Bullets for Butter - Chapter Six
Interview with the Rapist
I wasn't sure I wanted to be there at all. A friend had gotten invited by a friend of a friend, all of which only meant that we wouldn't really know anyone there. Of course, sometimes that's not a bad thing. My date was my ex-ex-boyfriend to whom I had come crawling back a few weeks before. Self-abuse was a bitch to stop.
I should have told you how much I hated Halloween. That's what the party was about. Halloween, a chance to be someone or better yet, something else for a night. On that particular Halloween, I was Eva Braun, with a German Paulie-Girl looking dress and a neat almost-real looking bullet hole in my forehead. Someone said she'd poisoned herself, but who cares.? It wasn't exactly politically correct and not everyone got the joke, but I didn't want to be just another vampire in a crowd of vampires. You know.
Like the one my ex-ex was talking to. An Elvira look-alike complete with milky breasts spilling out of her black night gown. I couldn't help but look at myself. Why do I do that? Even my 45-dollar Victoria's Secret push-up satin wonder-bra didn't help very much. I thought about cancelling my check, but settled for a rum and coke from the erstwhile Frankenstein tending the bar. He at least didn't talk, just grunted and groaned a lot. Not like the leprechaun to my left. Who invited him? He was drunk and putting on the fake Irish brogue, putting his hand on my hip too. What he's saying will forever be mercifully lost to the passing of time and that thought gives me some comfort at least.
Elvira was very, very close to my ex-ex and he was a vampire too. Just another one, but it suited his personality and so I could understand why Elvira was rubbing her breasts against him. He looked over at me, almost apologetically, and I raised my glass in a silent toast. "Bon-voyage," I mouthed with exaggerated lips. Good riddance. It would only be a few minutes before they were out the door. Like deja vu all over again. What was her name? Oh yeah. Jenny. My best friend. She didn't mean anything, he'd told me, so that made it okay or something. I was the one who called him, remember?
My friend, my only ride home, was with her husband and looking wifely. Like Wilma Flintstone, she'd decided to be a cave girl. She'd had visions of Raquel Welch in that old movie, but she looked like Wilma. At least they were happy, but it had only been five months. They were still having sex everyday. Oh! Bad thoughts. I looked down again, a little lower, wondering if it really was like riding a bicycle. I couldn't seem to remember at the moment, but Lucky the Leprechaun wasn't helping either. I had to get away.
And so I ended up on the terrace, if you could call it that, gasping with all the people who couldn't smoke inside. The sweet smell of death surrounded me and I inhaled deeply. I used to smoke, gave it up for Lent and by Halloween I just got close to people who still did.
One gentleman is kind enough to offer me one. "Care for a nail?"
I declined without so much as a glance, only a wistful sigh beneath the orange lights. Halloween. Orange. God. He tells me it's the socially accepted form of suicide, but not in this country. Not anymore. But it was sufficiently clever enough that I finally looked at him; being a bitch all the time was hard work. There's something out of place. I put my finger to my lips as if shushing him. No, don't tell me. I'll figure it out. Suddenly it struck me...He's not wearing a costume. No props, no mask, no mascara.
"Okay. I give up. What are you supposed to be?" I asked, because we're all supposed to be something. Aren't we? Why am I wearing 20 pounds of dress otherwise?
"I'm a rapist."
"Excuse me?" I asked in a slow, clear voice. That's the way we speak when we hear something we didn't expect, like English from a taxi driver for example. It's like a foreign language and we all know how to speak to foreigners: slowly and clearly. Louder works too...Well, not really, but it feels good at the time.
"A rapist, you know...Sex. Violence." He looks at my face. "Don't you watch TV? It's all the rage."
And that of course made me laugh because he's laughing too. "Yes, I've heard of it. I'm not sure about your costume though."
"Why not? Most rapist look like the guy next door," he smiles. "You could be living next to one and never know it."
"I suppose." I wasn't entirely convinced. My neighbor was 72 and needed an oxygen mask to get out of bed. But I got the point.
Jim points at another guy, like him in his mid-twenties and wearing a suit. "Guess what he is."
"Ummm...A funeral director?"
Jim chuckles. "No. But that's very good! He's a serial killer. His wife is around someplace, she's wearing a big milk carton."
Yes, I'd seen her. It was a good costume, but it looked like she belonged at the county fair.
"Oh, you didn't look close enough. She's a missing person. Her bio is written underneath the hole for her face."
"So who's he supposed to be Ted Bundy or somebody?" He looked like a shoe salesman, I thought.
"No," Jim shakes his head. "Ted Bundy got caught. He's the Green River killer." He looks me up and down, "I don't think he'd go for you though; he likes the birds of night."
I feigned disappointment and wondered what a bird of night was. Probably another stupid vampire, I thought and looked over to the spot where Elvira had made my ex-ex my ex. A headless horseman stood there now, pouring a drink into his shirt.
This was all getting to be too much for me. Jim was cute, sure. And he hadn't asked why I was dressed up like a Bavarian beer wench with a hole in my forehead. I appreciated that, but I had to say, "Why don't you just admit it? You were too lazy to get a real costume."
Jim looks hurt and I laughed. "I have one, right here," he pulls a rolled up nylon stocking out of his back pocket.
"No ski mask?"
"Too warm for a ski mask, besides L'eggs are only two bucks and I get two stockings!"
We made our way back inside after Jim finishes his cigarette, exhaling dead, blue air into the night while he stares into my eyes until I had to turn away. Well, I thought, he's nice. Rather cute and a little clever and my choices were down to a frugal rapist or a drunken leprechaun. Have I ever told you how much I hated Halloween? And I saw that Lucky had disappeared from the bar and it was just as well for both of us. I'd made up my mind anyway.
Another rum and coke, my third, which was just about my limit. I was determined to drink it slow and find out why "You haven't asked my name yet, Jim."
He smiles and shrugs apologetically. "I don't want to know my victim's name."
"Oh?" I widened my eyes. He was speaking another language again. "Am I your victim?"
"Not yet, but the night is young." Another smile.
I felt something inside and I knew he was wrong; I was already his victim and we both knew it. I felt like a deer in the headlights of a speeding car. I knew I should move, but I didn't. It wasn't that I believed he was really a rapist, who would say such a thing? It was a fear of failing once again, losing out in a relationship and being alone. Or worse, crawling back over the telephone wires to leave a desperate message on an answering machine.
"Do you have an answering machine?"
Jim doesn't even blink, as if he's been waiting for me to ask. "No. I don't even have a telephone."
Do you believe in love at first sight, dear reader? I didn't. Not until he says that. Everybody has a phone, I protested, but to no avail. He's quite positive that he doesn't. He lives alone in a studio apartment. Works an anonymous job at Boeing like everyone else in Seattle. No wife, no kids. He has a girlfriend, but only as an alibi. He's not particularly interested in her in he tells me. But she loves him, so she will lie for him.
"That's the test of love," he says.
And we were outside, in the parking lot. It was cold and the wind was blowing up my skirts. Jim wraps his arms around me and I liked it, God help me. It was like riding a bicycle; familiar feelings, warm and half-remembered stirred deep in my belly and I touched myself there, smiling self-consciously until...
"Will you lie for me?" he asks.
It's a serious question and he's not smiling. Some kind of test? I wondered and I thought it was. But his arms feel good and it was getting cold outside. The orange glow behind me was casting strange shadows and making me see things I didn't want to. "I don't want to be your alibi."
He smiles suddenly and his teeth are white and sharp, coming towards me. Half of his face is dark, in a shadow and I wondered if he knows that. Half man, and the other half...Something unseen, I thought. I was finally seeing him without his costume. I opened my mouth for his kiss and touched my tongue to his teeth, expecting to feel pain, taste blood. But no, they're smooth and taste of cigarettes and whiskey. Whatever I'd been thinking seemed foolish to me then. The light is fully on him and he looks so ordinary. I felt disappointed and watched silently as he opens the car door for me.
...people are strange, when you're a stranger,
faces look ugly, when you're alone...
"The Doors?" I asked, watching the lights of I-5 go by my window.
I hadn't asked where we were going and he hasn't said. It was better that way. Falling into the victim role was so easy for me. I'd done it before and learned to enjoy the ride. Yes indeed, nothing wrong with the ride, I said to myself, blowing a little breath on the window next to me. Two quick jabs with my finger and a little curve underneath. I smiled at my smile. When the ride is done, that's when it hurts. Saying yes makes victims of us all. Absently I breathed some more, just enough to draw a bumpy milk carton around my little smiley face.
"Yeah. Strange Days." He stares at the road. It's raining, as usual. "Do you like it?"
...women seem wicked, when you're unwanted,
streets are uneven, when you're down...
"I don't know," I feigned indifference. "I've never really listened to them."
We sat in silence for a few moments and the sad melody moved along with the windshield wipers, adding it's soft rhythm. Another pattern, like all the others I thought I'd seen. Trying to put order in my life was the least of my sins, but trying to order the world around me may have been the greatest. Like silently wishing the song was half a beat faster or the wipers a split-second slower.
After the song is over Jim reaches down without looking and turns off the radio. Seattle was behind us now and we were on a different road, traveling towards Enumclaw and Mount Rainier hidden in the night.
"Have you ever been caught, Jim?"
"No. I'm very careful."
"Don't you worry about catching a disease? Aids or something? It seems to me like being a rapist is a high risk occupation." Like being a girlfriend?
I remembered the thrill of being told that Jenny had a little 'problem'...A social problem and she may have given it to my boyfriend, and he in turn might have blessed me with a little reminder of his infidelity. I guessed it was only marginally better than finding out I might be pregnant, but only just. I at least had the satisfaction of knowing I was clean, although for the three days it took to find out I was reading the anarchist's cookbook, just in case.
"It's a risk," Jim allows slowly, "but I find the girls I'm attracted to..." a look at me, a smile, "...are very rarely dangerous."
I didn't know if I should be flattered or not. "Dangerous in what way?"
"In any way." Jim is smiling again, but only at the road. We were driving up, into the mountains and it was a bumpy ride.
Where was I? That thought hit me hard. I didn't know. No more than I knew what I was doing there with a man I'd just met and knew only by his first name. He didn't seem particularly dangerous, except for that moment in the parking lot. He was playing a game, certainly and maybe that's why I'd come along. A new game to divert some thoughts I was saving for when I could be alone and put my face against my pillow and scream.
"You're a rapist, so that means....You're not a murderer, right?"
Jim's pushing a cigarette between his lips and then the lighter into the dashboard. We both sat there listening to the wind, barely heard in the tall trees around us. Jim has stopped the car and it's long since stopped raining. Even the clouds have thinned enough to let a shadowy moon light the hillside with a soft pale glow. The silence was strange and loud, but I was waiting for an answer, the way my father used to when I'd been a child. I could wait all night and that thought gave me some little bit of bravery. I stared at his dimly lit face and crossed my arms across my breasts.
*POP*
I jumped and felt my face redden as Jim calmly pulls the lighter up to his face and lights his cigarette. There's a bright orange glow, more reddish than yellow. A warmth which spread over his features. You'll wonder what I expected, sitting alone in a car in the wilderness with a self-professed rapist. It was unreasonable, ludicrous even to imagine it. I told that to Jim, realizing I was not my father and I couldn't wait all night.
"I don't know what I'm doing here. This is so wrong. I'm sorry Jim, maybe..." my voice trailed off.
This guy would have to be the nicest guy in the world if he was going to turn around and drive me home after going 50 miles to be alone. That thought frightened me, but not so much. I'd given away sex for a lot less than that after all and once in the city, once I felt safe...he could have me. Pride was the going price for pleasure in those days, but I could only say that because I knew I would enjoy giving in to him, even though I'd be screaming into my pillow the next morning and wondering why.
"I understand," Jim says quietly. "But let's stretch our legs and watch the stars for a bit. Okay?"
That seemed too reasonable. Pride? What was that? I wasn't going to let him take me home, not until we'd finished this strange unexpected dance. I'll confess I wanted to play the virgin and say "No...Nooo...Nooooohhh...kay....." and keep a little dignity, a shred of self-respect because I'd at least tried. Now Jim had me. I was out of my league. A simple "I understand..." was all it took and I was going to have to beg to ride that particular bicycle again. God! I hated him in that moment. I looked around for a pillow.
"Go ahead and scream," Jim is leaning on the damp hood of his car. "No one can hear you. If a tree falls in the woods..." He smiles and takes a drag of his cigarette.
"Wha...What do you mean?" Did he think I'd try and stop him? The warmth was back and it was spreading quickly through my tummy. I wasn't sure what this game was now. I don't think I was ever sure.
"I mean, why do you think all those girls end up on milk cartons?" Jim flicks his cigarette away and reaches into his back pocket.
"I...I don't know...I..." I watched as Jim slowly covers his face with the nylon stocking, stretching it around his handsome face so that he became distorted and grotesque. It wasn't human and he bares his teeth at me like a wild thing. I didn't recognize him and I realized his was the best costume of the night.