Chapter 3
Maria's memories had not focussed themselves until the Mayor and Jerry walked in. First, she had thought of asking them for help, telling them about Arlene, asking them to kick Arlene out of town. But only too soon, her memories pointed out to her why she couldn't do it.
Yes, Jim had gone to war and, to fill Maria's loneliness, Arlene had made frequent appearances. Maria had never known about such things. She had never even heard of them, but Arlene was a facile teacher. Arlene met her back of Dad's barn - with the moon creaming the whole world-and Maria stared into a Di-ana-esque which glowed with white violence stolen from the moon.
She stared down at Arlene's long hands, and Arlene motioned for her to follow down an old cow path and through dark pines. Maria, as a child, had often smelled their piney, pungent aroma, but now she shivered when she inhaled it. Shadows circled crazily and Arlene walked swiftly through them, creating strange motions with her hands and arms.
It seemed as if Arlene were stroking herself and diverting her own flesh, but it could have been a trick of the shadows. Arlene walked through alternating black and white, and when the light cut across her face and body, it revealed to Maria sheer beauty and sheer horror. For it seemed in that white-black world, as if Arlene's body were ready to explode. Maria expected the moon to ignite it and send dark pieces of Arlene Harte flashing into orbit.
Maria wanted to grab hold of a rough branch and save herself by holding on, but she couldn't. Arlene led, and Maria followed to a sheer granite cliff that overlooked a wide, ever-expanding valley, where yellow lights glowed up in rectangular silence from a dozen farms. Maria was not so much scared as shocked. She had expected the lights to be friendly ones. They were not. They shone coldly, severely, and Arlene stood there looking down at them, searching for something in the night.
Arlene's silence provoked Maria, but then Arlene turned and spoke with a husky voice that whipped the night into a wild, white froth.
"Give me your hand, Maria! Here, darling, take hold of my zipper. Help me off with this stupid dress. We have to do it for him. You know that, don't you? We have to work hard to get him back to you."
Arlene stepped close to Maria, and Maria smelled the hard insistent thrust of Arlene's perfume. It was a violent, raw, uncontrolled smell. Maria found herself staring up into a white oval face, in which Arlene's eyes burned colder than ever. They melted the night with their lust and passion, and Arlene's wide, curved eyebrows stood like twin arches over twin icy fires.
Arlene's long nose was delicate, perfectly chiseled, seemed to Maria's way of thinking as perfect in beauty as that of a goddess cut from marble. Maria didn't dare look down at the curved, supple body, but she knew in those summer nights that Arlene's green-silk dress looked black as carbon. The moon flowed down across Arlene's shoulders, and the air trembled with the moon's endless milky ejaculations.
Even as Maria kept on silently staring, Arlene's hand reached out. Fingers smooth as stone coaxed and cupped Maria's left breast. Maria felt their chill as they pressed through her thin cotton blouse, and then the chill was transformed into sudden heat, and Arlene's mouth jerked down over her left nipple.
Maria shivered with fear, yet she couldn't force the other woman away. She didn't like it, yet she felt the dark stain of another deeper fear. She believed Arlene. She believed what Arlene read out of the melted lead, she believed Arlene could save Jim. She had nothing else. She had to believe her.
Arlene must have known it, must always have known it. Arlene used clever words. She was skilled with her movements with her hands, and Maria felt Arlene pulling on her superstition, working with it, playing with it, moulding it to her purpose.
Maria stood there, feeling Arlene's hands on her body, hearing words emerging from Arlene's facile mouth. They flowed out into the night like swift, liquid arrows. "It's not wrong to be naked in the moonlight. You know that, Maria. You know I must use my power. I must help Jim, and I must read the signs right."
"But why do we have to-"
"Because, darling, we must."
Maria stared into the distance, didn't look any longer. But on those nights, whipped, driven by Arlene's insistence, she had crawled into a small, sheltered cave. In there, she lit a blow torch and melted a small pot of lead. She felt the enormous heat, saw it glaring off the walls of the cave. She saw the dull glow of raw fire in the pot, scented the acrid smell of hot metal.
She had carried the pot out to Arlene, not wanting to see any more, but forced into it. She had started, and she had to continue. Out there, Arlene stood utterly naked, waiting for her. Arlene's hands moved with the quick, jerky movements of rubbing the moon into her body. She spread white silver softly around the jet-black area at the fork of her hips, then rubbed the moon down between her legs. The sight frightened Maria more than ever, but Arlene watched her coming.
She stopped her actions, sighed so loud the noise carried far into the night. Arlene grabbed the melted lead and poured it out into a bucket of water. White steam exploded. The magic was beginning, growing fast and hard with the swiftly congealing metal, and Maria grew impatient as she watched.
The metal ran silver. It lay like a raw wound on the ground, and Arlene knelt over it to read mysterious, magic signs which would tell of Jim's fate.
"Yes, Maria, he suffers. Today a bullet killed his buddy (and when later Maria got his letter, she knew then Arlene had told the truth), but Jim is all right. He misses you much. Others are killed, but he will come back to you."
"When?"
"Soon, my dear."
"And nothing else is wrong?" Maria asked the question blindly, not of herself, but as if the words had been forced from her mouth. Then she waited breathlessly, not breathing at all. She felt only the raw moon falling cold and silver over them. She saw the moonlight, like molten metal filling the valley under the mountain, and Arlene still knelt naked over the ugly awful shape that lay twisted on the ground. Her back stretched taut, with her vertebrae reptilian prominent along its length, and the moon stroked her round shoulders, the roundness of her hips, as Arlene went on examining some twist in the lead.
What did it mean?
What, Maria kept asking herself, as she saw Arlene's black hair distort itself into curls of ink and flow like ink over her naked arms. Her large breasts hung down in pointed, luminous globes, her body looked cold and hard as the marble statues in a nearby cemetery. Maria watched Arlene poke at the lead and awaited an answer, grew more and more impatient.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing is wrong. But wait! I think I do see something. Maria, you must make a sacrifice. You must do something immediately or he will never return. Great danger walks behind him. It crawls like a huge skeleton. It raises gigantic hands, and it looks like death. Come, my dear, give me your hand. We must fight it. We'll do it together. We must, we must, we must..."
Maria had tried. She had tried to tear herself away from those spidery hands. She had tried to hurl herself free. She had felt utter revulsion. Something had coiled up, trembled, exploded inside her body, as she kept trying to escape.
She wanted to run away, but Arlene held her. Arlene's voice was soothing her, Arlene's hand was running down her skirt zipper. Maria's skirt was slipping away. Arlene's hands were moving down with the band of her panties, rolling them off her hips. Maria felt the cold air, and the soft warmth of Arlene's fingers moving into a softness only Jim had known. She felt it, felt disgust, yet at the same time, molten lava flowed across her soul.
Her body shook and trembled with a raw aching need for relief. She couldn't stand it. She had to turn and run, yet she could only stand with her knees trembling violently together, blocking Arlene's approach. She felt the other woman thrusting her knees farther and farther apart. She felt Arlene's hard marble lips brushing down across her shoulders. She felt Arlene's hot tongue sucking at her throat, going down to her breasts.
She felt her own nipples jutting out, popping out, doing violent things, as if they didn't want to react, but had to. Her nipples wanted and didn't want to be tongued with such red-hot violence. Her nerves exploded. She couldn't stand it, and that softness, centering in her femininity, throbbed with cruel pain.
"Hold still, darling, you're slipping away." Words bubbled like foam out of Arlene's mouth, Arlene's tongue pushed more and more agony into her body.
"I can't!"
"Of course, you can!"
The lips moved cold as the moon away from her center, and Maria looked down. She watched Arlene's head move like a giant black spider up the paper-white space of her own naked body. Maria felt cold and dead as silver crystals in a moonscape scene, yet she had no relief. "I can't."
"But, darling, you believe."
Yes, Maria had believed. She made that her life, and it seemed true that Jim had escaped so narrowly, so many times. Maria had to accept, had to take Arlene's magic. She had to bring Jim back to her. She had to know him again, had to know what it felt like to be a real woman, sleeping with a real man.
Behind them lay a blanket Arlene pulled her down upon it. Maria felt herself falling, felt herself being pulled into a pit which grew deeper and deeper, and she tried not to see, tried not to look, at her own actions. But she saw flesh, her own flesh, and it mixed together with Arlene's, and it looked like scraps of white paper, ripped out of a book and thrown carelessly aside on a black carpet.
Arlene placed herself atop her, moved across her, pressed her down. Arlene bent down out of the night and moved her lips across Maria's mouth. Arlene's tongue pinned her, and Maria felt the sudden intense thundering and rising of her own agony, and she knew she had to burst. She had to let herself go, feeling herself spinning off into fragrant milky-white moonlight and forgetting everything else.
She hated it, yet she expected and waited for that ultimate feeling. She felt Arlene's hot, wild, wet surging tongue, and she rolled her hips in awful agony. Her knees flew apart spasmodically, leaving her wide open. The moon hung rigid in her face, and she felt it spattering Arlene's taut, unreal body.
Stark white rays flickered between them. The moon orbited inside her and she had her relief, looking into its inscrutable silver face, but feeling Arlene. Their bodies burned with white heat, then flared up in a single silver flame, and when it was over, she watched Arlene roll away without making one further sound.
Arlene lay rigid and still in the moonlight, and Maria sat up shivering in the chill night air, feeling disgusted, yet somehow relieved, and she watched the tight space of Arlene's closed eyelids. The moon shadowed the white thin skin and made that space look like two white, dead eyes on a drowned person.
Maria couldn't help it after that. She had to pray. She fought against herself, but it always came and happened again. In those months, with the moon tugging at every essence and nerve in her body, she returned to the cliff again and again. Arlene kept it up for a year, toyed with her, used her and, in the winter, after she had performed the dark, magic ceremony of reading the lead, she did something else.
Maria felt Arlene's ice cold, naked body, and her lips were ice cold, and she came to her, possessing her in new ways. Arlene's tongue touched hidden springs in Maria's body, and her nerves wanted to scream and kick as Arlene consummated their lesbian act in the utter darkness of the cave.
It was worse there, for sometimes Arlene pulled her ear tight, blew into it and then laughed at her reaction and aversion. "Maria, you're a stupid fool. It doesn't matter, don't you see? We're doing it for him. We're bringing him back safe to you. He's your man. You need him, and we're bringing him back... safe! We're making our powerful magic for Jim... for Jim!"
Arlene's hot tongue moved out from Arlene's cold lips like a thin hot snake, then it coiled up inside her, making her explode, bringing the softness into a raw state of ready, churning agony. Maria clawed then at her own breasts, ending her eternal need with more and more pain.
Once Maria ran away and went to New York. She escaped in the great mass of buildings on the East Side, but Arlene came and found her. "Darling, I miss you. I need you. Why did you run away?"
"I can't stand you! I can't stand what we do."
"Not even this...?"
Arlene's magic never stopped. It flourished like a strange, potent, darkling plant. Arlene spun velvet webs with her beauty, and she held Maria locked in the silver-steel spider web of her alabaster thighs. Maria screamed with pain, and nobody heard. And sometimes the pain was delicious, but mostly it was torment.
"I can't stand it!" she yelled at Arlene, and she wept sometimes, feeling lost and hurt. She felt disgusted with herself. She hated the female-inspired bursting of her passion. She hated Arlene, but sometimes she felt betrayed by the other woman, for she was not Arlene's only satisfaction.
After a month's search, Arlene found twin youths of twenty-one. Maria couldn't imagine why Arlene wanted them, but after a week of Arlene's torture, it happened. Maria watched Arlene tormenting them, playing one against the other, laughing with fiendish pleasure when, a few weeks later, they both committed suicide.
Maria had felt guilty about it. She caught hold of her friend then and looked at her accusingly. She insisted on an answer. "Why did you make them do it?"
"Do what, my dear?"
"Kill themselves?"
"But I didn't! Hell, kid, if they wanted to have a chicken race with each other, each in his own identical car, each doing ninety on a narrow dirt road, is that my fault?" Arlene shrugged her lovely shoulders, dismissing their death as lightly as if she'd done nothing worse than drop a paper napkin at a drive-in.
"Damn you! They were both in love with you. Don't you know they loved you, Arlene? And since they both couldn't have you, they had no way out."
"But they could have had me! I offered myself, darling."
"Not normally, you didn't. They couldn't have you. You know that."
"Pooh! That's a damn lie. That's not me. I didn't kill them."
They stood in the middle of a deserted dirt road, near the farm of Maria's father, and Arlene's laugh rang out across the stone fence. It tumbled like a crazy thing into the hemlocks and pines, and that laugh twisted with the sound of crackling crumbling steel.
"Maria!"
She shook her head, slowly, dully, and she heard Jim's voice. Arlene was laughing with a crazy sound, and Maria wondered why, but then she understood. The Mayor must have told a joke, and it must have been slightly dirty, for Arlene couldn't control herself. "Man," she said, "that's a good one!"
The Mayor laughed himself. "I wish I had a woman like you. If I did, I'd be telling jokes all the time. But, listen, folks, we've got to go. If you need anything, just holler."
The Mayor followed Jerry out the door, and the three of them were left alone. Arlene was still chuckling, and Jim remained silent. Maria couldn't stop staring at him. He sat there, real enough. He held onto the counter, real enough. He wore a conservative grey suit, summer weight. His shirt collar looked much too tight, but his shoulders seemed strong, and they jutted through the thin suit material.
But Maria wondered if he were strong. What had gone wrong with him? With them together? She tried to imagine her Jim living with Arlene, caught by Arlene and then resisting her. How could he? How could he live with her for ten years, caught in that steel web of Arlene's steel body? What kept him going? Why wasn't he dead like the stupid fly? Against those glittering poisoned webs, which Arlene spun so carelessly, how could one man ever fight for so long.
"Jim, lover," Arlene purred, turning towards him, "What's wrong with you? Don't you like a good dirty joke any more? You used to know enough of them."
"You didn't have to egg him on, not here."
"Why not? Ya scared, huh? Ya afraid somebody will find you out - find us out? That they'll learn what Maria used to do?"
That comment slapped Maria like an open hand, and she stepped close to the counter. She had to get to Jim, talk to him at least once. She faced him fully for the first time since the break that had split their lives wide open years before.
"Please, Jim," she said, "tell me something. Be true about it. Are you stronger than she is -are you?" She found herself searching his grey-green eyes, pleading with him. She was looking for strength in that New England jaw.
"Look," she went on, "can you break away from her? Please, Jim, think it over. Could you come back to me and forget her?"
She waited for Jim to answer, but his lips pressed in a thin, nervous line, and his hands showed white at the knuckles. He didn't answer, but Arlene spoke up quickly, interrupting, and pulled at her husband's arm.
"Go ahead, Jim, tell her. Tell her the truth. Tell her you ain't got no guts, no guts at all."
Maria glanced from one to the other, and still Jim didn't say anything, and Arlene sat there with her right thumb planted on the edge of her coffee cup, and she was stroking its smooth pink edge with obscene sensuality.
"Jim, please...!"
But he didn't look at her. He swung around to Arlene, and a low growl came from his throat. "You want to leave us alone for awhile? You want me to be with her, tell her the real truth? Is that what you want?"
"Why not, dear boy?" Arlene raised her hand from the cup, and she laughed, and the sound of her laughter was tight and ugly.
Jim heard it. He seemed to be fascinated by it, like a rodent charmed by the shrill descending scream of a hawk. The skin over his face drew into a tight, grim mask. Maria watched that familiar face, and she could only think of a rubber glove drawn tight over the right hand of an operating surgeon. Jim swung away from Arlene, shrugged his shoulders, then pushed his coffee cup away noisily. Maria thought he was going to stand up and run out of there, but he didn't.
He didn't look at anybody in particular, but his words boomed out loud and clear. Maria wondered if he were yelling at her, but she knew he wasn't.
"You damn, no-good bitch!"
"Thanks, lover, I like you too." Arlene lifted her coffee cup, twirled it deliberately for a second, then held it toward Maria.
"Could I have a refill, please?"
Maria wanted to spit into it more than anything else, but she went back and got the pyrex pot and filled Arlene's cup. As she did so, she felt the electric tension of Arlene's eyes violently searching her face.
"You sure, you want him back, my dear? What can he do for you? He's impotent... helpless. He doesn't make love any more. Maria, he sits there and looks at dirty pictures, just like when he was a little boy. And he dreams, Maria. You know what he dreams about? He dreams of a girl in a brook when he was a boy, and the girl is naked, and she looks like you. All wet, golden, soft and warm..."
"Shut up, Arlene!"
Maria couldn't believe it. Jim had yelled at Arlene four times, and she watched his face. Pain, torture, a great need and a great desire erupted in his eyes. His forehead wrinkled abruptly, and Maria wanted him back. She knew it then... she still loved him. She could save him, and he could save her. But then, she wondered suddenly, how? Just how? Was there any possible point of return?
Arlene gestured at him, her white hand flat, empty. "Don't you see it, Maria? He's a boy. He's not a man. He's a fish or something. He's got all twisted and turned up inside, and he's nothing. Nothing any more but a big can of garbage."
Maria tried to speak, but she saw Arlene's lips curl back, and she hesitated. Arlene's lips curled all the way back, and Maria thought she would hiss like a snake, but her words made only the same continuing whisper of sound.
"Do you want a big stinking hunk of nothing? Pure crap? Look, I'll be fair with you. I'll tell you what. You come on over to our motel tonight! About ten? You can try him and see. You want to do that? You dare do that, Maria?"