Violet’s voice calls to me from inside the cabin. “You’re not done yet, are you?”
I walk back inside and Violet draws the curtains behind me. She flops onto the bed and waits for me. “No,” I say, “in the light.” I jerk the curtains open and sunlight streams over Violet’s naked body. I go to her. We nibble and kiss and bite. She climbs atop me, but I push her rudely off. I flip her over. Grasp her hips and pull them upward. Push her head into the pillow and hold it there. Her cries are muffled, and I cannot tell if they are in protest or delight. Nor do I care. I enter her violently, unnaturally.
We hike a portion of the Appalachian Trail. Violet, sore from our encounter yesterday, has great difficulty navigating some of the rockier terrain. In fact, she was still bleeding from my rambunctiousness only this morning. I take a secret pride in this. Pride in my manhood for injuring her so. I catch her looking at me, and the expression on her face is a mixture of respect and fear. I suspect she wonders who I am. Wonders who is this stranger who brutalized her. I don’t blame her.
We come to a magnificent waterfall and riverbed with large flat rocks scattered invitingly in the stream. We have not passed any other hikers in over an hour, so I begin to shuck off my clothes. I find myself wanting to be naked all of the time. Violet has to be coaxed, but soon enough she joins me, naked, in the water.
We sun ourselves on a massive flat rock in the middle of the stream. The water rushes coldly by us as we grow dry and warm in the fall sun. I close my eyes and visit my old friend, the dark. Violet rubs her hand lightly over my chest, scratches her nails playfully over my nipples, and asks, “What are you thinking about?” I don’t answer. She trails her hand across my stomach, rakes her nails through my pubic hair, tangling it.
“Adam, tell me what you’re thinking about.”
“About how much I love the sun.”
She grasps my penis, manipulates it, awakens it.
“Do you think about your wife?”
This is a scene that she has assuredly read or seen countless times. Get your lover to discuss his wife while you excite him sexually. I am sure the romance racks at bookstands across the country are filled to overflowing with such scenes. No matter, I will let her play it out, as I play out my own.
She gauges the thickness and rigidity of my erection, the barometer of her powers.
“Do you think about Rachel?”
“No, she’s in the dark.”
She works me with her hands. I see now that this is her power, her way of controlling me just as Rachel controls me. I allow her the control. I think about my brother and the girl I loved a thousand summers ago. And the circle closes.
Her hands move with a speed and grace that seem incompatible. “What else?” she asks me. “What else about Rachel?” She coaxes me just as she coaxes my erect penis to give up its gift.
I blurt out the words just before the semen splashes across my stomach in a stream of white light.
“I think she’d be better off dead.”
That night, our last, I rage against Violet. My contempt for her knows no bounds. On the pretext of sexual exploration, she agrees to allow me to live out my fantasies. I tie her wrists and ankles to the four posts of the bed. I use her body for my own selfish ends. My every animal desire is given over to hate and lust. I commit unspeakable acts. I degrade her. In every way the imagination allows, I degrade her.
Afterward, I untie her. Her feet and hands are blue and icy from lack of circulation. She crawls to a cold dirty corner and weeps quietly.
We leave the mountain as we came, in silence. My thoughts are private and not to be shared with the likes of her. There is no longer any need to formally end the relationship. It is over. In her simple mind, I know she wonders. Questions if she is somehow at fault, at fault for my unspeakable behavior. I know that she wonders if this is not what she deserves. On some collective level, she feels that she somehow deserves such treatment. I know these things, because my brother taught me well. I can already feel Violet pulling away; my actions overrode even the hardiest of abuse syndromes. I know she will never contact me again. I made sure of that last night.
A billboard looms ahead. SEE LINVILLE CAVERNS. It calls to me, a cheap roadside attraction, but I know I must see it. Its dark recesses will present me with an opportunity to test my newfound self.
We pull into the dusty lot. Violet refuses to get out of the car, but I insist; I will continue to have this power over her until I allow her to let herself be free of me. I must go in, but I can’t go in alone. My transformation is not yet complete enough for that. I still need a comforting hand in the dark places. And once I no longer need even that, I will need nothing. More important, I will need nobody. A tacit agreement passes between us. She will go in, but this is the last experience we will ever share together.
I spot a line of tourists waiting outside the massive oak doors that have been built into the side of Linville Mountain. We get in line behind a gray-haired couple wearing matching red satin jackets emblazoned with the head of a toothy bulldog. The man, his hair clipped in a military-fashion flattop, puffs on a briarwood pipe. The pungently sweet tobacco smoke wafts from his mouth and wisps about on the breeze. The woman, gray with a face of folksy friendliness, turns to us, smiles, and turns back around. She turns again and gives Violet an appraising look.
“Honey, didn’t you bring a sweater or such? It’s dark and damp in there. They say it stays fifty-two degrees in there year round.”
Violet shakes her head. “No, I didn’t know. I didn’t bring anything.”
The woman turns to her husband. “Herbert, give her your jacket. She looks cold.” Herbert shrugs off his jacket, the red satin iridescent in the autumn sun.
Violet shakes her head. “No, really, please, I…”
I think I know what Violet is feeling. Dirty and ashamed. She does not want to sully this man’s jacket with her shame-ridden body.
“Yes, you can, and you certainly will,” Mrs. Herbert insists.
Herbert himself jumps in with, “I’d rather a beautiful young woman such as yourself wore it than an old man like me. Besides, I’m hot-blooded, right, honey?” He pats his wife’s behind, and Mrs. Herbert rolls her eyes comically.
Violet cringes away from the proffered jacket. I take it from Herbert’s hand and drape it across Violet’s shoulders, knowing that the weight of the garment of this good man sickens her. Smiling at Herbert, I offer my left hand for him to shake. It is an old trick my likewise left-handed brother taught me. A left-handed person must make certain concessions to the right-handed world, but when instigating a handshake, if you offer the other party your left hand, it confuses them and gives you a subtle psychological edge. Herbert does not disappoint me. He stares nonplussed at my hand, feeling, as I know, foolish and awkward. Finally, he grasps my hand in both of his. I have, through the ritual of the male handshake, reduced his role to that of an old blind woman.
“Thank you, Herbert, Mrs. Herbert,” I say.
Mrs. Herbert beams at me. “You two make such a nice couple. Are you married?”
I now hate her as much as I hate him. Her smile is crooked and her teeth stained. They are everything I will never be. They are everything that was stolen from me. They are commonplace and ordinary. They are normalcy. Already nervous about entering the cave, I find that I want to hurt this old woman. I want to make her feel bad.
“My wife recently passed away,” I say, reveling in it. “Violet’s been a good friend to me.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t be. She was a real bitch.”
Mrs. Herbert’s face immediately loses its former openness. The folksy friendliness is gone. The Herberts turn away from us and no longer acknowledge our presence. They will not have the nerve to ask for the jacket back after the tour.