by Karen Moline
“In the car,” she is screaming, “you, it was you in the car, it was you.”
“Yes,” he says, “yes. It was me.”
His voice is so calm, so resigned, his body stilled, that she stops screaming, teetering on the edge of hysteria, yet startled by the silence.
“Are you afraid?” he says, his voice so soft, purring in her ears, the same hateful words, the hateful hands raping her in the car, his slave. “Afraid of me? Afraid of what I am going to do to you? Afraid you might like it? Like it too much?”
She never could have liked it, not this, she never—
“I want you to be afraid,” he whispers. He has said the lines so many times before, rehearsing every second of this long-planned attack that he has no trouble remembering them now.
Nick was always good with his lines.
“I wanted you to live through one moment of undiluted, inexpressible terror,” the voice is saying, inhumanly serene. “I want you to be afraid, I want you to know how it feels, because that’s how Nick feels, all the time, without you.”
“No,” she is screaming again in unadulterated panic, she can’t possibly live through that assault again and stay sane, “let me go, let me—”
The screaming is a violent rushing in his ears, there is nothing but the screaming, she’ll never stop screaming, she’ll never—that’s what M said, once she knows she’ll never—
He has to stop the screaming.
His hands around her neck, choking her, choking the life out of her, when I hit him from behind, knocking him away with a sharp cry of passionate pain, and I hit him again, anger stored for years uncounted unleashed in a hail of punches, wrestling him down as he tries to turn his fury, raging with adrenaline, on me, but I am stronger.
I have always been stronger.
He won’t get away, I won’t let him, if he does I know he will kill me, it would be so easy for him, hiding my body, all his secrets snuffed with my disappearance, remarked upon by no one save Jamie and McAllister, no one knows he is here, no one knows I am with him.
No one knows who I am. No one cares.
And then he will redouble his strangling wrath onto Olivia, gasping long shuddering breaths beside us.
She is still alive.
Nick and I have slipped over the side of the bed, I feel his hands searching frantically for something, the other whips he’s hidden there, I can’t let him reach them, and I slam his head into the metal frame of the bed, once hard, then again till I feel him slump, finally, dazed and bleeding, then haul him up on the bed, imprisoning his wrists with the silken cords he has used so delightedly and so often on Olivia, knowing they will only hold for a minute once he revives. I quickly grab the whips that were just out of reach and bind his ankles together, tight, then look desperately for my keys, the key to the trunk, before I realize they’ve fallen to the floor, near Olivia’s, where I dropped them bursting into the room. When I stoop to pick them up I see a silver earring, delicate filigree studded with infinitesimal diamonds, like stars, caught deep in the carpet, and I pull it out and push it deep into my pocket, my hands shaking.
I flip up the trunk lid, throwing the soft embroidered linen and towels out in jumbled heaps, groping for the handcuffs underneath, finding them, and fasten Nick’s wrists securely to the bedposts, just above the drapery cords.
Olivia has slid down to the carpet, leaning against the bed, her eyes closed, wheezing, blood oozing down her leg and seeping into the carpet. I pick her up gently and carry her into the kitchen, easing her down to the cool slate floor and placing her head between her knees. I grab the first-aid kit from under the sink, and examine her leg. It looks bad, but I don’t think it needs stitches, so I clean it carefully and apply a butterfly bandage over several layers of gauze.
Olivia doesn’t even flinch when I touch her.
I take out two ice packs Nick keeps in the freezer to soothe the aches and pains of weary muscles after a long day’s work, wrapping each in a tea towel and placing them on her neck, picking up her hands and pressing them to the coldness, she deep in shock, obeying blindly mechanical, a jacquard print of fat sweet cherubs hiding the hideous necklace of fingerprints, rounded imprints of lurid pinks and purples emblazoned on her deathly pale skin like a brilliant sunset.
“Don’t move,” I say to her, although she couldn’t have if she tried, and I worry that she can’t even hear me. “I’ll be right back.”
I pick up the first-aid kit and run back to Nick, who is just beginning to stir, disoriented, the gash on his forehead still trickling. I rummage again in the bottom of the trunk until I see the small box with the glass vials lined up neatly inside, all except one, and the syringes. I fill one neatly as Nick has shown me, a dose stronger than the one he used on Olivia, and jab it into his hip.
I gather up Olivia’s scattered clothing and dress her calmly, she still dumb with shock, in the kitchen. “I’m going to take you home now,” I tell her, shaking her slightly, sick with worry. “Olivia, can you hear me? You’re going to be okay. I’m taking you home.” Her eyes move to mine, and I sigh, relieved, placing the ice packs back on her neck with her hands over them. “I’ll be right back. We’re going in just one minute.”
Nick’s breathing is slow and steady, and I cover him with the comforter. I untie the whip from his ankles and drop it into the trunk, close the lid, then clean his wound and bandage it. He will be out for a long time, lost in the blissful sleep of oblivion.
When I hurry back to the kitchen, Olivia is calmer. She looks up at me, tears trickling down her cheeks in a silent stream, still holding the cherubs to her neck.
“It’s okay. We’re going now,” I say, and scoop her up in my arms. She shudders at the touch, then buries her head in my neck.
SHE CRIES for a long time, sitting helpless in the dark on the smooth tiled floor of her kitchen, where we’ve gone so I could make her a cup of tea. She won’t let me turn on the light there, she doesn’t want to see her reflection in the polished metal gleam of the stove, or the hideous necklace of bruises she knows adorns her neck. I hold her tight, rocking her like a baby.
The comfort of the damned.
“Why did he do it?” she keeps asking. “Why why why?”
“Shhh,” I say, trying in vain to console her. “It’s not you. He can’t help it.” Murmuring over and over again. “It’s not you, it’s not you.”
“How did you know I was there?” she asks, not expecting an answer. “You saved me.”
I am glad there is so little light. I didn’t save her at all, not when I could have, not through all the watching, not—
I wipe her eyes with a roll of paper towels until the tears stop, and she sighs deeply.
“Better?” I ask, determined to keep my voice benign even though I want to cry out to the heavens. “How’s your leg?”
“Throbbing, but not too bad.” She fingers the bandage through her jeans. “I deserve it.”
She said that to me once before, ages ago, or was it only a day or two, when I said, Don’t be ridiculous.
“How can you say that?” I tell her. “No one does. You don’t mean it.”
“Sure,” she says ruefully. “But I still think this is what paying for your sins means.”
I had not heard bitterness in her voice before, or regret.
“It wasn’t sinful,” I say, finally.
“Wasn’t it?” Her voice is hard. “I mean, look at me! Look at what he’s done to me! Just look at what I let him!” The hysteria is creeping back as she pulls away, turning around to look at me in the dim light. “How can you stand it, how can you live with him, or be with him, or be with yourself, how can you take it, how? Just tell me that, I have to know, tell me how I can look at myself and not want to scream.”
I reach up to try and calm her, and she jerks back, then buries her head in her hands and sobs.
“Olivia, don’t,” I say, my heart breaking. “You can’t blame yourself. You couldn’t have known this would happen, not this way. He’s never been with a woman like you before, he’s never—”
“And what kind of woman am I?” she cries out. “What have I done?”
“You’re you,” I say. “Olivia.”
She looks up at me, at my face, she is looking at me, the tears stop and her anguish clears, and for a terrible minute I think she sees me truly, and I want to get up and run away, but I am frozen here, I cannot move.
“Why do you stay together?” she asks, wiping the tears away.
I am staring at my shoes. There is blood spattered on them like drops of paint, alizarin crimson.
“There is nowhere else to go.” My voice is a whisper. “It’s all we know.”
“But what do you owe him?” How can she ask me that, how can she be so understanding? “I should think he owes you.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Of course it does.” She wipes her nose again, calming. “At least it does to me. I don’t think I’ll ever understand it.”
“It’s not you,” I say again. “He can’t help it.”
“Is that what you were afraid of, when you said you wouldn’t let him hurt me?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, babbling, incoherent. “I tried, I promised you, I know I did, I didn’t think he would—he never told me, what he—I couldn’t—”
She puts a finger to my lips, and I hear myself starting to choke.
“Oh, M,” she says, “I believe you. I know you did. Now hush.”
She moves back, close to me, and we sit, locked together.
“I need to know where the pain comes from,” she says, finally.
I shake my head no.
“Please, M, I have to know. You must tell me. I won’t ask you anything else.”
Her eyes fill with tears again. I cannot stand to see her cry anymore, not tonight, not ever.
“It comes from fear.” My voice is so low I can hardly hear it. “If all you know is how to live without love, who can teach you how to live with it?”
I can’t believe I said that.
“It’s always been worse for you, hasn’t it?” she says.
I close my eyes.
“You know too much, don’t you?”
I try to pull away but her arms are wound tightly around me.
“You are so sad, M, I never met anyone so sad in all my life,” she says. “Who hurt you?”
“Don’t ask me,” I say. “Please don’t ask me.”
“M,” she says. “M.” Her voice is calmer, detached, she is regaining control. She is looking at me once more as no one has ever looked at me, as she always has, without fear or repulsion. I don’t want her to see me like this, not Olivia, not the woman I have watched so avidly in secret for all the hours she could give us.
I am unworthy of her sympathy, but I feel her fingers in my hair, gently caressing, and I haven’t the strength to make her stop.
“You are full of secrets,” she says, “many more secrets than anyone I’ve ever known.” She can’t say Nick’s name, not yet. “I would have painted you as the Sphinx, you know, if you’d let me, sitting on your haunches in the desert. Forever impenetrable. That enigmatic expression on your face—it’s almost impossible to paint. I wonder if I could have done it.”
“What expression?” I ask, bewildered.
She scrambles up, pushing back her hair and blowing her nose. “Just a minute. Stay there. Don’t move.”
I’d just said that to her, hadn’t I, not so very long ago. I sit frozen on her kitchen floor, wondering, until she comes back a moment later with a heavy drawing pad and pencils and a large square flashlight, the kind meant for camping trips and restful nights in a tent in a forest. She props the lantern on the floor beside her, shining it up toward the ceiling.
“You belong to the shadows,” she says, “and I’m going to draw you in them.”
“No,” I say. The impossible wonder I’d dreamed of, watching her watching me, please don’t, I don’t want to see myself as she must see me, nakedly revealed; I can’t. It will be the ultimate betrayal.
“Please, M, let me,” she says, her voice pleading, and I am afraid she is going to cry again. “I need to hold on to something. I need to do something. Concentrate. Think about anything but . . .” Her hands hover near the bruises on her neck, but she can’t bear to touch them. “Don’t let me think. Please.”
I could never say no to her.
The slight rasp of her pencil, the hunch of her body, the furrowed concentration, all so familiar. I can feel her relaxing, if only imperceptibly, into the work.
“If you don’t like it you can do what you want with it,” she says conversationally. I had forgotten how she usually liked to talk when she drew.
“Okay,” I say.
“M, will you do something for me?” she asks several minutes later. She sounds almost like herself again, pacified by the ingrained habits of what she does best.
“Anything,” I say.
“Tell me a story,” she says. “Tell me a story of when you were little.”
“I don’t think you want to know.”
She looks up at me, at my face. “Ah,” she says, “the inscrutable one speaks. Don’t move a muscle. That’s just the face I was looking for.” She smiles, a little sadly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. So tell me another one, a nice story. About anything you like.”
“There aren’t any.”
“I see.” The scrutiny of her gaze, probing. She bites her lip, deeply engrossed. “Never mind.”
Her fingers always moving, dancing over the paper, the grace of her body as she works, even seated here, on the kitchen floor, the square brightness of the flashlight shining up onto the ceiling, bouncing back down to her face, a glowing madonna. Time slows, along with my breathing, and I almost start to feel better.
“Done,” she says, moments later, or it could have been hours. I suddenly realize my legs are aching with cramp. “Well, it’s kind of raggedy, and rough, but it’ll do for now. Take a look.”
I don’t want her to be finished, I don’t want her to stop, I don’t want to leave this place, I cannot look.
“Go on,” she says, smiling. “If you don’t like it I’ll be crushed.”
She holds the pad out to me, and I take it, my hands trembling as if it were a newborn I might not know how to hold, and will drop, and then I look. I see the body of a sphinx, its haunches curved and powerful, its tail a fat whip in the sand, and I see a face, mine and yet not mine, powerful and proud, a nearly imperceptible hint of a smile curving the edge of my lips, guarding some mysterious knowledge. It seems to be shimmering in the dazzling white light of the desert, but I realize I am staring through a hazy film of tears at this image of my features, handsome and whole as I might have been, no scars disfiguring my face.
“Does this mean you like it?” she asks.
I nod, unable to speak, afraid that words of mine might break the mirage of this enchantment.
“I’m glad,” she says, taking it back. “Let me sign it for you.” Her pencil, hovering over the drawing. “ ‘To M.’ No, wait, I don’t like that. What’s your real name?”
She couldn’t be asking me that. Not now, not here, not after—
“Oh, M,” she says, putting down the pad. “After all this, you can trust me.”
“No,” I say, and I feel myself starting to shake. It is too much, all too much, holding it back, me, watching, all that time, everything I’ve seen, everything, my whole life, Nick, kissing her, pinning her down, her squirms irresistible, tying her wrists to the bed, making her body his slave, moaning her pleasure while I watch, while the tapes whirl, oblivious. Nick, jagged glass in his hand, making her scream, his han
ds around her throat, wanting to squeeze the life out of her. Nick, handcuffed to the bed, blood trickling down his forehead, dripping onto the sheets.
“Baby,” she says, her arms around me, kneeling at my side, her hands on my shoulder, gently kneading the stiffening muscles. Don’t stop, I beg her, a silent imploring, don’t let go of me, I’ll tell you anything, any pain is worth the sweet touch of your hands, your head so close to mine, the perfume of your hair, the scent of you, the essence of Olivia, so close, your voice a whisper, “Baby,” you called me, that word so strange from your lips, please don’t go, don’t leave me.
“His name isn’t Nick,” I say suddenly.
“What?” Her fingers stop, only for a second, then begin again, deeper as she moves closer, because my voice is no louder than a whisper.
“Nick. It’s not his name.”
“What is his name?”
“Ralph.”
“Ralph?” I think I hear her laughing, but there is a sharp buzz in my ears, and I am still trembling at her touch. “Ralph?”
“Ralph Polachek. From Pittsburgh.”
“He doesn’t look like a Ralph.”
“That’s the name he was born with. It’s not who he is.”
“Something horrible must’ve happened, yes? His parents? What?” Her hands on my shoulders, massaging in calm rhythmic strokes. I can’t tell her, I will never tell anybody, we swore it to ourselves, Nick and I, brothers in blood. “It has to come from some hideous place, that anger,” she murmurs, almost to herself. “To be that afraid. No wonder you . . . no wonder he couldn’t . . .”
I try to pull away. She won’t let me.
“You were orphans, weren’t you?” she says, cool and clinically detached, she has broken our code, deciphering our language of pain. “How many homes did he live in? Is that how you met him?”
The shadowy air, hanging, I could see the air, thick, murky, I will not breathe, not think, it hurts too much.
