Beyond Limits Ch. 02

That's what women were to me—frightening, destructive, needy, unreliable reservoirs of love, never to be satisfied, never to be met halfway, only to be conquered or conquered by, there was no other way. If I didn't have the power to hurt them, then they had the power to hurt me, and that power would be used. Doubtless it would be used. I didn't fall in love so much as declare armistice, define peace terms. That is, until Lexi.

Like her, I had found the one thing my mother and I could agree upon to be: an artist. It met with her social climbing approval and pretensions to culture, and it fit my need to be something special and to stand out. Also, playwriting gave me power to manipulate people and remake the world. I especially liked writing for women, showing the neurotic frenzy that sat within the placid exterior. I was writing my mother, of course. I make no secret of that. Inside I was still looking for the formula that could make her happy, still trying to figure this unhappy woman out as my own life plunged into despair. I had success with my work, enough to save me, enough to get me away from the poisonous milieu I'd just extricated myself from in Chicago and bring me here to Belpierre. A mild, semi-comical kind of success.

Lexi saved me. She wouldn't accept the façade I used with other women. She wanted to see the bad along with the good. She insisted, and she teased it out of me, and that's why I felt so weak with her, so disabled. I wasn't dealing from a position of strength with her. I didn't have my shields in place, my armor on and I'd told her my weaknesses, my shames, in the nights we lie in bed together in the glow of candles. I stood naked before her, just as I was afraid I was, unable to help anyone.

It some respects that felt good, amazingly liberating and freeing. In other ways, I never got used to it. I never recovered. After revealing myself so utterly, I needed to be her hero again, someone supernaturally grand, and she never gave me that chance.

* * * * *

When she left that night, I could have gone after her. I could have stopped her, but I didn't. After seeing her earlier response to Cormac, I needed her to acknowledge me as the most important man in her life, and I'd get that acknowledgement or I'd let her go. I was still swollen and full of testosterone from our sex and feeling strong, and so I watched her slip on her coat and wrap her scarf around her and march out the door.

She was angry. Let her be angry. I was angry too. She was mine.

I sat down at the dining room table and took my notebook from the shelf. I opened it and dated a page and started writing: "It's knowing someone so deeply, and them knowing you too and knowing who you are, holding an image of you in their minds constantly and aching for your presence. It's their sense of expectation keyed to the things you say and do, a kind of pattern recognition that lacks the form that makes the pattern and misses it so much. It's a constant sense of loss when they're not there, at times excruciatingly painful. It's the radiant joy of their approval and pleasure. It's that maybe most of all—seeing the joy on their faces when they just so much as look at you..."

At that moment the image of Lexi walking through the blowing, sleety snow came to me and I felt an indescribable anguish. Why did she walk out? She was trying to punish me, but why? Why wouldn't she give me this simple thing, the gift of her submission? I wasn't talking about tying her up and whipping her. I wasn't asking her to be my sub. Just to defer her will to mine, and yet that was apparently so distasteful that now she was out in this howling Lake Superior sleet storm just because I'd pulled my strength on her and made her do something against her will.

And she'd enjoyed it too! She couldn't tell me she didn't enjoy it. In fact, that's why she hadn't stayed, I was certain of it now. She hadn't stayed because she'd enjoyed it and she knew I could tell.

My cell phone rang. It was her. I recognized the ring tone.

"Lexi?"

"I'm going back to Ashcroft, Russell," I could hear the wind blowing across the phone. "I'm not staying tonight."

"Lexi, what the hell's wrong?"

"I don't want to talk about it. I just can't stay."

"So you're pissed at me, huh?"

"It's not a question of that."

"Then what?"

"I mean, it doesn't matter what I feel. I forgive you. I can't help the way I am though. I just can't do that kind of thing. It's beyond my control the way I am. It's not right with you. It's like my mother all over again."

I groaned. "Oh come on, baby!"

"I'm serious, Russell!"

"Well let me drive you home then. Where are you? I'll pick you up."

"No. I'd rather walk. It's not as bad as it looks and I want to think. I'll call you when I get to Ashcroft."

"Jesus, Lexi!"

I could sense a faint smile on her end. She liked making me suffer. "Bye."

She rang off.

"Fuck!"

Her mother. The horror of seeing herself weak and used, I suppose. My giving her orders and using her mouth made her feel like her mother and provoked some violent reaction she couldn't deal with. That's what I was supposed to believe.

But she'd enjoyed it. If she hadn't been fighting so hard to refuse me she would have enjoyed it even more. I could feel it in her, this desire to be overpowered and have the choice taken from her, the need to be made to submit.

She was afraid of it, she wanted it so much.

The thought hit me as I watched the snow blowing past the streetlight outside.

Wishful thinking, I decided.

Suddenly, for no reason, I thought of April and the number she'd given me. It would take Lexi twenty minutes to get to Ashcroft Hall. I decided to call April to see what she wanted.

The number was off-campus and she got it on the third ring. "April? Russell Backuss. You wanted me to call you? What's this about?"

"Oh yes, yes. Are you alone? Can you talk?"

"Yeah, I'm alone, and sure, I can talk. Why?"

"Is Lexi there?"

I scowled. "No. She's not. Why?"

"It's not important," she said. It sounded as though she cupped her hand over the speaker. I could hear "Wheel of Fortune" in the background. "I really hate to do this, Russell, but I'm in some trouble, and I don't know who to turn to. I just need some advice, that's all. Nothing more, but I really don't want to say too much on the phone."

I frowned. "What kind of trouble?"

"Nothing yet. Potential trouble if I'm not careful. It concerns something you'd probably know a lot about, which is why I wanted to talk to you. I know it's miserable out but I was hoping—"

"April, what are you talking about? Are you in danger? You being stalked or something?"

Two years ago a girl had been stalked by another student and it had been a big deal. The kid had been expelled but had hitchhiked back to campus and been found lurking around the girl's first-floor dorm room with a hunting knife.

"I don't know. Maybe. Can you possibly come over, Russell? I'd appreciate it so, so much! I really would! It's kind of worse than I thought and I'm going crazy. I was just trying to get your number from information, in fact..."

The idea of going over to April's in this weather was suddenly appealing. The idea of helping that damsel in distress suddenly seemed like a very good one. It would give Lexi something to think about besides her mother, put a new perspective on things. Might change my perspective too.

"What's your address?" I asked.

* * * * *

I resisted the temptation to drive along the route that would take me past Lexi on her way home to Ashcroft. The snow had picked up was blowing right in my face as I drove, and the roads were awful, actually, but I kept on. The traffic light over the intersection of Durant and River was coated with rime and you could only see the glow through the frost as it danced on its wires in the wind..

April lived in a modern, nondescript, 50's style apartment building with big picture windows some ways from campus. The hall smelled like years of cooking, the mail boxes were dented as if someone had been prying at them, the carpet threadbare and worn.

"So what's this all about?" I asked her after she'd let me in. She'd just made fresh coffee and so I took a cup so as not to disappoint her. She was dressed awfully nicely for a frightened girl at home in such rotten weather, wearing snug jeans and a blue and black plaid sweater that looked terribly dramatic with her golden blonde hair.

"I really want to thank you for coming over, Russell. I know how miserable it is out there and you don't know how I appreciate this. I've been worried sick. Sit down, please. I'll show you why I asked you to come over."

I sat down on the cheap sofa and she went into the back room and came out with a bedraggled looking paper shopping bag. She reached inside and put a parcel on the table and reached inside and took out something the size of half a brick. From the way it was wrapped with black plastic showing through the paper I knew it was dope, either heroin or cocaine, maybe 500 grams, and I immediately felt sick and excited at the same time, as if she'd dropped her pants and exposed herself to me.

"Holy shit, April! What is that?"

"Heroin, and I don't know what the hell to do with it."

"Put it away! Jesus! Close the blinds!"

She quickly put it back in the bag, which I saw now contained at least three more of these bricks, at least a kilo. She put the bag on the floor behind the coffee table. She went to the window.

"Where did you get this?"

"I have a cousin in the marines in Afghanistan. She got it and has some way of shipping it out somehow, getting it to the States. She asked me if I wanted some, and I thought sure, a little. Just a taste. I didn't expect this much."

She turned and closed the blinds. They didn't really block much, but no one could see in. The building was built in an 'L', and all that was outside her window was snow.

"She mailed it to you?"

"Some sort of Marine courier service brings it here. She has a partner over here. I don't know. Someone called me one day and told me to go down to my student mailbox and there was half of it, and then two days later the other half."

"So someone knows you have it?"

"Yes," she said nervously.

"They want money for it?"

"No. I guess not. My cousin, she's given to extravagant gestures like this. But I don't want this stuff around. At the same time, I don't want to just flush it down the toilet. It's worth thousands of dollars, isn't it? How can I do that?"

"Well what do you want me to do, April?"

"You wrote that book, A Rose of Water.... You knew all about it. I thought you might know some way to get rid of it." She looked at me sheepishly as if she suddenly realized how foolish her plan was. You don't ask authors to do anything practical

The fact was, though, I did know how to get rid of it. I knew some people who would be very interested in free-lancing Afghani heroin if it was as good as its reputation, and these were reputable people who would pay cash and who could be trusted, but I didn't know if I wanted to get involved.

"Do you know if it's any good?" I asked her.

"I haven't tried any. I really don't know anything about heroin except what I've read in your book. I've done coke..."

"It's not something to fuck around with."

"You did."

"I was careful."

"I can be careful."

I looked at her. As I said, she looks very young, very gamin and wholesome in spite of or maybe because of her nose stud and the little jewel below her bottom lip. They looked so very perverse on that innocent face. The jewel in her nose was red, the one below her lips was orange.

"Go see if there's anyone at their windows."

She got up and I watched her ass as she walked to the window. She peered outside into the driving snow.

"I can't see anything. It's snowing too hard."

"Where's your roommates?"

"St Louis," she said. "Visiting her parents. Just one roommate. Louise Matuscak."

"She know?"

"No."

I picked up the shopping bag and looked at the bricks till I found one that had a tear in its plastic, I wet my finger and touched it to the white powder and tasted it, looking for the sweetness of milk sugar or the grit of talcum, but all I got was the alkaloidal bitterness of heroin.

"Christ," I said. "It tastes good."

The taste, the taste. It reminded me of so many things, of exquisite pleasure, of nights smeared with blurry ecstasy and feelings of indescribable well-being, of an animal warmth that radiated from within like a light from a temple that was always there but blocked by the scrim of everyday consciousness.

"She said it was good and she doesn't lie. I just wish she hadn't sent me so much. I don't know what she was thinking."

We sat there uneasily for a moment. April's leg shook with nervous energy.

"Really, Russell, I'm sorry for calling you over here, but I'm just so scared. I didn't know who else I could go to. I'm all alone. With this much dope, I'm afraid someone might break in, maybe try to kill me even."

"I don't know, April. If whoever gave it to you wanted it, they wouldn't have given it to you in the first place. Is that what you're afraid of? That they'll come back and get it?"

"I guess so. Something like that."

It was strange. The whole thing was strange. I tasted the brick again and again the taste took me back, possessed me like a terrible nostalgia. April was looking at me nervously, dreamily, in that way she had, her leg vibrating. There's something slightly boyish about her, and I'd heard somewhere that she was gay, but I didn't think so. She really was in over her head and scared.

"You said you had some coke?" I asked.

"Yeah. Want some?"

It was a touchy request. I was her teacher, but I'd already blurred so many lines.

"It's the least I can do after dragging you over here," she offered with forced cheeriness.

She jumped up and went into the bedroom. Meanwhile my cell rang. It was Lexi.

"I'm home," she said sullenly. She had to have been home for a while now. "I said I'd call you. Bye."

"Wait a minute! Is that all? Goodbye?"

"Russell, I'm tired and I want to go to bed."

"Well we have some talking to do, Lexi."

"I know we do, but not now. Good night." And she hung up.

I was furious.

April came into the room with a mirror with a foil packet and a razor blade on it. From the rhythm of her walk I could tell she'd been hanging back just out of view, listening to the call.

"Was that Lexi?" she asked innocently.

"Yeah," I said. "Was."

She pretended not to notice. "You want me to cut some lines?"

"No, let me. I want to cut in some of this H. Make some speedball. It'll give us an idea of how good it is without getting us too wasted."

"Oh wow," she said. "I like the way you think. I've got some nice chardonnay. You want some?"

April turned down the lights and went into the kitchen, then came back in with two glasses of wine. She put on Miles Davis's Kind of Blue, which she'd already had out. I almost had to laugh. It was as if she'd been doing research on 50's junkie culture. I slit one of the bricks and scooped a little of the heroin out and mixed it with some of her coke and cut four lines. April had a little glass tube. She handed it to me.

I snorted up two lines and right away felt the coke. It had been a long time. I handed the tube to April and watched her take her hits and then leaned back as I felt the heroin come on— much slower, but like seeing a familiar old friend again. It was very good. Much better than I'd thought. I just kept sinking and sinking, and the lights were twinkling and twinkling. I forgot my anger with Lexi. I forgot April's concern with the dope. The heroin drove us down till we hit a deep and spongy bottom then we bounced back up like bubbles in a translucent pond and rose to the phosphorescent surface where the music and the air and the light in the apartment surrounded us in an endorphic sea of tranquility. The darkness brimmed with luxurious secrets and April became beautiful beyond imagining, the very air pregnant with meaning; the snowfall outside, wondrous beyond description. The coke loosened our tongues and we began to talk in a quiet, deep and marvelously profound way, totally relaxed, every word dripping with meaning and sincerity.

"I always envied Lexi for what she has with you," April said, lighting a cigarette. .

"It's not as perfect as it seems."

"Why do you say that?"

"Lexi doesn't give me everything I want"

"In terms of what?"

"In terms of her heart and soul and body. I'm a selfish man, April. I want everything."

Yeah. As strange as it sounds straight, that's exactly how we spoke, totally without inhibition, like brother and sister or something closer, she sitting on the floor in front of her chair and me lying on the sofa on my back, smoking and watching the streaking shadows caused by the snowflakes blowing by the window. Miles Davis kept on playing over and over again, sounding ever more deep and poignant. The heroin was coursing through our bodies dissolving all barriers, making honest communication absolutely imperative. It would be like death to lie.

"How could she refuse you?" She rolled the end of her cigarette against the ashtray. "You're a terribly passionate man. I can tell that from your writing. How could she refuse you anything?"

"Passionate, selfish, greedy... What's the difference? I just know Lexi doesn't give me everything she could. We had a fight tonight. I think I'm going to lose her."

She thought about this as she tried to blow a smoke ring and gave it up

She said: "You know, I've always been in love with you, Russell."

She said it like a sly secret, like she was confessing to having eaten the last cookie on Christmas Eve four years ago, like it was no more important than that.

I craned my head back and looked at her. "Have you? Why? You hardly know me."

"I know you through your work, through the things you write. I knew you before you came to Belpierre. I love you for your passion, your selfishness, your greed."

I craned my head to look at her. "Why are you telling me this?"

She shrugged. "Why not? It's true. It's the way I feel, so why lie about it?"

She crushed out her cigarette. "You know, I had mixed motives for calling you over here tonight. I'm honestly scared about the dope, but also, I saw what happened with Cormac and Lexi today and I thought you might want to talk about it and, you know, maybe be comforted."

She was quiet for a moment as the snow continued to blow past the window like a Japanese woodcut, then she pushed the coffee table away from the sofa with her foot. She got down on the carpet on her hands and knees and crawled over to me.

"I know what you want from her that she won't give you, Russell. I know because I know how you are. I can give it to you. I want to give it to you if you'll let me."

She posed right opposite me, her lips shining in the lamplight, her hair hanging in a fringe around her wise, little-girl face. The sharp blue of here eyes was glazed with lust and intoxication but the lashes looked long and heavy with seduction. She wasn't very chesty but she had a gorgeous ass that was cocked up and posed against the light from the kitchen, and long, sinuous legs. I realized now she'd worn these clothes specifically to entice me and they'd done a beautiful job. She looked wild and catlike and terribly beautiful.

"How do you know what I want?" I asked with a slow thrill uncoiling in my stomach. I was honestly curious. The way she was looking at me was making my cock rise.

"Because whatever you want is what I want, Russell. Anything." She let the last word hang in the air, her chin set, her mouth an inverted V of stubborn pride.

Suddenly I had a little drum in my chest, beating time to my groin and my head. I knew she was serious. As sure as it was snowing outside, she was serious. The drugs guaranteed it could be no other way.