The Great Escape

by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  He took a swig of Coke without bothering to reply. She averted her eyes from the disagreeable T-shirt she’d been pretending all day not to notice. Panda’s concept of sartorial elegance didn’t extend further than a shower and a clean pair of jeans. She felt an unwelcome pang for Ted, the sweet, sensitive, even-tempered bridegroom she’d thrown under the bus.

  “A shade umbrella would be nice,” she said.

  Nothing but silence.

  She spotted an excursion boat in the distance, cutting through bald cypress webbed with Spanish moss. “If I were a biker, I’d have a better name than Panda.”

  Viper.

  He crumpled his Coke can in his fist and stalked off the deck into the backyard, pitching the can into a black plastic trash bin on his way. As he walked toward the lake, she slumped into the chair he’d abandoned. Ted was a great conversationalist and the best listener she’d ever known. He’d acted as though he was fascinated with whatever she said. Of course, he acted that way with everybody, even crazy people, but still … She’d never known him to be impatient or short-tempered—never heard him utter a harsh word. He was kind, patient, thoughtful, understanding, and yet she’d dumped him. What did that say about her?

  She pulled one of the matching chairs closer with her heels, feeling bluer by the minute. Panda reached the dock. An overturned canoe lay on the bank, and an osprey skimmed the water. He hadn’t told her how long he planned to rent the house, only that she was free to leave anytime, the sooner the better. But did he really want that? She was growing increasingly convinced that he was smarter than he let on, and she couldn’t let go of her nagging fear that he was talking to the tabloids. What if he’d figured out he could make a lot more than a thousand dollars selling them her story?

  She headed down the steps and toward the water, where he’d stopped by the canoe. She scuffed the heel of her sneaker in the dirt. He didn’t look up. She wished she’d chosen a traveling companion who didn’t indulge in oppressive silences and favor loathsome bumper stickers. But then, she wished for a lot of things. That she’d picked a different fiancé to abandon, one who’d done something—anything—to justify being ditched at the altar. But Ted hadn’t, and some ugly part of her hated him for being so much better than she was.

  She couldn’t stand her thoughts a moment longer. “I like to fish,” she said. “I throw everything back. Except when I went to Outward Bound. I kept the fish then because—”

  “Not interested.” He straightened and gave her a long look—not undressing her with his eyes; he’d stopped doing that—but looking at her in a way that made her feel as if he were seeing every part of her, even the parts she didn’t know were there. “Call Ted and tell him you’re sorry. Call your folks. It’s been three days. You’ve had your adventure. It’s time for the rich girl to go home.”

  “I’ve heard enough rich-girl cracks.”

  “I call it like I see it.”

  “Like you want to see it.”

  He studied her for an uncomfortably long moment, then tilted his head toward the canoe. “Help me get this thing in the water.”

  They flipped the canoe and slid it into the lake. She grabbed one of the paddles without waiting for an invitation and stepped in. She hoped he’d stalk off, but he picked up the other paddle and climbed in, the motion so graceful the canoe barely moved.

  For the next hour, they glided through the water, steering clear of the water hyacinths that choked the swampier areas. As they paddled from one hidden bayou to the next, through eerie cypress forests draped with Spanish moss, he barely spoke. She glanced back at him. The play of his muscles stretched his white T-shirt over his chest as he paddled, highlighting the message written in black letters. The shirt wasn’t one of his recent purchases but something that must have been stashed in the bike’s saddlebags when he’d left Wynette. If only it had stayed there. “Those awful bumper stickers are bad enough,” she said, “but at least a person has to be close to your bike to see them.”

  He watched an alligator lolling in a patch of sunlight on the far bank. “I told you about the bumper stickers.”

  She turned around in her seat, resting the paddle on her knees and letting him steer. “You said the bike’s previous owner put them on. So why didn’t you let me peel them off?”

  He shifted his paddle to the other side. “Because I like them.”

  She frowned at the message on his T-shirt: IT ONLY SEEMS KINKY THE FIRST TIME.

  “It was a gift,” he said.

  “From Satan?”

  Something that looked almost like a smile flickered across his face and then disappeared. “You don’t like it, you know what you can do about it.” He cleared another snarl of water hyacinths.

  “What if a child saw that shirt?”

  “Seen any kids today?” He shifted his weight slightly on the seat. “You’re making me sorry I lost my favorite one.”

  She turned back to the bow. “I don’t want to hear.”

  “It says, ‘I’m all for gay marriage as long as both bitches are hot.’”

  Her temper sparked, and the canoe wobbled as she twisted back around. “Political correctness is obviously a big joke to you, but it isn’t to me. Call me old-fashioned, but I think there’s value in honoring the dignity of everyone.”

  He pulled his paddle out of the murky water. “Damn, I wish I’d brought the one I got a coupla weeks ago.”

  “A terrible loss, I’m sure.”

  “Want to know what it said?”

  “No.”

  “It said …”—he leaned toward her and spoke in a slow whisper that carried over the water—“‘If I’d shot you when I wanted to, I’d be out by now.’”

  So much for conversation.

  When they returned to the house, she made herself a sandwich from the groceries they’d picked up, claimed an old paperback someone had left behind, and closed herself in the bedroom. Loneliness wrapped around her like a too-heavy overcoat. Had Ted done anything to find her? Apparently not, considering that he hadn’t tried to stop her from leaving the church. And what about her parents? She’d called Meg twice from Panda’s phone, so it couldn’t be that hard for the Secret Service to locate her.

  What if Mat and Nealy had written her off? She told herself they wouldn’t do that.

  Unless they were so disgusted with her that they didn’t want to see her for a while.

  She couldn’t blame them.

  SOMETHING ODD HAPPENED OVER THE next few days. Panda’s manners underwent a marked improvement. At first she didn’t notice the absence of all those belches, slurps, and scratching. It was only when she saw him cut a piece of chicken neatly from the bone and carefully swallow his first bite before he asked her to pass the pepper that she became thoroughly confused. What had happened to that open-mouth chewing and using the back of his hand as a napkin? As for any suggestions of sexual violence … He barely seemed to notice she was female.

  They went into the town of Marshall for groceries and supplies. She bought sunglasses, kept her hat pulled low, the baby bump she’d grown to detest in place, and with Panda close by, no one noticed her.

  He worked on his bike, taking things apart, reassembling. Bare chested, and with a blue bandanna wrapped around his forehead, he lubed and polished, checked fluid levels and changed brake pads. He set a radio in an open window and listened to hip-hop, except once she’d gone outside and heard an aria from The Magic Flute. When she’d commented on it, he accused her of messing around with his radio and ordered her to change the damn station. Occasionally she’d catch him talking to someone on his cell, but he never left his phone around, so she had no opportunity to check his call records.

  At night, she sealed herself in her bedroom while he sat up, sometimes watching a baseball game on television, but more frequently sitting on the deck, staring out at the water. The numbness from the first few days began to fade, and she found herself watching him.

  PANDA DRAGGED THE MUSKY SCENT of the bayou into his lungs
. He had too much time to think—too many memories crowding in—and each day his resentment burrowed deeper.

  He hadn’t expected her to last more than a few hours, yet here she still was, seven days after he’d picked her up. Why couldn’t she do what she was supposed to? Go back to Wynette or run home to Virginia. He didn’t give a damn where she went, as long as she was gone.

  He couldn’t understand her. She’d seen right through that stomach-churning bogus rape he’d staged their second night out, and she acted as if she didn’t hear half the insults he hurled at her. She was so controlled, so disciplined. What she’d done on her wedding day was clearly out of character. And yet … Beneath those good manners, he kept catching glimpses of something—someone—more complicated. She was smart, maddeningly perceptive, and stubborn as hell. Shadows didn’t cling to her like they did to him. He’d bet anything she’d never woken up screaming. Or drunk until she blacked out. And when she’d been a kid …

  When she’d been a kid, she’d been able to do what he couldn’t.

  Five hundred dollars. That’s all his kid brother had been worth.

  Through the cry of a swamp creature, he heard his eight-year-old brother’s voice as they’d walked up the broken sidewalk to still another foster home, their current social worker climbing the creaking porch steps in front of them. “What if I pee the bed again?” Curtis whispered. “That’s what got us kicked out of the last house.”

  Panda hid his own fear beneath a fifteen-year-old’s swagger. “Don’t worry about it, jerkface.” He delivered a sucker punch to Curtis’s scrawny arm. “I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and take you to the bathroom.”

  But what if he didn’t wake up like he hadn’t last week? He’d promised himself he wouldn’t fall asleep until he got Curtis up to pee, but he’d dozed off anyway, and the next day old lady Gilbert had told Social Services they had to find someplace else for Curtis.

  Panda wouldn’t let anything separate him from his kid brother, and he told their social worker he’d run away if the two of them got split up. She must have believed him because she found a new house for them. But she warned him there weren’t any more families willing to take them both.

  “I’m scared,” Curtis whispered as they reached the porch. “Are you scared?”

  “I’m never scared,” he lied. “Nothing to be scared of.”

  He’d been so wrong.

  Panda gazed out at the dark water. Lucy had been fourteen when her mother had died. If he and Curtis had fallen in with Mat and Nealy Jorik, his brother would still be alive. Lucy had accomplished what he couldn’t pull off—she’d kept her sister safe—and now Curtis lay in a grave while the sister Lucy had protected prepared for her first year of college.

  Curtis had hooked up with a gang when he was only ten, something Panda could have prevented if he hadn’t been in juvie. They’d let him out long enough to go to his little brother’s funeral.

  He blinked his eyes hard. Memories of Curtis only led to other memories. It would be easier not to think if he had music to distract him, but he couldn’t listen to the heavy drama of Otello, Boris Godunov, or a dozen other operas with Lucy around. With anybody around.

  He wished she’d come out and talk to him. He wanted her close; he wanted her farther away. He wanted her to leave, to stay, to take off her clothes—he couldn’t help that. Being with her all day would test any man, especially a horny bastard like himself.

  He rubbed the bridge of his nose, pulled his cell from his pocket, and carried it around to the side of the house where he couldn’t be overheard.

  PANDA KEPT GOADING HER INTO going for morning runs, and even though she held him back, he refused to run ahead. “The second I’m out of sight, you’ll start walking,” he said.

  True. She walked for exercise and had a gym membership she used semi-semi-regularly, but she wasn’t a running enthusiast. “When did you make yourself my personal trainer?”

  He punished her by kicking up the pace. Eventually, however, he took pity and slowed.

  Her conviction that he wasn’t entirely the Neanderthal he wanted her to believe had grown along with her curiosity about him, and she embarked on a fishing expedition. “Have you talked to your girlfriend since you’ve been gone from wherever you’re gone from?”

  A grunt.

  “Where is that, by the way?”

  “Up north.”

  “Colorado? Nome?”

  “Do you have to talk?”

  “Married? Divorced?”

  “Watch that pothole. If you break your leg, you’re on your own.”

  She pulled some extra air into her burning lungs. “You know the details of my life. It’s only fair that I know some of yours.”

  He moved ahead again. Unlike her, he wasn’t out of breath. “Never been married, and that’s all you’re getting.”

  “Are you involved with anybody?”

  He looked at her over his shoulder—faintly pitying. “What do you think?”

  “That the pool of lady alligator wrestlers isn’t big enough to give you a lot of dating opportunities?”

  She heard a sound—either amusement or a warning that he’d heard enough stupid questions—but all she’d learned was that he was single, and he could be lying about that. “It’s so strange,” she said. “As soon as we got here, your manners improved. It must be the swamp air.”

  He cut to the other side of the road. “The question is,” she said, “why bother with all that spitting and scratching since—and I have to admit I was surprised about this—it doesn’t seem to come naturally?”

  She expected him to dodge the question, but he didn’t. “So what? I got bored when I realized you were too much of a nut job to be scared into doing what you should have done right away?”

  No one had ever called her a nut job, but since the insult came from him, she didn’t take it to heart. “You were hoping when I saw the contrast between you and Ted, I’d realize what I’d given up and go back to Wynette.”

  “Something like that. Ted’s a good guy, and he was obviously in love with you. I was trying to do him a favor. I stopped when I realized the biggest favor I could do him was to keep you from going back.”

  That was true enough to hurt, and they finished the run in silence.

  When they returned to the house, he pulled his sweat-soaked T-shirt over his head, grabbed the hose, and doused himself. His hair clung to his neck in wet black ribbons; the sun poured over his face as he tilted his head to the sky.

  He finally set the hose aside and used his palm to sluice the water from his chest. His swarthy skin, blunt-tipped nose, and wet, big-fisted hands made an unsettling contrast to Ted’s perfect male beauty. Panda might not be as crude as he wanted her to believe, but he still existed completely outside her realm of experience.

  She realized she was staring and turned away. Her female body was clearly drawn to what she saw. Fortunately, her female brain wasn’t nearly as foolish.

  ONE DAY DRIFTED INTO ANOTHER until they’d been at the lake for a week. She swam, read, or baked bread, one of the few foods that tasted good to her. What she didn’t do was call Ted or her family.

  Each morning after their run, Panda appeared in the kitchen, his hair still wet from his shower, his curls temporarily tamed, although she knew they’d quickly reassert themselves. He picked up what she suspected would be the first of several warm slices of the oatmeal bread she’d just taken from the oven, tore the bread neatly in half, and spread each piece with a spoonful of orange marmalade. “Did Ted know about your baking skills when he let you dump him?” he said after he’d swallowed his second bite.

  She set aside her own piece of bread, no longer hungry. “Ted doesn’t eat a lot of carbs.” That wasn’t true, but she wouldn’t admit that she’d never gotten around to baking for her fiancé.

  She’d picked up her adult cooking skills under the funnel-shaped stainless steel lights that hung in the White House kitchen, the place where she’d escaped when h
er siblings’ squabbles had gotten on her nerves. There, she’d learned from some of the country’s best chefs, and now Panda, instead of Ted, was the beneficiary.

  He twisted the lid back on the marmalade jar. “Ted’s the kind of guy who was born under a lucky star. Brains, money, polish.” He slapped the jar in the refrigerator and shoved the door closed. “While the rest of the world screws up, Ted Beaudine sails free.”

  “Yes, well, he was trapped in a pretty big screwup last weekend,” she said.

  “He’s already over it.”

  She prayed that was true.

  NEAR THE HOUSE, CADDO LAKE was shallow with a muddy bottom, so she couldn’t swim there, but when they were on the lake, she swam off the small outboard that came with the rental house. He never went in the water with her, and eight days after their arrival—eleven days since she’d fled—she asked him about it as she swam alongside the drifting boat. “Odd that a tough guy like you seems afraid to go in the water.”

  “Can’t swim,” he said as he propped his bare feet on the boat’s splintering rail. “I never learned.”

  Having observed his love of being on the water, she found that strange. And what about those jeans he always wore? She flipped to her back and took another approach. “You don’t want me to see your skinny legs. You’re afraid I’ll mock.” As if any part of his body could be less than muscular …

  “I like jeans,” he said.

  She dropped her feet and treaded water. “I don’t get it. It’s a sauna around here, and you’ll take off your shirt at the drop of a hat, so why not wear shorts?”

  “I’ve got some scars. Now shut up about it.”

  He might be telling the truth, but she doubted it. As he leaned back against the stern, sunlight gilded his swarthy pirate’s skin, and his half-closed eyes seemed more languid than menacing. She felt another of those unwelcoming stirs of … something. She wanted to think it was merely awareness, but it was more than that. An involuntary arousal.