Bone Music (Burning Girl #1)(76)
They used to fill him with paralytic rage, these moments, these split-second exchanges in which a lifetime’s worth of accomplishments, from his medical degree to the hours he spends in the gym to the millions he’s amassed in savings, are rendered worthless by a series of genetic attributes. Of course, if he put some effort into it, he could big-talk her past her initial reaction. Make it clear how rich and successful he is until she was leaning on his every word. Because once she knew enough details about his life, a chunky, entitled little bitch like her would realize she should be grateful for any attention from a man like him. But none of that would erase the wretchedness of that first moment, of that flash of truth in her eyes when she saw for the first time the face he’s never been able to escape.
During medical school, he watched students with half his skill earn twice the respect of their professors because their big, perfectly balanced eyes and tiny, sculpted chins invoked a parental tenderness in just about everyone they met. Since then, he’s watched rival doctors bring in twice the number of patients solely because the strong jawlines and proud Roman noses they exhibit in their professional headshots suggest a confidence and skill they do not truly possess. You had to be the relentless victim of these constant injustices to see how prevalent they were. He calls it the tyranny of faces, a tyranny so pervasive, so woven through the fabric of society, that it goes well beyond the deferential treatment granted the exceedingly beautiful. This injustice is made up of the millions of unearned gifts bestowed on those whose faces are merely balanced or proportional, who possess random, genetically determined arrangements of features that just happen to trigger primal, but positive, emotional cues in those around them, cues that bear no real connection to who they are as people. To what they actually say. To what they actually do.
Why is he the only one who can see this—that our faces are masks, rendering our personalities, our behaviors, our true accomplishments, utterly irrelevant, and yet we seem to have utter, idiotic faith in them as indicators of what’s in the soul?
With each face he removes and places on public display, he comes another step closer to revealing this injustice to the world.
It took only a few seconds for this woman, this total stranger, to dismiss him, as so many have done before. But the rage has left him entirely in the short time it takes him to reach the circle of benches and concrete next to the trail’s entrance. Now it’s been replaced by a giddy sense of anticipation that sends a pulse of heat to his balls. The base of his cock thickens.
He turns his back to the woman, dons his windbreaker, and props one leg against the bench in front of him; then he bends forward slowly to stretch out his hamstring.
A group of mountain bikers flies out of the tunnel of branches that mark the trailhead, slowing as they near their parked cars.
There are other parks he could have picked. Bigger parks with more room to hide. Smaller parks he could slip in and out of more quickly after nightfall. But many of them were scorched by recent wildfires that devoured their mature trees. What’s brought him to Whiting Ranch is the densely wooded first stretch of the Borrego Canyon Trail, a little finger of wilderness passing through typical Orange County subdivisions, the kind where the red-tile-roof houses all look the same and the streets are gently curved to distract from the fact that the entire neighborhood was laid out on a single sheet of drafting paper. Beyond the first stretch, the houses fall away and the trail rises into the drier hills beyond. If all goes well, his new patient will never get that far.
He hears her footfalls behind him, sluggish slaps against the concrete, turning crunchy when they hit the dirt.
He keeps his back to her as she passes, makes sure his baseball cap is secure. He’s taken care to pull most of the threads from the logo on the cap’s brim—a logo for some medical supply company whose name he can’t even remember, a giveaway he got at some conference years before. Now the brim bears a few loose loops of blue thread, confusing enough to throw off a potential witness should they try to describe it later. Every minute said witness spends wondering what sports team the hat promoted is another minute he gets to work in peace, without distractions.
As tempting as it is to check the contents of his fanny pack, he can’t do that now, not out in the open like this. Instead he grips the outside and gives it a little shake, as if he’s just making sure the thing’s secured to his hip. It allows him to feel the lumps made by the ball gag and the ten-milliliter syringe containing his special blend of ketamine, Versed, and propofol.
He’s locked and loaded and ready to go.
After a few minutes on the trail, he spots her.
She’s already losing steam, probably because she took off too fast. Her chocolate-brown ponytail is swaying when it should be bouncing, and she’s glistening with sweat. He’s never run up behind a patient in this way, and he’s pleasantly surprised by the delicious tensions inherent in the act. By the multiple contrasts. Waiting and the exertion, simultaneous assessments of the trail ahead and behind, of the thickness of the brush on either side, of his speed, which must stay steady without giving away that he’s slowly gaining on her. He feels like a wolf and a snake in one. Or a snake riding on the back of a wolf, waiting for the right moment to strike. A ridiculous image, even if it is a fitting metaphor. He has to hold back laughter.
When you become this good at something, he thinks, that’s a sign it’s exactly what you should be doing.