VACANCY & ARIEL

He thinks this could be it, the sum of the Palaniappans’ vengeance—they’ve finished with their games, and in the morning they’ll reunite him and Marley. They appear to know everything about him, where he is at any given moment…all that. Perhaps they know he’s basically decent and that he didn’t intend to injure Isabel. That thought planes into others about Isabel, and those in turn plane into memories of the movie they made together. He can’t recall its name, but it’s right on the tip of his tongue. Devil Something. Something Sword. She flirted brazenly with him on the set, but there was an untutored quality to her brazenness, as if she didn’t have much experience with men and knew no other way to achieve her ends. He recalls seeing her off the set, in a Manila hotel, room service on white linen, high windows that opened onto a balcony, how she danced so erotically he thought his cock would explode, but once he was inside her, that part of him calmed down and he could go all night. It’s a wonder he didn’t notice she loved him, because all these years later he sees it with absolute clarity. She would lie beside him, stroking his chest, gazing into his eyes, waiting for him to reciprocate. He thought she was trying to impress him with her devotion, to trap a rich American for her husband, and, while that might have been true, he failed to recognize the deeper truth that underscored her actions. It’s the same with Marley, and he understands that, at least in the beginning, he treated her with equal deference, dealing with her as one might a sexy puppy that was eager to bounce and play. It was convenient to feel that way, because it absolved him of responsibility for her feelings.

Other memories obtain from that initial one, and he becomes lost, living in a dream of Isabel, and when a point of blue light begins to expand in midair, right in front of him, he thinks it’s part of the movie he’s replaying, part of the dream, and watches from a dreamlike distance as it expands further, unfolds and grows plump in all the right places, evolving into the spitting image of Isabel as she was in The Black Devil’s Sword or whatever, blue skin, black nipples, lithe and curvy, her secret hair barbered into exotic shapes, and she’s dancing for him, only this dance is different from the one she used to do, more aggressive, almost angry, though he knows Isabel didn’t have an angry bone in her body…it’s as though she has no bones at all, her movements are so sinuous and supple, bending backwards to trail her hair along the floor, then straightening with a weaving motion, hips and breasts swaying, a sheen of sweat upon her body as she flings her fingers out at him, like the queen…in the movie…when she danced…

Cliff feels pain, not an awful pain, but pain like he’s never felt before, as if an organ of which he has been unaware, a special organ tucked away beneath the tightly packed fruits of heart, liver, spleen, kidneys, and intestines, insulated by their flesh, has been opened and is spilling its substance. It’s not a stabbing pain, neither an ache nor a twinge, not the raw pain that comes from an open wound or a burning such as eventuates from an ulcer; but though comparably mild, not yet severe enough to combat his arousal, it’s the worst pain he has known. A sick, emptying feeling is the closest he can come to articulating it, but not even that says it. He understands now that this is no movie and that something vital is leaking out, being drawn from his body in surges, in trickles and sudden gushes, conjured forth by blue fingers that tease, tempt, and coax. He tries to relieve the pain by twisting in the chair, by screaming, but he’s denied the consolation of movement—he cannot convulse or writhe or kick, and when he attempts to scream, a scratchy whisper is all he can muster. It’s not that he’s being restrained, but rather it seems that as the level of that vital essence lowers, he’s become immobilized, his will shriveled to the point that he no longer desires to move, he no longer cares to do anything other than to suffer in silence, to stare helplessly at the beautiful blue witch with full breasts and half-moon hips, sweat glistening on her thighs and belly, who is both the emblem and purveyor of his pain.