|
|
After Dinner on the Chesapeake
copyright 1999, by Running With Deer
Disclaimer:
The characters Dr. Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling were created by Thomas
Harris. They are used herein without permission, but in the spirit of
admiration and respect. No infringement of copyright is intended, and no
profit, of any kind, is made by the creator, maintainer or contributors to this
site.
1 of 5 | 2 of 5 | 3 of 5 | 4 of 5 | 5 of 5
PART 3
Starling slept for a time. After a week with Dr. Lecter, she had become quite accustomed to the luxury of taking several naps a day, whenever she pleased. This, of course, was somewhat different.
The thought brought her almost fully awake. There was no clock in the bedroom, but she was facing the window, and the moonlight they had enjoyed was now nearly gone. She guessed that it was at least an hour or two past midnight. Without having to turn, she knew she was alone in the bed.
She lay on her left side, her legs drawn up and the covers snugly around her. It was “good sleeping weather,” as her mother would have said, near freezing outside, the sea breeze nagging in gusts against the corners of the house. Within the walls, a ticking silence.
She moved slightly in the bed, registered that she wore nothing under the cool sheets and solid comforter, and with a deep breath, forced her eyes wide open and began her recollections of the evening. After a moment, she realized she was grinning. She buried her face in the pillow and listened to herself chuckle. She laughed until tears began to form in the corners of her eyes, and she kicked the mattress several times. Only the pervasive stillness of the night forestalled her from letting loose with the good Rebel yell she felt inside.
Finally, she rolled over to her right side and surveyed the room. The pillow next to hers had a head-sized depression. She shifted a few inches and smelled the pillow, seeking his scent. It was faint, but it was there. She stroked the ground sheet where he had lain, wondering if the warmth she felt there was from him, or just her imagination.
“Hannibal,” she whispered. Years before, as they spoke to each other through the bars at the asylum, he had indicated that she should address him as “Dr. Lecter,” which, he had said, was more appropriate to her age and station. She reflected that since then, both had risen. She thought he might not require that much formality now.
Her eyes moved around the dim room; she saw the cream silk gown she had worn for him, draped neatly over the back of the chair next to the wall. She remembered how his hands felt, whenever they had touched her—unfastening the jacket of the gown, pushing the shoulder straps aside. She remembered the fleeting tickle of his hair against her groin as he stooped to get the gown off the floor. She looked at the chair again, and saw that his clothing was no longer there.
She sat up straighter now, the laughing mood at bay. In the silent dark, she listened for… Something. Anything that might indicate he was still awake in the house, perhaps intending to come back to this room, to this bed, to her. That he hadn’t gone to the comfort of some other bed, preferring his own sleeping company to hers.
There was no sound. She lay back on the pillow, finally, feeling the calming sharpness of her own thoughts. This might, she forced herself to acknowledge, be all there was to it. If it was, she would be leaving this house after the sun came up. Her Mustang was in the garage, purse with keys in the dresser; her .45 and her boot knife—she had checked them daily, almost ritualistically. She could go back to the duplex in Arlington, where Ardelia was undoubtedly keeping a sour vigil.
She could tell Ardelia most of it, perhaps all. Anyone else would be told, under oath, that Dr. Lecter had taken marginal care of her, just enough to keep her lucid for answering his teasing questions and listening to his cruel taunts. She would tell anyone who asked that he had made some bizarre advances toward her, which she had resolutely rejected. That Lecter had declined to rape her would surprise few in the Bureau. They knew his fetish for “courtesy,” and forced sex was just too rude, too crude, too lewd—too common for Lecter. Of course, and they also knew that she was a cold fish. She was the sort of female that men raped for spite, not for sex.
And once she had told them what they wanted to hear, it would be time to put on an interview suit and start casting about for the few souls on earth who had enough pity or respect for her to extend a job offer or a favorable reference.
“All good things to those who wait,” Dr. Lecter had once said to her.
She knew a better one. All good things must come to an end.
She flipped back the sheet and padded to the bathroom. In the friendly incandescent light (Dr. Lecter allowed fluorescents only in his kitchen), she washed the stickiness off her legs, brushed her teeth and treated her elbows and knees to a dab of the body lotion she had come to adore. It was a duplicate of what he had sent her from Florence, in the box with the drawing. You are the honey in the lion, his note had said, and in the days following her humiliating hearing on the seventh floor, she had gone back to that, wishing she’d had the courage to ask Pearsall to give her the note and the gifts. But Paul Krendler had touched them, too, and maybe she wouldn’t have really wanted them.
Krendler. Behind the flowers, before and after. She had helped Hannibal Lecter eat a man’s brain. “I did that,” she whispered to her reflection in the mirror, and understood that it was the first time in about a week that she had actually seen her own image.
Starling closed her eyes. Who was she?
Whose am I? her mind echoed back.
She kept her eyes closed, and after a few seconds, raised her hand and found the switch by feel. She didn’t want the light. She stood in front of the sink, her fingertips touching the porcelain, and took measured breaths. It was the dead of night and she was naked, an inappropriate backdrop for undisciplined thoughts. She could do no harm to herself or anyone else by getting back into bed and allowing the hours to pass.
She would not allow herself to leave the bedroom and search for him.
She made her way halfway to the bed, then arranged herself instead on the cushioned banquette by the window. She felt the cold and made herself ignore it. Through a part in the drape, there was nothing to see but fog. She leaned back, closed her eyes again, and somehow found sleep.
The moon had gone on its way when the door opened softly. Dr. Lecter, in his dressing gown, paused, looking first at the empty bed and then at the figure, so obviously asleep, propped with tented knees in the window seat. He set down the tray with its glasses and pitcher of ice water, and transferred his clothing, on hangers, to a hook on the back of the door.
He went to the side of the bed nearest her and sat on its edge, silently tracking the minute movements of her torso as she breathed. It was cooler in the room now than a few hours before, and soon he would have to disturb her, lest she become chilled. But for a good quarter-hour, he remained transfixed.
When she swallowed and moved her head slightly, he approached her, wanting to waken her with a touch, but found himself unable at first to decide on the right place. At last, he reached out and settled a palm on the inside of her thigh, just above the knee.
“Clarice,” he whispered.
Fin
Part 3 of 5