PROLOGUE

She sat alone on the bed, and the kerosene lamp played its flickering shadow-light on her drawn face. Outside, the surf pounded the minutes to shreds, reducing time to a soft pulp without substance or division. She raised her hands from the writing pad on her lap and ran her fingers through her black hair. Her hands moved jerkily as though in answer to someone else’s command. She felt her hair lying warm and heavy on the backs of her hands; the hair too seemed not to be a part of her. She sniffed and felt the swollen congestion inside the bridge of her nose. Moisture filmed her eyes as she looked back down at the paper, giving the dark blue lines an outline of light.

… so there seems no point in going on, dreading every tomorrow and regretting each yesterday …

It sounded melodramatic, the kind of farewell a B actress would write in the hope that it would appear in the newspapers. She tore out the sheet and started another:

Dear Rolf,

Three nights on this island and a week away from you have given me a chance to think about all that has happened and I have decided

She drew a line through the last phrase, and added: since I married you. Still the letter seemed a sticky, sentimental coating on the purity of the act she was about to commit. The act wouldn’t hurt Rolf. Inconvenience him, yes. Anger him even. But she could never hurt him, any more than she had ever been able to please him.

Tracy gasped as pain gouged her stomach. She pressed her palms flat against it and felt the pain-taut muscle trembling beneath the skin. She touched a finger between her breasts and felt the perspiration, slick, greasy cold. I’m getting sick, and it’s too soon. I wanted to get everything done before.…

She rose abruptly from the coconut-fiber mattress, belting her white terrycloth robe around her waist. She felt nervous, edgy. There were flashes at the edge of her vision. The stone wall of the room had an unpleasant glow; the furniture was haloed. Overhead, the thatched roof crawled with shadow-life. She heard rasping noises, creaks, murmuring voices in a distant room.

But there is only one room and the other cabins are empty …

She carried the lamp onto the lean-to veranda, her rubber sandals grating on the sand-strewn concrete floor. A breeze struck the lamp, causing it to dip low and send up a gray spiral of smoke. She adjusted the wick and set the lamp on a hand-hewn table beside a stack of mold-smelling magazines. Fate, Astrology, Your Future.… The nearsighted woman who owned the island supplied her guests with the kind of reading she herself liked. Joss at least believed in something.

A soldier crab tried to scuttle beneath her feet, clattered against the table, then folded its claws and lay still. Tracy toed the unresisting object across the floor, opened the screen door, and kicked it out onto the sand. She watched the crab stick out an exploratory claw, turn itself upright, then scuttle away into the night. She stepped out onto the sand and glanced right, then left. The adjacent cabins were dark and silent. Palms rustled overhead, and a tinny cha-cha beat came from the direction of the beach club. The boys had turned in Radio Trinidad on their battery set. No doubt the cleaning women had already locked themselves in their shack, and Joss would be drunk. Nobody would know, nobody would care …

Salt-crusted grass crunched beneath her feet as she walked toward the sea. She thought of frost on the churchyard on Sunday morning, walking in patent-leather shoes with her mother and father on either side, smelling respectively of perfume and shaving lotion. Then the odor of ancient varnish biting her nostrils, and the woody-musty smell of the song book in her hands. She had loved to sing hymns, sending her voice out among the others and having it return … a hundredfold. She’d liked that, and the part about casting your bread upon the waters.…

Her mind returned to the aching stiffness in her joints. Railroad vines snatched at her bare ankles as she walked toward the phosphorescent surf. When she reached the sand she kicked off her sandals and walked barefoot. Once she’d loved to feel warm sand against her feet; now it was only an irritation, and even the air felt unpleasant on her face, like spiders crawling. Her nose ran and her eyes watered. She had a terrible awareness of the flesh clinging to her bones, of each joining of cartilage, muscle, and tissue; of her brain lying overhead, each movement causing pain to flare up behind her eyes.

Hate my body, hate it hate it hate it.

The sea lay like a pall of smoke, inviting.

The prickly weight of the bathrobe was gone. She left the clothing lying on the sand like dead skin, diseased and discarded. The water was exactly the temperature of the air; it was a pressure on her legs and no more. She stumbled over a rock and barnacles gouged her knees like cinders. She climbed over the reef, felt the coral cut into her feet, and told herself it didn’t matter.

The sea was high. A wave swelled up, towered overhead, then collapsed and buried her in greenness. It wasn’t water, it was raw force tearing her apart, lifting her body high and slamming it down, dragging her across an object which raked her body with long sharp claws, then leaving her to gasp on the reef. It lifted her again, higher and higher, swinging her in a silken hammock. She relaxed, feeling relief from the pull of muscle in her shoulders, stomach and chest; she drew in a deep breath and waited for her lungs to fill with water—

Air came in.

She opened her eyes and found herself on the sand. A bubbling carpet of surf came forward, buried her, and left her again. Oh, I didn’t know it was so hard to drown. If only I could swim, I could go far out …

She was tired. She lay there and let the air dry her body. After a time she rose and dressed. The surf teased, bubbling forward, hissing back.

Back at the cabin, she carried the lamp into the bathroom. She smelled the salty-musty odor of old swim suits, and heard the drip-drip-drip of the shower-head which hung like a drooping rusty blossom. She set the lamp on the low stand beside the washbasin and peered at the warped and mottled image in the mirror. She felt a curious, cold detachment toward herself. The upward glow of the lamp shadowed her forehead with the arch of her brows, unplucked and heavy in the center. Her nose seemed long and thin, and the white crescent scar on its tip looked more prominent than ever. Her wet hair lay flat on her skull and framed her narrow face like a cowl. High cheekbones shaded her eyes, and the line of her jaw lent her cheeks a hollow aspect.

You’re dying, Tracy.

“I’ve been dying ever since I married him.”

She said it aloud, and felt dismay at the thin sound of her voice. She filled her lungs to produce a deeper resonance; her breasts rose and brushed against the cloth, causing a shiver to spread throughout her body. She gave a shudder which rejected all clothing; her skin seemed raw all over; the robe was an unbearable weight on her shoulders, and the band of her shorts was a hand squeezing her in two.

She closed her eyes, and the lids grated like fine sand. She pressed her fingertips against her eyes, felt the eyeballs rolling beneath the lids like grapes. Got to hurry, she thought, before I get too sick—

She got her safety razor from her toilet case, grasped the rust-rimmed blade between her thumb and forefinger. Her hands began to shake. The third try produced a cut which barely broke the skin. She sat down on the stool, breathing heavily.

If I only had a cap, just enough to get straight.…

Stupid. You left your purse on the boat and it’s not due back until tomorrow.

Tomorrow! What about now?

Maybe you can find some. You had stuff squirreled everywhere.

Again she searched the lining of her clothes. Her lipstick tube. Compact. Fingers of her gloves. Face powder—

Her fingers touched something round, oblong. Joy dissolved her strength, and a small sob escaped her lips. She picked out the gelatin capsule and blew the face powder from its surface. A full one, sure. Rolf always got full measure. The pushers knew better than to hand him fogged caps. Not that Rolf would mind being cheated. He treated everybody with a studied carelessness, half-hoping someone would cheat and give him an excuse.

She separated the two halves of the capsule and dumped the contents onto a sheet of paper. Her body shivered, and she could feel moisture from her nose poised on her upper lip. Her fingers seemed gnarled, blunt and clumsy, but they were steady as she used the razor blade to scrape the powder into a tiny windrow at the edge of the paper. She dumped the powder into a spoon, then held the spoon above the chimney of the lamp until there was only a clear liquid. She took the needle from her suitcase, filled it, and watched the liquid climb the spike. While it cooled she took off the belt of her bathrobe and wrapped it around her leg just above the knee. It was easier in the arm but there was already a string of purple dots like a fading tattoo.…

Now the vein throbbed, swollen purple. With flawless rhythm the glass bird swooped down and thrust its glittering steel beak into the knotted worm of the vein. Its glass intestine filled with thick red blood, blended with the fluid inside and became pink. Her thumb pressed down and the fluid disappeared.…

Ah …

Warmth in her chest, like an explosion of pleasure. It rippled along her skin; her lips spread in a loose smile and a faint breathy giggle escaped them. Finally she withdrew the needle and laid it on the stand. A fly came to drink of the glistening red droplet which hung from its tip. She regarded it with a benevolent smile. Get high, little fly. After a long time she carried the lamp into the bedroom and sat down on the bed. The room seemed to flatten out and relax like a cat stretching itself before a fire. Before it had been a jangling, jarring chaos of corners and angles; now it was exactly right, and there was beauty in each joining of stone. The air was filled with streamers of light, rose, purple, green and blue; they wove themselves into a net and enveloped her, swinging her gently. Smoke curled from the lamp like a satin ribbon edged with purple and orange. She felt a gratitude for the lamp and then no gratitude; she was the lamp, the house, the sea and the universe, all joined in one.

But …

Someone was standing in the door behind her. She fought to ignore it, knowing that if she came down she could never go as high again.

“Tracy.”

Rolf’s voice. How had he got here? What does he want? I’ll push him out of my mind, not even think about him …

But the effort of holding herself high caused her to lose it. She felt herself coming down, down.

“Please, Rolf,” she spoke without turning. “Later we can talk.”

“Just struck yourself, did you, baby? All squared now, eh?”

“Mmmm.”

“What are you writing?”

A hand appeared from behind her shoulder. It seemed almost to be hers, except for the long spatulate fingers. The square-cut diamond on his little finger caught the lamplight and sent yellow shards flashing around the room. She would have enjoyed the diamond universe, but Rolf was reading her letter. Why did he read aloud?

“You’ve decided what, Tracy? What have you decided? Suicide? You’ve mentioned it enough.”

Round rolling words like lumps of cold gravy dripping on her head. She knew the answers but there were more important questions, and each question had its own answer.

His hand grasped hers and held it under the lamp. She heard him laughing. “You couldn’t do it, could you? Not while you had your needle. I counted on that.” He released her hand. “How do you know death isn’t the same thing, Tracy, only better? How do you know death isn’t the biggest fix of all?”

He turned her to face him; he must have done it roughly because she felt pain somewhere behind the soft pillowing pleasure. She lowered her head, but he lifted her chin and met her eyes.

“Look at me, Tracy. You know something funny?”

She wondered if it was the lamplight which made his face seem molded in wax. Even the blond mustache looked like the ones they put on department store dummies. But the pale blue eyes were real; they held a look of amused pity as though he had somehow learned the hour of her death.

The eyes didn’t change when he slapped her.

“Answer me, Tracy. You know what’s funny about your trying to kill yourself?”

She looked out of a long dark tunnel; she was hidden up high behind her eyes, protected by the hard helmet of her skull. She would stay here quietly, warm and cozy, where he couldn’t hurt her.

He slapped her again, then again. The waxy mask seemed to crack and fall away, leaving a wizened old man’s face. His hands encircled her throat, and she realized abruptly there was no use hiding inside her skull. There was no air. She clawed at his hands, and up inside her brain the cells began blinking off like lights at bedtime.