“I thought you disapproved.”
“No. It was a step, an important one. I am glad you enjoyed yourself.”
“I was always at the phone from two-thirty to three. If you wanted me, I was available.”
“Why do you justify yourself? I have not criticized you.”
“You seem hostile.”
“Oh?”
“Perhaps I am mistaken.”
“Indeed, I think you must be, Jan.”
He sits beside me on the couch, drinks his coffee, pours himself another cup. I sense and share his tension. I look at the hairs on the backs of his hands. Of course he wears no rings on his fingers, no jewelry of any sort.
“Jan.”
“Yes?”
“You won’t see the boys anymore.”
“If they call—”
“They won’t call.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
“But—”
“I know.”
Fear, in the actual physical form of a chill, is upon me. I see David and Arnold broken and dead, their heads at impossible angles, their arms and legs broken, as if dropped from a great height.
“What have you done to them?”
“Nothing.”
“Then how can you say — I don’t understand. I just don’t understand.”
“You had a pleasant week with them. Be satisfied with that. There was no future in it, Jan.”
“Future?”
He gets to his feet, walks to the fire, warms his hands over the coals. He turns, looks intently at me.
“I like your dress.”
“Thank you.”
“I haven’t seen it before.”
“It’s new. I had to buy a lot of new things. I’ve lost weight.”
“You look very nice.”
“Thank you.”
“Take the dress off.”
I am not even surprised by the casual abruptness of the order. He might have been asking me to pour him another cup of coffee. I stand, strip. He looks at me appraisingly.
“Yes, you have lost weight. You looked good before, but I think you look better now. Leaner, trimmer. No extra flesh.”
“My breasts are smaller.”
“Yes.”
“Do you like them as well?”
He looks at me as if the question is inane. He tells me to sit down again. I sit and reach for my cup of coffee, drink it down, pour another.
“You bought new clothes.”
“Yes.”
“Charged them to your husband.”
“Yes.”
“I see.” He fixes his eyes on mine, holds my gaze to his. It is uncanny how he does this.
“I believe it is time for you to make a change, Jan. Time for a change in your life. I don’t think you should be able to depend on your husband anymore. You have some money of your own. Live on it.”
“And when it’s gone?”
He does not seem to have heard the question. “You have your purse with you? Let me have your credit cards, please. All of them, please. Anything that ties you to him.”
“Nothing ties me to Howard.”
“Then why retain the ropes?”
I go through the purse searching for credit cards. Here’s an oil company card, here’s Diner’s Club, here’s Master Charge, here’s Bloomingdale’s, here’s Saks, here’s Lord & Taylor—
He places them one by one on the coal fire. The cardboard ones burn, the plastic ones melt. They all go.
“You will see no one unless I tell you to. You will stay in your apartment as much as possible or walk to the park if you are not here. Do not speak to people.”
“Why?”
“You may go now.”
“Don’t you want to—”
“Go now.”
He is obviously out of his tree. What other explanation is there? I read somewhere once that certain types of maniacs have extremely strong and compelling personalities, and you find yourself following them through hell before you finally realize that they are certifiable. Does Eric require more explanation than that?
What does he want with me? Sometimes I have the feeling that when he’s all done with me, when he has made me jump through the last of the hoops, when my possibilities are quite exhausted, he’ll run a spit through me and roast me over the coals and literally consume me, hair and teeth and bones and all, so that there is nothing left of me.
Quel ridiculous. He’d do no such thing. When he’s bored with me he’ll just sell me to North African white slavers, that’s all. And let me end my days in some filthy Arab whorehouse.
He must never find out about this diary.
April 12
I’ve been calling David and Arnold more or less constantly. No answer. I’m a little worried, which I suppose is not rational, but what is rational and what isn’t and how does anybody tell the difference? I had to take an antidepressant yesterday. I had been promising myself not to take them, not to need them, and for a while this was an easy promise to keep. No one feels compelled to take antidepressants when she’s walking on air. I wasn’t depressed and I didn’t need them, but yesterday I had to take one, and it didn’t do all that I hoped it would, I was still down.
Rational. Is it rational that he should know everything I do? Does he have spies? Detectives? Or is he some comic-book hero who can see through walls?
I hope they’re all right. I don’t know how I know this, but I’m positive he has killed people. And that he’s capable of anything.
He owns me.
Lock, stock and barrel. He really does.
Oh, crap. The hell he does. If he owned me this book would not exist. I wouldn’t be writing these entries. They preserve my independence. You could even say that they constitute my independence. What independence I’ve got.
The thing this diary does besides is to keep me together. Not keep me sane, although maybe it helps do that, or helps toward that end, I don’t know. But I keep being different people and my life keeps finding new forms and this book, “Dear Diary,” is the only constant.
April 13
They have disappeared into thin air.
This isn’t funny! I keep starting to laugh, but God, there’s nothing funny about it. Nothing at all. They have absolutely fucking disappeared from the face of the fucking earth, and the obscenity is there for dramatic effect, not that the circumstances would not be sufficiently dramatic without such emphasis.
I went to their apartments. First Arnold, then David. I sensed that this was not what my keeper would have me do, but I decided to hell with him, because I kept calling them and getting no answer and I kept imagining the worst — what else? — and finally I said the hell with it and went over there.
And they have moved. Both of them, to parts unknown. No forwarding address. Nada.
Now of course it is perfectly possible that this had nothing to do with me. Or with Eric. That they simply folded their tents like Arabs and disappeared into the night. It is possible, and I do not believe it for a moment.
God, what did he do to them? Snap his fingers? Utter a magic incantation?
I wonder why I let him destroy my charge cards. I have been thinking about that scene, how theatrical it was and at the same time how ridiculous it was. The stench of the plastic cards melting on the coal fire! Why did he want to do this, and why did I let him?
I have to go there now. He just called, and when the strings are jiggled the puppet must dance. Au revoir.
April 19
It is like going to college. A tutorial course in sexual technique. He has been teaching me the most extraordinary things. Oriental accomplishments, bits of business I never believed people actually did.