by J. Thorn
“Sure,” she replied, although not really listening to him.
Karen watched as Ravna turned the steering wheel gently to the right and allowed the car to coast up to a pump that appeared to have been around during the 1970s oil embargo. A bell rang twice as he put the car in park.
She yawned and tossed the book into the backseat, tucking the pencil behind her ear and grabbing the door latch. “Pee.”
Ravna nodded and unbuckled his seatbelt, indicating that he had it all under control.
Karen walked past the pumps and the grinning face of a young gas-station attendant leaning back on two legs of a wooden chair. A brown puddle of tobacco juice sat beside his right work boot. Karen looked closely at the boy. He wore a tattered, green ball cap on top of slicked-back hair. Grease covered a minor breakout of acne. A silver chain holding a crucifix lay upon his hairless chest. Karen noticed the embroidered nametag on his mechanic’s shirt: Jasper. She felt his eyes move from her ankles to her eyes, spending more time at some altitudes than others. Karen scurried past as he stood up and began sauntering toward Ravna’s car. He faced her as she went past, tipping the visor of his ball cap and winking.
The word “womin” was scrawled on the restroom door in black permanent marker.
Misspelled, Karen thought. Don’t stereotype the entire South based on one misspelled, hand-scrawled word.
The sun threatened to ignite the rounded tops of the Appalachians. The copper lights of the backwoods service station had already flickered to life, and she could hear the crickets revving up their engines. Corpses of several cars lay half-buried in kudzu, some growing through shattered sunroofs like tufts of renegade hair. Karen stooped down and saw that the rusted hulk closest to her sat on cinderblocks.
“Nope. No stereotypes here,” she said with a smirk.
Karen heard Ravna’s voice mingling with the long drawl of the young man filling the tank. She had to admit that there was something musical about the accent she often associated with redneck living. A mosquito snapped at her calf, reminding her that her bladder needed relief before the creatures sucked the blood from her body. Karen placed her hand on the doorknob and pulled the door open, taking the brunt of the foul greetings of pent-up sewer gas. She waved her hands in front of her face and coughed, stepping backward. Her heel struck an object, and Karen looked down to see it lying in the high grass, hidden from sight. She reached down and grabbed the strap to a black purse. Ants swarmed over the bottom, so she brushed them aside, temporarily forgetting her need to use the restroom. The purse was leather, and the zippers wore a light coating of rust. It was heavy and closed. She looked around, still hearing the conversation between Ravna and the attendant but not able to see them around the corner of the building.
“If I can’t see them, they can’t see me,” she whispered.
Karen stooped down, setting the purse on the gravel path leading to the ladies’ room. She unzipped it and fumbled through items that would be found in most purses. Karen noted a makeup bag, extra tampon, lipstick, checkbook, can of Mace, and a wallet. She grabbed the wallet first and unfastened the latch. Her thumb flipped through five twenty-dollar bills neatly tucked behind five grooves holding five different credit cards. The currency raised her eyebrows and heartbeat in a natural reaction to found money until her brain caught up.
“Someone does not lose a purse of this size, and a snatcher doesn’t leave the money and credit cards inside it.”
Karen was overcome with a sense of shame. She shut the wallet and zipped the purse shut, determined to take it into the restroom with her and then decide what to do. Going through another woman’s purse without her consent felt like an invasion of privacy, yet Karen’s mind fluttered with dozens of unanswered questions about the purse and the course of events that had led to it being abandoned. Something felt off, and though Karen refused to use that ridiculous phrase, “women’s intuition,” she knew something was not right.
The hood of a car slammed shut, snapping Karen from her thoughts. She fumbled for the light switch inside the open bathroom, as the sweet mountain air had finally made the odor tolerable. She clutched the purse to her chest and dropped it on the floor next to the sink. The fluorescent light fixture above the shattered mirror flickered for a few moments until the gas inside warmed, flooding the room with bright, artificial light. Karen pulled the door shut behind her and pushed the button on the inside of the doorknob to lock it. She grimaced at the state of the toilet and knew she would be squatting above it, rest-stop style. Before dropping her bikini bottom below her knees, Karen verified that at least three squares of toilet paper remained on the holder.
The relief was instantaneous and so welcome that Karen closed her eyes and smiled, temporarily forgetting the filthy seat and mysterious purse. She finished and flushed, feeling as though her mind had been released from the mental prison established by the most basic of human needs. The water came out of the cold spigot only, preceded by a brown ooze of liquid that could only have accumulated in the pipes after months of inactivity. Karen reached for her phone before realizing she had neither a back pocket nor a phone. The phone sat on the dash in Ravna’s car. Her mind raced along with her adrenaline as she looked at the rust stains in the sink and the purse on the floor. It did not make sense. None of it.
Karen bent down and yanked the black liner out of the garbage pail. The odor that greeted her almost knocked her off her feet. Karen placed the purse at the bottom and set the liner and its contents back on top. It was not much of a hiding place, but it was the only one inside the bathroom. She took one last look at herself in what was left of the mirror.
“Get a grip, honey. This is real life, not some stupid horror movie that Ravna is making you watch on late-night cable.”
She giggled to herself and took a deep breath. They would be back on the road in minutes and wrapped in each other’s naked arms in hours. The shitty gas station and creepy attendant would be nothing but a funny story they’d tell at happy hour or, if all went well, at the wedding reception. Karen reached out, turned the knob, and pushed on the door. When it did not open, she pushed again, this time harder. When it did not open on the third attempt, she stepped back and struggled to keep her imagination from racing to the most unthinkable conclusion. Karen felt her eyelids slip, and the cramped restroom turned. She slid sideways into the wall, fighting for balance. Her final thought before passing out was of the attendant’s stupid fucking baseball cap.
***
She awoke in a panic, frantically scanning the room for something familiar while trying to ignore the throbbing pain in her forehead. Karen’s first thought was to scream. Growing up as a young woman in the 1990s, she had been instructed on all of the best practices for surviving personal attacks. She did not carry a rape whistle, but remembered the targets that would be vulnerable on a man. Karen knew that the first few moments of a carjacking or abduction were critical, but none of the self-defense classes had prepared her for her current situation. None of the demonstrations involved an escape from a locked bathroom at the edge of nowhere. She could scream, but who would hear it? Surely Ravna knew something was wrong. She had been in the restroom for much longer than was necessary. He would know that most women would spend as little time as possible inside a gas-station bathroom behind a grimy garage. Ravna would know something was wrong, and, given their location in the Appalachians, she could only be in a handful of places.
“Help!” she cried, and the reverberation off the tiled bathroom startled her. “Rav!”
Her eyes searched the bathroom as she tried to will another door or window into existence. Karen leaned against the wall and rubbed her forehead with one hand. Maybe the door was jammed and she was jumping to outrageous conclusions. She took a deep breath and placed both hands on the knob, turning it to the left and pulling. The door did not move. She laughed, thinking of the old cartoon with the bright kid pushing the door labeled “pull.” She put her shoulder into the door and pushed, but the door remai
ned closed. Karen bent down and looked through the crack of the door jamb to see if the locking mechanism had accidentally slid into place. She ran her fingernail down the opening but could not detect a blockage. Whatever was holding the door shut had been done from the outside.
She stood back and cursed the fact that she had left her purse and everything else inside the car. As soon as the words left her mouth, Karen remembered the purse she had stashed in the garbage can and dove for it. She ripped the liner out but stood motionless over the empty bin, grabbing the trash bag and shaking it, looking around for the purse.
“What the hell is happening to me?” she asked the empty room.
Forgetting the filth and the mysterious disappearing purse, Karen went down on her hands and knees, searching for anything that would help her escape. She saw a dime wedged beneath the edge of the toilet, and she used her nails to pull it out. Had it been any other coin, she would not have been able to use it on the screws. She stood and turned to the door. The hinges on the inside jam of the door kept the screws hidden, and the pins holding them on had rusted together long ago. The only other option would be the doorknob. Karen felt a spark of hope as she noticed that the screwheads for the knob were on her side of the door. She fumbled with the dime as she tried to place the edge inside the slot on the head of the screw, thankful it wasn’t the newer Phillips head type. Luckily, the dime was just the right thickness, and she was able to lodge it tightly. With a slow, turning motion, Karen felt the screw loosen. She continued to turn it to the left with the dime several more times until she was able to pinch the screw with her thumb and forefinger. Karen drew the screw completely out and dropped it to the floor. She wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead.
“One down, two to go.”
Karen focused on the next screw, each loosening turn helping to keep her panic at bay. Her mind had raced ahead, contemplating the possibility that removing the knob would not necessarily unlock the door. She buried that thought as quickly as possible. Even if the knob did not open the door, it would give her a small aperture on the real world, much like a deep-sea diver without a tank who finds a pocket of air trapped beneath a rock. At the very least, she would be able to unleash her cries for help into the outside world instead of having them pierce her own ears.
The second screw came out as easily as the first, but the third would not budge. Karen cursed and pounded her fist on the knob hoping to somehow loosen the screw. She gouged at it with the dime, which only helped to strip the head, making it harder to turn. The knob felt loose in her hand, and she was able to pull the outer ring away from layers of paint that secured it to the door. She twisted and turned the knob until she could taste the sweet mountain air. Hope ignited in her chest as the third screw began to wiggle within the casing. With both hands, Karen twisted back and forth as if her life depended on it. For some reason, she knew that it did.
***
Distantly, Karen heard a phone ringing. When she heard someone walking through the gravel, she stopped pulling on the doorknob. She knew the visitor was not Ravna.
“Hey, ma'am. Wanted to make sure you were okay. Your husband said you’d been in there a long time.”
Karen waited as a wave of embarrassment painted her face bright red. She was relieved to know he would not be able to see it. “Seems this door locked on me and I can’t get out.”
“Happens a lot,” replied Jasper. “I shoulda warned you not to use the lock, but that woulda sounded, well, kinda creepy.”
Karen shook her head and pushed a stray lock of hair from her face. This was a boy, a simple child of the mountains, and she shook her head at her overreaction. He came to check on her, probably sent by Ravna as he sat in the car, gunning the engine with an impatient foot.
“It’s fine. I appreciate you coming back to check on me. Can you open the door now?”
“Sure thing, ma’am,” Jasper replied.
Karen placed a hand over her mouth and shook her head. She was tired and could not wait to check into a clean, simple motel and laugh about this over a glass of wine. She stood and took a step back as if Jasper needed the space to set her free.
“I’m Jasper.”
“Karen. My name is Karen,” she said, aiming her words at the tight opening where the doorknob hung askew by one bolt.
“Pleasure to meet you.”
“Likewise,” she replied.
Karen heard Jasper’s screwdriver working on the door. The metal scraped and clicked, and she began to breathe again. She looked down and laughed, shaking her head back and forth. She was not sure if she would ever describe the situation to Rav. Some experiences were so embarrassing that it was best to take them to the grave.
“Almost done,” Jasper said. “You just hold your pretty little ass nice and tight.”
Karen stopped, her forehead creasing. She tilted her head to one side as if it might improve her hearing. “Excuse me?” she asked, trying not to put an edge on her question.
“I said this bolt is nice and tight. I’ll have it out in a jiff.”
She straightened up and exhaled over her bottom lip. She had been imprisoned inside the bathroom for what felt like mere minutes, yet her mental sharpness was slipping.
“Where’s Ravna?” she asked. “Is he coming to help?”
“Waiting for ya at the car,” Jasper replied.
She saw the head of the third and final bolt pop toward her before sliding from the knob and dropping to the floor. The remnants of the doorknob followed and clattered to the tile floor at her feet. The side of Jasper’s face filled the three-inch circle previously occupied by the door’s hardware.
“Almost done. You all decent in there, right?”
Karen smiled and nodded, assuming Jasper could see her. She thought it was an odd question to ask after looking through the hole and into the restroom.
“I just need to slip it in. Could be a tight fit.”
Karen’s mouth fell open as she watched the shaft of a screwdriver coming through the hole in the door. She heard several clicks, and another small piece of metal fell to the floor.
“That should do it,” Jasper said, although the door remained closed.
“Thank you so much,” Karen responded.
“Lemme ask ya something, ma’am. Karen, if ya don’t mind.”
She sighed, shuffling her feet and rolling her eyes. Until she was back in the car and hurtling down the highway with Ravna, she had to placate him. “Not at all, Jasper.”
“You ever been in a magazine?”
Karen shifted her weight to one foot and cocked her hip to the side. “A magazine?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he responded. “A magazine with, you know, perty girls inside?”
“What’s this about, Jasper?” Karen asked, no longer amused with his backwoods drawl.
“One of dem spreads where the girls open up for the whole world to see. You know the kind I’m talkin’ about?”
“Jasper. I need you to open this door right now or I’m going to scream.” She heard giggling on the other side, which descended into a smoker’s wheeze.
“Go on. I’ll wait,” he said.
Karen saw Jasper’s face disappear from the hole in the door, replaced by the black night of the Blue Ridge Mountains. “Jasper?” Karen cried out.
“You ever been in one?” he asked.
“No,” she replied, the word like a staccato burst of gunfire. “I’ve never been photographed naked.”
It may not have been entirely true, but she was not about to go into semantics with Jasper. Her old college boyfriend promised her he would delete those files, and the sledgehammer she took to his laptop was her insurance plan.
“That’s too bad,” said Jasper, his face reappearing in the hole. “I think lots of guys wouldn’t mind a peek at yer cooch.”
“I’m calling the police,” Karen replied.
His face backed away, and for a second she believed she had him spooked. But after several moments, her phone, cracked and spli
ntered, fell through the hole in the door and landed at her feet.
“You son of a bitch,” she whispered.
“Ha! Jasper been called that a few times!”
Karen’s revulsion to his words made her dry heave. Where the fuck is Ravna?
“What do you want from me?”
“Yer bottoms, for starters,” replied Jasper. His single eye remained in the hole, wide and leering.
“Fuck you.”
“Aw, honey, I wish. He ain’t allowin’ it for you, otherwise I might be able to accommodate yer stirrings.”
Karen felt her heart quicken in her chest. Adrenaline began to flood her bloodstream.
“Yer bottoms,” he repeated.
“Or what?” she asked.
“Or I say fuck-all to the boss and cut you into little fucking pieces.”
Karen shivered. She pushed her bikini bottom down her legs until it curled on the floor like a dead snake. She grabbed it with one hand and pushed the edge through the hole in the door. Jasper grabbed the corner and yanked hard, tearing it as they caught on the edge of the splintered door.
“Fresh,” he replied.
Karen heard him inhaling as if he was drawing air from an oxygen tank.
“Take the rest off,” he said through a muffled mouth.
“No.”
A long, thin blade poked through the hole. It danced several times in the air, letting Karen know her alternatives. She stripped down and pushed her beach clothes to the side.
“Sandals too,” he said.
Karen kicked them off and stood completely naked in the bright wash of the fluorescent lighting. Jasper gasped at her. His eyes trailed across her buxom, upright breasts and then down to wide hips accentuating smooth, toned legs. And then he saw nothing.
“What the fuck!” he cried out.
Karen stood in the room, allowing her eyes to adjust to the darkness. “Guess you have to open the door if you want the light back on, you smarmy son of a bitch.”
