by Jack Douglas
“How do we get it out?” she asked. “Is there a knife?”
He turned toward one of the drawers, opened it slowly. “I think I saw an icepick in here somewhere.”
She waited while he rummaged through the drawer then she closed the icebox door. “Let’s wait until later to do this,” she said, as he placed the icepick on top of the counter. “It won’t take long to melt. It’s getting pretty hot in here.”
“Do with it what you want,” he said, turning away from her. “It’s yours anyway. I can’t touch that stuff. I’d vomit it right back up.”
She looked at him. Craig seemed too calm, way too calm—at least for him. This was a guy who panicked at the sight of a ladybug. Who couldn’t order his own Chinese food anymore because he’d freeze up on the phone. Maybe the gravity of the situation simply hadn’t kicked in yet. Or maybe he was just overly tired.
Or maybe it was something else.
“I need to lie down,” he said, moving out of the kitchen. “Need to rest my eyes a bit.”
She watched him round the corner, waited until she heard the bedroom door close. Then she slipped into the living room. She knelt by Craig’s luggage, then she set the suitcase on its back and slowly unzipped it so as not to make much noise. Without looking inside the suitcase she poked her hand in and started feeling around. Immediately frustrated, she went ahead and opened the damned thing.
She didn’t know what she was looking for. Just something. She didn’t know if he still kept a journal, but if Amy had to bet, she would say he did. She knew she hadn’t packed one for him, but he could have easily slipped one of his leather journals into a suitcase before they left for the airport. Right now, she was hoping like hell that he did. She needed some answers.
But there was nothing in the suitcase other than the clothes she had packed for him. Those and the Gillette Fusion razor and his shaving cream. Nothing else, except for the shirt and pants he wore the day they arrived. She pulled those out and went quickly through each of his pockets. All of them were empty save for some lint.
She stuffed everything back inside and zipped the suitcase back up. She picked herself up off her haunches and groaned. For the first time ever she felt her age. She ached. In her legs, in her arms, in her lower back. Even in her ankles. Damn, what she wouldn’t do for an Advil.
Amy could ignore the hunger; she’d done that before. Had built her willpower up as a child. Amy had been chubby as a kid, so chubby in fact that her dad had called her Tubby Two-by-Four. She didn’t mind the teasing at school so much, but her dad—well, that was something different.
She went on a diet at age thirteen. At least that was what she had called it. Dr. Lennox, her pediatrician, called it anorexia. Ordered her hospitalized the summer before her freshman year at Pawling High School. She went in right after her eighth grade graduation and didn’t come out until Labor Day, three days before high school orientation. Her father never called her Tubby Two-by-Four after that. But he still gave her looks. Looks that told her when she was getting too fat.
That was when she decided to major in nutrition in college, when she decided she wanted to become a registered dietitian. She would learn all about food science and dieting. She would know the limits of the human body and how to safely control her weight. And, sure enough, even at five-foot-six, she had not topped a hundred and twelve pounds since the day she earned her bachelor’s degree from Kent State. But Amy did need water. Every living thing on the planet did, as far she knew. She might be able to ignore her hunger but she wouldn’t be able to ignore her thirst. Not for very long anyway.
She stepped back into the kitchen, opened the icebox and stared at the frost. She closed the icebox door and began opening the drawers. Then the cabinets. Her eyes started tearing again. She raised her head and wiped the tears with the back of her hands.
That was when she saw the vent on the ceiling directly above her head. It was small, not large enough for a human to crawl into. But even if she couldn’t travel into another apartment, maybe her voice could. She surveyed the counter and found the best place to step. Then she took off her slippers and pulled herself up on sock-covered feet. She nearly slipped. But she grabbed hold of the top of the cabinets and held steady long enough to catch her breath.
She peered up into the vent. It was grimy and covered with dust. Black inside. Her eyes began to sting and she coughed. Between coughs she hollered. “Hello? Hello? Can anybody hear me?”
No response. Not that she had really expected any.
Her dry stinging eyes glossed over the tops of the cabinets as she held on, trying to maintain her balance. They, too, were cruddy, and peppered here and there were tiny brown specks. Ew, rat turds, she thought.
She squinted. At the far end of the cabinets, she saw something else. A stack of blue plastic playing cards. Who the fuck would place a stack of playing cards up here? She shimmied sideways toward the stack slowly, nearly slipping and falling twice along the way.
She sniffled. Her nose itched but she couldn’t spare a hand to scratch it.
Holding back a sneeze by pressing her tongue against the roof of her mouth, she went on. She didn’t think she would touch the deck once she got there. But oddly enough, the cards weren’t dirty. Showed no kind of wear whatsoever. No evidence they had been up there for a very long time. So she reached for them, snatched them between her fingers.
She lowered herself gently off the counter. Then she fanned the cards out in front of her on the counter near the kitchen sink. There were maybe two dozen playing cards, all blue, all adorned with the Absolut Vodka logo. But it was what was parked in between the cards that got her heart racing. In between the playing cards were five pieces of plastic: two Visas, a MasterCard, a Discover Card, and an American Express. Each of the credit cards bore the same name.
Each of the cards belonged to Craig Devlin.
Chapter 17
He was too damn hungry to sleep, and too dirty. He felt grimy, as though there were something caked to his flesh, some bacteria or horde of microscopic insects. He sat up in the bed, dug into his pocket and pulled out the Purell. It was only a one-ounce bottle and half of it was gone. He would have to use the sanitizer sparingly from here on out.
He squeezed a drop into his left hand. Rubbed it against his right, wrung his hands together then let them travel up his forearms, under his short sleeves, up his biceps to his shoulders. He rubbed it on his face and neck.
The sanitizer reeked of alcohol and he suddenly craved a drink. Better than a drink, a joint. Better than a joint, a bump. A bump of coke would curb his appetite, make the hunger go away. Then he could sleep. Well, he could sleep once the coke wore off anyway.
He lay his head back down on the pillow and listened to the ceaseless pulsing in his ear. He stuck his index finger into his ear. Tried again to yawn the sensation away. He shifted his jaw, popped his ears. Still the fucking thing kept beating, beating, beating, beating.
(It’s a tumor.)
(Or an aneurism.)
He wondered if it was a tumor whether they could operate. Whether they could remove the cancer, whether he could live a normal life.
(With an aneurism you go like that!)
But who was he kidding? He would never survive such a serious surgery. He had passed out when the ER doctor set his pinky finger after a touch football game in high school. When he dislocated his right knee cap during a softball game in college. When he’d pulled a muscle in his chest from lifting weights, for hell’s sake.
No, if it was a tumor (Or an aneurism.) his life was over.
(With an aneurism you go like that!)
He turned over on his side and thought about Danny. How they used to sit up nights with an eightball of cocaine and a case of beer in between them. Watching the same goddamn movies over and over again. Old silly nonsensical flicks like Animal House and Bachelor Party. How they would fire down a bottle of Jack, snort the pile of blow, and then hit the pipe until dawn. How they would refuse to leave C
raig’s apartment, even if it meant missing the best parties, even if it meant not getting laid.
“This is where it’s at,” Danny would say.
And Craig’s Battery Park apartment was where it was at, where he and Danny spent most of their nights. Even after Danny moved out of the second bedroom and bought a place of his own uptown, Danny would hop the subway every day after work and come on down. Bring with him a big bag of ‘shrooms or some ketamine. Have Ping haul a nitrous oxide tank up from Trenton.
And each and every night around eleven o’clock they would place a call to Suede. Five bags, they would order, a half dozen vials. Enough coke and crack to last them through dawn.
It was all good till they started riding the pony. Until they started spiking the vein.
Craig had just about finally started nodding off when Amy began rapping on the bedroom door. It was a light little rap, a tease, as though she wasn’t really sure whether she wanted in.
He opened his eyes. “Come in,” he said, irritated.
The rapping paused then started again. This time it was more of a knock.
“Come in!” he said again.
The knocking stopped but she didn’t enter. She was probably sulking on the other side of the door because he had raised his voice. She was so damn sensitive. It had gotten so that he couldn’t even joke around with her anymore. Couldn’t tease her or poke fun, couldn’t come up behind her and unhook her bra or pinch her ass or even say something risqué.
The knocking started up again. This time he held his tongue.
If she wanted to act like a child then Craig would treat her like one. He would ignore her. Let her knock on the goddamn door until her knuckles turned black and blue.
The knocking continued.
She wants you to get angry, he thought. Wants you to lose your temper, to yell and scream and rush at her, so she could go crying to her mother. That’s been her plan all along. To break up and then blame you. Well, that wasn’t going to happen. He put on his best smile and said sweetly, “Come in, baby. The door’s unlocked.”
The knocking stopped for a moment then the rapping started again.
This time just three light taps.
And that was all it took. Craig lost control of himself, felt the words rise in his throat like a dry heave. He screamed, “Come the fuck in, you dumb bitch!”
The door opened and Amy appeared, wearing a bewildered expression. “What is wrong with you?”
He propped himself up on his elbow, tried to slow down his breathing. “I was...” Confused. But he simply waved the sentence off and lay back down. “Nothing,” he said. Then, “What is it, Amy? What can I do for you?”
She moved toward the bed and sat down beside him, lay her slender hand on his chest and started massaging him through his white cotton tee shirt. “I just wanted to talk.”
He sighed, some of the heavy pressure blowing out of him. True, he was quick to anger, but unlike Amy, he was also quick to calm. Quick to forgive and forget, to move on. Except maybe when it came to her damn mother. “We can talk,” he said. “What do you want to talk about?”
“About us. About our situation.”
“About being stuck in here?”
“No, no,” she said, shaking her head. Raising his shirt and rubbing his stomach. Her cool hand felt good against his warm flesh. “Not about that. About what happens when we leave. When we get out of this flat.” He covered his eyes with his arm, drew a long breath and said,
“Well, that’s up to you.”
She pulled his arm away from his face. “Look at me,” she said. “I love you.” Her eyes were welling up again. “I’m not going to leave you. Not when we get out of here, not ever. I promise. I swear on my mother.”
His chest rose. “Then you’re willing to stay here in Portugal with me?” he said. “Really?”
She nodded her head. “I’ll stay wherever you stay. I’ll go wherever you want to go. I’ll always be by your side, Craig, I promise.”
He sat up on the bed and hugged her, his sick nauseous stomach swelling with delight. She smelled a bit like sweat from not having showered but he didn’t care. He clutched her to him and wouldn’t let go. He flooded himself with her scent.
Tears spilled down his own cheeks now. “I love you, too. You don’t know how badly I needed to hear that.”
Her chin moved up and down against his shoulder. She shook in his arms, her tears seeping through his shirt. “I know,” she whispered. “I know.”
For a moment everything drifted away. The hunger, the thirst, the exhaustion and restlessness, the stench of vomit escaping under the bathroom door. Even the pulse. He felt perfect, as perfect as he had felt when they first landed in Honolulu two years ago.
Softly she said, “Let’s go now, Craig. Let’s get out of here.”
It took him a few seconds to comprehend. “Out of the bedroom?”
She sobbed, shook her head against his chest. “I mean, out of this flat, Craig.”
He grabbed her by the shoulders and held her away. He looked in her reddening face, in her sopping wet eyes. “What?”
“Let’s leave here,” she said, gently touching his face. “We can go out and find another apartment here in Lisbon, if you want. Or we can go to France or Spain, wherever you decide. Let’s just get the hell out of this flat. Please.”
He turned his head to one side. “I don’t understand, Amy. What are you saying? That you still think I’m the one keeping us locked up in this place?”
“Craig, please.”
He tightened his grip on her shoulders and shook her, shook her hard. “Is that what you’re saying, Amy? Is that what you think?”
She was bawling now. Trembling on her own again.
He felt his fingers closing, pressing into her skin. He felt the bone, the cartilage. “Is that why you told me all this? That you love me and want to stay with me?” He felt the color rising in him, felt his own skin growing red. “Is that why you came in here and started touching me?”
She whimpered, “You’re hurting me.”
He let go of her and jumped off the bed. “How dare you,” he said with indignation. “I didn’t do this. I’m not the one keeping us here.”
He gave her one last look then stormed toward the door.
“Craig!” she bellowed.
He turned and glared at her as she slunk off the bed and onto the floor.
“I found your credit cards.”
He parted his lips to say something but didn’t. Instead he spun around and walked out the door. Then he slammed it behind him.
Chapter Eighteen
In the early afternoon, when Amy finally summoned the courage to exit the bedroom, she found Craig seated at the table in front of his laptop. He was actually working through this. Writing his goddamn novel. He didn’t say anything to her as she crossed the room, didn’t so much as look up. He just kept typing.
Amy moved to the couch. It had to be Craig. He had to be the one to have done this. She wondered briefly if he had been planning it all along. He’d had to. He had everything covered. The door was sealed, the window shut tight and unbreakable. He had sabotaged the phone and Internet service. Threw away the few scraps of food the last tenant had left behind. But what was his end game? Was this his new way of attempting suicide?
If so, Amy realized, he planned on taking her with him.
She watched him as he typed. Had he really received an email from Amaro Dias Silva? She hadn’t seen it, he’d only read the message to her. She had watched him send an email to the landlord the previous night. But if he had gone this far in planning all this, maybe he had set up an account and emailed himself. For all she knew there was no Amaro Dias Silva. For all she knew they were squatting in this hellish place!
Amy’s last best hope was her mother. Her mother hated Craig. She feared him, feared for her only daughter. Of course she wouldn’t let not hearing from Amy slide for very long. She hated that Amy was leaving the States to begin with, deplo
red the fact that Amy was still with Craig at all. And now she had not heard from Amy in three full days. Surely by this time she was taking some action. Contacting the Portuguese authorities, or she might well even be on her way. Her mother had the address of this blasted building. And that would be all she would need.
#
He couldn’t believe how well the writing was going. The writing had not gone this well since he was scribbling in his notebook on Waikiki Beach, sipping cold Fresca and watching the women in two- piece bikinis walk by. Back then he had attributed his good fortune to the sun, to the ocean, to the mood the beauty of Hawaii had created in him. So then what was spurring him on now? Hell, it didn’t matter. He quickly checked his stats: fourteen thousand words and counting. He saved his work and almost smiled. But he stopped himself in time. He couldn’t smile right now. Amy was watching.
#
She stood and moved toward the boxes. Her cell phone, though undoubtedly useless here in Europe, was packed somewhere within. She hunched over the boxes, groaning from the pain in her lower back. Some of the boxes were marked but most of them weren’t. She had lost her enthusiasm for packing and labeling once she had realized she would be doing all of the work herself, that Craig yet again didn’t intend to help.
She knelt beside a large carton, poked her fingernails under the packing tape and peeled it off. Frrrrrrrrsssssshhhhh. She stole a glance at Craig. He had paused typing when he heard the noise and now he was watching her. She tried to pay him no mind and opened the box. Therein she found his law licenses from the State of New York and the federal courts, along with his college and law school degrees. All were expensively framed and carefully packed as though they were still more than just pieces of paper.
