"Take your filthy hands off me," I say clearly, enjoying his enjoyment of my enjoyment of his enjoyment of that cliche'. Has he forgotten the three lepers?
"Send them away," he mutters in agony, "send them away! Natalie can do them," forgetting gender in his haste. Or perhaps he really thinks they are my lovers.
Women will do what men find too disgusting, too difficult, too demeaning.
"Look," I say, grinning uncontrollably, "I want to be perfectly clear. I don't want your revolting lovemaking. I'm here to do business and relay any reasonable message to my superiors. I'm not here to play games. Cut it out."
But when do they ever listen!
"You're a woman," he cries, shutting his eyes, "you're a beautiful woman. You've got a hole down there. You're a beautiful woman. You've got real, round tits and you've got a beautiful ass. You want me. It doesn't matter what you say. You're a woman, aren't you? This is the crown of your life. This is what God made you for. I'm going to fuck you. I'm going to screw you until you can't stand up. You want it. You want to be mastered. Natalie wants to be mastered. All you women, you're all women, you're sirens, you're beautiful, you're waiting for me, waiting for a man, waiting for me to stick it in, waiting for me, me, me."
Et patati et patata; the mode is a wee bit over-familiar. I told him to open his eyes, that I didn't want to kill him with his eyes shut, for God's sake.
He didn't hear me.
"OPEN YOUR EYES!" I roared, "BEFORE I KILL YOU!" and Boss-man did.
He said, You led me on.
He said, You are a prude. (He was shocked.)
He said, You deceived me.
He said, You are a Bad Lady.
This we can cure!-as they say about pneumonia. I think the J's will have sense enough to stay out of it. Boss was muttering something angry about his erection so, angry enough for two, I produced my own-by this I mean that the grafted muscles on my fingers and hands pulled back the loose skin, with that characteristic, itchy tickling, and of course you are wise; you have guessed that I do not have Cancer on my fingers but Claws, talons like a cat's but bigger, a little more dull than wood brads but good for tearing. And my teeth are a sham over metal. Why are men so afraid of the awful intimacies of hate?
Remember, I don't threaten. I don't play. I always carry firearms. The truly violent are never without them. I could have drilled him between the eyes, but if I do that, I all but leave my signature on him; it's freakier and funnier to make it look as if a wolf did it. Better to think his Puli went mad and attacked him. I raked him gaily on the neck and chin and when he embraced me in rage, sank my claws into his back. You have to build up the fingers surgically so they'll take the strain. A certain squeamishness prevents me from using my teeth in front of witnesses-the best way to silence an enemy is to bite out his larynx. Forgive me! I dug the hardened cuticle into his neck but he sprang away; he tried a kick but I wasn't there (I told you they rely too much on their strength); he got hold of my arm but I broke the hold and spun him off, adding with my nifty, weighted shoe one another bruise on his limping kidneys. Ha ha!
He fell on me (you don't feel injuries in my state) and I reached around and scored him under the ear, letting him spray urgently into the rug; he will stagger to his feet and fall, he will plunge fountainy to the ground; at her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down; at her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down dead. Jael. Clean and satisfied from head to foot. Boss is pumping his life out into the carpet. All very quiet, oddly enough. Three J's in a terrible state, to judge from their huddling together; I can't read their hidden faces. Will Natalie come in? Will she faint? Will she say, "I'm glad to be rid of him, the old bastard?" Who will own her now? You get monomaniacal on adrenalin. "Come on, come on!" I whispered to the J's, herding them toward the door, buzzing and humming, the stuff still singing in my blood. The stupidity of it. The asininity of it. I love it, I love it. "Come on!" I said. Pushing them out the door, into the corridor, out and into the elevator, past the fish swimming in the aquatic wall, evil, svelte manta-rays and groupers six feet long. Poor fish! No business done today, God damn, but once they get that way there's no doing business with them; you have to kill them anyway, might as well have fun. There's no standing those non-humans at all, at all. Jeannie is calm. Joanna is ashamed of me. Janet is weeping. But how do you expect me to stand for this all month? How do you expect me to stand it all year? Week after week? For twenty years? Little male voice says: It Was Her Menstrual Period. Perfect explanation! Raging hormonal imbalances. His ghostly voice: "You did it because you had your period. Bad girl." Oh beware of unclean vessels who have that dirty menstrual period and Who Will Not Play! I shooed the J's into the Boss-man's car-Anna had long ago disappeared-skeleton keys out of my invisible suit with its invisible pocket, opened the lock, fired the car, started up. I'll go on Automatic as soon as we get to the highway; Boss's I. D. will carry us to the border. No trouble from there.
"You all right?" I asked the J's, laughing, laughing, laughing. I'm drunk still.
They said Yes in varying musical keys. The Strong One's voice is pitched higher than that of The Weak One (who believes she's an alto), and The Little One is highest of all. Yes, yes, they said, frightened. Yes, yes, yes.
"Now I did not get that contract signed," I said, putting on my sham teeth over my steel ones. "God damn, God damn, God damn!" (Don't drive on adrenalin; you'll probably have an accident.)
"When does it leave you?" That's The Strong One: smart girl. "An hour, half an hour," I said. "When we get home."
"Home?" (from the back)
"Yes. My home." Every time I do this I burn up a little life. I shorten my time.
I'm at the effusive stage now, so I bit my lip, to keep quiet.
After a long silence-"Was that necessary?" from The Weak One.
Still hurt, still able to be hurt by them! Amazing. You'd think my skin would get thicker, but it doesn't. We're all of us still flat on our backs. The boot's on our neck while we slowly, ever so slowly, gather the power and the money and the resources into our own hands. While they play war games. I put the car on Autom. and sat back, chilly with the reaction. My heartbeat's quieting. Breath slower.
Was it necessary? (Nobody says this.) You could have turned him off-maybe. You could have sat there all night. You could have nodded and adored him until dawn.
You could have let him throw his temper tantrum; you could have lain under him- what difference does it make to you?-you'd have forgotten it by morning.
You might even have made the poor man happy.
There is a pretense on my own side that we are too refined to care, too compassionate for revenge-this is bullshit, I tell the idealists. "Being with Men," they say, "has changed you."
Eating it year in and year out.
"Look, was it necessary?" says one of the J's, addressing to me the serious urgency of womankind's eternal quest for love, the ages-long effort to heal the wounds of the sick soul, the infinite, caring compassion of the female saint.
An over-familiar mode! Dawn comes up over the waste land, bringing into existence the boulders and pebbles battered long ago by bombs, dawn gilding with its pale possibilities even the Crazy Womb, the Ball-breaking Bitch, the Fanged Killer Lady.