Was Patty? My mind was a mass of confusion of mixed emotions and self-doubt. I tried to think what happened the day that I put Kristen under my power, and suddenly remembered that I gave tickets to Wendy, Camille, and Patty—and told them not to worry about how I was doing these things, but rather to think that I was pretty wonderful. “Oh, yeah,” I said glumly, the realization hitting me.
Patty nodded. “That’s probably why I couldn’t think that you were doing something terrible, Jim. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was feeling very guilty for allowing what happened to occur. When I heard her on the phone the next day, I realized that something was seriously wrong. I needed to do whatever I could to try to fix things.”
“You keep saying things like that. You’re sensitive to the tickets; you knew how Kristen was feeling. What are you telling me?”
Patty lowered her eyes. “I’ve never been able to tell anybody before. Let me see if I can do so now. If not, Jim, it’s not because I don’t want to.”
My ears pricked up. Patty was teetering on the verge of answering a question that was on my mind for so long. I was genuinely curious. “Tell anybody what?”
Patty took a deep breath and said, “Camille and I have been best friends since, like, forever. Then something happened to her. Everybody knows her hair suddenly got lighter. She denied dyeing it, and eventually, everybody didn’t think much about it. She also used to be an average student, but she started acing classes. She also started to become more popular at school, sleeping with her sister’s friends, both boys and, it was whispered, girls. That was all very unlike her. I’d ask her what was happening, and she’d just shrug.”
“Camille was under the influence of the tickets,” I said.
“Right, but she didn’t have them. Her sister did.”
Patty knew about Debbie? I simply nodded to confirm this to Patty.
“I confronted Debbie and demanded to know what was happening. She simply laughed at me and handed me a ticket. This happened so fast that I couldn’t ignore the ticket and run away. I was forced to take the ticket from her.”
“What did Debbie command you?”
“I heard her words, Jim, and I can only tell you the last part.” Patty closed her eyes and added, “I remember her saying, ‘you will have no memory of what I’ve just said.’ That was it. I left her house, and didn’t worry about Camille’s odd behavior much anymore. I started to take it for granted as if she was always that way—a slut, in her own words.”
“OK…” I said, drawing the syllables out, hoping that Patty would continue.
“I have a hunch about one of Debbie’s commands. I mean, when I saw the ticket that first time, everything within me told me to get away… run away… avoid it as if it were the plague! However, the next time I saw a ticket… in the store when you now had them… instead of getting that bad feeling, I eagerly took it, thinking that it would be fun. I knew what you were saying and what you were doing, and I just went along with it. I now think that Debbie must have made me feel that way.”
That didn’t follow what I understood of the tickets. When the tickets passed from Debbie to whomever was next… Camille? Anyway, commands made didn’t continue, did they? But wait, what about the commands that Tim gave to Sherry… they transferred to me, didn’t they?
“You’re thinking of something,” Patty said, looking at me.
“Do you remember what Sherry told us, about how Tim gave her a command and now she’s forced to follow it with me? What if Debbie’s command to you is now directed at me?”
Patty thought this over. “That could make sense. If Debbie told me to trust her, and that command is directed toward you…” Patty’s voice trailed off.
I let the red haired girl think about this.
“Those things are… evil!”
“Yeah,” I said with a sigh. “Tell me about it.”
“You must destroy them!”
I shook my head. “Nope. That won’t solve anything. Debbie got rid of them and now I have them. I got rid of Tim’s tickets, and now Sherry feels she needs to give up her virginity to me.”
The two of us were silent for a long time.
“The record’s skipping.”
Patty and I turned to see Lynette in the doorway. She was wearing only a robe.
How much did Lynette hear of our conversation? I looked wildly at Patty, and she shook her head a bit, but I didn’t understand what she was trying to tell me. Was she indicating that Lynette didn’t hear anything, or that she didn’t know what Lynette heard?
“The record!” Lynette repeated. She moved over to the phonograph and lifted the tone arm, which was riding in the lead-out groove on side one of the Zeppelin album. “Kristen will kill you if you break that needle!”
Without thinking, I pointed to a small box to the right of the turntable. “There’s another Shure cartridge in that box over there. I think the old one was about due for a change. The new one’s a type III that I’ve been wanting to try out. Stereo Review gave it high marks.”
“You want me to change Kristen’s cartridge? Are you fucking nuts?” Lynette looked at me with an incredulous expression that made it look as if I just asked her to do heart surgery on herself.
“I’ll do it later,” I said, shrugging. “I have the screwdrivers in the studio, since that was the last place I replaced a cartridge.”
Lynette picked up the record in between her palms, and carefully placed it into the paper record insert before putting it into the album cover. She placed the album in the wooden case, and switched the receiver so that it was playing a soft song from one of the FM stations.
“I’m going to the main house. I think Kris is with Cammy, and I want to tell Cammy all about the new routine that Sherry and I came up with for the squad.”
“In your robe?” I asked.
Lynette opened her robe, revealing one of Kristen’s designer bathing suits underneath.
I whistled appreciatively. “Give her my love,” I said, softly.
Lynette smiled at me. “I’ll give everybody your love, Oogie. I’m sorry for interrupting, Patty. I’ll tell Kris and Cammy that you’re here.”
“Thanks, Lynette,” Patty said.
I thanked Lynette as well, and she left the billiard room and headed down the hall.
After I was sure that Lynette was out of the building, I asked Patty, “Do you think she heard?”
“No, she didn’t.”
“Yeah, right,” I said sarcastically. “You can, like, just feel that. Right?”
“No, Jim,” Patty said, her face looking a bit hurt. “I can’t talk about the tickets unless you are around, and never when anybody else that doesn’t know about them is around. She came after we shut up.”
Patty said that with such certainty that I didn’t bother to argue.
“What were we talking about?” I asked.
“You said you can’t destroy the tickets.”
“No,” I corrected. “I said I won’t destroy them. I don’t know enough about them, but everything inside me tells me that if I just assume that destroying them will get them out of my life, then I am seriously mistaken.”
Patty narrowed her eyes. “Why do you say that?”
I told Patty what I decided. “Look, if I get rid of the tickets, then most likely, they will end up with somebody else. Now, I’ve abused the tickets myself, and I’ve seen what other people have done with the tickets. I may not be perfect…”
Patty nodded. “But you already know how easy it is to go too far with them. Right? You’ve already made the mistakes.”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “Something like that.”