She wore makeup—lashes and lipstick, additions to the perfection of youth that seemed garish because they were unnecessary, a mockery of nature. She wore diamond earrings and triple strands of pearls, probably courtesy of her mother, who probably didn’t know she’d extended the courtesy.
The girl took off one earring. Licked it lingeringly. Placed it in an ashtray.
On the table beside the ashtray, neatly set out as though for a formal dinner, were a syringe, a small silver chafing dish, an eyedropper, a bowl of clear liquid, and several glassine envelopes of powder.
She took off the other earring and repeated the ritual.
There was no sound in the room but the buzzing of the VCR.
Cardozo watched Cordelia sitting there, alert in the flickering cone of light. He could smell her tingling state of puzzlement.
It was like meeting an old friend at an unexpected time and place, out of context—not at first recognizing them—taking a moment to remember that there’s a thing called time, that it changes us, that the stranger we’re looking at now could be the friend of years ago.
A spasm twitched the muscles of Cordelia’s face, and at that instant Cardozo saw her recognize the little girl.
It was herself, seven years ago.
From the whiteness of her face he understood that she had had no idea any of this had been videotaped.
She felt his attention, glanced over, looked quickly away from him.
A man stepped gracefully into the picture on the TV screen. He wore evening clothes and a half mask, a domino, over his eyes. He could have been the Lone Ranger in a tux.
He began fondling the girl. He kissed her cheeks, her eyes, her forehead, her throat, each ear, and then brushed his lips against hers. Once, lightly. A second time, lingeringly.
Now, working with the unhurried care of a maître d’ personally preparing crepes suzette for a favorite marchioness, the Lone Ranger readied the dope. He lit the flame in the chafing dish, melted the white powders down into a liquid, drew them up into the syringe.
Without prompting, the girl held out her arm.
He tied a length of rubber tubing around her forearm. A vein rose, delicately pulsing in the shaded crook.
He pressed the tip of the needle into the vein, slowly depressed the plunger, emptied the chamber into her bloodstream.
All the while she gazed at him with blank-faced adoration.
Over the next sixty seconds the dope took hold. A beat slipped into the girl’s movements as she shed her awkwardness and shyness.
Her head tipped back invitingly. The man kissed her throat, his tongue passing over the milk-white patch faintly hollowed by a shadow. At the same time he undid the zipper down the back of the gown.
The silken fabric fell to the girl’s waist. She wriggled, and the dress slid past her slender hips and lay in a shimmering puddle on the floor. She stepped out of it. She was wearing no undergarments.
There was only the faintest darkening of pubic hair at her crotch.
She reached up and unhooked the pearl necklace. Letting it slide slowly through her hands, she dropped it on the table.
The tip of her tongue appeared in the corner of her mouth.
She knelt.
First she took the man’s right hand. She kissed his fingers, one at a time. Then the left hand. Same m.o.
Then she opened his fly, drew out his circumcised penis, manipulated him to erection. She began blowing him. It was a slick, experienced blowjob, like the work of a hooker who’d been at it for half her lifetime. Only there was real enthusiasm to it. The kid got a kick out of dick.
The man stepped back, erection wagging. He undressed, folding his clothes and laying them neatly on the Queen Anne chair, putting his shirt studs and cufflinks into the ashtray on the table.
His attention came back to the girl.
She tilted her face toward him. He drew her head up. She went on tiptoes, closing her eyes.
He swiftly covered her neck, her shoulders, in kisses. His lips moved more slowly over her mouth, her cheeks, her closed eyes. His hands softly stroked her throat, then went to her breasts, to the perfect pubescent nipples, teasing them to erectness.
His face dove and smothered the breast, his mask a slash of black like a knife wound across her flesh.
He lowered her into the chair, spread her thighs, and began intercourse.
The camera never blinked.
Cardozo froze the image with a little snap. He waited, letting the silence widen.
Cordelia was in some sort of twilight, looking at the screen in a musing way. Her face had become an unmoving mask, all expression paralyzed: the only thing that showed was the emptiness in her eyes.
“Well?” he said, staring at her, not letting her look away.
She raised her eyebrows at his tone. “Well what?”
“Who’s the man?”
She shifted and her dress made a silky sound. She lit a cigarette and exhaled a plume of smoke. She sat gazing at him, not answering, an impudently poised nineteen-year-old. Her eyes seemed to say, I make three hundred thousand a year on my own and I’ll inherit thirty million and I’m a New York Vanderwalk. Who the hell are you?
He sensed it was a performance, far from the truth of what she was feeling.
“Are you threatening me?” she said.
“No.”
“Good.” She gathered up her cigarettes and silk purse. He could feel her fighting her fear with a show of bravado. “I’m going to go now,” she said.
“No you’re not. There’s something else you’re going to see.”
He changed videocassettes.
The images shimmered, the only source of light in the darkened room.
Her hand hovered like a hummingbird just above the arm of the chair, and then she sank back, holding on to the arm very hard.
The tapes were a voyage to a very strange part of a country called Hell.
Cordelia watched in utter stillness, a belt of moisture forming across her forehead. Without warning she jumped and grabbed the remote control from him and jammed off the picture.
“Who is he?” Cardozo shouted.
Her breath was coming in little shakes. The channel on the screen began changing erratically.
“Those are human beings!” Cardozo screamed. “Ripped and gone, like pages of last year’s calendar, crumpled and tossed into the incinerator! And you think the man you’re shielding is human? You think he’s even a man? Let me tell you something, he’s not human, he’s not a man, he’s prehistoric slime!”
He twisted the remote control from her hand and flicked the cassette back on. He felt totally out of control, and what was more dangerous, he was enjoying the feeling.
“Some species survive because they taste horrible, because they’re poisonous … because they have no predators.” Cardozo thrust his thumb at the man frozen on the TV screen, gray skin pulled taut over his cheekbones, eyes behind the mask halfway to sockets. “He’s one of them! Tell me that shithead’s name! It’s Monserat, isn’t it! Your downstairs neighbor!”
Cardozo stood there, rage building up to critical mass, and she still didn’t answer, and pumps began thudding in his skull.
“He gave you the insulin to inject your mother—didn’t he! He taught you how to use a syringe—didn’t he! And did you know he’s a sadist and a necrophile, did he invite you to any of his parties where torture was the entertainment or a dead body was the guest of honor?” He stopped the picture. “You’re lucky you’re fucking alive, you know that?”
She spoke in a half whisper. “You’re getting me very confused.”
His eyes hooked hers and the resolve seemed to drain out of her.
“I was only a kid,” she whispered.
“You’re not a kid now.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with—those other things.”
“Then stop shielding him.”
He stared at her until she looked down.
“Why are you doing this to me? It wasn’t my fault! I never had a chance!”
“You have a chance now.”