Tonight, Again Read online

  “I arrived on a Sunday. She died on the Monday night. So I got there just in time, really. I thank God for that. She’d got cancer. She was riddled with it. Lungs, throat, brain. She was in a coma when I got to the hospital. They said to me: it’s no use talking to her, she’s too far gone, she doesn’t know you’re here. But she knew. I held her hand, and told her I loved her, and that I’d see her on the other side. We’d talked a lot about that over the years. We were both believers. We had faith, you know, we’d see each other again in Heaven.

  “When she died I was alone with her. I picked her up—oh, she was so tiny—and I held her for a long time. I called her all those names, you know, those names you only use between the two of you. My little itsy-bitsy, my darlin’ doll. Skittibop. I used to call her Skittibop. I don’t know where that came from.

  “She’s buried in Toledo. I’ve been back there two or three times since she passed, but I don’t think I’ll go again. It’s a long trip for an old man. Anyway, she’s not there, is she? She’s in heaven, waiting for me.

  “You know what I wonder? You’re going to think I’m dumb, but…what the hell, I’ve told you everything else. When I see her in heaven, is she still going to be my little Sylvia, or are we all goin’ to be the same size? I mean, she had a soul—let me tell you, that woman had a soul—bigger than yours and mine put together. So…maybe if we’re all souls up there I’m going to be the little one, huh? I’m going to be sitting in the crook of her arm. That’d be nice, sittin’ in the crook of her arm. That’d be perfect.”

  The Phone Call

  Why did you smile?"

  “When?”

  “When I was talking to you: why did you smile?”

  “Christ, you call me up in the middle of the night—”

  “It’s eleven-thirty.”

  “I go to bed early.”

  “Oh, did I wake you?”

  “No.”

  “But you’re ready for bed?”

  “I don’t see what business that is of yours, professor.”

  “Call me Chuck. Are you dressed for bed?” His voice dropped an octave as he asked her this.

  “As it happens, yes,” she said, her voice betraying some of the astonishment she felt that she’d answered such an impertinent question. She already knew what he was going to say next.

  “What are you wearing?”

  “Is this a dirty phone call…”

  “Hank,” he prompted.

  “…Hank?”

  “Why? Do you want it to be?”

  “Is it?”

  “Why did you smile?”

  “When?”

  “When I was talking about phallic symbols.”

  “Oh. Because of something you said.”

  “What?”

  “Rocket ship.”

  “What’s funny about that?”

  “It’s a child’s word. Rocket Ship. I don’t think you’re a very worldly man, and that amused me.”

  “I’m not a child.”

  “I realize that.”

  “No, really. I’m not a child. Just because I use a word that doesn’t seem very sophisticated, I…”

  “You’re not a child. I understand.”

  “So. What are you wearing?”

  “My robe.”

  “Silk?”

  “Terrycloth.”

  “And underneath?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You sleep naked. You don’t seem like the type.”

  “There’s a type?”

  “Of women who sleep naked? Yes.”

  “You speak from long experience.”

  He was silent a moment. “I’ve known…plenty of women, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “And there’s a type, of woman you’ve known, who sleeps naked.”

  “Yes.”

  “But I don’t seem like that type?”

  “No.”

  “I seem…more uptight?”

  “I’m not saying that.”

  “But that’s what you mean. And you misread me. I’m not uptight at all. It’s just that I don’t know how Douglas likes his people to present themselves, and it’s a good job, which I don’t want to lose.”

  “I see.”

  “So, goodnight, Hank.”

  “Wait—”

  “I’m tired.”

  “Just a minute more.”

  “—and I’ve got an early—”

  “One minute. That’s all. One.”

  “What then?”

  There was a silence.

  “You have a minute. You’re wasting it.” The silence went on. “Say whatever’s on your mind.”

  “Well… I’d like you to do something for me.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’d like you to touch yourself. Down between your legs. Put your finger deep inside yourself.” Another silence. “Give yourself pleasure. Will you do that for me?”

  Now it was she who was silent for a time. Then she said: “What makes you think I’m not doing that already?” and put down the phone.

  The Multitude

  He felt the insects all over him: his shaft, the head, the slit of his head, his balls, his perineum, down between the crack of his buttocks, seething over his asshole. The whole region of his groin was alive, his cock a solid column of beetles.

  He was, needless to say, hard as an unmilked adolescent, and he looked down at himself with a kind of horrified amazement; to see his cock so much larger than it had even been before. Like a hallucination of himself, wild and beautiful to look at.

  The sensation? It was as if the area had been skinned, and every nerve was exposed, every barbed leg, every carapace, every antennae that moved against him was a new point of stimulation. He didn’t move. He just stayed there on the floor facing the cracked wall, while the flood of creatures out of the hole continued.

  Some were spreading out across his thighs now and up over his belly. Every once in a while—though in fact very rarely, given the sheer number of insects—one would bite him. The small sharp pain only added to his pleasure. By degrees, the number of bites grew; this he supposed was because of the numbers of insects. They were fighting against themselves, he could see, and the plainest causality of their argument was the territory they were fighting over, which was to say, his genitals, his thighs, his belly, his asshole.

  In fact, there were territorial wars breaking out now; factions forming, there before him. He was in a kind of elevated place, as he viewed this, being both the contested ground and as if he were a god watching from a high vantage point the vagaries of battle.

  His body was shaking with pleasure, an experience he was not very familiar with. Pleasure had never come in great abundance to him. He assumed that he simply wasn’t wired for it in the way others were. Now he knew that was wrong. There was nothing that his body needed but the right form of stimulation, and by God he’d found it. He liked the bites around his cock-head the best; they were what made him afraid he was simply going to lose control and come. What a waste that would be! He wanted this to go on for hours; he had nothing to do; just lie back and be pleasured by the multitude.

  A monster lies in wait in me,

  A stew of wounds and misery,

  But fiercer still in life and limb,

  The me that lies in wait in him.

  An Incident

  at the Nunnery

  Having broken down the convent door with hammers, the four men went in search of Sister Barbara, complaining that her exhortations to heaven had kept them up at night, and that they were sick to death of her railing against the pleasures of the flesh. The leader of this quartet was a handsome fellow, dressed in grey, his close companion a brute of a man, more monster than human, who kept the nuns at bay with casual swipes of his hand.

  Sister Barbara, it should be explained, had seen a vision of Christ the previous spring, and had, at His instruction, retreated to the convent’s bell tower. There she had been exposed to the fierce heat of the summer days, and to the bi
tter cold of the nights. But despite her suffering, she had kept a ceaseless vigil, inspired to spread (by means of shouted prayers and warnings) the word of the Lord. She could see much from her tower that appalled her. Fornication in the orchard; lewd dancing on the hill; a company of raucous clowns in the town square. Oh, the horrors that would come of this, she warned. The earth would shake, and gape like the very maw of Hell. The sinners would be swallowed up, the fornicators and the dancers and the clowns, swallowed.

  She was still preaching in this very manner when she was brought down by the men, and carried out into the orchard. Occasionally she bit and kicked her abductors, drawing blood and blackening eyes.

  But they weren’t about to let her go. Out between the trees they took her, despite the Mother Abbess begging that the woman not be harmed.

  “We’ve had all we can take of your Sister Barbara,” said the man in grey, handing his portion of the struggling nun over to his brutish partner so as to address the Mother. “We’re going to put an end to her din.”

  The Mother Abbess, who was an old and saintly woman, went down on her knees and caught hold of the man’s foot. The Sisters were quite appalled at the spectacle; several hid their eyes, certain they were about to see the beloved Abbess martyred.

  “Sir,” the Mother Abbess said, “I am an old woman. I like my peace and quiet. And I will confess that sometimes I’ve wondered why God has chosen to make Sister Barbara so…voluble. But sir, her prayers were inspired by a vision of Christ.”

  At the mention of Christ, the man dropped down on his haunches, and caught hold of the Mother Abbess. One of the nuns fainted in terror.

  “Good lady,” said the man in grey, “I’ve heard all about Sister Barbara’s vision. She’s given us chapter and verse, night after night, about the loveliness of Christ. About how He pierced her breast with his gaze. How He parted her lips and filled her mouth with inspiration. I know it all.” He started to lift the Mother Abbess to her feet. “And I never want to hear another word.”

  Then, to the astonishment of all, he laid his rough face against the Mother Abbess’ lavender cheek, and kissed her. “Please…” he said. “Take your novices into the chapel, and if it soothes your souls, pray. I have business to do with Sister Barbara.”

  “Oh, you terrible man,” the Mother Abbess said. “You cannot imagine the agonies you will suffer for this.”

  “If it’s any worse than being preached to by that poor demented bitch,” the man said, “I’ll be very surprised. Now go. All of you! Shoo!”

  The women retreated. A few went into the chapel, and knelt down to pray, exhorted by Sister Ignatius to raise their voices so that poor Barbara might hear them as she went to her death. But there were several other nuns—mostly women who’d been close to Barbara before her vision—who went to peepholes in the walls to see what befell the Sister. It looked likely to be more horrible than even the most morbid of them had suspected. There, under the cherry trees, the men had made a little fire, and were heating a pot on it.

  “Liquid lead,” said one of the women. “They mean to make her drink liquid lead.”

  “I think it’s sulphur,” said another of the sisters. “They mean to burn out her eyes.”

  But the Mother Abbess told them to shush their nonsense. “I don’t smell lead or sulphur,” she said. “I smell molasses.”

  Sister Barbara was still praying, very loudly, and she continued to do so while the men stripped her. The watching women were all in their secret heavens waiting for the next phase of this drama: the moment when the four men unbuttoned themselves.

  Naked now, but still struggling, still ranting, Sister Barbara was laid on the ground. Then her legs were lifted into the air, and parted. The witnesses waited, with baited breaths. Sister Barbara’s violators pressed her thighs down against her body, bending her double and exposing her intimate parts to their scrutiny. In the cherry trees, the birds sang blithely, indifferent to the atrocity occurring beneath them.

  The man in grey now instructed one of his thugs to bring the pot from the fire. He had it set down beside the struggling nun. Then, from a bag laid nearby, he had another of them bring a large ladle. Before he took it, he put his fingers into the pot. Either what it contained was merely warm, or else he was immune to suffering, because he did not pull his fingers out, but rather twirled them around, like a cook making certain the soup was properly stirred. Then he took the ladle from his companion, and dipped it into the pot.

  Every witness held her breath. Perhaps even now God would intervene. Lightning out of a clear sky, to strike the monster down; or the earth gaping, as Sister Barbara had warned it would.

  But no; nothing. The ladle was dipped in the pot, and conveyed between Sister Barbara’s spread thighs.

  The poor martyred woman was held too fast to move an inch. All she could do was pray, and that so loudly the birds were drowned out.

  The man in grey upended the ladle, and a slow rivulet of dark, glutinous fluid ran into the gaping cleft of Sister Barbara’s body.

  Her prayers faltered. Her violator emptied the ladle. Then he returned it to the pot, dipped again, and again raised it, gazing down at his victim as he did so. The contents of the ladle were once more emptied into the woman’s body. Her prayers had faded entirely now. And her struggles, such as were visible, had ceased. The men were no longer struggling to hold her in place.

  A third ladleful of whatever the pot held was poured into her. This time the man in grey was more playful, drizzling the contents of the ladle over her thighs as a child might drizzle honey on bread. Through their spy holes, the women knew that something uncanny had happened, because a moan escaped the throat of Sister Barbara; a soft and lovely sound.

  The man now tossed his ladle aside, and stood up. He must have given some instruction to the others, because they let go of their captive, and stood back. Sister Barbara didn’t move. She simply remained in the position in which they’d held her, legs spread. Once the men had retreated, it was possible for the witnesses to see the state of her body. The place between her thighs—that most secret place which had been so cruelly uncovered – was like a wide-necked jug.

  Three ladlefuls of glistening stuff were brimming there, the excess running down the cleft of her buttocks.

  “I think we’ve seen quite enough,” the Mother Abbess said, in her severest tones. The women left off their witnessing, and went into the chapel, to join the others. There were prayers, hymns, and some self-flagellation from the ever-devout Sister Ignatius.

  Perhaps an hour later, Sister Barbara returned from the orchard. She’d left her habit, or the torn remains of it, on the ground; she was quite naked. She was also completely silent, her gaze slow, her lips not very far from smiling. The Mother Abbess instructed that three of the sisters take her into the washhouse and scrub her thoroughly. This was done, though all three later reported that their efforts were uncalled for. There was not a single drop of the fluid that had been used to silence Sister Barbara on her body. Nor in it, either, for by the instruction of Mother Abbess her intimate parts were examined for any harm that might have been done to them. Sister Barbara conceded to the examination without a murmur, only remarking, in a dreamy fashion, that there was nothing to find. She’s been licked clean, she said.

  Need it be said that she did not return to the bell tower? She lived instead a quietly meditative life, in the convent. But the following spring she forsook her vows and went out into the world. She was never seen again.

  Nor were the four men who’d abducted her, though on her deathbed the Mother Abbess confessed that she’d known the man in grey somewhat, in her youth. He came out of the infernal place, she said, to tempt the souls of innocent women. He had a tooth too sweet for this bitter world; aye, and a tongue, too.

  Her confessor was astonished to hear this remark.

  What do you know of this creature’s tongue? he had asked the Mother Abbess. But the good woman had passed away, her hand touching the place on her che
ek where once she’d been kissed.

  The Genius

  of Denny Dan

  One conversation with Denny, who is the closest I know to a true, I would even say sublimely, perverted man, and nothing in the world is safe to be viewed, smelled, or touched. Everything has now some sexual quality, some sexual possibility. He has at some point in his life, put the most convenient of objects of the world, at least those without a pulse, to use. Obviously the clothespins, the rubber boots, the dog leash, the garden hose. But the cornflakes? A copy of the Complete Works of Racine?

  The first time I met Denny, he was deep in a conversation with a member of the Medical Faculty about how long a cucumber should be cooked before it was used for anal stimulation. I take that back, it was not a conversation. Denny was seeking an opinion from this poor man, who was simply staring at him in mute panic, while Denny supplied both sides of the debate. “If it’s overcooked it goes too much, doesn’t it? And your ass-muscles don’t have anything to grip onto. Do you think that’s bad for the ass? I mean, it’s not much fun. But you think it does any damage? I mean, I know if it’s not cooked well enough you can do yourself some harm. I mean, particularly if you’re really ambitious, you know? Ideally, I suppose it’s al dente, like spaghetti: Just crisp enough to have something to bite down on, but soft enough to give you a nice slithery feeling.”

  I, like the faculty member, was listening to this in a kind of trance. When the fellow left—I should say, retreated—I asked Denny if he’d done all that deliberately. To which Denny replied—without, I swear, a trace of irony:

  “Did all what?”

  There was nothing he wouldn’t talk about, nothing he wouldn’t try. He loved women, and thoroughly enjoyed fucking them, though not, he said, as much as he enjoyed fucking, or being fucked by, men. “With women,” he opined, “you’re more likely to end sort of having to be a man. Most women don’t want you to be anything.”