7

 

WALLFLOWER

 

Diana Proctor, braced like a West Point plebe, stood rigid in the garden just outside the window. Back arched, eyes forward, head straight, chin down—in this exaggerated posture her nose was but inches from the glass.

Beverly Archer, sitting in the consulting room, glanced at her and smiled. The rain, running down Diana's young and ardent face, streaked her cheeks like tears. The girl's hair, cut close and butch, hung limp like wet black yarn. Her gray T-shirt, bearing the word TRAINING in small block military letters, clung sopping to her rib cage and chest.

What a sight! You'd think the poor thing would have to move, but there she stood still as stone just as she'd been ordered. She was shivering; no surprise, since she'd been standing out there for nearly forty minutes and still had twenty more to go. Rain or shine, a sentence was a sentence; an hour had been decreed, and an hour would be served. A fat little alarm clock, standing on tiny feet, was perched upon the windowsill. Diana's eyes were fastened to its taunting face, her features frozen, locked. That, too, had been ordered. If the eyes were permitted to drift, the strings of control would weaken. In a matter of this kind control was everything. Obedience and control.

To Beverly the glass between them, transparent yet impenetrable, symbolized their relationship: intimately bound yet separate and apart. Here she sat within, sheltered and warm, flipping casually through a magazine, while Diana stood less than a foot away, braving the elements as she performed her penance. The polarity was perfect, Beverly thought, and best of all, Mama would approve.

She remembered: Mama zippering her into an oversize snowsuit, then pulling the collar up above her head so her face was encased as well. "Better be good, Bev, or I'll zip you up forever. . . ."

She glanced again at Diana. Poor girl! But Diana craved hard discipline, reveled in it. It was discipline that had made her strong, that would make of her a perfect steely tool. With a person like Diana, discipline was the only way. Break her; control her; then build her up again. Take the raw killer rage and forge it to your need. Train her; teach her obedience; then she will serve you and Mama, too. Then she will be better than a bullet, better even than a knife.

She remembered: "Learn to be an archer, Bev," Mama said. "Find your arrow, sharpen it up, string it to your bow, and let it fly. It'll travel far and true, hit your targets again and again. . . ."

Beverly rose from the black Eames chair, set down her magazine, and moved to the window. She stared straight at Diana, trying to distract her, make her eyes flicker a moment from the clock. Not a blink. Good girl! Beverly was proud. Perhaps Diana's nipples twitched a little against the drenched gray cotton of her shirt, but her eyes, disks of sky blue ice, held firm.

 

Twenty minutes later Diana, trembling, stood before Beverly in the office. Her skin, so very pale, glistened with rain and sweat.

"Tonight you learned something," Beverly said. The girl nodded. "What?"

"That I can do it," Diana whispered, still shaking with chill.

"Do what? Go on, girl—speak." Beverly intentionally tightened her lips to make her mouth appear authoritative.

"That I can do as I'm told."

"And that's important. Why?"

"Because there'll come a time—"

"Maybe soon."

"—soon, when you'll order me—"

"To perform a mission."

"Yes. And then I must perform it exactly as you tell me."

"Without deviation."

"Without any deviation. And then I must return, stand before you as I'm standing now, and report to you everything I did."

"Everything, accurately, in scrupulous detail."

"In the most scrupulous detail," Diana affirmed.

"And so your task tonight—?"

"Was to show I can obey you without questioning, that I'm capable of doing what you tell me, exactly—"

"And correctly."

"Yes."

"To serve me and obey."

Diana nodded. "Serve and obey."

The girl drew in her breath. When she spoke again, she lowered her eyes, as was her habit whenever she uttered an opinion of her own. "I believe tonight I have shown you I can," she offered hesitantly.

Beverly smiled, rose, stood before Diana, patted the girl gently on the head. "Yes, my dear. We're coming along nicely now." She toyed a little with Diana's stringy, dripping hair. "Down to your room now, off with those nasty garments, towel your hair, put onsomething nice and clean, then join me in the bedroom for a cup of tea."

At Beverly's gesture of dismissal, Diana raised her eyes, gleaming with incipient tears. "Thank you, Doctor," the girl whispered, then, quick as a cat, scooted from the room.

Afterward Beverly stood alone in the office, thinking about the next phase of Diana's training, the next degree of obedience she would instill. The control must be remote, she thought. Following orders with me hovering about is easy. Total submission beyond my sight—that will be something else.

 

She had always believed that the concept came to her on a certain rainy afternoon when she was fifteen years old, came just after a crack of lightning revealed the inky blackness that lay beyond the fine, tight gray fabric of the sky.

A romantic fantasy most likely, although perhaps it really had come to her then, at least in some rudimentary form. She knew well from her studies of human psychology that life-changing ideas often seem to strike like bolts delivered from above.

But it was not as if she were actually seeking some means of reprisal at the time. Nor was she worrying over one or another slight the way she so often did. Quite the contrary. So perhaps it was because she wasn't trying to figure out a way to squash her enemies that a method of revenge came to her, heaven-sent if you will, and then, of course, it was so perfect, so beautiful she had no choice but to devote the remainder of her life to seeing if it was actually possible to bring it off.

Get someone else to get them for you. There it was in a nutshell, so to speak, and, like so many great notions, startlingly simple once you thought of it.

But there was a special element to this particular notion, the craft and cunning of it that always made her smile. The thin, tight, knowing, masking, taunting smile that said she knew something the others didn't and was harboring a plan that would see them all in hell. No matter what you do to me, the smile said, no matter what you say, what insults you heap, what humiliations you force me to endure, in the end I'll get you back, and now, even as you torment me, I know exactly how I'm going to do it, too. Yes, that's what her thin, tight, knowing, masking, taunting smile said.

Mama knew. "Be an archer," she said. "Find an arrow; string it to your bow."

Mama, of course, had been playing with words, making a pun out of their name. What Mama meant was: go for the weak spot -- which had always been Mama's way. But Beverly thought her own approach was far more cunning. Find someone else to do your dirty work. Get yourself a human tool.

It took her years to find Tool, and when she finally did, the moment she laid eyes on it was one of the most ecstatic of her life.

There she is! she said to herself. That’s her! I can see it now, can see her doing all the things I've been dreaming of. Yes, no question, that's her, I know it, she's the one!

Then she peered at the girl a second time to make sure she was right.

It wouldn't do to pick out the wrong person just because so many years had passed and she'd grown impatient to settle up her scores. She'd waited this long; another year, even another decade wouldn't matter if Tool was right. But on second look, and third! and fourth!, she was still convinced the girl was perfect. The tool she'd been looking for had been delivered. Beverly felt her head surge with power the way she imagined the cockhead of some prehistoric man had once swelled with potency when he stared at a rock and realized for the first time that he could use it to crush a rival's skull.

 

It had been a gray day, the kind of sad, warm, unbearably humid day when the sky's the color of old pewter and the air's so close your brain feels soggy and your joints begin to ache. The kind of day when you don't feel like meeting new people because even the sight of the ones you already know drives you up the wall. You want to scream, that's the kind of day it was, but you don't, don't show even a smidgen of your pain because you're a professional, a shrink, a clinical psychologist, certified and sane and socialized and analyzed, so you just smile your thin, tight, masking smile and go in to meet the new patient.

There she sits, tense, coiled, twenty years old, five feet two inches tall, 110 beautifully conditioned pounds, hair black like a witch's, eyes so hard and blue they make you think of ice. And yet there's something vulnerable about her, too, a visible yearning, a need, and you grasp at once she's got a craving you can satisfy.

She's a murderess.

"Another little murderess, Bev," Carl Drucker tells you as he hands you the file. Carl pretends to hold the folder as if it were too hot to handle, and his sheepdog's eyes twinkle when he enunciates "murderess." Carl always feigns amusement over the most dangerous patients, but he doesn't fool you. He's scared of them, so frightened he'd surely wet his pants if he had to be with one of them alone. Poor Carl. For all his training, evil still confuses him. He knows in his brain that there's no such thing, there's only antisocial behavior, but he doesn't really know it the way you do, deep down in your gut.

"Seems our new Missy Perfect chopped up mommy and granny, little sissy, too. The old story, Bev. Strict family. Religious nuts. Wouldn't let the girls watch TV, let alone go out on dates. Mommy was stupid. Granny ruled with the strap. So one day Missy broke, took the old wood ax, and chopped 'em up."

Another twinkle from Carl. Better watch it, Carl. Don't want to end up on my list, do you?

"Why the sister?" you ask. As if you didn't know!

"Oh, Bev—why's the grass green? Jeez, you've been around. Sissy was there. She probably ragged her. 'Diana's gonna get it, Diana's gonna get it, neah, neah, neah!' So, while you're chopping the authority figures, you might as well chop up the taunting little bitch, too. But it's interesting, come to think of it, there weren't any men around?" Carl, stroking his wimpy mustache, assumes his Great Psychiatrist pose. "She went for the ladies, split their heads, then gave 'em each a couple of chops between the legs. Split, split, split. She's a little sickie, I can tell you. Sue Farber tried talking to her, couldn't even get close. We thought you'd do okay with her, though. More your type, Bev. Wanna give it a shot?"

Sure. Why not? It's what you do for a living, work with disturbed young females all day long, and you know the offenders aren't that much different from the nice polite college kids either. The bottom line is usually pretty much the same, a snake ball jangle of angry sexual confusion working its way out through eating disorders, and, in this case, good old matricide.

"You'll take a look?" You nod. Carl's eyes twinkle. "That's my girl. Diana Proctor's her name." He strokes his wimpy mustache. "Good luck, Bev. And don't take any sharp instruments in there with you. Heh-heh-heh."

Poor Carl. He knows they're all incurable. He knows he's running a warehouse for psychotics and the state's rehabilitation policy is so much crap. Hell, you're lucky if you can get one of them to construct a coherent "feelie" in the OT shop, let alone relate to you on a therapeutic basis. But Carl doesn't care. He's beyond all that. He's a proper civil servant now. Maybe there was a time when he wanted to save the world, effect great cures, write up great cases, apply psychiatric theory to social problems, reform penology, rehabilitate irreversibles. But he gave up on all that long ago. He thinks you've given up on it, too, doesn't know that you're here looking for a tool and that in about five minutes you're going to find yourself one in young Diana Proctor, murderess.

 

How did she know? Even now she couldn't tell you, though Diana had been in continuous training with her for more than a year, and there'd been five years of weekly therapy sessions before that, before she could get her out of Carlisle and under full-time supervision.

It was the whole gestalt, she often told herself, recalling the moment of their first encounter, so clear in her mind it could have taken place within the hour instead of years before.

It was her need; she reeked of it, she told herself. I could smell her hunger the way you smell bread in a bakeshop. She'll be my tool. And so now she has become. . . .

It was one of those mysterious encounters that take place once in a lifetime if a person is lucky, like finding your dreamboat sitting beside you on a tour bus, or like accidentally pressing the shutter of your camera at the very moment a prominent politician is assassinated.

Of course, it wasn't that accidental. She'd been working at the hospital all those years just waiting for the right tool to come along. Diana was perfect. The hard part would be to get her out.

 

Shhhh. Here she comes now. Up the stairs on tippy-toe, just like a little lynx. She pauses in the bedroom doorway, silhouettes herself the way you trained her against the light of the hall. An elegant black form against a warm yellow rectangle, waiting, waiting for your order.

"Come in, my dear. Feeling better?"

The little thing nods as she scampers toward you. The tail ends of her wet hair, slicked straight back, comb lines visible, cling seductively to her sinewy little neck. She sits down on her stool and helps herself to a cup of tea. You watch her as she blows on the hot liquid, smile at the sight of her pink little tongue as it darts out between her lips to test the temperature.

"I'm going to reward you for your very good obedience, Diana. Tomorrow at dusk you'll enter Central Park, dressed in black, dressed to kill. You'll carry two holstered ice picks strapped to your arms and several bulletin board-type pins, you know the kind, with the little colored knobs on the ends."

The lynx nods eagerly.

"The first part of your mission will be to pick out a person on one of the paths. Your target should be alone, big, male. A jogger would be fine, but a walker or an ordinary tourist will do as well. Stalk him for at least fifteen minutes. Make sure he's the one you want to hit. Then, when you see an opportunity, execute an attack. Don't kill him; just stab him with one of the pins. A quick jab in his rump will do the trick. But remember, it won't count unless it makes him squeal. Approach from the back; stick him; then retreat and lose yourself in the woods. Move rapidly toward the West Side. Go to some stores; hang out awhile; then take a bus back. Don't come home on foot. So, girl—think you can do all that?"

The little lynx smiles. "Piece of cake."

"Is it now? I guarantee it won't be so easy. A hundred things can go wrong. Pick on an off-duty cop and you're in trouble. He'll shoot you if you don't run fast enough. Or what if your target shouts for help and there happens to be a good Samaritan around the bend? See, you have to think of everything, analyze the mission. Tell me, what are your most important decisions?"

Lynx gazes up at you. Her ice blue eyes burn with predatory lust. "Choosing the target," she whispers. "And deciding when to prick him."

Smart girl! Sometimes you're so proud of her you want to kiss her all over. But instead you stroke her head, pet her the way Mama used to stroke and pet you, offering affection in exchange for loyalty and obedience. What the tool needs is tough love, not sex; sex she can provide for herself.

"Okay, go on back down to your room now, lie on your bed, close your eyes, and think the whole thing through. Remember, he's got to squeal. You'll take my little tape recorder with you, so you can bring me back some proof. Wear rubber gloves, of course, and leave the pin in. That'll slow him down in case he's the pursuing type. He'll have to pull it out first, and by then you'll be gone in a puff of smoke. So, tomorrow night?"

"Please, yes, Doctor," the little tool begs.

 

The plan was to make Carl think it was his idea, that recommending Diana for release had never crossed your mind. Sure, you'd done wonders with the little murderess, vacuuming out her brain, servicing and reinstalling her superego, instilling remorse for her evil acts and a strong desire for redemption. You'd even made her into a leader in the wards, a girl the others turned to for settlement of minor disputes. And she'd become virtually indispensable in the hospital library, not to mention earning straight A's in her extension courses in library science. The little murderess has proved herself reliable, trustworthy, contrite, but no, Carl, it has never ever occurred to you she should be released.

"Jeez, Bev. . . ." Carl turns away, starts stroking his pointy little beard. The wimpy mustache wasn't enough; this year he sees himself as Freud. "I mean, what're we doing here if we're not preparing them for release? Isn't our purpose to save their broken little souls?"

"Yes, of course. . . ." You furrow your brow. What a hoot, but you have to appear sincere. "Don't forget, Diana committed three murders, Carl. She axed her own mother. The public won't stand for it if all she's got to do is spend five years in cushy old Carlisle."

"Think so, Bev? I'm not so sure myself."

You can't believe it! He's actually thought the whole thing through!

". . . those kinds of objections, you know, don't come from the public. It's the survivors who usually put up the stink. They write the judge. They lost their loved ones, and the killer's got to pay." Carl twinkles. "But here," he says, "we've got a unique situation. There are no survivors. There aren't any cousins, aunts, anyone who cared for any of them or even gave a rusty shit. Diana finished off her whole family. So what I anticipate is a quiet hearing in the judge's chambers with a sympathetic prosecutor going along. Let's go to the wall for her, Bev, and, while we're at it, show the state we can do what they pay us for. Diana's barely twenty-five. I hate to lose her, but she's entitled to a future. I talked to her this morning. She refers to 'the old me who did that very bad thing' and how, though she knows that 'old me' was definitely her, and wouldn't dream of not taking responsibility for her actions, she feels emotionally disassociated from the person she used to be and thoroughly incapable of doing what she knows she did. Thanks to you, Bev, she's practically cured! And I thought I'd never see the day. Anyway, you know that people who kill close family members are almost never dangerous to anybody else."

Ha! That's what you think, twerp!

Carl turns slowly toward you again, places his hands ceremoniously on his desk. "Look, she's your case. Whatever you decide I'll back you up. But think about this: If you don't want to take on responsibility for initiating a release, and believe me, I can understand why you might not, I'll be happy, with your consent, to take that upon myself. Believe me, Bev, every shrink on staff will join the cause."

Carl's eyes dance merrily in their sockets.

 

Remember what she was like that first time? Young Murderess Ready to Strike. She had the killer eyes, the kind you'd seen so often in sociopaths, the fear and hatred raging to get out. Those kinds of eyes tell you there's no compassion, no identification with another human's pain. You have those very eyes yourself sometimes but never show them to the world. They're turned inward, and over the years you've worked up a mask so you can play the healer and make the troubled girlies think you care about their wearisome anorexia or tedious bulimia attacks.

She, Diana, Tool-to-be, had the true killer's glow and, fairly rare in combination with that, a deep, deep need to submit. She was a storm trooper waiting impatiently for orders, a gladiator frothing at the mouth to fight. She craved authority, a coach, a savior, and as she met your eyes, she knew you would be the one to give structure to her rage, focus it down until it became a pure blue torch point of fire.

How could you both tell so much from just a glance? Because you'd been looking for each other all your lives. You'd been rummaging for years in prisons and mental hospitals, searching always for a certain look, and Diana had been seeking you, too, even though she didn't know she had. So when you walked into that little room, she saw in you the governess of her dreams, and you saw in her a fine young ward who would help you balance up all your old accounts.

It was, as they say, love at first blush.

"They're calling you little murderess around the hospital," you told her, speaking passionately and looking straight into the little murderess's killer eyes. "They're frightened of you. They think you're dangerous. They say I'm a fool to sit down in here with you alone. But I am not afraid, Diana. I know you won't harm me. I understand why you did what you did, and I'm going to say this to you now, before you even speak a word: You were right to kill them, and you oughtn't to be feeling any guilt over it. None! None at all! They abused you and by doing so brought everything that happened upon themselves. Mother, grandmother, sister—are you supposed to bear unendurable suffering just because it comes from your blood relations? Everyone's got murderous feelings toward family members, but few have got the guts to take up an ax and pay them back. You're different. You have got the guts. So whatever happens between us now, Diana, I want you to know how much I respect you for your bravery."

Having made your passionate personal statement, you assumed a cooler, more professional demeanor. "Now listen carefully, we're going to be working together. I'm going to be your doctor and help make you well. After I prove to you that what you did was right, we're going to take a good hard look together at who you are and what you ought to be. You have a whole lifetime ahead of you, Diana. In a few years, when you're ready, I'll get you released, and then I'll show you how to realize your potential. I'm going to help you first by building you up, making you feel strong and confident. Now tell me—what do you feel about what I've just said? Tell me your true feelings. I want to hear."

The girl started to sob almost at once. You hugged her to you and urged her to weep on.

"It's okay. Let it out. Cry it all out of yourself. Clean yourself out with the tears, Diana. You'll feel better afterwards, I promise. . . ."

In the end, after the weeping gave way to sporadic little moans and sobs, she spoke the golden words you'd been waiting for: "I feel at last . . ."

"Go on, my dear."

"I've met—"

"Yes. Tell me, who've you met?"

"Finally someone—"

"Yes, go on."

"—who understands me. Really does."

"You believe that?"

"Oh, yes." She nodded shyly. "I do."

You immediately hugged her to you again, then gently rocked her in your arms. "That's right, Diana. You have, you have, sweet girl."

And it was true! You did understand her! You truly, truly did!

 

The method was to envelop her in an alternate reality, a fictive world of your own creation existing parallel to the so-called real world, yet which to an outside observer would appear the same. To Diana, however, confined within your web, every so-called normal value would be subverted. Purposes, motives, principles, matters of morality and personal honor—in your alternate world such things would not have the same meanings as they did outside.

She's down there now in her dank little hole of a room in the basement, dreaming through her mission. She's imagining the feeling of popping the pin into the posterior of some unsuspecting man, the way it'll sink so nicely into his cushy ass. And then his yelp, squeal, cry, little chirp of pain, and how she'll record it as she runs by and how the pitch'll change because she'll be in motion. You smile to yourself: The exercise, if questioned, could be construed as a practical demonstration of the Doppler effect.

 

You went to watch her work out at her dojo at Broadway and 110th, a big hot, humid room on the second floor above a supermarket, where you were greeted by the deep-throated cries of zealous young fighters and the tangy aroma of their bodies at work.

Diana was in the first line with the best of them, energetically slashing at the air with her strong young arms. You loved the way Tool threw fast kicks and punches in unison with the others, mostly giant males. She looked so right among them, cute, too, in her white canvas gi jacket, white pants, and black obi. But you'd seen the backs of her hands after a workout, raw from hundreds of knuckle push-ups ordered by her instructor, and occasional marks, too, across her back from hits delivered with a bamboo stick, penalties for poorly executed exercises or that obscure and thus endlessly punishable offense of the dojo, insufficient respect.

There was another girl in the class that afternoon who caught your interest, reminding you of someone from your past. She had blond hair cut into a wedge, beautifully tanned skin, and a smile that lit up her entire face as she punched and kicked the air. You watched her carefully during combat exercises. She easily overpowered her opponents. She was taller than Diana, though just as perfectly proportioned, and her eyes were entirely different. While Diana had cold killer's eyes, this girl's eyes blazed clear gray like a warrior's. And while Diana had been trained to sneak-attack her targets from behind, this girl was the sort to approach hers from the front in fair, refereed competitions.

That evening, as you ministered to Diana's bleeding knuckles, you asked her the other girl's name.

"Oh, you must mean Jess," Diana said. "Sensei says she's the best fighter in the class."

 

Remember Bertha Parce, Mama? That old mean bag of a bitch English teacher at Ashley-Burnett? Yes, that one, who enjoyed making fun of certain selected kids in front of all the others. Remember the time I told you about when she read a story of mine aloud to the entire class? The story I wrote about you, Mama, the true one about your opening night at the Fairmount Club Lounge, when Millie and I hid in back of the curtain behind the orchestra and you belted out those great Porter tunes, "You're the Top," "I Get a Kick Out of You," "I've Got You Under My Skin," and the crowd went wild. "More! More!" they shouted, and you grinned and belted out a couple more: "Let's Do It," "So in Love," and, as your final encore, "Another Op'nin; Another Show." Even then they clapped and howled and begged for more. God! Do you remember?

I wrote my story about that night, and everything I felt during it, the way my heart brimmed with pride in you, Mama, standing out there in your glittering sequin-trimmed crimson strapless, knocking all those fancy folks for a loop. And then how you brought me and Millie out. "I want you all to meet my two girls," you announced. "It's way past their bedtimes, but they wanted to be here to see if their old ma could really sing." And the crowd went berserk again! I remember one fat old man in particular, with slicked-back gray hair, who stood and clapped until the rest of them followed suit. And then some bosomy lady yelled, "Bravo! Bravo!" and you glowed, Mama, you positively lit up electric in the smoky, booze-scented dark of the lounge.

That's what I wrote about, and the grip of little Millie's hand in mine, and the swelling up I felt inside, the warmth of my pride in people knowing I was your daughter. I wrote, too, about how, late that night back home, you came into my room to tuck me in and how you smelled, the faint scent of perfume on your skin, the remnants of powder on your cheeks, and the glow on you still, the glow that comes from being applauded, and the aliveness of you, the pulsing energy, the power I felt when you reached down and grasped me in your arms. I wrote about how I fell asleep remembering the applause, listening to it echo, and how, just before I slept, I whispered four words to myself. I think you know them, Mama. "A star is born" is what I whispered. And I wrote how I smiled then and fell asleep and how I thought that was the happiest, proudest, most sublime night of my entire life, Mama, and I wrote about it that way, too, trying to capture the special quality of its magic.

A week later I was positively thrilled when Miss Parce announced she was going to read my story out loud in class. Except she had barely read a couple of paragraphs when I realized what she was trying to do. She read it in this mean, sarcastic way, and soon, sure enough, she had the other girls tittering, smirking, glancing at one another, and rolling eyes. And then, caught up in the spirit of the thing, she broadened her satiric attack, making funny little faces while relentlessly decimating my story, assassinating my every line, until finally all my words lay shattered and broken on the floor.

When she was finished, when there was nothing left of what I wrote except the sporadic tittering in the back of the room, she looked straight at me, eyes glowing, and said: "Tell us one thing please, Beverly: Is there a single line in this entire tale in which there resides one tiny particle of truth?"

I stared back at her uncomprehending, too stupefied to reply. The classroom went silent. You could hear a pin drop, as they say.

"Well, dear?" she asked, and, when I still didn't answer: "What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?"

She stared cold stone hard at me, her black pupils tightened down to points. And then she smirked. I wanted to speak. I wanted to cry out, beg her to stop staring at me. But I couldn't; I was too humiliated. And still, the mean old witch would not relent. She kept staring, and then her mouth turned cruel, and she dabbed her tongue to her lips like a snake readying to strike and said: "I've heard your mother actually does sing in nightclubs. Is that correct, my dear?"

I must have nodded faintly, for she went on.

"Well, I must say that is a unique occupation for a mother. And I'm sure she does very well at it, too. But Beverly"—and here her voice turned false-friendly—"there are things we write about when the assignment is 'describe a sublime moment in your life' and there are things we don't write about, we don't even mention in polite conversation. I would have hoped you understood that."

With that the old witch wrote a great big F in red ink across the front page of my story, then daintily placed it facedown on her desk.

The girls in back had gone quiet again. And at just that moment (and she could have timed it so perfectly only by design) the bell rang to announce the end of class. The others shuffled out of the room in mortified silence, leaving me and the bitch alone. I began to cry. Miss Parce smiled at me and, in the phony manner of a wise, friendly teacher, said: "Now, now, my dear, no need to weep, I'm sure. . . ."

As I sat there choking on my tears, I knew, Mama, that I would pay her back one day. Yes, Mama, I knew I would live to see her dead, mutilated, too, if I could manage it. But most important—dead! dead! dead!

 

Listening to the tape Diana brought back from Central Park, feeling her excitement rise at the sound of Diana's running feet, Tool's "uh!" as she plunged in the pin, the delicious squeal of the jogger victim, his "yeeeeeow!" as he was stuck, then his curses receding in the distance as Diana's feet hit dirt when she dodged off the running path and into the woods, Beverly knew she would always want Diana to bring back something from her missions.

It was only later, upon her realization that the quick kills Diana would be making would preclude the possibility of recording her quarries' cries of pain, that she evolved the notion of trophies. She wanted always to have something, some object taken from the Scenes of Bloodletting, to touch, caress, and hold. It would give immediacy to Diana's reports, and perhaps most important, it could be offered up to Mama on the wall.

 

Mama told her: "Truly now, dear, in your training of Diana, you've found your true vocation. I think at heart you were always a behaviorist hiding in an analytic therapist's cloak. Rewards and punishments, increasingly complex tests of obedience—these are the only ways to dominate and compel. Certainly the progress you've made with the lynx proves the efficacy of your approach. My God, Bev, take a look, will you, at the incredible little tool you have wrought!"

 

The vigorous training workouts—long, slow, loping jogs along the bridle paths of Central Park; short, sharp wind sprints along the East River esplanade; huffing and puffing calisthenic sessions on the cold basement floor of the house; sweaty muscle building on the Nautilus machines at the Eighty-sixth Street Health Club; harsh, exhausting martial arts training at the West Side dojo; the special intensive ten-day commando course in Boulder, Colorado; endurance exercises; obedience tests; ice pick attack drills performed against straw dummies in your holiest of holies, your bedchamber—all were carefully designed to build strength and speed, refine coordination, increase response time, restore vigor in the face of fatigue, and, most important, inspire a yearning to kill.

Once the craving was instilled, the obsession would build, and once the obsession was implanted, the command to execute would be ardently obeyed. "It's all in the preparation," Mama told you. "The long, hard months of training will pay off," she said, "in the swift split seconds of attack." But since the kills will be so very swift, you and Tool must receive gratification some other way. Perhaps through slow rituals performed afterward upon the cadavers, rituals of vengeance by which your rage will be satiated and the humiliations you endured will be many times repaid. "Remember, Bev," Mama said, "it's not sufficient to settle your old accounts at par value. Too many years have passed; the interest has built up and by now far exceeds the original charges entered in your ledger."

 

Diana Proctor stands poised in a corner of the cellar, sleek and slinky in her black cotton bodysuit. Two specially designed holsters, each containing an ice pick, are strapped to her forearms. Across the room a scrawny tiger cat, abducted from the street, prowls around a plastic dish of kitty tuna bits.

Beverly studies the human lynx, breathing slowly, deeply, awaiting her order. Finally Beverly decides it's time.

"Kill it," she orders.

Diana doesn't move. Beverly approaches the girl, then slaps her hard, smack!, across her face.

Diana, eyes front, lips trembling, receives the blow as her due. Beverly watches as the pale skin of the lynx's cheek turns pink, then red from the impact. Both understand the meaning of this chastisement. Delay and/or squeamishness will not be tolerated.

"Kill! Kill the cat!" Beverly whispers her command, and this time an admonished Diana instantly obeys.

In a single, beautiful, scything balletic motion the tool executes the little creature. Afterward they both stare down at its rigid body, neck up, ice pick thrust through the throat deep into its tiny brain.

"Clean up the mess; deposit it in a trash can on the avenue; then report to me in my bedroom," Beverly orders. "I have a choice new punishment in mind for you, my dear. One that will, I'm sure, instill a greater eagerness to obey."

Diana, braced, nods acceptance of this directive. As Beverly turns, she smiles quietly to herself. The little lynx can't wait. She loves correction. She'll be lubricating like crazy by the time she mounts the stairs.

 

You told Tool to befriend the girl named Jess, the lovely, strong, brave gladiator at the dojo. You had in mind a kind of recruitment but naturally never mentioned your intentions.

 

After Tool flew down to Florida, slew Bertha Parce, and brought back your trophy, a hair curler found in a funny bright blue plastic box beside the old schoolmarm's bed, you quizzed her endlessly about the gluing of the bitch's vagina, what it felt like to slather in the gooey stuff, then squeeze the labia majora shut.

"Did she smell down there?" you inquired, grinning. "Like a rotten old fish, I bet," you added, pinching your nostrils with disgust.

Your delighted interest in the aromatic dimension most definitely spurred Diana on. She described everything, as she'd been trained to do, in the most exhaustive detail. And you relished every word, for that was the bliss—the imagining of it, the reconstruction, the obsessive staging and restaging of the execution. Your re-creations, fueled by Diana's reportage, gave you more pleasure, you were certain, than anything you might have felt had you gone down there and done the wonderful deed yourself. Your imagination, embellishing powerfully upon the details Diana provided, could create scenes far more intense than what had actually taken place.

 

It was so funny, Mama, when Carl went through the file and kept pulling out the reports I'd planted so carefully, ingeniously, and diligently through the years, flatly written case file summaries which contained no evaluations, no recommendations, and certainly no self-congratulation.

They purported to be simple factual accounts of Diana Proctor's treatment, and Carl kept quoting them to me, saying things like "Just listen to what you wrote, Bev!" and "Jeez, Bev, listen to this!" and "God's sakes, Bev, can't you see the forest for the trees?" He was using them, see, to try to convince me the little murderess had recovered and was ready for release. And I kept resisting: "I'm not sure, Carl"; "I might have overstated that, Carl"; "But don't forget, she killed them, Carl—killed them, then split their crotches with an ax!"

I toyed with him until I got him riled. I was acting like a hard-ass, he said, a tough bitch shrink, the kind he hated, and he was genuinely surprised since when he'd hired me, it was for my humanity, not my clinical skills or my degrees. What happened to my compassion anyway, he wanted to know, and had it occurred to me I might have spent too many years playing shrink-goddess to my patients, in the process losing sight of them as vulnerable human beings? At the very least I owed Diana the benefit of a doubt. I'd brought her along this far; why the hell couldn't I see she was ready to go the distance? And I just stared at him, Mama, until he started to rave: What kind of a person was I? Had I become one of those neurotic power-tripping shrinks who refuse to let a patient go because they can't bear to relinquish their control?

See, Mama, he was using my own words to make his case, and the longer I refused to buy it, the stronger became his conviction he was right. In the end, when I finally relented, his investment in Diana's "rehabilitation" exceeded anything I could have worked up with a direct appeal. I hornswoggled the little twerp, and he never knew it. I'm telling you, Mama, it was so damn funny to watch him fall so easily into the trap that took me the better part of five years to lay. Like taking candy from a baby. It was just, I don't know . . . hysterical.

 

There was another little trap I laid, not for Carl but for Diana. Call it my safety valve, Mama. I laid it . . . just in case.

The trap consisted of creating a traceable path between Diana and the signature, a path that would not run through me. So I instructed her to tell Carl, Sue Farber, the librarian, and a couple of her cronies among the patients that she was a sort of "wallflower type," and that was why she didn't like going to hospital dances. None of them would think anything of it, unless, of course, they were questioned about it later on. Then they'd all remember, wouldn't they? You bet they would!

I also had her sign a note to me with a droopy flower leaning against a wall, a note I could plant without comment in her file. The best part of it was the way I persuaded Diana that the devalued flower she'd leave at each gluing would, in fact, be her signature.

A neat little double trap, if I do say so, for although she would only be the tool, she would think she was the artist!

 

Beverly Archer, wearing a prim navy blue wool skirt and freshly ironed white blouse, sits in a chair in her bedroom facing the full-length life-size oil painting of her mother on the wall. Diana Proctor squats on the floor between Beverly's legs, also facing the portrait. The girl wears jeans but is bare above the waist.

"You know why we're facing Mama?" Beverly asks. "You do, don't you?"

Diana shakes her head. "I'm not sure," she whispers.

Beverly, tightening her grip by pressing her knees together, feels the girl shudder. The little lynx is afraid, she thinks. As well she might be, considering she's about to get it.

"We're facing Mama because we want Mama to see," Beverly explains patiently. "Isn't that right, my dear? I mean we do want that, don't we?" Beverly squeezes her again. "Well?"

"I guess so," Diana responds.

"Guess! Well, I assure you we most definitely do want her to see. We want Mama to witness your correction." Beverly pauses. "You know why you're going to receive correction, don't you?"

"I think so," the girl mutters.

"Tell me?"

"Because I hesitated."

"You did, and now you're going to be punished for it."

Beverly does not feel unkindly toward Tool. On the contrary, she feels quite maternal toward her. But the tool has erred and must be disciplined. The principle of unquestioning obedience must be reinforced.

"You know I don't like to hit you, Diana. You know how much it hurts me," Beverly says.

"I know," the girl concedes in a whisper.

"Especially as I understand what you went through as a child, the beatings you took from your grandmother. You know how much I despise brutality."

"Yes, I know that, Doctor."

"So you must concede that when I strike you, there has to be a very good reason?" The girl nods. "What you did before down in the cellar, hesitating, standing there petrified, not even acknowledging my order, was deserving of the good, hard slap you got, wasn't it?"

Beverly feels another wave surge through Diana. "Yes, I deserved it. I know I did."

"Well, what I'm going to do to you now is not like that slap at all. It's important for you to understand the difference. I slapped you to shock you into action. The purpose was to sting and stun, make you aware of your responsibility to obey. The correction you will receive now has an entirely different objective. It's to remind you of your status vis-à-vis myself. What is that status, Diana?"

"You're the doctor and I'm the patient," Diana says as if by rote.

"Correct. And who is in charge in a doctor-patient relationship?"

"Doctor is always in charge."

"Completely, in charge of everything?"

"Everything."

"And patient's role is—go on, girl, fill in the blank spaces?"

"Her role is to obey Doctor."

"Always."

"Always."

"No matter what Doctor prescribes."

"No matter what."

"And so if Doctor says, 'Kill the cat,' then patient must kill the cat, correct?"

Diana nods. "Patient must immediately kill the cat."

"Easy to forget sometimes, when the assigned task is disagreeable. Nobody wants to stab a helpless creature and make a bloody mess on the floor. We both understand that. But there are many disagreeable tasks to be performed in this life. Mama taught me that, and now I'm teaching you."

"Yes, thank you, Doctor."

"Good. Now we shall proceed with the correction."

Beverly grabs hold of Diana's hair, pulls her head back so her face is pointed up at the portrait. "Look up at Mama, straight into her eyes. Keep your eyes fastened to hers. Don't look down again until I tell you."

Beverly reaches to the little round marble-top table beside her chair and extracts a pair of stainless steel scissors. Feeling Diana tense between her knees, Beverly freezes with the shears as if posing for a photograph. She looks up at Mama, smiles, and nods, then, taking up a big handful of Diana's glossy black hair, abruptly snips it off.

Diana, finally comprehending the nature of her chastisement, moans while Beverly looks down at the hair lying inky black in her hand. It is beautiful luxuriant hair, thick and soft, the little lynx's protective fur. And it's going to come off now, all of it, every single strand, until Diana's head is as smooth as a billiard ball.

Snip! Snap! Snip! Snap! The hair falls fast beneath the scissors. Beverly can feel the sweat on Diana's neck as she holds the girl's head steady, can hear the sobs that rack the poor lynx's body, too. Every so often, out of kindness, she reaches around to Diana's face to wipe away the tears. But still, she cuts, relentlessly.

"Now, now, my dear," she comforts.

Tool, for all her distress, is behaving well. Even as she weeps copiously for her loss, her eyes remain riveted to Mama's. Good little tool, brave little tool, but the hardest part is yet to come. Diana's head, now topped by a mop of ragged black, still must be clipped and shaved.

Beverly, finished with the scissors, takes up a small electric clippers, turns them on, applies the clipper head to Diana's skull. Buzz, buzz, buzz, she mows the hair straight off the top the way she's seen it done in films about marine recruits, slowly, inexorably shaming the girl caught tight between her knees.

More tears now, great rivers of them, as Beverly takes up a shaving brush, dips it into a bowl of warm water, stirs it around in a cup of soap, then applies the rich lather to Diana's head. Swish, swish, swish, she shaves the head clean with a razor. And all the while she whispers: "Now, now, little darling. Now, now. . . ."

Diana's hair is everywhere, on the floor, on Beverly's skirt, sticking to the girl's bare moist torso, front and back. Her pale shoulders and breasts are decorated with little flecks of black, and her skull gleams white like alabaster.

Beverly cradles the girl's head in her arms, tenderly petting the back of her neck. After granting permission for Diana to lower her eyes from Mama's, Beverly urges her to turn and sob upon her lap.

"There, there," Beverly says, gently caressing the well-shaved skull. "There, there, my little precious. It was difficult, I know, but it wasn't as bad as that. And I have a lovely black wig all ready for you, to cover you up when you go out."

Diana stares up at Beverly, her eyes large, beseeching. "You're not going to let me…?"

"No, my dear. Every few days we'll be shaving you clean again. I'm afraid you won't be allowed to grow another full head of hair until you've completed all your missions."

"Oh, Doctor!" The girl's red, teary eyes are filled with pathos. Beverly, slightly touched, knows she must not relent.

"Think of yourself as a Ninja warrior. They shave their skulls to symbolize their commitment."

"I so love my hair long."

Yes, long like a witch's. "And so do I," Beverly assures the girl. "Which is why we shall be saving all the trims. I have a lovely rosewood box to keep them in. Some evenings we'll get them out, feel them, and remind ourselves of the glorious mane you had and will someday have again."

"Yes, thank you, Doctor," Diana says gratefully, hugging Beverly around her waist.

Beverly hesitates. There is more correction to be administered, and she wants to assure herself now that the little lynx can take it. It won't do to push the girl too far; the purpose is to humble her, not to wound or break her spirit. There is also something about this additional correction that causes Beverly to pause. She wonders whether she'll be able to inflict it without trembling a little bit herself. Shaving Diana's head was one thing, but the other more intimate area. . .

Beverly looks up to the portrait, asks Mama what to do. The answer comes back immediately.

"Make the little bitch shave her own pubes," Mama says. "Have her lie on her back on the bathroom floor, spread her legs before the mirror and scrape herself. Stand behind her, watch her as she does it, and smile as you do. The correction will be more forceful and the submission more complete if she's required to do it under supervision."

"Thank you, Mama. You're so clever about these things."

Beverly Archer leans down and whispers into Diana's ear: "Come with me, dear, into the bathroom. There's still a little more hair to be removed. . . ."

 

Bertha Parce, Cynthia Morse, Jimmy and Stu MacDonald, Bobby Wexler, Laura Gabelli—I got six of them, Mama, six so far. Cindy was best, I think. Tool did a first-class job on her. Not only glued her up tight but her daughters, too, who (their bad luck!) stayed over with her in Seattle for Memorial Day. Tool also glued Cindy's hands together so I could imagine her begging me for mercy and, while she was at it, webbed her feet as well.

Remember Cindy, Mama? Remember what she did? I could never ever forgive her for it. My best friend, the one I trusted more than anyone else, whose declarations of sisterhood I naïvely believed. The roommate to whom I confided my secret yearnings, passions, fears. And then, after all of that, to have her turn on me so cruelly.

You probably guessed it. We were lovers. I'll never forget those wintry nights at Bennington when we pleasured each other, then slept together warm in each other's arms. I'm not ashamed of having loved her, Mama. There should never be shame where love's involved. And I did love her; that is why her betrayal was so calamitous, why it did a hell of a lot more than just sting me to the quick.

God! Remember what a wreck I was when I came down from Bennington, told you I wasn't going back, that nothing would ever ever make me return? And the way I cried, days of weeping it seems like now, and you were worried because I wouldn't eat and barely got out of bed.

"Bev's having a little breakdown," I overheard you tell Lisa Walters. But it was a major breakdown I was having, Mama, and it was that lousy traitor bitch who brought it on. What she did was unforgivable. And I never did forgive her for it. No, I never did.

What I still can't understand is why she turned. I never did anything to her except love her. So . . . maybe that was it. She couldn't take my love. It was too powerful, too consuming. Fearing it, she betrayed my trust.

A year after it happened I wrote her a letter. "Please," I begged, "all I want to know is why. Please just tell me why?" She didn't answer. I should have known. So there I was, humiliated again. And then I vowed that one day she'd beg something from me, beg me not to glue her.

She was an ice goddess, was Miss Cynthia Morse, with her thick blond hair, parted to the side, so she could throw it back whenever it fell into her eyes, fling her head and throw it back like the fine Thoroughbred mare she knew she was. Her skin tanned more beautifully under the sun than any human's skin should be allowed to, her eyes were clear and gray, and she had a wonderful smile that made her whole face light up like a sunrise. I don't think I'll ever forget the touch of her, the satiny feel of her flesh, the fresh salty flavor of it, and the smell. Her small but perfect breasts cupped in my hands, the feel of her ribs through the skin of her flanks. She was a knockout beauty and I was plain, she was popular and I was disliked, she was gregarious and I was a loner, but still, she chose me to be her friend.

I was proud of that. I believed I was envied for it. Anyone in the whole college would have been happy to be Cindy's roommate, but she had chosen me. "You'll keep me honest, Bev," she told me one afternoon, spring of freshman year, when we took a long walk together across the meadows and she broached her proposal that we room together in the fall. "I can talk to you. You're always there to listen. Know what I think you should be? A shrink. Ever think of it, Bev? I know you'd be good at it. You're so giving, you know. Such a good listener. And you have such good intuitions about people, too."

Oh, I was giving all right! I gave her everything I had. Friendship, affection, love, later my passion. That was my undoing.

"This it, Cin?"

"Oh, yes, Bev. Down there, yes. There. That's the place. Yes! Right there! Oh! Do me, Bev. Please do me there again. Oh, yes, yes, your mouth feels so good. . . ."

And I did. I reveled in it. Before I knew what she was up to, I would actually beg to be allowed to taste her. That's how stars-in-my-eyes stricken I was. Well, ha!, she's the one begging now!

There were nights, I remember, January and February nights, when we'd put a Mozart horn concerto on the stereo, then lie together in her bed in the dark of our room, watching the snow falling gently outside.

"This is great, isn't it, Bev?" she said, hugging me. "This is the way it should be. Just the two of us together like this, together and forever. I truly wish our lives could go on like this forever. Don't you, Bev? Don't you?"

One night I asked her if she thought a day would come when we'd each have a man in our lives.

"Men! Oh, Bev, sometimes you're just so screwy. I haven't seen any men around here. Have you? All I've seen are boys, and I don't mean just the kids, I mean the whole damn male faculty, too. Men! Ha! Who needs 'em? I sure don't. On a night like this, what could a man do for me that you can't do?" Cindy paused, stretched. "Hey, wanna go down under the covers? Feel like it, huh? It's so nice when you're down there taking care of me. Helps me to sleep, you know. Hey! What're you doing? Oooo! I like that. You never did that before. Where'd you learn that? You've got great moves, kid. No boy I ever went out with knew how to do that. Oh! Yeah! Yes!"

For two months I loved her, passionately, feverishly. She didn't reciprocate, just had me do special things to her, things she let me know she liked by the way she wiggled and moaned and swooned. And I was glad to do them, although I believe now some part of me must have known I was being used. But even if I'd realized it at the time, I wouldn't have cared. The bliss, you see, was all mine. Her needs became my obsession; her secret chambers became my pleasure domes. All day long in my various classes I'd think about servicing her at night. I was totally enraptured by her, enthralled, enslaved, possessed. Cynthia Morse, blond Thoroughbred mare—she became my world.

Looking back now, I can see it all coming and wonder at my blindness to what was going on. She needed me that winter, but as soon as spring came, she was ready to cast me aside.

That in itself could be understood. In this life, as you so often remind me, Mama, people use one another all the time. "It's all this use," you say, "that makes the world go around." But use is one thing, betrayal another. Cindy betrayed my love for her, betrayed it in a vulgar way. Use can be forgiven but not betrayal. You taught me, Mama: Betrayal must be avenged.

I had gone down to Cambridge for the weekend to do some research at Widener Library. My intention was to spend the night in Millie's Harvard dorm room, work the following day, then return to Bennington on Sunday night. But when I got to Millie's, I found I wasn't welcome. She and her roommates had male guests; there'd clearly be no room for me unless I slept on the floor. In any event there'd be no privacy.

I was furious. I'd told Millie I was coming, and she'd promised she'd save me space. We got into a fight, which led to my walking out in a snit. Steaming with anger, I decided to hell with research, I'd return immediately to Vermont.

Back in Bennington, tired and depressed, I taxied to my dorm from the bus stop. Our room was empty. Cindy wasn't there. Feeling needy for her friendship, I decided to search her out.

I found her finally, or rather should say I heard her, for it was her unique effervescent laughter that told me where she was. In a room on the floor below, belonging to Gretchen Hawes and Karen Tate, well-known campus lesbians, close buddies of Cindy's but not, I'm afraid, of mine.

I don't know what made me hesitate before I knocked. Perhaps I was curious about what was inspiring so much giggling inside, afraid, too, that my depressed mood might bring the others down. I certainly didn't want to intrude and put a damper on their fun. So I stood outside the door and listened. And then I understood: They were talking about me.

"She's too much, Cin. Too much," said Gretchen.

"Well, I think she's very sweet," I heard Cindy reply.

"You would. Seeing as how you've been on the receiving end." Laughter.

"Sick, sick, sick," said Karen. They all broke up.

"Play us some more. Come on, Cin. More!"

Much giggling again, and then I couldn't believe what I heard. My own voice, on tape, begging Cindy to let me love her: "Please, Cin. I know just what you need. Please—let me do it. I can make you smile, you know I can. Please."

The blood rose, boiling, to my face. I felt as if the top of my head were about to explode. My voice! Begging to be allowed to pleasure her! And she recorded it! And was playing it now for them!

"Hey, I've got an idea, Cin." Gretchen tittered. "Bring the little mouse down here one night. Share some of that 'please, please, please' with us, okay?"

"I've got some special places she can do." Karen snickered. "So long as she begs for it." And then: "Sick, sick, sick!"

I wanted to scream. Don't know why I didn't. I wanted to curl up, die right there on the floor. But instead I took hold of the doorknob and shoved the door open. The three of them were sprawled out on their stomachs on top of Karen's bed, the little tape player in the center.

Six eyes met mine, laughing, defiant eyes. And then, when they realized I'd been listening, those six eyes turned mean.

"Snooping, Bev?" Gretchen sneered.

But I ignored her. I stared straight at Cindy. "You recorded me?"

She shrugged, then smiled sheepishly. "Yeah, well, I guess I did."

"How does it feel to be a rat?" I spat the words, then reached to the tape player and ripped out the cassette.

"Hey, watch it!" said Karen. "You can screw up the machine. We were just having a little fun. God!"

But I kept my eyes on Cindy and let her have it. "Is this your idea of fun?"

"Get off your high horse, honeybunch," said Gretchen Hawes. "Eavesdropping at the door is like reading other people's mail. Do that, and you deserve what you get."

I met their eyes with as much contempt as I could summon, then, bursting into tears, ran back to our room and flung myself onto my bed. "How could she? How could she? How could she?" I screamed into the pillow. I wept and wept and wept.

Cindy turned up an hour later. She'd been drinking. I could smell the booze on her the minute she walked in. I pretended to be asleep. She was noisy as she undressed. It was clear she wanted to disturb me. Finally she spoke: "Stop faking, Bev. I know you're wide-awake."

"How could you do that to me?" I asked. "How could you?"

"You kind of let yourself in for it if you know what I mean," she said.

I sat up in bed. "Let myself in for it?"

"Sure. The way you've been slinking around all winter, trying to get into my pants all the time. I mean, now and then it's fun, but when I asked you to be my roommate, I didn't know I'd be taking the, you know, lezzy route."

"But it was you!"

"Uh-uh, Bev. Was you started it. I never put the make on you. I wouldn't want to." She snickered. "You don't turn me on."

I stared at her. This was my Best Friend! "I turned you on plenty as I remember," I whispered bitterly.

"Work your tongue around long enough you'll get a reaction. I'm just flesh and blood, you know."

"So you never cared for me? Is that what you're saying?"

"Frankly I like guys, but I try to understand other points of view. You know the saying 'Different strokes for different folks'? Right?"

I rushed at her then, attacked her with flailing arms and nails. I wanted to scratch out her eyes. Being bigger and stronger, she overpowered me easily. Finally, when I was exhausted, pinned to the floor, she looked down on me and smiled her unforgettable smile.

"Let's not make such a big deal out of this, huh? There're still a couple months till the end of the term. Let's try and get along, Bev. I'm sorry about playing the tape for those guys. I really am."

Sorry about playing the tape! What about recording it? What else besides playing it did she have in mind when she taped me when I was most vulnerable?

It all had been a setup, that much was clear; I'd loved her as best I could, but to her I'd been little more than a pest.

The next day I packed up my stuff. She came into the room just as I was finishing.

"Leaving, huh?"

"What did you expect?"

She shrugged. "Well, it was nice while it lasted, Bev. It's too bad you had to sneak back early on the weekend."

Sneak back! The girl was incredible.

"You hurt me, Cin. Hurt me a lot."

"If I did, I'm sorry, I really am. I'm sure you'll get over it. When you do, I hope we can be friends." She shrugged again and left the room.

Twenty years ago, and I never did get over it, Mama. And I never loved anyone carnally again. I'd learned the risks the hard way and didn't like them. Cindy was the last lover I ever had.

That whole spring was miserable, that whole summer, too, not to mention the whole rest of my life. But as they say, you live and learn. And there was one good thing that came out of our relationship: Cindy steered me to my profession. On her advice I became a psychologist.

By the following autumn, tired of suffering, I decided to concentrate on my anger. And then I began to have fantasies, delicious fantasies of Cindy begging me not to hurt her the way she'd hurt me.

In response I shrugged and smiled and told her not to make such a big thing about it. I was going to kill her; that's all I was going to do. After all, she was only flesh and blood; isn't that what she'd said? And after she was dead, I was going to seal her up with glue. No big deal, right, Cin? Different strokes for different folks, right? Huh? Right?

I'm looking now at the trophy Tool brought back from Seattle. The yearbook of our Bennington class. Nice book, though I'm not in it. Nice picture of Cindy as she was then, tossing back her head to flick away the long blond hair that always used to fall across her face. Reminds me a little of someone I've seen recently, same eyes, hair, same warming, radiant smile.

 

Carl's bedazzled reaction when you broach taking the tool into your house: "Sometimes you surprise me, Bev."

"I don't know what's so surprising, Carl. Diana's my patient, she's my responsibility, and since I've got an unrented basement apartment available, and she's going to be coming to me four days a week for therapy anyway . . . well, it just seems natural to throw in a little housing, too."

"Sort of like a halfway house for her. That what you have in mind?"

"Now that you mention it—sure, why not?"

His little eyes dance a jig. "And you were so against her being released."

"Never against it, Carl. Hesitant about proposing it, that's all." You shrug. "I guess you could call me conservative when it comes to murderesses."

He strokes his beard, becoming grayer and more pointy by the month.

"What about a job?"

"There're a lot of possibilities right in the neighborhood—museums, institutes, archives. She's a trained librarian. She'll have no trouble finding a position."

"Small-town Connecticut girl—think she can hack it in the city?"

You put your hands on your hips. "I'm from Cleveland, Carl. I can hack it, so why not her?"

He fondles his beard again. "Want to know what I think? I think you're one superduper human being. How's that?"

You stare at him incredulously. "Well, thank you, Carl. I believe that's the first real compliment I've ever had from you. And we've worked together a lot of years."

"We have, Bev. And pardon me for not being one of those bosses effusive with the praise. But when I say something like that, I mean every word of it. I think you're an incredibly talented shrink and a terrific person, too."

Flattered and stunned, you shake your head. "I'm going to treasure what you're saying, Carl. It really means a lot."

 

When you first noticed the tall blond girl in Diana's martial arts class, you knew she reminded you of someone, though you couldn't put your finger on exactly whom. It was only later, after you asked Diana to get to know the girl and cultivate a friendship, that it struck you whom she reminded you of. Cindy Morse, of course.

Then you couldn't wait to get your hands on her. But you were patient. Patience, you might say, is your middle name. And Diana was clever about it, too, building the friendship slowly, exactly as you'd ordered.

You'll never forget the evening Diana reported that she and Jess Foy had gone out for coffee after class. As you'd instructed, Diana told Jess she worked part-time at the New York Society Library and confided, too, in a most casual way, that she was in intensive therapy with a female shrink. Jess, in turn, informed Diana that she was a student at Columbia, where she was also on the women's varsity fencing team. She herself had never gone to a therapist, she said, although there were times when she was sorely tempted, what with the pressures of college and all. The girls chatted about karate, gossiped about the sensei, and exchanged tales of their initial embarrassment at having to change clothes in the unisex dojo locker room. But then, giggling, each admitted to the other that she now deliberately took no special pains to conceal herself when undressing.

"Let the novice hard-ons drool, that's my motto," Jess told Diana.

Diana reported how much she liked her new friend and was pleased at your instruction to nurture the relationship and make it grow.

 

Beverly Archer and Diana Proctor both were aware that the stakes were high and that for each of them, in separate as well as connected ways, it would be a night of destiny. Depending on the outcome, Beverly would learn whether the course she had embarked upon obsessively so many years before would finally lead to the attainment of her goals. For Diana the night would prove whether her murderous passions, once raging and incoherent, now disciplined and honed, could be applied to the completion of Beverly's design.

As the day ended, the strain between the women, always apparent on account of the extreme polarity of their roles, seemed to increase with the inexorable withering of the light. Beverly was more snappish than usual; Diana, quieter and more withdrawn. As night settled in, there was a palpable tension in the second-floor bedroom, where they waited, silent, before the large portrait of Beverly's mother in the niche.

Beverly had turned on the red lamps so that the chamber was curiously illuminated, suffused with crimson light redolent of blood. She wore the same scarlet dress as was depicted in the portrait, a dress that had once belonged to her mother and that she'd had altered to fit her shorter, plumper frame. But there was something anomalous about her in that particular costume, designed to be worn by a featured singer in a nightclub. And since Beverly had refused to have it dry-cleaned, it still reeked faintly of tobacco, alcohol, and sweat, the signature aroma of her mother's professional milieu.

Diana Proctor, dressed in the costume of a night killer, full-length black bodysuit, black sneakers, tight-fitting close-cropped black wig, black latex gloves, had two ice picks fitted into leather holsters strapped to the insides of her forearms. In a small waist sack, suspended from her belt, rested a caulking gun loaded up with glue and, wrapped carefully in tissue paper, a withered field daisy collected that morning from Central Park.

An hour later Diana, in a loose denim jacket that concealed the ice picks, sat alone at the end of a subway car on a sparsely filled downtown express. The train hurtled through the tunnels, swaying and moaning, wheels grinding against the tracks. To a neutral observer Diana might have appeared drugged and in a daze. In fact, she was visualizing, a process taught to her by her therapist in preparation for the important act she was on her way to perform.

She got off her train at Union Square, took the exit stairs that led directly to the park above. Once outside she sniffed the night air, clean and cool, then made her way east along Fourteenth. It was a quiet weekday evening; traffic was sparse, and there were few pedestrians. As Diana approached Second Avenue, she began to look around. She was searching for a quarry, not a stray cat or dog, not even a jogger to prick in the butt with a pin. Tonight she was stalking something bigger. She was looking for a human she could kill.

Unbeknownst to Diana, Beverly Archer was close by. While Diana had waited uptown for her express, Beverly had left her house, hailed a cab, then ordered the driver to speed south to East Fourteenth and Second. Now she stood in a phone booth, phone in hand as if making a call, waiting for Diana to appear. She saw the girl, springy and taut, ready to strike, moving rapidly toward her. Though tense herself, Beverly was filled with pride. The girl approaching was a weapon she had forged, a tool trained to kill on command. On her command.

Diana, unaware of Beverly, continued east on Fourteenth. On First Avenue she turned south, and then after two blocks, east again on Twelfth.

After ten minutes of walking she entered the so-called Alphabet City section of Manhattan, where the avenues are lettered A, B, C, and D. This was a neighborhood of broken-down tenements and vacant buildings turned into crack houses. Here, behind the garbage cans in the alleys, one could find occasional homeless persons sleeping curled in messes of tattered blankets.

After exploring this area for a quarter of an hour, Diana located three possible quarries. Her first choice was an old man, sleeping and wheezing noisily, his body curled just inside the back doorway of an abandoned store. He had covered himself with a long piece of cardboard. His cheeks bore a grayish stubble, and locks of iron gray hair surrounded his ears.

Diana stood poised, staring down at him, thinking out how best to proceed. She had rehearsed the procedure numerous times, both with Doctor and alone, and it was certainly not as if she had never attacked live people before. But still, she hesitated. This man meant nothing to her. He had never abused her. He had no meaning in her life.

"It will be a cold kill," Doctor had explained, "the most difficult kind to bring off. Yet because it will be cold, it will be an excellent test. If you have trouble with the coldness, you can always warm it up. Just imagine your target is a person who has shamed you, hurt you in a way no apology can repair. Put a little bit of your mother into him if you like, your grandmother and sister, too. Remember, Diana, you're well practiced with the picks. It's not the killing but the gluing that's going to draw upon your strength."

Diana stared down at the sleeping man, wheezing and sputtering in the night. But it wasn't thoughts of members of her own family that fired her up to strike. It was the elegantly coiffed redheaded singer in the scarlet dress on Doctor's wall who thought up all the awful punishments. Yes, it was Mama lying there beneath the cardboard. Mama who deserved to die!

In a series of moves as quick and balletic as the ones she'd used on numerous dummies, Diana Proctor attacked the old man's throat. A moment later the belabored wheezing stopped.

Off now with the cardboard cover. A series of quick flicks with the utility knife and the encrusted trousers were cut loose. The fly zipper was already open. Diana pulled off the shoes, wrapped in filthy towels, then placed a heel in her victim's crotch and hauled the torn-up trousers down.

Doctor had been most specific about the way she wanted her enemies desexed. Female organs were to be filled and pinched shut, male organs glued back between the legs. Using her black-sneakered foot to pull down the stained underdrawers, Diana exposed her quarry's blue and flaccid genitals to the air. Then she pulled out her caulking gun and set to work. When she was finished, she unwrapped the withered field daisy and lovingly placed it in the doorway beside the building wall.

Beverly waited for Diana in an all-night bookstore on Third Avenue near Twelfth. Browsing titles on a table of Specials & Bargains, she glanced up every so often at the large plate glass window facing the street. Diana had to pass by here after she had completed her mission; it was on her prescribed route home.

A few minutes past midnight Beverly caught sight of the lynx, elegant in her black garb, approaching from down the avenue. Beverly hurried out of the shop to intercept her. Was that a killer's glow she saw on the little murderess's face?

For Diana this meeting was unexpected. Surprised, perhaps even frightened, she asked Doctor if she had done something wrong. Beverly, instead of answering, placed both hands on Diana's arms, then ran them along the girl's sleeves. Feeling only one pick beneath Diana's jacket, she expressed her pleasure with a grin.

"Problems?" she asked. Diana shook her head. "Bring a trophy back for Mama?"

Diana nodded, reached into her pocket, handed Beverly a carefully folded piece of paper, an advertising flyer for a fortune-teller resident in the neighborhood.

"He wasn't carrying much," she explained.

Beverly, pleased with the flyer, understood. "It's not the monetary value of the trophy that's important to Mama, dear. It's the way it speaks of the victim's mentality."

Alone in a taxi, on her way uptown, Beverly trembled with exhilaration. Tool worked; it could settle old accounts. Soon there would be fulfillment of a long-held cunning dream.

Diana, riding home in a deserted subway car, felt the same dizzy exhaustion she had felt years before when she killed the female members of her family. It’s hard and exacting work, but it has its pleasures, she reminded herself, as the train swayed side to side, hurtling through the tunnels.

An hour later, having bathed and changed, Diana presented herself at Beverly's bedroom door, ready to report every detail of her outing. Beverly sat in her usual chair, the portrait of her mother looming above. She beckoned the girl into the room. Diana stood at stiff attention, and the debriefing ceremony began.

At one point in the recitation, when Beverly inquired whether Tool found it necessary to conjure up an actual character in her life in order to bring herself to kill the homeless man, Diana raised her eyes for a moment to the face on the painting. Smiling knowingly to herself, she answered respectfully: "I took your advice, Doctor. I thought of Mother."

 

You were very pleased with Tool for the way she recruited Jessica. And Jessica herself made a particularly lovely patient. If only you could harness her energy, you wished, as she droned on about seeing her father die in an exploding car. If only you could send her on missions, you yearned, as she explained how for years she couldn't bear to look out a window when someone was about to drive away.

There was a special quality she had, one unfortunately that Tool lacked. It was the quality of seeming untamed, perhaps even being untamable. You knew you'd have to use drugs if you were ever to train her to do your bidding. The very notion of channeling her aggression, disciplining it so it could serve your purpose, definitely excited you. You had some delicious daydreams about that during several of her sessions, in which you imagined her being broken by degrees. Undoubtedly she stimulated such fantasies because she was so strong and competitive. Whenever you saw her, you got the kind of charge you imagine a horse trainer gets when confronted with a powerful Thoroughbred filly. Yes, it would be a real pleasure to make a champion out of this one, to teach her to kill for you on command. And it was her very inaccessibility on that level, the fact that you knew you could never make her into a tool, that fueled your "what if?" fantasies and made seeing her in sessions such a pleasure.

 

Two women, Beverly Archer and Diana Proctor, stand toe to toe inches apart. Both are short, just a little more than five feet tall, but while Beverly is middle-aged and pudgy, Diana is young, lean, superbly conditioned, and extremely strong. Beverly's arms are flabby; Diana's are roped with muscle.

Yet it is the weaker older woman who dominates the stronger, younger one. By the force of her intellect and the power of her dream she had made Diana her slave. And behind Beverly there stands always the life-size portrait of Victoria Archer, pushing, goading her daughter to forge Diana into the tool of her vengeance.

The room where they stand is an oversize bedchamber situated on the second floor of Beverly Archer's Manhattan house. The painting of Victoria Archer takes up a large niche opposite the bed. It is illuminated with a reddish glow similar to one cast by the spotlight at the notorious Fairmount Club Lounge in Cleveland, Ohio, scene of Victoria Archer's greatest triumphs as a singer. During her nightclub singing career, red was Victoria's trademark color; she had naturally red hair, always wore a crimson dress, her entrances were keyed with a red spot, and pink light played upon her face while she sang. But her daughter's trademark color is different. She is just now in the process of explaining the difference to Diana.

"You are my knight," she tells the girl, "and as such, you must wear your lady's colors."

"What are your colors?" Diana asks humbly.

Beverly glances up at the image of her mother, then back to Diana. "Black, all black, black on black," she responds.

 

Diana Proctor, wearing outdoor clothing purchased out of a catalog from L. L. Bean and a nondescript light brown wig, proceeds as instructed to Grand Central Station in New York City, boards a noon train, then sits quietly with her backpack at her feet until, an hour and forty minutes later, the train pulls into New Haven, Connecticut.

At a storefront near the railroad station, she rents a standard-size Chevrolet for a two-day period, telling the friendly clerk she intends to drive into Vermont to view the magnificent autumn foliage that has been well reported in the newspapers and on TV. She will most likely spend the night in a motel up there, she says, and then, getting an early start, return the car late the following morning in time to catch her 1:00 P.M. train back to Providence, where she is a graduate student at the Rhode Island School of Design.

It's a cool Sunday afternoon in mid-October. As Diana drives her rented car into the Connecticut countryside, the sun glitters, and the sky, an intense shade of blue, makes a brilliant backdrop for the foliage now nearly at its peak. The passing woodlands, clusters of maple, oak, and ash, are russet and gold. Fallen leaves, in a multitude of hues, coat the lawns of homes, and trees, arching overhead, cause the sunlight to dapple the worn macadam roads.

Diana's route, as traced by Beverly Archer on an Automobile Club map, takes her through the picturesque towns of Woodbury, Roxbury, and Washington Depot. She refills her gas tank at a Shell station in New Preston, then continues west, along the edge of Lake Waramaug, finally arriving at the town of Kent, Connecticut, a little past 4:00 P.M.

Here she parks in a shopping center lot, takes a stroll, stops at a coffee shop, where she devours an egg salad sandwich and a large glass of Coke. After eating, she returns to her vehicle, hitches on her backpack, then proceeds to hike her way out of town. Shortly after crossing the Route 341 bridge, she passes the campus of the Kent School, an exclusive preparatory boarding school bordering the Housatonic River. Within an hour she arrives on foot at the main entrance to Macedonia Brook State Park.

It is 6:00 P.M. when Diana enters the park, relieves herself at one of the portable toilets set up near the entrance, then quickly follows a trail heading north directly into the woods. Since the sign at the entrance instructs hikers that the park closes officially at sunset, Diana wishes to disappear into its wilderness as quickly as possible.

Twenty minutes of rapid walking bring her to a small stone bridge that spans Macedonia Brook. But instead of crossing it, she consults her compass, turns off the trail, and begins to follow the water on a vector south through uncleared brush. Once she is certain she is alone, invisible to other hikers who might still be lingering on the trails behind, she unloads her backpack, takes a long sip of water from her canteen, then proceeds to strip off her brightly colored hiking gear and wig and change into her all-black executioner's garments. When she is fully dressed for the work she has come to perform, she hoists her pack up again, then follows the roaring brook back to the southern edge of the park.

Here, abutting the wilderness, sits a nicely renovated white clapboard farmhouse. Only a hedge of bushes, a wire deer fence, and an old stone wall separate this residential weekend retreat from the parkland. In a place she carefully selected at the height of summer two months before, Diana takes off her pack, then sits upon it. She will wait at least four hours before moving closer to her prey.

As darkness falls, the lights in the house come on, first in the kitchen, then on the front porch, then in the living and dining rooms. From time to time the forms of two men can be seen passing by uncovered windows or silhouetted against the translucent curtains that protect the rooms on the upper floor.

As evening wears on, cooking smells, including the aroma of roasted lamb, reach Diana from the house. Sounds reach her too: conversation; laughter; recorded music; television news. She waits patiently until the smells and sounds subside, until the downstairs and finally the bedroom lights go off. Then she stands, stretches, and carefully straps two holstered ice picks to her forearms, and her usual glue and wallflower pack around her waist.

The moon, showing a three-quarters face, illuminates the woods. Diana climbs over the ruined stone wall that separates the park from the property belonging to the house. Using pliers, she separates a portion of the deer fence from a tree, slips in, makes her way through the hedge, and then emerges finally onto cleared land.

Crossing the lawn, she resembles an apparition, her black clothing blending with the shadows cast by the trees, her shaven head, reflecting moonlight, shining amidst the darkness all around. In the forest behind an owl hoots. The only other sound is of rushing water, a tributary of Macedonia Brook that crosses the property to cascade over a small waterfall on the far side of the house.

Diana has no difficulty entering the premises. On her reconnaissance visit over the summer she discovered a ground-floor lavatory window with a broken lock. Lynxlike she pulls herself through this opening, then drops silently to the tile floor inside. The owners, brothers, own no pets. This night, she is grateful she will not have to kill any dogs.

A muttony aroma, which she smelled earlier outside, still permeates the interior. Passing through the kitchen, she notices an empty wine bottle on the counter. She presses her hand against the front of the dishwasher, feeling a familiar warmth. Then, pausing at the kitchen window, she stares out across the lawn. She can see the hedge she passed through on her way in, but the woods behind are lost in darkness.

The first step of the old stairs creaks when she places her foot upon it. It will not be possible, she understands, to ascend and make her kills silently one at a time. She hesitates. Unfortunately there is always an unexpected complication. This time it's the bedrooms. The house is old, eccentrically built and renovated, and thus difficult for her to map out in her mind. She tries to visualize where the bedrooms will be in relation to the top of the stairs. On the basis of observations made earlier from the woods outside, she comes up with a reasonable guess.

Still standing on the first step, she works out a strategy. She will rush up, execute the brother in the bedroom on the left, then wait for the other brother to come into the first one's room to see what the commotion is about. Doctor will want to know about this, and myriad details more: what it felt like to rush up the stairs; how many steps it took to reach the bedroom from the landing; the position of the first brother in his bed; a description of his nightclothes; whether his window was open; the smell of him; the sounds he makes (if any) as he dies; how he looks when he's stripped for gluing; the exact size and shape of his genitals; the feel and weight of them in her gloved hands.

Diana, coiling to attack, prepares herself to take mental photographs of all that will transpire. She has proposed to Doctor several times that she bring along a camera to document details. But Doctor wants no part of mechanical documentation. "You are my camera," Doctor has said. "It's your point of view, the killer's view that interests me. Not that of a neutral machine."

The sound of a cough from the second floor. Diana freezes on the first step. Perhaps one or both of the brothers are still awake. But no difference—she has killed awake people before.

Suddenly she leaps, taking the stairs two at a time, bounds off them onto the springy pine floor of the landing, twirls martial arts-style, then barges through the half-open doorway to her left. A blubbery middle-aged man, lying naked in his bed, is in the process of raising himself up as she bursts in.

"Who the hell—?"

She notes the explosion of fear in his eyes as she punches at him with her fist, violently knocking back his head with the blow. Before he can recover, she thrusts her first ice pick up through the exposed portion of his throat, then shoves it with all her force deep into the soft tissue of his brain.

She hears a sound, turns, sees the second brother standing in the doorway. Their eyes meet for a moment, and then he flees. She is at his heels as he rushes into a bathroom, then desperately attempts to shut her out. She aims her foot at one of the door panels, kicks full force, splintering the wood. The man, middle-aged, paunchy, balding, backs up against the toilet. He stares at her and at her ice pick, terrified. She stops all motion, meets his gaze.

"You must be Stu MacDonald," she says softly.

The man shakes his head. "I'm Jimmy. That was Stu in the other room."

Diana shrugs. "Doesn't matter. He's gotten his. Your turn now."

"What do you want? What are you going to do?" Jimmy MacDonald whimpers hoarsely. "Please, miss, there's money in the house. Art objects. A valuable coin collection. I'll give you all of it if you'll go away, spare—"

Diana shakes her head. "No mercy tonight," she intones.

Jimmy nods. "Yes, I see that. No mercy. . . ." He tries to speak calmly in the hope that by so doing, he will gain himself several extra seconds of life. "Could you at least tell me why, miss? Why you want to hurt us?"

"Doctor."

"Doctor? Who's the doctor?" Jimmy becomes angry. He screws up his eyes. "What the hell kind of doctor are you talking about?"

"Dr. Beverly Archer."

At first Jimmy's eyes cloud with confusion. Then a small flicker of remembrance ignites somewhere deep within.

"Bev Archer? But that was so long ago. Must be twenty-five years. Surely she doesn't still think…because it wasn't us, you know. It was set up. She ought to talk to her—" Jimmy shakes his head. "Bev can't still be angry over that."

Oh, she's angry!

Diana feigns an attack with her second pick, then waits for Jimmy to raise his hands in a posture of defense. When he does, she punches at him through the opening, hitting him hard in the center of his stomach. As he chokes and doubles over, she stabs him through the window of his right eye, then thrusts her pick deep into the mushy substance within his skull.

The killing done, Diana calmly switches on lights in order to examine her handiwork. Jimmy lies on his side, ruby red blood pulsing from his eye socket across the white tiles and into the grout lines of the bathroom floor. In the bedroom Stu MacDonald lies sprawled out on his back, half on, half off his bed. Diana takes mental pictures of their positions, for she knows the kinds of questions Doctor will ask.

Both killings together have taken her a total of ninety-seven seconds. Not bad, she thinks, for such a complicated house. Moreover, she has engaged for the first time in actual dialogue with a quarry, a unique experience she is eager to share. Even as she prepares the brothers for gluing, she imagines the keen expression that will transfix Doctor's face when she describes the confusion slowly giving way to recognition in Jimmy MacDonald's frightened eyes.

An hour later, having glued up both brothers and collected two new trophies of her hunt, Diana drives one of their vehicles, a gray Jeep Wagoneer, back into the town of Kent. When she emerges from the Jeep, she is wearing the same nondescript light brown wig and L. L. Bean hiking clothes she wore earlier in the day. She transfers her backpack into her rental car parked in the shopping center lot, then, careful to observe all traffic regulations, drives back across the Route 341 bridge, continuing this time into New York State and on to a preselected spot far off the main road where she can park safely, curl up, and get some sleep.

The next morning, on her way back to New Haven, Diana decides to make a brief side trip. She does so in full knowledge that should she confess this unauthorized detour to Doctor, she will be severely punished.

Nonetheless, passing so close to Derby, Connecticut, she feels the need to look again at Carlisle Hospital. The place means much to her. Having been incarcerated there on account of the ax murders of her mother, grandmother, and sister, she spent five relatively happy years in intensive therapy before a judge signed an order for her release.

Departing from her designated route, she follows the side road that leads to the institution, then stops her car a hundred feet from the main gate, turns off the ignition, and stares in through the sturdy wire fencing that surrounds the grounds.

Far in the distance, between the red-brick main treatment building and the gray cinder-block residence known as A, she makes out a small group of young men and women playing touch football in a field. They are much too far away to recognize, a good thing, too, since she knows well the awkwardness of meetings between former patients and patients still confined.

As she watches, a man exits the door of the main treatment building and walks to a second building, which houses the manual therapy shop. Diana recognizes this person on account of his stride. He is chief psychiatrist Dr. Carl Drucker, a gentle man with merry eyes and a funny, pointed beard who, in her last months at Carlisle, assured her she was cured.

Now something bittersweet wells up within Diana as she remembers Dr. Drucker's kindness and watches the young people in the distance at their play. She thinks nostalgically of the years she spent in this institution, happy, lighthearted years. And although she acknowledges the enormous debt of gratitude she owes to Doctor for her release, there is a side of her that wishes she were still locked up inside.

Tears well in her eyes as she recalls her life here, how she was permitted to wear her hair long, to roam freely about the grounds, to meet, talk, perform, and make friends without having always to ask permission in advance. Now in the city every moment of her existence is regulated, bounded by Doctor's demands to perform missions and bring back trophies of her kills. Am I free now? she asks herself. She doesn't know the answer. But peering through the locked gates of Carlisle, she fondly remembers carefree days within.

 

There is but an hour of light left after a warm October day, an Indian summer day in Manhattan. Two young women, one short and dark, the other tall and blond, stand on a bluff in Riverside Park overlooking the Hudson River. Although both wear workout clothes, tank tops and running shorts, the taller woman's garments are brightly colored, while the shorter one's are totally black.

The short dark-haired girl is holding a bow. She has notched an arrow in its string and is demonstrating the pull to her taller friend. Very slowly she pulls the arrow back. At full extension she holds it poised for flight. She stands this way for what seems an eternity, both hands steady, the bow not moving, and then, very slowly, she raises the bow upward in an arc so that the arrow is pointed directly at the sun. Again she holds her position. Then, suddenly, she lets the arrow fly. For a moment it shows black against the dark orange solar disk. Then it disappears from sight.

The taller woman nods. She is impressed. The shorter one offers her the bow and aluminum quiver filled with arrows. The tall girl, accepting, promises to practice diligently. The shorter one assures her taller friend that she need not return the equipment until she has mastered the technique.

 

Remember the MacDonald brothers, Mama, Jimmy and Stu, those tall, strapping, handsome all-around fellas at Caxton Academy when I was at Ashley-Burnett? So many of the girls had crushes on them. In those days they were the type you were supposed to swoon over and adore. Stu played football, Jimmy basketball, and they both were great dancers. Broad shoulders and even broader smiles. Hunks of what the girls called U.S. Prime Grade A Beef.

There was something marvelously shallow about them, too. Oddly that may have been their most attractive feature. They weren't tormented intellectuals or overly mature and thus awkward among their peers. They weren't emotionally skewered by a bizarre home life, or artistically gifted, or unpredictable in any way. The MacDonald boys acted their age. They were interested in sports and cars and girls and not terribly much else. Easy going, fun-loving playboy types, who, like all red-blooded guys back then, were always looking to get laid. But if a girl turned them down, they didn't get too upset about it. Men and women, boys and girls—to them relations between the sexes was a game of flirt, conquest, and submit. Sometimes you won, other times you didn't; but win or lose, you knew there'd always be another round. What I'm getting at, Mama, is that with the MacDonalds what you saw was what you got: two normal white bread all-American boys, the kind who, when they grew up, would run businesses or sell stocks and help keep our nation strong.

Except what I saw was not what I finally got. Because there was a dark side to the MacDonalds, a side they hid so you wouldn't see it, except maybe sometimes when they were drinking or smoking grass, and then there was a little bit of blackness showing, enough so that if you were an astute observer, you'd catch a glimpse of the smallness, the meanness, the part that would always take advantage, the cheap crooks crouching behind the cardboard pasteups we used to call (ha!) gentlemen.

Remember, Mama: I was fifteen years old. There was a dance that winter over Christmas. I didn't want to go, but you said I must because the parents of the kids giving it had put my name on the list as a favor.

I hated dances, first, because I was such a maladroit dancer and, second, because I was so rarely asked onto the floor. I was too plain for the Cleveland boys. Something about me, withdrawn and worried, put them off. I wasn't sexy. I didn't have your looks or charm or poise. I was clumsy and mousy and too smart for my own good. I hadn't yet learned the craft of pretense. . . of which I am a master now.

And so I went. You gave me little choice. You bought me a dress, not particularly flattering or attractive, and you arranged a ride for me with someone else's father. Studying me while I waited, amused at my anguish, you asked why I was looking so damn tragic since it was just a dance. I really wasn't going to be burned at the stake, you said. I might even enjoy it if I tried a little bit. "Come on, Bev—let's see you smile," you said. "And try not to be a wallflower, okay?"

I remember riding downtown silent in a car filled with giggly, overexcited girls, off to some dark, stuffy club on Euclid Avenue, where there were rows of old oil paintings on dark wood-paneled walls and the air smelled of dead cigars. I followed the others up a grand staircase and into a ballroom, where an orchestra was playing the smarmy, sentimental standards of the day. There were kids buzzing around, parents smiling, a bar for soft drinks, and couples dancing on the floor.

Well, Mama, just as I'd foreseen, I stood by the wall with the dozen or so other wallflowers, unattractive girls, girls with acne on their faces, girls who were merely shy—stood with them, a stupid, turd-eating grin on my face, looking hopeful, eager, waiting, waiting for what I knew would never come.

On the other side of the room stood our counterparts, the stag line: unattractive, shy, acne-faced boys who didn't dance well and acted silly around females. We wallflowers eyed the stags and the stags eyed us and no one came over, and thus the evening wore tediously on.

But there was something afoot that night. The MacDonald brothers had cooked up a private little scheme, something no wallflower had ever experienced or even hoped for in her dreams. They'd decided between themselves that they would romance one of us clinging to the wall. And for some reason, I've never managed to fathom why, they settled upon me. Me, Mama! They chose me to be their Cinderella.

They began their courtship early in the evening. First Jimmy and then Stu came over and asked me to dance. No one watching could believe it. Dreamboat Caxton boys, the kind a girl would kill for at Ashley-Burnett, offering themselves to mousy little Beverly Archer, twirling her off to dance in strong, authoritative arms.

They were good dancers, so agile and slick they made me feel like a princess at a ball. Around, around I danced with them, first Jimmy, then Stu, then Jimmy, then Stu again, around and around and around.

Those MacDonalds knew how to charm a girl, knew how to talk and to seduce. After they warmed me up, got me all sweaty and excited, they led me off to an anteroom, and there Stu produced a slim silver cigarette case filled with lovingly rolled, thickly packed joints. He lit one and took a deep drag, passed it on to Jimmy, who also inhaled and then passed the joint to me.

It was good stuff, as I recall. But I wasn't used to it, and very soon it had me flying higher than a kite. Then back to the ballroom for more whirling and twirling, each of them romancing me, working me over, and I got high on it, it was a dream come true, a dream I didn't even know I'd had: drab, little, brainy Bev Archer getting her first taste of what it felt like to be desired.

Oh, yes, Mama, those boys made no bones about their cravings. They lusted for me; they made that clear enough. They even whispered provocative little endearments as we danced.

Jimmy: "You're really special, Bev. I've had my eyes on you since September. I just couldn't get up the nerve to do anything about it till now. There's something of your mom in you, isn't there? Stu and I've been down to the Fairmount Club Lounge and heard her sing. One very sexy lady, your mom."

Stu: "We both knew as soon as we saw you. Jimmy nudged me. 'She's as sexy as her mom. Probably as talented, too.' Hey, it doesn't upset you to hear me use that word, does it, Bev? 'Cause it's true. I mean you are sexy . . . if you don't mind my saying so."

Mind? Of course, I didn't mind. I loved it, adored it, was intoxicated by the thought. Sexy was what you were, Mama, and it was the one thing I was certain I was not. I had never felt sexy, wasn't sure I'd even know the feeling if I did. But then, as it turned out, I did know. Because while they were talking to me, I began to feel aroused.

Thinking back on it now, I don't think it was those particular boys that got me going so much as the general situation I found myself in: being high; being told I was sexy; being attended to as if I were sexy; being competed for and treated so openly as an object of desire.

I had no doubt they both hungered for me. They made it manifest, pressing themselves against me as we danced, making sure I was aware of their rigidity, showing me the hard bodily proof of their lust. But I'm sure now it wasn't their stiff cocks that excited me. Male organs have never done much for me one way or the other. It was the aura of their excitement, the evidence of their craving. I certainly didn't feel I wanted to be screwed by them, but most assuredly I enjoyed the fact that they pined to screw me.

There was a part of me, too, that knew sooner or later one or the other of them was going to make his move. But I wasn't thinking about that very much; I was too excited by the here and now of it all. Still, I wasn't naïve. I was your daughter; I knew about sex; I'd met your lovers. And the girls my age at Ashley-Burnett gossiped about little else but boys, what they liked to do and how a girl could handle them if she kept her wits about her. So on a mental level I pretty much knew what to expect. But having no practical experience and no psychological training, I badly underestimated my predicament.

It was around midnight (the dance was scheduled to end at 1:00 A.M.) that they first broached the notion of driving me home.

"We've got a car," Jimmy said. "We can easily drop you off. Anyway, aren't you getting tired of this crappy dance? Let's leave now, stop off for a nightcap at this dive we know. The bartender's a good guy. He'll serve us without making us show ID. What do you say?" And when I hesitated: " Not scared to go to a bar, are you, Bev—you who used to hang around with your mom at the Fairmount Club Lounge?"

Actually I was thrilled with the idea of going to a bar in the company of two handsome tuxedo-clad boys. So I sought out the girl whose father had driven me downtown, told her I'd arranged another ride, and enjoyed the obvious envy in her eyes when she warned me to watch out, I could get a bad reputation hanging around with the MacDonalds.

A bad reputation! At that moment I couldn't think of anything I wanted more!

We never did stop off at any dive, of course, if such a place did actually exist, which I doubt. Once we were in the car (Stu at the wheel, me and Jimmy in the back) the slim silver cigarette case emerged again. Jimmy and I shared a joint and then started in on a second. Meanwhile, Stu drove us to a deserted overlook above the Cuyahoga River, parked, got out, came around to the back, and sat down on my other side.

There I was, Mama, boxed in between them. And then the fun began. Stu deep kissed me. That was okay; I'd been looking forward to a real kiss like that. But then Jimmy kissed me that way, too, and that was kind of strange. I mean, there I was sandwiched between two brothers, both of whom were trying to make out with me at once.

"Hey, please! One at a time," I said, or some such nonsense. That only encouraged them. Next thing I knew they both were simultaneously trying to undress me or at least gain access to my top.

"Down, boys!" I said, in the haughty way an Ashley-Burnett girl might address a pair of obstreperous guys. And when that didn't stop them: "Enough! Jimmy, Stu! Come on, let's all go home."

"Uh-uh, Bev," I remember Jimmy saying as he leered. "Get into a car with a couple of horny brothers, you gotta take the consequences. Right, Stu?"

There was a lot of giggling then, I remember, mild attempts on my part to push them off, equally lighthearted attempts on theirs to unclasp my bra. We were in a kind of three-way wrestling match, laughing, having fun, and I confess I enjoyed the struggle, doubtless because I figured it wouldn't continue very long. Stu and Jimmy were decent, well-brought-up young men. Sooner or later, when they realized I wasn't going to play, they'd give it up, we'd stop off for the promised nightcap, and then they'd take me home.

That, Mama, was conventional dating wisdom as it was promulgated amongst the student body in the corridors and locker rooms of the Ashley-Burnett School for Girls. But wise though it might have been, it began to dawn on me some minutes into the struggle that in this case it was not going to apply. Then I panicked. I was scared, Mama, real scared. I began to struggle, struggle hard, and then, as can happen in close quarters like the back of a car, somebody got hurt.

It was Stu. Struggling with them both, I managed to stick my elbow in his eye. He got mad. "Watch it, bitch." Then he slapped me, not full force, of course, but hard enough to make me scream.

Jimmy cupped his hand hard over my mouth.

"Why'd you hit her, Stu?"

"Bitch poked me in the eye."

"We weren't 'sposed to hit her."

"Who cares what we were 'sposed to do. Let's do what we want. Yeah?"

At that Stu ripped down the entire front of my dress. And then the real combat began. Even through the haze of pot I knew I was in trouble and tried seriously to fight my way out of the car. Jimmy took hold of my arms and held them tight behind my back. Then Stu pulled off my bra and grabbed hold of my breasts. When I screamed, Jimmy cupped my mouth again. This time I bit his hand.

"Fuck!" He was furious. He grabbed hold of my hair and yanked it back. "Bite me again, I'll clobber you, too."

I screamed at them to let me go, and when they didn't, I began to beg. But by then they were all fired up. I'm sure all my struggling had turned them on. They'd reached the point where they wouldn't let me loose until I gave them something in return.

"Think we danced with you all night 'cause you're so attractive?" Stu sneered. He answered his own query. "Only reason you trot a wallflower is to get her to put out later on."

Then they really started to work me over, Mama. They grabbed at me and grasped at me and taunted me for my ugliness. They laughed when I started to cry. "Bet she's wet down there, too," one of them said.

The struggle went on for a good ten minutes. They laughed and hooted and talked about me in the third person as if I didn't have ears or couldn't understand.

"Look at the way she twists. Like a snake. What she needs is a good fucking, yeah?"

"Let's rip her panties off and fingerfuck both her holes."

"Better, let's strip her and throw her out of the car. Make her hitch home bare-ass."

"Yeah!"

And then, almost suddenly, it was over. The sneering and abuse petered out; the dark threats and rough grabs gave way to laughter and a lighter touch. There we were again, three kids squeezed together in the back of a car, the guys smiling, telling the girl to calm herself, the girl whimpering and shaking, then gingerly accepting the offered handkerchief to wipe away her tears. Stu got back in the driver's seat, drove us back to Shaker Heights. Half an hour later I was let off in front of my house with a "Good night, Bev. See you around, kid." I heard their laughter as they drove away.

What they did to me that night wasn't a "date rape," Mama, but I think it was worse in a way than any rape I ever heard about in my practice. Instead of raping me, they abused me; that, I've always thought, may have been their plan from the start.

I can just imagine the dialogue: "Hey, Stu, let's have some fun. Tonight, at this crappy dance we gotta go to, let's pick out one of the wallflowers, a real ugly-duckling type, know what I mean? Then dance her around, make her think she's got us all hot for her body. Then see if we can get her to do something really raunchy like suck us both off at once, maybe even take it up the ass."

"Sure, great. But what if she doesn't want to?"

"She will. She'll be so grateful she'll do anything."

"And if she isn't?"

"Screw it, bro. We'll dump on her. Give her something to remember us by. What do you say?"

In the end, Mama, it wasn't my body that was violated; it was my ego, my very soul. They shamed me, broke me down, made me cry and beg. They degraded me nearly as much as one human can degrade another, except, since there were two of them that night, my degradation was doubled.

You weren't there when I got home. You were still down at the lounge, having a drink with your cronies after your final set. But even if you'd been home, I don't know what I would have told you. I was just so embarrassed, so humiliated, so incredulous about what had happened. I doubt I could have talked about it to you or anyone else.

I tiptoed up the stairs. Millie was sound asleep. In our bathroom, I stripped off all my clothes and stared woefully at myself in the mirror.

It was Cinderella who stared back at me, Mama, Cinderella after her moment of triumph at the ball, transformed after midnight back into her drab and lonely self. But I was different inside, in a way that didn't show for several years. That night a killer was born. This wallflower, I promised myself, will one day have her revenge. And a few months later, on a miserable cold and rainy day, when I was sitting in the window seat on our landing and saw something in the sky, a flash of lightning and then a glimpse of black, I smiled as I grasped the process by which my vengeance would one day be wreaked.

 

The flashes of pain, the hurts, the shames! Wallflower, wallflower, wallflower! I'd show them what a wallflower could do! I'd leave a flower by their walls! Oh, yes, I would, Mama! Oh, yes, I would!

 

Bobby Wexler and Laura Gabelli, they got theirs, Mama: Bobby and his new brood out in Fort Worth; Laura, her hubby and children up in Providence.

Bobby was executed, of course, for the way he treated me that summer between junior and senior years at Ashley-Burnett, when you were singing at the Cavendish and he thought, since he was already sticking his repulsive member into you, it might be fun to take out your daughter and stick it into her as well. Naturally he didn't succeed. I swear, Mama, I never tried to compete with you. All your men were Private Property as far as I was concerned. But I know you had your doubts when Bobby went around telling everyone I'd put out. The little shit! When I rejected his advances, he went into a pout and then, out of wounded vanity, tried to stir up mother-daughter trouble. He wanted to come between us, Mama, and he almost succeeded, too. It's for that I gave the asshole his due. I just hope he likes the way I had him glued. He won't be getting any more erections now!

Laura got hers for gabbing. After I transferred down to Tufts, the little bitch tried to put the make on me and, when she got slapped down, went around telling everyone on campus "Bev had a big love affair that went sour with her roommate up at Bennington." She told all her lesbian pals they'd do well to stay away from me as I was very bad news. So how do you like your new glued-up pussy, Laura? Bet your husband likes it, too, heh! heh!

Probably the best parts of these executions, Mama, were the trophies Tool brought back for you. From Bobby's house a beaten up paperback copy of some crappy self-help book (as if he could ever help himself!) and from Laura's that funny old eggbeater, evidence of her newfound "domesticity" no doubt.

Yes, the first six were all on account of sexual humiliations. Even old Bertha Parce when you think of it—her attack on me was but a disguised attack on your sexuality. And the gluing of their genitalia seemed appropriate to such offenses. As for the family members unfortunate enough to be present at the times of execution, their organs were also glued so as to terminate the bloodlines, so to speak.

But now there are other pages in the ledger. Names of people who shamed me in other ways, like arrogant Professor Gaitenburg at Western Reserve, who mocked me during my orals, or Dr. Wendell Greer, the gynecologist, who tried to feel me up on his examination table. Ruth Kendricks, Geraldine Pearson, Pat Tinder and Walter Kinsolving, Rachel Spargo, Linda Nash, Richard Duggan and Violet Kraus. Oh, Mama, I could give you a list a hundred names long. There were so many of them, so very many, and there's not nearly enough time left in this life to take care of them all.

 

It must have been something in my eyes that set her off, the way I looked at Jessica. Maybe she identifies Jessica with her sister whom she loved and killed. "I had to kill her to save her from Granny," she told me once, back at Carlisle. Or maybe she identifies me with Granny, the ogress who ruled her life. Whatever weird connections she's made, the damage now is done. Poor Tool is bewildered, angry, hurt. But she's just going to have to control herself. Mama was right. Once a tool starts getting a mind of its own, things can go bad very fast.

 

The fight takes place in a small all-white room on the third floor above the dojo, a room reserved for private contests among the sensei's students. Afternoon light, pouring in through the high windows that face upper Broadway, makes the hard bleached oak floor shine.

The room is empty except for the two young female combatants, one blond and tall, the other black-haired and short. Dressed in gi jackets and pants, breathing heavily, they stand several feet apart in postures of confrontation, faces creased with rage and pain. An aura of aggression edged with danger envelops them. A faint aroma of perspiration perfumes the air.

Both women know this room well. They have fought matches here many times. It was here, too, that, giggling, they stripped to the waist several months before and amicably dueled with sabers with only a borrowed Polaroid camera to witness their carefully orchestrated contest.

Their fight today is different. A new element, a clear intent on the part of the shorter combatant to hurt and seriously vanquish the taller, has become evident only moments before. Now the two young women, chests heaving from their last contact, appraise each other. The stare of the short one, Diana, is hard and cold; the stare ofthe taller, Jess, is injured and perplexed. Then, like rival warriors about to engage in a final clash, their eyes meet and lock.

"I think we should stop awhile, cool down," Jess suggests. But she does not relax her fighting stance.

Diana shakes her head.

"You really want to go for it then?"

Diana gives her answer, a rush attack.

The women collide, brutally punch and kick at each other. Grunts of effort and sharp cries of pain resound off the walls. The smell of sweat turns pungent as, for a full twenty seconds they stand close, in nearly intimate contact, raining and blocking blows. Flesh is bruised. Blood spurts. Knuckles become raw and burn. Finally, exhausted from the struggle, the two fall back to try to control their labored breathing, each trying hard, too, not to show how badly she's been hurt.

Finally Jess speaks: "This isn't sport, you know."

Diana squints. "For me it is."

"If we continue like this, one of us'll be killed."

"That's what a real fight's about," Diana replies.

Still in her fighting stance, Diana suddenly reaches up and pulls at her hair. A moment later she casts a wig down upon the floor, then grins as she reveals her closely shaven skull.

Jess stares at Diana, trying to decipher the meaning of this gesture. Now she sees something in her opponent's icy blue eyes, a murderous look, savage, almost feral, that she never noticed before, even though the two have been friends for months. Suddenly Jess makes a decision. Turning her back on Diana, she strides across the room, opens the door, and exits without a word.

Diana, relaxing her stance, smiles knowingly. To leave a fight, turn one's back on an opponent without making the obligatory bow, is to deliver an unpardonable insult. And it will not be pardoned, she thinks.

 

My mistake, Mama, was to forget how passionate she could be. Her deeply submissive attachment made me forget that this was a girl who killed her mother, grandmother, and sister with an ax, then split all three of their bodies straight up from the crotch.

That she might be jealous if I gave special attention to a patient—well, I should have thought of that and taken steps. But things got out of hand. I remember your words: "If a tool goes into business for itself, you gotta think about getting rid of it."

And that, sadly, Mama, is what I may have to do.

 

It is 8:00 P.M. A chilly evening in New York. Diana's nostrils quiver as they catch the smell of rotted leaves, a late-autumn smell rising from the dark wet parkland below. Cold rain fell in the afternoon; now there are puddles on Riverside Drive.

Diana, jogging downtown, does not avoid these puddles. Rather, she runs straight through them. At this hour the drive is nearly deserted. On either side, graceful streetlamps burn sulfurous in the night.

Across the dark canopy of wet bushes and trees Diana catches sight of the Hudson River, its surface gleaming black like roiling oil. Beside the river, streams of cars, headlights streaking, speed along the West Side Highway.

Diana cannot hear these cars; they are too far away. All she can hear is the steady pat-pat-pat of her feet upon the wet pavement and a light buzzing sound inside her brain.

Her quarry, unaware she is being tracked, also jogs, but two hundred feet ahead and a hundred feet below amidst the trees. Every so often Diana catches sight of her, a tall, thin light-haired young woman dressed in a dark track suit, loping along a path that winds and turns through the narrow park. Diana is on a collision course with this woman. The point of intersection is a mile ahead. She feels an excitement different in quality from what she felt when carrying out missions for Doctor. This time it is her own enemy she is after, an opponent she knows well from numerous encounters. She also knows that this quarry is most likely armed, a fact that enhances the thrill of the hunt. Diana intends to strike first, hard and fast from behind. The battle should be over before it is even joined. That is the method she was taught.

Although it is cold, Diana is lightly dressed. She wears a thin black long-sleeved T-shirt and black nylon running shorts. She also wears a nylon waist sack loaded with paraphernalia for her kill: her weapon, an ice pick, which she will strap on to her forearm when she is ready; a caulking gun filled with glue to mark and desecrate her victim; and a shriveled flower plucked earlier from Doctor's garden, which she will leave as her signature beside a little wall she discovered near the killing site.

She has calculated everything. Only a half mile now to the place she carefully picked out. She increases her speed from a jogger's pace to a fast flat-out run. She bears right at the fork where the sidewalk that borders the drive meets a paved path that descends into the park. Once among the trees, she pulls out her weapon and fits it into the sheath strapped to her arm. She is now on an intersecting vector with her quarry, whom she sees clearly jogging a hundred yards ahead.

What luck! Jess is wearing a Walkman; she will not be able to hear Diana's steps. Diana looks around; no one else is on the path. She and Jess are alone in this narrow strip of park. Ahead, the great illuminated tower of Riverside Church soars into the night sky. Beyond a faint glow is cast by the city's lights.

A light rain begins to fall. Diana shivers slightly but runs on. She notices that Jess has begun to pick up her pace. Diana speeds up even more. Pat-pat-pat go her feet. She feels her heartbeat quicken as her ears find the sound of Jess's steps. Pit-pat pit-pat pit-pat. Jess is but a hundred feet ahead. Impossible now to stop. The rhythm is set. The momentum of attack is carrying her along. Diana pulls her pick from its sheath, holds it underhand as she swings her arms. Fifty feet now. Thirty. Twenty-five. Jess is almost within her reach. In a burst of speed Diana overtakes her. And then, in a single violent motion, she raises her right arm and with full force plunges the pick sideways so that it enters Jess's brain directly through the ear.

Jess, stabbed, falls upon the path, and as she does, the buzzing inside Diana's head suddenly stops. Feeling hot, feverish with victory, Diana grabs hold of Jess's feet and drags her body into the thick, wet brush on the right. She pulls her through the fallen leaves to within a few feet of the ruined wall, then lets go of her, stands back, and stares down at her face.

At one time Jess was her friend, but when she, too, became Doctor's patient, Diana's liking of her turned to hate. Now that hate is purged. Her rival is but dead meat on the ground. Diana kneels to untie the string that secures Jess's sweatpants, then pulls them down to the girl's ankles. She grins when she sees the switchblade knife strapped against Jess's side. An opponent's weapon—what a fine trophy that will make!

As Diana uncaps her caulking gun and sets to work with the glue, her only regret is that now that her onetime friend is dead, she will never be able to give back the archery set she borrowed the week before.

 

She's down there in the basement now, brooding over her unauthorized kill. All right, you turned her into a killing machine, so you've got to expect a certain amount of carryover. She's human after all. But to leave the wallflower signature and use the glue, methods reserved for your tormentors—that was crazy, that means she's out of control.

She can't even explain why she did it. A fit of jealousy? But it was Tool who got Jessica to come see you in the first place. Tool recruited her. She was Jessica's friend. She knew what therapy was. What did she expect? That you'd treat Jessica differently? That you wouldn't take her into your office and listen to her for an hour three times a week?

No, it had to be something more. This past autumn, when Jessica asked for the name of her shrink, Tool was quick to send her on. Remember the way she beamed when she told you to expect the call?

What about their actual relationship? How much do you really know? Could they have been more than gym buddies? Could they have been lovers?

Be rational about this; don't let the stress generate fantasies. The truth is you still don't know what they did all those times they went off together after martial arts class. Come to think of it, isn't it strange Jessica never mentioned Tool except the first time she called?

"Diana Proctor gave me your name. We take a martial arts class together on the West Side. I'm looking for a good therapist. I'd like to come in and talk about it if that's all right."

Yes, of course, it was "all right." You were extremely interested in treating someone who looked so much like Cynthia Morse. And this girl was so much nicer without any evident cruel streak. She was a decent, direct sort of person, but with Cindy's great looks, smile, and appeal.

So what were you after with her anyway? Looking to seduce her? Don't be absurd! Those days are long gone, and anyway, the girl was young enough to be your daughter. But admit it, she attracted you. She was just your type. And just about the same age as Cindy was then, before she turned on you and earned herself a place in the ledger.

No, there's got to be more to this than meets the eye. Tool and Jessica must have had some kind of emotional connection that, when it snapped, generated rage in Tool and set her off.

Remember the little encounter at the knife show? Running into Jessica with Tool in tow didn't strike you as being all that important at the time. But suppose Jessica, seeing her shrink unexpectedly in the company of another patient who happened to be her friend, got curious, decided to trail you for a while, and then saw something she didn't like.

Wait a minute! Remember the famous "English girl" she met in Italy, the one who fenced topless with her? The truth is you've had only her word on that. You never saw the photographs, didn't even know about them until Janek brought them up. Why didn't she tell you about them? Could she have been afraid you'd ask to see them? She couldn't allow that because if she did, you'd recognize the other girl. Suppose the alleged "English girl" was a subterfuge? Suppose Jessica didn't want to tell you she'd actually played the topless fencing scene with Diana? If that's true, then they definitely did have something going, perhaps not overtly sexual, but certainly sexualized. And if that's the case, then there was enough unresolved energy to unleash Tool and cause her to explode.

But go back a moment, think about that knife show. What could Jessica have seen you and Tool do that might cause her to mention to a friend that she was thinking of quitting therapy?

You might have spoken harshly to Tool or petted her. You do that unconsciously sometimes, out of some twisted maternal feeling no doubt. If you'd had your wits about you, you'd never have gone to that damn knife show in the first place. It was Tool's idea. She said she wasn't enjoying using crude store-bought ice picks all the time, she wanted a fine weapon, something she wouldn't have to leave behind, something really sharp with a ritualistic flavor to it, and since there was a knife show in town, would you attend it with her, take a look, see if anything caught your eye?

So there it is. Tool set the whole thing up. She knew Jessica would attend the show, probably even knew which day. She enticed you into taking her there because she wanted Jessica to see her with you, and she probably did something there that you didn't even notice, like taking your arm, squeezing it—anything to provoke Jessica and force her out of therapy.

This is terrible! It means Tool's been using you! It means you've lost control of her, created a Frankenstein's monster just as Mama said.

Calm down! Look at the implications. Janek's got the photographs. If Tool was the other fencer and he should see her entering the basement apartment, he'll recognize her at once. He already suspects you. He's not all that great at hiding what he feels. Or, more likely, he's deliberately letting his suspicions show in the hope you'll get spooked and tip your hand.

The main thing now is to keep Janek from seeing Tool.

But there's something even more important, which is to get to the bottom of Tool and Jessica's relationship. Tool has to tell you whether she was the "English girl." Once you're certain about that, you can take the necessary countermeasures.

So the thing to do is get Tool up here in front of Mama. Mama always intimidates her. If you can get her up here naked in front of Mama, Mama'll make her talk.

 

It is night. The scene is a shadowy and cavernous bedchamber dimly lit with soft reddish light. At one end a large four-poster oak bed stands free of the walls. At the other, three female figures are arranged in frozen postures as if posing for a tableau vivant. From the expressions on the faces of these players, a spectator might well feel that a question hangs upon the air. But not one of the figures moves or speaks. The question, if there was one, remains unanswered.

The first figure, young, muscular, firm-fleshed, stands at stiff attention. She is naked, her head and body totally shaved, a fine gloss of perspiration coating her like a dew. The soft red light that paints her exposed skin emphasizes the blush generated from within. Her eyes, too, are red, as if from weeping.

The second figure, older, shorter, plump, sits opposite the first in a high-backed chair. She is dressed in a too-tight strapless crimson gown which can barely contain her bodice. Her eyes are narrowed as she stares with cold reproach at the younger woman's face. But the younger woman does not return the seated woman's gaze.

Rather, her eyes engage the eyes of a third woman, actually a painted image hanging on the wall just above the seated woman's chair. This woman, the one in the picture, wears the same crimson gown as the live woman below, but the garment suits her better. While the breasts of the seated woman are constricted by her gown, the bosoms of the painted woman fill hers perfectly. There is a curious resemblance between the seated woman and the painted one that must haunt a spectator. It is as if each one's face, in a completely different way, is a caricature of the other's.

But perhaps what would seem most strange would be the powerful force-field of emotions that appears to exist among these players. A spectator would know that the three are bound to one another in some inexorable and yet tragic way, bound so tightly and forcefully that anything outside their triangle, any person or event, would have no meaning to them at all.

 

"She says she did it because Jessica wouldn't return her bow! What do you think, Mama? Hours of punitive bracing and she comes up with that."

"The bow we gave—"

"Right, Mama, the bow we presented to her when she came back from commando school in Colorado. Remember, she was first in her class out there, and we thought she ought to be rewarded for doing so well, especially as most of the other students were males. Besides, she'd told us her martial arts instructor had suggested she take up archery to hone her concentration. So we mail-ordered an excellent target bow and set of arrows and laid them out for her on the bed so she'd see them first thing when she reported in after her trip."

"But wasn't there another connection?"

"Of course, Mama! Do you think I'm such a bad analyst I didn't understand what was going on?"

"Gosh, Bev, you're touchy today. I don't think you're a bad analyst at all."

"Forgive me, Mama. I thought you were implying that I wasn't aware of the play on words. Because, of course, I was. Diana wanted a bow so she could play archer, or should I say 'Archer'? She liked being the patient but also wanted to play at being Doctor, or at least try out the authority role for a while. If she had a bow in her hands, she'd be a kind of Archer, with real potency, too, as a bow can be an extremely powerful weapon."

"You were always a wonderful analyst, Bev. You have your deficiencies. Who doesn't? But you've always been good at your job."

"What deficiencies?"

"Oh, please, let's not get into that."

"I think we should get into it. I've known for some time you've found me deficient. Now's as good a time as any to clear the air. I'm waiting, Mama. Tell me where you find me wanting. I can take your criticism. God knows, I've taken it all my life."

"You're sure you want to hear it?"

"I'm sure."

"Okay, but just remember you asked for it. So don't complain."

"I won't."

"Let's start with this wallflower business."

"Is that what it is? A 'business'?"

"You know what I mean."

"I'm not sure I do. I happen to be a wallflower."

"No, dear, that's what you made yourself into. No one's born a wallflower. A wallflower creates herself. Something in you likes being a wallflower, so you have Tool leave those flowers beside the walls, as if—"

"As if what, damn it, Mama?"

"There, see, you're getting angry. You were always so touchy, Bev. You could never take the slightest bit of criticism."

"Never mind that! Just tell me how I've made myself into a wallflower, since that seems to be what you think."

"It's not just what I think, dear. It's the truth. And having Tool leave those homely, withered flowers by the bodies only reinforces your negative self-image. Which, frankly, you could remedy if you'd just find yourself somebody who . . . you know."

"Somebody to screw me. That's what you mean, isn't it?"

"I knew this dialogue was going to turn unpleasant, Bev. I think it would be better if we stop talking."

"Certainly, Mama, if that's the way you want it . . ."

 

"There's a difference, Mama, a big difference between us. It's important for you to understand the difference and why, as much as I might like, I cannot be like you. For one thing, I don't have your looks. I know I'm not really bad-looking. And I certainly don't feel sorry for myself. In this world, as I so often remind my patients, you've got to play the hand you're dealt. But you're beautiful, Mama. Just look at yourself, your eyes, complexion, bones, the marvelous planes of your face. There were those who called you the most beautiful woman in Cleveland. You played the part, too. Grand. Mysterious. Elusive. Even cruel at times. Not really cruel in the sense of mean or small, but cruel in the way that a great woman projects cruelty, becoming, as the poet said, a Lady of Pain. Mystical. Unfathomable. My nurturer and my nemesis.

"It was you who taught me the lines:

 

   Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel

   Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour;

   The heavy white limbs, and the cruel

   Red mouth like a venomous flower.

 

"Sometimes when I'm lying in bed, I look up at you and think: How could I, little me, be the child of such magnificence? I know I shouldn't run myself down. I am who I am and, as such, am as valuable as any other human on this earth. But it hasn't always been easy being your daughter. I never had your stature, your beauty, your compelling personality. I had to find my own way to power, and the way I found, the way of concealment and craft, is not nearly as attractive as yours. While you played torch singer to Cleveland, bewitching your audiences with songs, I took a less flamboyant route, studying the permutations of the human mind, then working within the interstices to create unique effects. And while your color was and always will be red, color of flames, mine is and always shall be black, color of night.

"There were times, Mama, when you hurt me deeply. I never told you this before. I know you never meant to hurt me; I know that whatever you did, it was always with my own best interests at heart. But there're still times when I feel the pain, and then I wonder: Is it worth it to keep on living, to try to make my way in this pitiless, indifferent world? I do my best. I work hard with my patients, pretending always to listen to them with sympathy. I try hard not to seem like one of those small, tight-lipped therapists who listen and listen and give nothing back in return. But there's so little I can give, Mama, to assuage so much cruelty, torment, so many hurts and humiliations and intractable problems in other women's lives. Who can solve them all? Who can bind up all the wounds? Who can assuage the hurts and blunt the cruelties and tell the wounded ones there is hope and time will heal. It's hard, too, to listen all the time, always to care about them, absorb myself in them, focus my attention on their difficulties, when I have so many of my own. I haven't wanted to think always of the past, obsess over the old hurts and wounds, but it's been hard not to, the pain's been so real, and, Mama, it's always there.

"I was left with no choice, it seems, but to try to wipe it out with acts of retributive justice. The only other option for me was to allow the awful pain to strangle me, choke me to death with its poisonous vines.

"You know your silent treatment's killing me. Do I deserve it, do I really? I'm very sorry, truly very, very sorry I was insolent. But I never denied my overriding love for you. So there really wasn't anything for you to get so offended about.

"Will you please answer me, Mama? Have you forgotten the trophies I had Tool bring back for you! The offerings I made to you? The years I spent listening to your sob stories? I practically did your goddamn wash for you! Have you forgotten that?

"Go ahead, ignore me. Just don't forget—I'm an analyst. I know you're hiding something, and I have a pretty good idea what it is. I want you to confess to me. That's right, Mama, I want the truth. Tell me the truth, and I'll forgive you for it. Because I know you did something, Mama. I know you did.

"Think back. Remember that last little exchange with Jimmy MacDonald just before Tool stabbed him in the eye? You don't remember? Then I'll refresh your memory. Jimmy said: '. . . it wasn't us, you know. It was set up. She ought to talk to her—' And then he stopped.

"Her what? Her mother? Could that have been the person Jimmy was referring to? Was he thinking of you, Mama?

"Since you don't deny it, since you refuse to say anything . . . well, I'll have to draw my own conclusions, won't I? Yes, I'll just have to draw my own conclusions, hurtful though they may be . . . ."

 

"Shhhh. We have to whisper now. We don't want Tool to hear us. If she hears, she may decide to attack us first. We're going to have to get rid of her. That much is clear. And to do that, we're going to have to set her up so well that there'll be no doubt she was always acting on her own. That won't be hard. All the receipts from her various trips, the paper trail as they call it, have been safely preserved on our orders in her room. And Carl Drucker will gladly testify that we resisted when he first broached release. The most important thing is to make sure the little lynx hasn't kept a diary or anything that can directly tie us to the crimes. Of course, we are tied to them indirectly: It was her insane obsession with us that pushed her to kill these various figures from our past. That's easily documented. All the information she needed was available in our personal files, to which she had ready access by virtue of living in the basement of our house. The plan is foolproof. Even if the cops suspect our influence, all the evidence will point to Tool alone. But we mustn't forget to move the trophies. They mustn't be in front of the portrait; rather, they have to be hidden away in various corners and drawers. The paper trail should nail her nicely, as will the wallflower trap we laid so carefully at Carlisle. We'll have to do it quickly. It will take all our courage, and we'll have only one chance to get it right. The staging must conform to the provocation: Tool tried to kill us; we struck back at her in self-defense. After all, she's a confessed killer. All we ever wanted was to help her adjust. She attacked us, her therapist and mother surrogate, just the way she attacked her own mother, with an ax. We managed to kill her only because she slipped. Another second and her ax would have split our skull. We defended ourself; we had no choice. It was either her or us.

"Too bad, of course, but now that we gather she killed all those other fine people, whole families of them, it seems, and by so doing replicated her original crime against her own family—well, we can't help wondering if perhaps she's not better off dead. This may seem odd, coming as it does from a healer, but we truly believe there are times a person is truly better off in the grave than living possessed by the kind of demons that ravaged poor young Diana Proctor's tormented soul."

 

Where are you, Mama? I need you now, need you so much! Why are you so silent? Talk to me. Please, talk to me! Pleeeeeease!