Twisted: The Collected Stories (14 page)

“Are you . . . Who are you?” Loesser stammered.

She gave a faint smile. “It’s me, Kari.”

“But . . . I don’t understand.”

She gave a contemptuous glance at Dale, still lying on the pier, and said to Loesser, “When he followed me to Crowell I finally realized what had to happen: One of us had to die . . . and I picked me.”

“You?”

She nodded. “I killed the person he was obsessed with: Kari the supermodel.” Looking out to sea, breathing deeply, she continued. “Last year, down in the Caribbean, I met this plastic surgeon. His office was in Manhattan but he also ran a free clinic in Haiti, where he was born. He’d rebuild the faces of locals injured in accidents.” She laughed. “He was trying to pick me up, of course, joking that if I ever needed a plastic surgeon, give him a call. But
he wasn’t obnoxious and I liked the volunteer work he did. We hit it off. When I decided last month I had to do something about Dale I called him. I figured if he could make really deformed people look normal, he could make a beautiful person look normal too. I met with him in New York. He didn’t want to do the operation at first but I gave him a hundred thousand for his clinic. That changed his mind.”

Loesser studied her closely. She wasn’t ugly. She simply looked average—like any of ten million women you’d meet on the street and not glance at twice.

David Dale’s terrible moaning rose up over the sound of the wind, not from physical pain but from horror—that the beauty that had obsessed him was now gone. “No, no, no . . .”

Kari asked Loesser, “Can you take these things off me?” Holding up the cuffs.

Harper unhooked them.

As Kari pulled her coat tighter around her a mad voice suddenly filled the air, rising above the sound of the waves. “How could you?” Dale cried, rising to his knees. “How could you do this to me?”

Kari crouched in front of him. “To
you
?” she raged. “What I look like, who I am, the life I lead . . . those don’t have a goddamn thing to do with you and they never did!” She gripped his head in both hands and tried to turn it toward her. “Look at me.”

“No.” He struggled to keep his face averted.

“Look at me!”

Finally he did.

“Do you love me now, David?” she asked with a cold smile on her new face.

He scrabbled away in revulsion and began to run back toward the street. He stumbled then picked himself up and continued to sprint away from the pier.

Kari Swanson rose and shouted after him, “Do you love me, David? Do you love me now? Do you? Do you?”

“Hey, Cath,” the man said, surveying the grocery cart she was pushing.

“What?” she asked. The plastic surgery had officially laid “Kari” to rest and she was now accepting only variations on Catherine.

“I think we’re missing something,” Carl replied with exaggerated gravity.

“What?”

“Junk food,” he answered.

“Oh, no.” She too frowned in mock alarm as she examined the cart. Then she suggested, “Nachos’d solve the problem.”

“Ah. Good choice. Back in a minute.” Carl—a man with an easy temperament and an endless supply of bulky fisherman’s sweaters—ambled off down the snack food aisle. He was a late bloomer, a second-career lawyer who was exactly five years older and two inches taller than Cathy. He’d picked her up in the annual Crowell St. Patrick’s Day festival ten days ago and they’d spent a half dozen delightful afternoons and evenings together, doing absolutely nothing.

Was there a future between them? Cathy had no idea. They certainly enjoyed each other’s company but Carl had yet to spend the night. And he still hadn’t given her the skinny on his ex-wife.

Both of which were, of course, vital benchmarks in the life of a relationship.

But there was no hurry. Catherine Swanson wasn’t looking for a man. Her life was a comfortable mélange of teaching high school history, jogging along the rocky Massachusetts shore, working on her master’s at BU and spending time with a marvelous therapist, who was helping her forget David Dale—she hadn’t heard anything from the stalker in the past six months.

She moved forward in the checkout line, trying to remember if she had charcoal for the grill. She thought—

“Say, miss, excuse me,” mumbled a man’s low voice behind her. She recognized his intonation immediately—the edgy, intimate sound of obsession.

Gasping, Cathy spun around to see a young man in a trench coat and a stocking cap. Instantly she thought of the hundreds of strangers who had relentlessly pursued her on the street, in restaurants and in checkout lines just like this one. Her palms began to sweat. Her heart started pounding fiercely, jaw trembling. Her mouth opened but she couldn’t speak.

But then Cathy saw that the man wasn’t looking at her at all. His eyes were fixed on the magazine rack next to the cash register. He muttered, “That
Entertainment Weekly
there? Could you hand it to me?”

She passed him the magazine. Without thanking her, he flipped quickly to an article inside. Cathy couldn’t tell what the story was about, only that it featured three or four cheesecakey pictures of some young, brunette woman, which he stared at intently.

Cathy slowly forced herself to be calm. Then, suddenly, her shaking hands rose to her mouth and she began laughing out loud. The man looked up once from the pictures of his dream girl then returned to his magazine, not the least curious about this tall, plain woman and what she found so funny. Cathy wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes, turned back to the cart and began loading her groceries onto the belt.

T
he headlights lit the sensuous sweep of the road ahead of her.

Cruising through the dark pines, swaying left right, left right. A damp evening, a cold spring. Her Lexus strayed slightly over the centerline of the wet asphalt and she wondered whether she’d had two martinis with Don or three.

Only two, she decided, and sped up.

She drove this same road, from her job in New Hampshire to her home just over the Massachusetts border, every weekday night—and every night she thought the same thing on this stretch of Route 28: sensuous curves.

Like the cliché of a sign two miles back:
Soft Shoulder.

A lot of nights—slightly drunk, listening to Michael Bolton on the radio—she’d laugh at those words on the yellow diamond. Tonight she was somber.

Twelve miles from home.

Carolyn eased her stockinged foot off the gas. Her white Ferragamo spike heels rested on the seat next to her (she often drove barefoot, less for control than to avoid scuffing). Then she piloted the car through the final set of, yes, sensuous curves that led to the minuscule town of Dunning.

The gas station, the general store, a propane company, an old motel, a liquor store and an antique shop in which she’d never—in the five years of commuting to and from the hospital—seen anyone buy a single thing.

She slowed to thirty at the rusted harvester, which is where the avid young cops of Dunning caught their speeders and tormented anybody driving a vehicle nicer than a Buick. She stopped here every night on the way home from work—buying gas and a large coffee—but the service station attendants never seemed to notice that she was a regular.

As she climbed out of the car she saw another customer, a man with a rough face and a five o’clock shadow, leaning against his car, talking on a cell phone. He nodded unhappily; whoever was speaking on the other end of the line was delivering bad news.

Carolyn slipped the nozzle into her gas tank and set the catch on the handle. She stood up, felt a chill. She was wearing her beige Evan Picone suit, low cut, no blouse, and a short skirt. With some satisfaction she noticed the customer’s eyes lift from the asphalt and scan her body. Even though there was something crude about him—the craggy face, the
meaty hands—he was dressed well. A smooth gray suit and a dark trench coat with lots of flaps. His car was a Lincoln, golden brown. It cost, she figured, about the same as hers. She approved of men in expensive cars.

The nozzle snapped off and she went inside to pay.

A cup of black coffee, a roll of Lifesavers. Pep-O-Mint. Without a hint of recognition, the young clerk looked up from his portable TV only long enough to glance at her chest while he gave her the change; maybe it was just her face he didn’t recognize.

She stepped back outside, glancing at the man with the Lincoln as he tossed his phone on the seat of the car and reached into his pocket, fishing for money. He glanced toward her again.

Then he froze. His eyes went wide, focusing just past her.

And she felt an arm snake around her waist, felt cold metal at her ear.

“Oh, God . . .”

“Shut up, lady,” a young man’s voice stuttered in her ear. He was nervous and smelled of whisky. “We’re gonna get in your car and drive. You scream, you’re dead.”

Carolyn had never been mugged. She’d lived in Chicago and New York City and briefly in Paris but the only time she’d ever been physically threatened, the perpetrator hadn’t been a crook but the wife of the man who lived across the hall from her on the Left Bank. She was now paralyzed with fear.

As the mugger dragged her toward her car she stammered, “Please, just take the keys.”

“No way, babe. I want you’s much as I want your wheels.”

“Please, no!” she moaned. “I’ll give you a lot of money. I’ll—”

“Shut up. You’re coming with me.”

“No, she’s not.” Lincoln Man had walked up to the passenger side of her Lexus. He was standing between them and the car. His eyes were steady. He didn’t seem afraid. The skinny kid, on the other hand, seemed terrified. He shoved the gun forward. “Get the hell outa the way, mister. Nobody’ll get hurt, you do what I say.”

The man said calmly, “You want the car, take the car. Take
my
car. It’s new. Got twelve thousand miles on it.” He held up the keys.

“I’m taking her and her car and you’re getting outa my way. I don’t want to shoot you.” The gun wavered. He was a scrawny young guy, backwoods, with dishwater-brown hair in a snaky ponytail.

Lincoln Man smiled and continued to talk calmly. “Look, friend. Carjacking’s no big deal. But a kidnapping or rape count? Forget about it. You’ll go away forever.”

“Get the hell out of my way!” his voice crackled. He moved forward a few feet, forcing Carolyn along with him. She was whimpering. Hated herself for it but she had no control.

Lincoln Man stood his ground and the kid shoved the gun directly into his face.

What happened next happened fast.

She saw:

Lincoln Man turning his palms toward the mugger in a gesture of surrender, stepping back slightly.

The passenger door swinging open and the kid shoving her inside. (Carolyn, thinking crazily: I’ve never been in the passenger seat of my car before, the seat’s too far forward, I’ll tear my panty hose. . . .)

The mugger walking around the front of the car to the driver’s side of the Lexus, forcing Lincoln Man—hands still raised—out of the way.

Carolyn glanced hopelessly into the gas station window. The young attendant was still behind the counter, still eating potato chips, still watching
Roseanne
on the tiny TV.

The mugger started to climb into the car, then paused, looking back, realizing the nozzle was still in the gas tank of the car.

Then Lincoln Man was lunging, grabbing the mugger’s gun hand. He gasped in surprise and fought fiercely to free his hand.

But Lincoln Man was stronger. Carolyn pushed open her door and sprang out as the two men tumbled onto the hood of the Lexus and grappled for the gun. Lincoln Man banged his opponent’s wrist onto the windshield several times and the black pistol flew from his grasp. Carolyn squinted as it landed at her feet. The gun didn’t go off.

She’d never held a gun in her life, not a pistol anyway, and she now crouched down and lifted it, felt its heavy weight, felt its heat. She shoved the muzzle into the face of the mugger. He went limp as cloth.

Lincoln Man—a good foot taller than the kid—rolled off the hood and took him by the collar.

The mugger looked at Carolyn’s uneasy eyes and
must’ve concluded that she wasn’t going to be shooting anybody. He pushed Lincoln Man away with surprising strength and took off at a gallop into the brush beside the gas station.