp. "Not
so loud." Pup cautioned, and they made their way quietly down the
stairs to the kitchen.

He could hear the
television going full blast in the living room: by now his mother
would be half-asleep in front of it, watching
Live at Five
. He stopped at the
kitchen counter to pull a few Oreos from the open box. He put one
in his mouth as he moved to the back door. Sprinkles walked happily
beside him, half-climbing up his leg until Pup bent down and shoved
a cookie in his mouth.

It was chillier than he had thought it would
be outside, and he tightened the jacket zipper under his neck. He
broke into a trot. Squinting, he could just see the top of the
Ferris wheel over the rooftops.

"Coming, Lavinia," he said, smiling to
himself.

He still couldn't believe
she had been beckoning for him. But why not? He'd once had the
impression she knew he was watching her through her bedroom window
when he'd heard her remark to one of her checkout-counter
girlfriends in the supermarket that someone was "always trying to
cop a look at me." When she'd said it, she'd turned full-face on
him with that same half-pouting look she'd had when he saw her
through the telescope, and he had fumbled on the checkout line with
the
National Enquirer
until she looked away.

So why not? Who the hell knew how hard up she
was? There was talk that she was loose; the paperboy, Billy
Squiers, had told Pup that once she had tried to lure him into the
house, when he went to collect the weekly fee, saying, "You have a
minute? I think there's something wrong with my television." She
had been wearing only a robe, and not much of that, Squiers had
said. When Pup had asked him why he hadn't gone in, Billy had
blustered something about having a lot of homework to do and then
shut up. That was why Pup got so pissed at Jack and Reggie—they
just got embarrassed like Billy Squiers whenever he tried to talk
about girls. Well, this time they didn't know what they were
missing.

Without realizing it, he had quickened his
step to the point that Sprinkles was half a block behind. "Come on,
boy," Pup called, waiting patiently while the dog caught up. He
bent down, giving him the last Oreo, and Sprinkles waved his tail
happily. Pup tried to slow his gait to accommodate the old dog.

As they reached the long black fence of the
park. Sprinkles trotted beside him. Suddenly Pup hesitated.

"Well, now what?" he said out loud. He felt
the same hesitation he had felt before in front of this fence. He
almost wished Jack and Reggie were with him. Although there was no
way he could share his knowledge about Lavinia with them, he valued
their coolness in situations like this. He could always ditch them
after they got inside, but at least they would help him get in if
he told them how important it was.

He pulled his collar even tighter around his
neck and saw that Sprinkles was reacting to the same feeling that
was washing over him. Fear. Maybe it wasn't a good idea after all
to go snooping around in here, at least not now. Maybe Lavinia
Crawford wasn't worth it. Then again, maybe she was.

Ignoring Sprinkles' low growl, he hoisted
himself halfway up the iron fence and immediately dropped back
down. He saw a place where someone had made marks on the fence a
little farther down the line. There were good footholds there, and
it suddenly occurred to him with a rush of anticipation that maybe
that was how Lavinia had gotten in.

In a moment he was up and over. Sprinkles was
whining on the other side, and Pup thought of leaving him there,
saying something like, “Good boy, I'll be right back," but the sad
look on the dog's face made him change his mind. And the chill in
the air made him want to have the dog with him. After some
searching, he found a spot where the bottom of the iron grating was
not quite flush with the earth, and by widening and deepening the
depression at the bottom, he was able to pull Sprinkles underneath.
The dog resisted. Pup cursed him as, half in and half out, the dog
decided to use his hind end to scrabble back out. "Goddammit, come
on!" Pup shouted and then, with a heave, the dog was inside. After
a furtive look at the outside world, it brushed up against him.

Part of Pup wanted to do a little snooping,
but another part wanted to get right to the Ferris wheel and see if
Lavinia Crawford was really there. And then there was a third part
that made him feel uneasy just to be in the place.

Soon the third part grew stronger. Every step
Pup took magnified his fear. Before long he was moving as though
someone were pushing him from behind. He had the feeling that he
was being watched through a telescope.

Sprinkles felt it too. The dog was glued to
Pup's side, making angry noises in its throat and looking around
furtively. The hair on its back stood nearly straight up. Every
time Pup tried to brush the dog away, it pushed right back to his
leg.

And then Pup was at the base of the Ferris
wheel. It loomed above, bigger even than the one in the park he'd
made his father take him to once when he was younger, a park that
had boasted the largest Ferris wheel within three hundred
miles.

And there, at the top, gently swaying still,
was the red car that held Lavinia Crawford.

Vaguely Pup wondered about how she had gotten
up there, and why. But these thoughts were pushed aside by his
mounting excitement. There was a warm feeling spreading under his
belt. Who cared how she got there? If she really wanted him, she
could have him. He had read enough and seen enough of the books his
father kept hidden under the storage shelves in the basement to
know what he had to do.

"Lavinia?" he called tentatively in an
embarrassed whisper.

The car stopped rocking. A thin, naked figure
stood up and looked down at him. He wished he had his binoculars
with him, but he could have sworn she had blown him a kiss. She
leaned over, her breasts clearly visible, and then she stepped back
and was lost to view.

A hidden engine whirred into motion, and the
Ferris wheel began, ponderously, to turn. The car with Lavinia in
it crawled down toward him.

Sprinkles reared back on his haunches,
growling, but Pup ignored him. His eyes were transfixed on the red
carriage arcing inevitably toward him. The warmth below his belt
became a tight, hard excitement.