Chapter 4

It was after four o'clock when things finally wrapped up and they went down to the garage. Bobbie's eyes widened when she saw Marie open the door of her sports convertible and put the top down. When the girl got in, Marie just grinned and said, "If you say one word to anyone on campus about me or my car, you're dead!" Bobbie just nodded and reclined her seatback to enjoy the ride.

As they were driving, Marie asked her what she thought Harriet Dobbs would do. Barbara opined that she would try to get someone to try but she didn't think they had a prayer of success. "That's without cheating, of course. What I do know she will do is to try to figure out some way of beating the contest; there's no way in hell she could perform the feat fairly."

"There's one big advantage we have, though," Marie continued. "She doesn't know where the place is, other than in Hawaii ... somewhere. You know," she said with a big grin, "you wouldn't believe how much water there is in the Pacific — or how spread out the State of Hawaii really is!"

Then she changed the subject. "Why did you characterize yourself as vile and dirty when you were talking to Ali? You seem like a pretty good girl to me."

To Marie's amazement, the girl began to bawl. She rolled her body up into a ball with her face toward the door and began to cry her eyes out. Since they were traveling main roads there was nothing she could do for the girl nor was there anything the girl could do to herself for that matter. She knew that Tom had a late lab that day and wouldn't be home until nine.

When she pulled up at the garage that she had rented near their apartment, she eased the car in, shut it off, and opened the passenger-side door. Effortlessly, she lifted the larger girl out of the car and half-carried her up to their apartment.

Once inside, she stretched the girl out on the sofa, then went to the kitchen and came back a moment later with a tumbler full of cognac. Giving it to the girl she said, "Drink it. Take a big slug."

The girl did and almost choked. Marie muffled her grin because it had done what she wanted it to do: It had brought Bobbie's crying to a sudden stop. The girl looked up with tears in her eyes from the alcohol that had burned her throat, replacing the ones from her emotions.

With a gasp, she said hoarsely, "If the objective was to get me to stop flooding out your apartment with my tears, I guess it worked."

Marie had brought a tumbler of cognac for herself, too. She clinked her glass against Bobbie's and said, "Damned teenagers! You have to gulp everything. Try sipping it, Hon. I think you'll like it."

The girl looked up suddenly and asked, "What did you just call me?"

Marie was taken aback and had to think. Then she shrugged and said, "I guess I said Hon. Why?"

"Hon is short for honey. All it shows is how little you know about me," the girl replied. "Marie, today has been the most unbelievable day of my life. I learned about motherhood ... My God! Did I ever.

"I guess I never really thought about it much before, but I just sort of thought that these days a woman's place is in an office or a courtroom or wherever.

"Well, today I found an office loaded with brilliant, beautiful, witty, highly-educated women ... whose principal interests are their husbands and their children. Harriet said that Sandy is probably the top trial lawyer in the state, yet I have never seen a woman look so fulfilled as when she put her baby son to her breast. I could almost feel it myself as the baby drew the wonderful warm milk from her tit. Against that, what's a trial? Any good actor can do it, I suppose. But being a mother? Only women.

"Then I just could not believe those two small children! My God! They have a level of wisdom and maturity that would do credit to a person of fifty, let alone five. But it's so much more."

She looked down at her hands holding the glass and seemed to be organizing her thoughts. Then she continued, "I remembered something from long ago — when I used to go to church — that the eyes are the windows of the soul. Until today, I thought they were just words. Now I know that it is the unvarnished truth. I looked into the eyes of those little children — do you know what I saw?" she asked.

Recognizing the rhetorical nature of the question, Marie merely shook her head.

The girl continued, "I saw the most incredible purity, goodness and love. Those children are graceful..." She looked up at Marie and continued with a note of discovery, "Of course! 'Sanctifying grace' — another concept lost in the black reaches of my brain. Those children are full of God's divine grace! They are truly blessed."

Then the tears started to flow again and she said, "Wasn't there something about 'suffer the little children'? Anyway, that's who they are.

"Me? I think of them looking into my eyes and seeing only filth and sewage and rot! I am a walking disgrace to the human race; why my parents didn't leave me out on a high mountainside somewhere to die of exposure and provide food for a couple of wolves, I'll never know."

Now she sat up straight on the sofa and held her head up as she said, "They did have the good sense to disown me, of course."

Then she looked at Marie and said, "I haven't seen them since I came to school as a freshman. Every month there's money deposited in my checking account but that's all."

Looking at Marie she began to cry in earnest, but this time she continued to hold her head up and just let the tears stream down her face. "Today I heard you say that it was on your honeymoon — on the beach — that you lost your virginity to your husband and he lost his to you. Yesterday, I would have thought that was the funniest thing I could possibly imagine. Today, I think it's the most beautiful!" She looked into Marie's eyes, but couldn't make out her expression.

"Let me tell you a little about myself. I am the most immoral, amoral person on two feet. Do you know what I was trying to do yesterday afternoon? I was hoping for a pleasant early-evening fuck! I was hoping to block out my rent-paying experience of the previous night.

"What do I hear today? I hear about high-school girls who are virgins and martyrs!" Again she began to weep while just making hopeless sounds. Finally, she struggled on. "I thought that was a relic of the first or second century. Today I find out that your schoolmates... your schoolmates... ! sacrificed their lives for the God they believed in.

"Good Heavens! When you and Celeste stood face to face I could imagine you turning slowly from a hook on a scaffold while you're unmercifully whipped. I could see scars on your back continue in a straight line to hers ... Your legs ... Your buttocks..."

With a look of near-hopelessness in her eyes she asked, "Could you tell me more about it?"

Before answering, Marie rose from her chair, sat beside Bobbie on the couch and took the anguished girl into her arms. Then speaking softly into her ear she told her about that fateful day:

"They entered the village at dawn. The villagers were rounded up and made to surround the square. I told you how my father was taken, made to kneel and then was shot in the head. When my mother pulled free from a guard and ran to him so he could die in her arms, they shot her in the head, too. After quickly erecting a scaffold-like structure in the center, they suspended my sister and me naked and made us watch while, one after the other, they took our schoolmates out to the square, tortured, raped, and ultimately killed them all. With the bodies still lying all over the square and with all the villagers still being made to watch, they tied us face to face and began to beat us with bull whips.

"At the same time they were heating a branding iron red hot to brand us in different spots so they could tell us apart for purposes of their betting. They were betting which of us would live longer. A man was waiting with a sharp knife. They had decided that after whipping us back to back, the next thing they would do would be to cut off our tits, barbecue them and eat them, or make us eat them — I was never sure which. I do know they were going to use the iron to cauterize our chests while they thought about what to do to us next.

"As they were about to retie us and whip our breasts, bellies and cunts, all hell broke loose."

She smiled and said, "It was Kenneth Carlson and Carlson's Rangers. Ken is Kathy's husband and she was his inspiration. She wrote hundreds of letters, all in blue pen on blue paper that came to be known as Kathy-grams throughout Vietnam. She provided the motivation for him to perform an endless series of superhuman feats."

Hugging the girl tightly and caressing her lovely wavy hair she continued, "That's why I kiss Kathy's feet. You see, working with the inspiration she regularly provided, he saved us from death that day.

"Then seven years ago, he and Kathy were out in Hawaii on their honeymoon — she was already working for Clifford & Jamison at the time — and they restored us to life. You see, Bobbie, from that day in the square until seven years ago, my sister and I were utterly dead from the waist down. Then they brought my sister and me to the most incredible orgasms I could ever imagine. We've both been fine ever since."

She eased the girl off her shoulder so she could look into her face. Then she said, "Tom is the son of Hank and Jim Conroy. Jim is also a great American war hero and Ken Carlson saved his life, too."

Looking at the girl, Marie's eyes were gleaming as she said, "Can you imagine? Jim had been shot down and seriously wounded while deep in the jungle. He was found by an enemy patrol that had no intention of carrying a wounded American miles through the jungle. The officer had his gun at Jim's head and was tightening his finger on the trigger when his hand disappeared.

As he stared at the bleeding stump where his gun hand had been, a third eye appears in the center of his forehead. Before the men in his patrol could even raise their weapons, they were all dead, too. Of course it was Ken who shot off the officer's hand and put the bullet in his head.

"Tom and his older sister, Samantha, used all of the money they had saved in their lives to buy a tray to present to the Carlsons. They now have it in the place of honor in their dining room. You see, they acknowledged that if their father had died, their mother would have been dead within sixty days, too."

There were tears running down Marie's cheeks now, too, as she said, "You know something? They were absolutely right. You see, it was the intensity of the love between the Conroys and the Carlsons that inspired me."

Then with a grin she said, "You claim you're dirty and filthy? I'll bet I've done something you would never even think of doing. I went down on a twelve-year-old boy and brought him to the first orgasm of his life!"

"It was Tom, wasn't it?" Bobbie asked hoarsely. She had cried so much she could scarcely talk.