He finished the note, scrawled Herm across the bottom, and sat back, massaging his temples. He had a headache.
In high school and in college, Herm Pynchot had been a closet transvestite. He liked to dress up in women’s clothes because he thought they made him look…, well, very pretty. His junior year in college, as a member of Delta Tau Delta, he had been discovered by two of his fraternity brothers.
The price of their silence had been a ritual humiliation, not much different from the pledge hazing that Pynchot himself had participated in with high good humor.
At two o'clock in the morning, his discoverers had spread trash and garbage from one end of the fraternity kitchen to the other and had forced Pynchot, dressed only in ladies” panties, stockings and garter belt, and a bra stuffed with toilet paper, to clean it all up and then wash the floor, under constant threat of discovery: all it would have taken was another frat “brother” wandering down for an early-morning snack.
The incident had ended in mutual masturbation, which, Pynchot supposed, he should have been grateful for-it was probably the only thing that caused them to really keep their promise. But he had dropped out of the frat, terrified and disgusted with himself-most of all because he had found the entire incident somehow exciting. He had never “cross-dressed” since that time. He was not gay. He had a lovely wife and two fine children and that proved he was not gay. He hadn’t even thought of that humiliating, disgusting incident in years. And yet-
The image of the garbage disposal, that smooth black hole faced with rubber, remained. And his headache was worse.
The echo set off by Andy’s push had begun. It was lazy and slow-moving now; the image of the disposal, coupled with the idea of being very pretty, was still an intermittent thing.
But it would speed up. Begin to ricochet.
Until it became unbearable.
9
“No,” Charlie said. “It’s wrong.” And she turned around to march right out of the small room again. Her face was white and strained. There were dark, purplish dashes under her eyes.
“Hey, whoa, wait a minute,” Hockstetter said, putting out his hands. He laughed a little. “What’s wrong, Charlie?”
“Everything,” she said. “Everything’s wrong.”
Hockstetter looked at the room. In one corner, a Sony TV camera had been set up. Its cords led through the pressed-cork wall to a VCR in the observation room next door. On the table in the middle of the room was a steel tray loaded with woodchips. To the left of this was an electroencephalograph dripping wires. A young man in a white coat presided over this.
“That’s not much help,” Hockstetter said. He was still smiling paternally, but he was mad. You didn’t have to be a mind reader to know that; you had only to look in his eyes.
“You don’t listen,” she said shrilly. “None of you listen except-”
(except,john but you can’t say that)
“Tell us how to fix it,” Hockstetter said. She would not be placated. “If you listened, you’d know. That steel tray with the little pieces of wood, that’s all right, but that’s the only thing that is. The table’s wood, that wall stuff, that’s fluh-flammable… and so’s that guy’s clothes.” She pointed to the technician, who flinched a little.
“Charlie-”
“That camera is, too.”
“Charlie, that camera’s-”
“It’s plastic and if it gets hot enough it will explode and little pieces will go everywhere. And there’s no water! I told you, I have to push it at water once it gets started. My father and my mother told me so. I have to push it at water to put it out. Or… or…”
She burst into tears. She wanted John. She wanted her father. More than anything, oh, more than anything, she didn’t want to be here. She had not slept at all last night.
For his part, Hockstetter looked at her thoughtfully. The tears, the emotional upset… he thought those things made it as clear as anything that she was really prepared to go through with it.
“All right,” he said. “All right, Charlie. You tell us what to do and we’ll do it.”
“You’re right,” she said. “Or you don’t get nothing.”
Hockstetter thought: We’ll get plenty, you snotty little bitch.
As it turned out, he was absolutely right.
10
Late that afternoon they brought her into a different room. She had fallen asleep in front of the TV when they brought her back to her apartment-her body was still young enough to enforce its need on her worried, confused mind-and she’d slept for nearly six hours. As a result of that and a hamburger and fries for lunch, she felt much better, more in control of herself.
She looked carefully at the room for a long time. The tray of woodchips was on a metal table. The walls were gray industrial sheet steel, unadorned.
Hockstetter said, “The technician there is wearing an asbestos uniform and asbestos slippers.” He spoke down to her, still smiling his paternal smile. The EEG operator looked hot and uncomfortable. He was wearing a white cloth mask to avoid aspirating any asbestos fiber. Hockstetter pointed to a long, square pane of mirror glass set into the far wall. “That’s one-way glass. Our camera is behind it. And you see the tub.”
Charlie went over to it. It was an old-fashioned clawfoot tub and it looked decidedly out of place in these stark surroundings. It was full of water. She thought it would do.
“All right,” she said.
Hockstetter’s smile widened. “Fine.”
“Only you go in the other room there. I don’t want to have to look at you while I do it:” Charlie stared at Hockstetter inscrutably. “Something might happen.” Hockstetter’s paternal smile faltered a little.
11
“She was right, you know,” Rainbird said. “If you’d listened to her, you could have got it right the first time.”
Hockstetter looked at him and grunted.
“But you still don’t believe it, do you?”
Hockstetter, Rainbird, and Cap were standing in front of the one-way glass. Behind them the camera peered into the room and the Sony VCR hummed almost inaudibly. The glass was lightly polarized, making everything in the testing room look faintly blue, like scenery seen through the window of a Greyhound bus. The technician was hooking Charlie up to the EEG. A TV monitor in the observation room reproduced her brainwaves.
“Look at those alphas,” one of the technicians murmured. “She’s really jacked up.”
“Scared,” Rainbird said. “She’s really scared.”
“You believe it, don’t you?” Cap asked suddenly. “You didn’t at first, but now you do.”
“Yes,” Rainbird said. “I believe it.”
In the other room, the technician stepped away from Charlie. “Ready in here.”
Hockstetter flipped a toggle switch. “Go ahead, Charlie. When you’re ready.” Charlie glanced toward the one-way glass, and for an eerie moment she seemed to be looking right into Rainbird’s one eye. He looked back, smiling faintly.
12
Charlie McGee looked at the one-way glass and saw nothing save her own reflection… but the sense of eyes watching her was very strong. She wished John could be back there; that would have made her feel more at ease. But she had no feeling that he was.
She looked back at the tray of woodchips.
It wasn’t a push; it was a shove. She thought about doing it and was again disgusted and frightened to find herself wanting to do it. She thought about doing it the way a hot and hungry person might sit in front of a chocolate ice-cream soda and think about gobbling and slurping it down. That was okay, but first you wanted just a moment to… to savor it.