When She Was Bad

2

Lilah emerges from her blackout to find herself crouched naked in a shower stall, rubbing her right thumb against the pads of the first two fingers. Awakening abruptly in unfamiliar surroundings is nothing new for Lilah-her life has always been a disconnected series of sudden appearances.

So she rises-and jumps back against the wall of the stall with a startled laugh as the water comes on. Electric eye-cool. Fragrant soap, water not as hot as she likes it, spray not as needle-fine, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to control it. She lathers and rinses luxuriously, sensuously, with special attention to the erogenous zones, idly masturbating for the sheer sensation of it, no intention of going for an orgasm.

The water shuts off when she steps out of the oddly doorless stall. Wherever she is, she tells herself-if it’s a hotel, it’s one of those modern ones-at least the towels are clean, thick, and plentiful. She wraps a bath towel around her torso, makes a turban of a second, and is drying herself with a third when she hears a knock. “Be right out!”

But as Lilah tightens the towel under her armpits and steps out of the bathroom-another oddity, there’s no bathroom door-the room door slides open to admit a powerful-looking woman in a white polo shirt, white duck trousers, and a mullet haircut. Lilah, who is nearsighted but too vain to wear eyeglasses, squints at the plastic tag on the woman’s breast. She can just make out the name-Patricia Benoit-but the letters below it are a blur.

Probably a maid, thinks Lilah. And if it’s true what they say-the butcher they are, the sweeter the tongue-she probably gives some heavenly head. “Is that Ben-oyt or Ben-wa?” She lets a giggle escape.

“Ben-oyt-but you can call me Patty. What’s so funny?”

“I was thinking about ben-wa balls. You ever heard of them? They’re these like, sex toys, you stick ’em inside your-”

“Oh, right, right.” Patty colors. “I’ve heard of them, I just didn’t know that’s what they were called.”

“Ever use ’em?” asks Lilah, slyly, as she brushes past the much larger woman; her damp feet leave tidy little Robinson Crusoe footprints on the carpet as she crosses the room to examine the clothes folded and stacked in the waist-high blond dresser, which has recessed shelves instead of drawers.

Patty lets the question drop. She’s worked with DID patients before, and some of them-not Lyssy, of course-she’s suspected of feigning the disorder either knowingly or unknowingly. It was fun for them to impersonate different characters, they received lots of attention, and it was also a nifty way to deflect responsibility for their actions. Or at least, it was nifty until Dr. Corder got hold of them.

But this Lily DeVries is for real-after watching the alter switch in the shower on the security monitor at the nurses’ station, Patty has no doubt of that. Not even Jody Foster, whom Patty idolizes, is that good an actress. Lily hasn’t just changed her affect or adopted a set of mannerisms, like the fakers do-the very way she inhabits her body is strikingly different.

This alter, the towel-clad, gutter-mouthed tramp swearing quietly over the selection of clothes available to her, seems entirely comfortable with her physicality. She carries her shoulders low; her walk is liquid and balanced, her hips loose and swaying, and when she unwraps her long brown-black hair and hunkers down on her heels to examine the clothes on the bottom shelf, she reminds Patty of one of Gauguin’s tantalizingly unself-conscious Polynesian girls.

Having been fully briefed by Dr. Corder this morning, and having reviewed the so-called “map” of alters drawn up by Lily’s former psychiatrist, Patty now has a reasonably good idea who this one is. Name: Lilah; alter class: promiscuous; age: actual; self-image: actual; affect: sexually provocative.

“Are you here to make up the room?” asks Lilah, still hunkered down on her heels.

“No, I was here to escort you down to the dining hall,” says Patty, with an emphasis on the past tense.

Escort, Lilah thinks. This must be one hell of a ritzy place. “Want to help me work up an appetite?” She rises, letting the towel fall. Stark naked, she holds her hands out at her side, as if to say, here I am, and I’m all yours if you want me.

“That is so not happening, young lady.” Patty looks down at the carpet; she’d have turned down the offer even if she hadn’t known about the hidden security cameras. Taking sexual advantage of one of her charges, even one as extraordinarily desirable and apparently willing as Lilah, is simply unthinkable for Patty.

Nevertheless, she has the feeling that this latest acquisition, the searing image of the naked girl offering herself, has just acceded to the permanent collection in her private museum of erotic images; she also has the feeling that this was precisely Lilah’s intention. “I’ll be right back,” she tells her charge.

Alone again, Lilah selects a sweatshirt and a pair of panties and jeans at random-while the place may be ritzy, judging from the selection of clothes it’s also informal-but just as she finishes changing into them, the door slides open again and Patty announces a change in plans.

“Time to begin your therapy,” she says, tossing Lilah a green hospital gown as the door slides closed behind her. “Take those off, put this on.”

Therapy? thinks Lilah. Then she reads the fine print-PSYCH. TECH.-on Patty’s name tag and suddenly fear floods her system. A desperate plan begins to take shape. “Could I have a little privacy to get dressed, please?”

“Now it’s privacy you want?” Patty turns away and punches her security code into the keypad. As the door begins to slide open, Lilah dashes across the room, jukes right, then left, and ducks under Patty’s flailing arm. She races down a long green corridor toward a door with a breaker bar and a sign reading Emergency Exit Only, unable to shake the eerie sensation that she’s done this before-and not so long ago, either.

Heads turn as Lilah passes the nurses’ station; the faces are white and blank as night-blooming flowers. She hits the breaker bar, crashes through the door, and bolts barefoot down a flight of stairs.

But the door on the next landing is locked. And here’s Patty lumbering down the stairs after her, red-faced and puffing, her arms mottled and meaty-looking as two legs of lamb, spread wide to block Lilah’s retreat. “Come on now, oh come on,” she’s saying, in a voice less of anger than of schoolmarmish annoyance.

Joining Patty on the stairs is another massive, white-clad figure who fills his polo shirt like the Mighty Hulk. If this is a dream, I’d really like to wake up now, thinks Lilah. It sure feels like a dream, the way she’s rooted to the landing, frozen in place as the two close in on her, looking nightmarishly similar in their white uniforms, like Tweedledee and Tweedledum in a madhouse production of Alice in Wonderland.

They flank her, each taking an arm, and walk her back up the stairs and down the corridor; this time the nurses all turn away busily as they pass the desk. Patty accompanies Lilah into the peach-colored room while her male counterpart-his name tag reads simply, Wally-waits outside. “Let’s try this again,” says Patty, picking up the discarded hospital gown and shoving it firmly into Lilah’s hands.