did this bother him? He knew it would happen. It always happened. Her expression was composed and happy. The way she kept it.
Ephram shifted down as the traffic thickened, people up ahead rubbernecking a minor accident.
She hates me, he thought.
Then he thought: No, she doesn't. Because I have her soul in my hands, and I make it perform for me like a small, trained animal; I squeeze it and reshape it like gelatin. She feels what she is commanded to feel. And it certainly wouldn't matter, if she did hate me.
The traffic slowed to a crawl; his attention was freed up. So he reached into her. Without even looking at her, no acknowledgement from him about what he was doing but a faint, smug smile on his lips; he reached into her brain with the 'plasmic fingers and squeezed her pleasure centre. She squirmed on her seat and moaned. He prompted her and, accordingly, she said: 'I love you, Ephram.'
He looked at her. No, she didn't love him.
He could make her mean it, though. He reached more deeply into her…
'I love you, Ephram,' she said, turning to look at him, her eyes glazing with devotion, with sentiment. But her voice betraying a hint of desperation.
A black cloud swirled inside him. 'No. you don't.'
He reached over and grabbed her hand and began to squeeze her fingers together, hard. She whimpered with pain. 'Now you love me?' he demanded. 'When I do this to you?'
'Yes!'
He squeezed harder. Could feel the bones in her hand on the verge of cracking. She cried out.
He hissed, ' Now you love me?'
'Yes. Yes.' No pleasure in her now, just pain and fear and the steel corset of his command: Tell me you love me.
He let go of her hand, but reached under her skirt, grabbed her pubis, through the filmy panties and began to twist the soft handful of skin and flesh. 'Now you love me?'
'Yes. Yes. Yes!'
She experienced no masochistic enjoyment of this whatsoever. He could see that clearly.
He twisted her crotch again. Harder. 'You hate me.'
'No, I love you.'
'Hate me.'
'Love you!'
He could let go of her mind and see what she said. She'd probably still say she loved him, out of fear.
'You disgust me,' he said, letting go of her.
Then he gave her a charge of pleasure, to keep her quiet. She made a low, humming sound and nestled deeper into the leather of the bucket seats.
Maybe, he thought, if I spent enough time at it, I could make her really sincerely love me, giving her no option but that. Enough pressure on the mind would bend it into any shape at all. And that would be sincere love, wouldn't it? What sort of ridiculous contortions did people go though – and put others through – to make people love them, in ordinary relationships? This was more honest.
It would be real love. As much as there was such a thing as real love…
He wished it were night, so he could see the stars, look for guidance in the secret constellations. The sunset was taking its languorous, smog-blurred time. The lights of the city were glimmering brighter in the twilight. The drug dealers would be out on the street… And some of Denver's people, too, would be there…
Probably stupid to come to Denver's town. Could I be steering myself to self destruction, somehow? he wondered. Why did it matter so much what the girl felt today?
What was wrong with him?
He gave himself a small jolt of pleasure – something he was very cautious about doing, normally. Didn't want to bum himself out.
But he felt better, almost immediately. The evening took on a different cast. It went from tragedy to comedy.
When they drove up beside the traffic accident, they had a good long look It was worse than he'd imagined. There was blood and broken glass.
If he'd been here at the time, he could have made the victims of the traffic accident enjoy the crash, the mangling. Have to try that sometime. That'd be funny. A little auto-motive psychic tampering. That'd be a gas, ha ha.
The bitch hates me.
The San Fernando Valley
'I'm sorry, sir, we were told invitations only. You got to have a printed invite.' He was a stocky, gum-chewing kid of about nineteen in a Burns Security uniform, with walkman earphones pulled down around his neck. He'd stopped them walking up the drive to Arthwright's place. It was a long, circular drive leading to a modern, jutting house with as many round windows as square ones. In the balmy evening, soft red and blue 'Malibu' lighting painted blush and eyeshadow on the house's facade. The drive was ornamented with a cactus garden and miniature palms. Jags and Rolls-Royces and BMWs and Corvettes and the occasional Volvo lined the drive, nose to tail. 'You can stay, sir,' the security guard was saying to Jeff, 'but -' He looked apologetically at Prentice and shrugged. 'Sorry.''
Jeff said, 'This is bullshit, this guy is my partner and he's a good friend of Arthwright's -' Both exaggerations. '- and Arthwright's gonna be pissed if he doesn't get in. He didn't know Tom was in town -'
'Forget it, Jeff,' Prentice said. This was typical of Jeff – and of Prentice. Jeff was a pusher, a don't-take-no hustler; Prentice was a more cautious angler.
The guard was squaring his shoulders and shaking his head, when Jeff spotted Arthwright stepping out the gate to say goodbye to someone. Arthwright's voice came to them distantly. 'I just wished you coulda stayed longer, Sol – it's so great to see ya -'
'Hey Zack! Zack!' Jeff fairly shrieked it.
Prentice winced. 'Christ, Jeff, forget it!'
Arthwright was about to go back through the gate – he looked up, spotted Jeff, and strolled over, one hand in a pocket of his casual dinner jacket – worn with jeans – the other scratching the back of his head. 'What's the problem – um, you're Jeff, right?'
'Yeah, man. Jeff Teitelbaum. You know my buddy Tom Prentice here – we're having some trouble getting past the Gestapo -'
The guard heaved a theatrical sigh. 'You told me no invite no entrance, Mr. Arthwright.'
'That's okay, Billy, I got this one covered. Keep at it.' Arthwright waved for Jeff and Prentice to follow him.
'Look, I don't mean to crash the place, Zack,' Prentice began. 'Jeff seemed to think since he had an invite it was for two -'
'Sure, sure, no prob,' Arthwright said, leading them in through the wooden backyard gate. There was a TV camera mounted on a pole above the gate post. Prentice could feel its cold lens watching the back of his neck as they went in.
'Make yourself to home,' Arthwright said, in a mimicry of a generic country accent, 'and I'll get you a drink.' He stepped up to a small, portable bar that had been rolled in on casters, spoke to the bartenders, good-looking Mexican fellows in white tuxedos.
Prentice looked around. Jeff had said it was a Pool Party, but no one was in the pool. No one was even in a swimming suit. They milled about the ornamental-tile verge of the pool with cocktails and little plates of mesquite grill, or sprawled in aluminium loungers, in the soft rippling of reflected chlorine-tinted pool-lights. Soft Mexican music played from hidden speakers.
'Our special Sangria,' Arthwright said, returning with a frosted glass in each hand. He passed them to Jeff and Prentice, winked, and said, 'Party hearty.' And vanished into the house.
'He wasn't pleased,' Prentice said, feeling humiliated by the whole episode. 'We probably pissed him off. And I'm trying to get a deal with him.'
'He's probably embarrassed you didn't get an invitation,' Jeff said. 'Don't worry about it.'
