There were nineteen installments in the Containment Report, the name which John ascribed to the traveling trunk. There was a cake, still inside its pink baker’s box, that read HAPPY BIRTHDAY SADIE in hardened pink sugar letters. The cake was frosted in thick white icing. No candles but there was a red sugary drawing of a clown hovering above the pink words. One corner of the cake had been slightly crushed in but other than that it was in perfect condition. There was a monogrammed light blue handkerchief stiffened with a goodly quantity of dried blood; the monogram was AKI and the blood still damp when John retrieved it. An envelope that had been mailed, read and discarded, all in Parsonsville, contained a letter from a lover who could not keep up the lie any longer. The letter was written to someone named JD and was signed Lynn. There were three shopping lists, one balled-up photograph from a pornographic magazine, a broken cell phone, a used condom, a wallet that at first seemed empty but, upon closer examination, had a secret compartment containing a snapshot of a face contorted by fright. There was a receipt from the twenty-four-hour drugstore that listed twenty-one items purchased by a shopper at a register manned by Andrew H and a nearly full pack of Camel cigarettes.
Finally there was a small black velvet sack containing a jury-rigged syringe made from a rubber-bulbed eyedropper and a hypodermic needle, a small plastic bag of white powder, a real silver spoon, four cotton balls and a box of wooden matches.
Every night, when he was alone, John studied his finds. He had a student in the IT department copy the contents of the journal and letter into a program that separated out the words as symbols and numbered them. There were one hundred sixty-three thousand two hundred forty-one words crammed into BOG’s diary.
Over the next four months John studied the materials and annotated his finds with sparing use of public records or the Internet. He interpreted the data and gave it meaning primarily by using the skills that any historians or anthropologists would have at their disposal.
“I want to tell you some things,” Carlinda said to John on the Monday after his final foray into the downtown public trash receptacle.
Drinking port at his downstairs table, they had not yet kissed or even touched.
“Talk,” John said
“Not like this.”
“Like what then?”
“Naked in the bed,” she said, “with me on top of you and you inside me.”
“Why?”
“I’ll tell you upstairs.”
It was difficult at first but they were finally able to achieve the position Carlinda required. She was breathing deeply and he felt distracted — the Containment Report was sitting on the window ledge with two padlocks keeping it secure.
“Arnold only knows how to make love one way,” she said.
John could feel his heart beating.
“You’re getting harder,” she told him.
“Uh,” John replied.
“He can only do missionary or he goes limp and if I talk while we’re doing it he loses concentration. He’s got a big one but it doesn’t get hard like yours is right now.”
“I don’t know what to say,” John muttered.
“The reason I like you is that your dick talks for you. I never knew it before but I like that in a man.”
“I thought you had other lovers.”
“I never went all the way with them because Arnold would find out and come back into my life.
“Last Wednesday I told him that if he wanted sex he’d have to let me chain him down to the bed. I used handcuffs from the new sex shop in town to shackle his wrists and ankles to the metal frame under his mattress.”
“What did you do then?” John asked shifting his position slightly.
“Stay still, Professor. I just want to feel it without you moving around.”
“What did you do then?” he asked again.
“I tortured him with pleasure until he could do it the way I wanted. He complained that the cuffs were too tight so I made them tighter. He said he couldn’t do it but when I got on top of him he could...” At that moment Carlinda began to shudder and moan. When John moved with her she slapped him. He stopped moving and she continued with her orgasm.
When she was finished she said, “I told him that any other night we could do what he wanted but on Wednesdays he had to let me have my way.”
“And what did he say?”
“Nothing.”
In the morning, alone again, John took digital photographs of the contents of his Containment Report trunk. These he e-mailed to Talia Friendly, his IT specialist. She would create the slide shows he wanted.
That afternoon he drove out to the Spark City Bar, nursed a club soda until 7:45 then went over to see Senta.
When she opened the door he walked past her into the room and sat on the bed.
“Do you have to go to the toilet?” she asked.
“No. I went in the bar before I came over.”
“Do you want to take off your clothes?”
“Not now, maybe later.”
Senta dragged a pine chair from the table over to the bed and sat down facing her john, John.
“What’s wrong, baby?”
“Nothing,” he said, gazing at the floor.
The dirty pink carpet was wall-to-wall and had probably been red at one time. He hadn’t remembered the rug. This simple fact disturbed him. He was an observer. He should know everything about every place he’d been.
Reaching over, Senta extricated his left hand from the right.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
He shook his head.
She smiled and asked, “Are you breaking up with me?”
In unison they brought all four of their hands together.
“I have sex with you because I want to,” he said.
“Well duh.”
“No, Senta, you don’t understand. I have sex with you because I want to but I come here because I need, I need you.”
“You need to have sex.”
“No,” John said.
“You’re hurting me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, letting go.
“What are you telling me, John?”
“I get pretty drunk with you sometimes right?”
“Yeah. We both drink too much. But I like it with you because you talk about things I never thought of before.”
“And I like you because you’re always here in this room when I come calling.” Senta smiled and then grinned.
“What?” John asked.
“When I was a little girl me and my sister would stay with my grandmother for the summers. She had a cabin on Lake Spofford up in New Hampshire. There was a picture of granddad on the mantel above the fireplace. He died before we were born so grandma’d tell us stories about him. She used to say about when he’d come calling. That’s what they called dating back then. Do you think you’re dating me?”
“I love you, Senta.”
She frowned and he took her hands again.
“I’m powerless,” he said. “I can’t ask you for anything but this room. It’s the only place where I don’t feel like I’m manipulating the world around me: here and when I’m doing my work.”
“Are you drunk?” Senta asked.
“No. I haven’t had a drink in a month or more.”
“Why are you saying all this to me?”
“Wednesday after next I’m supposed to deliver a paper for my department. My future at the university depends on how they respond to it.”
“You’re ready though, right?”
“I am. But they won’t understand.”