She used the edge of the sink to haul herself up. She caught just a glimpse of an eight-hundred-year-old woman looking out of the mirror at her, and then she twisted the basin tap marked C. Fresh water-all the water in the world-came gushing out. She tried to voice that triumphant shriek again, but this time managed nothing but a harsh susurrant whisper. She bent over the basin, her mouth opening and closing like the mouth of a fish, and lunged into that mossy wellhead perfume. It was also the bland mineral smell which had so haunted her over all the years since her father had molested her during the eclipse, but now it was all right; now it was not the smell of fear and shame but of life. Jessie inhaled it, then coughed it out joyously again as she shoved her open mouth into the water jetting from the tap. She drank until a powerful but painless cramp caused her to heave it all back up again. It came still cool from its short visit in her stomach and sprayed the mirror with pink droplets. Then she gasped in several breaths and tried again.
The second time the water stayed down.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The water brought her back wonderfully, and when she at last turned off the tap and looked at herself in the mirror again, she felt like a reasonable facsimile of a human being-weak, hurting, and shaky on her feet… but alive and aware, just the same. She thought she would never again experience anything as deeply satisfying as those first few swallows of cold water from the gushing tap, and in all her previous experience, only her first orgasm came close to rivalling that moment. In both cases she had been totally commanded by the cells and tissues of her physical being for a few brief seconds, conscious thought (but not consciousness itself) wiped away, and the result had been ecstasy. I’ll never forget it, she thought, knowing she had forgotten it already, just as she had forgotten the gorgeous honeyed sting of that first orgasm as soon as the nerves had stopped firing off. It was as if the body disdained memory… or refused the responsibility of it.
Never mind all that, Jessie-you have to hurry!
Can’t you stop yapping at me? she responded. Her wounded wrist was no longer gushing, but it was still doing a hell of a lot more than trickling, and the bed she saw reflected in the bathroom mirror was a horror-the mattress soaked with blood and the headboard streaked with it. She had read that people could lose a great deal of blood and keep on functioning, but when they started to tip over, everything went at once. And she had to be pushing the envelope.
She opened the medicine cabinet, looked at the box of Band-Aids, and uttered a harsh caw of laughter. Her eye happened on the small box of Always maxi-pads sitting discreetly behind a clutter of perfumes and colognes and aftershaves. She knocked two or three of the bottles over dragging the box out, and the air filled with a gagging combination of scents. She stripped the paper cover from one of the pads, which she then wrapped around her wrist like a fat white bracelet. Poppies began to bloom on it almost at once.
Who would have thought the lawyer’s wife had so much blood in her? she mused, and uttered another harsh caw of laughter. There was a tin wheel of Red Cross tape on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet. She took it, using her left hand. Her right now seemed capable of very little except bleeding and howling with pain. Yet she still felt a deep love for it, and why not? When she’d needed it, when there had been absolutely nothing else, it had grasped the remaining key, put it in the lock, and turned it. No, she had nothing at all against Ms Right.
That was you, Jessie, Punkin said. I mean…we’re all you, Youdo know that, don’t you?
Yes. She knew that perfectly well.
She pushed the cover of the adhesive tape and held the roll clumsily with her right hand while she used her left thumb to lift up the end of the tape. She returned the roll to her left hand, pressed the end of the tape to her makeshift bandage, and revolved the roll around her right wrist several times, binding the already damp sanitary pad as tightly against the slash on the inside of her wrist as she could. She tore the tape off the roll with her teeth, hesitated, and then added a white, overlapping armlet of adhesive tape just below her right elbow. Jessie had no idea how much good such a makeshift tourniquet could do, but she didn’t think it could do any harm.
She tore the tape a second time, and as she dropped the much diminished roll back onto the counter, she saw a green bottle of Excedrin standing on the middle shelf of the medicine cabinet. No childproof cap, either-God be thanked. She took it down with her left hand and used her teeth to pry off the white plastic top. The smell of the aspirin tablets was acrid, sharp, faintly vinegary.
I don’t think that’s a good idea at all, Goodwife Burlingame said nervously. Aspirin thins the blood and slows clotting.
That was probably true, but the exposed nerves of the back of her right hand were now shrieking like a fire-alarm, and if she didn’t do something to damp them down a little, Jessie thought she would soon be rolling around on the floor and baying at the reflections on the ceiling. She shook two Excedrin into her mouth, hesitated, shook in two more. She turned on the tap again, swallowed them, then looked guiltily at the makeshift bandage on her wrist. The red was still sinking through the layers of paper; soon she would be able to take the pad off and wring blood out of it like hot red water. An awful image… and once she had it in her head, she could not seem to get rid of it.
If you made that worse-Goody began dolefully.
Oh, give me a break, the Ruth-voice responded. It spoke briskly but not unkindly. If I die of blood-loss now, am I supposed to blameit on four aspirin after I damned near scalped my right hand in order toget off the bed in the first place? That’s surreal!
Yes indeed. Everything seemed surreal now. Except that wasn’t exactly the right word. The right word was…
“Hyper-real,” she said in a low, musing voice.
Yes, that was it. Definitely it. Jessie turned around so she was facing out the bathroom door again, then gasped in alarm. The part of her head which monitored equilibrium reported that she was still turning. For a moment she imagined dozens of Jessies, an overlapping chain of them, documenting the arc of her turn like frames of movie-film. Her alarm deepened as she observed that the golden bars of light slanting in through the west window had taken on an actual texture-they looked like swatches of bright yellow snakeskin. The dust motes spinning through them had become sprays of diamond grit. She could hear the fast light beat of her heart, could smell the mixed aromas of blood and well-water. It was like sniffing an ancient copper pipe.
I’m getting ready to pass out.
No, Jess, you’re not. You can’t afford to pass out.
That was probably true, but she was pretty sure it was going to happen, anyway. There was nothing she could do about it.
Yes, there is. And you know what.
She looked down at her skinned hand, then raised it. There would be no need to actually do anything except relax the muscles of her right arm. Gravity would take care of the rest. If the pain of her peeled hand striking the edge of the counter weren’t enough to drag her out of this terrible bright place she suddenly found herself in, nothing would be. She held the hand beside her bloodsmeared left breast for a long moment, trying to nerve herself up enough to do it. Finally she lowered it to her side again. She couldn’t-simply could not. It was one thing too much. One pain too much.