When She Was Bad

3

It’s hard to imagine two personalities less alike than the pair who shared Ulysses Maxwell’s mind. Where Lyssy was sunny and outgoing, as friendly and disingenuous as a puppy dog, Max was brooding and saturnine, with a sardonic wit and the compassion of a starving alley cat-if they hadn’t occupied the same body, he’d have strangled the cheerful little bastard years ago.

In the good old days, in fact, Lyssy was only permitted consciousness when great pain or long periods of boredom had to be endured. The rest of the time the original personality was confined to the dark place, while in the external world his alter identities, under Max’s direction, functioned together as a sort of strawberry blond processing plant. At one end was the charming Christopher, whose job it was to seduce them; waiting at the other end was Kinch the Knife.

But the other alters were gone now. Some had faded from existence while the body lay bleeding out on the floor of the barn at Scorned Ridge after being shot by Pender, while others had failed to return from their ECT sessions. Of that once-feared gang, only Max and Lyssy remained. In a way, thought Max, it was a lot like the end of the Arthurian legend, when the king and his page were all that were left of the mighty Round Table.

Only in his case, the king wasn’t going to die-not if he was successfully able to masquerade as the page. And thus far Max had made it through his first meal in two and half years-his first crap in two and a half years, for that matter-without any of the staff noticing anything amiss. The cockteaser of a nurse Lyssy had dubbed Miss Stockings, the huge, dumb-as-a-sack-of-onions psych tech named Wally, even the sharp-eyed Patty Benoit-like most people, they saw whom they expected to see.

Not Max, though. The instant he and the girl in the dining hall had locked eyes that morning, he’d realized that she had to have undergone an alter switch since Lyssy had shown her around the arboretum Monday-otherwise there’d have been at least a glimmer of recognition on her part. And if it hadn’t been for a challenging look in this new alter’s eyes, something steely and questing and determined behind her momentary confusion, he’d have busted her on it then and there, maybe picked up some brownie points with the staff.

Instead, he’d bailed her out by prompting her with his name. And in just a few minutes, he told himself as the two of them set off down the sun-dappled path between the pines, followed at a respectable distance by their escorts, he’d find out whether fate had brought him a potential ally, or merely a momentary distraction.

Until they achieved a little more separation from the trailing psych techs, though, Max confined himself to vintage Lyssy-babble. “It’s pretty here in the morning, hunh? Everything’s so fresh and new. Of course, it’s always pretty, even when it’s raining. That’s the neat thing about the arboretum, how it’s different at different times of the day. My favorite is around sunset, when the sky and everything lights up like the pictures in this Maxfield Parrish book my art therapy tutor gave me. The violet hour, she called it. Only it’s not always easy getting an escort that time of day, so…. “

They reached a point where the gravel path, bordered on the right by a seven-foot hedge, looped tightly around on itself like a paper clip. Max glanced over his shoulder-the escorts had dropped back out of sight. “Wanna play a trick on them?”

“Sure, I guess.”

He took the girl’s hand-how warm and alive it felt, like a small soft animal-and ducked lopsidedly through a gap in the hedge, good leg first, bad leg dragging. They rejoined the path on the other side. Still clutching one of her hands in one of his, Max held the forefinger of his free hand to his lips as the psych techs strolled by on the other side of the hedge, uniforms flashing white through the dark green leaves, then tugged the girl back through the hedge as the psych techs disappeared around a sharp bend.

“They think they’re behind us, but now we’re behind them,” he whispered, his glance sliding downward to the swell of her breasts under a brown T-shirt the same color as her hair.

“Hey! Anybody ever tell you it was rude to stare?”

“I wasn’t…I mean, I didn’t mean to…“stammered Max, as Lyssy; if he could have forced a blush, he would have.

“Just messing with you,” said the girl. “You like?”

“What’s…what’s not to like?”

“You want?” Taking his hand in both of hers, she pressed his scarred palm between her breasts, against her heart, which was thumping a mile a minute. Gone was the little girl whisper; the alter’s true voice was low-pitched, with a husky, thrilling catch in it.

Staring directly into her eyes now, he cupped his palm under her right breast, stroked the stiffening nipple with his thumb. “I wouldn’t throw you out of bed for eating potato chips,” he whispered, using his own voice, the one that sounded like acid eating through glass, for the first time that day.

“Okay then,” she said. “But there’s something you have to do for me first.” Her breath was moist and sweet, her eyes so dark there was no border between pupil and iris.

“What’s that?”

“Get me out of this fucking loony bin.”