Message-ID: <40566asstr$1043316602@assm.asstr-mirror.org> Return-Path: From: "Sean Farragher" X-Original-Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1106 X-ASSTR-Original-Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2003 22:26:00 -0500 Subject: {ASSM} TxM6: Taxi Murders the Novel Chapter 78 -- April 9 1992 -- Day Before Laurie Screams Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2003 05:10:02 -0500 Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail Approved: Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d X-Archived-At: X-Moderator-Contact: ASSTR ASSM moderation X-Story-Submission: X-Moderator-ID: dennyw, gill-bates If you have missed any parts of Taxi Murders the Novel, they are archived on ASSM --Google and at my web site. I welcome feedback. Chapters 1-76 are available at my site, which updates every few days. http://www.seanfarragher.com/taximurdersbook Taxi Murders the Novel -- Chapter 76 April 9, 1992 Day Before the Scream (c) 2003 Sean Farragher sfarragher@nj.rr.com http://www.seanfarragher.com http://www.seanfarragher.com/Joss http://www.seanfarragher.com/taximurdersbook Chapter 76 April 9, 1992 -- The Day Before Laurie Screamed Prelude to Truth? Does the Present tense imply an inverse? Henry asked this question every day Laurie was missing. Dreams repeat as lovers show the future not as a time but a state of mind, Laurie had said this on that last night before she was abducted. Lovers, even if not present with each other, repeat shared dreams. She whispered this oath to Henry the last night they slept together. Once or twice over the years that she knew Henry Laurie drove with Henry in his cab sitting in the front seat. It broke company rules, but they did it. Of course, some driver reported Henry, and he was written up. Best thing that could happen is that they fire me. Henry didn't mean it. He loved hacking and riding the streets. When Laurie held Henry's hand, and he hers, she felt his past. They could be talking about anything. She told him it was her sixth sense. I always feel your turmoil and your peace. It is an odd combination. I am attracted to it. Laurie made a rule early in their relationship that they would never plan a future. Live day by day, she said. That way we are not too disappointed when life fucks us up. Tonight, Laurie had an agenda. She needed to tell Henry that she was pregnant and that he was the father. When she first learned she was expecting, she lied about the dates, and told Henry he was not the father. Laurie and Henry had just gotten back together after breaking up. Henry accepted her pregnancy but was not completely happy. Henry's oldest daughter Michelle was also pregnant. She lived in Boston and was planning on bringing up the child as a single parent. Maybe they could all live together. He'd help Michelle move to Jersey. Laurie was not pleased with the idea. Laurie tried to be open about it, but it bothered her, and she knew it shouldn't. Henry's relationship with his daughter reminded Laurie of the ones she had had with her stepfathers, Huw and Billy. Laurie knew she could never talk to Henry about her suspicions. Laurie knew she wasn't pregnant by anyone but Henry. She never slept with anyone after she moved in with Henry. Laurie told Angela that she lied to Henry because she did not want him to feel obligated for anything. "You know how men try to own you. I liked what Henry and I have. Why would I want to change it? And besides Henry is going to have to help Michelle, and this leaves some options open. Angela warned Laurie that her must tell the truth. "You will you know," she said. You know how generous Henry is, Angela said. How could you do this to him? This is one lie that you have to correct. What if lied to you like this. How would you feel? Riding through the Palisades she started to tell Henry, but suddenly, he got involved with a fare, and the more she thought about what she had to say the less certain she was that she could do it. How could she tell him that she had lied, I do not want to upset him just before he flies to Boston. Laurie stayed silent. They made love all night, and after Laurie slept uneasy, and in the morning Henry left. He seemed sad to leave and tried to change his plans, but Laurie insisted. You are going to be a grandpa in a few days. Don't you want to be there? I have to work so I can't go with you, and besides Michelle and I clash. It is her time. I understand that. The next night, Laurie kidnapped by Abel, would not get the chance to tell Henry the truth that she carried his child. 2. Dreams Henry drove the thin layers of melancholy across the synapses of memory again and again. In these daydreams he held Laurie in his life returning to them as he drove from taxi yard to taxi yard across the George Washington Bridge. Every night after Henry returned to make their memories more visible. He remembered that night that they talked endlessly bout the past in the present and wondered present had an inverse larger than the past or the future. "Imagine witnessing the sacrifice of Job," Henry said, as that classical man struggled for faith. In Henry's dream the Laurie possessed the narrative. Their stories seemed everlasting and at the same time fragile waiting for destruction. Most of the debris caught by lingered in the closet as useless and wasted. It was boxed up and it would be hard to discard it. We are trapped that way. That night before he left for Boston Henry dreamed of Laurie riding the arm of his taxi half in and out of his side window. He didn't suspect that a tragedy was about to haunt him. Denial to acceptance is carried everywhere. Laurie and I cover each other as we sleep. It is more than protection from the cold or loneliness. He did not protect her. She needed no protection. When he learned that Laurie was taken, captive or dead, he believed she would not die. If she was dead, he would know it, and his dreams of her, and her of him, he reasoned would stop. If he died before her by some fluke, she would know of his death as he would know. When most had given up Henry and Angela believed. How can she not be alive? Once a week or so after Laurie was lost, Henry retraced their last drive together as he casually drove his Car #4, Hudson Street cab from the taxi yard to the gallows of paradise. This must be Dante's vision. Henry, like Laurie, didn't believe in the innate goodness. He believed contrary to the Bible that the search for the fruit of the tree of knowledge was a blessing not a sin. His search for Laurie had been only good. How do I know if I win, Lord, Henry asked again mocking religion? If Laurie is dead, I lose. If she is alive she suffers. How do we know the truth? Henry was uncomfortable in prayer, but he also knew he had nothing to lose. Prayer holds on to the past too long Laurie once said. Why? Murder is one moment. Henry remembered how last year Zammy beaten almost to death by two men with baseball bats while a third their boss, watched and laughed. Henry realized that violence was a sign of something. But what? Self advertised greed had shattered Zammy's life. What use was a drug addict pusher? That was Zammy's life. How can we say this person or that, no matter what their crime, is not essential? Laurie had asked Henry that question the day after Zammy's assault. She missed his laughter most, she said. I wanted him back all of him. I loved his flaws. Zammy didn't deserve to have his mind turned to soup. "Nothing is valuable but our lies" and that last night Laurie remembered how she had lied to Henry about fatherhood. At that moment she had decided to tell him the truth the moment of his return from Boston. Henry didn't know Laurie had a lie to correct, but he wondered endlessly what Laurie thought that moment when she knew she could not escape. Every night Henry relived his life with Laurie as the cold, gray and red sunset slid downward not as delusion but beautiful over the western hills of the palisades they both had cherished. Suddenly Henry was terribly sad. It was moment not unlike the one that the patriot Benedict Arnold discovered (or Judas) that it was his cause he would betray. Henry didn't know that Laurie had misled him. She lived with her lie. It fucked up her life and helped her survive. I need to tell him the truth, and I will, she said. When the baby was born in captivity and released set out in Van Saun Park to be found by the authorities. Abel called the police using a voice modification device. Laurie wrote the child's name, Molly Whitman on her belly in lipstick. Henry would know from that. Lilith discovering the message and she erased it. She didn't tell Laurie that she did it, and then at an odd moment a month later to fuck with Laurie, she told her what she had done. "Do you think you can get away with out thinking me," she said. 3. Laurie's Captivity He lived suspended and missed Laurie. I would die for my country. I am not brave just ignorant. I want to help Laurie, but I do not know how. Henry felt powerless like the times in Nam just before insertion or extraction when he had to act no matter what and save the lives of his men. How do we know the brave? Do they stop death? Do they hunt out inequity? Do they lust for justice? Do they swallow their own ego and mark down curses that their lives have mattered? Laurie is the larger hero if she lives and victim if she is dead. Is that the only value we place on her? If we perform we win. If we do not survive or fail in our attempt we lose and the prize if you can call it that for loss is the missing spaces of our lives where we feed our loneliness that food called self-pity. Validation. I mattered. Laurie mattered more. If she is dead, her life is not wasted. Henry over the months of Laurie's captivity constantly reassured himself that he had no evidence of her death." Henry pursued that notion. How do we make the ache go away? What is the difference between virtual and actual memory. How do we talk to anyone about right or wrong when it is the abuse of guilt that makes us wrong and not what we imagined we have done? Can memory ever be wrong? Of course it can. I can wonder if I am whole or not. Laurie cannot if she is dead. She cannot be not alive. Life abused her and she was making it right. It is not fair. Suddenly sex stirred. Henry remembered Laurie's hands on his cock, He felt her kiss. Henry had discovered in Nam that the sun would swallow its own lips to prepare you for a breathless death. Light reaches ahead in time, Henry dreamed. It becomes the light distinctive and not a rigid map of chemical and emotional phosphorescence. Must be that Laurie's alive. I cannot imagine her dead. for More TxM6 http://www.seanfarragher.com/taximurdersbook END -- Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated. +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | alt.sex.stories.moderated ----- send stories to: | | FAQ: Moderator: | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Discuss this story and others in alt.sex.stories.d, look for subject {ASSD}| |Archive at Hosted by | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+