The Killer Touch

Twelve

The wind died gradually from about midnight on. Burt loosened Tracy’s belt and arranged her in a sitting posture with her back to the tree. She moaned but didn’t awaken. Burt sat beside her and dozed.

Dawn came with a bleak gray light. The leaden sky was mottled by black clouds kicked along by blasts of wind. Rain drops stung his face like BBs. He looked at Tracy sleeping with her head back, her lips parted. His eyes followed the straight white column of her neck down to her wasted body; the small cuplike breasts were bare and rainwashed to an ivory whiteness. He could see the blue veinings beneath her skin, and he wondered what had given her such a frail, unearthly beauty. Her face seemed to glow with its own cold light; her eyes were shadowed and deep in their sockets. Camille, he thought, or St. Joan of Arc in the dying ecstasy of her martyrdom.

He took off his tattered shirt and put it around her. He stood up and surveyed the debris which had been deposited on their barren rock: Several palm leaves, dozens of coconuts, an entire guava tree stripped clean of bark and leaves, a few shattered boards and assorted specimens of dying undersea life, including a ray the size of a dining room table which was draped over a rock and beginning to swell. He saw that their island had been split in two; thirty yards west of their tree was a twenty-foot chasm of rushing white water. Where the sand spit had been, a few jagged rocks thrust up from the lashing foam. So much for the boat...

He draped palm leaves over the trunk of the guava tree and laid Tracy beneath the waist-high shelter. Her forehead was cold and clammy, but she was breathing. He decided not to awaken her; when the withdrawal pains came there would be no rest for her anyway. He used his knife to open a can of beef and ate half of it with his fingers. He punctured a coconut, drank the sweet water, then gathered up all the coconuts he could find and piled them beside the shelter. At least they’d have no drinking problem...

He returned with his last load to find her struggling to sit up. “Lie down,” he said.

“But I need my — oh!” She lay back and looked up at him from wide frightened eyes. “I... didn’t really lose my kit, did I? That wasn’t real.”

“Yes,” he said. “You lost it.”

She closed her eyes and began to tremble. He touched his hand to her forehead; it was cold and moist, like the flesh of a dead chicken. Her teeth clattered.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Like... like th-th-they were squirting hot w-w-water up my n-n-nose.” She started to sneeze, then rolled over on her side and retched. Burt sat helplessly until she finished.

“Maybe if you ate,” he said.

He handed her the remaining half-can of beef. The beef dropped off her shaking fingers and down the front of her shirt. Her mouth was loose and drooling, and moisture ran out of her nose. He took the can from her hand. “Lean back and try to relax. I’ll feed you.”

It was a bizarre and intimate scene; he dipped the beef from the can and she ate it from his fingers. He remembered that some Indian marriage ceremony included a ritual of bride and groom feeding each other by hand. He wondered why he should get ideas like that. When the can was empty, he said, “I’ll open a coconut. You can drink.”

“I... I don’t think—” Her face turned green. He jerked back just in time to escape the spew of bully beef. She doubled over and vomited again, then again, until all the beef was gone. Still the retching continued. He put his palm on her arched back and felt the spasm rip through her body. He lost track of time and lost count of her convulsions. He saw that there was really such a thing as black bile, and he wondered how much punishment the frail body could stand. He didn’t leave her, though there was nothing he could do to ease her pain; he had a strange feeling that soon she would be nothing but empty skin, lying on the sand like a discarded laundry bag.

At last she sighed and lay back. Her face looked like a skull. Cold moisture gleamed on her pale skin. “The doctor...” she gasped, closing her eyes. “We’ve got to go...”

“I am afraid—” he began, but he saw the slow rise and fall of her bosom beneath the sweat-soaked shirt. She was asleep; she seemed to be resting.

He rose on aching limbs and walked to the break in the island. Peering beyond, he saw his rope tied to a rock where the sand spit had been. His heart stopped when he saw the rope go taut, then slacken. Could there be a boat on the end of that? It seemed impossible.

He started across the channel where it seemed shallowest. The current slammed against him and tore his feet from the porous rock. He made a leap, seized a jut of rock, and pulled himself to dry land. He lay for a moment panting, then rose and walked to the rope. During the ebb of a wave, he saw the boat wedged between two rocks and filled with sand. He found a broken counch shell and descended, using the shell flange to scoop out the sand. He worked in waist-deep water, scraping his hands raw. Twice he managed to empty the boat, and twice the burgeoning surf drove him to high ground while the boat filled again with sand. At last he managed to drag the boat up above the booming surf. A close inspection showed him that it was far from seaworthy. One hole he could have shoved his head through, a half-dozen others would have admitted his hand, and there were innumerable cracks and pits. He felt no grief; it was a boat, and he had despaired even of that...

Suddenly he heard a shout. He turned to see Tracy standing on the other side of the break, her face twisted in terror. He caught only a few of her words.

“Don’t... leave me!”

He tried to shout that he wouldn’t, but his words were lost in the booming surf. He started running when she stepped into the water. When he reached the break she was a swirling patch of hair twenty feet out. He plunged in and swam with all his strength, caught her by the hair and started dragging her back. It took all his remaining energy, for he had to make a wide circle to avoid the rip current which now flowed through the island. He reached land, collapsed and lay panting, his body limp against the sand. When he raised his head, she was sitting beside him, regarding him with concern in her red, swollen eyes. He spoke with a tired, futile anger:

“How many times do I have to save your stupid life?”

“I thought... you were going to leave.”

“I was just checking the damage on the boat. Did you think you could swim that channel?”

“No. I can’t swim.”

He stared at her, speechless. She passed a shaky hand over her face, as though brushing away cobwebs. “Can we go now? I feel as if spiders were crawling all over me.”

He rose to his feet. “I’ve got to fix the boat first. You’re on this side of the river now, so the swim wasn’t all wasted.”

Using the boat’s rope to make a handline across the break, he transferred the food, some coconuts, and the most usable pieces of wood. He rebuilt the shelter and began whittling out repairs for the boat. Occasionally a pale sun shone between the clouds. Birds shrieked in the water and fought over dead fish. Two hundred yards out a long gray body left the water and crashed down again, leaving a memory of flashing teeth and streaming blood. Shark-fight, he thought; blood crazed scavengers divvying up some dead monster of the deep. Better make sure the boat was good, he decided; there’d be small chance of surviving if it swamped.

He fitted a board in place and saw a new problem. The boat would make water like a sieve if he didn’t calk the seams. He stood up and searched his pitiful pile of scrap lumber. One fragment of ship planking yielded scarcely enough tar to dirty his fingernails. Beneath his feet he saw a round, black globule. He picked it up and found it soft and sticky, with the sulphurous smell of crude oil. He looked around and saw the beach sprinkled with the globules. Hmm, an oil tanker must have gone down nearby. Well, their misfortune is our salvation... He dropped to his hands and knees and began harvesting the globules.

“Can I help?”

He looked up and saw her body streaked with the long red marks of her nails. Her hair was an impossible tangle. “Go back and lie down.”

“I can’t... sit still,” she said, dropping down beside him. “I feel itchy where I can’t scratch. It’s in my bones.”

He set his teeth and rose. Maybe work would help, there was nothing else he could offer her. “Okay, gather up all this tar. I’ll get back to work.”

Back at the boat, he started fitting boards in place and cramming in the tar. He half-forgot the woman until he heard her moan. He jumped up and found her lying on the other side of the shelter, the little pile of tar beside her. She was arched backward, her heels nearly touching the back of her head. He knelt beside her and asked her what was the matter, but she could say nothing, her lips were pulled back from her teeth, her eyes rolled back into her head. Muscle spasm, he thought. He placed his hand against her back and found the skin tight as stretched canvas. The muscles on her legs stood out like ropes; the veins on her head were like worms. Her face turned blue, then black; Burt stuck his fingers into her throat to free her tongue; he put a piece of driftwood between her teeth to keep her from biting it in two, then began kneading and probing her muscles.

Gradually the spasm ended. She straightened and lay gasping, her legs kicking fitfully like those of a dog which has just been shot. “I... never kicked the habit before,” she gasped. “How... long does it last?”

Burt had no direct information, but he’d heard that it lasted anywhere from two days to a week. He couldn’t tell her that. “You’re over the worst part,” he said. “From now on it gets easier.”

He carried her to the shelter and returned to the boat. The convulsions came again a half-hour later. He massaged her until she relaxed, and by then it was dark. He ate, but she could not touch food. Her lips hung slack and moisture ran down her chin. He lay beside her all night, stroking her body when the convulsions tore her apart. He came to regard her as a piece of his own flesh, like an arm or leg. He felt her cramps as though they were his own; he agonized when the pain tore her apart. He could only relax when she did, and that was rare. Toward dawn he napped, only to awaken and find her gone. He sat up and saw her down beside the water stepping out of her slacks. Her nude body was tinged with a halo of pink from the rising sun. He ran and caught her before she got her knees wet. She gave no struggle as he carried her back to the shelter; her eyes were vacant and there seemed to be nothing behind them. She was limp and boneless as he put on her clothes; dressing her was like dressing a doll. When he finished she half-opened her eyes.

“You’re all right now?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You don’t really want to die, do you?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, now look.” He spoke as though instructing a child. “Death is something you don’t ask for, Tracy. It’ll come, that’s in front. Maybe it’s a kick, who knows, but it’s the very last one you’ll ever get. Making it happen is like going out at noon and praying for night. Night will come, it’s all arranged. You don’t have to push it...”

He broke off, for she had closed her eyes. He rose, vaguely disappointed, for he had wanted to ask why she’d taken off her clothes before she attempted suicide. So many women did. He’d always wondered...

He ate and got to work on the boat. He checked her frequently to see if she was dead. She never was, and it never stopped surprising him. She didn’t sleep, just seemed to drift away for a time. He decided that she must have tremendous inner strength. Others had kicked it cold-turkey, but most of them had been nourished and cared for. This was the rawest, roughest setup. He wondered how Rolf had enslaved her.

At three that afternoon she said she was hungry. She was too weak to eat, and Burt fed her again from his fingers.

“I feel that I have died,” she said. “Maybe I’ll live again, I don’t know. It seems like a lot of trouble.”

“You don’t have to make the same mistakes.”

“Oh, but the hunger is in me. Every little nerve is going gabble-gabble-gabble, we want it we want it we want it.” She closed her eyes. “When I go back to Rolf he’ll be able to get it, and I can’t put it down...”

“You won’t be going back to Rolf,” he said, but she was asleep.

He worked until dark, then lay down beside her. Late that night she awoke trembling.

“Put your arms around me,” she said. “Keep me warm.”

He did, and her hair tickled his nose. He didn’t move for fear of disturbing her. He thought she was asleep, but then she said:

“My blood is like ice-water. This... is in the way.” He felt her hand between them, pulling apart the shirt. Then her cool bare flesh rested against him, pressing hard as though she were trying to curl up inside his body. He felt her relax and sigh.

“What’s your name?”

“Burt.”

“That’s a very... abrupt name. Are you an abrupt man? No, you’re not. You’re very calm, in a deep sort of way. Rolf is calm only on the surface. I can’t understand why you work for him.”

“I don’t.”

She stiffened. “But you said—”

“A lie,” he said, then he told her about finding her purse with the heroin, the discovery of the masquerade, and the entire chain of events which had led him to this island. “I’ve wondered about one thing,” he said when he finished. “Did you know what was going on?”

“Oh, part of it. I knew there was something crooked. I knew that woman was posing as me, because she came out with Rolf and gawked at me. But then I thought, what the hell, maybe she’ll make a better Tracy Keener than I did. You realize I wasn’t really here. My body was just something you stuck a needle into. It was a chemical substance, I mixed it with dope and became real. When it wasn’t mixed, I was nothing.”

“You were something,” he said. “Before you got hooked.”

“A child. An unformed creature. You wouldn’t be interested.”

“I would, yes.” He looked up and saw the purple dawn lacing the sky. “Right now I’ve got work to do.”

The boat was nearly ready; Burt had saved the two best boards for oars. He ate and started work. She watched for a few minutes then said:

“I feel I could help.”

“Okay, start cramming tar into the cracks.”

While she worked she told him what she’d been before she got hooked: intelligent, only child of respectable parents, the kind of background that makes you feel smarter than you really are. She’d left home to seek the usual things: romance, independence, and a broadening of experience. Working for Rolf seemed to offer it all; he took long trips and would no doubt leave her in charge. Eventually she too might taste the glamour of foreign travel. But he told her nothing, and she became frustrated. Once she tried to open a forbidden filing cabinet. It burned, filling the office with acrid smoke. At first Rolf was furious, but then he cooled. “I should have warned you. If you try to open the cabinets incorrectly, it triggers an incendiary which destroys the contents.” She asked, “But why? What part of your business has to be hidden?” He took her out to dinner that night and explained: The art objects were hidden in the ground; he was bringing them to a public which could appreciate them. Technically illegal, perhaps, but so was drinking on Sunday. Burt, having heard Rolf’s warped and faultless logic, believed Tracy when she said she’d been confused. What confused her still more was that Rolf took an abrupt personal interest in her. He found her an apartment near the office at a rental she couldn’t resist. He took her out to dinner and on boating trips. Gradually she lost touch with boys she dated and girls she’d known.

“I understand it now,” she said. “He’d taken me into his confidence; now he had to take control of me. I remember the night I realized Rolf had taken over management of my life. We were eating at a restaurant overlooking the sea. I felt the kind of panic you get when an elevator sticks between floors. I told him I was quitting my job, and he nodded as though he had been just about to suggest it himself. You could never get ahead of Rolf. Then he said: ‘I’ve decided to get married, Tracy. Why don’t you think it over?’ Well you know the cool impersonal way he talks, as though he’d just recognized the need for a wife in the abstract, a need which had nothing to do with me. When I realized he was proposing, I looked down at my lobster and waited for the wave of joy which is supposed to hit you at this time. When it didn’t come, I told myself I was a fool for not taking a rich handsome man when he was in an offering mood. Still I don’t remember thinking it over or saying, yes, I’ll marry you Rolf. Suddenly one day I was standing in front of a stranger with a Bible in his hand, and there was Rolf beside me. I ran.” She laughed. “The minister’s wife ran after me. All girls felt that way, she said. Ten years from now I would laugh and wonder how I could have been so foolish. So I thought, well, you’ve got to play the rules, Tracy, marry this man and be blushing and happy. So I went back in and the ritual came off. I didn’t even have to think; they told me every move to make. If it wasn’t set up that way there’d be a lot fewer marriages. What they need now is some ritual to carry you through the wedding night.”

She was silent, looking down at her tar-blackened fingers. “I don’t even like to think about it.”

“Don’t.”

“Why not?” She squinted at him. “How could I keep secrets from you? You’ve fed me, dressed me... I’ve been like a baby just being born. This is another bit of the old Tracy. So I’ll tell it and get rid of it.”

But she fell silent again. He put one finished oar aside and was starting another when she spoke again:

“He brought a bottle up to the room and fixed me drink after drink. He never touched it. I poured it down, my nerves stretched tight, getting sorrier every minute about what I’d done. And Rolf watched me with that faint smile, until finally I asked with a little laugh: ‘Well... don’t we go to bed or something?’ He laughed too and said: ‘You don’t want to.’ And I said, ‘But I do, certainly I do,’ even though he was right, as he usually is. Then we got into this unbearable discussion of whether I wanted to or not, and I began to wish I hadn’t drunk anything, because he was twisting my words, making me say things I didn’t want to say. And finally I shouted: ‘What am I supposed to do?’ And he said, ‘If you wanted to, you wouldn’t have to ask.’ I left him and went out to a bar, and drank more liquor until I was just sober enough to fall into a taxi and give my address. Then I sort of dozed off, half-aware that we had pulled off the road, and the taxidriver was getting in the back. Suddenly the door opened and there was Rolf. I just remember his white teeth shining and his grunts of violence, then the driver was slumped down between the seats, unconscious. And then Rolf... while the cars whizzed past on the highway and the driver gurgled through his broken mouth... Rolf consummated our marriage.” She looked down for a moment. “Before I came out of my daze, Rolf took me off to Nassau and treated me like a queen for two weeks. I’m... susceptible to that sort of thing. When we got back, we got into another fight about a trip he was making, and taking that woman along. I knew about her. And... it happened again. Only with a guy in a bar; Rolf came in when he was trying to buy me a drink and cut him to pieces without even mussing his hair. And then... home again. I began to realize he couldn’t make love without fighting first—”

“He is crazy, didn’t you know that?”

“I thought so. But he talked so logically. You try to tell him and he winds up proving you’re the one who’s crazy. Arguing with him is like firing bullets against a rock; he catches all your words and throws them back at you. And the bottle was always there, for me...”

“How’d he get you on the needle?”

“Oh, a bad hangover. He gave me some white powder to sniff. It was... wonderful. I’d been taking it for about a week and thought it was some fantastic new headache powder — don’t laugh, I was stupid, I know that. I started complaining about it burning my nose, and he brought home a needle. Then I knew it was heroin. I threw a scene, I told him no, no, no, and he just smiled and said, “Well, I’ll leave this here in case you need it. I didn’t want it. But then I learned for the first time that nobody wants it. You need it, like food. Somebody mentions it and your insides light up. Your mind says, take it away, and your body says gimme, gimme, gimme. So... I got hooked. Rolf was finally in complete control. He kept me supplied and ignored me. I didn’t care; all my troubles were soft fluffy things I could blow away like dandelion seed.” She looked up in sudden fright. “I’ve lost the last four years, Burt. Can I ever get them back?”

He shook his head. “What’s gone is gone, but there are more years to come.”

“And what if I see Rolf and he says, ‘Here’s some stuff, baby, in case you want to get straight?’”

“We’ll have to make sure you don’t meet him.” Burt held up the finished paddle. “Ready to go?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”