The Best American Mystery Stories 2002

Roland, sitting on an old worn corduroy-covered sofa, waiting anxiously for the sleeping potion to take effect, murmured yes, he guessed Babs must be right.

She continued with her lines, reciting, forgetting, and needing to be prompted, remembering, reciting, moving her arms, making her face “expressive”; the more she rehearsed Laura, the more Laura eluded her, like a mocking phantom. Ten minutes passed, with excruciating slowness; I felt beads of sweat break out on my heated face and trickle down my thin sides; fifteen minutes passed, and by degrees Babs appeared to be getting drowsy, murmuring that she didn’t know what was wrong with her, she was feeling so tired, couldn’t keep her eyes open. She knocked the cola bottle over; what remained of the liquid spilled out onto the already stained carpet. Abruptly then she slumped down at the far end of the sofa, and within a matter of seconds was asleep.

I sat without moving, not even looking directly at her, at first, for some time. The magic had worked! It wasn’t believable, yet it had happened; Roland could have had no real power over a girl like Babs Hendrick, yet — this had happened. Yes I was elated. Ecstatic! Yes I was terrified. For what I had done, the crudest of tricks, I could not undo.

Not scrawny brainy Roland, that shy boy, but another person, calculating and almost calm, moved at last from his position on the sofa and stood trembling with excitement over the sleeping girl. Beautiful when awake, and animated, Babs was yet more beautiful in sleep; waxy-skinned and vulnerable, she seemed much younger than seventeen. Her face was pale and slack and her lips parted, like a sleeping baby’s, her arms were limp, her legs sprawled like the legs of a rag doll. She wore a pale yellow angora sweater with short puffy sleeves, and a charcoal gray pleated skirt. (This predated the era of universal blue jeans.) I whispered, “Babs? Babs?” and she gave no sign of hearing. She was breathing in deep, erratic, shuddering breaths and her eyelids were quivering. My fear was that she’d wake suddenly and see me standing over her and know what I’d done, and begin to scream, and what would happen to Roland, the doctor’s son, then? I dared to touch her arm, and shook her gently. “Babs? What’s wrong?” So far, what was happening wasn’t suspicious exactly. (Was it?) Kids often fell asleep in school, cradling their heads on their arms in the library, or in study hall; in boring classes nearly everyone nodded off, at times. Self-dramatizing young actors, complaining of exhaustion and overwork, stole naps in the greenroom, and tales were told of couples “sleeping” on the infamous corduroy couch when they were assured of a few minutes’ quick-snatched privacy. Babs, like her popular friends, stayed up late, talking and laughing over the telephone, as I’d gathered from overhearing their conversations, and she’d been anxious about the play, and sleep-deprived, so it wasn’t so unlikely that, in the midst of going over her lines with me, she might become exhausted suddenly and fall asleep. None of this was suspicious. Not yet!

But Roland’s behavior was beginning to be suspicious, wasn’t it? For stealthily he went to the door, which had no lock, and dragged a heavy leather armchair in front of it to prevent the door being opened suddenly. (There were likely to be a few teachers and students remaining in the building, even past six o’clock.) He switched off all the lights in the windowless room except one, a flickering fluorescent tube on the verge of burning out. He spoke gently, cautiously to the deeply breathing, sleeping girl, “Babs? Babs? It’s just me. Rollie.” For long mesmerized seconds he stood above her, staring. The elusive girl of his fever dreams! His high school sweetheart, whom his father tried to forbid him. Unclean. Compulsive. Self-abuse. Daringly Roland touched the girl again, caressing her shoulder, like a film lover, and her arm in the fuzzy angora sweater, and her limp, chill fingers. He was breathing quickly now, and he’d become sticky with sweat. If he leaned closer, if he kissed her? (But how did you kiss a girl like Babs Hendrick?) Just her forehead? Would she wake suddenly, would she begin to scream? “It’s just me. Rollie. I love you.” Suddenly he wondered, with a stab of jealousy, whether Hal McCreagh had ever seen Babs like this. So deeply asleep! So beautiful! He wondered what Hal did to Babs, when they were alone together in Hal’s car. Kissing? (Tongue kissing?) Touching, fondling? Petting? It excited Roland, and infuriated him, to imagine.

But Hal wasn’t here now. Hal knew nothing of this interlude, this “rehearsal.” There was no longer any Hal. There was only Roland, the doctor’s brainy, beloved son.

He was trembling badly now. Shaking. A powerful throbbing ache in his groin, which he tried to ignore, and a rapid beating of his heart. This could not be happening, could it? How could this be happening? Bringing his lips against the girl’s strangely cool, clammy forehead. It was the first true kiss of his life. Babs’s silky blond head had fallen back against the soiled armrest of the sofa, and her mouth had dropped open. Her eyelids were oddly bluish and fluttering as if desperately she wanted to open them but could not. “Babs? Don’t be afraid.” He kissed her cheek, he stooped to kiss her mouth, which hung open, slack, helpless, a string of saliva trailing down her chin. The taste of her mouth excited him terribly. With his tongue he licked her saliva. Like tasting blood. Roland, the vampire. That first kiss! His brain seemed to go black. He was seized by a powerful need to grab hold of the girl, hard. To show her who was master. But he restrained himself, for Roland was not such a person; Roland was a good boy and would never harm anyone. (Would he?) Babs Hendrick was, he knew, a good Christian girl, as he was a good Christian boy. What harm could come to them really? If he meant no harm, harm would not ensue. He would be protected. The girl would be protected. He’d begun to notice her strange, labored breathing, audible as a grown man’s breathing in stress, and yet he did not somehow absorb the possible meaning of such a symptom, though he was (but right now, was not) Roland, the doctor’s son. He was trembling with excitement. His hand, which seemed to him slightly distorted as if seen through a magnifying lens, reached out to smooth the silky blond hair and cradle it in his fingers. He stroked the nape of the girl’s neck, slowly he caressed her shoulder, her left breast, delicately touching the breast with his fingertips, that fuzzy pale yellow angora wool that was so beautiful; he cupped his hand (but was this his hand?) beneath the small, shapely breast, gently and then with more assurance he caressed, he squeezed lightly. “Babs! I l-love you.” The girl moaned in her heavy, stuporous sleep, a sexual moan it seemed to Roland, who was himself whimpering with excitement. But she didn’t wake. His power over her, Roland’s revenge, was that she could not wake; she was at his mercy, and he would be merciful. She was utterly helpless and vulnerable, and he would not take advantage of her as one of the crude Indian River High boys would have done in his place. (Would he?) In even the most lurid of his dreams he hadn’t defiled his sweetheart (at least that he’d allowed himself to remember). In a cracked, hoarse, half-pleading voice, whispering, “Babs? Don’t be afraid. I would never hurt you, I love you.” And the blackness rose, swooning in him a second time, annihilating his brain, and he would not afterward recall all that happened in that dim-lit windowless room, on the shabby corduroy sofa, or was caused to happen, perceived as through a distorting lens that both magnified and reduced vision.