In Love With Rachel

"It's your turn, Taylor," she says. "Tell me a story"

Playboy's College Fiction Contest Winner

Taylor Orders a vodka martini. Made with Finlandia vodka, he specifies. He is late, but Rachel, as he has known she would be, is later. He watches the barman mix his drink and admires the skills--the quick, sure movements, handling the bottles with ease, putting them back without looking, the spill-less pour. The making of a vodka martini is a comforting routine, something Taylor knows he can depend on. There is a story that goes with the bar. Taylor knows this from talking to the present owner. He told him the man who originally opened it did so in 1912. He sold it in 1918, though, after his son was gassed and died in the third wave over the top at Ypres. Mustard gas, Taylor remembers.

Hanging on the wall opposite a picture of Cole Porter in a tux and slicked-back hair is a gas mask. It is old--its leather peeling, hoses cracked, eyepieces thick and cloudy like the glasses of someone with very bad vision. Taylor doesn't know if he believes the story about the bar. Probably, it has been there long enough, though. He doesn't know where Ypres is or what mustard gas does to you.

The barman puts a napkin down and then puts the drink in its frosted glass on the napkin. Taylor's money, including a dollar tip, is already on the bar. Taylor takes his drink to an overstuffed red-leather booth at the back of the room, where he can see the entrance. His feet rise off the floor as he sinks into the sagging springs. He touches the breast pocket of his blue blazer for the envelope, then pulls it out to be sure. After drinks, Taylor has planned dinner and a play for himself and Rachel. He has made the dinner reservation for 7:15 at a new restaurant he has heard is very good. He checks the tickets' date and the time and seat numbers. The play is also new and it received a very good review in the Times, though Taylor, not trusting the reviewer, called an actor friend, who assured him it should not be missed. Taylor puts the tickets away and takes a sip of his drink, holding it on his tongue. It is well made, the proper mix of vodka and vermouth, chilled just right.

It is 4:15 when Rachel walks in, searching the room for him, while Taylor watches her from behind. Other men in the bar look at her, too. They turn away from their talk and drinks and look. Taylor understands. She is beautiful--tall and thin, with a girlish figure and thick, curly light-brown hair she tries to keep tied back with a slim black ribbon. No make-up. Dressed in a simple but expensive white-cotton dress, her legs stock-ingless, long and slightly tanned, her shoes open-toed and red.

Those shoes. Taylor has seen those shoes before, those ugly shoes. He was with Rachel when she bought them. They were walking and the shoes in a store window caught her eye. Immediately, Rachel ran into the store. Later, she explained that she had felt sorry for the shoes. They were so ugly no one else would have bought them. And if she didn't, little children in Ecuador would starve. Starting at the age of four, they are forced to leave their homes in the barrio and go out into the jungle and trap anteaters for the leather. They leave their mothers and fathers, everyone they care for, and travel alone. They don't want to, they are frightened in the jungle, it is dark and scary, but they have no choice. It is what they have always done. The anteaters are big, with bristly fur, sharp claws and long, rough tongues that feel like sandpaper on the skin. They live in holes dug deep into the earth. Sometimes the children have to crawl down into these to catch them. Sometimes the children meet another child already in the hole and they hunt together, clinging to each other. Either way, alone or in pairs, it is very dangerous work. Fire red, two straps hugging the instep, heels too sharp--Taylor hates those shoes.

Rachel turns around and searches the back of the barroom. Taylor admires the way she moves--light, graceful, her dress flaring out at the hem like a dancer's. And she did used to be a dancer, when she was younger. She dreamed of being a great ballerina, of traveling all over the world. But then one day she was warming up, just moving slowly across the floor, and she fell. She never danced again. It was her medial collateral, a very important connection, she told him. The one that holds everything else together. Taylor has seen the small scar on her right knee. The orthopedist brought in a plastic surgeon to close the incision. He knew she was a young girl with pretty legs and did good work. It barely shows.

Rachel catches sight of Taylor, waves a big wave, as if she has just come back from a long trip, and walks toward him. He does not wave back. "I'm sorry I'm late," Rachel says, standing before him at the edge of the booth.

She captures his hand in mid-air and slides into the opposite side of the booth. The bartender comes over and she orders a drink, like Taylor's, and smiles again, soft pink lips sliding over hard white teeth.

The drink arrives and Rachel takes a sip. "Do you want to know why I'm late?" she asks. Taylor clears his throat to answer and Rachel pulls his hand across the shiny black table toward her, wrapping it up tightly with her other hand. "Well, I had trouble with a cab. At first I couldn't find one and when I finally did, it had the most peculiar driver. Do you want to hear about him?"

With his free hand, Taylor fidgets with his drink, drawing a careful grid in the condensation clinging to the cold glass. "OK," he says. "Tell me about this cabdriver."

Relaxing her grip on his hand, Rachel leans back into the heavy red upholstery. "To begin with," she says, "he was foreign. But they all are nowadays, aren't they? I don't know exactly where he was from. From the East, definitely, but not Arab or Chinese. From somewhere in between--one of those little mountain countries where it snows all the time and the men all carry rifles on their backs because there are bandits everywhere. His English was good, though; very practiced, I guess you could call it. But not schoolish. More like he had learned it from watching old movies and speaking along with a dialog."

"He sounded like Cary Grant?" Taylor asks.

"No," Rachel answers, "but he did have an accent. Not like Cary Grant's but one that was very thick and rich, like cream. That's not what you notice most about him, though."

"No?"

"The shaved head, that's probably what really gets your attention. Smooth and shiny. That and the mustache. The mustache was definitely hard to ignore."

"A mustache that can't be ignored?"

"Well, it was so big, how could you?" Rachel says. "Anyway, I flagged him down in the Village and told him I had to go uptown. I told him I was late. Traffic was heavy, but he drove very fast, with great skill, weaving in and out, making pedestrians jump back onto the curb. We hadn't gone very far, though, when he suddenly pulled over. I gave him the address again, thinking that maybe he had forgotten it and was lost. But he just shook his head. 'Is there something wrong with the cab?' I asked, but he didn't answer. I sat there for the longest time, not knowing what to do. It was very strange."

"How long?" Taylor asks, concerned.

"I don't know," Rachel says with a small shrug of her narrow shoulders. "A long time. And when I finally reached for the door handle, he turned around quickly and grabbed my hand. 'Don't worry,' I told him, 'I'll pay what's on the meter.' It was then I noticed he was crying. Heavy tears rolled down his face and collected in his mustache.

"'No,' he said, shaking his hairless head but letting go of my hand. 'Do not worry about money. All I want from you is for you to listen. I have a story to tell, a very sad story. I must tell someone. I cannot ride around all day with people close enough to me to touch and not tell them. It is too hard to keep it inside me. Please, would you listen?' Really, Taylor, I didn't know what to do. It was scary, so I told him I would listen. What else could I do?"

"You could have got out of the cab and hailed another one," Taylor says. He glances over at the bar quickly. It is crowded, not a seat open, and people are beginning to drink with their sleeves rolled up.

Rachel's thick hair is coming free from its ribbon and falling down over her shoulders. Taylor notices how even in the dim light of the bar, the loose ends shine.

"He was a hard worker," she continues. "Days, nights, holidays--no shift was too long. He even started to sleep in the garage so he could take over for any of the other drivers who were sick or just too tired to go on. And he was really close to getting what he wanted when something happened and ruined everything."

"Someone checked his immigration, status."

"You see, one night, after he had been out driving for hours," Rachel says, "he went back into the garage to get some rest before going out for the morning rush hour. This was during the very same week that everything he had worked for was to come true. That's important to know. He was going to get his own medallion and he was going to be reunited with his wife. He had already sent her the airline ticket.

"Anyway, he was so excited he couldn't sleep. So, to pass the time, he started playing backgammon with some of the other drivers. He really loved backgammon, used to play it all the time back in his native country; but after he came to America and started working, he never allowed himself to play. He didn't want to waste the time. This night was an exception, though. He felt he could relax.

"He started to play with a new driver and the games were very difficult and close. The new man played recklessly, relying more on luck than anything else. My driver knew he was a better player, but he still kept on losing. He lost game after game."

Resting her slim, tanned arms on the table, Rachel leans toward Taylor. "It was not so much that he lost that bothered him but the way he lost. All his clever gambits and patient plans were swept aside by his opponent's impulsive gambles and lucky throws of the dice. He became very angry. When the other driver suggested they bet on the games, he accepted."

"Even though he kept on losing?" Taylor asks.

"That's right," Rachel says. "The thing is, the other driver kept on winning. His luck never ran out. This only made my driver even angrier and he kept on increasing their wagers."

"That was a very foolish thing to do."

"Maybe, but he couldn't quit."

"Why not?"

"Because he had already started to play, and once you start, you can't quit," Rachel says. "But listen, things got even worse. Gradually, he realized he was being tricked. The new driver wasn't just lucky. He had seen it before with other very good backgammon players. They pretend to be lucky fools, but all the time they are really playing a very subtle and sophisticated game. Now it was he who felt like a fool, but he couldn't back down. It was too late. As the stakes grew, the dispatcher called in the other drivers from the road and the garage became filled with men straining to see the action on the board, the movement of the dice."

"Why didn't one of them stop him?" Taylor asks.

"Because...."

"Because why? Weren't they his friends? It doesn't make sense."

"Because they couldn't, that's all," Rachel says. "He wouldn't have let them. The game went on and in time, everything he had worked so hard for was lost. This man whom he barely knew had won the good life that was going to be his and his wife's.

"Then, still sitting over the board, he took out his wallet, Taylor, and pulled out a picture of his wife. An old black-and-white picture showing her standing next to a fountain in a garden in a country thousands of miles away. He showed it to the other driver, who was impressed by her beauty, and suggested that they play one more game. If he lost, he would give him his wife."

"They started to play for this guy's wife?" Taylor asks. "What kind of thing is that to do?"

"He had to keep on playing. He didn't even really know why. Part of it was that he had lost and wanted to get even. He wanted to show he was the better player, that he was in control. But there was something else, too. He just couldn't seem to quit, even though he knew he should. They started another game, but he couldn't concentrate. The dice felt so heavy he could barely lift them, the black and white pieces blurred together and he couldn't tell them apart. Of course, he lost.

"As you can imagine, he was destroyed. He left the garage and was certain he would have to kill himself. Back where he came from, he would have put the rifle that had belonged to his father--and his father before him--in his mouth (continued on page 138) Rachel (continued from page 101) and pulled back the trigger with his toe. Or he would have thrown himself into some snowy mountain gorge. Obviously, he couldn't do those things in New York, but there are plenty of bridges and tall buildings and subway platforms to jump off of. It is easy to kill oneself in New York. But then he realized that would not be good enough. He owed his wife even more.

"So, for the longest time, he walked the streets. He was in a daze. It had been cold but had turned warm suddenly and he was covered with sweat. All the people on the street were in good spirits, their faces bright and happy, and the cabdriver looked at them and couldn't understand how they could be that way when he was so miserable. Late in the day, after wandering around for hours, he found himself in front of a tattoo parlor in the Bowery, on a street filled with boarded-up hotels, dark storefronts, alleys blocked with razor wire."

Rachel stops telling the cabdriver's story to take a sip of her drink, holding the cold liquor in her mouth. She pushes some of her stubborn curly hair behind her ears, smooths her dress in her lap and smiles. "Do you know what happened at the tattoo parlor?" she asks. Taylor shakes his head, looking at her lips wet from the martini. Slowly, he raises his hand and glances down at his Rolex.

"I thought we'd go to dinner," he says. "There's this new restaurant. I was told it's very good. The Times gave it two stars."

"The Cajun one?" Rachel asks. "The one where the chef went to Harvard but then dropped out to study cooking with some old woman in a swamp. He lost an arm hunting alligators."

"I don't know," Taylor says. "Maybe it's a different one. I made reservations for seven-fifteen." He looks up at Rachel, catching her bright green eyes.

"Do you want to know what happened in the tattoo parlor?" she asks again, and this time Taylor nods slowly. "Good," she says.

"You see, all the time the cabdriver was telling me his story, he kept on wiping away the tears on his cheeks with the back of his hand. It was strange. Some of the tears wouldn't go away, no matter how hard he seemed to rub.

"'You have noticed!' he said to me, very excited. 'These tears on my face that will not be wiped away. Yes, they are tattoos!' Those are what he had done that first night in the tattoo parlor. He called them reminders of his pain, tears that will last forever. But they were only the beginning. Since then, he has gone back to the tattoo parlor every day."

"He was probably in prison," Taylor says. "I saw something about that on TV, tattoos of tears. The reporter said it was some kind of initiation rite. They do it with ballpoint pens."

"I saw that, too. The reporter got his wife to claim he had raped her so he'd be sent to Attica and could see what it was really like. She was supposed to recant her story in a few months but started to have an affair and decided she didn't want him back. So she kept silent. He tried everything to get out--wrote letters to newspapers, his Congressman, the President, even went on a hunger strike...."

"Anyway," Taylor says, "you should really be more careful. Are you sure you didn't get his name or number?"

"No, Taylor," Rachel says. "You aren't paying attention. Listen. The cabdriver undid a bright-blue scarf that he had wrapped tightly around his neck and unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. What I saw were slim, delicate fingers--a woman's fingers--curling around his neck. They were the most amazing color: pale gold, as if lighted by the sun, with nails of flaming red. On one finger, there was a wedding band that was a sick, tarnished green. Farther down his neck, I could see the hands that these fingers belonged to, hands that rose up out of his shirt. And on his chest, I could see the top of a head--thick, wavy black hair, wild and unkempt, the beginning curve of a forehead. It was exactly as if a woman were on top of him, resting her head on his chest, making love to him or struggling to hold him down and choke out his life."

"He had a whole woman tattooed on him?" Taylor asks.

"That's right."

"Everything? I mean ... in color?"

"In the tattoo parlor, he gave the artist a picture of his wife and told him that he wanted it done life-size, just as if she were on top of him."

"All done with those needles?" Taylor asks. "Like they do hearts on sailors' biceps? One prick at a time. That would be----"

"Excruciating," Rachel says. "And slow, too. The artist warned him about that. He also told him it would be very expensive. He did not work cheap. But the driver said that was not a problem. He welcomed the pain and no longer had anything else to work for. Now he drives his cab and takes whatever he earns down to the tattoo parlor. The artist stays open for him and they work through the night. The cabdriver is his greatest creation. The picture of his wife is almost finished: When it is, the cabdriver said there will be no escape. His wife went with the other driver, just as he said she would. He has not seen either of them since. He heard they moved to Florida. When he stands before a mirror, she stands in front of him. When he makes love to another woman, she lies between them. He can always feel her fingers on his throat."

Rachel is finished. She smiles at Taylor. It is a small smile, but it grows. "So, that's why I'm late," she says. "What do you think?"

Taylor looks at her. He doesn't know what to think. He never knows. The story about the cabdriver may or may not be true. That hardly matters. It is the story that matters, and that's all. A story is a story and it is the duty of the teller to make it as interesting as possible. Those are the rules Rachel plays by.

•

The bartender brings over a second round of drinks without being asked. Taylor takes a quick sip and then looks at his watch again. "We can still go to the theater," he says. "There's still time. It's supposed to be a fine play."

"I heard about that play," Rachel says. "The playwright is from South America somewhere and he was imprisoned for years by the ruling junta. They tortured him, beat his feet with rubber hoses, worked him over with a cattle prod."

"A cattle prod? The electric kind?" Taylor asks. He takes a gulp of his drink.

Rachel picks up her glass, holds it up to her mouth and then bites gently down on the rim with her front teeth. She sticks the tip of her tongue down into the glass until it just touches the surface of the liquor. "Hmmm ..." she says, setting the glass down. "No, I don't think I want to go to the play." She reaches across the table and touches his arm. "Now it's your turn, Taylor," she says, playing with the cuff of his shirt. "Tell me a story."

Rachel knows she is a good storyteller. It is something she has worked very hard for. She also knows that Taylor is not. Despite this, Rachel is not willing to give up. She cares too much for Taylor and feels that, with her help, there may be some hope for him. In the pursuit of a story, she is both uncompromising and relentless. Taylor has known this about Rachel since the time they met. He had been taken to an art opening by a friend (continued on page 162)Rachel(continued from page 138) and noticed Rachel standing at the edge of the crowd. She looked out of place and a little silly to him, dressed in a black-silk dress and rubber beach sandals. She was very beautiful, though, and on his way out, he asked if she would like to share a taxi with him. It was snowing, not the best weather for beach sandals. Rachel said she would and during the ride uptown, she told him about herself. She worked at another gallery, so went to lots of openings. She didn't care for her job, though, and made no secret of it. She supposed they might get around to firing her, but that didn't bother her. She lost jobs all the time, it seemed. It was her tenth job since leaving college. What she really wanted to do was to be a painter herself.

Obviously, she was very confused. Taylor had seen women like her before--at college, at parties, walking down the street. They always seemed to work in galleries, sell flowers from street carts with bright umbrellas, go to Europe to study and have affairs with married Frenchmen or German anarchists from wealthy families. He understands women like her and usually they don't interest him. But there was something else about Rachel. In the cab, he listened to her talk, slid closer to her on the hard seat. And when, right before the cab reached his building, Rachel asked him to tell her a story, he told the driver to keep driving. That first cab ride ended up costing him $72.40.

Once, Taylor recalls, after he and Rachel had been going out a few months, she grabbed hold of him and wouldn't let him get out of bed and go to the bathroom until he told her a story. He had tried and tried. Finally, in desperation, he dredged up what he knew was a rather lame anecdote about Rusty, a calico cat he had had when he was seven.

Almost in disgust, Rachel had let him get up. While he was in the bathroom, though, standing over the bowl, she stood outside the door and told him another story of her own. She was just a little girl, no more than five or six. Standing in the back of her big sister's closet, enjoying the dark, the lingering smell of perfume on the clothes, the delicious danger of being in a place that was forbidden to her, Rachel was surprised by the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. The door to the room opened and she heard the voices of her sister and her boyfriend. Boys were forbidden in the bedroom. Rachel would have loved to tell on her, but their parents were out and she was trapped, afraid to move.

The two of them giggling, the sound of the window being pushed open. She could smell cigarette smoke, another thing her sister was forbidden to do. Then Rachel heard the sound of zippers being pulled and snaps being undone, her sister's vague protests, which soon gave way to laughter, and the bedsprings' squeak. Suddenly, Rachel had to go--really had to go--to the bathroom. There was no escape. She waited and waited, but they were still out there--the bed rocking up and down, a few soft, whispered words, the Beatles' album Rubber Soul playing over and over again on her sister's small phonograph. Rachel began to cry. She wiggled and cried. The dark closet frightened her now. She was afraid of what would happen when she was found out. Her parents would punish her. Her sister would hate her. And what was her sister doing, anyway? Was she OK?

As the first drops began to trickle down her legs, Rachel crawled into the very back of the closet. There she found an old can of moth balls. She had always loved the smell of moth balls. In the dark, tugging down her panties, she squatted, held the can between her legs and peed.

The smell filled the closet, clung to the clothes. It made Rachel's skin feel electric and prickly, made her eyes water. She had never smelled anything quite like it before, anything so strong and intoxicating. It was strange, though. She suddenly felt faint and began to cough. She tried not to--her sister would hear--but she couldn't help herself. Something was wrong. Her throat burned and she collapsed on the floor. There were loud voices in the room, her sister's and her boyfriend's; they had heard. Then there was a long, long scream.

She awoke in the hospital. Her mother was there and her father, standing around the bed. Her sister was there, too, sitting in tears in a chair near the door. A thin sheet of plastic separated Rachel from all three of them. Later, Rachel learned there had been a chemical reaction between the moth balls and her urine. Some sort of gas had been created that had made her pass out. It spread into the bedroom and made her sister's boyfriend pass out, too, when he was still on top of her sister. She had thought he died and screamed so loud that the neighbors called the police. That was how the police found them when they burst through the door.

After hearing this story, Taylor came out of the bathroom and was unable to sleep. He sat up that night in a chair, watching Rachel sleep peacefully. Whenever he felt himself drift off, he slapped himself hard across the face.

Also, since that night, Taylor has become convinced he has exhausted his life's resource of stories. Every sadistic football coach, lecherous baby sitter, outrageous roommate and senile relative he has ever encountered has been put to use.

Recently, Taylor has even tried to recycle stories he has already told Rachel. He has shifted them around, changed some names, switched locations. But Rachel sees right through their flimsy fabric. She takes his deceit rather badly, too. It is almost as if he has betrayed her. Taylor knows he could make something up, something completely fictitious and outrageous, and Rachel would be pleased. That is what she is after.

Each evening, he looked back on his day, saw it stretched out behind him and shook his head. What happened was what he had expected to happen. It did not beg comment, let alone retelling. Taylor began to feel for the first time at a loss, strangely helpless. Maybe it would be possible for him to borrow some stories from his friends and co-workers. David, who worked in Research, two floors below Taylor's, had been in Vietnam. He had flown in B-52s, a navigator, so he knew the country only from a long distance away, looking through a tiny window. But he still knew many things that he would talk about when asked. He knew the sound the bombs made when they exploded: thunder, as if somewhere it were going to rain. Actually, he had never really heard that sound. They dropped the bombs and were already on their way back home to Thailand by the time they hit the ground. But once, while sitting in a restaurant in Bangkok, David talked to a Marine who had heard the bombs. He told him what it was like. Taylor was too young to have been in Vietnam, and Rachel knew it. Still, he thought he might be able to use some of David's stories. He would change the specific details, but maybe the principle would still apply.

Taylor looks at Rachel, who sits waiting patiently. He sighs deeply. "How would you like to go to a movie?" he asks.

Someone has left behind a newspaper in the booth, the Post. Taylor picks it up and looks for the movie listings. Before he finds them, he passes articles about how coffee causes cancer, certain vegetables prevent cancer and a woman in New Jersey whose husband has been locked up in a Russian prison since 1918. "Here," he says. "Around the corner, there is one about pirates who get sent into the future and teenagers who get sent into the past. Down the block, there is one about a woman who kills her child in a concentration camp."

Rachel shakes her head. "No, Taylor," she says. "It's your turn."

She waits. Taylor clears his throat. He begins one story and stops. Then another.

Rachel waits, carefully shredding her napkin and then trying to fit all the pieces back together again. As he struggles, she absent-mindedly runs her index finger along the rim of her glass. There is an unseen chip and on the third pass, the finger is cut. A drop of blood appears. Rachel holds the finger over the glass. The drop grows heavier and heavier and then falls into the drink. The cool, clear liquor is infused with streaks of bright red. A new drop appears on the finger replacing the old. Rachel holds it up to her face and looks at it casually. She sticks it into her mouth and gently sucks.

Taylor watches Rachel's glass. The tiny drop of blood spreads easily throughout the drink. It does not float to the surface or sink. No part is safe from it.

"Do you remember that story I told you?" Rachel asks.

"I remember," Taylor says, still staring at the drink, his voice loud enough for people at the other tables to hear. He does remember: the summer she turned 16, out all night on the beach with her boyfriend, huddled under a blanket, kissing and drinking strawberry wine, the fight with her father when she got home that ended up with his calling her a slut. Twenty-nine stitches in her left hand. That was how Rachel had replied to her father's accusation. Ever since she told him, when they hold hands, Taylor catches himself carefully examining her palm. He looks for the long, thin white line.

Rachel's finger starts to bleed again. She sticks it into her mouth for a second and then holds it out on the table in front of Taylor. It is the index finger of her left hand.

"See," she says. "There's no great damage."

Taylor takes Rachel's hand. "This place should be more careful," he says. "Someone could be seriously hurt. They could sue. You should really be more careful, too." He dabs at the tiny cut with his napkin, looks at the spot of blood on the white paper and then presses down on the finger until its tip turns purple.

Rachel tells another story. It takes place in the not-too-distant past, a story about her going up to Boston for what was to be a guiltless abortion. She never told Taylor she was pregnant. Her trip to Boston was to visit friends, that was what she did tell him. Everything was going to be taken care of.

The clinic was very clean, the staff friendly. In the waiting room, all the plants had somehow been made to bloom at the same time. The doctor introduced himself and shook her hand. He told her to call him Bob. In the "procedure room," as Bob called it, there were problems. She already had the gown on, had already been put on the table, her feet were in the stirrups, but they had to wait. There were problems with the machine. Bob said there wasn't enough suction. He would have it taken care of, would see to it personally.

She was led into a small adjacent room to wait. Marge, the nurse, told her that was where she would recover, after it was over. The door to the procedure room was partially open and it was not long before she could see Bob and a man wearing blue chinos and a blue shirt with Murray written above the left pocket enter the room. Murray was carrying a big toolbox and Bob told him there was definitely a suction problem. Murray assured him that it would be no problem, it happened all the time, and he would take care of it. He pulled out a big wrench.

Back on the table again, legs apart, Rachel counted her breaths, one to ten, one to ten. Now it would be over. Bob apologized for the delay and Marge took her blood pressure and pulse. Not records but close. This would make her feel better, Bob said, taking a syringe from Marge and putting it in her vein, and he was telling the truth. Immediately, she felt better. She felt great, warm and relaxed. She felt just like she was coming, right there on the table, and that struck her as being funny. She even began to laugh. Something had to be reversed, mixed up and confused.

Later, on her way back from the clinic, she stopped at a toy store in Cambridge. It was having a sale, things left over from Christmas. She bought a big German Teddy bear that cost so much she had to use her American Express card. Spring had not arrived yet. The wind was blowing hard and cold. Bob had given her three little white pills "for the pain, one now, two later." He had told her to go right home and lie down, but she took a long walk instead, her collar turned up against the wind, the bear held tightly to her breast.

She walked for hours. Night came and she still walked. She felt that she wanted to cry, or at least that she should cry, but she couldn't. The big German bear was supposed to help; it had big soft ears and sad brown eyes. Standing alongside the Charles, she said goodbye to the bear. It had failed her and she was going to throw it into the dark, icy river.

There was something wrong. She began to shiver. Her coat was heavy and warm, but she felt so cold. And she hurt. All three of Bob's pills were gone and she still hurt. She began to walk again, trailing the Teddy bear behind her. It began to snow, a soft, late-season snow. The flakes hung in the air, caught in the light from street lamps. The snow muffled every sound, cars glided by, moving silently, like sleds on invisible runners. She couldn't even hear her own footsteps. She knew that if she called out for help or screamed, there would be nothing. Not a single sound. Stopping for a moment, she looked down at the snow beneath her feet and saw spots. Deep red, they clung to the top crust of snow and then slowly began to spread out at the edges, soaking in.

On Mass Avenue, she found a cab, slowly disappearing under the snow, and got in. Blood was everywhere. She didn't want the cabdriver to see, though, didn't want his cab to be covered with her blood. She took the German bear that cost $117 and wedged it tightly between her legs. She was sure it could absorb every drop of blood she had in her. It was a big bear.

In the emergency room, they took the bloody bear away from her. She held tight, but it slipped away. A little boy who was waiting with a bag of ice held over one eye saw the bear and began to cry. It was given to a black orderly wearing a white T-shirt with yellow stains. She watched as he shoved it through a little door in the hall marked Incinerator. She began to cry.

•

Rachel and Taylor slide out of the booth and meet at the end of the table. Rachel smiles at him, touching his shoulder. "It's OK," she says. "You can give me one later." Rachel fusses with her hair, trying to keep it back, but gives up. Taylor sets down a $20 bill for the bartender.

It is late. They have been in the bar for a long time. It is too late for dinner and the theater. Too late for movies. Outside it is warm, though. Spring. Several cabs pass by with their lights on. but neither Taylor nor Rachel raises a hand. They decide to walk back to Taylor's apartment. It is a long distance, but they decide to walk, anyway. They have each other for company.

Across the street, a new building is being constructed. It is just a skeleton of cement and steel, but already it is very tall. At the four corners, there are very bright lights and on every floor, workmen arc busy. They walk back and forth across the thin girders, in constant motion. The building grows higher and higher. Taylor didn't even notice it when he walked into the bar.

"Was this here before?" he asks.

"What?" Rachel asks, taking Taylor's arm and guiding him down the street.

"This building. I've never seen it. Was it here before? I want to know."

"Oh, that," Rachel says, still walking. "Haven't you heard? About the Brazilian industrialist. And his wife who disappeared in the jungle while collecting butterflies. It was thought she had gone to live with this tribe of cannibals. Anyway, he swore that if she ever came back----"

"Never mind," Taylor says, looking back over his shoulder and counting the floors.

•

Rachel and Taylor make love. Rachel sits on top of him, rocking her hips. With his eyes closed, Taylor thinks of being on a ship far out at sea. With the index finger of each hand, Rachel traces the outline of Taylor's body on the bed. She starts at the top of his head and pulls the fingers down slowly, until they are past his knees. Then she pulls them up until they meet at the beginning. Later, Taylor and Rachel lie in each other's arms. Rachel falls asleep, but Taylor cannot. He reaches over to the nightstand and grabs the remote control for the TV. He turns on the VCR but keeps the sound off. A movie he does not recognize fills the 25-inch screen. Such colors. They are so bright he has to squint. A woman dances with a Dixieland band in the streets of Las Vegas, but her husband is far away. He stands out in the desert and watches a young girl walk a tightrope under a million bright stars.

Taylor turns off the VCR and turns on the TV. He goes through the many channels. They flash before his eyes. Wars are being fought, loves falling apart, drains unplugged right there in front of him. He wonders which one he should watch but can't decide.

Taylor places the remote-control unit under his pillow and lies back down on it. The pressure from his head keeps the channel-changer button depressed and the channels whirl by, a continuous electronic scroll. He watches the pictures. The constant flash and flicker begin to make him dizzy.

Watching the TV, Taylor becomes confused. He tries to concentrate, but there, before his eyes, wars are being unstuck, drains heroically conquered, stubborn loves dissolved and washed away. He reaches under the pillow to find the remote control. He wants to turn the TV off, but it's not there. It must have slipped down between the mattress and the headboard, he decides. Taylor wedges his hand into the narrow space but can't reach it. The button is still depressed and the channels continue to whirl.

Taylor turns over onto his stomach and sticks his hand farther down in search of the remote control. He sticks it in up to the elbow and then, getting up on his knees, jams it in all the way up to his shoulder. He still can't find it. His finger tips crawl slowly, methodically over every inch of the dark space. Taylor sits up. Below him, he can see part of the outline of his body that Rachel traced. Most of it has been wiped out, but the heavy cotton sheet still holds parts--a broad shoulder, a bony hip, a left elbow. Pushing hard, feet kicking, Taylor tries to force his arm down ever farther into the narrow space, but his legs become tangled up with the blanket. Falling forward, he hits his head on the smooth oak headboard with a crack.

Lying on his back again, Taylor tries to fit back into the outline. It is almost completely gone now, but he tries, thinks he can make out some faint lines--the thigh here, the hand there--thinks he can remember how it all was. He stares at the TV, bright colors and patterns twisting back on one another as in a kaleidoscope. He breathes hard. Outside the window, Taylor hears a siren, fast and shrill, go by, and then another. He tries to concentrate again, not on the TV but on other things. He counts heartbeats, then the drawers in the dresser, the bricks in the wall.

The only thing to do, Taylor knows, is to get up and turn off the TV by hand. He feels too dizzy, sick. Desperate, he slowly lowers an exploratory foot to the floor, but he can't find it. It's not there. Suddenly, the floor, the walls, everything that used to make up the room is gone, replaced by flashing, flickering, whirling blue light.

He turns onto his side and faces away from the TV. Rachel is still asleep beside him. Taylor is so sick he doesn't know what to do. He's adrift in an angry ball of blue light and there's no escape, no other place to go. Taylor and Rachel are so close, the tips of their noses touch. He touches Rachel gently on the shoulder and she opens her eyes slowly, by fractions.

"Rachel," Taylor whispers. His throat is dry, he can barely speak. He swallows hard, but it does not help. "I have a story to tell you." Rachel smiles and Taylor sees between her lips not teeth but a thin, hard band of blue light.

"I'm listening," she says.

"I am not of your world," he continues. "My people came to earth thousands of years ago and assumed human form. We have waited. We are patient as a race. But one day a message, too faint to be heard by any ears except our own, will come from our ruler and our plans will be put into effect. Some of your people will be enslaved, some sent back to our galaxy as food; most will simply be destroyed. This was a secret, but I just thought you should know."

Rachel's smile broadens. She throws a leg over Taylor, pinning him to the mattress with a warm, soft thigh. "Oh, Taylor," she says. Her mouth is filled with blue light, her breath so hot it burns his face. "I'm so glad you told me. Because, you see, I'm not from this planet, either. It is an alien and strange place. My people came here a very long time ago. We've been at war with your race since the beginning of time." Rachel puts an arm around Taylor and holds him in a tight embrace. "And you see, Taylor, I've been waiting right here for you. I've been waiting for a million years."

"Taylor looks at her. He doesn't know what to think. Her story may or may not be true."

"Rachel heard the sound of zippers being pulled and snaps being undone and the bedsprings' squeak."

Other prize winners in Playboy's College Fiction Contest: second prize, "Looking for Johnny" by Amy Michael Homes, University of Iowa; third prizes, "Object Permanence," by Marshall Boswell, Washington & Lee University; "The Grease Man," by Stephen Coyne, University of Denver; "Life's Big Adventure," by Robin D. Lewis, University of Alaska.

Playboy College Fiction Contest

First prize, $3000 and publication in the October 1988 issue; second prize, $500 and a year's subscription; third prize, a year's subscription. The rules:

1. No purchase necessary. 2. Contest is open to all college students--no age limit. Employees of Playboy Enterprises, Inc., its agents, affiliates and families are not eligible. 3. To enter, submit your typed, double-spaced manuscript of 25 pages or fewer with a 3" x 5" card listing your name, age, college affiliation, permanent home address and phone number to Playboy College Fiction Contest, 919 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60611. Only one entry per person. All entries must be original works of fiction and must be postmarked by January 1, 1988. Mutilated or illegible entries will be disqualified. 4. Prizes will be awarded to those entrants whose stories meet Playboy's standard for quality. Playboy reserves the right to withhold prizes if the submitted entries do not meet its usual standards for publication. All decisions of the judges are final. 5. Winning contestants will be notified by mail and may be obligated to sign and return an affidavit of eligibility within 30 days of notification. In the event of noncompliance within this time period, alternate winners may be selected. Any prize-notification letter or any prize returned to Playboy Enterprises, Inc., and undeliverable may be awarded to an alternate winner. 6. Playboy reserves the right to edit the first-prize-winning story for publication. 7. Entry authorizes use of any prize winner's name, photograph and biographical information by Playboy Enterprises, Inc., without further compensation to the winner. 8. Playboy reserves the right to publish the winning entries in the U.S. and foreign editions of Playboy and to reprint the winning entries in any English-language or foreign-edition anthologies or compilations of Playboy material. 9. Contest is subject to all Federal, state and local laws and regulations. Taxes on prizes are the sole responsibility of winning contestants. Void where prohibited by law. 10. All manuscripts become the property of Playboy Enterprises, Inc., and will not be returned. For a list of winners, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Playboy Enterprises, Inc., College Fiction Contest, 919 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60611.