The Final Judgment Read online

  Another part of her, she realized, was listening to the woods behind them.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  She hunched her shoulders. “I don’t know.”

  “We have to decide.”

  “You decided without me, James. Now I have to decide what I want. Without you.”

  His shadow seemed to slump a little. At length, he said, “Then just be with me, all right?”

  Brett knew what James meant, perhaps before he did. It was James’s instinct to see lovemaking as a refuge from his insecurity. So that, taking him inside her, Brett never knew whether he was reaching for her or running from himself.

  She turned to him. “Trying to fuck me into submission?”

  The crooked smile again. Beneath it Brett saw a flicker of vulnerability—James exposed to himself. “Not really.”

  She felt a first twinge of guilt. “Good,” she said. “Because I’m hungry. And thirsty.”

  Tentatively, James took her hand. They walked back to the blanket.

  They knelt there, James unwrapping the cheese and slicing it with a pocket knife, Brett pouring red wine into a paper cup. There was no sound but their own.

  With the second cup of wine, Brett felt the alcoholic glow. A pleasant lassitude crept through her limbs.

  She sat between James’s legs, back against his chest, in a silent declaration of truce. They shared a cup, James taking it from her hand and placing it back again. Brett was not a drinker; with each sip, the night seemed to close in a little, become a cocoon of warmth. The passing moments were impressions—the rise and fall of crickets chirring, the sheen of water, the rich red taste of wine, the rough-smooth feel of James’s face against hers. She tried to push their troubles away, save her decision for the cool, clear morning that would light the lake with silver, then with gold.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “I’m just being,” she answered, and drained the cup.

  James knew not to push her. Silent, he reached around her and filled the empty cup.

  “Some grass?” he asked. “I brought a joint.”

  It was wrong, part of her thought. They should not drift toward lovemaking dulled by dope and wine; whatever happened would have little meaning beyond release. But she needed time to find the answer that might well end them.

  When James lit the joint, sucking in the first hit with a low quick breath, she took it from between his fingers.

  She did not do this much. The first acrid puff was hot and raw in her throat. But with the second, slower and deeper, she settled in James’s arms.

  The night changed again. The stars had a diamond clarity, undimmed by clouds or city lights. Brett became lost in them.

  They stayed like that, passing the joint back and forth as they finished the bottle of wine. James seemed less a person than a presence; what Brett felt now was a deep immersion in this place—the sky, the water, the rattle of breezes in unseen trees. It was all she wanted.

  And then James’s hands, tender and tentative, brushed against her breasts.

  She wore no bra. Through her T-shirt, she felt her nipples rise beneath his hands, her nerve ends suddenly alive, a pulse of warmth where James had not yet touched. A silent murmur filled her throat.

  In this way, at least, he knew her. This way, they worked.

  The tips of his fingers touched her nipples now, gently moving. And then she felt the wine and the dope and the shiver of skin exploding in a savage impulse.

  She turned to him, balanced on her knees, and raised the T-shirt over her head.

  Slowly, as if in a ritual, he untied her sneakers, pushed her to the blanket with one hand cradling her back, then unzipped her jeans and slid them down and off.

  That he did not undress said the rest. She lay on her back, watching the stars, as he reached beneath the elastic of her underpants.

  Brett opened her legs for him.

  James bent his face to her. For an instant, Brett felt it as a silent offering, a plea for closeness. Then all she felt was his face against her thighs, his seeking tongue.

  When her hips began to move, she could not help this, nor did she want to. The sounds from her lips were more cry than murmur, becoming quicker, a guide for him. Blood rushed to where his tongue caressed her, swift with the hotness of dope and wanting. Her movements lost all rhythm.

  A cry in darkness.

  Brett’s eyes shut tight as the spasms ran through her body. Only as a tingle reached her fingers did she hear the woman’s cries, slower and softer, recognize them as hers.

  And then she was still.

  She could not seem to move. Beneath the torpor, sex and dope and wine seemed to loop in circuits through her brain.

  Awkwardly, Brett got to her knees. She could feel the heat receding from her thighs.

  James seemed unreal now, in pieces: eyes wanting her, a hand pulling her close. She felt smoke and alcohol in the pit of her stomach. The night began to spin.

  “Jesus,” she murmured.

  He did not seem to hear; suddenly his movements had the clumsy concentration of drunkenness. As he pulled down his pants, Brett had the jaded, antic vision of a monster she had seen in an old movie, tottering over Tokyo as he swayed from side to side.

  She swallowed, fighting sickness and self-disgust. When he held his penis to her face, she shook her head.

  Just don’t lie down, she told herself.

  “Lie back,” she murmured.

  He did that. Clumsily, she turned from him, crawling naked toward the gym bag.

  “Where are you going?” he asked dully.

  Mute, she fumbled through the bag and then pulled out a foil square. Crawling back, she held it out to him.

  “You’re on the pill,” he said.

  Brett stared at him. “I’ll put it on for you.”

  Watching her face, he said nothing more.

  Fragments now: sheathing him in latex, its oily slickness between her fingers. Clambering on her knees to mount him. The blunt feeling of him as he entered her. A fever on her skin, too clammy for passion.

  As James moaned, urging himself to climax, she thought of two dogs mating.

  She rode him out of stubbornness, fighting sickness. He did not come. Desperate, Brett wrenched him upward with her hands beneath his spine. He flinched beneath her; dimly, she realized that her nails had scraped his skin.

  His eyes opened wider. “I love you…,” he murmured.

  Brett stopped moving. Tenderness overtaking her, she touched his face.

  James was asleep.

  As she shivered in the sudden cool of night, he slipped from inside her. She stared at him, sick and stupid again, fighting the impulse to lift him by the hair. And then, abruptly, anger became sadness.

  There was still goodness in him, she knew, much that had not been ruined. He was tender with her, always. When she grew angry with him, he did not lash back; he watched her, puzzled, trying to comprehend. As if listening for music he could not yet hear.

  Gently, she laid his head down, turned it to one side. He slept with a child’s innocence.

  Lost in dope and darkness, Brett had forgotten the lake was there. And then it struck her: the cool water might clear her head.

  Rising, she turned to the water.

  It seemed opaque, a glassy rock. Brett clambered naked from the glade across the rocky shore, crying out as the sharp stones cut her bare feet.

  A splash, shocking coolness as she hit the water.

  Swimming felt hard and slow. Suddenly, she was swathed in blackness, swallowed by the lake. In panic, she flailed to keep from drowning, felt herself go under….

  And then, shivering and panting, Brett was lying facedown on the rough wooden planks of the diving platform. She felt surprise, then fright that she could not remember how she got there.

  Slowly, like a woman half drowned, Brett turned on her back. Her mouth had the brackish taste of algae and still water. Her heart throbbed in her chest.

>   Gradually, her breathing eased. She had no thought of swimming back.

  Time kept slipping. Brett saw an image from childhood: her mother, calm and sure then, teaching her to dive, her grandfather watching with that air of pleased reserve. Brett stared up at the moon, so seemingly close that she could almost touch the craters on its face.

  And then the sense was upon her, primal and instinctive, that they were not alone.

  Brett trained her eyes on the water. Distances were lost to her. When she turned to the glade where James lay sleeping, it seemed to move away. The faint moonlight on the grass was like the glow of phosphorus.

  A sudden shadow rose from the grass.

  Brett sat up. “James…”

  Startled, the shadow turned. Her voice echoed on the water.

  “James…”

  Abruptly, the shadow vanished among the shadows of her imaginings….

  No.

  Brett stood without thinking and dove into the water.

  The shock of coolness felt real now. She was less afraid to swim than to stop and look at the glade. She rose from the water’s edge, trembling with cold.

  The glade was dark and silent. She walked toward the blanket, grass matting beneath her feet.

  James was not the shadow. He lay as she had left him, except that he was gazing at the moon.

  A sound came from his throat.

  Like snoring, Brett thought as she approached. Yet not snoring. In the moonlight, she saw that his mouth was open, heard ragged breaths.

  The sound again. A gurgling, Brett thought suddenly. Like the sound of a man whose lungs had filled with water.

  James, she thought with horror, was drowning in his own vomit.

  With quick, instinctive movements, Brett knelt beside him. As moonlight caught his face, she started CPR.

  She felt wetness on his lips, heard her own breath rattle in his throat. Her eyes shut tight. Like a delayed image on the retina, Brett saw his face in the instant before she had placed her mouth to his.

  As Brett recoiled, a warm spray rose from his lips, flecking her face and throat and breasts.

  His body shivered beneath her in a twitching spasm. His face was speckled, eyes staring at nothing. The last soft spray of blood rose from his severed windpipe.

  A knife stuck from his ribs.

  Brett made no sound. She stood, trembling, straining to comprehend. Saw the blood on her fingers.

  Only then did she realize that she had pulled the knife from his chest.

  As her shriek carried across the water, Brett the reasoning human ceased to exist.

  All was a nightmare collage: Her hand clutching the knife. His wallet where it had fallen as he undressed. The dark slash through his throat.

  She whirled, staring wildly at the woods. The wind, moaning now, was the sound of James dying.

  Blindly, Brett ran toward the darkness.

  It enveloped her. Branches beat her face and body as she flailed at the darkness with both hands, hacking the leaves from her face. Now the darkness seemed to enter her mind. The flailing became a dream, no moment distinct from the other, the glade behind her no more real than the moon she could not see. Time had no end. And then, in sudden moonlight, the outline of a Jeep appeared.

  Brett slowed to a walk. Emerging naked from the trees, she was uncertain of what to believe. Tentative, she rested her hand on the Jeep.

  It was real. The keys were still inside.

  Brett opened the door, throwing what she had carried on the passenger seat, and turned the ignition.

  It worked. Brett locked herself in. She did not know how long she sat there, naked, listening to the low hum of the motor.

  She switched on the headlights. When she spun the Jeep around, their beams cut a path between the trunks of trees. Just as before.

  Shifting gears, Brett began to drive.

  Brett awoke in darkness.

  She tasted blood in her mouth, then vomit. Her lip felt swollen.

  She was slumped, naked, across the steering wheel. The stench of sickness filled the Jeep. Her stomach felt hollow.

  Brett felt a pounding in her head. Stiff-necked, she leaned back in the seat and looked around her.

  A wooded roadside. She did not know where she was, how she had gotten there, how long she had been unconscious. She was not sure why she was crying.

  A light came toward her.

  Brett winced, turning her head. The light filled her windshield.

  Behind the flashlight was the shape of a man.

  The light circled the hood of her car, moving toward the driver’s side. Brett curled sideways, face pressed against the door, arms folded across her chest, eyes and mouth clamped tight.

  There was a tap on the window.

  No, she thought. Don’t hurt me.

  Fingers digging into her skin, Brett forced her eyes open. The tap of the flashlight stopped. A beam of light crossed her body, captured her hips, a shadow of pubic hair.

  As Brett gazed at her own nakedness, a tremor ran through her.

  “Open up,” a voice demanded.

  A young man’s voice, Brett thought. She swallowed.

  “Open up,” he said again. “Police.”

  Police. By instinct, she reached for the window crank, one arm covering her breasts, and lowered the glass between her and the voice.

  He was young, with short dark hair and a pale face. Though he wore the jacket of the local police, she did not know him.

  He looked startled, embarrassed. “What happened?”

  Brett shook her head. Words did not seem to come.

  “Sick…”

  He thrust the flashlight into the car, jabbing the beam here and there. In a taut voice, he asked, “Is someone hurt?”

  Sudden images. Straddling James in the night. His staring eyes. A knife in her hand.

  “Miss?”

  A nightmare. She must be stoned, the terrible pictures a dream. James was home in bed.

  Her voice was weak. “Please, take me home….”

  His flashlight lit the passenger seat.

  A heap of clothes, a wallet. A bloody knife.

  “I’m taking you in, miss.”

  A convulsive sob ripped from Brett’s throat. “Why…?”

  A moment’s pause. “For driving while intoxicated.”

  The beam moved back to her. Brett saw blood on her hands, speckles of blood on her torso.

  She curled, elbows on knees, and vomited.

  He gave her his jacket.

  Their drive to the station was lost to her. The shotgun in his car, the crackle of a radio, nothing else. When she found herself sitting hunched against the wall of a cinder-block cell, it was like awakening from a blackout. The policeman stood over her.

  Looking away from him, she pulled his jacket to midthigh, saw specks of vomit on her legs.

  In his hand was James’s wallet, opened to his driver’s license. Staring from the picture on the laminated card, James looked stiff and frightened.

  With terrible vividness, Brett saw the gash in his throat.

  The cop’s voice was strangely gentle. “I think there’s someone hurt out there, needing our help. If we can’t find him…”

  Brett’s eyes filled with tears. “Look by the lake,” she said dully. “Maybe he’s there.”

  “Heron Lake?”

  Swallowing, Brett nodded.

  The cop hurried away. Brett heard footsteps on tile, his voice on the telephone. She waited, drained, until the cop returned.

  “I’ll drive you to the hospital,” he said.

  A blond, bird-faced woman in a state trooper’s uniform was waiting by the emergency entrance.

  The cop holding one arm, the trooper the other, Brett was led through the bleak corridors. She passed beneath the fluorescent lights as if sleepwalking.

  At the end of a corridor was an empty room.

  The trooper took Brett inside. Brett stood there, staring at the room—an examining table, two chairs, a metal cabinet
and sink and mirror.

  She felt the young cop pause in the doorway. “Is this all right?” he asked.

  The trooper nodded. “For waiting, yes. Until they find something.”

  The cop hesitated, glancing at Brett, and left.

  The trooper closed the door behind them, stood facing Brett. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I need to take that jacket off.”

  Brett clasped it tighter. “Why?”

  “Procedures.” Without waiting for an answer, she unzipped the jacket and slid it from Brett’s shoulders.

  Brett shivered again.

  “Can I clean up?” she asked.

  “No. Not yet.”

  Brett stared at her. Taking the handcuffs from her belt, the trooper turned one chair to face the cabinet and in the crisp manner of a schoolteacher said, “Sit here, please. I have to cuff you.”

  Suddenly, Brett was angry. “Tell me why, damn it.”

  The trooper shot her a level glance. “So that you don’t touch yourself.”

  For that instant, Brett wanted to call her parents, her grandfather. Then the mirror caught her reflection.

  Her face was flecked with blood.

  Brett walked forward, as if drawn to her image. Dried blood speckled her lips, her throat, her breasts.

  Brett sat in the chair.

  As she held out her hands, there was blood on her fingertips.

  Pulling Brett’s arms behind her, the trooper cuffed her to the metal chair.

  A plump nurse came. Silent, she took out a needle and punctured Brett’s arm. With an odd detachment, Brett watched the plastic tube fill with her own blood. She hardly felt the needle.

  The nurse left her with the trooper.

  “How long will I be here?” Brett asked.

  No answer.

  Time passed. Perhaps minutes, perhaps hours.

  There was a knock on the door.

  Brett turned. The trooper opened the door slightly, speaking through the crack to shield Brett’s nakedness.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  A male voice, new to Brett. “They found him. At Heron Lake.”

  “Is he all right?” Brett asked.

  Whispers now. Closing the door, the trooper handed her some papers.

  “This is a search warrant,” she said. “For you.”