Red Dragon hl-1 Read online

  It was in here now, she could smell it.

  A voice. “Up, now. Easy. Down. Can we leave the sling under him, Dr. Warfield?”

  “Yeah, wrap that cushion in one of the green towels and put it under his head. I’ll send John for you when we’ve finished.”

  Footsteps leaving.

  She waited for Dolarhyde to tell her something. He didn’t.

  “It’s in here,” she said.

  “Ten men carried it in on a sling. It’s big. Ten feet. Dr. Warfield’s listening to its heart. Now he’s looking under one eyelid. Here he comes.”

  A body damped the noise in front of her.

  “Dr. Warfield, Reba MeClane,” Dolarhyde said.

  She held out her hand. A large, soft hand took it.

  “Thanks for letting me come,” she said. “It’s a treat.”

  “Glad you could come. Enlivens my day.We appreciate the film, by the way.”

  Dr. Warfield’s voice was middle-aged, deep, cultured, black.Virginia, she guessed.

  “We’re waiting to be sure his respiration and heartbeat are strong and steady before Dr. Hassler starts. Hassler’s over there adjusting his head mirror. Just between us, he only wears it to hold down his toupee. Come meet him. Mr. Dolarhyde?”

  “You go ahead.”

  She put out her hand to Dolarhyde. The pat was slow in coming, light when it came. His palm left sweat on her knuckles.

  Dr. Warfield placed her hand on his arm and they walked forward slowly.

  “He’s sound asleep. Do you have a general impression… ? I’ll describe as much as you like.” He stopped, uncertain how to put it.

  “I remember pictures in books when I was a child, and I saw a puma once in the zoo near home.”

  “This tiger is like a super puma,” he said. “Deeper chest, more massive head, and a heavier frame and musculature. He’s a four-year-old maleBengal. He’s about ten feet long, from his nose to the tip of his tail, and he weighs eight hundred and fifteen pounds. He’s lying on his right side under bright lights.”

  “I can feel the lights.”

  “He’s striking, orange and black stripes, the orange is so bright it seems almost to bleed into the air around him.” Suddenly Dr. Warfield feared that it was cruel to talk of colors. A glance at her face reassured him.

  “He’s six feet away, can you smell him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Dolarhyde may have told you, some dimwit poked at him through the barrier with one of our gardener’s spades. He snapped off the long fang on the upper left side on the blade. Okay, Dr. Hassler?”

  “He’s fine. We’ll give it another minute or two.”

  Warfield introduced the dentist to Reba.

  “My dear, you’re the first pleasant surprise I’ve ever had from Frank Warfield,” Hassler said. “You might like to examine this. It’s a gold tooth, fang actually.” He put it in her hand. “Heavy, isn’t it? I cleaned up the broken tooth and took an impression several days ago, and today I’ll cap it with this one. I could have done it in white of course, but I thought this would be more fun. Dr. Warfield will tell you I never pass up an opportunity to show off. He’s too inconsiderate to let me put an advertisement on the cage.”

  She felt the taper, curve, and point with her sensitive battered fingers. “What a nice piece of work!” She heard deep, slow breathing nearby.

  “It’ll give the kids a start when he yawns,” Hassler said. “And I don’t think it’ll tempt any thieves. Now for the fun. You’re not apprehensive, are you? Your muscular gentleman over there is watching us like a ferret. He’s not making you do this?”

  “No! No, I want to.”

  “We’re facing his back,” Dr. Warfield said. “He’s just sleeping away about two and a half feet from you, waist-high on a work table. Tell you what: I’ll put your left hand –you’re right-handed aren’t you?—I’ll put your left hand on the edge of the table and you can explore with your right. Take your time. I’ll be right here beside you.”

  “So will I,” Dr. Hassler said. They were enjoying this. Under the hot lights her hair smelled like fresh sawdust in the sun.

  Reba could feel the heat on the top of her head. It made her scalp tingle. She could smell her warm hair, Warfield’s soap, alcohol and disinfectant, and the cat. She felt a touch of faintness, quickly over.

  She gripped the edge of the table and reached out tentatively until her fingers touched tips of fur, warm from the lights, a cooler layer and then a deep steady warmth from below. She flattened her hand on the thick coat and moved it gently, feeling the fur slide across her palm, with and against the lay, felt the hide slide over the wide ribs as they rose and fell.

  She gripped the pelt and fur sprang between her fingers. In the very presence of the tiger her face grew pink and she lapsed into blindisms, inappropriate facial movements she had schooled herself against.

  Warfield and Hassler saw her forget herself and were glad. They saw her through a wavy window, a pane of new sensation she pressed her face against.

  As he watched from the shadows, the great muscles in Dolarhyde’s back quivered. A drop of sweat bounced down his ribs.

  “The other side’s all business,” Dr. Warfield said close to her ear. He led her around the table, her hand trailing down the tail. A sudden constriction in Dolarhyde’s chest as her fingers trailed over the furry testicles. She cupped them and moved on.

  Warfield lifted a great paw and put it in her hand. She felt the roughness of the pads and smelled faintly the cage floor. He pressed a toe to make the claw slide out. The heavy, supple muscles of the shoulders filled her hands.

  She felt the tiger’s ears, the width of its head and, carefully, the veterinarian guiding her, touched the roughness of its tongue. Hot breath stirred the hair on her forearms.

  Last, Dr. Warfield put the stethoscope in her ears. Her hands on the rhythmic chest, her face upturned, she was filled with the tiger heart’s bright thunder.

  * * *

  Reba McClane was quiet, flushed, elated as they drove away. She turned to Dolarhyde once and said slowly, “Thank you… very much. If you don’t mind, I would dearly love a martini.”

  * * *

  “Wait here a minute,” Dolarhyde said as he parked in his yard.

  She was glad they hadn’t gone back to her apartment. It was stale and safe. “Don’t tidy up. Take me in and tell me it’s neat.”

  “Wait here.”

  He carried in the sack from the liquor store and made a fast inspection tour. He stopped in the kitchen and stood for a moment with his hands over his face. He wasn’t sure what he was doing. He felt danger, but not from the woman. He couldn’t look up the stairs. He had to do something and he didn’t know how. He should take her back home.

  Before his Becoming, he would not have dared any of this.

  Now he realized he could do anything. Anything. Anything.

  He came outside, into the sunset, into the long blue shadow of the van. Reba McClane held on to his shoulders until her foot touched the ground.

  She felt the loom of the house. She sensed its height in the echo of the van door closing.

  “Four steps on the grass. Then there’s a ramp,” he said.

  She took his arm. A tremor through him. Clean perspiration in cotton.

  “You do have a ramp. What for?”

  “Old people were here.”

  “Not now, though.”

  “No.”

  “It feels cool and tall,” she said in the parlor. Museum air. And was that incense? A clock ticked far away. “It’s a big house, isn’t it? How many rooms?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “It’s old. The things in here are old.” She brushed against a fringed lampshade and touched it with her fingers.

  Shy Mr. Dolarhyde. She was perfectly aware that it had excited him to see her with the tiger; he had shuddered like a horse when she took his arm leaving the treatment room.

  An elegant gesture, his arranging that. Maybe eloqu
ent as well, she wasn’t sure.

  “Martini?”

  “Let me go with you and do it,” she said, taking off her shoes.

  She flicked vermouth from her finger into the glass. Two and a half ounces of gin on top, and two olives. She picked up points of reference quickly in the house—the ticking clock, the hum of a window air conditioner. There was a warm place on the floor near the kitchen door where the sunlight had fallen through the afternoon.

  He took her to his big chair. He sat on the couch.

  There was a charge in the air. Like fluorescence in the sea, it limned movement; she found a place for her drink on the stand beside her, he put on music.

  To Dolarhyde the room seemed changed. She was the first voluntary company he ever had in the house, and now the room was divided into her part and his.

  There was the music, Debussy as the light failed.

  He asked her aboutDenverand she told him a little, absently, as though she thought of something else. He described the house and the big hedged yard. There wasn’t much need to talk.

  In the silence while he changed records, she said, “That wonderful tiger, this house, you’re just full of surprises, D. I don’t think anybody knows you at all.”

  “Did you ask them?”

  “Who?”

  “Anybody.”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know that nobody knows me?” His concentration on the tongue-twister kept the tone of the question neutral.

  “Oh, some of the women from Gateway saw us getting into your van the other day. Boy, were they curious. All of a sudden I have company at the Coke machine.”

  “What do they want to know?”

  “They just wanted some juicy gossip. When they found out there isn’t any, they went away. They were just fishing.”

  “And what did they say?”

  She had meant to make the women’s avid curiosity into humor directed at herself. It was not working out that way.

  “They wonder about everything,” she said. “They find you very mysterious and interesting. Come on, it’s a compliment.”

  “Did they tell you how I look?”

  The question was spoken lightly, very well done, but Reba knew that nobody is ever kidding. She met it head-on.

  “I didn’t ask them. But, yes, they told me how they think you look. Want to hear it? Verbatim? Don’t ask if you don’t.” She was sure he would ask.

  No reply.

  Suddenly Reba felt that she was alone in the room, that the place where he had stood was emptier than empty, a black hole swallowing everything and emanating nothing. She knew he could not have left without her hearing him.

  “I think I’ll tell you,” she said. “You have a kind of hard clean neatness that they like. They said you have a remarkable body.” Clearly she couldn’t leave it at that. “They say you’re very sensitive about your face and that you shouldn’t be. Okay, here’s the dippy one with the Dentine, is it Eileen?”

  “Eileen.”

  Ah, a return signal. She felt like a radio astronomer.

  Reba was an excellent mimic. She could have reproduced Eileen’s speech with startling fidelity, but she was too wise to mimic anyone’s speech for Dolarhyde. She quoted Eileen as though she read from a transcript.

  “‘He’s not a bad-looking guy. Honest to God I’ve gone out with lots of guys didn’t look that good. I went out with a hockey player one time—played for the Blues?—had a little dip in his lip where his gum shrank back from his bridge? They all have that, hockey players. It’s kind of, you know, macho, I think. Mr. D.’s got the nicest skin, and what I wouldn’t give for his hair.’ Satisfied? Oh, and she asked me if you’re as strong as you look.”

  “And?”

  “I said I didn’t know.” She drained her glass and got up. “Where the hell are you anyway, D.?” She knew when he moved between her and a stereo speaker. “Aha. Here you are. Do you want to know what I think about it?”

  She found his mouth with her fingers and kissed it, lightly pressing his lips against his clenched teeth. She registered instantly that it was shyness and not distaste that held him rigid.

  He was astonished.

  “Now, would you show me where the bathroom is?”

  She took his arm and went with him down the hall.

  “I can find my own way back.”

  In the bathroom she patted her hair and ran her fingers along the top of the basin, hunting toothpaste or mouthwash. She tried to find the door of the medicine cabinet and found there was no door, only hinges and exposed shelves. She touched the objects on them carefully, leery of a razor, until she found a bottle. She took off the cap, smelled to verify mouthwash, and swished some around.

  When she returned to the parlor, she heard a familiar sound—the whir of a projector rewinding.

  “I have to do a little homework,” Dolarhyde said, handing her a fresh martini.

  “Sure,” she said. She didn’t know how to take it. “If I’m keeping you from working, I’ll go. Will a cab come up here?”

  “No. I want you to be here. I do. It’s just some film I need to check. It won’t take long.”

  He started to take her to the big chair. She knew where the couch was. She went to it instead.

  “Does it have a soundtrack?”

  “No.”

  “May I keep the music?”

  “Um-hmmm.”

  She felt his attention. He wanted her to stay, he was just frightened. He shouldn’t be. All right. She sat down.

  The martini was wonderfully cold and crisp.

  He sat on the other end of the couch, his weight clinking the ice in her glass. The projector was still rewinding.

  “I think I’ll stretch out for a few minutes if you don’t mind,” she said. “No, don’t move, I have plenty of room. Wake me up if I drop off, okay?”

  She lay on the couch, holding the glass on her stomach; the tips of her hair just touched his hand beside his thigh.

  He flicked the remote switch and the film began.

  Dolarhyde had wanted to watch hisLeedsfilm or his Jacobi film with this woman in the room. He wanted to look back and forth from the screen to Reba. He knew she would never survive that. The women saw her getting into his van. Don’t even think about that. The women saw her getting into his van.

  He would watch his film of the Shermans, the people he would visit next. He would see the promise of relief to come, and do it in Reba’s presence, looking at her all he liked.

  On the screen, The New House spelled in pennies on a shirt cardboard. A long shot of Mrs. Sherman and the children. Fun in the pool. Mrs. Sherman holds to the ladder and looks up at the camera, bosom swelling shining wet above her suit, palelegs scissoring.

  Dolarhyde was proud of his self-control. He would think of this film, not the other one. But in his mind he began to speak to Mrs. Sherman as he had spoken to Valerie Leeds inAtlanta.

  You see me now, yes

  That’s how you feel to see me, yes

  Fun with old clothes. Mrs. Sherruan has the wide hat on. She is before the mirror. She turns with an arch smile and strikes a pose for the camera, her hand at the back of her neck. There is a cameo at her throat.

  Reba McClane stirs on the couch. She sets her glass on the floor. Dolarhyde feels a weight and warmth. She has rested her head on his thigh. The nape of her neck is pale and the movie light plays on it.

  He sits very still, moves only his thumb to stop the film, back it up. On the screen, Mrs. Sherman poses before the mirror in the hat. She turns to the camera and smiles.

  You see me now, yes

  That’s how you feel to see me, yes

  Do you feel me now? yes

  Dolarhyde is trembling. His trousers are mashing him so hard. He feels heat. He feels warm breath through the cloth. Reba has made a discovery.

  Convulsively his thumb works the switch.

  You see me now, yes

  That’s how you feel to see me, yes

  Do you
feel this? yes

  Reba has unzipped his trousers.

  A stab of fear in him; he has never been erect before in the presence of a living woman. He is the Dragon, he doesn’t have to be afraid.

  Busy fingers spring him free.

  OH.

  Do you feel me now? yes

  Do you feel this yes

  You do I know it yes

  Your heart is loud yes

  He must keep his hands off Reba’s neck. Keep them off. The women saw them in the van. His hand is squeezing the arm of the couch. His fingers pop through the upholstery.

  Your heart is loud yes

  And fluttering now

  It’s fluttering now

  It’s trying to get out yes

  And now it’s quick and light and quicker and light and…

  Gone.

  Oh, gone.

  Reba rests her head on his thigh and turns her gleaming cheek to him. She runs her hand inside his shirt and rests it warm on his chest.

  “I hope I didn’t shock you,” she said.

  It was the sound of her living voice that shocked him, and he felt to see if her heart was going and it was. She held his hand there gently.

  “My goodness, you’re not through yet, are you?”

  A living woman. How bizarre. Filled with power, the Dragon’s or his own, he lifted her from the couch easily. She weighed nothing, so much easier to carry because she wasn’t limp. Not upstairs. Not upstairs. Hurrying now. Somewhere. Quick. Grandmother’s bed, the satin comforter sliding under them.

  “Oh, wait, I’ll get them off. Oh, now it’s torn. I don’t care. Come on. My God, man. That’s so sweeeet. Don’t please hold me down, let me come up to you and take it.”

  * * *

  With Reba, his only living woman, held with her in this one bubbleskin of time, he felt for the first time that it was all right: it was his life he was releasing, himself past all mortality that he was sending into her starry darkness, away from this pain planet, ringing harmonic distances away to peace and the promise of rest.