As much as I love and desire her, I must have a respite now and then — a night off to recharge my batteries, as it were. Tonight when she comes I’ll ask her to grant me this small favor, for both our benefits.
Her answer was no. A sweet and gentle no.
“I can’t get enough of you,” she said. “Don’t you feel the same about me anymore?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then don’t deny me. If you deny me, I might not come to you again.”
“Don’t say that! I couldn’t bear it.”
She gathers me to her again. And once more I drown in her warm soft wetness.
So tired now. Weak. I need sleep desperately, but even in the daytime I can’t seem to do more than doze for a few minutes. Can’t seem to eat anything, either; I have no appetite. My body looks and feels shrunken, shriveled, like that of a very old man.
I could not get out of bed at all yesterday or this morning. I can only lie here wide awake and wait for the night.
All day I found myself hoping Angelique would not come. But of course she does. And it seems not to matter to her that when she slips naked into my bed, she finds herself clutching a desiccated shell of a man.
“Not tonight,” I say to her in a voice that croaks like a frog’s, “please, not again tonight,” but she only laughs and reaches out her hand to touch me. I try to will myself not to respond, but I have no resistance. Her seductive powers are amazing. In an instant I am as ready for her as I was the first night.
When she joins her body to mine she laughs again, but this time the laughter is neither soft nor throaty with passion. It’s strange, shrill, a kind of hideous triumphant sound that fills me with ice instead of heat, terror instead of love. And I realize that I am not blessed but cursed.
“Lie still,” she says. “I’m almost done.”
I have no choice — I lie still.
“Now turn on the lamp. I want you to see me this last time.”
I have just enough strength left to turn on the lamp. In its pale glow as she writhes above me, the flawless beauty of her face shimmers, fragments, falls away like a crumbling mask, and when I see what lies beneath I scream... I scream... I scream... but my screams have no voice.
Quickly, hungrily, the thing that is not and never was Angelique finishes draining me dry.
Out of the Depths
He came tumbling out of the sea, dark and misshapen, like a being that was not human. A creature from the depths; or a jumbee, the evil spirit of West Indian superstition. Fanciful thoughts, and Shea was not a fanciful woman. But on this strange, wild night nothing seemed real or explicable.
At first, with the moon hidden behind the running scud of clouds, she’d seen him as a blob of flotsam on a breaking wave. The squall earlier had left the sea rough and the swells out toward the reef were high, their crests stripped of spume by the wind. The angry surf threw him onto the strip of beach, dragged him back again; another wave flung him up a little farther. The moon reappeared then, bathing sea and beach and rocks in the kind of frost-white shine you found only in the Caribbean. Not flotsam — something alive. She saw his arms extend, splayed fingers dig into the sand to hold himself against the backward pull of the sea. Saw him raise a smallish head above a massive, deformed torso, then squirm weakly toward the nearest jut of rock. Another wave shoved him the last few feet. He clung to the rock, lying motionless with the surf foaming around him.
Out of the depths, she thought.
The irony made her shiver, draw the collar of her coat more tightly around her neck. She lifted her gaze again to the rocky peninsula farther south. Windflaw Point, where the undertow off its tiny beach was the most treacherous on the island. It had taken her almost an hour to marshal her courage to the point where she was ready — almost ready — to walk out there and into the ocean. Into the depths. Now...
Massive clouds sealed off the moon again. In the heavy darkness Shea could just make him out, still lying motionless on the fine coral sand. Unconscious? Dead? I ought to go down there, she thought. But she could not seem to lift herself out of the chair.
After several minutes he moved again: dark shape rising to hands and knees, then trying to stand. Three tries before he was able to keep his legs from collapsing under him. He stood swaying, as if gathering strength; finally staggered onto the path that led up through rocks and sea grape. Toward the house. Toward her.
On another night she would have felt any number of emotions by this time: surprise, bewilderment, curiosity, concern. But not on this night. There was a numbness in her mind, like the numbness in her body from the cold wind. It was as if she were dreaming, sitting there on the open terrace — as if she’d fallen asleep hours ago, before the clouds began to pile up at sunset and the sky turned the color of a blood bruise.
A new storm was making up. Hammering northern this time, from the look of the sky. The wind had shifted, coming out of the northeast now; the clouds were bloated and simmering in that direction and the air had a charged quality. Unless the wind shifted again soon, the rest of the night would be even wilder.
Briefly the clouds released the moon. In its white glare she saw him plodding closer, limping, almost dragging his left leg. A man, of course — just a man. And not deformed: what had made him seem that way was the life jacket fastened around his upper body. She remembered the lights of a freighter or tanker she had seen passing on the horizon just after nightfall, ahead of the squall. Had he gone overboard from that somehow?
He had reached the garden, was making his way past the flamboyant trees and the thick clusters of frangipani. Heading toward the garden door and the kitchen; she’d left the lights on in there and the jalousies open. It was the lights that had drawn him here, like a beacon that could be seen a long distance out to sea.
A good thing she’d left them on or not? She didn’t want him here, a cast up stranger, hurt and needing attention — not on this night, not when she’d been so close to making the walk to Windflaw Point. But neither could she refuse him access or help. John would have, if he’d been drunk and in the wrong mood. Not her. It was not in her nature to be cruel to anyone, except perhaps herself.
Abruptly Shea pushed herself out of the chair. He hadn’t seen her sitting in the restless shadows, and he didn’t see her now as she moved back across the terrace to the sliding glass doors to her bedroom. Or at least if he did see her, he didn’t stop or call out to her. She hurried through the darkened bedroom, down the hall, and into the kitchen. She was halfway to the garden door when he began pounding on it.
She unlocked and opened the door without hesitation. He was propped against the stucco wall, arms hanging and body slumped with exhaustion. Big and youngish, that was her first impression. She couldn’t see his face clearly.
“Need some help,” he said in a thick, strained voice. “Been in the water... washed up on your beach...”
“I know, I saw you from the terrace. Come inside.”
“Better get a towel first. Coral ripped a gash in my foot... blood all over your floor.”
“All right. I’ll have to close the door. The wind...”
“Go ahead.”
She shut the door and went to fetch a towel, a blanket, and the first aid kit. On the way back to the kitchen she turned the heat up several degrees. When she opened up to him again she saw that he’d shed the life jacket. His clothing was minimaclass="underline" plaid wool shirt, denim trousers, canvas shoes, all nicked and torn by coral. Around his waist was a pouch-type waterproof belt, like a workman’s utility belt. One of the pouches bulged slightly.