Gerald’s Game

fonny, senhorra, I theenk. It hadn’t been funny to her, though.

Will had been laughing hardest of all, so hard he was actually doubled over with one hand planted above each knee, his hair hanging in his face. This had been a year or so after the advent of the Beatles and the Stones and the Searchers and all the rest, and Will had had a lot of hair to hang. It had apparently blocked his view of Jessie, because he had no idea of how angry she was… and he was, under ordinary circumstances, very much aware of her turns of mood and temper. He’d gone on laughing until that froth of emotion so filled her that she understood she would have to do something with it or simply explode. So she had doubled up one small fist and had punched her well-loved brother in the mouth when he finally raised his head to look at her. The blow had knocked him over like a bowling pin and he had cried really hard.

Later she had tried to tell herself that he had cried more out of surprise than pain, but she had known, even at twelve, that that wasn’t so. She had hurt him, hurt him plenty. His lower lip had split in one place, his upper lip in two, and she had hurt him plenty. And why? Because he had done something stupid? But he’d only been nine himself-nine that day-and at that age all kids were stupid. No; it hadn’t been his stupidity. It had been her fear-fear that if she didn’t do something with that ugly green froth of anger and embarrassment, it would

(put out the sun)

cause her to explode. The truth, first encountered on that day, was this: there was a well inside her, the water in that well was poisoned, and when he goosed her, William had sent a bucket down there, one which had come up filled with scum and squirming gluck. She had hated him for that, and she supposed it was really her hate which had caused her to strike out. That deep stuff had scared her. Now, all these years later, she was discovering it still did… but it still infuriated her, as well.

You won’t put out the sun, she thought, without the slightest idea of what this meant. Be damned if you will.

“I don’t want to argue the fine points, Gerald. just get the keys to these fucking things and unlock me!”

And then he said something which so astounded her that at first she couldn’t grasp it: “What if I won’t?”

What registered first was the change of his tone. He usually spoke in a bluff, gruff, hearty sort of voice-I’m in charge here,and it’s a pretty lucky thing for all of us, isn’t it? that tone proclaimed-but this was a low, purring voice with which she was not familiar. The gleam had returned to his eyes-that hot little gleam which had turned her on like a bank of floodlights once upon a time. She couldn’t see it very well-his eyes were squinted down to puffy slits behind his gold-rimmed spectacles-but it was there. Yes indeed.

Then there was the strange case of Mr Happy. Mr Happy hadn’t wilted a bit. Seemed, in fact, to be standing taller than at any time she could remember… although that was probably just her imagination.

Do you think so, toots? I don’t.

She processed all this information before finally returning to the last thing he’d said-that amazing question. What if I won’t? This time she got past the tone to the sense of the words, and as she came to fully understand them, she felt her rage and fear crank up a notch. Somewhere inside, the bucket was going down its shaft again for another slimy dip-a scumload of water filled with microbes almost as poisonous as swamp copperheads.

The kitchen door banged against its jamb and the dog began to bark in the woods again, sounding closer than ever now. It was a splintery, desperate sound. Listening to something like that for too long would undoubtedly give you a migraine.

“Listen, Gerald,” she heard her strong new voice saying. She was aware that this voice could have picked a better time to break its silence-she was, after all, out here on the deserted north shore of Kashwakamak Lake, handcuffed to the bedposts, and wearing only a skimpy pair of nylon panties-but she still found herself admiring it. Almost against her will she found herself admiring it. “Are you listening yet? I know you don’t do much of that these days when it’s me doing the talking, but this time it’s really important that you hear me. So… are you finally listening?”

He was kneeling on the bed, looking at her as if she were some previously undiscovered species of bug. His cheeks, in which complex networks of tiny scarlet threads squirmed (she thought of them as Gerald’s liquor-brands), were flushed almost purple. A similar swath crossed his forehead. Its color was so dark, its shape so definite, that it looked like a birthmark. “Yes,” he said, and in his new purring voice the word came out yey-usss. “I’m listening, Jessie. I most certainly am.”

“Good. Then you’ll walk over to the bureau and get those keys. You’ll unlock this one'-she rattled her right wrist against the headboard-'and then you’ll unlock this one.” She rattled the left wrist in similar fashion. “If you do this right away, we can have a little normal, painless, mutual-orgasm sex before returning to our normal, painless lives in Portland.”

Pointless, she thought. You left that one out, Normal, painless,pointless lives in Portland. Perhaps that was so, or perhaps it was just a little overdramatization (being handcuffed to the bed brought that out in a person, she was discovering), but it was probably just as well she’d left that one out, in any case. It suggested that the new, no-bullshit voice wasn’t so indiscreet, after all. Then, as if to contradict this idea, she heard that voice-which was, after all, her voice-begin to rise in the unmistakable beats and pulses of rage.

“But if you continue screwing around and teasing me, I’ll go straight to my sister’s from here, find out who did her divorce, and call her. I’m not joking. I do not want to play thisgame!”

Now something really incredible was happening, something she never would have suspected in a million years: his grin was resurfacing. It was coming up like a sub which has finally reached friendly waters after a long and dangerous voyage. That wasn’t the really incredible thing, though. The really incredible thing was that the grin no longer made Gerald look harmlessly retarded. It now made him look like a dangerous lunatic.

His hand stole out again, caressed her left breast, then squeezed it painfully. He finished this unpleasant bit of business by pinching her nipple, a thing he had never done before.

“Ow, Gerald! That hurts!”

He gave a solemn, appreciative nod that went very strangely with his horrible grin. “That’s good, Jessie. The whole thing, I mean. You could be an actress. Or a call- girl. One of the really high-priced ones.” He hesitated, then added: “That’s supposed to be a compliment.”

“What in God’s name are you talking about?” Except she was pretty sure she knew. She was really afraid now. Something bad was loose in the bedroom; it was spinning around and around like a black top.

But she was also still angry-as angry as she had been on the day Will had goosed her.

Gerald actually laughed. “What am I talking about? For a minute there, you had me believing it. That’s what I’m talking about.” He dropped a hand onto her right thigh. When he spoke again, his voice was brisk and weirdly businesslike. “Now-do you want to spread them for me, or do I have to do it? Is that part of the game, too?”

“Let me up!”

“Yes… eventually.” His other hand shot out. This time it was her right breast he pinched, and this time the pinch was so hard it fired off nerves in little white sparkles all the way down her side to her hip. “For now, spread those lovely legs, me proud beauty!”

She took a closer look at him and saw a terrible thing: he knew. He knew she wasn’t kidding about not wanting to go on with it.

He knew, but he had chosen not to know he knew. Could a person do that?

You bet, the no-bullshit voice said. If you’re a hotshot shyster inthe biggest corporate law-firm north of Boston and south of Montreal, Iguess you can know whatever you want to know and not know whateveryou don’t want to. I think you’re in big trouble here, honey. The kind oftrouble that ends marriages. Better grit your teeth and squint your eyes,because I think one bitch of a vaccination shot is on the way.

That grin. That ugly, mean-spirited grin.

Pretending ignorance. And doing it so hard that later on he would be able to pass a lie-detector test on the subject. I thought it was part of the game, he would say, all hurt and wide-eyed. I really did. And if she persisted, driving at him with her anger, he would eventually fall back to the oldest defense of them all… and then slip into it, like a lizard into a crack in a rock: You likedit. You know you did. Why don’t you admit it?

Pretending into ignorance. Knowing but planning to go ahead anyway. He’d handcuffed her to the bedposts, had done it with her own cooperation, and now, oh shit, let’s not gild the lily, now he meant to rape her, actually rape her while the door banged and the dog barked and the chainsaw snarled and the loon yodeled out there on the lake. He really meant to do it. Yessir, boys, hyuck, hyuck, hyuck, you ain’t really had pussy until you’ve had pussy that’s jumping around underneath you like a hen on a hot griddle. And if she did go to Maddy’s when his exercise in humiliation was over, he would continue to insist that rape had been the furthest thing from his mind.

He placed his pink hands against her thighs and began spreading her legs. She did not resist much; for a moment, at least, she was too horrified and amazed by what was going on here to resist much.

And that’s exactly the right attitude, the more familiar voice inside her spoke up. Just lie there quietly and let him shoot his squirt. Afterall, what’s the big deal? He’s done it at least a thousand times beforeand you never once turned green. In case you forgot, it’s been quite a fewyears since you were a blushing virgin.

And what would happen if she didn’t listen and obey the counsel of that voice? What was the alternative?

As if in answer, a horrid picture rose in her mind. It was herself she saw, testifying in divorce court. She didn’t know if there still were such things as divorce courts in Maine, but that in no way dimmed the vividness of the vision. She saw herself dressed in her conservative pink Donna Karan suit, with her peach silk blouse beneath it. Her knees and ankles were primly together. Her small clutch bag, the white one, was in her lap. She saw herself telling a judge who looked like the late Harry Reasoner that yes, it was true she had accompanied Gerald to the summer house of her own free will, yes, she had allowed him to tether her to the bedposts with two sets of Kreig handcuffs, also of her own free will, and yes, as a matter of fact they had played such games before, although never at the place on the lake.

Yes, judge. Yes.

Yes, yes, yes.

As Gerald continued to spread her legs, Jessie heard herself telling the judge who looked like Harry Reasoner about how they had started with silk scarves, and how she had allowed the game to go on, progressing from scarves to ropes to handcuffs, even though she had quickly tired of the whole thing. Had become disgusted by it. So disgusted, in fact, that she had allowed Gerald to drive her the sixty-three miles from Portland to Kashwakamak Lake on a weekday in October; so revolted she had once again allowed him to chain her up like a dog; so bored with the whole thing that she had been wearing nothing but a pair of nylon panties so wispy you could have read The New York Times classified section through them. The judge would believe it all and sympathize with her most deeply. Of course he would. Who wouldn’t? She could see herself sitting there on the witness stand and saying, “So there I was, handcuffed to the bedpost and wearing nothing but some underwear from Victoria’s Secret and a smile, but I changed my mind at the last minute, and Gerald knew it, and that makes it rape.”

Yes sit, that would do her, all right. Bet your boots.

She came out of this appalling fantasy to find Gerald yanking at her panties. He was kneeling between her legs, his face so studious that you might have been tempted to believe it was the Bar Exam he was planning to take instead of his unwilling wife. There was a runner of white spittle coursing down his chin from the center of his plump lower lip.

Let him do it, Jessie. Let him shoot his squirt. It’s that stuff in hisballs that’s making him crazy, and you know it. It makes them all crazy. When he gets rid of it, you’ll be able to talk to him again. You’llbe able to deal with him. So don’t make a fuss-just lie there and waituntil