Shudder (18 page)

Natalie sat in the National Patriot office, on her screen an unfinished list of newssheet editors and radio and TV hosts who might be sympathetic to the new party, and felt her heart thumping like a beat in a dance club.

Her arms were very weak, her hands clammy and very pale, and there was a very slight tingling somewhere just behind her ears.

She woke up powerless, sporting a headache, but forced herself to go to work. She was now in charge, she had responsibilities. She couldn't let Mister Eberstark down. She couldn't let Mister Blonski down.

Kurt, a thirty-year-old junior expert in public relations, appeared by her desk. “Hi, Natalie, do you know where the files for the patriotic education act are?”

She looked at him with unseeing eyes, “I gave them to Karen half an hour ago.”

“Okay, thanks. You're doing a wonderful job, Natalie.”

“Thanks,” She turned stiffly back to her text.
Can't they see that I'm ill?
she asked herself with a mounting hysteria creeping up her throat,
can they really not see it?

Acting on a sudden decision, she closed all her open files and shut down the computer.

I'm ill. I'm very ill,
she told herself and gave an involuntary belch, as if her empty organism was trying to throw up something nonexistent.

“If anyone asks, I'm home, being ill,” Natalie said as she passed Kurt and then walked past the young man with the serious haircut and the mutant sideburns, and stumbled at the exit. She regained her balance, but was almost out of breath from the pounding of her heart.

Nonexistent snowflakes appeared in her peripheral vision.

Must not blackout, must not blackout,
Natalie repeated to herself as she tried to remember where she was. Trying to get back home now was out of the question.

To her left she saw an orange blur.

The Smooth Cats Cappuccino Palace.

Unsteadily, but not allowing herself to hold on to the building's wall, she walked towards the orange blur. It grew bigger and now all she had to do was figure out which one of all the glass squares was the entrance.

Someone walked out and she grabbed the door and went in.

Warmth, the smell of coffee and of sweet down-market perfume. This was natural, since at this hour, when all honest adults were at work, the main client body of the cafe was made up of teenagers and seniors.

Natalie saw a blurred row of people to her right. Now she would have to make an order and then move inconspicuously to a table and try to get a grip on herself. She felt that she couldn't handle a conversation concerning what type of drink she wanted.

Her skin felt a flash of cold. She was standing near the cold drinks. Cold drinks... She could do with one, any one.

She took a plastic bottle at random and walked over to the counter.

In front of her stood two elderly ladies who slowly conversed in order to reach a consensus on each purchased item.

Impatiently, Natalie opened her bottle and took a sip. It turned out to be a tangerine-flavored tonic. It would have to do.

The ladies stated what they wanted, paid, and scuttled off.

Now it was her turn.

* * * *

Natalie shows the bottle to the person at the counter without looking at him/her and hands over a bill. With a ‘thank you' she gets her change and turns around to find a place.

The person at the counter asks her something, but she does not understand what it is and does not want to find out. The question is not repeated, so it must not have been anything very important.

She finds an unoccupied plastic orange table and sits on the chair beside it. She puts her bottle on it. The bottle tips over, falls, and rolls towards the edge of the table but it does not fall. Its momentum runs out two inches before the edge.

Natalie takes off her coat very slowly and then realizes she is almost not breathing.

By application of considerable willpower, she takes a breath. It is in fact a very shallow breath, but it helps a lot.

She takes another breath, which is a little deeper. The shapes around her begin to come into focus.

She takes a third breath, which is now really deep, making her chest unlock with a muffled crack and her ribs expand.

The ringing behind her ears is reduced to a general hum. It fits quite comfortably with the music and conversations of the Smooth Cats Cappuccino Palace, into which the unorganized background noise of a minute ago has transformed itself.

She takes her bottle with a steadier hand now and takes another drink. Soon she would be able to walk out of here and get a cab.

In the cafe's toilet, she looks at her reflection. How can the face of a black girl look so pale? The apparition, with bags under its eyes and a subtle gray tinge to the lips, stares back from the mirror with desperation.

Breaking off eye contact with herself, Natalie starts rubbing her cheeks with detached automatism, and gives them little slaps, trying to get the blood flowing again.

* * * *

As she entered her home, Natalie slammed the door behind her, zigzagged through the corridor, and fell into her bed without undressing.

She lay there for half an hour, on her face, without moving even a finger. Then she rolled over to her back, rubbed her eyes, and got up.

She undressed, letting her coat simply fall on the floor, and without taking off her boots she went to the kitchen and made herself a cup of green tea. She lighted a cigarette and sat limp in her chair.

She ran her free hand through her hair and listened to her heart. Its beat was much less pronounced now. It no longer felt as if each heartbeat rocked her whole frame.

There was an apple in a plate near the window. It's been there for two days, but she couldn't bring herself to eat anything for a long time now, except some nuts and tiny pieces of chocolate.

Natalie told herself that she had to eat that apple.

Then she answered herself, that the very thought of doing that makes her insides tightened and her windpipe seize up.
I will try to eat it after I wake up
, she promised herself in the end.

Ten minutes later, she was in her bed, beneath the cool sheets, naked.

As she woke up, the dreary early morning light was already oozing through the thin drapes.

She was awake but could not move.

She felt figures in her room. Many, three or four of them.

She felt a sickly sexual charge in the air and knew that this time they would do what they hadn't done in years.

As she felt herself violated, huge distorted hands pressing on her body, which suddenly felt miniscule and fragile, cocks which felt thick and endless entering her, Natalie tried to do her trick.

She tried to change the situation by repeating to herself:
I want this, I like this, I am in charge, they are doing this because I want them to, I want this, I like this, I am in charge, I commanded this to happen, I want them to do this...

Dave looked at the pedestrians bustling to and fro, scandalously faster than the stream of cars of which he was part.

Something was inherently faulty with the mechanics of city life, when people on foot moved faster than people in hi-tech contraptions with hundreds of horse powers slumbering unused.

He hoped that someday this misunderstanding would be over and even during the hours of going to and returning from work, cars would again be faster than old ladies.

On a less abstract plane, he also hoped that the box of celebratory candy on the back seat would not melt before he reached the office.

The news on the radio was focused on the economy. Years ago Dave had gone through a brief period of straining to fathom the confounded processes that created and distributed wealth. He had followed articles on the matter and had even read half of a text book. He'd given up on the matter long since, but still he listened with half an ear.

As usual, he understood all the words that made it to his brain, but it was the same old salad of empty meanings. Perhaps even the voices on the radio did not fully understand what they were saying.

It went like this: “Blah blabitty blah substantial growth blah blah blah stronger push blabitty blah blah vitality blah boost consumption blah blah total consumption blabitty dynamics of consumption blah blah consumer index blabitty blabitty curbing excess blah success and growth blah blah economic rebound blah blah blah retail sales going upwards blabitty...”

It ended on an upbeat note. Then again, economic news tended to end on an upbeat note since he was teenager—without seemingly being influenced by, or at least mirroring, simple facts like him having more money, or less money, or no money, or it being easy for him to find a job where he was, or having to uproot himself and settle in far away Muhosransk.

The stream of cars inched forward another ten yards before bogging down; first reviving and then ruthlessly dashing to pieces the optimism that flowers tenderly during such short bursts of traffic movement.

The detective's gaze brushed absently the foot soldiers of the city. The workers. The students. Serious men and women. Not so serious boys and girls.

All walking with a paraded sense of purpose.

Naturally.

In the city, in daytime, if you don't walk with a sense of purpose, you begin to stand out. Unless you are an obvious tourist, standing out makes you either a criminal, or a crazy, or a junkie, or a loser, or a confused soon-to-be victim of a criminal, or a crazy, or a junkie. A future loser.

It was now late autumn and he believed the intensity of the erotic signals emitted by the citizens subsided significantly in this colder season. They retreating to boots, jackets, overcoats and the occasional leather skirt.

Leather pants.

Studded leather hats.

Chains hanging from belts and handbags.

Belts.

Oops.

Dave revised his opinion. It sounded like a nice logical observation and he already anticipated the jolly banter with Anton about it. Now that he thought it through, it just wasn't right.

In the autumn the erotic signal are as present as ever,
he thought now,
only the amount of uncovered body shown is less, this is the only difference. The significance is transplanted from one's own skin to some object covering it, but it is still there.

Oh well
.

A honk from behind alerted him to another movement of the cars in front of him. Alert now, he too moved forward.

Twenty-three minutes later he was in his office, looking at Maldiva's erotic signals.
Completely automatic
, he thought as he nodded at her and fumbled with the nylon wrapper of the candy box.

She is in a cocoon of erotic promises and hints, maintained out of mechanical fashion momentum
.

How many times he had been disappointed as a teenager, that wretched feeling of having been cheated, each time it turned out that girls could dress and talk and gesticulate like whores, without actually being ones, even being honestly indignant at the very thought of them looking and talking and gesticulating like ones.

It was total discrepancy between the outer signals and the inner persona. However, that was then.

If Anton was right about porn influencing life in general, then the gap between the outer whore and the inner core was now almost completely closed.

“How lovely. What's the occasion?” Maldiva asked when, after patiently waiting out the struggle between man and box to reach a decisive crisis, she was finally presented with the chocolate candy by a radiant Dave.

She took it with grace, even allowing her scarf—this otherwise silent accusation concerning her employer's insane fascination with open windows-to slip a little.

“Another case solved. The world a better place.” Dave said with affable pathos, and Maldiva replied with an earnest smile, “which sex crime was it, Mister Cohran?”

He squinted manfully, “The case of the destroyed sex toys.”

He saw that his words precipitated a dwindling of enthusiasm in Maldiva's eyes. Did she expect something more exciting?

Maldiva interpreted his lingering look as a desire for a pat on the back, “Congratulations, Mister Cohran.”

Since his only reply was a slight twitch of his mouth, she plucked a piece of candy with her thumb and forefinger, and bit off half with delicate feminine precision.

“Mmm, it's very nice, Mister Cohran.”

“Glad you like it, glad you like it,” said Cohran, waking up from his short stupor, and turned to the coffee machine to fill up his mug.

As he turned again to go to his private office, he saw Maldiva looking at her computer monitor thoughtfully and slowly rubbing half a candy on her lower lips.

Dave rolled his eyes and slunk away.

What's wrong with this woman?
he asked himself as he switched on his computer,
and why the emphasis on ‘sex crime'? Of course I solved a bloody sex-crime, I specialize in sex-crimes, and she knows it.

He imagined Maldiva telling her friends, and her husband, about where she worked. How did she manage to present it matter-of-factly? Or did she hide it? Or flaunt it?

Suddenly David laughed out loud.
Well, what the hell do I expect
, he admonished himself.
The woman is working in a sex crime detective agency. She's made her peace with that fact. Of course she will act like this. To her it's only logical. Only appropriate. I should be grateful she is so detailed in her loyalty to the cause.

Dave typed in the password, had his palm read, and noted that there were no updates from the police. Which in itself was excellent, it meant that no crimes in his sphere were committed in the city yesterday.

Must have been the position of the stars or something.

Then Dave saw on his desktop the Season Girls folder and the ‘shit strangler' folder and stopped flying in the clouds. It was time for some nitty gritty detecting. Time for some harsh realities.

He typed ‘shit suffocation' into a search engine.

Scores of links to fiction blogs appeared in front of his eyes. Also a dozen links to major porn portals. Also links to file sharing and download sites. And, that was just page one.

At the bottom of the screen a blurred train of pop-ups flickered for a second, before being shut off by his firewall.

The detective clicked the first batch of sites open and took out his phone. He dialed Anton, knowing that in another half-hour he would simply forget to make his appointment with the albino.