отрывок из книги Red Dragon

[TessaIsHisHome]

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Reba McClane was quiet, flushed, elated as they drove away. She turned to Dolarhyde

once and said slowly, "Thank you . . . very much. If you don't mind, I would dearly love

a martini."

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"Wait here a minute," Dolarhyde said as he parked in his yard.

She was glad they hadn't gone back to her apartment. It was stale and safe. "Don't tidy

up. Take me in and tell me it's neat."

"Wait here."

He carried in the sack from the liquor store and made a fast inspection tour. He stopped in the kitchen and stood for a moment with his hands over his face. He wasn't

sure what he was doing. He felt danger, but not from the woman. He couldn't look up the

stairs. He had to do something and he didn't know how. He should take her back home.

Before his Becoming, he would not have dared any of this.

Now he realized he could do anything. Anything. Anything.

He came outside, into the sunset, into the long blue shadow of the van. Reba McClane

held on to his shoulders until her foot touched the ground.

She felt the loom of the house. She sensed its height in the echo of the van door

closing.

"Four steps on the grass. Then there's a ramp," he said.

She took his arm. A tremor through him. Clean perspiration in cotton.

"You do have a ramp. What for?"

"Old people were here."

"Not now, though."

"No."

"It feels cool and tall," she said in the parlor. Museum air. And was that incense? A

clock ticked far away. "It's a big house, isn't it? How many rooms?"

"Fourteen."

"It's old. The things in here are old." She brushed against a fringed lampshade and

touched it with her fingers.

Shy Mr. Dolarhyde. She was perfectly aware that it had excited him to see her with the

tiger; he had shuddered like a horse when she took his arm leaving the treatment room.

An elegant gesture, his arranging that. Maybe eloquent as well, she wasn't sure.

"Martini?"

"Let me go with you and do it," she said, taking off her shoes.

She flicked vermouth from her finger into the glass. Two and a half ounces of gin on

top, and two olives. She picked up points of reference quickly in the house - the ticking

clock, the hum of a window air conditioner. There was a warm place on the floor near the

kitchen door where the sunlight had fallen through the afternoon.

He took her to his big chair. He sat on the couch.

There was a charge in the air. Like fluorescence in the sea, it limned movement; she

found a place for her drink on the stand beside her, he put on music.

To Dolarhyde the room seemed changed. She was the first voluntary company he ever had

in the house, and now the room was divided into her part and his.

There was the music, Debussy as the light failed.

He asked her about Denver and she told him a little, absently, as though she thought of

something else. He described the house and the big hedged yard. There wasn't much need to

talk.

In the silence while he changed records, she said, "That wonderful tiger, this house,

you're just full of surprises, D. I don't think anybody knows you at all."

"Did you ask them?"

"Who?"

"Anybody."

"No."

"Then how do you know that nobody knows me?" His concentration on the tongue-twister

kept the tone of the question neutral.

"Oh, some of the women from Gateway saw us getting into your van the other day. Boy,

were they curious. All of a sudden I have company at the Coke machine."

"What do they want to know?"

"They just wanted some juicy gossip. When they found out there isn't any, they went

away. They were just fishing."

"And what did they say?"

She had meant to make the women's avid curiosity into humor directed at herself. It was

not working out that way.

"They wonder about everything," she said. "They find you very mysterious and

interesting. Come on, it's a compliment."

"Did they tell you how I look?"

The question was spoken lightly, very well done, but Reba knew that nobody is ever

kidding. She met it head-on.

"I didn't ask them. But, yes, they told me how they think you look. Want to hear it?

Verbatim? Don't ask if you don't." She was sure he would ask.

No reply.

Suddenly Reba felt that she was alone in the room, that the place where he had stood

was emptier than empty, a black hole swallowing everything and emanating nothing. She

knew he could not have left without her hearing him.

"I think I'll tell you," she said. "You have a kind of hard clean neatness that they

like. They said you have a remarkable body." Clearly she couldn't leave it at that. "They

say you're very sensitive about your face and that you shouldn't be. Okay, here's the

dippy one with the Dentine, is it Eileen?"

"Eileen."

Ah, a return signal. She felt like a radio astronomer.

Reba was an excellent mimic. She could have reproduced Eileen's speech with startling

fidelity, but she was too wise to mimic anyone's speech for Dolarhyde. She quoted Eileen

as though she read from a transсriрt.

"'He's not a bad-looking guy. Honest to God I've gone out with lots of guys didn't look

that good. I went out with a hockey player one time - played for the Blues? - had a

little dip in his lip where his gum shrank back from his bridge? They all have that,

hockey players. It's kind of, you know, macho, I think. Mr. D.'s got the nicest skin, and

what I wouldn't give for his hair.' Satisfied? Oh, and she asked me if you're as strong

as you look."

"And?"

"I said I didn't know." She drained her glass and got up. "Where the hell are you

anyway, D.?" She knew when he moved between her and a stereo speaker. "Aha. Here you are.

Do you want to know what I think about it?"

She found his mouth with her fingers and kissed it, lightly pressing his lips against

his clenched teeth. She registered instantly that it was shyness and not distaste that

held him rigid.

He was astonished.

"Now, would you show me where the bathroom is?"

She took his arm and went with him down the hall.

"I can find my own way back."

In the bathroom she patted her hair and ran her fingers along the top of the basin,

hunting toothpaste or mouthwash. She tried to find the door of the medicine cabinet and

found there was no door, only hinges and exposed shelves. She touched the objects on them

carefully, leery of a razor, until she found a bottle. She took off the cap, smelled to

verify mouthwash, and swished some around.

When she returned to the parlor, she heard a familiar sound - the whir of a projector

rewinding.

"I have to do a little homework," Dolarhyde said, handing her a fresh martini.

"Sure," she said. She didn't know how to take it. "If I'm keeping you from working I'll go. Will a cab come up here?"

"No. I want you to be here. I do. It's just some film I need to check. It won't take

long."

He started to take her to the big chair. She knew where the couch was. She went to it

instead.

"Does it have a soundtrack?"

"No."

"May I keep the music?"

"Um-hmmm."

She felt his attention. He wanted her to stay, he was just frightened. He shouldn't be.

All right. She sat down.

The martini was wonderfully cold and crisp.

He sat on the other end of the couch, his weight clinking the ice in her glass. The

projector was still rewinding.

"I think I'll stretch out for a few minutes if you don't mind," she said. "No, don't

move, I have plenty of room. Wake me up if I drop off, okay?"

She lay on the couch, holding the glass on her stomach; the tips of her hair just

touched his hand beside his thigh.

He flicked the remote switch and the film began.

Dolarhyde had wanted to watch his Leeds film or his Jacobi film with this woman in the

room. He wanted to look back and forth from the screen to Reba. He knew she would never

survive that. The women saw her getting into his van. Don't even think about that. The

women saw her getting into his van.

He would watch his film of the Shermans, the people he would visit next. He would see

the promise of relief to come, and do it in Reba's presence, looking at her all he liked.

On the screen, The New House spelled in pennies on a shirt cardboard. A long shot of

Mrs. Sherman and the children. Fun in the pool. Mrs. Sherman holds to the ladder and

looks up at the camera, bosom swelling shining wet above her suit, pale legs scissoring.

Dolarhyde was proud of his self-control. He would think of this film, not the other

one. But in his mind he began to speak to Mrs. Sherman as he had spoken to Valerie Leeds

in Atlanta.



You see me now, yes

That's how you feel to see me, yes



Fun with old clothes. Mrs. Sherruan has the wide hat on. She is before the mirror. She

turns with an arch smile and strikes a pose for the camera, her hand at the back of her

neck. There is a cameo at her throat.

Reba McClane stirs on the couch. She sets her glass on the floor. Dolarhyde feels a

weight and warmth. She has rested her head on his thigh. The nape of her neck is pale and

the movie light plays on it.

He sits very still, moves only his thumb to stop the film, back it up. On the screen,

Mrs. Sherman poses before the mirror in the hat. She turns to the camera and smiles.



You see me now, yes

That's how you feel to see me, yes

Do you feel me now? yes



Dolarhyde is trembling. His trousers are mashing him so hard. He feels heat. He feels

warm breath through the cloth. Reba has made a discovery.

Convulsively his thumb works the switch.



You see me now, yes

That's how you feel to see me, yes

Do you feel this? yes



Reba has unzipped his trousers.

A stab of fear in him; he has never been erect before in the presence of a living

woman. He is the Dragon, he doesn't have to be afraid.

Busy fingers spring him free.



OH.

Do you feel me now? yes

Do you feel this yes

You do I know it yes

Your heart is loud yes



He must keep his hands off Reba's neck. Keep them off. The women saw them in the van.

His hand is squeezing the arm of the couch. His fingers pop through the upholstery.



Your heart is loud yes

And fluttering now

It's fluttering now

It's trying to get out yes

And now it's quick and light and quicker and light and . . .

Gone.

Oh, gone.



Reba rests her head on his thigh and turns her gleaming cheek to him. She runs her hand

inside his shirt and rests it warm on his chest.

"I hope I didn't shock you," she said.

It was the sound of her living voice that shocked him, and he felt to see if her heart

was going and it was. She held his hand there gently.

"My goodness, you're not through yet, are you?"

A living woman. How bizarre. Filled with power, the Dragon's or his own, he lifted her

from the couch easily. She weighed nothing, so much easier to carry because she wasn't

limp. Not upstairs. Not upstairs. Hurrying now. Somewhere. Quick. Grandmother's bed, the

satin comforter sliding under them.

"Oh, wait, I'll get them off. Oh, now it's torn. I don't care. Come on. My God, man.

That's so sweeeet. Don't please hold me down, let me come up to you and take it."



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With Reba, his only living woman, held with her in this one bubbleskin of time, he felt

for the first time that it was all right: it was his life he was releasing, himself past

all mortality that he was sending into her starry darkness, away from this pain planet,

ringing harmonic distances away to peace and the promise of rest.

Beside her in the dark, he put his hand on her and pressed her together gently to seal

the way back. As she slept, Dolarhyde, damned murderer of eleven, listened time and again to her heart. Images. Baroque pearls flying through the friendly dark. A Very pistol he had fired at

the moon. A great firework he saw in Hong Kong called "The Dragon Sows His Pearls."

The Dragon.

He felt stunned, cloven. And all the long night beside her he listened, fearful, for

himself coming down the stairs in the kimono.

She stirred once in the night, searching sleepily until she found the bedside glass.

Grandmother's teeth rattled in it.

Dolarhyde brought her water. She held him in the dark. When she slept again, he took

her hand off his great tattoo and put it on his face.

...