Chapter
10
When I returned to the hospital room, Candy started a breathless monologue. She said that the police had obtained a warrant
to enter Duval’s apartment and they had found a very large supply of heroin
and marijuana. She said possession
of illicit drugs was a violation of parole and they had arrested him a few
hours ago in his hospital bed. A cop
was now stationed in front of his room too.
She said she had to leave the hospital as soon as possible so they
wouldn’t arrest her as an accomplice, or at least as a runaway. In a few hurried moments, I agreed to let her
stay in my apartment and I promised I would carry messages back and forth
between Candy and Marlo. I waited outside with the cop while she and
Marlo talked. She wore
a threadbare, white robe over her faded blue hospital nightgown and I carried
up the bag that contained her clothes.
On the way to the car, she stopped and pointed to the flattened bushes
where she supposed they had discovered Duval, the night before. I felt no remorse for what I had done. She took her bag and disappeared into the bushes
to change clothes and motioned to me with her cast to help her with her boots.
She had changed into the same clothes she wore the night I met her:
white patent leather boots and a maroon mini skirt, and the low cut, sheer
blouse with the horse pattern on it. Her thighs were covered with bruises and long
red marks. It was foggy and cold and
I threw my jacket over her shoulders. She
was holding a small white bottle.
“What’s that?”
“It’s my antibiotics. The doctor
says I have to take a pill twice a day, for 10 days.”
“What for?”
“He said I have an infection.”
I looked at her lap.
She said, “There are some open
wounds and they might get infected. It’s
only been a couple of days and I already feel better.”
“Good.”
“The doctor said it’s a miracle that there aren’t any broken bones
in my face. My nose isn’t even broken.”
“Let’s talk about it later.”
We got in the car and drove to the freeway in silence.
On the freeway, she said, “Brad. I want to get my guitar.”
“Your guitar? Where is it?”
“It’s in George’s apartment. I’ve
got a key.”
“I thought you said he burned all of your stuff.”
“He didn’t burn my guitar.” She
paused. “I asked him last night and he said it was still
there.”
“In his apartment?”
“Yeah.”
“What if the cops have the place staked out?”
She giggled. “Why would they
have the place staked out?”
“You never know ... You said
you were afraid they were going to arrest you.”
She said pensively, to herself, “He
had a lot of White Lady up there.” She
looked over at me and added, “The judge
said he would put him away for five years if they ever caught him selling
again.”
She rummaged in her purse for the key.
The street was almost empty and I took a chance and parked under a
large oak tree about a block away. I
waited in the car while she went upstairs.
Within a few minutes she appeared at the foot of the stairs, very awkwardly
carrying two guitar cases, a small one and a large one.
A girl about 13 years old passed her on the sidewalk and was frightened
by her face and broke into a run.
“I guess I look pretty bad,” she said, getting into the car.
“To me, you’re the same as you’ve always been.”
“Don’t lie. I haven’t even had
the courage to look in a mirror yet.”
“You’ll recover.” I looked down
at the two black cases. “I thought
you went up there to get one guitar?”
“I decided to take his Rickenbacker too. He’s not going to need it where he’s going.
I’ve got to go back up there and get the amplifier too.”
This time I went with her. The
apartment walls were covered with psychedelic posters and the place was a
mess. There were empty beer cans and liquor bottles
lying all over the apartment. A coffee
table was broken in the middle and the two pieces lay, almost touching, on
the rug. We went into the bedroom to
get the amplifier and I saw the black mass of congealed cloth on the floor
of the bedroom closet that must have been her clothes.
I lugged the large, heavy amplifier down the stairs and she carried
a handful of record albums and wires.
I had to push her seat all the way forward to get the amplifier in
the back seat and she sat with her knees pressed awkwardly against the dashboard. I reached across and took her hand and she squeezed
it, and we held hands the rest of the way.
She liked my new waterbed. I
had moved the box spring and mattress to the living room and I insisted on
sleeping in it, alone because I wanted her to get a good night’s sleep.
In the middle of the night we were awakened by a thunderstorm and she
appeared at my bedside, wrapped in my yellow blanket.
The streetlights that shone through the kitchen window illuminated
the bruises on her body.
I said, “You scared me.”
“I can’t sleep.”
I rubbed my eyes and shook my head.
She said, in her high voice, “I
want you to sleep with me.” The rain
came down hard and we heard a garbage can fall onto the pavement just outside
the apartment window. It rolled along
the concrete sidewalk until it banged against something.
The lid made a clattering noise and rolled into the street.
I got out of bed and put my hand on her hair and smoothed it. “All right.”
I followed her to the waterbed. We
slid into the undulating bed, and I bounced against her body. She moaned.
“I’m sorry. Where does it hurt?”
“All over.”
“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”
She clutched at my arm and accidentally jabbed my rib with a fingernail. I jerked away and she pulled me closer. I said, “I’m
not going anywhere.” I put my arm around
her shoulder, very gently.
She asked, “Can you close the
curtains?”
“No. They’re too small. I need new ones. I can put a blanket over the window if you want.”
“I don’t want you to see my face.”
“You’re beautiful.”
“I look horrible.”
I started to get up.
She held me tightly. “Don’t
leave.” The wind howled outside and rain poured onto
the roof with enormous force
“Really, you’re beautiful,” I whispered into her ear.
She started to cry.
“Don’t cry.” A bolt of lightening
lit up the room and a half-second later thunder shook the building. She clung to me.
After a few moments, I said, “Where
doesn’t it hurt?”
“It hurts everywhere.” Her
low, whispering voice was almost drowned out by the sound of rain. She released her grip and I rolled towards the
other side of the bed. She said,
“Help me take it off.” She was wearing the blue nightgown that she
had taken from the hospital.
I helped her get it off but I insisted on turning on the bathroom light. I saw that her body was covered with black and
blue marks and there were long stripes crisscrossing her back and stomach,
and on her breasts and thighs. Some
of the slash marks were still open and oozing.
“Even my cunt hurts,” she said, and gave a little laugh. She parted her knees to expose red marks that
slanted into the black pubic hair.
I was ashamed that an erection peeked over the elastic band of my underpants.
I said, “It has a mind of its own.”
“Can it play chess?”
“I hope not.”
“Brad.”
“Yes.”
“I was doing what you said. I
mean before he beat me up.”
“I looked into her eyes which were red with blood and almost completely
closed.
“I’ve been doing it and using fantasies.
Like you said. But they’re mostly
about you.”
I smiled. “I can live with that.”
“Take off your underpants.” A
bolt of lightning lit up the sky with a jagged flash and there was a huge
noise that shook the building again, with enormous force.
In a few moments, rain pounded the roof and we laughed like children.
We made love in the noise of torrential rain, amid flashing white sheets
of light and the deafening roars that followed them, and we yelled into the
roaring, shaking thunder.
The next morning I rolled out of the waterbed very slowly, so as not
to wake her, and made breakfast. After
about twenty minutes, she shuffled into the kitchen wearing my robe. The swelling
of her eyelids had gone down slightly, and the blood in her eyes spangled
bright red patches across the white and cobalt blue of her eyes. Sunlight streamed in through the kitchen windows
and steam rose from the sidewalk below, mingling with beams of sunlight.
She said, “God. It
smells so good.”
I had fried some eggs, made buckwheat pancakes and squeezed fresh orange
juice. There was a pot of coffee on
the table and a pitcher of real maple syrup.
She said, “I still can’t believe
it, that your mother is Rhonda Bradford, the Evangelist.
I still remember her red hair and her milk-white skin from my childhood.”
“That’s my mother.”
“She knew the Bible by heart. I was so impressed.”
“She doesn’t know the Bible by heart.
She knows most of it by heart but not all of it.”
“She talked at our school at least a couple of times a year.”
“I know. I went on some of the
crusades when I was a little boy.”
She said, “It’s such a coincidence that
we’ve met like this.”
“It’s a case of synchronicity.”
“Yes. Synchronicity.” She pronounced the word carefully, dilating
the sibilants. “Carl Jung. He was one of the many authors my father wouldn’t
let me read, so I read him under the covers with a flashlight after I went
to bed. Symbol and Psyche, Man in Search of a Soul. I was so tired the next day. You’ve studied at the Jungian Institute?”
“Yes.”
She suddenly changed the subject. “I
must look horrible. I’m still afraid
to look in the mirror.” She probed
her face with her fingers. “I’m so
puffy.”
She got up and went to the couch where her purse was lying. She took out the little white bottle and unscrewed
the cap carefully. “I was the best
student in
“I’m impressed.”
She got up and got a glass of water
to help swallow the pill. “Then I ran
away with George.”
I looked at the two cases leaning against the wall. “I want to hear you play someday. When your arm heals.”
“It’s just a hairline fracture and he said I was lucky because that
means the cast can come off in six weeks.
Six weeks! Lucky! Six weeks is a long time.”
I asked, “How did you get into
this mess anyway? I mean why did you
get mixed up with a guy like George Duval?”
“I envy people whose lives are happy stories.”
“I can read happy stories in Seventeen magazine.”
I poured her another cup of coffee.
“My father was the Principal of the
I recognized the name.
“He didn’t know anything about what went on outside in the playground. Or at least he pretended not to know. For one thing, nasty rumors circulated about
my mother who ran away when I was a baby.
The kids said she was a prostitute and a couple of boys even threatened
to rape me. But I knew they wouldn’t,
because they were afraid of my father. I
never told him about it. I learned
not to talk to him about the rumors, because ... well... her pictures were everywhere and I knew that
he still loved her even though, in his sermons, he called her a ‘fallen woman.’ ”
I asked, “How did George get into the picture?”
“He was just another orphan that my father tried to save. We have a lot of orphans at the Academy. My father tries to save them all. He loves everybody.”
“Like my mother. She loves everyone
in Christ but I don't think she ever loved anyone for himself.”
“That’s it exactly. Maybe that’s
why my father admires your mother so much.
They're two of a kind. He has
a large picture of her in his office, you know.”
I looked into her puffy, discolored face and hated George Duval again. “My mother almost abandoned me when I was a child. She
was always away, on a Crusade for Christ.”
“What about your father? We
heard a lot of rumors about him. Do
you know what really happened?”
“Not really. Nobody knows exactly
what happened. They think he drowned.”
I
looked out the window while we allowed a few silent moments to pass.
I said, “My grandfather moved in with us when he died.
My father’s father. I was three years old.”
She smiled.
“He taught me mathematics, when I was
a child.”
“That’s why you won the prize.”
“He had a Ph.D. in economics. His
father wouldn’t allow him to study mathematics because he said it didn’t have
any practical value. My grandfather
died three years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s been very difficult without him.”
“I thought all mathematicians wore horn rimmed glasses and were about
five feet tall.”
“Mathematicians are a pretty good-looking group of people actually. You’d be surprised.”
“But most of them don’t play sports.
Do they?”
“They forced me to play.”
“Forced you to play? Who?”
“The coaches. It was when I
was a kid. The only game I really liked was baseball, and
my fifth grade coach said if I didn’t play on the basketball team and football
team too, he wouldn’t let me play baseball the next season. In fact, he said he wouldn’t even let me play
after school and I would have to go home.
So I played on all the teams and I was seduced: I ended up loving football
and basketball too.”
“Lyle said he played football. Is
that how you met him? Playing football?”
“No. He lived in a small cottage in my neighborhood
and we met when we were five years old. When we were older, his family needed money
so my mother hired his mother to take care of me while she was away on her
Crusades for Christ. My grandfather
worked at the bank during the day.”
“This is starting to sound like Seventeen
magazine.”
“I know.”
“I was joking. Tell me.”
“Well, his parents started taking care
of me in the summers and on vacations when I was 5 or 6 years old. When I was thirteen, Rhonda said I was old enough
to be on my own. A year later, they
moved to northern
She said, “My father toured
with your mother on the Crusades for Christ a few times.”
She smiled brightly.
I said, “How did you get mixed
up with Lyle? At least I have an excuse.”
“It was kind of an emergency. At
first he threatened to bust me for being under age.
Then George came into Frenchy’s looking for
me and Lyle helped me get out of there. I
wanted him to drive me to
“Curious?”
She said, “It was pretty obvious
you didn’t want to let me stay with you that night.
Why did you change your mind?”
“I don’t know. It must be a
miracle because Lyal burned me a few weeks before
that and I felt like throwing you both out.”
She said, “What would your mother
say?”
“She would probably call you the Devil with a red dress on.”
“I wasn’t wearing a red dress.” She
looked down at her mini skirt.
“I know. It was maroon.”
We smiled.
She said, “I was an ardent Christian
once. Until I was almost fourteen. I began to doubt then, but I thought it was
just the Devil testing my Faith. When
George came around, I gave in.” She
didn’t raise her eyes and I thought it was because she believed that she looked
hideous.
I asked, “What happened then?”
“It’s been a living hell.”
“He had another girlfriend?”
“Other girlfriends. We were in a rock and roll band. The band broke up about three months ago.
We played at the Fillmore, and we were getting screwed by Phil Graham
and by The Grateful Dead too. They weren’t paying us anything. Have you heard of them?”
“Yeah. I’ve been to the Fillmore Auditorium a couple
of times. Jerry Garcia and The Grateful
Dead.”
“You may have seen us playing.”
I tried to remember. “Do you
play the electric guitar?”
“I even tried to sing but I can’t carry a tune.”
“How did you...”
“Become a whore? We were broke. One of the guys in the band had a lot of money.
Juan Vargas, the drummer. He offered George a hundred dollars. I got high.
He said it would be just one time.
Then one of Vargas’ friends wanted me and I said no, and George slapped
me around. I tried to leave the next
day but…” Her blood filled eyes widened. “We
hung out with a lot of glamorous people. The
“Why didn’t you come back? After you left that day?”
“I was planning to. I went to
“It sounds like a nightmare.”
“I’ve only been with him since last September but it feels like five
years.”
I looked down at my knuckles. She
reached across and stroked my right hand.
She said, “I really enjoyed
playing chess with you that night Brad. For
someone who hasn’t played much, you’re very good.”
She lifted my hand, leaned across the table and lightly kissed the
scab on the largest knuckle.