The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

‘But first, take me in the bedroom. Don’t talk about it either. Just do it.’

She kept telling him to go harder, almost belting him with her upthrusting hips, as if she wanted to buck him off. But she wasn’t getting there.

‘Hit me,’ she said.

He did it. He was beyond rationality.

‘You can do better than that. Fucking hit me!’

He hit her harder. Her lower lip split open. She dabbed her fingers in the blood. While she was doing it, she came.

‘Show it to me,’ Winnie said. This was the next day. They were in his study.

‘Show me the money.’ A famous line. She just couldn’t remember from where.

‘After I see the video.’

The camera was still in the crumpled bag. She took it out, along with the cable. He had a little TV in the study, and she connected the cable to it. She pushed Play, and they looked at the woman in the Mets cap sitting on the park bench. Behind her, a few children were playing. Behind them, mothers were talking mommyshit: body wraps, plays they had seen or were going to see, the new car, the next vacation. Blah-blah-blah.

The woman got up from the bench. The video zoomed jerkily in. The picture shivered a bit, then steadied.

That was where Nora hit the Pause button. This was Chad’s idea, and she had agreed to it. She trusted Winnie, but only so far.

‘I want to see the money.’

Winnie took a key from the pocket of the cardigan sweater he was wearing. He used it to open the center drawer of his desk, switching it to his left hand when the partially paralyzed right one wouldn’t do his bidding.

It wasn’t an envelope after all. It was a medium-sized Federal Express box. She looked inside and saw bundled hundreds, each bundle secured with a rubber band.

He said, ‘It’s all there, plus some extra.’

‘All right. Look at what you bought. All you have to do is push Play. I’ll be in the kitchen.’

‘Don’t you want to watch it with me?’

‘No.’

‘Nora? You appear to have had a small accident yourself.’ He tapped the corner of his mouth, the side that still turned down slightly.

Had she thought he had a sheep’s face? How stupid of her. How unseeing of her. Nor was it a wolf’s face, not really. It was somewhere in between. A dog’s face, maybe. The kind of dog that would bite and then run.

‘I ran into a door,’ she said.

‘I see.’

‘All right, I’ll watch it with you,’ she said, and sat down. She pushed Play herself.

They watched the video twice, in complete silence. The running time was about thirty seconds. That amounted to about sixty-six hundred dollars per second. Nora had done the math while she and Chad were watching it.

After the second time, he pushed Stop. She showed him how to eject the small cassette. ‘This is yours. The camera has to go back to the guy my husband borrowed it from.’

‘I understand.’ His eyes were bright. It seemed he’d actually gotten what he’d paid for. What he wanted. Incredible. ‘I shall have Mrs Granger buy me another camera for future viewings. Or perhaps that’s an errand you’d care to run.’

‘Not me. We’re done.’

‘Ah.’ He didn’t look surprised. ‘All right. But … if I may make a suggestion … you may want to get another job. So no one thinks it odd when those bills begin getting paid off at a faster clip. It’s only your welfare I’m thinking of, my dear.’

‘I’m sure.’ She unplugged the cable and put it back in the bag with the camera.

‘And I wouldn’t leave for Vermont too soon.’

‘I don’t need your advice. I feel dirty and you’re the reason why.’

‘I suppose I am. But you won’t get caught and no one will ever know.’ The right side of his mouth was drawn down, the left side lifted in what could have been a smile. The result was a serpentine S below his beak of a nose. His speech was very clear that day. She would remember that, and ponder it. As if what he called sin had turned out to be therapy. ‘And Nora … is feeling dirty always a bad thing?’

She had no idea how to answer this. Which, she supposed, was an answer in itself.

‘I only ask,’ he said, ‘because the second time you ran the tape, I watched you instead of it.’

She snatched up the bag with Charlie Green’s video cam inside and walked to the door. ‘Have a nice life, Winnie. Make sure you get an actual therapist as well as a nurse next time. Your father left you enough to afford both. And take care of that tape. For both our sakes.’

‘You’re unidentifiable on it, dear. And even if you weren’t, would anyone care?’ He shrugged. ‘It doesn’t depict a rape or murder, after all.’

She stood in the doorway, wanting to be gone but curious. Still curious.

‘Winnie, how will you square this with your God? How long will it take to pray it off?’

He chuckled. ‘If an outrageous sinner like Simon Peter could go on to found the Catholic Church, I expect I’ll be fine.’

‘Yes, but did Simon Peter keep the videotape to watch on cold winter evenings?’

This finally silenced him, and Nora left before he could find his voice again. It was a small victory, but one she grasped eagerly.