Little Fingers! by Tim Roux Page B

creep.”
    They are all
watching me to see how I am reacting. What am I supposed to be
reacting to?
     
    * *
*
     
    I have
explained how Mary and I got together. I invited her and Frank over
for lunch. Frank went fishing. We got drunk.
    Mary looks at
me from the floor. She is shame-faced, and embarrassed in the lull,
yet visibly excited. “I don't know what to say,” she says. “What do
we do now? We shouldn't have done this. It was incredible.” Her
eyes beseech me under her lashes. She wants to reassure herself
that she will not be going straight to hell. Hell cannot be like
this.
    “ I'm glad you
enjoyed it.”
    Mary laughs.
“I did. But now what?”
    “ Why is there
a what? We can do it again.”
    “ I don't
think we should. I don't normally do this kind of
thing.”
    “ You seemed
natural enough to me. I didn't have to rape you, however much I
have wanted to over the last few weeks.”
    Mary is
shaken. “You planned this?”
    “ Yes, no. I
hoped that it would happen. I thought that it would.”
    “ Why? I am
not a lesbian. I have never been a lesbian before.”
    “ There is
something very open inside you. There is no need for you to be a
lesbian to do this with me. I am not a lesbian either.”
    Mary chuckles
derisively. “Who are you kidding, Julia? You are in denial. You are
definitely a lesbian.”
    “ Technically,
I am not.”
    “ Technically,
how?”
    “ That is a
long story.”
    “ I am
listening.”
    “ I am not
telling.”
    Mary waits.
She stares me out. Nobody can out-stare me. She breaks, and she
kisses me to ease the suspense. We start again. Her body is so
soft, her lower lips are so eager. She even thrusts them onto my
hand.
    “ I am getting
so fat,” Mary observes as she dresses to go. “It hasn't mattered to
me for a long time. You make it matter to me now.”
    “ It suits
you.”
    “ It doesn't
suit my clothes. They were designed for a thinner me.”
    “ Don't wear
your clothes then, at least not here.”
    “ I will have
to sometimes, and then I look fat.”
    She kisses me
good-bye. “I don't know how we make this work, Julia, but I really
want it to work.”
    “ So do
I.”
    For this
moment our eyes twinkle. We are two bodies as one.
     
    * *
*
     
     

Chapter
7
     
    At last, it is
time to enter the Mary Knightly's den. I have plotted to meet Mary
here for so long now. I am a predator and a victim.
    In truth, I am
unsure as to exactly what she did to my mother, what harm she
caused her. My mother described her as “pure evil”. I would argue
with her. The definition of evil precludes purity. Purity precludes
evil. Perhaps she might try “totally evil” or “entirely evil” or
“undiluted evil”. My mother would always give me a glare to suggest
that I was picking a fight on sacred ground, that I was desecrating
her fragile being. Eventually she tossed at me angrily “Go look up
'oxymoron' in the dictionary, will you? Then try 'smart-arse
ignoramus'.” I did, and her point struck home to the extent of
strafing my pride with shrapnel.
    No-one seems
to like Mary Knightly, yet she carries on doing whatever she does.
She has not run away. She has brazened out her short-comings and
the negativity they provoke. That, at least, is
admirable.
    So, I am as
prepared to appreciate her as to hate her. I doubt that I shall
ever like her.
    I already
realise the sort of person she is. I have picked up the vibe.
Nervous, spiteful, scared, aggressive, poisonous.
    You could say
that I have used my Mary to get to her. She is on the festival
committee, and she has suggested that I join it too, given my
undoubted organisational abilities. Why do people assume that
because you are rich you can organise anything?
    What do I do
with Mary Knightly once I am in contact with her? All I have is an
inherited hatred and a sense of enraged injustice emanating from a
vague evil.
    After all, my
mother was a flake, cooky, a cross between Goldie Hawn and Joan
Crawford. Dizzy and depressed. Sexy and