THE UNSAYABLE, Part One

The camcorder was pulled from the closet and set up by the bed and the tape slapped into its compartment. It was already as good as night, and without a working alarm clock it would be difficult to carve out a little plot of time for a nap in darkness better suited for deep sleep. Emma’s wristwatch was only a windup that offered no alarm feature, which meant there was no way to mark time in the house.

One plan required another. Michael went downstairs to retrieve a wider candle from the box by the kitchen door and placed it on a ceramic plate. Both items were taken back upstairs and set on the nightstand. A blade for his utility knife was wedged into wax about an eighth of an inch down from the top of the candle, and a glass marble was balanced on the flat, protruding end of the blade. The painter was a light sleeper, and his thinking was that when the candle melted down to loosen the blade, it and the marble would clap loudly on the plate. He switched on the camcorder before lighting the wick, and then proceeded to the bathroom.

It was not his intention to sleep too deeply, so a sleeping tablet was placed on the sink and, using the file from his toenail clippers, a small portion of it was sliced off. It was not clear what he hoped to accomplish in recording over the mysterious video, or whether he would take enough of the pill to matter. However, no sooner did he fill a glass of water than the telephone rang by the bed; the reverberating acoustics came almost as a revelation.

Ri-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-g-g-g-g-g-g!

He picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Hello, Michael. It’s Amber.”

She sounded close. “Are you in town?”

“I’m out at the Peek-a-boo Motel. My client cancelled. I’m sorry I didn’t call you back earlier, but I knew I would be driving down.”

Michael blew out the candle. “I was hoping to talk to you.”

“Do you want to meet here at the motel? I already have the room.”

He waffled. “Well...”

“It’s just to talk, of course,” she added as an inducement.

A part of Michael did not want to go to the motel. (A part of him never wanted to do anything of a social nature.) He often had to force himself to do things where others were involved—not out of a need for self-betterment but to spare himself the guilt of possibly hurting the feelings of people he knew. This was not the purest of motivations, but (and more times than he would admit) he found himself enjoying the activity in spite of his reservations. Regardless, no number of positive experiences would ever change his underlying inertia. Even under the best of circumstances it was extremely difficult for him to transition out of his all-consuming activities. When it was in his power to do so, he budgeted time (usually several hours) to create buffers between things, thus minimizing the carry-over effects of his restlessness and moody resentment. Given his chronic disorganization in practical matters, this was not always possible, and not wanting to subject others to his struggle he would forego subsequent social engagements where he knew he would not be engaged socially.

What distinguished many of Michael’s behaviors from those of others were not the behaviors themselves. Anyone could claim an acquaintance with feeling self-conscious, unsociable, or obsessive from time to time. An occasional behavior, however, is not the same as a pervasive behavior. Where one is an anecdote of shared experience, the other continuously disrupts or prevents a normal life. Where one may be a phase, the other is so integral a part of one’s being that it requires elaborate schemes, rationalizations, and lifelong coping mechanisms to either conceal or justify the behavior.

More unique to him, and disturbing, was Michael’s proclivity to runaway paranoia. From bouts of hypochondria, where he would convince himself he had skin cancer or diabetes, to reverse engineering subtle plots against him, dark ideas could overtake his logic-chopping reason for short periods of time. He constructed his arguments on the thinnest of evidence, or on no evidence at all. A prevailing sense of catastrophe, of being watched, of having his body or property violated by natural or nefarious means, was never far from his mind. From washing his hands to elude germs to crossing the street to avoid staring strangers, the world—his world—imparted little sense of security. What prevented him from being schizophrenic was he completely comprehended his irrationality of emotion and thought as they were occurring, yet was powerless to set them aside.

Here too he was forced to second-guess his runaway suspicions, although it had been Omar, his best friend, who had raised the specter of surveillance in the house.

Amber told him she was in The Honeymoon Suite, but it was only in gazing up at a long row of motel doors the visitor remembered all the rooms bore that name. On entering the front office he was accosted by a bank of mute TV monitors over the counter; all—save one—were chronicling the exploits of lovers in the various rooms.

A wiry, dandruff-speckled man emerged out of a back room finishing up a dripping taco. “No vacancies,” he announced.

“I’m suppose to meet someone here. Someone who already has a room.”

“Can’t give out that information.”

“But…”

The desk clerk scowled.

The rebuffed man glanced up at the one monitor with a dark screen. “No vacancies?” he repeated.

“No vacancies.”

Rain beaded on the oil-slicked blacktop outside, reflecting the bright sign that dominated the roof. Michael navigated the mud flaps of oversized pickup trucks to follow his constellation to the rod-iron stairs with peeling paint. Once on the second level, he proceeded down to the door at the far end. It was ajar; darkness in the crack confirmed his hunch.

“Amber…?” Her name dropped over the threshold to a mottled carpet, yet garnered no reply. He traced the shining seam of neon up to a table lamp.

“Leave it,” came her hushed command from the shadows.

“Don’t you want me to see your face?”

“Precaution.” Her finger lifted. “That’s another precaution.”

Michael looked to where she was pointing. A pillowcase was covering the mounted video camera in the corner.

Her slink placed her at edge of the bed. “Like I said, I work for an agency. They wouldn’t appreciate me being here on their clock.”

The man puzzled at the cloak-and-dagger.

“Sit,” she said, patting the disconcertingly small mattress. Her calm tone halved the remaining shadow between them. “If we’re going to talk, then we both need to be comfortable.”

He waded out of a muddle. “I can’t be comfortable.”

“You can’t be comfortable with me, you mean.”

“I mean I can’t be comfortable with people... in general.”

“Why?”

Michael turned to the nightstand, and then to the window. By the time he turned back, he was pacing. “Most people say too little for me to abide,” he blurted, “and in a take or leave situation, I can leave them all.”

“Is this a ‘leave’ situation?”

“No,” he said, stopping dead in his tracks.

“Then what do you need others to tell you?”

He did not hesitate. “I need for others to speak their minds—their hearts. To hide nothing from me.”

She turned it back on him. “Do you hide nothing in your communications?”

He began pacing again—rambling. “I don’t fake friendship just to manipulate others. There are rules. There should be rules.”

“But do you always speak candidly?”

“Yes.”

“Even if others impose upon you? Slight you? Manipulate you?”

He quieted before saying, “I’m not in the habit of bearing grudges.”

“Which is why you have so few friends,” she observed. “It’s easier for you to let an acquaintance whither than it is for you to clear the air. Friendship carries responsibilities, Michael.”

He had not come to hear a lecture about his shortcomings.

“Sit,” she again said.

He acquiesced in his clumsy way.

She took his hand and used her thumb to massage his palm. “Why did you call without leaving a message?”

“I never think through why I do anything. I only second-guess myself afterwards.”

“You are always honest,” she observed. “Whether you speak your mind or not, you wear your true feelings for all to see.”

He looked down between his feet.

“Is all this to do with the girl who is not your girlfriend?”

Michael spoke frankly in the darkness. “I’ve chosen unwisely, I think.”

“Unwisely? How?”

He explained, “All my life I’ve been in love with an ideal. As I’ve grown older, I guess I've never paid attention that my ideal hasn’t changed while I have. It is only with this girl I see the emerging gap.”

“Then your ideal has to evolve, too.”

“I suppose. If it’s even possible.”

“I think it’s very possible.”

He mulled over the optimism.

Amber stood up, latching on to the bend of his knees. “You need to relax.”

He was tensing up again.

The prostitute pulled off his shoes and began doing to his socked feet what she had done to his palm. Her thumbs seemed to reach up and snip his hamstrings.

He was swimming against the shadows—against her. “Why did you drop out of art school, Amber?”

“To be brutally honest,” she confessed, “I enjoyed sex more than studying.”

Darkness only went so far in erecting a curtain between their thoughts.

“You have that look,” she said.

“A look?”

“A look that would like to reform me.”

“Your life is your own.”

“But you disapprove.” Amber crawled up to straddle his waist in her stilettos. “Because you’re attracted to me.”

“You’re an attractive woman. And smart.”

“And…?”

Her thighs were turned down between his arms and darkened at their contours under the scratchy nylon. “And,” he continued less confidently, “I would wish more for you.”

“Which would be what?”

He dissembled. “I can hardly say.”

Her legs tightened at his sides, like a vice being recalibrated. “You can blame my stepfather for the way I turned out.”

“Your stepfather?”

“He was my first lover.”

Michael’s body became a piece of barbed wire. “And you’ve dedicated your life to chasing after him in bed?”

She grinned at his show of emotion. “I do have a thing for older men.”

“That can’t be good,” he said.

“Older men?”

No.” He amended the remark. “The part about you chasing after your stepfather in bed.”

“We need what we need.”

“I don’t judge you. I judge him.”

“And so you should. He was a beastly man, apart from being good in the sack.”

“Is he still alive?”

“I can’t say.”

“Then you have nothing more to do with him?”

“He got me pregnant when I was still a teen. After that, I moved in with an aunt and never saw him again.”

“Did you have the baby?”

“It would have messed up my figure.”

His face flattened on the pillow.

She probed. “Did I strike a chord?”

“Is this the child you mentioned in Chicago? The one you feel guilty about?”

“This is not the child I want to talk about.” The stage scenery shifted around with her weight, but his submissive posture left the man little leverage. “What was your relationship like with your mother when you were younger, Michael?”

“My mother? What brought this up?”

“We talked in generalities about your mother in Chicago.”

“So I’m back on the shrink’s couch?”

“When you think of yourself as a little boy, what impression do you remember most strongly of your mother?”

“Define ‘impression’?”

“Do you think of being in her arms?”

“I have no recollections of that sort. I didn’t like being touched as a child.”

“Do you have any recollections of her punishing you?”

“Most children are spanked by their mothers.”

“So you do recall those occasions?”

“I don’t understand the point of this.”

“That’s why you’re an ass man,” she declared.

“What?”

She went on to explain. “The way you we’re looking at me in the hallway in Chicago.”

“But what does a woman’s anatomy have to do with my mother whipping me as a child?”

Amber laid out her theory. “When you were a tyke, all you saw of your mother from the floor was her hips and ass, which some part of you naturally wanted to cling to. Perhaps your mother did not force affection on you, but she did physically interact with you when she punished you. Thus, your contact with female anatomy has largely been an unpleasant one.”

“And you get all this from a glance at your backside and one night of pillow talk?”

She continued, “Just as a child acquires immunities through his mother’s milk, a mother’s arms impart other forms of armor. Boys who spend a lot of time in their mothers’ arms tend to be boob men, and generally have fewer phobias. Such as a fear of heights.”

“Did Omar tell you about that?”

Amber expounded, “You’re a bottom-dweller, you see. Always looking up at a heaven you can’t touch.”

Michael was stuck to refute what she was saying.

The prostitute stroked his still-youthful face. “Would you like to be my little backdoor man?”

He blushed. “I could never afford you, Amber.”

“But you’re not a client.”

He contemplated other challenges.

She was already miles ahead. “We could meet here at this motel on a regular basis, if you want? Sort of halfway between Chicago and Stonesthrow.”

Even allowing for the dimness, it was clear nothing lay under her short skirt but garters and smooth, clean-shaven skin. He fidgeted, agitating aromatics on her skin. “Sex has never been the beginning of anything for me,” he proclaimed.

She laid a finger to his lips and, in complete candor, said, “But if we start sleeping together—keep sleeping together—sooner or later, it would be a beginning to something.”

He had no ready answer for her.

Amber leaned back, even as her gaze penetrated deeper. “I’m hiding nothing from you, Michael. I’m speaking my heart. Isn’t that what you want? Isn’t that what you need to be comfortable?”

(What he was uncomfortable with was the abruptness of her proposition.)