by Donald Wells
Lindsay is barely awake and unable to focus on anything. When Derek removes her top, she helps him, saying, “Bedtime… so tired.”
“Yes.” Derek says. “It’s bedtime.”
He strips Lindsay naked and after neatly folding her clothes, he sets them on the rocker.
Lindsay’s rolled over onto her stomach, sleeping peacefully. Derek looks at her, at her face, and brushes the hair from her eyes, then, leaning down, he gently kisses her on the mouth.
“That’s nice.” Lindsay whispers, awakening some, although her eyes stay closed.
“I’m sorry I cheated, but I can’t control myself, I just need sex all the time.” Derek says.
“I forgive you.” Lindsay slurs.
Derek smiles, “Really? Good, good, I’ve missed you. I, I think about you all the time… I love you Lindsay.”
Lindsay mutters. “I love you too Jason.”
Derek’s face turns a deep red as his hands quiver into fists. He grabs Lindsay by the hair, hard, her eyes flicker open as Derek hisses into her ear. “Jason doesn’t love you.”
“He loves me.” Lindsay whines, as her eyes close again.
“Remember the pictures? He’s fucking her you know that, a bitch that tasty? Forget Jason, you’re mine Lindsay. You belong to me!”
Derek grasps Lindsay’s arm and flips her over onto her back.
Lindsay moans, while just barely conscious. “Why Jason why?”
He climbs onto the bed and slaps her thighs apart as he moves between them.
“You’re mine Lindsay.” Derek grunts, while forcing himself into her. “You’re mine!”
8
Lindsay wakes amid a myriad of pain. She had been sleeping on her stomach with her left hand caught beneath her; it now throbs as the numbness dissipates. Her thighs hurt from bruising, while the area between them aches doubly. Her vagina feels like an insane gynecologist examined her and she has an urge to urinate greater than any she can ever remember.
She tumbles to the bathroom while leaning on the hallway walls, otherwise, she would fall. After using the toilet she sits there, motionless, trying to clear her mind of the gauze of sleep enclosing it.
Before she can ruminate further a wave of nausea engulfs her and she vomits, had she not already been in the bathroom she never would have made it to the toilet. She is on her knees, naked, and the iciness of the cold tiles starts her to shivering. She gets up and turns on the shower.
I’ve got to wake up.
As she steps into the tub, the hot water removes some of the cobwebs from her mind.
Jason and that girl, it’s true, it’s really true. She steps from the shower and towels off. The ache from her vagina is intense. Why?
She looks in the medicine cabinet and finds pain reliever; next, she walks back to her room on steadier legs and puts on her robe.
“Jason’s cheating on me.” She says in wonder, as she sits on the side of the bed. It is then that she notices her clothes, the ones she wore earlier. They’re folded and stacked in a neat little bundle on the seat of the rocker, exactly the way Derek always did it.
Lindsay whispers, “Oh God no, I slept with Derek.” as the words, You’ve got to pay him back, float across her mind like lyrics from an old song.
What happened? I remember Derek kissing me and taking my hand, but I said no, I said no! Derek was angry downstairs, here too, I remember now. Oh God, I remember him on top of me, and now I remember him laughing, but I said no, I said—oh my God he, he…
Lindsay grabs the phone. It sits beside her address book, the book lies opened to Jason’s number.
“Hello?”
“Simone,”
“Lindsay… is that you?”
“Simone I’ve been, he—oh God,” She cannot say the word.
* * *
Jason sits in the passenger seat of Paul’s car, a blue and white Ford Mustang. The day had started in dazzling sunshine, but now the sky grows dark, as clouds gather in the late afternoon.
“Tell me again, exactly, what did she say?” Jason asks.
“I told you. Simone said for us to come to Lindsay’s and that something was wrong.”
“But what’s wrong? What is it?”
“I asked her what it was and she said to just hurry over, so we’re hurrying over.”
“I sure as hell don’t like the sound of that.”
“Me neither.” Paul agrees.
When they arrive at Lindsay’s house, Jason jumps out of the car before it fully stops.
Simone opens the door and Jason runs past her, yelling.
“Lindsay!”
Lindsay is on the sofa, dressed in gray sweatpants and sweatshirt. She wears no make-up and her face is splotchy, her eyes red from crying.
Jason sits and reaches out to take her hand. “Honey what’s wrong? You’ve been crying.”
Lindsay pulls away. “Don’t touch me!”
Paul and Simone stand off to the side, looking uneasy.
“Why won’t you let me touch you?” Jason says.
“Why don’t you go touch her?” Lindsay says, pure venom, and points to the pictures on the coffee table.
Until this time, Jason had not noticed them, now he looks at them, perplexed. He picks one up. “What are these?”
“You tell me.” Lindsay says.
“Well, this looks like me at the mall. These must have been taken when that girl was bothering me, you remember Paul?”
“Let me see.” Paul says. Jason hands him a photo and Paul examines it. “Yeah, it’s the food court. Jason and I were at the mall that day looking for Valentine’s Day gifts. Where’d you get these Lindsay?”
Lindsay’s face softens. “Jason do you know that girl or not?”
“No honey, she sat down at our table when Paul got up for a minute and then she…”
“Then she what?” Lindsay asks.
“Well, she offered to take me home with her.”
“If you had gone off with her, Lindsay would have gotten pictures of that.” Paul says. “I’ll bet these photos were plan B.”
“Where did these come from? Who took them?” Jason asks.
Lindsay points to the art pad. “Why would you draw her if you don’t know her?”
Jason looks at the smeared charcoal; the green streaks that were Rita’s eyes spark his memory.
“Is that my drawing of Rita? Honey that’s not the same girl, that’s my Cousin Melody’s friend Rita. I drew that at Thanksgiving, where’d you get it?”
“I thought you were sleeping with this girl.”
“Who? Rita?”
“Yes, I mean no, the girl in the pictures, both.”
“But Lindsay I love you, how could you think that?”
Panic dawns on Lindsay’s face. “Derek sent me the pictures, and when I found the drawing I—” She grabs Jason, rocking him back and forth while chanting, “I’m so sorry I’m so sorry I’m so sorry I’m so—”
“Lindsay!” Jason shouts, breaking her craze. “It’s okay, Derek took his best shot and it didn’t work. The sick bastard’s not breaking us up with lies.”
“Jason I, I have something else to tell you. It’s worse than these pictures, it’s worse than anything.” She trembles and gazes downward, unable to look him in the eyes.
Jason takes her hands and discovers they are like ice. “Lindsay?”
Simone speaks up. “You should tell Jason this alone. Paul and I will be in the kitchen.”
Simone takes Paul by the hand and leads him down the short hallway to the kitchen.
“Lindsay It’s okay, please honey, you’re really frightening me. Please talk to me.”
Lindsay raises her head and makes eye contact.
“When I got those pictures I started thinking about what Derek said on Christmas Eve, about having seen you with another girl.”
“But why would you—” Jason starts, and is hushed, as Lindsay presses a finger to his lips.
“Please don’t interrupt or I may not get
it said. I have to tell you this all at once in the order I remember it. I’m still trying to make sense of it myself.”
“I won’t interrupt, just tell me.”
“After the pictures came yesterday I showed them to Simone. She said they looked staged and I shouldn’t let them bother me, I agreed and tore them up, but they kept coming back into my mind. It’s like when someone says don’t think about a pink elephant and then all you can think about are pink elephants. I taped them together and looked at them most of the night. After barely sleeping, I decided to confront you.”
Here, Jason almost interrupts; he opens his mouth and then closes it. Lindsay goes on.
“This morning when you picked me up and spun me around I suddenly felt foolish. You were so happy to see me, then in the shower, and again in the bed.” She smiles at him. “Oh Jason I was so happy, so happy.” Lindsay gets up and begins pacing. “I swear I wasn’t snooping around your room. But I noticed that bright red case and I looked inside. When I saw that drawing… she looks so much like the girl in the pictures that I just collapsed.
“I came home and started drinking, looking at the pictures and the drawing, and drinking. I believed you were cheating, just like Derek did, just like… daddy did. This was a thousand times worse than with Derek. I never loved Derek and I love you more than life. Oh Jason I just wanted to die.”
Jason goes to her and hugs her from behind, but Lindsay turns in his arms and pushes him away.
“No, I won’t be able to finish if you hold me. I need to pace.”
“All right, but I can’t stand this. I’ve never seen you this way before.”
Lindsay’s face contorts. “That’s because I’ve never been…”
No, I can’t blurt it out. I have to lead him to it gently. Gently? Nothing can cushion this. I just have to say it.
She turns her back to Jason and hugs herself, closing her eyes, forcing herself to speak.
“I must have been drinking for hours when the doorbell rang, it was, it was Derek.”
At the sound of his name she senses Jason shift behind her, but he doesn’t interrupt.
“I remember Derek kissing me, wanting to sleep with me, I told him no, that cheating or not, I loved you. Then he snorted something, probably cocaine. I drank a beer… after that it’s all just bits and pieces.”
“Bits and pieces of what?” Jason says, and the way he says it tells her he may know.
“Derek was talking, but I don’t remember all of what he said. I only remember one sentence. He kept saying that I was his, that I belonged to him… as if I were a thing.”
“Bits and pieces of what?” Jason says again, and this time there is no doubt, he knows.
“Jason I, if I could have fought back I would have, but I was so unbelievably tired. I remember him on top of me and a pressure and pain. And I remember him laughing, laughing while he, he… raped me.”
At the utterance of the word, Lindsay hears Jason make a sound like, “Uuunnhhh,”
She opens her eyes and turns to look at him. He’s fallen back onto the sofa, his face a blank mask, his eyes far away.
“How bad did he hurt you?” He asks, and it’s in a voice she hardly recognizes as coming from the man she loves.
“I’m sore and I have some bruising and swelling, but there was no bleeding.”
“Do you want a doctor, a hospital?” Same voice,
“…No.” Lindsay says.
Simone peeks around the corner, upon seeing Jason she knows immediately that Lindsay’s told him about the rape. She and Paul enter the room.
“Paul found two spoons on the countertop. It looks as though Derek crushed up some kind of drug with them; he probably gave it to you in the beer. Lindsay, it wasn’t only the champagne, Derek drugged you.”
“Jason,” Paul says. “Jason what are we going to do?”
Jason stares at Paul as if he had just asked him what two plus two were.
“I’m going to kill him of course.”
And Lindsay now knows whose voice she’d been hearing. It was the voice of Death.
9
Michael McGee is alone in the kitchen at the Stern estate, eating a roast beef sandwich that Marta the maid prepared for him.
McGee is thirty-eight-years-old and built tough. His six-foot-five, 238lb. body is mostly muscle, and in his brown eyes lies more than a spark of intelligence.
McGee hides this intellect behind a facade of commonness. His job title is listed as caretaker/chauffer, however his duties are… various.
McGee eats like he does everything else—patiently. He picks at the meat hanging off the side of the bread. Next, he nibbles off the crust. Only then will he eat the soft unprotected middle, but not with hearty bites, small bites, take small bites and be patient, always be patient.
Derek enters and takes two beers from the refrigerator; he slides one over to McGee as he sits down at the table.
“I need a little help tonight.”
“Father, brother, boyfriend or husband?” McGee says, between nibbles.
“Boyfriend,”
“When?”
“Oh anytime now,” Derek says. “Anytime now.”
* * *
Lindsay watches Jason and feels more fear than she has ever known.
In the time they’ve been together she has seen him happy, she has seen him sad and she has seen him angry, but she has never seen him like this.
He sits looking calmly at the people around him, people who are his friends, one, nearly a brother, and herself, his lover.
His calm is so disturbing because his words were so menacing. Jason said he was going to kill Derek, and God help her, Lindsay believes him.
“You can’t kill him.” Paul says. “It would be murder, a homicide.”
“Listen to Paul, please don’t do anything rash.” Simone says.
Jason ignores them and looks at Lindsay. He rises off the sofa and goes to her, taking her in his arms, hugging her, and to everyone and no one he asks.
“What would make him think he could hurt you and live?” And again, it is the Death voice.
Lindsay looks up into his face and discovers flat, blank eyes of death.
“Jason don’t go after Derek, let the police handle it. You’ll ruin your life if you kill him, you’ll ruin our lives.”
“But, he hurt you, he raped you. How can I let him live?” Asks Death.
“Because you have to, killing him would kill us, it would separate us and that would hurt me far more than the rape. I can’t lose you, I can’t. Don’t kill him, stay here and love me, please Boomer.”
Jason’s eyes flicker as tears well up and run down his face. Lindsay smiles at the tears, because she knows Death would not cry, only Jason. She looks through the tears and sees her Boomer looking back. And now it is Jason who speaks to her, and it’s Jason’s voice again.
“I love you so much Lindsay.” Then to Paul, “What can we do, call the police?”
Paul settles into a chair and gives Jason a sad look.
“Actually, and you don’t know how much it hurts me to say this, but I don’t think they would even arrest him under the circumstances.”
“What circumstances? The son of a bitch raped Lindsay, those are the circumstances!”
“Listen to me calmly, please, and understand, this is not my thinking, but it’s how the police will see things. Derek and Lindsay used to be together, a prior relationship. They’ll say she opened the door and let him in. Lindsay was drunk and Derek was high. Was it a party maybe? One that got a little too friendly? Do you see how it will look? And with his mother’s money and status the police won’t be too eager to get involved. I’m sorry Lindsay.”
“Fuck!” Jason says. “And you want to be a cop someday, why?”
“Jason, Little Brother, you can only change things from the inside.”
“So what the hell do we do then? What the hell can we do?”
“You’re doing it already. Jason forget Derek and take care of
Lindsay, she needs you.”
“Listen to Paul.” Lindsay says. “I’ll be all right if I know we’re okay, baby are we okay?”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t trust you. I believed you were cheating on me.”
Jason goes over to the coffee table and stares down at the pictures.
“It hurts that you didn’t trust me, but I can see why?”
“I thought you were cheating and I’m the one who wound up in bed with Derek.”
“You were in bed with Derek because he forced you there.” Jason says, and for an instant Lindsay hears a timbre of the Death voice, but it passes.
“Lindsay honey, come here.” Jason opens his arms. Lindsay falls into them and Jason enfolds himself upon her. “We’re not just okay, we’re stronger than okay we’re… we’re us.”
Lindsay smiles at this and they kiss, holding each other in love on Valentine’s Day.
* * *
Simone agrees to stay with Lindsay overnight and Paul drives Jason home. It’s dark now and the air is thick with imminent rain, despite a strong breeze gusting in off the ocean.
“Jason, don’t stay up all night thinking about Derek, it won’t do any good.”
“Don’t worry, I’m just going to concentrate on Lindsay and help her to get over this.”
“After I drop you off I’m going back and stay with Simone for a while.”
“Thank her for me again. You’re lucky to have her, you know?”
“I know Jason, believe me I know.”
Once home, Jason tells Paul goodbye and goes inside. His parents are sitting at the kitchen table.
His father looks up. “What was all the trouble at Lindsay’s? Is everything all right?”
Jason starts to talk and finds he cannot, the pain of the last few hours boils over and he begins to cry.
Marjorie goes over and holds him. “Oh God what’s wrong?”
Jason lowers his head onto her shoulder. “Lindsay was raped.”
“What?” Marjorie exclaims. “Jason is she, is she all right?”
“She will be mom. I’ll make sure.”
“Son, are you all right?” Adam asks.
“Dad, I don’t know yet, I really don’t know.”
* * *
