When Anna arrived, she found me asleep on the couch. When I opened my eyes, she was standing over me saying, “Ricky. Ricky. Wake up.”
“Ricky?” I asked. “Who’s Ricky?”
“Ricky Raccoon,” she said and started laughing.
“Cute,” I said. “Very cute. Did you bring the tapes?”
“You mean the wonderful world of Maddox’s Magic Kingdom?”
“The very same.”
I put the tapes in a stack on top of the television, which was an old, thirteen-inch number on an old- fashioned TV stand with a VCR on the uneven shelf below it.
The first tape was the one I had already seen. It showed Maddox and Johnson together again. We didn’t watch very much of it-I had seen it, and Anna wanted to see as little as possible of it. I couldn’t blame her. We watched roughly two minutes of it. They were the last two minutes though, and when I ejected the tape, I noticed that there was at least three quarters of the tape unused.
I put the tape back in and began to fast forward it. The snow on the screen looked no different in the fast forward mode than it did in the normal play mode, with the exception of the lines at the top and bottom of the screen that looked like wrinkles. After about five minutes or so, I ejected the tape, concluding that there was nothing else on it.
The second tape was of Maddox alone. When the first image flickered on the screen, it was of Maddox’s bare chest. It was roughly the color of cotton and covered with white hair, which added to that comparison. He was obviously leaning over the camera to it on. He then backed up, bent down, and looked right into the lens. His fat, out-of-focus face filled the screen. I could see the reflection of the red recording light flashing on his left cheek. He turned and headed toward the bed, and the light could then be seen flashing on his other left cheek.
Waiting on the bed for him were a remote control and a jar of Vaseline. He pointed the remote in the direction of the camera, and the TV began to play. The sounds of sex began to fill the speakers. They sounded as if they were coming from his TV, and because the video camera was so close to the TV the sound was distorted, but it was still unmistakable. It sounded like the tape we had just watched. Russ was watching himself with Johnson.
He removed the lid from the Vaseline jar, scooped out a heaping amount, and began to masturbate. He thrust hard up and down and moaned with pleasure. It was a sick, contrived moan, like he needed to hear himself make it. It made me feel sick.
I suddenly became very uncomfortable. I looked over at Anna. She seemed fine, but if we were watching a tape of her funeral, she would probably look the same way.
“Are you uncomfortable?” she asked.
“Slightly,” I said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. This just seems so personal, even more personal than watching two people have sex.”
“There’s more to it than that,” she said. “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Do you?” she asked.
“Do I what?”
“Do you, you know . . .” she said and nodded toward the TV.
“We are not having this conversation,” I said. I then added with a smile, “It really is the safest form of sex, you know.”
“Just one question,” she said.
“What?”
“Do you ever think about me when you do it?”
I choked and stuttered as I tried to speak, which was admission enough for her. She smiled.
I smiled.
“I think that’s enough of that one,” I said and stopped the tape. I pushed the fast forward button. This time it fast forwarded the tape without previewing what was on the screen. I pushed play again. There was nothing, just snow.
“You know, you are a very attractive guy; single, smart, sensitive, and to top it all off, you are very spiritual. I know you find me attractive, and we are alone in your trailer. Why don’t you seize the opportunity?”
“Besides the fact that you’re married and I look like Ricky Raccoon?”
“Yeah, besides that,” she said.
“I would never . . .”
“That’s precisely my point. You’re different from Maddox. In fact, you’re different from any man I know. I would never do this with any other man. I would never talk this way with any other man, but you, I can trust.”
“Don’t trust me too much. It might get you in trouble.”
“I’m not saying you don’t have a healthy libido. It’s just that you are to be trusted.”
“Don’t believe that,” I said.
“I do. I’m not saying you don’t have your struggles like everyone else, but I can tell things about people, especially men. I know you. I trust you.”
“Do you trust Merrill like that?”
“I trust Merrill, but for different reasons.”
We turned our attention back to the tapes. The third tape was Maddox and Johnson again. It was shot in black and white, which, because of the contrast between the two men, took on an artistic look.
The last tape, or what I thought was the last tape, was the kicker. It was Maddox in the starring role again, but this time his co-star was Anthony Thomas. Thomas was not as willing a participant as Johnson and seemed to be drugged.
When we finished watching the tapes, I felt like I needed a shower. The world looked like an ugly, dirty place, and I didn’t like seeing it that way.
“What do you think?” Anna asked when I had stopped the last tape.
“I think what you think, that everybody on these tapes is now dead. I thought there were five cases?”
“There were, but one of them had a smaller tape. Audio-tape, I guess.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s in my purse. Let me get it,” she said.
“Anna,” I said chastisingly, “it could be very important.”
“I know. I brought it with me. I just forgot to get it out of my purse. But it might just be music or at best just sounds. How is that going to help?”
“I need to hear it to know.”
She retrieved the tape and brought it over to me. It was not an audiotape, but an eight millimeter videotape.
“Anna, this is a videotape.”
“But, it’s so small.”
“It’s eight millimeter.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means it’s from a different camera than the one in Maddox’s bedroom. It’s not standard VHS, like these other tapes. It means that it was shot by somebody else.”
“Let’s watch it and see,” she said.
“You girls are so untechnical. We can’t watch it. I don’t have an eight-millimeter VCR.”
“Well, who does?”
“Susan still has ours.”
“Great, let’s drive up to Atlanta and see if she’ll loan it to us.”
Just then the phone rang, and I knew it was bad news again. I was almost to the point of not answering my phone anymore.
It was Dad.
Molly Thomas was dead.
