Chapter 36: Wednesday, Dec. 27

In which takeout Chinese is ordered, but what's delivered brings forth a veritable satyr, and a frenzy beyond passion or love.

By Alfred Alcorn

Oct 3, 2001 | I have horrific news to impart, news so personal, so shattering, and yet so poignant, I scarcely know where to begin. Indeed, I would not begin at all, were it not also pertinent to this journal about the strange happenings that have rocked our little community to its very foundations.

I have just returned from Seaboard Police Department headquarters. (I'm sorry if this seems disjointed, but I am agitated beyond words.) We've finally had a real break in the case, but at an awful price. I sit here in my high study, my father's 38-caliber Smith & Wesson at the ready, my hands afflicted by a telltale tremor.

Let me start at the beginning.

Earlier this evening Diantha and I returned from a meeting with the Reverend Lopes and Father O'Gould to make arrangements for Elsbeth's memorial service at Swift Chapel. Such decisions are always draining. They take an emotional toll the worse for not being expected. What order of service? What hymns? (For instance, one of Elsbeth's favorites was Mendelsohn's "Why Do the Heavens Rage?" But it didn't seem appropriate to the occasion.) Who speaks? What about the reception?

At any rate, upon returning home, we simply felt too tired to cook anything for ourselves. Indeed, we were too drained even to contemplate going out for a quick bite. Ordinarily I do not enjoy takeout food, the kind that arrives in white cardboard containers with plastic accouterments and little pouches of condiments. But to indulge Diantha, whose spirits had ebbed woefully low, I agreed to call the Garden of Delights and order from a veritable laundry list of Chinese food. We ticked off black bean shrimp, some kind of shredded beef, sweet and sour something or other, and rice, of course.

I presently poured Diantha a glass of chilled white wine and made myself a martini of lethal potency with at least three shots of good gin and a fair dollop of vermouth, which I chilled briefly over ice before pouring it into a frosted glass with a pitted olive. I had just had the barest sip when the bell rang. I opened the door to find a young man of Asian aspect holding a white bag stapled shut with the cash register printout attached. I paid him the requisite amount, gave him a generous tip, thanked him and closed the door. I took the bag of food and my drink into the television room where Diantha was arranging plates and silver on the ample coffee table between the couch and massive screen of the television.

"Smells good," she said, smiling at me. "I'm famished."

"Yes, I agreed, and it's quite appealing when you present it on a dish." We were each ladling generous amounts onto our plates. Some sort of police drama from the big city was on the television, with people yelling at each other and exchanging significant glances in between scuffling with criminal types. I never really pay much attention. To me most of what's on television constitutes a kind of moving wallpaper with noise.

"The black bean shrimp is divine," I remember Diantha saying. In one of those endearing, almost intimate gestures that occur between two people who are close, she held over a heaping forkful for me to take. We ate in greedy silence for perhaps ten or fifteen minutes. Diantha had switched the channel to what's called a situation comedy, a low form of humor in which people make wisecracks about their bodily functions, contort themselves like idiots, and mug for the camera, all to the sound of canned laughter. Yet I was glad to see Diantha respond even to this meager fare, because of late she had become withdrawn and moody. I had taken just the merest sip of my martini, saving it for a postprandial. I remember thinking I should have made tea instead when Diantha turned from the television, let out a low moan, put down her plate with a clatter, and turned to me. "Norman, Norman," she said breathlessly, her eyes going wide, her mouth opening. In one quite amazing gesture, she reached under her skirt and peeled off her panties and nylon tights. She leaned back, opened her legs to me and implored, "Norman, please, Norman, please."

I might not have resisted even if, a minute or so later in time that had gone out of focus, the most powerful erotic sensation I have ever experienced rocked my entire body. I cried out a futile "no," but was already unbuckling myself, had turned into a veritable satyr, engorged as I have never been in my life. I was in the grip of a passion too urgent to allow for anything as basic as pleasure let alone the more tender delights of lovemaking. We conjoined with a thrusting, uncontrolled violence, a frenzy beyond passion or love, a kind of injuring madness as we pounded at each other, snarling and biting like panicked animals.

Don't ask me what made me do what I did to save us. In the midst of the madness, as I pummeled Diantha and she pummeled back, our voices shrieking and groaning like two demented demons, some minuscule particle of ordinary sense remained intact in what was left of my mind. Because, on some inexplicable impulse, springing no doubt from that tiny remnant of normalcy, I reached over, grabbed my martini, and, before much of it spilled in the heave and shove of our frenzy, managed to swallow it down, nearly choking on the olive.

Next Page: "You're quite the stud, Norman, you know that?"

• View blog reactions