Love Is Red: A Novel

Part One

1

You pick her up in a bar. She’s not the type who would usually let herself be picked up but that’s not a problem for you. She’s a beautiful woman but she’s lonely. The men she’s chosen haven’t been kind. They’ve lied to her and made her feel less than she should. And time is ticking on; she’s beautiful but she’s not getting any younger. She was sitting at the bar when you got there. She had a book. You’ve seen that move before. A book, to show that she’s cool enough to go to a bar with a book, a book and not some girlfriends, a book and not a man. The book is The World According to Garp by John Irving. You appreciate that; it shows she has a certain sense of style, sense of humor. You don’t approach her immediately. That would be silly. She clearly has her guard up, the way she’s nursing that drink, determinedly reading. Still, the outfit she has on says: I might be reading but that doesn’t mean I’m all mind and no body.

You admire the display, the long shapely legs with their sheen of black panty hose. There’s just enough displayed to give you a sense of the thighs, creamy and smooth under the panty hose. But it’s just a hint, a suggestion more than anything. Again, you appreciate it. This woman’s no slut. She’s got class, maybe even a master’s degree. She wears the almost regulation pencil skirt, an innocuous good-quality white blouse. She’s drinking a vodka tonic by the looks of it.

The pale glass, the slip of lime, and the beautiful lonely woman pretending to read her book. It makes a pretty picture and you admire it for a moment before you move in. Nothing as crass as hello, though; you’ve seen a few others try that approach, even calling her the librarian. Amateurs.

Instead, you wait till they’ve left and she’s really alone. She’s stayed on that page for far too long. Then you send over an eighteen-year-old Macallan, a real drink, a serious drink. It’s a drink that you know will take her by surprise with its quality and class. You send it over and you wait. She is annoyed at first and suspicious, although it’s highly unlikely that any frat boy or middle-class middle management guy would send over that amber-colored beverage.

Then she sees you.

You’re not what she expected. You’re attractive, serious. You stare at her just long enough to make her uncomfortable and then you tip her a tiny smile, a mere curl of your lip. That’s it. Make it clear there are no strings for this expensive drink. She should drink it and be happy and forget about you. But now she can’t; now that she knows that she can walk away, she doesn’t. So it is she who indicates that you can sit by her, she who initiates conversation, she who is now worried. She’s worried you might have a girlfriend, a wife, might be bored, might leave. And you aren’t too encouraging, just enough. You give her just enough space to feel safe. You speak quietly. You are witty. You never touch her, not even to emphasize the good point you just made. She leans in to hear you make another dry, amusing observation. She wants you to touch her.

You don’t.

Instead you buy another round and then another one. Nothing garish about the gesture, of course. You just nod your head to the bartender. This shows that although you have class, have style, have money, have power, you never show off. You’re well educated, smart, powerful, and ambitious but you’re not an asshole.

Now the alcohol is entering her bloodstream.

She grows a little looser. Her hair, the small silken pieces by her ears, begins to rebel and grow soft and loose too. The book is pushed away, forgotten. Elbows on the table, leaning in, laughing, touching you lightly on the arm. When she does this she feels how firm your arm is. You work out. She is sizing you up when she thinks you’re not looking. She’s wondering where this could go.

Already in her mind she’s telling her girlfriends how she met you. In her mind she tries out the phrase in a bar and melds it to about to go, looked up, saw each other, talked the whole night through.

Then the bartender announces last call. You say, Well? You smile. You shrug.

Suddenly it seems that all her dreams are about to be blown away. You pause just long enough for her tipsy heart to sink like a stone and then you ask her where she wants to go next. This is the question that opens all the doors. This is the question that’s really the yes.

But maybe she’s not quite ready yet to admit where she’d really like to go with you. You, with your strong arms, your wry smile, your warmth, the laughter lines around your eyes, the easy way you listen, your clean expensive clothes, which fit well. She doesn’t want to be seen to be easy. She’s not one of those women. She’s educated with a job. She’s doing okay. She’s a lovely woman. She just needs to be courted, a little more anyway. She’s keeping a firm hold on herself even if she’s a little unsteady. You remind her to take her book. She blushes. She’s charming.

You go on to a little bar you know, filled with candlelight that throws quirky small shadows on the wall. You order for both of you. She loves the Pisco Sour you choose for her. You knew she would. She drinks it too quickly. She thinks you’re drunk too because you’re so warm, because you seem to know her so well.

The small red booth you chose forces you to sit across from each other. She studies your lean attractive face. She marvels at her luck. She wishes you’d touch her. She suddenly wants you very, very much. If you don’t touch her she’ll die.

Lust is the color of honey dribbled from a spoon; it smells like other people’s popcorn at the movies. It tugs like a wave on the underside of your toes, it clinks like a bracelet on the glass of a display counter, it sounds like two people laughing at a private joke, it feels like slippery linen against your cheek, a wall pressed against your back.

You lean over and kiss her passionately. Your lips are strong and warm and soft. You crush her mouth, your tongue and her tongue. Your mouth is warm and tastes faintly of mint. And you kiss her and you kiss her and you kiss her. It’s a wonderful kiss. It’s a magnificent kiss. It’s a kiss so perfect that it leaves her weak and speechless. She doesn’t have any bones left in her body. She’s amazed that she’s still sitting up. You say that you want to get out of there. She nods. She does too. She wants you, wants you so badly that she doesn’t care anymore what you, or anyone, or even she herself thinks of her. She wants to be in bed with you. She wants you to kiss her and that whole kiss to envelop her, as if she could live forever in that kiss. Wants you in her and above her and consuming her.

This time you take the book yourself. You don’t want her to forget it again.

You go to her place. She still knows what’s safe, still wants to be on home territory. It’s pleasant but impersonal, Matisse-like prints on the off-white walls. The apartment of a woman who works long hours, the apartment of a woman who’s a professional, the apartment of a woman who doesn’t want to assemble furniture all on her own. You had offered yours, but completely accept her choice. She imagines your home to be very beautiful and filled with masculine and elegant things. In time she’s sure she’ll see for herself. She tells you to help yourself to wine; you do. You pour her another glass too. She is on her long soft couch, longing and longing to be in bed with you. You haven’t touched her again yet, though. She keeps thinking of that kiss and all the other kisses to come and the things that will follow. You talk as you pour the drinks. You are funny but not inappropriate. You are never inappropriate, never tasteless. You sit beside her with the wine. She’s very drunk now. Still, you urge her to take a further sip. You admire her perfect throat as she swallows. Then she closes her eyes. You slip off her shoes, and she smiles faintly as you massage her feet. You are wonderful. It feels amazing. She moans a little because you are good at what you do and you work quickly. She keeps her eyes closed and that is good because it adds to her experience. She can feel your hands, different sensations and textures and touches. She would think about it but she cannot think. Her head is too hot. Her clothes are too tight. Tight. You run your hands down her motionless arms and massage them, then her hands. This too feels incredible; her eyes are still closed, trying to take in each experience competing for her senses, soft and firm and stroking. Each finger light and tapering, her wrists, their clever elegant bones. You admire each and every digit while you work, while you prepare her. She sighs and you tell her not to open her eyes yet.

Then you are next to her with your arm around her neck. You pull her in closer.

Closer still.

You lean in, and farther in, and you whisper a little secret into her creamy and curved and vulnerable ear. Exposed like a soft little mouse.

Her eyes widen.

You continue whispering and she tries to sit up. She tries to sit up, to look you in the face. She tries to sit up, to see if you are serious.

But you are very strong.

You have put something in her drink.

And now she will find that you have bound her hands with rope. Thin and nylon, the kind that folds easily into your pocket, the kind of rope that will not fray or break.

You slip your strong hand from the base of her neck to her soft warm mouth. She tries to bite you but you remember that trick well. You put some of your fingers into her mouth, holding her jaw apart so her bites feel like nothing more than a puppy teething. You like the wet dark of her mouth, your fingers in the wet dark, and you give her tongue a little pull. Just a little pull, because puppy must know when not to bite, puppy must learn. She whimpers. Maybe it hurts. But it hurts in a good way. You like that. You know that her adrenaline is fighting against the alcohol and the drugs. The adrenaline is no match for you. With your other hand you move down her body. Because she has other parts that you like. So many parts. Slowly you unbutton each button on her blouse. She is trying to wriggle free but she is still unsure. You are incredibly delicate, despite the wiggling. More so, perhaps, because you like a challenge.

You don’t want to ruin her shirt. Her breasts, in her bra, are exposed. You run a delicate hand over them. Her nipples tighten despite, or because of, her fear. You bend your face down and suck through the material. She moans again. She’s terrified that you’re going to bite her nipples, bite them hard. She thinks this because of the secret that you told her.

How can anyone truly appreciate life who has not destroyed it?

She thinks she knows what kind of man you are. But she’s in for a surprise. She has no idea. No one does. So you are content to suck and lick her round, creamy breasts. Till her nipples are hard and hot in spite of herself. Still struggling, but she’s wearing herself out.

Which is foolish.

You, who bring death, know how fleeting life is. You know because you take it, you break it, you inhale it, blood and breath and bone.

Your one hand is still in her hot, wet pink mouth, expertly holding her tongue, and your other hand is down her pencil skirt, down, down and slow. A firm deliberate stroke and then suddenly up between her legs. Now she tries again to wriggle free and maybe for the first time feels a sudden constriction because you have also bound her legs together. You are feeling up her legs, the slick sheen of the tights against the softness at the crotch. More layers to go through. What to do now? You like it. It’s nice to have choices. Puppy moans and writhes a bit.

Be good, puppy, you tell her. Be good.

While you think you make circles against her stockinged crotch with your thumb, wide and then smaller, then stroking back and forth against the tight fabric. She tries to close her legs tight. Silly puppy. This only makes you excited to play. You will have to teach her. Casually you tear a hole through her stockings. A perfect hole.

Bad puppy, you whisper. Look what you made me do. You like the way she smells now. Sweaty. A rank snarl of animal fear cutting through her floral perfume. She is wearing pale blue panties despite the lace bra. Not her best underwear. She didn’t dream she would actually be getting naked tonight. She didn’t plan on meeting you. You are rubbing and rubbing her through her underwear while she is still trying to move away. Her eyes so wide and full of tears. You like the wet. You lick the tears away with your tongue and the salt makes you hard. Very, very hard. You are having so much fun. It’s fun to play, after such a long time-out. She’s smelling the way you like her to smell. You want to eat the way she smells now. You can smell women like a pig smells truffles. Snuffle, snuffle for the truffle. The wet begins to show. Now you ease down the pale blue panties.

Is my little puppy wet?

You want to know.

You place one knuckle on her pink nub and gently rub. Rub-a-dub-dub on the nub. You will make her as hard as you. You give it a tiny pull. She moans. Through your hand, your fingers on her tongue. You are tireless. You are strong.

You like that? you ask. Yes. Yes, she must like it. You are sure she does. They always do. Thumb rubbing and circling, your fingers climbing down. The eensy weensy spider. And then they go in. Slowly, slowly up, up into the tight, wet, slick dark. So tight and wet in spite of herself. Two fingers up in dark pink pinkness. From somewhere far away you hear puppy whimpering louder and louder.

Shut up, you say. Be a good puppy.

Now you have two hands in her. One in her mouth and one in her cunt. You could spin her like a top. Spin and spin and spin. Maybe you will. But she is squirming and moaning too much. You give her shoulders a little shake. Shake ’n bake.

Play nice, you say.

You don’t say, however, that you will play nice. You will not play nice.

She’s your first drink after the drought, your first bite after the famine. Hers are the first streaks, the first leaks of bold and brilliant color. You intend to savor every drop.

In the Beginning you did not hunt; you merely sought out and destroyed.

In the Beginning you were swift and did not linger. You took what you needed, you harvested the Vessel, and you were gone. But as the ages of time passed you began to love the colors humming in your veins and pumping through your heart. Each color brought you closer to life, gave you a deeper understanding of how it is lived, so different from the nothing of nothingness, the great absence.

You began to slow down.

You began to enjoy.

You will tell her more stories. Stories to make her eyes wide and her thighs tighten as she tries to draw backward. That’s why it’s safer when you tie them up. You learned that long ago. It’s for her own good. Otherwise she’ll move too much, more than you like, and you’ll have to stop her moving. Then she won’t last too long. This has happened before. Bad girls don’t get playtime.

The pills and wine are really taking effect now. You think that she won’t give you much more resistance at this stage. Your joy and their suffering always end too soon. You’ll have to show her the knife. That should wake her up, for a little while anyway. You open your elegant Italian leather bag—those Italians really have style—and bring out a few of your favorite things.

You expertly gag her with the soft red silken scarf you keep for just such an occasion. Once she can no longer scream, you hold out your blade for her to see.

You smile. You can tell that this one is going to be a fighter after all.

As you prepare her for your true purpose, you call her the name you’ve wanted to call her all evening.

You lean over and softly call her Katherine.

She stares up at you blearily, the tears leaking down her face. Wet, wet, wet all over. Woozily she shakes her head. That is not her name, and more amusing still, it has dawned on her that maybe if you realize that you have the wrong woman, you’ll let her go.

Oh, I’m so sorry, I’ve made a mistake, you’ll say.

This you can’t resist.

You ask if she means she is not Katherine Emerson. You allow your forehead to wrinkle charmingly. She violently shakes her head, making as much noise as she can through the gag. Which isn’t much. You know how to tie a gag. You ask again if she’s positive. Her head turns wildly from side to side and clammy desperate sounds come through the silken scarf. The light grows in her eyes. She might still have a chance of escaping you. You’re complete crazy, and maybe this has been the key all along.

She’s Kathleen, not Katherine. Kathleen, she tries to tell you through the gag, my name is Kathleen. Kathleeeeen! But it comes out Eeem, eeeem!

Well, in that case, you say cheerfully and move over her as if to release her bonds. The desperate look of hope and relief in her eyes is truly delightful. Really, she is a lovely woman.

Then you laugh and call her silly puppy, straighten up and step away. Just for the pleasure of seeing her face turn ashen. You drink it in.

Terror is the color of under the bed, it is the color of bone marrow and the color of chalk, it wails like sirens, it hums like wasps, it thuds like an MRI machine, it tastes of sweat, it tastes of metal, it tastes of rising bile, it feels like the scrape of cement against skin, it thumps like a pounding heart.

You come back to the present with a sigh. As pleasurable as this is, you have a mission.

And she is only a means to the Vessel.

Katherine, who woke you from your darkness.

Katherine, who calls you ever closer.

Katherine, your destiny.

Katherine, the perfect one.

Katherine, the only one.

You turn back to Kathleen, bound and gagged on the couch.

Kathleen, your generous provider, the first woman you will harvest from. Her glorious hues of lust and of terror, confined within her skin, cry out to be unlocked.

Thank you, you say. You pick up your knife.

After all, it’s rude to keep a lady waiting.

2

Right now the man wearing the cardboard box is telling me about Mexican food.

He looks me in the face as he tells me all about a restaurant called Agave that I must try. I want to look back but I’m not used to so much eye contact. I’m also not used to barely dressed men earnestly telling me about restaurants. My hindbrain is squeaking at me to look down. I want to see his penis. I do not want to see his penis. I never remember specific penises anyway. I appreciate them but I don’t remember them as individuals.

Distracted, distracted, distracted, distracted, distracted, distracted.

Right now the man wearing the cardboard box is telling me about empanadas.

They’re the best I’ve ever had, he says, one hundred percent guaranteed organic.

He looks me full in the face as he says this. This is not normal in conversations. In normal conversations the eyes tend to naturally slide away and return. No one maintains this much eye contact unless he is taming a dog, or looking at his infant or at his lover in bed. It’s unsettling.

The place is called Agave because they don’t use any sugar, and if you’re serious about Mexican food, you have to try it.

Currently I am at an ABC party. ABC stands for Anything But Clothes. I myself am wearing only a curtain. Although theoretically the curtain qualifies as not clothes, it is, in fact, material and therefore has already created a hostile environment with those who take the theme of this party seriously. The people who take this party seriously are the two plump girls and three small hairy men dancing with them. It’s been a thin and grudging spring and everyone is tired of layers.

I don’t mind the lack of clothes though I find it strangely decadent given what’s happening. They just found another girl. That makes three this month. Three girls found in their own apartments with their throats slit, intricate carvings all over their bodies. No one can talk of anything else.

They’re saying it’s a serial killer.

They can’t work out how he gets in.

Shit, it’s so scary. And she was only found after a week?

These days when I go to a party I want to get just a little tipsy on red wine. I want to talk about movies seen and unseen, and a smattering of politics, with people who mostly share my viewpoints. I want to flirt and laugh and maybe even dance to a song like Love Machine by the Miracles. Now I’m clutching a plastic cup of punch, wishing I were at a laid-back bar where no one is standing around in items that are anything but clothes, talking about murder victims. This party is the reason I wish I were married. I wish I were in a serious relationship, or even a not-so-serious relationship. This party makes me wish I were watching TV, eating Thai, or Chinese, or Japanese, or something ending with -ese takeout. Takeout and my socked feet on someone else’s lap.

I was blackmailed into attending by one of my remaining single, gay friends, Colin. Come, he had said, to a divine party. He had asked me way in advance. I had said yes. Single and gay is a windfall. I don’t have many of those left. I can’t afford to lose him.

Only after I had accepted did he tell me that it was a costume party. The bastard. The worst part is that I could be with David. But I thought it would have been rude to bail on Colin, Colin who now sits too close to the host of the party. And I thought I would play a little hard to get with David. Don’t look too eager, said my friends who have husbands. Make him work, said my friends who have steady boyfriends and long-term partners.

I made the mistake of listening to people who have forgotten what it’s like, and now I’m sitting alone and furious in a curtain, wanting to go home. Scantily clad people are having earnest conversations. I watch their teeth gleaming in the dim light. Some lounge on the couches; others stand in small circles. They move as if underwater. I sit on the couch. I stare at my phone. Nothing.

I am waiting for a text. There’s no reason why he should text, but still, I want him to text. I could have been with him tonight. We met just over a week ago and now I sit and wait for a text.

Last week I was waiting at the Morgan Library to meet him. Although it was already almost seven o’clock the lobby was flooded with light. Some museums stay open late on Fridays and I thought it was a classy suggestion for a first date. The shining sweep of wooden floor and the clean architectural lines make you feel that (a) you are getting your money’s worth of culture and (b) you really should do something about organizing your apartment space. Although I was early I was looking at my watch, a nervous habit I’ve had since forever, when this guy walked up and asked me:

Do you know what time the museum closes today?

I was about to answer when I looked at him properly. He was long and lanky with light brown hair that flopped onto his forehead, round glasses, gray eyes, an oval chin.

David?

Katherine?

When he smiled he looked even better than he had online.

I’m so glad it’s you, he said.

Why?

Because if you weren’t Katherine I was going to have to pretend you were anyway.

Thanks, I think.

Shall we go in? He had bought tickets already.

It was a good time to come; the tourists had largely dissipated to take in an early meal before their Broadway musical, and the evening crowd of locals was only beginning to arrive. We walked through the atrium, all acoustics magnified, past the little café in the center with its small steel chairs and round white tables. A couple of waiters were glaring at two doughy women in sneakers and fanny packs who lingered, deep in conversation, over the remnants of their cooling cappuccinos. I thought that after we saw the exhibition we might come here for a drink. It was a little expensive but worth it for the people-watching.

We had wanted to see the Little Prince: A New York Story exhibition, but as we entered the second-floor gallery we heard the tour guide before we saw her. Haggard and authoritarian, with a mass of brittle red hair, she beckoned her charges closer.

Saint-Exupéry smoked like a chimney, she rasped at the group, who had gathered around her. She sounded judgmental. Come closer, and you can see where he burned a page.

They did, holding up their phones and wriggling offspring for a better view. David and I looked at each other in unspoken agreement, and we went to check out the woodcut exhibition on the third floor.

Here, in the more traditional hush, bowler-hatted figures printed in black blocky ink hung on the dark red walls. An illustrated copy of The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer was open under a glass display case. A stunning young black woman stood guard. She looked like she was dying to tackle anyone to the ground and break their fingers joint by joint if they so much as