Peter imagined the jaws of the tender trap meeting around his crushed shin.
“I’m so glad it was white,” Madeleine said, gripping harder. “It’s more special.”
Karen looked as if she were about to scream at her Hawaiian Extra-Spicy, but instead just said, “Miss Waters, please take your hands off my boyfriend.”
Madeleine smiled enchantingly, and tutted at Karen. “You’re forgetting yourself, Karen dearest. It’s Mrs. Mysliwiec, now.”
Then, Karen screamed.
A week later, the nightmares were fading.
At first, he couldn’t close his eyes without being drawn back to the knock-down, drag-out cat-fight in the pizza place. Karen had screamed and screamed, Madeleine had cried and cried. There’d been no way of explaining it to the proprietor, or the police.
Eventually, they had all escaped. Somewhere, one of the women had attacked him, leaving now-faded rake-marks on his cheek.
Alone in his double bed in the Highbury flat, he quickly got conscious. His heart hammering, he realized he’d been dreaming again, the bridal-gowned Madeleine assaulting him like a harpy, Freddy Krueger fingers sprouting from her lace gloves.
As he shook himself out of the fug of sleep, he heard noises. Someone was in his kitchen, humming. The radio was on to a station he’d normally avoid. Bobby Darin was talking about things.
“Karen?”
He thought she’d not been there last night. She still kept her place in Muswell Hill. Mainly to annoy the Dreaded Stanley, but also because—hey—she was an independent woman. This was the 90s.
Tying a robe over his pajama bottoms, he staggered out of the bedroom. Since his marriage, things had been getting fuzzy. He thought he’d been drinking with Tony last night.
In his tiny kitchen, a woman was cooking breakfast. Bacon sizzled in the pan next to a pair of sunny-side up eggs.
“Darling,” she chirruped, “you shouldn’t have gotten up. I was going to bring you a tray in bed. You work so hard, you deserve the rest. You need to be looked after.”
The smell brought him fully awake.
She wore a blue housedress, with a checkered pinafore. Her hair was worn in a Doris Day helmet, and most of her face was smile.
“Mad? Madeleine?”
She angled her head to one side, eyes shining. Her cheeks had rosy patches like a ragdoll’s, and her pinafore was so starched it crackled.
“Petey’s Maddie,” she said. “OJ, hon?”
She poured a measure of freshly-squeezed orange juice into a tumbler, and handed it to him.
“We’ll soon cure you of those unhealthy bachelor habits. Do you realize how deprived your fridge is? And you have no oregano. Men never have any oregano.”
Peter’s head began to hurt again.
“Look at this kitchen surface,” she said, drawing a finger through a layer of dusty grime. “Never mind, it’ll be clean in a jiffy. Clean right through to the squeak, a shine your mother could be proud of.”
Giving in, Peter sipped his juice. It shocked his tongue, and settled his stomach. A cooked breakfast—something he’d not had since school—seemed weirdly appropriate.
Karen came over for dinner, and Maddie cooked for the three of them. She was the perfect hostess, preparing everything from the hors d’oeuvres through the meat course to the cheeseboard and sorbets, finally delivering coffee the like of which Peter had never suspected could be produced from his old caffetiere.
Karen was determined to be calm this time. She hadn’t been able to get in touch with Jeannie, and was taking a methodical, careful, tactful approach to the insanity spilling into their lives. She had started to use phrases like “multiple personality” and “schizoid compulsive.”
“Peter’s so grateful for all you’ve done for him,” Maddie told Karen. “Especially since the trouble with the nationality people.”
Peter had told Karen everything. Maddie didn’t, at least, expect him to share a bed with her. In fact, one of the disturbing things was that she only seemed to need the occasional cat-nap in front of an afternoon soap opera. Otherwise, she was constantly busy, cooking, tidying, arranging, fussing, vacuuming, rearranging, humming, shopping, fluttering…
He thought the woman—his wife, he corrected himself—had a problem with her short-term memory. Like a goldfish, she had an identity—several, in fact—but no moment-to-moment consciousness. She lived in an eternal present, unchanging and perfect.
Karen said it was like being smothered by Nanette Newman.
The evening wore on, and Peter’s knots tightened. How would Maddie react when Karen and he went to bed? The kitchen she’d made her home was fully equipped with weapons. Sometime last year, Karen had bought him a set of Sabatier steak knives, with wicked, serrated edges.
In the event, Maddie ignored them, humming and clattering as she washed up, refusing all offers of assistance, and telling them to enjoy themselves while she worked. “My poor little brain isn’t up to business,” she told Karen, “so you talk figures and deadlines and schedules with Petey while my elves and I clean up.” She had permanent smile lines—like scars—etched in under her rosy patches.
Stunned, Karen allowed him to take her to bed and pull most of her clothes off. Maddie had the radio on again. Connie Francis’ “Lipstick On Your Collar,” Julie London’s “Cry Me a River,” the Ink Spots’ “Don’t Get Around Much Any More,” Hank Williams’ “Why Don’t You Love Me Like You Used to Do?,” Del Shannon’s “Hats Off to Larry.” The noise of plates and cups and crockery being cleaned accompanied the songs, and seemed to fill the bedroom.
Neither of them were up to it and they lay together, hugging. Maddie hummed along to “Stand By Your Man.” Karen shook her head, gave up, and got out of bed. She dressed in the dark, and left the flat.
Peter lay in bed, listening to washing-up.
A week later, while Peter was at his easel finishing up a rough for a Pan thriller, a blast of noise came from his CD.
He turned around, shaking. The broken doll he had been sketching fell off its stand.
WASP’s “Fuck Like a Beast.”
Madeleine was naked in the mid-afternoon, but for insectile dark glasses and a pair of high-heeled black patent leather pumps. Her face was more oval, lines better defined. Long, tangled hair—darker than last week—hung around her shoulders and breasts. Her body was off a 70s Mickey Spillane cover, and not what he had expected under the pinnies and dresses she’d been wearing.
The Dominoes’ “Sixty Minute Man.”
She came for him, fingers like hooks ripping his shirt and trousers apart. They didn’t make it to the bedroom for hours, and then they didn’t make it to sleep for nearly a day.
A week later, Peter woke up, still drained from the night before, to find Madeleine had locked herself in the bathroom and was sobbing.
He had to break in, wrenching his shoulder, and found her curled up between the sink and toilet bowl, clutching her stomach, a scattering of open and emptied pill bottles around her, a sweated-in T-shirt ridden up around her belly, stringy hair wrapped around her neck like a noose.
He slapped her semiconscious and walked her around the flat until the drowsiness wore off. Then he made her drink salt water until she spewed into a bucket. Undissolved pills clustered like frogspawn in her mainly clear vomitus.
She wouldn’t say anything coherent, but rambled dark and self-hating drivel at him. From somewhere, she found an Einsturzende Neubauten cassette and played “Der Tod ist ein Dandy” over and over, banging her head against the floor in time to the pounding rhythms until she was covered in blood from superficial cuts.