Ten for Ten
Mark Fitzgerald
Copyright 2010 by Mark Fitzgerald
Smashwords Edition
~
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I have offered all of my first publications in this one package, believing that the reader will find, and thoroughly enjoy, a mind boggling diversity of reading experiences in a single purchase.
I am inclined to write short novels that are very plot driven; at the expense of being rich in detail and much longer. They aren't snacks. They are full meals. But not banquets. Like raw eggs I think they are best purveyed in quantity. Ten, not a dozen, in this instance.
One word of confession. I am not professing to offer perfectly manifest works. There are errors of grammar and spelling. I think it is forgivable in the self-publish/low cost market.
I write these simply as my inclinations dictate. No effort to abide by the rules. I don't even know the rules. When I read them, I enjoy them. Maybe that means I am a natural. Maybe not.
I am actually an out of work architect with good typing skills. Maybe not a novelist at all!
BTW: To work within the system of my self-publisher, I have removed all chapter separations in each story. Hope it does not create any difficulties.
The following blurbs are the synopses that accompany each book as separately offered.
AVA
Ava is a fictional love story built around the form and character of a woman who hitch-hiked a ride from me once. She was in my car five minutes, at the most. None of what happens in this story, really happened. I can simply imagine a story like this one with this intriguing woman. I think this little story has a lot of heart and speaks quietly of real love.
TUG
What would happen if a man and his "best friend", TUG, the Bull Terrier, drown trying to save daughter/sibling Taylor. Imagine if they are both revived. Imagine if one soul goes on and one returns to the world but the wires got crossed. Can Tug save the family from the soul-less man who was once Dad; whose agenda no longer includes his family and their welfare.
After the accident, Tug knows he is different and every day his perceptual world evolves toward that of a truly sentient being. And everyday the MAN, who was once dad, now soul-less, becomes a greater threat to the people Tug loves. Can Tug evolve enough and in time?
This is a great little story I think. Written in "doggy" first person. I could probably spend a year perfecting the literary description of the "evolution" of Tug…. but I would rather you got to read the story and hope I am forgiven if I didn't get it perfect.
The Undergrad
In 1971, Parker was a freshman philosophy student forced to make a pledge of silence by a tyrannical and murderous professor. Twelve years later, his promise will cost him his life and leave three murdered coeds un-avenged unless the first real love of his life, a charming, homespun police detective in Fort Worth can vindicate him or, and much more challenging, she can divine the philosophical argument to release him from the pledge.
With a deliciously rich cast of characters, it's a tale of murder, of love, of discovery and of the binding force of honor. "A promise is a promise", for those whose intellect will not allow them to deny it.
This is the one I am most proud of. I once worked with a girl who I based the heroine upon. She was all "Texas".
Beer Money
I call these "neural nuggets": litely battered blather containing no less than %50 humor and %50 percent wisdom. Trace amounts of bullshit. No trans-fat.. anymore. Really, I'm an "out of work architect," who spends too much time on Facebook trying to be funny. They say I am. So, I am trying to earn "beer money" at least by publishing these. I am not kidding... I can't buy beer. God Bless.
I am John Galt
One man's efforts to raise awareness of the vileness and the vulnerability of the "right wing" in America, by "unspeakable" acts, leads to an outcome he could never have expected. This a neat little assassination piece in which I mock Ayn Rand and present a lot of facts about the right wing in America.
Viking Camp
A story about really brave Boy Scouts on an island in a lake in North Texas where it is really hot and there are loads of snakes and bugs and machete wielding drug dealers and Girl Scouts. An adventure story. For all ages. This is based on my son's summers as a camp leader on this island. Just a fictional story about kids kicking the ass of bad-guys.
Hypnogogic
I get these dream-like visions/recollections just as I am falling asleep. They seem as real as real life. But they aren't. I hope. Especially the one where I am sure I have killed and buried someone in the past and I fear being discovered. It would be tolerable, these "hypnogogic hallucinations", if I had any waking recollections of my past. I don't. Just what my parents tell me. I am sixteen.
I did get these dreams. For many years. Dreams that I killed someone. Creepy.
Fire Stair
Old buildings often had two stairs. One ornamental stair that connected all floors at the lobby. All way to the top; dangerously interconnecting every floor to any floor with a fire. They also had a fire stair. In the Burns Building the fires stair also interconnects all the floors; temporally not spatially. In a single day, it is November 22, 1963, 1973 and 1983. Lives are saved. Lives are lost. This is my time travel novel. It would make a great film, I think. I hope you can keep all the events and times straight in your mind as you read it. These "mothers" are hard to work out.
Arch Enemies
"Senior", the controlling partner at the firm has "problems"...psychological problems ... paranoia at the least, probably schizophrenia .... and a dubious sense of ethical obligation to his employees. I set out to avenge myself. Vengeance. Not a nice thing. Doesn't meet my expectations. Odd, how we can find love.
Some former bosses are schizo-assholes.. let's leave it at that.
I Could Never Hurt a Kid
A man seizes an opportunity, rising solely out of chance, to perpetrate a perfect crime; a kidnapping.... of sorts. Getting out of the mess he creates is a bigger challenge than succeeding would have been. Along the way, his victim's father confronts challenges of his own and his own demons. A short little novel about resentment, integrity and not always getting what you wished for.
This one is shorter than the rest. I really like the way the primary character is the victim, who accomplishes much in the span of a few hours. Simple.
One point of clarification. My family once had an association, through the ambitions of our children, with another family that has economic circumstances similar to the family of the kidnap victim. There is no resemblance at all between this fictional family and that real family. NONE.
The Undergrad
Back in those days, you could smoke in a college classroom. Sharing a paired desk with a non-smoking classmate, even. No one complained. You ground it out on the vinyl floor tile, vinyl asbestos tile actually, when you were done. Same thing in theaters, in airplanes, at the grocery store. The entire world probably stank, the smokers couldn’t tell... and the non-smokers abided. At scarcely a dollar a pack, smoking was a lot of pacification for the price.
A university philosophy class, with all those young, bohemian minds, would be ablaze with the cigs and pipes of the enlightened. Ethics 201 was no exception. Everyone smoked at least one during a typical class; in that tiny windowless basement room where the smaller, esoteric classes convened. Cigs only for the undergrad; pipes were to be earned; reserved for graduate students and professors.
Parker didn’t smoke. But it didn’t matter; he had an immunity to it. So many years in a household of smokers. He could recall family outings to the drive-in theater and the heavy fog of smoke within the car. Didn’t bother him at all. He once took his war-surplus gas mask to the event on the pretext of putting it to purposeful use, but a clear image of the screen prevailed over the questionable effect of a filter-less war relic. With no filter cartridge, it would not have been effective. He was a kid, he knew nothing of filter cartridges. It was odd he didn’t smoke. His parents were very liberal about substance abuse. Probably, had he been close enough to at least one smoking peer he might have tried it and persisted in his efforts until he had mastered it and of course, he was mastered as well.
Rausch, with his trademark pipe, which was never ablaze, was casting his spell of profundity. Asking questions of his intellectually unhoned proteges that they had little chance of addressing with much intellect at this stage of their education. Setting them up for his performance... for the “coup de grace”.
Professor Ryan Rausch was phenomena of a sort. He had perfected the persona of a brilliant mind, temporarily corporeal on this mortal coil, so that he could reveal the universe to those worthy enough to entreat him. He was 99 percent “bullshit” and simultaneously 100 percent the “real thing”.
Never had he been less than the smartest man in the room. Physically he was just as striking. Just short of six foot, he had a girth that was ... just short of excessive. Massive torso. Hirsute well beyond average. Full beard and mustache; always closely cropped. Thick head of dark wavy brown hair. Maybe it was black. Pale skin. Manicured hands, with dark hairs between each pair of knuckles and all the way up his arms . He dressed the part. Quality clothing, just a little bit frumpy, by choice. Generally good facial features. Perhaps his eyes were slighting bulging.
Rausch was not impressed by himself in these circumstances. It was easy to impress this crowd. But impressing this crowd had rewards other than affirming his own wit. He was after all only thirty five years old. Not tenured, but a full professor. He was godlike to students. That had advantages.
~
The girl in the “corridor side” row, a couple of seats back from the front, always distracted Parker. His height; shortish… a quality that he liked in women. Pretty and blonde. But pretty and blonde in a special way. Her blonde was not “sheeny clean” beach bunny blonde. Her’s was the kind he thought they might mean by “dirty blonde”. But he wasn’t sure if that still applied if the hair was a genuine and consistent flax color. It was straight as any line defined by two points and reached virtually to the waist. No makeup, at least discernable makeup… perhaps a dollop of Clearasil here and there. Fine perfect features, so perfect that she almost lacked any semblance of “character”.
Parker had noticed her immediately the first day of classes. Most notably the blackness... the black denim, the black leather boots to the knee. Always a blousy chemise that defied any speculation as to the nature of her bosom.
She was the quintessence of the brainy college girl to him. Not the “post beatnik” radicals of his high school years. She had an air of confidence that he could not imagine in a woman; let alone a young woman. He thought maybe it was conferred upon her by the black boots. He wanted to inhale her if he could get close enough… to know the real scent of a woman. He suspected it might be other than fruity fresh; something leathery perhaps.
Taking philosophy seemed to him the ultimate collegiate pursuit. A “bona fide” of his eventual ascension to the upper tier of the learned. His was the realm of the mind; not be hindered by corporeal pursuits. Being a geek was not anathema to a being a philosophy student. He wasn’t a geek, though. But nor was he the antithesis, a jock. He was certainly smart enough to realize there was no real continuum between geekiness and jockishness, but he was still too insecure to not fear that that his prowess and disinterest in sport and athletics, did make him a geek by default.
Philosophy was far more interesting than that he had anticipated. No, that is not correct. He assumed it was interesting, he just had absolutely no prior knowledge of it. It sounded like a really cool thing to study. Just like “Modern Revolutionary Ideologies” and “Mathematics and the Real World”; both of which bore fruit. A week into “Introduction to Archeaology” he had some misgivings about that discipline.
Philosophy was cool. In the short span of a few classes in ethics, he had come to realize just how nebulous were all his beliefs; beliefs he had passively absorbed from his lineage of earnest and ignorant kin back in Wyoming.
Greeley, Colorado. A point along the north/south highway that highway traffic passing through would always find humor in. You smelled Greeley ten miles in advance. Cow manure; one of those curiously stout odors that are somehow not really offensive. Almost having an atavistic appeal. Like all farm smells. Wet hay.
Inured to the smell of Greeley and to that of tobacco smoke, Parker might have considered that at least one of his senses was impaired.
He grew up on a ranch. Well, that sounded too archaic and heroic. He actually grew up like virtually any American kid in the sixties. It was just that his house sat on the corner of an thousand acre parcel of land on the edge of town, instead of a quarter acre in a suburb. Other than that, he took the bus to school every day, like most kids, ate lunch in the cafeteria, rode the bus home and killed time until supper watching tv. And then watched every show interesting to his age until the “crap” came on.
His father never really called upon him to “intern” as a cowboy. It was sufficient that he knew the basics and he did. His dad was intent that his son become educated and considered a full day at school to be enough of a contribution to the collective goals of the family to release him from arduous rural chores.
So he watched tv. Living on the edge of town, he didn’t have friends to consort with after school or in the later evening. When tv sucked he read. Reading, by itself had, assured him a 1554 SAT score. And a 1554 had gotten him a nearly full ride to the University of Oklahoma.
~
His courage had grown over the last month. He realized that he really understood the issues, at least, though he had not as yet mastered any single one of them. He wanted to be a part of it all. His listened intently to Rausch each class and completed the reading assignment the evening of the day they were assigned. He was having an epiphany of sorts. He was realizing that he could “think”. In high school he didn’t “think”. There he learned and when required, gave evidence of his earning.
Something Rausch has said in Monday’s class had jostled something in him. The entire course was about ethics. He was also taking the freshman “Introduction to Philosophy” taught by a doctoral candidate, a skinny Jewish guy, with an air of disdain for level of erudition he was being constrained to. The ethics class was open to all students, regardless of major, but it was not intended as a primer to philosophy. It was not patronized by the disinterested and only interesting to those who paid attention.
A dozen times before he had felt he had a point to make, and had come perilously close to raising his hand. Sometimes he regretted his timidity, when another student or Rausch himself made the same point. But just as many times, a few moments more reflection and discovering he was mistaken or the evisceration of another hasty student by Rausch had made him thankful for his less assertive nature.
Parker raised his hand and Rausch, with a regal gesture of the hand, consented.
Trying very hard not to stutter, Parker spoke aloud. “I can’t see how a little crime can be deemed equivalent to a gross misdeed. Surely, consequences are important. Is this not just utilitarianism in reverse?”
“A deed is only as evil as its outcome? Surely, some sins are greater than others.” Parker held his breath.
Rausch enjoyed this part. He loved the rhetorical question the most. It was easy, like the way cynicism is a lazy mind’s sense of humor. He was lazy a lot of the time so he put it back on Parker. “By what measure?…..any sin can produce havoc…. A lie can change the course of a civilization … a murder, by comparision may only affect few. So which is the greater sin. Can a sin be separated from its effect.”
And oh how Rausch loved to answer his own question. “Take our ten commandments. The breach of any one of them is a sin, isn’t it? Assuming, of course, that we dignify each commandment. I wonder if they were in the right order on those tablets.”
“If I bear false witness and in doing so accomplish much good, am I equally corrupt as he whose tainted witness only abets himself or causes hurt to others?”
Parker felt a tinge of confidence and forged ahead... “vamping”.
“Maybe morality isn’t absolute… maybe, being immoral is really a breach of contract .. of the “social contract”, as they say. If we were all liars, and uniformly endorsed lying, then no lie, regardless of its efficacy would be immoral. Maybe a lie is only wrong when it offends the promise of truth. Immorality is only a “breach of promise”, I think. I pledge to be faithful and, thereafter infidelity is a sin because it is fundamentally a breach of that promise.” This was fun, thought Parker.
Rausch was unaccustomed to being “challenged”. He was a contrarian by choice, preferring to counter far more than concur. “What if the promise... the contract as you say, is unfair. What if the outcome is imbalanced. Say the lessor gains more than the lessee in the transaction. What if it is equal? What if it is a fair trade? Tit for tat?”
“Better yet … what if the wager shifts…. the balance shifts to one side and the “deal” becomes one that would not have been struck under the new terms. Does the contract stand?”
“For better or worse”. There’s a famous pledge. Give that one some thought… there are millions of miserable spouses struggling with than one.”
Parker was sweating. As usual, he was gushing, the pits of his shirt blossoming and that incriminating flourish of dampness forming in the center of his chest; telegraphing to his shirt. How is it that the jocks actually sweat less than he does, he wondered. He had exhausted his line of thought and was recoiling in anticipation of Rausch’s next volley when ... “RRRIIINNNGGG” went the bell.
Commotion ensued as students scrambled to salvage a few minutes of personal time between classes.
She watched Rausch as, yet again, he quipped “Pavlovian!”. An observation that, overheard by a freshman, always sounded clever the first time heard.
Rausch was out of the room before even half of the students.
~
Satisfaction was suddenly all that Parker knew. He felt vigorous. Just crossing the threshold of the classroom door, he heard her say.
“He’s quite an ass you know.”
Parker turned liked he was taking a bullet from the grassy knoll. “Back and to the left”. She was speaking to him, all the while stretching backwards in her seat, arms outstretched like a martyred carpenter; revealing no more bosom than her regular posture conveyed.
“Intelligent as he may be, he’s a whore for attention. You sparred pretty well ... just hope he doesn’t think you scored points with the rabble.”
“So, there goes my grade point?” Parker hoped his reply was reasonably relevant and charming.
Rising with her yellow scratch pad in hand she said “No... you’re probably okay. He plays fair… and it helps that only he realized he was being challenged. His vanity is secure. You’ll live to fight another day.”
“You were saved by the bell… time permitting he would have slaughtered you! You know, it wouldn’t have mattered which side of the issue you were on... he would take the other and make you think you had been slaughtered, either way. Before you realized you’d been had, you’ve have already been discredited and disgraced. He’s the best.”
“Well... uh... thank’s for the juice… uh you know the info…” That had sounded so contrived!!!. Parker was not one to be abreast of the “hipper” ways of saying things and not at all convincing when he tried. Although, he thought in consolation, “juice” is not a bad metaphor for information.
When in doubt… when you have nothing, ask a question. He was a question asker. He knew it bored and exasperated others but he just didn’t know to start and sustain an interesting conversation. So, in his usual style, “You come to every class. Are you auditing or something?”
She loved it… he had set her up perfectly. She was vain. “No... I’m his TA. Hah! I shouldn’t tell you but it will be me grading your essays and tests!” It was a honor she could not begin to accustom to. She was the teaching assistant of a full professor in philosophy at one the finest universities in the middle United States.
‘‘So... I’m the one you shouldn’t piss off. Ha ha”. She was smiling, not just to herself but rather, on this occasion, smiling broadly enough that the world might well have witnessed her rare breach of sullenness.
What she had said was both funny and true.
“Actually, it might improve your grade if you….. take me for coffee or something.” That part she hadn’t expected to say. Hadn’t rehearsed it like she would have, had she been conscious of her sudden interest in him. It just rolled out, it seemed; as the logical conclusion of a valid premise… she told herself.
Nothing, to Parker, could have seemed less likely than an older, smarter and wiser and quietly erotic woman asking him to accompany her anywhere. Discounting her sincerity and wanting to make a charming exit he said,”Well I would, but I swear ... I don’t have a dime. Like a dime will buy a cup of coffee. “
“Well don’t swear… we sure wouldn’t want that. So, I’ll buy... so to speak ... except I don’t have a dime either, so you’ll just have to drink the coffee I make at my place. It’s close enough. One bus. It’s even walkable.”
For Tanya, the “come-on” or even just initiating further contact with men was not difficult. Her efforts were always rewarded, bolstering her confidence, until she had become outright assertive and oblivious or contemptuous of any resistance.
“ Follow me… I’m Tanya.”
~
Just like she promised it was a very short ride. One bus. Maybe a mile. Not two. Just a bit past the zone of once grand older homes; now each accommodating an improbable number of students, and into the adjacent zone of less palatial older homes; now rental properties to singles or couples; up or down. She talked the entire time. Walking to the bus, waiting for the bus, riding the bus. He listened. He had nothing to share, he was sure. She shared. And she was interesting and, with each city blocked removed from the campus, she was increasingly ebullient; totally nullifying her effete/ pessimistic/nihilistic persona; which she could restore as needed.
She was a Yankee. Suburban by birth. But not driven to become intensely urban like so many other young women from Connecticut. She didn’t want to study in New York. Oklahoma was her adventure; though her academic achievement and her father’s wealth and connections could have insured entrance to a notable east coast university. Popular in high school. Brainy. Ambitious to be notable forever. Not ambitious in terms of wealth. She had grown up very comfortably, and assumed that was everyone’s future. Even a philosopher’s.
~
Her apartment didn’t smell like his at all. Not that it was tidy. But it smelled of care and pride. There were smells that were altogether new to him. Scented candles. Maybe pot. But tidy…. no. In the “bay window” part of her bed/living room was a desk overlain with several strata of essays and papers of bygone years. So, he imagined. But of course, it was just the turmoil of essays and tests yet to grade and thesis drafts and bills unpaid and all the other stuff.
There were articles of clothing on the floor and on the bed. Nothing looked soiled. Soiled, not being the right word perhaps. Perhaps worn already. It was erotic.
It reminded him of something from before. Something really erotic. Something extraordinary in its simplicity.
One of his roommates, in the house they shared, “they” being six guys, showed him his treasure one day. It was the black one-piece swimsuit of his long time girlfriend, who has remained “wherever” while he went to university. Turned in-side out, it was a “Shroud of Turin”, but not the image of the savior’s ascendency, but of a beautiful teenage girl’s body eroding the fabric of a tight fitting garment. He envied his friend’s prize. He hoped, for his friend, that it hadn’t been laundered before his girl had sent him away with it.
“So... I suppose you live with a dozen roommates or something hideous like that.” She asked as he followed her through the door.
He had never lived with other men. He was the only boy in a family of two parents and a child of each sex. Living communally with other men was disquieting for him. On many levels.
“Actually, I am not sure what the actual count is…. not a dozen but a lot. It changes constantly. I think it is six, right now. I hate it really. I hate being around men. Not that I have been around women either. Maybe I hate human beings. I hate being around men in their underwear. I hate the residue of men in the bathrooms. I can’t imagine feeling the same way about living with women.”
He was stranded in the no-mans land of another person’s dwelling. He stood there, just inside the door, not knowing which direction he should go. Student apartments were stage sets. It was the designer’s secret as to which part of the one or two rooms, total, was that assigned to a role usually played out in an entire room in a real home. He wondered, “ was the bed the sofa? That big chair by the bed…is that the guest chair?”
Without direction from her, he just held his post there, just inside the door, as she flitted in an out of both rooms and each zone of both. There was a bathroom he assumed; somewhere. It was down the hall, outside of her suite. Shared with someone else.
He just kept talking, as she went about her business.
“I don’t know that being so disgusted by men isn’t sort of weird. I guess if I was a homosexual, I would be totally good with this stuff, but it seems weird to me that I am so repulsed by men. Not just physically... I just hate all the testosterone bullshit of being a man. If I get drafted I think I’ll kill myself.”
She was, finally, not in constant motion. She was trying to assemble all the components of a cup of coffee. Not a real cup of coffee. She could manage instant coffee, if she could find the jar of granules and boil water.
He had started to feel comfortable with her and realized that he had already began to run at the mouth like he would do back home to his kid sister. An apology… more like a warning, was required.
“I think way too much about stuff… and then I let stuff out… unedited ... coz it always seems reasonable to let stuff out it if is well intentioned… or at least not malevolent.” He went on.
“It is interesting, though, how programmed we are …. to favor one gender over the other. Manliness just makes me shiver.” That statement seemed to him a bit too strident. He tried to recant.
“I have no idea what my point was just then.”
She turned from the sink and with a wink, “I think they call you guys “beta” males. The jocks are the “alphas”. The propagators of our species.” She laughed out loud. They both laughed. His laugh was just cordial.
“So, are you a man of much experience... in terms of romance ... as it were? ” she queried. Not that she was so much interested in his history as she was enjoying his embarrassment.
He, feeling oddly comfortable admitting so, “As it is… none.. I have no experience whatsoever. Even my lips are pure. Everything is still in the original wrapper. I could be worth a fortune in the antiques market in a few years.”
“ Well, I can’t say the same thing… maybe I wish I could. Don’t care to share the actual count either… not a dozen but a lot. We struggle with that... at least some of us girls. Sooner or later we give it up… or someone takes it”. She had been looking askance but on that last utterance her eyes met his. She looked quickly away again, emboldened.
“Yeah... someone took it! It’s hard to say no... when it’s something you want to know about... and, harder still, when you think your “no” will come across as an admission of cowardice. Then saying no just seems irrelevant the next time... and the next time... and the next time ... and suddenly... I guess not suddenly, but eventually … eventually you are a girl who has had a lot of lovers. A lot of sex... not a lot of love.”
“ But sex... it’s good ... right? I keep hearing about it. From the big boys.” Parker hoped his quip would relieve any discomfort she had in speaking of her history.
It did.
“ I like it... but honestly I don’t know if it’s the intimacy … as superficial as it’s been so far or the physical pleasure that matters to me. I guess it is kind of pathetic if I am somehow nurtured by pseudo intimacy.
Tanya liked to make her points emphatically. Theatrically.
“I’d fuck you. For the same reasons. To feel good... and too be close to you… and I don’t even know you. See... I can just put it out there too. I like you ...and I don’t mean I like the way you are or look… I just like you,” she declared pulling her blouse over her head and dropping it on the bed.
Parker saw breasts. Probably not ones you would call spectacular but breasts totally consistent with his minds eye before.. Even more overwhelming to him was the fragility of her upper torso, the grace of her neck and the frailness of her shoulders and arms. Her femininity. He wanted to embrace her. To rest his cheek against hers.
She patted the bed beside her, summoning him closer. He obeyed. She sat cross-legged, back to the headboard and he side-saddle on the edge of the bed. She grabbed his shirt and wrenched it our of his waist band. He was suddenly conscious of the degree of his arousal and, foremost, terrified of her being witness to “it”. Starting from the top she unbuttoned the five pawns of his defense. Glancing downward as she did, she pushed his shirt backwards and halfway down his arms. He felt a twinge of panic at his arms being restrained from the pressing duty of concealing himself. She proclaimed, “Is that for me? A clever little female quip, if you hadn’t heard it before. It both embarrassed and calmed him. He hastily proceeded to unlock himself by unbuttoning the cuff of his sleeves but not in time enough to have thwarted her assault upon the zipper of his jeans. He immediately poked through. With uncanny speed she writhed out of her black denims, completing in that single stroke, the entire process of disrobing. She pulled him forward grasping both his shoulders and “scootching” herself under him, rapidly moving her hands to the top of his jeans and, thumbs engaged in his shorts, both jeans and underwear were suddenly at his knees. Now abandoned entirely to surrendering to her he thrashed his legs wildly to be free of his pants, while the epicenter of his entire existence, his penis, rubbed deliciously against her belly. All his senses were ignited but, most acutely, he could divine her scent. Drawing in the deepest of breaths, he was nearly dizzy. He reached down to the place where surely the scent was radiating and feeling the unexpected warmth and wetness of her he swooned for moment, like in a dream, followed by the sudden awareness that he was ejaculating. He tried to extricate himself from her embrace but before he had put any distance between then he had anointed her from belly to the nape of her neck with semen.
Her reaction was nearly as immediate as his; but she was not bewildered.
“Oopps……..”, she said as she lay back, smiling, swirling her finger in some of it. She saw the look of abject shame in his eyes. “Oh come on…” suddenly she laughed, “sorry, bad pun. Don’t be all upset. Your first time… it happens.”
He wasn’t hearing any of it. He was suddenly hearing the kettle she had up put on ten minutes ago, shreaking maniacally, but with ever decreasing conviction, as the water boiled away. Struggling with his balance as he did, he pulled his underwear up from their last position at his knees and standing on his tip toes to free up his cuffs he pulled up his jeans.
Hastily buttoning his shirt he exclaimed “I just don’t feel... I’m just not comfortable with all this. I mean you are really cool and all that but my head is just spinning and … I’ll get back to you… okay?”
“Stay Parker... please. Nothing has gone wrong… we just got going
to fast. Just stay here and we can just talk and stuff, just like we
were doing before.”
“Tanya, I really like you... in the way
you just said… but I really do just want to be alone for a while.
I’ll get with you again I promise.”
She hadn’t even risen from her bed before he has crossed the threshold of her door. The last word she got out, which he probably didn’t even hear, was “come back in an hour or so.”
Parker’s mind was a torrent of affects. Guilt, awe, lust, joy… all melding to a stupor which blinded him to the fact that he walked right past Rausch as he headed down the sidewalk for a sullen stroll home.
~
Rausch was quick to rage. Perhaps, because he was quick to coalesce elements into patterns... into conclusions. The instant he say Parker, the pageant was complete, like a nativity scene; the role of every figure clearly discernible . He could feel in his flesh all the fire of damnation... all the regret a prophecy fulfilled. They’re all cheating cunts.
Tanya “toweled-off” with the tail of the upper bed sheet. Reaching over the edge of the bed, and slightly under, she found her size “extra large” SOONERS jersey and slipped it on. Still sitting on the bed she turned abruptly toward the door as it started to open. She almost said “ Parker, you’re bad” … or something clever like that, but she was struck dumb as Rausch swung open her door and immediately settled into her one comfortable chair next to her dresser.
He could assume a “regal” demeaner, that impressed him and the uninitiated, but had come to disgust her over the last two years. He slumped into her chair kicking off his leviathan shoes in the same effort. She hated the way he would so totally possess that chair. She could scarcely bear to sit in it, because of him, though it was the only comfortable reading chair in the place and she did an enormous amount of reading.
His tone was all she needed to know that a “shit storm” was brewing.
“You went straight home after class…. Still watching your shows?” Meaning, of course, the afternoon soap operas that were the closet passion of many college students, who could and would arrange their curriculum to satisfy their addiction to them.
“I like my show. My ONE show. Lord I remember some of the characters from “sick-days” when I was in junior high.”
He stared at her, with as much ”theatrical” condescension as he could affect.
“No,” she said hoping to preempt his next questions by volunteering information, “I just wanted to get a start on some of my work.” She rose from the bed without the benefit of having planned her next destination. She stalled and, in doing so, felt incredibly naked.
“Oh.. what work?”
“Oh, nothing specific .. just get organized or oriented. I don’t know.”
Rising from his throne, Rausch said, “I guess if you don’t know, then it must be something that can wait.” He as much blocked her escape from her bedside, as he offered his embrace.
“ No library time tonight?” He reached around her and forced the wedge of his stiff extended fingers between her buttocks .
Tanya knew she was in for a total “mind-body” fuck, tonight.
“No… I just thought I would stay in… and I thought you might come over so I just got comfortable.” The precedent of the “football jersey over nothing else” had been set before, so she was not too alarmed by his probing hand nor his discovery that she was without underwear.
Without releasing his grip on her buttock he held her there as he unzipped his fly and fished out his penis. He was enormous. It was a matter of great, unexpressed pride to him. A vindication. He was highly intelligent and he had a huge dick.
He was a “selfish little piggy” in the body of a behemoth, when it came to sex. Early on, he had affected affection, but “all the cards on the table” now, he just took what he wanted…. when he wanted it.
This time there was an “edge” to it.
She not so much as uttered a sound.
Suddenly, he tugged at her buttock spinning her around and fell heavily upon her.
She realized that his ardor was catalyzed by hostility and that he intended to indulge himself.
“I’m not into that tonight,” she asserted. Having maintained his grip on one buttock he parted her and began to wedge himself between them. She exclaimed, “Really it always hurts and it’s demeaning anyway.”
He started to enter her. She could accommodate him with fair warning and a few deep breaths, as she had done before, but this time the pain was acute and she cried out, “really ... you’re hurting!”
Pushing himself deeper he taunted, “You’ve taken a liking to sophomore sex? Is your little friend gentle? Like gentle has ever worked for you. But I am sure gentle is how you like to sell it to the kids.”
“What the fuck are you referring to?”
“What kind of fuck did you just hand your little buckaroo before he scurried home like a naughty puppy?”
Conceding the point, that he had been there, she said, “We didn’t fuck.”
“When he pays the bills he can fuck you….. anywhere he wants.”. He bottomed out. She gasped.
“Stop it..you fucking asshole.. go find some little boy to do that to.”
Rausch grabbed her pony tail and jerked her head back toward him, “you fucking cunt!”
There was not even a click. Her vertebrae crumbled, her spinal cord severed noiselessly and, when he relaxed his grip, she simply fell face first into her pillow. Rausch was so close to ejaculating that it was a full blown moral dilemma, considered and resolved in an instant, that forbade his coming inside her deceased rectum.
He could smell the kettle being consumed, without actually igniting, on the stove in the other room.
~
He couldn’t stop smelling his hand. It made him dizzy. Maybe he was hyperventilating. Maybe it was because there was some compound in that aromatic brine that he was fundamentally susceptible too. It was the richest aroma he had ever experienced. Some essences he recognized. Urine. Sweat. It was peculiar to admit that it had much in common with the scent that would grace his hands if he drew them between his legs and his balls. That scent too, made him light-headed.
He had seen a woman naked. He had felt the heat of a woman on the entire length of his penis. He had ejaculated without actually touching himself. That was the bewildering part. Someone, a woman, had made him come. He could only imagine how it would feel to be fellated or masturbated by someone. To be that “victim”.
She was fun. He didn’t mind being teased. It was attention. She was tragic too. Victim of the “alpha male”.
He had always thought of her as beautiful, he realized. A month of classes had gone by and most of the time in class, his ear tuned to Rausch, his eyes had surveyed every nuance of her.
He was nearly home, when the bus heading back to her apartment came into view. He wasn’t ready to call it a day. He sprinted to the stop and boarded the bus. Damn the fare! He would be back to her in minutes. And she had invited him. He heard it distinctly as he held the door briefly before closing it to take his walk of shame.
Parker wished he had already achieved the familiarity to warrant coming in unannounced, with a clever quip. But, he was only at the “respectful” knock stage; in spite of having her scent wafting relentlessly up at him from his knocking hand.
It couldn’t have been a half an hour since he left her apartment. Amazing how his body was already fully recovered from his first real sexual encounter and equally amazing how intense was his resolve to consummate their acquaintanceship. But she didn’t come to the door. He stepped back into the street. Everything looked the same. Lights were on. He climbed the short flight of steps from the street again and knocked. This time with a measure of conviction. It is hard to gauge the proper length of time between a knock and the resignation that it is not being acknowledged. He gave it a while longer. For some reason, as he turned to descend the stairs for the last time that night, her gave the door knob a twist.
The knob put up no resistance and the door slowing swung open, an inch at a time until it surrendered an eight inch wide portal into the life of Tanya Arquette.
She lay on the bed. Face down. A football jersey hiked up to the middle of her back. Her buttocks exposed.
Parker called out her name, barely audibly. A concession to her vulnerable state. Nothing. Gripped by an undefined fear he crept, literally in a hunched posture, to her bedside. He placed his hand upon her neck. She was warm. He felt an enormous relief. She was okay. God, he thought, for a second that, he had lost her. Speaking her name softly, and gently jostling her, he tried to rouse her. Nothing. Suddenly, he had the most horrid of “ahah” experiences.
She was not well, at all.
He tore into a frenzied search for her telephone. Did she even own one? He hurled himself at her desk, in the street-side window bay. Tossing everything to one side or the other, he finally exhumed it …. a silly “princess” style phone. In a princess color, pink.. and, like all princess phones hard to manipulate. He hated rotary phones. It was so easy to fuck up the dialing part and so time consuming. It was the stuff of nightmares for him… repeated attempts to execute the sequence of rotations to complete some vital call. But he only had three numbers to register .. 9…. 1…
~
“Put it down!!!!!!!!!!!!. Now!!!!!!!!”
The rage in the voice was palpable. It stopped Parker cold; halfway in the rotation on the final “one”. He didn’t recognize the voice but the face, camouflaged in the light and dark of a street side walk up apartment, was still unmistakable.
“She’s hurts…. I think she dying!!!!!!!!!!!”
“She’s dead.” The world had not really stopped with that utterance but for Parker at least, it was devoid of sound and sense. “She’s dead,” Parker heard him say. For the second time.
His mind cleared…. “We have to do something... call the police.”
Rausch stepped out of the darkness and plopped into his chair. “Normally …yes… just not this time.”
Parker stared at him in disbelief.
“Doesn’t my presence at the scene of the crime ...” Roach shook his head to and fro... as if in disbelief.
“You showed promise this afternoon.”
“I killed her …Chester !” Rausch was proud of his spontaneous and clever television homage!
“For God’s sake why?”
“I guess that would be between me and her.” Rausch went on, “It was an accident ... in as much as I didn’t intend to hurt her.”
“Well we have to do something,” Parker insisted.
Not moving from his seat, Roach, pulled open the top drawer of the dresser and withdrew a handgun.
“Chester, try thinking for a change… what do you suppose really ought to happen now… excluding that scenario where I get convicted of murder. I didn’t want to kill her. There was no intention. So, I don’t feel that I must abide society’s efforts to exact revenge or restitution for killing her. Nor the scandal my suddenly manifest association with her might reveal.”
Parker was speechless.
“Certainly you realize that my association with this woman has been discrete to this point”.
A long and theatrical pause, then Rausch mused, “An unlikely pair ... she and I. We had an arrangement of sorts. I dare say I am relieved to be released from my part of the bargain.”
“I am relieved to be released from my obligation to abet her career. That was the bargain… articulated or not. Can you imagine an arrogant, hirsute bear of a man with a girl like her. I always envisioned a grizzly bear plundering a hare when we made love. Lapin, I called her….. French…. she was so easily charmed. My little rabbit.”
Scarcely moving from his throne, he reached and grabbed hold of the umbrella she parked next to her dresser. With gesture worthy of P.T. Barnum he poked the end of the umbrella into the crack of her buttocks causing them to part.
“ How lovely that was.. is .. was.. the more glorious fruit of bartered lust. Not usually granted… more surrendered, in trade. Miss Arquette knew where her bread was buttered... or shall we say where to butter, if you follow my allusion to that “tango” film. Curious how compelling that spot becomes over time.”
“The Greeks had it right…… not just in matters philosophical.” Rausch wanted to laugh at his joke but he dreaded appearing narcissistic.
“It took me years to become lecherous. And only after many, many years of the most crippling lust and moral debate. And then, as if ordained, I crossed that line and, guilt or moral fiber withstanding, I was a lecher. And life didn’t end…. it went on... and in that new life I was to have glorious sex.”
“I never thought I would murder … certainly never pined to it. And yet... I am a murderer now. And life goes on… if I let it. And letting you tell the tale will not forward my cause ... will it?”
Another deliberate and dramatic pause, then Rausch resumed. “So, ploughboy, I’m thinking this is not going to be one of your better days.”
The only thing that I am struggling with... and mind you, I am new to this stuff... is whether to simply erase the witness or risk the complications of leaving the witness, unfortunately deceased, as the perpetrator of record, as part of some whole sad college parti. I admit I am intrigued by the challenge.”
“I’d have to kill you… to appear as if she had killed you. Oh... what serendipitous luck… this is her gun. The one a lovely grad student in a big bad city would only be too prudent to own.”
“How to stage this one? How did she get off the shot that killed you even though you had already delivered the mortal blow? And the trouble is of course, you either die of a broken neck or you don’t, I assume. You don’t recover enough to get off the vengeful shot.”
“So it’s the old standby.. murder/suicide.”
“Hard to explain the workings of the youthful mind.. dealing with so many stressors… college.. romance… money… drugs. God only knows why you did it?”
Rausch, with startling grace, was suddenly up and had the gun at the temple of Parker’s head. For the suicide scenario. He cocked the trigger which made a most authoritative sound in such close proximity to his head. He literally felt the mechanical action of the gun.
“Stop!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Parker shreaked. “I could shut up. I mean I could keep this all a secret.”
Maybe posterity would reveal whether Parker had suddenly divined the path to salvation or if Rausch had simply guided him to it, masterfully.
“There are no secrets. There are pledges of secrecy… no secrets though. I’ve never kept one or had one kept, for that matter. How do they say it…”promises are made to be broken?”
“You don’t strike me as a man that can abet a crime with his silence, let alone outright collusion.” Pointing to the comfortable chair, Rausch insisted Parker have a seat. He was having fun, walking about but never removing the gun from Parker. Had Parker the presence of mind, he might have realized that Rausch could not shoot him if he made a sudden run for the door. The suicide scenario was all he had.
“Oh ... this is rich... oh my dear god this is priceless. To think just this very afternoon we had almost this same discussion. Is there yet another commandment…the eleventh?”
“ Thou shalt not ….. mm .. let’s get the phrasing right… help me…uh….. uh… un… unbear witness. Thou shall not unbear witness? Fuck, I don’t know…”
“That’s perfect. Death row wisdom but .. let’s use it.”
Parker was fully bewildered; confused by the apparently random logic of Rausch’s argument.
Rausch was “immanent”.
“Come one ... Chester.. we’re on to something... stay with me! It’s your concept. You brought it up… in class this very afternoon. The whole social contract schtick you tried to impress us with.” Now, the trademark rhetorical question.
“You keep a promise when?????????”
Parker could have answered but he was still addled by fear.
“ When enough is at stake….. when it is worth enough.. . say, all that there is … say your whole fucking life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Rausch paused, and then went on, in a more reflective manner.
“No. No. I’ve gotten ahead of my self…… you MAKE a promise when enough is at stake. Getting someone to keep the promise is the stickler.”
“Like it is really in MY best interest that you are dead in a few moments and the only way it isn’t is if you trade you life, which is totally fuckin’mine right now, for eternal silence.”
“But you know what Chester…. the second I let you go I don’t have your fuckin’ life as collateral for mine….so I don’t see we have a deal here.”
Having closed in on Parker again, and resting the gun barrel on his temple again, Rausch stated, coolly, “So.. I think we have to go back to the old scenario where you, the dead man, can tell no tale.”
“I can promise!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can promise ... absolutely… unconditionally... divorced from circumstance .. from reward …from all contingency... simply as a pledge!” Never had Parker spoken with such eloquent spontaneity.
Rausch loved to torment. He loved to tease.
“BULLSHIT!” Rausch bellowed. “You know you might consider a different major… your grasp of ideas is superficial. You’re a fairly good showman… like today in class. I enjoy waxing for the benefit of the simple, too.”
“You MAKE a promise as a contract! Your keeping your promise is my concern. Convince me that you will keep it ..”
“Or you can die right now.”
“I promise, ” said Parker with all the conviction he could manifest.
“No you ass, I not looking for earnestness.. tell me why your promise will bind you forever. Convince me and you live.”
For moments, hours in his mind, Parker could think of nothing, though he could sense the presence of the “truth”.
Parker found the words, suddenly. It was an epiphany. “You keep your promise because that is the “prima facie commandment”.. the only ethical absolute… the one with a priori validity.”
“ Chester……. Chester… you are the young ingénue. I didn’t see quite see it…. we were both there… and you saw it….. it went right by me….. there it is … your dissertation…… your word too, “the prima facie commandment”. I am positively jealous.”
“Fuck off then”. Rausch paused then continued, authoritatively. “Go away. I think I would be happiest never seeing you again. You’ve got you’re A. Let’s say this was a seminar of sorts in which you distinguished yourself and were bestowed credit in advance. You got your elective ... go back to your geology or psychology or whatever you chose to major in. GO!”
~
Texas Wesleyan University was unlike any other university in the suddenly sprawling Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, of 1983.
There was really only one significant public university, the University of Texas at Arlington. Right in the middle of the whole urban sprawl of North Texas, serving both Dallas and Fort Worth; without bias. Of the private universities, Texas Wesleyan was the humblest. Methodist affiliated. But not all that much like the revered Southern Methodist University of the City of Highland Park (an oasis of fabulous wealth within the Dallas municipal limits). Wesleyan was a little academic oasis mired in one of the most economically depressed areas of Fort Worth, Texas. The campus buildings encircled the one large main lot, commons, upon which the original neo classical “all in one” building was placed. A few of the new campus buildings encroached upon the main lot. At the corner, demarcating the end of the campus on the east side was the large, grand and, for the area, markedly gracious Methodist cathedral. To the south was a strip of one story “turn of the century” mercantile buildings, handsome in their prime, but now abandoned and eroding in the heat and blistering sun of West Texas.
“West Texas”, because the City of Fort Worth so declared that Fort Worth was “where the west begins”. Which of course was just a matter of declaration and not fact, but the city of Fort Worth, down to the last man, did feel and assert that Fort Worth was NOT Dallas. Dallas, was an outpost of the “Eastern Establishment” here on the perimeter of the western frontier. Historically, there was some truth to that assertion. Fort Worth, called “Cowtown” was where the livestock was handled and traded. Dallas was more where the currency was handled.
And of course, they killed the president in Dallas just twenty years prior. The fact that the accused killer attended high school in Fort Worth and lived there first, after returning from his period of expatriation in Russia, was not widely known or heralded.
Parker, now known as Dr. Parker Lee Fitzgerald, had envisioned, much earlier in his career, joining the faculty of one of the more prestigious universities.
But the early years of the eighties had made everyone, blue collar, white collar, rainbow collar receptive to accepting any and all offers. Every one was moving to Texas. Many were the bumpers stickers declaring “Native Texan”. Or, “Welcome to Texas, now go home”. There were even exculpatory stickers. “I wasn’t born in Texas but I got here as fast as I could.” Or, “Texan by choice if not by birth”.
The heat of Texas was simply extraordinary. You could spot the Yankee easily; car windows were rolled down most of the year. A car without AC was of better use as a storage shed than a mode of transportation. Yankee cars were obsolete within the first year of immigration to Texas.
At least North Texas was not humid. Houston, they said, was humid as hell or rather hot as hell and humid. The meteorologists had their special measure. The heat/humidity index. . Rather, the “heat index”. It was great for histrionic weather reporting, because no matter what the temperature, you could always report the more alarming sounding heat index. Unless, the area was totally desiccated, there was always some measure of humidity and a corresponding heat index. In fairness though, when it was over 100 degrees AND humid, it was vastly more uncomfortable than the air temperature alone suggested. Same thing for the northern regions, they had their “wind/chill factor”; making it possible for northern states to declare, bravely, they had experienced 60 degrees below zero.