And then Frank Moort got up from his table and brushed past Teeny with his coat in hand. Not a word from him, not even a look.
She wasn’t sure when she made the decision but she hurried alongside him down the aisle behind the crowd of chairs and legs and seated customers. She managed to get around him at the front door of the café, stopping him short of leaving, not touching him, thank God, but almost needing to put a hand on his chest to act as his personal stop light.
She whispered in a forceful way, looking directly into his eyes again.
His breath smelled of coffee and a cigarette.
“Okay, okay, okay,” she said, wary that her mother and Mrs. Smythe might be able to hear her. She shot a glance over his shoulder and saw that the two women were both looking directly at her and Frank Moort. Not eating or talking. Just watching her. She wondered, in a flash, who else might be paying any attention to her and Mr. Moort and what her mother would make of this if she could hear.
“I’ll do what you want,” Teeny whispered to Frank Moort, barely able to believe the words were coming from her. And she was so quiet that she wondered if even Frank Moort would hear her. “Just not now,” She added. “After closing. Come then.”
He heard. Oh did he. And finally, Frank Moort’s distant look broke. And he gave a genuine smile of yellowing teeth before stepping around her and heading out into the sunshine. The bell over the door gave a dingle as the door drew closed again behind him.
Teeny didn’t move. Only stood there staring at the hub of activity, the haze of cigarette smoke from the lunch rush, there in the bulk of the café. But she didn’t really see the movement, was oblivious to the fact that customers at her tables were getting irritated, had emptied their coffee cups, were lighting second and third cigarettes.
That didn’t matter right now. Maybe it never did.
Her chest grew heavy, like it was filling with sand, and her stomach did a slow, drawling summersault below her ribs. She took a deep breath as static rose in her ears. She thought it might be a blender from the kitchen but discovered it was actually noise inside her own head. A few feet away her Mama and Delia Smythe were watching her. Her mother’s voice went from loud and strong to weak and distant as though Teeny was a television set and someone had started turning the volume way down.
“Teeny. Teeny? Is everything okay…?”
Mrs. McLeod put her hands on the grips of her wheel chair and eased herself out from under the table, turning the chair she’d been sitting in for the better part of twelve years toward her grown daughter.
Now the volume was completely gone from the room. Teeny heard nothing, only saw her mother wheeling towards her at waist height with her worry lines prominent at the corner of her eyes and her mouth asking silent questions. It moved but the sound was lost to a vacuum.
Teeny instantly understood why she’d said what she had to Frank Moort. It wasn’t for the money. Well, not just for the money. It was for what the money could do.
Captivity is a whore, she thought. And she understood why wild animals could gnaw off their own legs to get out of a hunter’s steel trap.
We’re all caught in something, Teeny thought. Yeah. Captivity is a whore. And now I will be too.
It was thirty-five minutes past twelve.
Part III
A Large Grey Bird with a Sharp Beak
1.
Teeny McLeod waited. And then waited some more. This was a long afternoon, and not just for an unusual lunch rush that extended through to coffee time but because of what she was dreading.
She stood at the front door of the café looking out into the setting sun down at the end of Main Street which sloped as it ran towards the harbour. She stared at slowly undulating formations of orange in the sky and reflecting back from the chopped glass of the harbour water. They felt like waves of regret, waves of anxiety. They rolled through her like sea sickness.
Still no Frank Moort. It was way past supper hour now. He wasn’t coming. The last customer left an hour ago. It had been Delia Smythe’s cousin from the mainland who was apparently on a different clock than the island and needed eggs and bacon, extra grease.
Teeny thought she should just go home, that even if Frank Moort did come this would be the deepest, darkest kind of life mistake. The first and second fingers on her right hand burned. She rubbed them with her other hand and looked down at them to see that they were a bright, tomato red, as though she’d wound a rubber band tightly around the base of each and cut off the circulation to both until they turned from normal to bulbous with plasma and engorged with colour.
She tried to remember if that can of Tahitian pineapple with the rotten, poisonous skin was still laying on the floor of the cold storage locker at the back of the café or if she had the presence of mind to pick it up and throw it in the dumpster out back. She honestly couldn’t remember.
Her feet ached. Her back too. She rubbed her thumb on the first two fingers of her right hand, those two that were infected. It stung too. The problem was getting worse, not better.
Patsy Cline was singing “Crazy” on the small radio in the kitchen. Way up here, she could barely hear it, but she knew the song so well.
Chances were, Frank Moort wouldn’t show up. He just wanted to know she would do what he wanted, didn’t he? He was the sort that just needed his permission slip, but didn’t actually need to go down that road once the gate was opened for him. As long as he knew he could have something the way he wanted it, that was enough for a man like him. He wanted his power over her.
She turned from the cafe’s frontage thinking that was the truth. Or close to the truth. Or that he forgot. Or that he was busy with some time-sensitive overtime work at the Union Rail building across the street where he was apparently fairly important.
The way the world works, she knew the only way she’d ever be someone important was if she got her hands on that sweepstakes ticket and could begin to demand respect. Or if she married rich. A woman in Dovetail Cove in this day in age, the only options were waitress, teacher, nurse, dressmaker or secretary for a man like Frank Moort. She wondered if she should check the mailbox on the way home again, see if her acceptance to the secretarial school had finally come. She believed it too would leave her waiting.
As she headed back towards the kitchen she wished to the Lord above that she would have been born a man. Then she mentally snapped at herself. Tina! You take that back right now. The good Lord made you this exact way for a very distinct purpose. Then she sighed. You just don’t know what it is yet, girlie-girl.
She was about to head back through the swinging kitchen door and hang up her apron when the bell over the front door of the Highliner jingled. She turned around.
Frank Moort was already halfway down the main aisle of tables to her wearing a sly smile like a slit cut into his face. His neck tie was loose and his suit coat hung open swinging with a swish-swish of fabric against the rest of him. He stopped when he got to her with that smile still wide and full of off-white teeth. He was sweating and pink-hued. He came right up to her, too close, and she flinched then shrunk back from him.
“Anyone around? Dab’s not here, is he?" His eyes darted sideways, past her shoulder to the kitchen door.
She shook her head, no, but didn’t speak, couldn’t.
One eyebrow went up over reddened eyes and pink cheeks. “You’ll excuse me, dollface, if I don’t entirely trust your answer.” He pushed past her and into the kitchen. Miguel’s little transistor radio came louder through the pass-through. Now Bill Withers was singing a tinny version of Lean on Me.
Frank Moort pushed back through then gathered up her hand in his, laced his fingers with hers as though they’d practiced it, and led her through the robin’s egg blue door and into the men’s room. The door squawked and he drew it shut behind them, folding them into darkness that was overt and bland. Overhead, the swish-swish of the fan sounded a bit like his coat had. Both his walk and the fan had their purpose.
Clic
k. On came the yellow fluorescent overhead, throwing her and Frank Moort into light. The inside of the men’s room wasn’t robin’s egg blue. It was a sickly green of tile and steel stalls with the old white of sinks and a urinal. Standing in the green room, Frank Moort wasn’t smiling any more. The buzz of the lights was loud. It competed with the Tin-ting-tin-TING of the fan. Bill Withers came through the ductwork and across the grill of a register cover in the ceiling, sounding hollow but not-too-distant.
“Over there,” he said, motioning to the sink and taking off his jacket. “Turn ’round, dollface.” Feeling small and fragile, she turned away from him at the front of one of the sinks and made sure to keep her eyes on him in the mirror. Behind her, he was rolling the cuffs of his wrinkled dress shirt up his arms. He threw his jacket in a heap on the floor near the door.
In a fluid movement, he thrust up behind her, his crotch at her rear. His arms swung out and ensnared her wrists to force her forward and down, heels of her hands onto the two sinks, one on each. Her dark hair flew in the air and obscured herself in the mirror for a moment before settling. Brown blooms of rust framed the mirrors in here, framed her. She looked tired, dark-faced. The ceiling was lower than out in the restaurant and the overhead fan went round and round throwing falsely cool air on her neck. He pushed her down over the surface of the two sinks and, instinctively, her arms shot out to brace her fall so she wouldn’t end up face-first into the lip of one, breaking her teeth or fracturing her nose.
She could feel him back there, behind her, and she looked up at herself through her fallen hair in one of the two mirrors. They were chipped and foggy with age at the edges where rust had started in on the metal finish behind the glass. She could see herself and then the top of his head at her rear. He was bent forward fiddling with his buckle and the fly of his dress pants. She heard the jingle of the belt and zipper as it hit the floor and the tops of his shoes.
Worry was in her throat now: palpable. She gulped hard. His hands were hot and they came out to her backside, not tentative but probing, getting a feel for what was his and how it measured up. His fingers went under her short black skirt likes snakes. Tips found the elastic waistband of her white panties and hooked on to it in two spots, then yanked them down. He worked at them quickly getting them past her knees then giving up on them. He had access to what he needed. She wiggled her legs and they plummeted to her shoes. She didn’t bother kicking them off, vaguely hoping this wouldn’t be long and she could pull them up again.
She spoke. It came out loud and even startled her. “After this, you going to give it back, Mr. Moort?” No answer. “...I mean, you going to give me back what’s mine?” Still no answer as his hands went around and over her, bent before him. “Mr. Moort?”
Frank Moort grunted.
She pushed his hands away and turned around, upright, coming nearly face to face with him. Her stomach flipped around violently as she came just eight inches or so below eye-level to him. Hers met his and she thought she would vomit.
“Mr. Moort. You’re gonna give it to me. After, I mean?” Her voice was shaky. Fluttering like a leaf in a light breeze.
He smiled with eyes that were narrowed. “Yuh,” he said. “Course I will.” He put his hands back on her hips, turned her back around and then put fingertips on her shoulder blades to hinge her at the waist and return her to the bent-forward position of a moment earlier: a do-over. In other words, Don’t move, little one. Don’t even speak. She only gave a little resistance, now more in tune with the idea that this could be done, done soon, done now.
Miguel’s transistor shot sound nearly perfectly through the ductwork and Derek and the Dominoes were coming through the vent in the men’s room now. The song was Layla. Eric Clapton was shouting. He wanted to know what you’ll do when you get lonely. When nobody was at your side…
Frank Moort was putting fingers up between her legs now, working away with one hand on her and one, presumably, on him, though she couldn’t see. She threw her hair back to get it out of her eyes, helping it with her right hand. But she fought the urge to turn her head partially back. She could hear a slapping sound, but didn’t feel anything yet.
His fingers, God, his fingers. Rubbing and pressing. In her personal rearview mirror she saw Frank Moort lick his four fingers on his right hand then put them back to the work of getting things set.
“Don’t do that,” she finally said, a hoarse little croak. “Don’t. Okay?”
“Don’t what?” he said, hesitating for a fraction of a second.
“Not in my...cunny,” she said with her own hesitation. Hesitation at that word. “In me from my...behind—okay? Not the usual way. Okay, Mr. Moort? I can’t end up with a baby over this and I don’t think you’ve got a rubber with you—do you?”
“—No—”
“Then go at it the other way. You have to…or we can’t.”
He paused. Frank Moort was thinking. Then he responded.
“Fine. But it’ll hurt more. Way more.”
“I know. Here.” She reached out with two hands, steadying herself gingerly with one elbow on one sink. She pumped industrial soap from the rusting metal dispenser into her palm. “Use this. Lather up with it.” Then she added, “It won’t be...okay. But it’ll have to be.”
She was telling him it would be okay? Her words sounded so far away. So foreign.
Eric Clapton was belting it out now, offering to make the best of the situation, to not go insane. The tune was echoing through the aluminum tunnel and through the register cover over their heads making it hollow but clear.
He reached forward, awkward for the first time, and scooped a pile of the pink, smelly soap out of her hand. In a moment, the slapping sound was accompanied by a squelching one, getting up to an increasing rhythm.
The soap on the skin of her first two fingers brought her attention back to them, burning and swollen. They were puffy now, like small, inflated balloons, hardly able to bend at their joints.
She closed her eyes. Then she squeezed them. Her fingers hurt. The back of her head hurt. She became aware of her knees and her hips. He was using one hand to widen her stance, to guide her to be more…open.
He cleared his throat. But he didn’t say anything.
Then he was pushing on her. Pushing his way in.
And she was fighting the urge to scream.
It was a quarter past seven.
2.
It was not over quickly. For her, it seemed to take an hour. It wasn’t that long, probably only minutes stacked up, but it most assuredly didn’t take an hour.
First it was dry and chaffing, even a moment of this won’t be so bad. Then it was so much burning, like logs on fire and being banged together to throw sparks and cinders among the white-hot flames. Frank Moort was behind her, constantly, still, forever, forcing something that was completely and utterly unnatural, even with the use of the industrial makeshift lubricant. At one point, with gritted teeth, she held herself stolid against his movements and managed to pump another handful of soap into her palm. She reached around and then under and got most of it onto him where it needed to be. It helped—thank God it helped some—but she knew it would add to the burning and the stinging, might even make it hurt more…after. Lots of the soap went onto her skirt and she figured she’d have to take that off and give it a good wash in the sink before locking up for the night and walking home. It would be a long slow walk. And she would not be getting a lift home from Frank Moort.
All of this was going through her head as Frank Moort kept going, kept grunting, kept giving her more. She brought her slick, soapy hand back to brace against the white porcelain of the sink and saw that it wasn’t just pink with soap residue but red with blood. She felt a long, itchy drip going down the inside of her left thigh and knew it was probably raw soap mixed with blood. She pictured it dropping onto her white panties and wished she’d kicked them away before this started.
Her mom had been scolding her for years, for always being a little
girl just daydreaming her way through life. And now she couldn’t think of anything except this. Why couldn’t she dream something up right now? Something far away? Something better?
He was picking up his pace, getting more forceful. His front banged into her with rhythm. She saw not just his head behind her in the mirror, but off to the side, the brown tongue of his belt was bobbing now too. Their flesh collided again and again, smacking each other like giant repeated kisses by drunkard bodies. Her backside and inside were raw like uncooked meat, puffy and swelling despite still being used. Her anus felt like a bruised and battered eye starting to inflate but still getting hit, even before the pigmentation and heft could begin to rise.
She didn’t want to catch his face in the mirror. She didn’t want to see herself either. She thought, Why can’t I think of something else? Think of the sweepstakes ticket. Think of that. Get one of your daydreams out. Do it now, girlie-girl.
She squinted her eyes tight against this, against all of this. Her hair flew around. Her body jolted and swayed in sloppy motion. She tried to remember if he’d pulled the latch on the inside of the men’s room door, couldn’t call it to mind. Couldn’t think of anything else to take her away from this moment. Think of the ticket, her mind roared again. Think, God damn you.
Derek and the Dominoes finished their song. She wasn’t sure but the deejay may have come on with a weather report or maybe an on-location spot at one of the mainland car lots. Either way, that part was past and now it was Sammy Davis Jr. singing The Candy Man. He would sing a line echoing through the ductwork and register cover and then a group of children, perfectly on key, perfectly at pitch, would sing the same line, and it would echo down the metal tube. She thought how utterly inane this song was.
Oh, that Sammy! In his inimitable way, he was asking all those kids in the chorus if they knew the magical man capable of sprinkling a sunrise with dew. He wanted to know, who was the only special fellow capable of covering it all with chocolate and miracles?
Bled Page 4
