24
Playmate asked, “What did you think of Kayne?”
“Honest answer, Play? I never saw her before in my life. But I wanted to trip her and beat her to the floor. And ten seconds after that I just wanted to beat her. And ten seconds after that I was completely confused about what I wanted. And right now the animal side of my soul is screaming at me not to walk away from this wonderful chance. There’s a perverse, self-destructive urge in there somewhere that she just shrieks out to.”
He wasn’t offended. “That’s how a lot of men react. You a little faster than most, but that’s just you being you. And after years of studying Kayne Prose I think it’s all because of what’s going on inside her. She doesn’t just hurt herself in these doomed relationships. And the harder it is on the guys, the harder they try to make it work.”
We were strolling. Playmate needed to air out some thoughts. It was clear that he was a Kayne Prose addict and willing to risk destruction. And maybe Kayne Prose thought too much of Playmate to give him a hit of poison.
People are the strangest creatures.
“What’s it all mean?” I asked, just to keep open the windows of his mental house.
“I think it means that Kayne has a low-grade form of what the Dead Man has. The mind thing.” Which could mean another wizard in the woodpile, a generation further back. “Just enough to read you faintly and to touch you just as weakly. Without knowing it on a conscious level. But using it all the time when men are around. In such a way that whatever is going on inside her will be reflected right back at her from outside. And maybe it’ll feed on itself if it starts running into something dark.”
I considered. “You could be right.” I started trying to compare, in my head, Kayne Prose’s impact with the jolt my friend Katie could deliver. Katie can reduce this man to jelly with just a look. When Katie gets interested there are no distractions. Katie is the closest I’ve ever come to having had a religious epiphany.
I’d just considered that to be a matter of focus. But maybe it was something more. Maybe there was a weak, crude mental connection involved.
Playmate said, “It’s just a hypothesis.” With a tone so defensive that an apology was implied.
“A damned good hypothesis, I’d say. You ought to get completely alone with her sometime, no distractions whatsoever, and test it out.”
He sputtered.
“Play? You’re embarrassed?”
“I’m not that kind of guy, Garrett.”
“Maybe you ought to be. Tell me about Kayne’s other kids. Are they problem folks like their mother and brother?”
“Not like their mother and brother. But problems enough. You’ll like Cassie.”
He didn’t tell me much more. But he was right about Cassie. Cassie was a very likeable child indeed.