Do You Trust Me, Suzy?

Suzanne Dreyfus had spent her young life reaching for things most people couldn't see. Stars that hadn't been named yet. Planets at the edge of the observable universe. The cold mathematics of deep space, where time itself behaved differently and human ambition seemed, by comparison, almost quaint. She was the girl from Brooklyn who looked up instead of around.

But there is always another gravity. The earthbound kind. It pulls downward. It promises everything the sky denies you. Warmth. Power. Love. The intoxicating freedom of wanting. The underworld has always known how to speak to the ones who reach highest. It waits. It watches. It finds the precise moment when the light is brightest and the loneliness most acute.

That was when Garrick Cripps walked into her life.

She had been skeptical of Garrick when they met at MIT. Brash, handsome, smooth talker. Questionable work ethic as a research scientist but popular teaching undergrads. Suzanne had been aloof, spending most of her time alone. Had he sensed her isolation? Had he thought of himself as a predator seeking the lone victim in the wilds of an elite college campus in the 1990s? He pounced, as predators do, and truth be told, Suzanne had let him. The fascination of the man was itself the seduction.

They flirted. He mentioned his private dream of creating a libertarian paradise in America. She didn’t take him seriously. Too far-fetched. Un-American, even. She teased Garrick and got him to laugh at himself. She saw his humanity. His kindness toward his mother who lived alone in Indiana. Suzanne and Garrick capitulated to one another. They had crafted their flawed alliance—Garrick with his narcissistic need to be adored, and she with her twisted desire to adore him, or so it seemed.

Playfully so. Suzanne was always playful, a trait she learned from her father, a child of the 60s who loved all the Jewish satirists of that era, from Lenny Bruce to Mort Sahl. A mind such as hers always doubted. Always saw the thread of absurdity in some serious people who were often more enamored with their self-importance than what they deserved. And yet, Suzanne wanted to be seduced by such a man.  By a force of nature. She had not wanted the alliance to go as far as it had. She looked like a goddess, which is probably why a man like Garrick pursued her. He thought of himself as a god.  She may have looked like a goddess, but she was all too human.

She had always assumed that domination was something that happened to other women. Lesser women. Women who didn't understand the mathematics of deep space or the cold indifference of the universe. She had never imagined that her certainty of immunity was itself the open door. That Garrick had walked through it so quietly she hadn't heard a sound.

If she had listened to her parents, she would never have met Garrick. Both Suzanne’s father and her mother, a high school math teacher, were leftists who had met in Mississippi at a demonstration where Dr. King himself spoke. They kept preaching the practicality of going to CUNY: she could live at home and save money.

She didn't listen. MIT was looking for smart women to go into science, engineering, and math. She wanted to study astrophysics and join the faculty of a college somewhere in New England, to teach and to discover new planets and stars. She could meet a nice guy in Cambridge, a fellow scientist, and team up on big discoveries. But she also dreamed of having children and a pretty home in the suburbs or in the country. Get a dog.

Suzanne Dreyfus, the smart pretty girl from Brooklyn, wanted it all. Love. A home. To be herself. A searcher. A woman who wanted to understand the world and yet belong to it. That is who she was. Who we all are. All the good things that narcissists prey upon, and then, tragically, to get us to go along with a world that does not make sense to anyone but themselves.

What happened? Was it love or the simulation of love? Stars could not be dominated. Planets circled and atoms did what atoms did according to the laws of Newton and Einstein. The universe was indifferent to human hunger. But Garrick was not indifferent. He understood the human condition in ways that both repelled and fascinated her.

She was no longer little Suzy Dreyfus, the girl who had looked up instead of around. Under Garrick's influence she had learned to look differently — inward, at power, at the cold mathematics of human ambition rather than the cosmos. She loved her parents, but Garrick called them weak and naive. She remembered the weekend in Morro Bay, years after MIT, when he finally revealed his true self — or more accurately, the person he had become.

“Hope for the poor, Garrick.”

“Screw the poor, Suzy. They’re poor because they’re incapable of winning.”

“Education matters, Garrick.”

“Only if you’re intelligent enough to make it matter.”

“Health care for all, Garrick.”

“Where does it say that in the Constitution? The Founding Fathers never guaranteed a right to die later rather than sooner.”

“Equal rights for all, my love.”

“Nice in theory. But in America, we buy and sell rights to the highest bidder, free from coercion. Get over it. It’s called liberty.”

In time Garrick’s ruthlessness repelled her. And yet his hyper-confidence—the corollary of his ruthlessness— attracted her more. Suzanne could have had any man. She knew it—and so did Garrick. She often wondered whether his contempt for the weak was the source of his power or a cover for his own weakness.

By January 2020, Suzanne had long since been living in Boulder, but Garrick had flown her to his cottage in Morro Bay for the weekend. Garrick dropped the bomb that he was going underground until the “endgame.” And it was Suzanne’s job to work with their old friend, William—who now went by Eurynomos—and “make it happen.”

“Make what happen, Garrick?”

They were naked after sex on the library sofa. “We begin now.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“It will become clear. I’m asking you to be patient.”

“Why are you being so cryptic? You’re messing with me, right?”

They talked for hours that day. Garrick soothed her, and she softened. They ordered in and holed up for another night in the cottage. They made love again, then enjoyed cognac and crème brûlée. Suzanne’s mischievousness always elevated with her blood alcohol.

“Do you really believe?” She grasped her lover gently by his balls.

“I have to believe. My DNA, darling. You’re making me hard, thinking about it.”

“About what, exactly? My hands on your nuts?”

“My lusts. You know what they are.”

“Money and power. Anything else?”

“And you, of course.”

She clung to his crotch, squeezed tightly, then let go. She placed her fingers on his hard-on, teasing him.

“Garrick, can I confess something to you?”

“Don’t stop now, darling.”

She became more mischievous, carefully composing the words she knew would make him even harder. She had always been good at this. Too good, perhaps.

"You taught me to see the world differently. Without illusions." She paused, watching his face. He was already believing it. "I fell in love with you for that. You seduced me with your ideas. You taught me how to find purity in a complicated, fucked-up world full of insecure people and impure thoughts. I fell in love with a devil who lusted for purity."

She toyed with the tip of his cock, then spat on it.

“I love that, Suzy. Complexity is unnecessary. Our reality can be so simple and so pleasurable.”

“And what is that reality for you?”

“That the strong shall prevail over the weak. Full stop. That simple idea makes me want to fuck you. Again and again.”

Rulers make bad lovers, Suzanne remembered thinking.

“You think I’m weak?”

“You’re one of the strong ones, Suzanne. I’ve always known that. But you tried to fight me at first, remember? You know, right after The Manifesto.”

The Manifesto. The Libertarian Manifesto, to be exact. She let the word sit there for a moment. A gift. A joke. A satirist's daughter playing with matches and then lighting it on Garrick's birthday cake those years ago. She had not imagined the fire.

“What do you think of Lenny Bruce?” she asked, out of the blue.

“Lenny who?”

Her face tightened. She let go of his cock. “Garrick, listen to me. I always wanted us to be the way we were, before you became the one and only Garrick Cripps. I couldn’t stop you, and I wouldn’t leave you. An affair might have ended it, but you’ve always been faithful. Haven’t you?”

“Always, darling. Look at you. What man would look anywhere else?”

“Good answer.”

His cock had softened. She spat on the head and wrapped her mouth around it, sucking the blood from his brain, exploiting the gravity of natural law to engorge his dick with fresh fluid. She looked up, allowing her man to witness her adoring eyes framed by perfect breasts and stiffened nipples, and her wide mouth giving a pleasure greater than he’d ever given in return. But that was Garrick.

When she woke Garrick had vanished from his own home. She left Morro Bay in the morning.

She got home to Boulder, opened her suitcase, and found a note stuffed in her underwear.

"From now on, you will deal with Eurynomos. Trust him. He’s built for revolutionary work. You asked me if I was a true believer. To be honest, I don’t know. But I know this: don’t love me. Love the revolution. Garrick had closed with a question: Do you trust me, Suzy?"

Suzanne showered and dressed for an evening out. But she wasn’t going out. She slipped into a pair of black Christian Louboutins, and leafed through her closet and found a bright red wool coat, as if to cover her naked body in warm blood. Suzanne grabbed Garrick's note from her suitcase. The spikes slapped the hard floor as she walked to the kitchen. She opened the pantry and pulled out a fresh bottle of Campari. Not the candied Aperol. The Campari for its complexity, its herbal bitterness, and aroma of deep earth. Not a simple- minded Aperol cocktail at a Tuscan wedding reception. The New York City interpretation. A cool drink with sensuous purpose. She uncorked a chilled bottle of prosecco and mixed the drink in a fulsome wine glass, topping it with soda and ice. She cut the lights then lit a small candle and placed it in a saucer. With a few strokes on her laptop, the Mark Coppey interpretation of JS Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major filled the darkened space.

She danced over the flame while ripping up the note, tossing the pieces into the wax-filled saucer. She threw another match onto the flame, amplifying the fire, as the prelude reached its crescendo.

Watching the burning note, her face contorted into a wicked smile. She lit a cigarette. Suzanne did not squat over the flame. She stood like a man, drink in one hand and cigarette tipping from her lips.

Celebrating the cello’s burst of energy in her own private bacchanal, she sucked on the cocktail and raised her glass. She dragged on the cig and again pulled from the drink. She studied the burning paper for a moment, then spread her legs in a v-shaped stance, her clit above the fire. She touched herself. Again and again, until she came.

“Fuck you, Garrick,” she hissed. Contemplating the art of revenge, she pissed with pleasure on the dying flame of paper and ink disappearing into a puddle of piss, cum, and betrayal.

Do you trust me, Suzy?

She watched the question burn.

And then she sang to herself, surprised that her voice still sounded so strong, so sweet.

She had not sung in ages but now she did.

Always, darling, she sang.

Look at you.

What woman would look anywhere else?