Porcelain white china skin, the way I imagined it in my fantasies. Dark eyes and long brunette hair under a white shawl of the most delicate and precious lace. Her body slim and lovely and perfect, profiled in a tight white dress that might have been a wedding gown or the courting costume of an aristocrat. White high heels that must have been five or six inches tall. Legs, reed-slim and long and heart-stoppingly sexy, crossed just so. And a dainty hand, reaching out of the shadows to touch me as I move closer.
"Hi," she says, and the love I feel for her is so real and all-pervasive and staggering that I can only say «Wow» and expel the breath I've been holding since I'd first seen her.
Such a theatrical moment. The light seems planned just so, to flatter and spotlight her, yet keep her shadowy and mysterious all at the same time. A princess sitting on the darkest edge of this circle of radiant light, she pulls me into its nimbus with an urgent whisper.
"I've waited so long to kiss you." Her voice, the voice of ultimate sex, sears me with its heat. She pulls my face down to hers. Like a teenager, I close my eyes and kiss that perfection and my heart feels like it will explode. Time has no meaning and reality can not be conceptualized.
A deft hand of fine china reaches for the zipper of my trousers and she takes my masculinity in her small, delicate fingers and leans forward and it is then that the shawl pulls back just enough so that, for the first time, I see all of her face.
A harlequin face. Only half a face. The other half is a skull — a slick, desperate screaming nightmare of a thousand sweat-soaked sheets. A latex mask of a skull, of hospital crocodiles man-eating swampscream tortured skin pulled tight werewolf gladiator wounds hell in the flaming river rubbery skin pulled thing stretched awful hideous oh my God I'm sorry baby inhuman red raw bleeding oh Jesus in Heaven skull pulled tight oh Christ it's okay, darlin', really, you're going to be all right, tell Daddy all about it, and the frightening apparition of the skull mask half-woman smiles up at me as the mask must have done a time or two before and whispers those hot, icy, agonizing hurt words, words that do not belong to a voice of Velvet, a voice made to whisper words of love and sex and beauty and stiffening erection-causing lust.
"I was in a fire," she says. Yes, I can see that. Where is my pulled-together shit now when I can only back up, back-pedaling like an idiot, turning, wanting to run, wanting to scream.
Maybe she says don't leave. Or let's have a cup of Maxwell House. Or maybe she tells me how many grafts had been done before they got that tight, rubbery thing over half the skull, before they got those hideous red things stretched across the face, before they made the other half scream across the white bone.
Or maybe she says, "I'm lucky to be alive," and I'm going oh baby oh my God bless you honey I'm sorry I'm so sorry but I'm fucking LEAVING you know I can't handle it. And maybe she says something about how it's like that all down the right side or the left side and would I like to "SEE IT YOU DIRTY CHICKENSHIT SONOFABITCH!"
Her voice is slashing out at me as I run for the car. "Come on back!" she shrieks at me from the intercom. "COME BACK AND I'LL SHOW YOU ALL OF IT, YOU NO-GOOD COCKSUCKER." The words, hard-edged as bad acid, stabbing me as I run.
"WHAT A FUNNY JOKE ON BOTH OF US," she screams from her throne, because she had seen me too.
And that is how I leave her, in her state of grace, the remorseless legacy of a God who will not be questioned. I go home to pray for us, for myself, of course, and for Our Lady Patricia.
THE MODEL
Robert Block
Before I begin this story, I must tell you that I don't believe a word of it.
If I did, I'd be just as crazy as the man who told it to me, and he's in the asylum.
There are times, though, when I wonder. But that's something you'll have to decide for yourself.
About the man in the asylum — let's call him George Milbank. Age thirty-two, according to the records, but he looked older; balding, running to fat, with a reedy voice and a facial tic that made me a little uptight watching him. But he didn't act or sound like a weirdo.
"And I'm not," he said, as we sat there in his room on the afternoon of my visit. "That's why Dr. Stern wanted you to see me, isn't it?"
"What do you mean?" I was playing it cool.
"Doc told me who you were, and I know the kind of stuff you write. If you're looking for material —»
"I didn't say that."
"Don't worry, I'm glad to talk to you. I've been wanting to talk to someone for a long time. Someone who'll do more than just put down what I say in a case history and file it away. They've got me filed away now and they're never going to let me out of here, but somebody should know the truth. I don't care if you write it up as a story, just so you don't make me out bananas. Because I'm going to tell it like it is, so help me God. If there is a God. That's what worries me — I mean, what kind of a God would create someone like Vilma?"
That's when I became conscious of his facial tic, and it disturbed me. He noticed my reaction and shook his head. "Don't take my word for it," he said. "Just look at the women in the magazine ads. High-fashion models, you know the type? Tall, thin, all arms and legs, with no bust. And those high cheekbones, the big eyes, the face frozen in that snotty don't-touch-me look.
"I guess that's what got to me. Just as it was supposed to. I took Vilma's look as a challenge." His face twitched again.
"You don't like women, do you?" I said.
"You're putting me on." For the first and only time he grinned. "Man, you're talking to one of the biggest womanizers in the business!" Then the grin faded. "At least I was, until I met Vilma.
"It all came together on a cruise ship — the Morland, one of these big new Scandinavian jobs built for the Caribbean package tours. Nine ports in two weeks, conducted shore trips to all the exotic native clipjoints.
"But I was aboard for business, not pleasure. McKay-Phipps, the ad agency I worked for, pitched Apex Camera a campaign featuring full-page color spreads in the fashion magazines. You know the setup — big, arty shots of a model posed against tropical resort backgrounds with just a few lines of snob-appeal copy below. She travels in style. Her outfit — a Countess D'Or original. Her camera — an Apex. That kind of crud, right?
"Okay, it was their money and who the hell am I to say how they throw it around? Besides, it wasn't even one of my accounts. But Ben Sanders, the exec who handled it, went down the tube with a heart attack just three days before sailing, and I got nailed for the assignment.
"I didn't know diddly about the high-fashion rag business or cameras either, but no problem. The D'Or people sent along Pat Grigsby, their top design consultant, to take charge of the wardrobe end. And I had Smitty Lane handling the actual shooting. He's one of the best in the business, and he got everything lined up before we left — worked out a complete schedule of what shots we'd take and where, checked out times and locations, wired ahead for clearances and firmed-up the arrangements. All I had to do was come along for the ride and see that everyone showed up at the right place at the right time.
"So on the face of it I was home free. Or away from home free. There are worse things than two weeks on a West Indies cruise in February with all expenses paid. The ship was brand new, with a dozen top-deck staterooms, and they'd booked one for each of us. None of those converted broomcloset cabins, and if we wanted we could have our meals served in and skip the first-sitting hassle in the dining room.
"But you don't give a damn about my vacation, and neither did I. Because it turned out to be a real downer.
"Like I said, the Morland hit nine ports in two weeks, and we were scheduled to do our thing in every one of them. Smitty wanted to shoot with natural light, so that meant we had to be on location and ready for action by 11 a.m. Since most of the spots he'd picked out were resorts halfway across the various islands, we had to haul out of the sack before seven, grab a fast continental breakfast, and drag all the wardrobe and equipment onto a chartered bus by eight. You ever ride a 1959 VW minibus over a stretch of rough back country road in steambath temperatures and humidity? It's the original bad trip.