“You won’t be going back to Rolf,” he said, but she was asleep.
He worked until dark, then lay down beside her. Late that night she awoke trembling.
“Put your arms around me,” she said. “Keep me warm.”
He did, and her hair tickled his nose. He didn’t move for fear of disturbing her. He thought she was asleep, but then she said:
“My blood is like ice-water. This... is in the way.” He felt her hand between them, pulling apart the shirt. Then her cool bare flesh rested against him, pressing hard as though she were trying to curl up inside his body. He felt her relax and sigh.
“What’s your name?”
“Burt.”
“That’s a very... abrupt name. Are you an abrupt man? No, you’re not. You’re very calm, in a deep sort of way. Rolf is calm only on the surface. I can’t understand why you work for him.”
“I don’t.”
She stiffened. “But you said—”
“A lie,” he said, then he told her about finding her purse with the heroin, the discovery of the masquerade, and the entire chain of events which had led him to this island. “I’ve wondered about one thing,” he said when he finished. “Did you know what was going on?”
“Oh, part of it. I knew there was something crooked. I knew that woman was posing as me, because she came out with Rolf and gawked at me. But then I thought, what the hell, maybe she’ll make a better Tracy Keener than I did. You realize I wasn’t really here. My body was just something you stuck a needle into. It was a chemical substance, I mixed it with dope and became real. When it wasn’t mixed, I was nothing.”
“You were something,” he said. “Before you got hooked.”
“A child. An unformed creature. You wouldn’t be interested.”
“I would, yes.” He looked up and saw the purple dawn lacing the sky. “Right now I’ve got work to do.”
The boat was nearly ready; Burt had saved the two best boards for oars. He ate and started work. She watched for a few minutes then said:
“I feel I could help.”
“Okay, start cramming tar into the cracks.”
While she worked she told him what she’d been before she got hooked: intelligent, only child of respectable parents, the kind of background that makes you feel smarter than you really are. She’d left home to seek the usual things: romance, independence, and a broadening of experience. Working for Rolf seemed to offer it all; he took long trips and would no doubt leave her in charge. Eventually she too might taste the glamour of foreign travel. But he told her nothing, and she became frustrated. Once she tried to open a forbidden filing cabinet. It burned, filling the office with acrid smoke. At first Rolf was furious, but then he cooled. “I should have warned you. If you try to open the cabinets incorrectly, it triggers an incendiary which destroys the contents.” She asked, “But why? What part of your business has to be hidden?” He took her out to dinner that night and explained: The art objects were hidden in the ground; he was bringing them to a public which could appreciate them. Technically illegal, perhaps, but so was drinking on Sunday. Burt, having heard Rolf’s warped and faultless logic, believed Tracy when she said she’d been confused. What confused her still more was that Rolf took an abrupt personal interest in her. He found her an apartment near the office at a rental she couldn’t resist. He took her out to dinner and on boating trips. Gradually she lost touch with boys she dated and girls she’d known.
“I understand it now,” she said. “He’d taken me into his confidence; now he had to take control of me. I remember the night I realized Rolf had taken over management of my life. We were eating at a restaurant overlooking the sea. I felt the kind of panic you get when an elevator sticks between floors. I told him I was quitting my job, and he nodded as though he had been just about to suggest it himself. You could never get ahead of Rolf. Then he said: ‘I’ve decided to get married, Tracy. Why don’t you think it over?’ Well you know the cool impersonal way he talks, as though he’d just recognized the need for a wife in the abstract, a need which had nothing to do with me. When I realized he was proposing, I looked down at my lobster and waited for the wave of joy which is supposed to hit you at this time. When it didn’t come, I told myself I was a fool for not taking a rich handsome man when he was in an offering mood. Still I don’t remember thinking it over or saying, yes, I’ll marry you Rolf. Suddenly one day I was standing in front of a stranger with a Bible in his hand, and there was Rolf beside me. I ran.” She laughed. “The minister’s wife ran after me. All girls felt that way, she said. Ten years from now I would laugh and wonder how I could have been so foolish. So I thought, well, you’ve got to play the rules, Tracy, marry this man and be blushing and happy. So I went back in and the ritual came off. I didn’t even have to think; they told me every move to make. If it wasn’t set up that way there’d be a lot fewer marriages. What they need now is some ritual to carry you through the wedding night.”
She was silent, looking down at her tar-blackened fingers. “I don’t even like to think about it.”
“Don’t.”
“Why not?” She squinted at him. “How could I keep secrets from you? You’ve fed me, dressed me... I’ve been like a baby just being born. This is another bit of the old Tracy. So I’ll tell it and get rid of it.”
But she fell silent again. He put one finished oar aside and was starting another when she spoke again:
“He brought a bottle up to the room and fixed me drink after drink. He never touched it. I poured it down, my nerves stretched tight, getting sorrier every minute about what I’d done. And Rolf watched me with that faint smile, until finally I asked with a little laugh: ‘Well... don’t we go to bed or something?’ He laughed too and said: ‘You don’t want to.’ And I said, ‘But I do, certainly I do,’ even though he was right, as he usually is. Then we got into this unbearable discussion of whether I wanted to or not, and I began to wish I hadn’t drunk anything, because he was twisting my words, making me say things I didn’t want to say. And finally I shouted: ‘What am I supposed to do?’ And he said, ‘If you wanted to, you wouldn’t have to ask.’ I left him and went out to a bar, and drank more liquor until I was just sober enough to fall into a taxi and give my address. Then I sort of dozed off, half-aware that we had pulled off the road, and the taxidriver was getting in the back. Suddenly the door opened and there was Rolf. I just remember his white teeth shining and his grunts of violence, then the driver was slumped down between the seats, unconscious. And then Rolf... while the cars whizzed past on the highway and the driver gurgled through his broken mouth... Rolf consummated our marriage.” She looked down for a moment. “Before I came out of my daze, Rolf took me off to Nassau and treated me like a queen for two weeks. I’m... susceptible to that sort of thing. When we got back, we got into another fight about a trip he was making, and taking that woman along. I knew about her. And... it happened again. Only with a guy in a bar; Rolf came in when he was trying to buy me a drink and cut him to pieces without even mussing his hair. And then... home again. I began to realize he couldn’t make love without fighting first—”
“He is crazy, didn’t you know that?”
“I thought so. But he talked so logically. You try to tell him and he winds up proving you’re the one who’s crazy. Arguing with him is like firing bullets against a rock; he catches all your words and throws them back at you. And the bottle was always there, for me...”
“How’d he get you on the needle?”
“Oh, a bad hangover. He gave me some white powder to sniff. It was... wonderful. I’d been taking it for about a week and thought it was some fantastic new headache powder — don’t laugh, I was stupid, I know that. I started complaining about it burning my nose, and he brought home a needle. Then I knew it was heroin. I threw a scene, I told him no, no, no, and he just smiled and said, “Well, I’ll leave this here in case you need it. I didn’t want it. But then I learned for the first time that nobody wants it. You need it, like food. Somebody mentions it and your insides light up. Your mind says, take it away, and your body says gimme, gimme, gimme. So... I got hooked. Rolf was finally in complete control. He kept me supplied and ignored me. I didn’t care; all my troubles were soft fluffy things I could blow away like dandelion seed.” She looked up in sudden fright. “I’ve lost the last four years, Burt. Can I ever get them back?”