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Chapter 15.
It was unnaturally quiet in my room above Smokey's that evening. Gerda, I thought, was in her room. But neither she nor her stereo were rattling the windows with the usual oohhhs and ahhhs that I'd almost but not quite got used to.
I tapped gently on her door. There was no sound. I timidly pushed it open.
Gerda was lying fully stretched on the bed - with piles of books around her. She wore a very short black dress that seemed to give up long before it reached her waist. I tried to ignore the long white legs that went on endlessly until they disappeared enticingly into a pair of tiny black briefs. I put the strong state of arousal she created in me down to hypersensitivity due to being in love and therefore irrational. I tried to think of something, anything that would dampen my ardor.
She wriggled which didn't help and looked round.
"I didn't think I'd invited you in?"
"It seemed a bit quiet, I thought you might be sick."
"Sick of studying for this exam!"
"If you could do with some help, I'm game. I could test you or whatever. Frankly, I could use the company."
"Are you still down with a bad case of the Jennifer's?" She made it sound like a disease.
"I'd rather not think about that at the moment. Things are not too good ... "
Gerda twisted round to sit with her back against the wall and passed a book to me.
"It's about obsessive personalities." She patted the bed besides her.
I took a seat and thumbed through. She was so close I could smell her and the smell was sweet. I tried to concentrate on the book but wasn't getting anywhere. Gerda's legs were just too close.
I reached out a finger and casually stroked her knee. I could see her pupils dilate and her eyes grow misty.
"There's not a single obsessive profile," said Gerda slowly. Her voice seemed to have developed husky undertones. "You have to decide which sub-profile he relates to if you want to know about him."
"Do many get dangerous?"
"Some get violent, some don't. It often depends on what the victim does."
I thought of Jennifer's plan to push her ex. to the limit and I thought of the cold eyes staring out of the photo I had pinned with two darts to the back of my wardrobe door.
"He was probably the school bully when he was young," said Gerda, thoughtfully. "He might even now be bullying his colleagues in the workplace. If he hurts somebody for whatever reason, it will be their fault not his. It's all part of his need to control; it's not about passion. He may well be incapable of a relationship, certainly a caring one. Love is merely an opportunity to impose his order on the relationship and he always has to be in the right and will shout down anybody that opposes him."
"What can be done to make him go away?"
"Any dialogue or reaction to his existence will probably be seen as encouragement. Any relationship your friend has will be seen as forced upon her against her will. Put simply, he sees things from his own, unique and very different point of view - and it's most unlikely he'll be shaken from his beliefs."
"You mean that he won't believe her when she says she doesn't love him?"
"She says that and he hears 'I can't love you because ... ' or whatever other scenario he has in his mind. She says 'I want to marry somebody else' he hears 'I'm being forced to marry him ' and seeks to remove the person who's forcing her from his life."
"You mean her friends could be at risk?"
"Most certainly."
Gerda took hold of my finger that had been tracing shapes on her knee as we talked and closed her hand around it gently. I couldn't bring myself to remove it.
We were closer together now so our faces were only inches apart. Her lips pouted in a little smile and her brown eyes looked vulnerable but teasing.
She lifted my finger to her lower lip and rubbed it gently from side to side watching my discomfort as the tingle coursed down my arm and shocked through my body.
Dimly, as we kissed, I wondered how I could have thought her unattractive. Her body was warm and responsive as she moved against me.
"Barry ...", she said.
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