“So you like women,” she says.
“They’re better than tuna on toast.”
She glares at him, rage distorting the attempted superiority of the smile. “You hate women.”
“Oh, goody,” he says. “Psychology.”
“You don’t know how to deal with women, so you fuck them and then run off.”
“It doesn’t work the other way around.”
“You think we need you?”
“I don’t know what you need, honey,” Koo tells her, in utter sincerity, “but if it’s me, you’re outa luck.”
“I’ll show you how much we need you,” she says. “Watch.”
Koo doesn’t know what to expect—he’s actually braced to duck a thrown knife, something like that—but what happens is, she slides lower in the upholstered swivel chair so that she’s sitting on the base of her spine, then pulls up the skirt of the dashiki over onto her stomach and spreads her knees far apart, showing that she’s naked beneath, her cunt a beginner’s origami within its shawl of hair. Astonished, now believing she has some sort of seduction in mind—with a last-second refusal, no doubt—Koo watches her angry eyes, wondering how far he dare go in letting her see just how little she turns him on. But next she slips the middle finger of her right hand into her mouth, smiling around it like some evil child, then lowers the moistened finger between her legs, touching herself, finding the clitoris, manipulating it, her finger and hand moving in a small quick repeated circle, like a piece of machinery in a model railroad set.
So it’s craziness, simple craziness. Koo refuses to turn away, but also refuses to watch directly what she’s doing; he stares at her eyes instead. His feelings shift from alarm to annoyance and outrage—kidnapping is one thing, but this is too much—but as her eyes become less focused, as the artificial scorn fades from her face and color begins to flush her cheeks, he thinks, She’s going to make herself come, and what he feels is embarrassment—for them both.
It doesn’t take long. Her leg muscles are rigid beneath the tanned flesh, her face is increasingly swollen and red, her gaze slides away to stare at the ceiling, her mouth sags open, she breathes in tiny desperate gasps, her finger spins and spins, and from her throat come two quick guttural coughs. Mouth straining wide, she suddenly thrusts the finger into herself, jabbing and jabbing, the side of her thumb jolting against her clitoris at every plunge of the finger. Bending forward, her other hand reaching almost protectively between her legs, she prods and batters at herself in semi-privacy a few instants more, then sags over her drawn-up knees, her head lowering so he can no longer see her distorted face.
Koo also is released; he turns away, staring at the furniture, the wall, the closed bathroom door, anything at all. That was the least sane thing anybody, man or woman, ever did in his presence, and his mind is a jumble of response; pity, outrage, embarrassment, humiliation, fear. Everything, in fact, but lust: You’re a great argument for monasteries, baby, he thinks, but he doesn’t say it out loud.
Liz, in fact, is the first to speak, three or four minutes later, saying, “Well?”
He looks at her, and she’s back to her old self, angry, hostile and scornful. She’s also sitting up straight now, the sunglasses hiding her face and the dashiki down over her legs. Koo has nothing to say, but he watches her, waiting for whatever will happen next.
The drug or madness or whatever it was seems gone now. She’s merely a nasty woman; nastier than most. With more belligerence than challenge she says, “Do you think you could make me come like that? You couldn’t. Not even close.”
Koo answers without the slightest overtone of comic manner: “For the first time in my life,” he says, “I know why they call it self-abuse.”
“Funny man,” she says, as mirthlessly as he. Then she shakes her head, saying, “Do you really expect to live through this?”
“I don’t think about it,” he says, while a lump of dread forms in his stomach.
What a lot of different sneers she owns! Using a brand new one, she says, “Afraid?”
“Very. Aren’t you?”
“We having nothing to fear but fear itself,” she tells him. “And that big guy over there with the sword.”
Koo gapes at her; does she realize she’s quoting an ancient line of his?
Yes. With an ironic smile she explains, “They’re showing your old movies on television. Because of all this.”
“Oh. Is that the silver lining, or the cloud?” And, astonishingly, he senses the beginning of human contact between them.
But she won’t let it happen. Souring again, lips turning down, she says, “I’m not your fan. We’re not chums.”
“That’s the silver lining.”
“Shut up for a minute. You’re a boring person.”
“Send me home.”
She looks at him, stolidly. “You’ll never see home again. Now shut your face.”
He says nothing. She wants the last word? Fine, she’s got the last word.
And some last word it is. While the silence goes on and on in the small room—she’s brooding about something, over there behind her sunglasses—her last statement keeps circling in Koo’s head. “You’ll never see home again.” That’s the fear, tucked down into a capsule and neatly answered, the fear that there is no way out, that kidnapping isn’t really what’s happened to Koo Davis. Death is happening to him, that’s what, Death, in easy stages. He’s on the chute, the long slippery chute, sliding down into the black.
It must be five minutes they sit there in jagged silence when the door behind Koo opens again and Joyce enters, looking hopeful and almost happy—and then surprised, when she sees Liz: “So there you are!”
“Maybe,” Liz says, unmoving.
“Did you hear the announcement?”
Liz shrugs.
“On the radio,” Joyce says, as though a piling on of detail will encourage Liz to respond.
Koo says, “Something about me? Excuse me butting in, I take an interest in my well-being.”
“Yes, of course,” Joyce says. “It was from the man Wiskiel. He said the kidnappers should watch a special program tonight at seven-thirty on Channel 11, we’ll have an answer from Washington then.”
“A special? They can’t just say yes or no, they have to bring on the June Taylor Dancers?”
“They apologized for not making the six o’clock deadline,” Joyce goes on, oblivious, “but they said seven-thirty was the absolute earliest they could have the answer ready. Doesn’t that sound hopeful to you?”
She’s asking Koo, having obviously decided not to waste her high spirits on Liz, but Koo isn’t feeling particularly perky himself at the moment, and he says, “What’s so hopeful about it? It can still be yes or no.”
“Oh, it’s much more likely to be yes. If it was no, they could just say so, but if it’s yes they have to get everybody ready, get them out of their jails and all, and that takes time.”
“I hope you’re right,” Koo tells her. “In fact, I’m positive you’re right.”
“I know I am.” Joyce takes everything literally. Now she actually smiles fondly at Koo, and says, “It really hasn’t been that bad, has it?”
Can she be serious? Koo studies her earnest face, and decides she can. He says, “You know how, sometimes, there’s a thing that somebody doesn’t like, and he’ll say, ‘Well, it’s not as bad as a poke in the eye with a sharp stick’? You ever hear anybody use that remark?”