When he was naked, she said, “Now lie back.”
He lay back. Lila stood with her legs slightly spread and a single nylon stocking in her hand.
“Put your hands behind your head.” Her voice had softened.
“What?”
“Put your hands behind your head. It’s a little game.”
He wanted to protest, but couldn’t. He put his hands behind his head, aware of his exposure.
“You keep them there because I’m going to give you something you won’t get from little Miss Becky Tolland.”
He braced for her to hit him, but instead she draped the nylon across his legs and dragged it across his feet back and forth so that it tickled. Then she trailed it up one leg to his thigh then down the other leg to his feet then back up the other leg. He had no idea what she was doing, but the tickling sensation was not unpleasant. He felt himself begin to relax.
“Does that feel good?”
He nodded.
“Good,” she cooed and dragged the stocking across his belly then down his thigh and across to the other thigh then back. She did that a few times, and with each the circle got smaller and smaller. “Do you think I’m pretty?”
Her eyes had that askew cast, but they did not look wild. He nodded.
“I didn’t hear you.”
“Yes, very pretty.”
“Prettier than her?” The stocking crossed just below his genitals and he flinched in reflex.
“Yes. Beautiful.” His body was beginning to hum.
“Good. Close your eyes.”
He closed his eyes and felt the stocking brush his penis like a feathery snake. He opened them a slit and watched it crawl down his legs then up again, and he spread his legs a bit to let it pass. He felt himself grow erect and brought his hands down to cover himself.
“No. Hands back where they were. And no eyes.”
He closed his eyes as she continued teasing him with the stocking.
“Did Miss Becky ever do this to you?”
“No.”
“Or this?”
He groaned in pleasure as she curled the stocking around him like fingers. “No.”
“You going to see her again?”
“No. I promise. I swear…”
“Good.”
As she continued to move the stocking up and down his body, curling around him, he arched and squirmed to catch it, trying to anticipate its passes and teasing curls, trying to lure it to wrap itself around his shaft and bring him to full pleasure. For several long liquid moments as he undulated in place, all he concentrated on was that stocking. That black shiny lace-top stocking. He wanted it. He wanted it. No, he wanted Lila.
He opened his eyes. “Please,” he begged. “Please.”
She leaned over and planted her mouth on his and gave him a long tongue-twining kiss. “What, my little Beauty Boy?” she whispered, pulling up.
He looked at her wide deep gorgeous eyes, her breasts, and the red pubic mesh that crawled toward him like a crab. He thrust himself high into the air and groaned.
“Would you like to make love to me?”
“Yes. Yes.”
God! If she dragged that stocking across him one more time he’d explode. “Pleaaaaaaase.”
She pulled the stocking across the head of his penis, then coiled it around the shaft. His breath caught in his throat as he felt himself about to come. And at just the moment he erupted, she pulled the stocking into a stranglehold.
He let out a cry of agony as if something inside had ruptured.
Lila stood over him, her face again the demon. “Dirty girl,” she said, and shot out of the room and slammed the door behind her.
51
Steve had that dream again.
There was no buildup, no foreplay. He was straddling the woman as she lay naked on her bed, her red hair spread under her like brushfire. Digging into his palms were the opposite ends of a black nylon that he pulled with all his might, causing the loop to cut into her neck, making her face swell grotesquely under him, her nose seeming to inflate toward his, her eyes bulging to the popping point, her mouth emitting a high, shrill, jingling sound.
The PDA ringing from his night table shocked him awake.
And he said a silent prayer that he was awake. He had begun to hate the thought of going to bed, of risking having that dream again. It made him fear for his own sanity—fear that he was the person in those nightmares. Fear that those dreams weren’t imaginings but memory.
Through the dark he could make out that the digital clock said 4:24, and his first thought was Dana: something was wrong. He was instantly alert.
“Hey, Steve,” Captain Reardon said. “Sorry to wake you at this hour, but I’ve got some bad news. Pendergast’s dead.”
“What?”
“Committed suicide. The guards found him about an hour ago. He tore off the sleeve of his shirt and wrapped it around his neck and the bed frame.”
“Christ! Where the hell was the guard?”
“He’d just finished his rounds and must have gone out for a coffee or something. The last time he had checked, he was sound asleep.”
“I don’t believe this.”
“Yeah, a tough break. But it might be his way of confessing without having to face the music and the prospect of life in prison.”
“Yeah.”
“I know you thought he was the wrong man. But the way I look at it, if he wasn’t capable of rising above the shit, he was in too deep.”
“Did he leave a note?”
“No.”
“It just doesn’t feel right.”
“Nothing does at four in the morning. But on the bright side, maybe it vindicates Neil and gets us out of the tree.”
“Yeah.”
“Unit meeting’s at nine. Go back to sleep, and when you wake up things will make sense.”
“We can only hope.”
Part II
52
SUMMER 1975
Becky was right. He had become Lila’s puppy.
But Becky didn’t know the half of it. Lila in her craziness had twisted mother love into something unrecognizable. Spread over the years she had done it with so gentle a madness that it was as addictive as it was scary. She had romanced him, brought him places he could not imagine. Made him her boy toy. As the years passed, he became certain that it was wrong, that she had betrayed a trust, leaving him confused and ashamed.
But that night with the stocking had done something to him, put some kind of hex on him. He didn’t think it was medical—a crushed urethra, ruptured organ, something physical. No, that stocking was like a tourniquet around his libido. He could still become aroused by sexual fantasies. But he could not for some time sustain the arousal to achieve pleasure. Lila had ruined that.
At the same time, she had left him with a dark and impossible longing he could do nothing about. So, he followed her around, hoping she’d snap her fingers and reverse the spell. But that wouldn’t happen. That fancy lace stocking had become a punishing noose that had left him suspended between wanting her and fearing her, loving her and loathing her. At times wishing he were dead. Wishing she were dead.
Likewise for years she had spoiled all other females for him, making herself his gold standard. As everybody said, she was a classic beauty—a woman blessed with a goddess face. As a boy growing up, he had taken her appearance for granted, never having thought of her as having or not having beauty. Young kids didn’t think in those terms. Not until his teen years did he become aware of Lila’s specialness.
It was also when he began to suspect that his father was right—that she was crazy. Her mood swings were so violent and unpredictable, her demons so tangible, her suffering so consuming, that he could only guess at whatever abuse she had grown up with. Although his father was never physically hurtful, it was an angry and unfulfilling marriage—and one that had scarred him.