“God…” Boyle begged into the pattern of the wallpaper. “Please God, somebody help me…” But the prayers were no more fruitful than his struggles. He was pinned against the wall like a butterfly spread on cork, about to be pierced through. He closed his eyes, tears of frustration running down his cheeks. The assailant left off his hold on Boyle’s head and pressed his violation home. Boyle refused to cry out. The pain he felt was not the equal of his shame.
Better perhaps that Dooley remained comatose; that this humiliation be done and finished unwitnessed.
“Stop,” he murmured into the wall, not to his attacker but to his body, urging it not to find pleasure in this outrage. But his nerve endings were treacherous; they caught fire from the assault. Beneath the stabbing agony some unforgivable part of him rose to the occasion.
On the stairs, Dooley hauled himself to his feet. His lumbar region, which had been weak since the car accident the previous Christmas, had given out almost as soon as the wild man had sprung him in the hall. Now, as he descended the stairs, the least motion caused excruciating agonies. Crippled with pain he stumbled to the bottom of the stairs and looked, amazed, across the hallway. Could this be Boyle — he the supercilious, he the rising man, being pummeled like a street kid in need of dope money? The sight transfixed Dooley for several seconds before he unhinged his eyes and swung them down to the truncheon on the mat. He moved cautiously, but the wild man was too occupied with the deflowering to notice him.
Jerome was listening to Boyle’s heart. It was a loud, seductive beat, and with every thrust into the man it seemed to get louder. He wanted it: the heat of it, the life of it. His hand moved around to Boyle’s chest and dug at his flesh.
“Give me your heart,” he said. It was like a line from one of the songs.
Boyle screamed into the wall as his attacker mauled his chest. He’d seen photographs of the woman at the laboratories; the open wound of her torso was lightning-clear in his mind’s eye.
Now the maniac intended the same atrocity. Give me your heart. Panicked to the edge of his sanity he found new stamina and began to fight afresh, reaching around and clawing at the man’s torso. Nothing — not even the bloody loss of hair from his scalp — broke the rhythm of his thrusts, however. In extremis, Boyle attempted to insinuate one of his hands between his body and the wall and reach between his legs to unman the bastard. As he did so, Dooley attacked, delivering a hail of truncheon blows upon the man’s head. The diversion gave Boyle precious leeway. He pressed hard against the wall. The man, his grip on Boyle’s chest slick with blood, lost his hold.
Again, Boyle pushed. This time he managed to shrug the man off entirely. The bodies disengaged. Boyle turned, bleeding but in no danger, and watched Dooley follow the man across the hallway, beating at his greasy blond head. He made little attempt to protect himself, however. His burning eyes (Boyle had never understood the physical accuracy of that image until now) were still on the object of his affections.
“Kill him!” Boyle said quietly as the man grinned — grinned! — through the blows. “Break every bone in his body!”
Even if Dooley, hobbled as he was, had been in any fit state to obey the imperative, he had no chance to do so. His berating was interrupted by a voice from down the hallway. A woman had emerged from the flat Boyle had come though. She too had been a victim of this marauder, to judge by her state. But Dooley’s entry into the house had clearly distracted her molester before he could do serious damage.
“Arrest him!” she said, pointing at the leering man. “He tried to rape me!” Dooley closed in to take possession of the prisoner, but Jerome had other intentions. He put his hand in Dooley’s face and pushed him back against the front door. The coconut mat slid from under him; he all but fell. By the time he’d regained his balance Jerome was up and away.
Boyle made a wretched attempt to stop him, but the tatters of his trousers were wrapped about his lower legs and Jerome, fleet-footed, was soon half-way up the stairs.
“Call for help,” Boyle ordered Dooley. “And make it quick.” Dooley nodded and opened the front door.
“Is there any way out from upstairs?” Boyle demanded of Mrs. Morrisey. She shook her head. “Then we’ve got the bastard trapped, haven’t we?” he said. “Go on, Dooley!” Dooley hobbled away down the path. “And you,” he said to the woman, “fetch something in the way of weaponry. Anything solid.” The woman nodded and returned the way she’d dome, leaving Boyle slumped beside the open door. A soft breeze cooled the sweat on his face. At the car outside Dooley was calling up reinforcements.
All too soon, Boyle thought, the cars would be here, and the man upstairs would be hauled away to give his testimony. There would be no opportunity for revenge once he was in custody. The law would take its placid course, and he, the victim, would only be a bystander. If he was ever to salvage the ruins of his manhood, now was the time. If he didn’t — if he languished here, his bowels on fire — he would never shrug off the horror he felt at his body’s betrayal. He must act now — must beat the grin off his ravisher’s face once and for all — or else live in selfdisgust until memory failed him.
The choice was no choice at all. Without further debate, he got up from his squatting position and began up the stairs. As he reached the half-landing he realized he hadn’t brought a weapon with him. He knew, however, that if he descended again he’d lose all momentum.
Prepared, in that moment, to dir if necessary, he headed on up.
There was only one door on the top landing. Through it came the sound of a radio.
Downstairs, in the safety of the hall, he heard Dooley come in to tell him that the call had been made, only to break off in mid-announcement. Ignoring the distraction, Boyle stepped into the flat.
There was nobody there. It took Boyle a few moments only to check the kitchen, the tiny bathroom and the living room. All were deserted. He returned to the bathroom, the window of which was open, and put his head out. The drop to the grass of the garden below was quite manageable. There was an imprint in the ground of the man’s body. He had leaped. And gone.
Boyle cursed his tardiness and hung his head. A trickle of heat ran down the inside of his leg. In the next room, the love songs played on.
For Jerome, there was no forgetfulness, not this time. The encounter with Mrs. Morrisey, which had been interrupted by Dooley, and the episode with Boyle that had followed, had all merely served to fan the fire in him. Now, by the light of those flames, he saw clearly what crimes he had committed. He remembered with horrible clarity the laboratory, the injection, the monkeys, the blood. The acts he recalled, however (and there were many), woke no sense of sinfulness in him. All moral consequence, all shame or remorse, was burned out by the fire that was even now licking his flesh to new enthusiasms.
He took refuge in a quiet cul-de-sac to make himself presentable. The clothes he had managed to snatch before making his escape were motley but would serve to keep him from attracting unwelcome attention. As he buttoned himself up — his body seeming to strain from its covering as if resentful of being concealed — he tried to control the holocaust that raged between his ears. But the flames wouldn’t be dampened. His every fiber seemed alive to the flux and flow of the world around him. The marshaled trees along the road, the wall at his back, the very paving stones beneath his bare feet were catching a spark from him and burning now with their own fire. He grinned to see the conflagration spread. The world, in its every eager particular, grinned back.