She realized in the course of this session that she had lost her fear of Darius. He was unusual and mysterious, but not dangerous. He was also fascinating.
It grew dark in the shed, for though there was a line here, Colene had used it only to listen to tapes in the day, and had never brought out a light. Now a light would be disastrous, because it would show that Darius was there.
“I have to go,” she said abruptly. “Mom will wonder if I stay out here too long. But you stay here, and I’ll bring you more food in the morning.”
“Yes,” he said. She hoped that he really did understand. She slipped out the door, not opening it wide, just in case her mother was looking this way, and closed it quickly behind her. Actually there would be nothing visible inside except darkness now, but it made sense to practice safe management. She returned to the house.
Her mother was pretty much out of it by this time. Good. Colene scrounged in the refrigerator for more to eat, and gobbled it down without bothering to sit. Then she went to her room. There was her bed, neatly made, and her desk where she normally did her homework, and her dresser and mirror, and the guitar she hoped someday to learn to play decently. All very conventional. She kept it that way deliberately, so that no one could garner any secrets about her by analyzing her living space. There was even a set of standard dolls on the dresser. Ken and Barbie. What a visitor would not know was that she had renamed the male: he was really Klaus. Thus the pair was Klaus Barbie. There had been a notorious Nazi criminal by that name. She flossed her teeth, brushed her hair, changed into her pajamas, and lay down on her bed. She stared at the ceiling.
Sleep didn’t come. All she could do was think about Darius, out there in the Bumshed, and her heart was beating at a running pace. She had to slow it to a walking pace before she could nod off. She knew from experience with bad nights.
After a time she got up, went to the closet, and changed into her silky nightgown. She loved the feel of it against her skin. It was long enough so that she wore nothing under it, which gave her a deliciously wicked feeling. It was a good outfit in which to dream. Very good. In fact, too good.
Now her heart slowed, but her thoughts turned darker. She remembered the time a few months ago when her beloved grandmother, one of the mainstays of her young life after the default of her parents, had sickened with cancer and then died. It was as if the last leg had been knocked out from under Colene’s will to live. Without Grandma, what was the point? She had not exactly told Grandma about the horrors she had experienced, or how her life had been falling apart, but she suspected that Grandma knew. It was better to go where Grandma was, and have her reassurance again. Colene had taken her mother’s pills from the cabinet, one sniff of which, as an Arabian Nights tale put it with suitable hyperbole, could make an elephant sleep from night to night. She swallowed three, then another, pondered, and finally two more. Six was a good number. Six-six-six was the devil’s own number. Sick-sick-sick was what these pills would make her. Sick unto death. Then she lay down in her sexy nightie—the one she was wearing now. She wanted to expire in maidenly style.
The elephant pills did not exactly kill her. They put her into a trancelike state in which she had a vision. In the vision she was exactly as she was, in her naughty nightgown, and gloriously dying; the church bells were warming up for the somber death toll, and there would be mourning until the funeral. How sweet she would look in the casket, a red-red rose on her cold-cold bosom. Other girls would envy her the beauty of that nightgown, knowing that they would not have the nerve to be shown dead in such an outfit.
Three figures entered the room, coming through the wall, so it was obvious that they were of the spiritual persuasion. Two were her grandparents, now reunited in the afterlife. Grandma approached. “Dear, you may not yet die, because there is something you have yet to do with your life. We love you and will always be with you.”
Then the third figure, the stranger, approached. He was clothed in a dark robe and wore a cowl over his head, and his face was shaded by mist. Who he was she dared not guess, but there was an inherent glow about him that bespoke his authority. “Colene,” he said, his voice full of compassion and knowledge. “You have to go on. You will not be able to quit. Your life will get better.”
Buoyed by that message, she had roused herself from the vision, stumbled to the bathroom, poked her finger down her throat, and gagged out the remaining contents of her stomach. “Just call me bulimic,” she had gasped with gallant gallows humor as her heaves expired. She had changed her mind about dying. For a while.
No one had known. Her mother hadn’t even missed the six pills.
Had she done the right thing? Colene could not be sure. Yet now, with the appearance of Darius, it seemed that there was indeed something for her to do with her life. Maybe her vision was coming true.
After more time she got up again, slipped her feet into her slippers, turned out the light, and cracked open the door. She made her way through the house. If her mother asked, she was just going for another snack. But her mother didn’t notice her passage.
Colene got the spare house key, stepped quickly out the back door, and locked herself out. That way her mother would assume that she had locked them in for the night, and would not check her room. Colene would use the key to let herself in again later.
It was chill outside, and she shivered as she made her way across the dark back yard to the shed. Her heart was pounding, but not because of the temperature. She was embarking on another suicidally foolish risk.
She knocked on the door, then opened it. She couldn’t see anything inside, but knew he was there.
Indeed he was, hunched under the blankets. They really weren’t enough, considering his weakened state. He needed more warmth.
“I should have brought another blanket,” she murmured. “But I would have had to take it from my own bed, and that would be chancy. I’ll see what I can do.”
She sat down beside him, and pulled at the blankets, rearranging them. Then she lay down, full length beside him, and drew the blankets over them both. “It’s warmer this way,” she explained.
He rolled over to face her, and she stiffened with fear. “Please don’t rape me,” she whispered. “I really don’t like it.” Yet she had come out here in her provocative nightgown. He couldn’t see it, of course, but he could feel it. She had gotten under the blankets with him, in the dark. No jury would convict him.
“Rape?” he asked, not knowing the word.
Now she had to define it! How could she do that? If she managed to get the concept across, without the use of her pad and pencil, it would have to be by touch, and he might think she was asking for it. But she had used the word, and she had to explain it.
She pondered, her heart beating so wildly she almost thought her mother in the house could hear it, let alone Darius. Then she found his right hand under the blanket. She brought it across his body and up to touch her head. “Yes,” she said. Then she took it down to touch her right breast through the nightgown, as she lay on her back. “Maybe.” Finally she put it against her thigh. “No.”
He considered that, while she lay breathing rapidly, her body stiff. Then he reached across her, not to embrace her, but to find her left arm. He brought it across her body and up to his head. Her fingers touched his mouth. “Yes,” he said. Then he took it down to his clothed crotch. “No.”
He understood! “That’s right,” she said, squeezing his fingers with hers. “I’m here to warm you, and that’s about it.”
“Thank you.” He brought her hand to his lips again, and kissed it.
Colene experienced a wild thrill. She knew she should just lie where she was, having made her point. But it was her nature to risk disaster. Suicide was merely the most extreme extension of a syndrome that permeated her existence. Whatever she did, she had to push the limit, courting trouble. This was folly, but it was her way. Had she been a man, she would have been a daredevil cyclist, hurdling lines of cars soaked in gasoline, daring the flames to get her. But she was only a teenage girl, so had to settle for lesser dares.