by Ted Dekker
Helen snatched a pair of Nikes, pulled them over her bare feet, and ran out to the living room. It would be best to leave out the back, in case the old woman . . .
. . . Ivena, Helen. Her name is Ivena and she’s not old . . .
. . . drove up front. Helen hurried to the attached greenhouse, suddenly eager to be free. Desperate to get back into the water. She ran out to the backyard. But there were no gates in the tall fence surrounding the lawn. She gave up and ran right through the house and out the front door. It occurred to her only then that she had no ride. She should call Glenn. He would send a car. He’d be in a stew— the thought made her shiver. You pay your dues, baby. We all pay our dues. It was one of Glenn’s favorite sayings. His idea of dues was a bit extreme.
She raced back into the house, snatched up Ivena’s phone and called Glenn’s private number. His secretary, the old hooknosed witch Beatrice, answered and demanded to know where she was. Helen gave her the nearest cross street and hung up. Take a flying leap from the top story, Beatrice. And don’t forget your broom.
Now she ran with the butterflies that fluttered through her belly. She took a turn at the sidewalk and did not stop for two blocks, thinking only once that she should’ve ditched the dress—she must look like some kind of pink butterfly in the stupid thing. But her craving for the Palace washed the thought away.
Helen sucked in the warm southern air and settled into a walk. It was going to be a good night. Not at first, of course. At first it might not be so good at all, but that would pass. It always did. A picture of all those clothes piled on that bed back there flashed through her mind. Sorry, Ivena. At least I left them. At least I didn’t take them.
Sorry, Jan.
Don’t be stupid.
A long white limousine was already waiting at the corner of Grand and Mason, drawing the stares of stiff-lipped pedestrians in all directions. Yes indeed, it was going to be a good night.
BEATRICE WAS waiting for Helen when the elevator doors opened at the top of the West Tower, her nose hooked and her chin lifted like a snotty schoolmaster. She looked Helen’s dress over and her lips twisted to a wrinkled frown. “So, the slug has crawled home wearing a dress. You think that’s supposed to impress him?”
“Shut up, Witch. I’m not trying to impress anybody.”
Beatrice’s eyes grew round and then squeezed to slits. “He’s gonna tan your hide when he sees you in that ridiculous getup.” She turned on her heels and marched for the double doors leading to the Palace.
Helen hesitated, staring at those wide black doors. Her stomach seemed to have lifted into her throat. Glenn was in there, doing only God knew what, but in reality doing only one thing: waiting for her. Yes, and in truth she was waiting for him as well, right? Or at least for what he could offer. Which was bliss. Yes, indeed, Glenn could definitely offer her bliss.
She swallowed and stepped onto the thick black carpet after the witch, chills now running the length of her spine. You’re a fool, Helen. You have a death wish? She thought about that and the chill was quickly replaced by a tingle. No, honey, not death. Sweet life. Sweet, sweet mind-numbing life!
Beatrice walked in without knocking; she was the only one who could survive such boldness. Helen followed, stepping lightly, as if doing so would somehow make her entrance less obvious. The sprawling room reminded Helen of a casino she’d been in once; lots of mirrors, lots of colored light, none of it natural. Glenn was not in sight.
Beatrice retreated with a humph and pulled the doors shut behind her. Helen peered about the room, her heart now thumping in the silence. To her right, one of those large mirrored balls rotated above a dance floor, slowly spinning a thousand tiny white dots through the room. Otherwise the Palace lay absolutely still. When she’d left the party three nights earlier, a dozen bodies twisted slowly on the pink marble dance floor. Directly ahead, a large lion head roared down to a red leather couch. A couple had been sprawled on that sofa, wasted to the world that night. Other guests had passed out on a dozen similar couches, each under beasts that glared down at them. There were a hyena and a rhinoceros and a buffalo—all within her sight. The others wound about the suite. To her left a long bar sparkled with a hundred colored bottles, each hosting its own intoxicant.
The last time she’d seen Glenn, he’d been leaning on that bar, talking to some huge black man with his back toward her. He was not there now.
“So . . .”
Her heart seized and she spun to his voice. Glenn stood ten yards to her right with his arms to his sides, in the shadow of a Greek pillar, huge and thick like the stonework beside him. A red-and-yellow Hawaiian shirt hung loosely over his torso; white slacks ran to the floor where they met his bare feet. He took a step forward then stopped, spread his legs, and clasped his hands together like a soldier at ease. From this distance his eyes looked like holes drilled through his skull; as black as midnight. His chin was stubbled and his hair unkempt.
Helen gulped and fought the overwhelming urge to flee. This had been a mistake. A terrible error on her part—coming here, back to this monster. He liked things dirty, he said, because he could. Weaker men had to stay clean to impress those in power. But not he. On several occasions she had suspected that he’d gone a week or more without bathing. When she was high the fact somehow held its own appeal, but now with a clear mind the very sight of him brought bile to her throat.
“So. Where have you been?” he asked.
“Hi, Glenn.” She said it straight, but her voice wavered slightly. “I’ve been around.”
“Around, huh? Why did you leave me?”
She smiled as best she could. You can’t be weak, Helen. He despises weakness. “I didn’t leave you, Glenn. I’m here, aren’t I? Nobody forced me to come here.” She wanted to say, You think you own me, you pig? but she held her tongue.
Glenn walked toward her. He did not stop until he towered over her, within arm’s reach, drilling her with those dark eyes. He lifted a hand and touched her cheek with a knotted finger, rolling it back and forth, intent on the feel of her flesh. “You look so much like your mother, you know.”
Her mother? Glenn knew her mother? Helen blinked. “You knew my mother?”
“Just an expression, dear,” he said, gazing with a cocked head at his fingers touching her. His body odor hit her nostrils and she turned her head, trying not to show her disgust.
“What is it, darling?” he said in a soft, labored voice. “Do I frighten you?”
His breath smelled of dead flesh. Helen felt the pressure of tears fill her sinuses. “Are you trying to frighten me?” she asked. Be strong, Helen. You know how he likes that.
A soft moan ran past his lips. “Do you have any idea how much I’ve missed you? I was worried sick.” His finger trembled on her cheek. “I feel lost without you, you know that, don’t you? Look at me.”
She held her breath and clenched her jaw and looked at his face. His unshaven jaw rested open and he ran his fat tongue over those crooked teeth. “Do you love me?” he asked.
A thousand sirens of protest raged through her mind. “Yes. Of course I love you.” She had to get some dope into her system. She had to before she threw up on the man’s smelly shirt. “You have some snort for me, honey?”
His lips peeled back over yellowed teeth in a smile of sorts and a string of spittle bridged his open mouth. He was enjoying his power over her. “Where did you get the dress, Helen?”
“The dress?” She looked down at the pink dress, wishing she would have had the sense to leave it at Ivena’s. She chuckled. “Oh, this? Goodness, nowhere. I stole it. I—”
Crack! A blow struck her cheek and spun her around to the door. She gasped and instinctively jerked a hand to her mouth. It came away red and wet. Tears stung her eyes. Behind her Glenn was breathing heavy. She had to walk the line carefully now—this line between his anger and his desire to play. She turned back to him.
“What’s the matter, Glenn?” she asked, forcing a grin. “Your little t
reasure disappears for three days and you come unglued, is that it?”
He blinked, unsure how to take the indictment. “You look like a schoolgirl,” he said. “Your hair’s different.”
“Yeah, and you prefer the street girl look. Then give me what I want and I’ll give you your street girl.”
He brought each foot forward one step. “And what is it that you want, Helen?”
She’d meant the drugs, of course. They both knew that. But now he was daring her to say anything but him. “I want you, of course,” she said.
She hoped it would appease him. It did not. His hand flashed from his hip and across her head before she could react. The blow sent her staggering to her right. This time she cried out and sprawled to the floor. It felt as though her ear had been ripped off by the blow, but she knew better. She gritted her teeth and pushed herself to her knees. She could kill the monster! If she had a knife now she would rush him and stuff it into the folds of his belly.
“You want me, do you? And that’s why you were off with another man?” he thundered. He was red in the face now.
“That was nothing,” she returned, standing unsteadily. “You sent two men after me, what do you expect?”
“I expect you to stay home, is what I expect! I expect you to at least try to stay alive, which means staying away from other men.” His hands were balled into fists at his sides.
“Well, if you’d quit hitting me I might want to stay home!”
He grunted like a bull and swung again, but this time she stepped out of the blow’s path and skipped back. “You fat pig!” She had entered his game now. “I came back, didn’t I?” That was it. That was her ace. The fact that his men had not caught her and still she was here of her own will.
She sidestepped and ran across the room. Come on, baby. Play the game. Just play the game and it’ll be okay.
Glenn lumbered after her. “I swear, if you ever, and I mean ever, leave me again, I swear I’ll kill you!” he said. Someday he might actually make good on that promise to kill her, she thought.
She leaped behind a large couch and faced him. “Unless you die of heartbreak first!” She said it with a grin and tore out of his way just as he crashed into the sofa. “Give me some dope, Glenn.”
Glenn pulled up in the center of the room, threw his fists to either side and roared at the ceiling. She spun around, the first genuine smile now spreading her mouth. Now he was playing. Now he was definitely playing. And that was good. That was really good. Adrenaline rushed through her veins.
“Give me some snort, Glenn. I’ll be your girl.”
He ripped his shirt open, popping the buttons with a single pull. His flabby belly bulged white. She couldn’t stand to touch him without the drugs in her system. “Give me the drugs, Glenn!” She called out frantically now. “Where did you stash them?”
He taunted her with an ear-to-ear grin. “Drugs? Drugs are illegal, dear. You want to be illegal in my palace? You want some dope?”
“Yes. Yes I do.”
“Then beg. Drop to your knees and beg, you dirty pig.”
She did. She dropped to her knees, clasped her hands and begged. “Please! Please, tell me . . .”
He grinned like a kid. “In your bedroom.”
Of course! Helen twisted to the door leading to the apartment he referred to as hers. She clambered to her feet and ran for the door. Glenn pounded across the room in pursuit. She slammed through the door and scanned the room for the dope. Her bed lay exactly as she’d left it—a comforter strewn cockeyed across it, three pillows bunched at the head. When he’d first presented the hidden apartment to her, its psychedelic yellow decor had taken her breath away. Now it made her head spin. She only wanted the stuff.
And then she saw it; a small pile of white powder on the mirrored end table across the room. Glenn’s hot breath approached from behind and she bolted for the stash. She stumbled forward and fell to her knees just out of the stand’s reach.
His big hand landed on her shoulder. “Come here, precious.”
She clawed her way to the end table, desperate now. She had to have the stuff in her system. Had to. She swung her elbow back hard and landed it on his bare chest. He grunted.
The blow stalled him enough for Helen to reach the powder, shove her nose into the mound and inhale hard. Her nostrils filled with the suffocating drug, and she fought the urge to cough. A bitter pain burned at the back of her throat and through her lungs.
Then three hundred pounds fell on her back and rolled off to the floor, squealing like a stuck pig. Glenn squirmed on the carpet and giggled. You are a sick man, Helen thought. A very sick man. But the drug had already started to numb her mind and she thought it with a twist of irony. Like, I am with a sick man. With a smelly pig and I’m feeling good. And that’s because I’m sick too. We’re just two sick pigs in a blanket. Glenn and me.
She dived on top of him, slapping his fat and squealing along with him. Suddenly he wasn’t a pig at all. Unless pigs could fly. ’Cause they were flying and Helen thought that maybe she was in heaven and he was her angel. Maybe.
Then Helen just let herself go and held on to her angel tight. Yes, she decided, she was in heaven. She was definitely in heaven.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
JAN’S MANSION, as Ivena called it, lay at the end of a street, its arched entrance bordered by tall spruce trees, its front door bearing a simple greeting etched on a cross. In living we die; In dying we live. Behind the house a scattering of maple leaves drifted across a blue swimming pool nestled in a manicured lawn—an absolute necessity in this heat, Roald had told him. Jan had yet to use it. The house was of Southwestern decor, inside and out, from its ceramic shingle roof to the large rust tiles that covered the kitchen floor.
In all honesty, Jan felt awkward in the large house. He used the master bedroom, the kitchen, and the living room, which left four other rooms untouched. The exercise room sat collecting dust down the hall and the dining room had seen use only once—when Karen and Roald had first come to christen the house. The whole thing had been Karen’s idea—give Jan an elegant house that completed the rags-to-riches image she was building around him. Roald had jumped on the idea and found the house.
Jan and Ivena sat in the living room under the indirect lighting of two amber floor lamps, staring past a large picture window at the shimmering pool late that night.
“So then,” Jan said. “She’s gone. What can I say?”
“We have to find her. Don’t you see, she’s doomed.”
“Perhaps, Ivena, but so are a million other women in this country.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean you can ignore the one that comes begging for help. Where’s your heart, Janjic?”
“My heart’s where it should be: with Karen.”
“That’s not what I meant. This has nothing to do with her. I’m talking about Helen.”
“And Helen’s an adult. It was her decision to leave.”
Jan had battled conflicting emotions from the moment he’d heard of her disappearance. He’d come home to an answering machine stuffed with messages from a distraught Ivena. Helen had disappeared. At first a chill of concern had spread through his bones, but after collecting himself he realized that they should hardly have expected differently. Helen had come into their lives like a whirlwind and sent their minds reeling. So now she had gone as quickly and it was just as well, he thought.
And the vision he’d had upon their touch? He had responded already. Just because his eyes had been opened for her didn’t mean he now carried a responsibility for her. Besides, the day with Karen had all but washed the vision from his mind.
“What did you expect?” he continued. “You can’t adopt her.”
Ivena stiffened beside him. “And why not? Is it so unwise to take in a wounded soul?”
“She’s twenty-nine, Ivena. A full-grown woman, not some child. You don’t just spend a thousand dollars on a full-grown woman and expect her to change.”
T
he reference to the money fell on deaf ears. “Twenty-nine. Nadia would have turned twenty-nine this year, Janjic. Did you know that?” Her eyes misted.
“No. I’m sorry, Ivena, I had forgotten.”
“Well, I have not forgotten my daughter.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Ivena turned to face the pool outside. “She could be her, you know. Blond hair, blue eyes, so frail. Like a child.”
So, Ivena had seen her own child in Helen. “I am so sorry, Ivena. I wasn’t thinking about—”
“You are not remembering so well these days, Janjic. You speak of it all the time, to so many men all puffed up in their white shirts, feeling so important. But do you remember?” She turned to him. “Do you remember what it felt like to see Nadia die?”
He stared at her, blinking. “But Helen is not Nadia.”
“No, she isn’t. But then she is, isn’t she? It’s why you wrote your book, isn’t it? So that others could feel Father Micheal’s and Nadia’s love the way you felt it twenty years ago? So that they could show that love, not for Nadia or Father Micheal, but for others. For people desperately needing a touch from God. For street girls like Helen. Isn’t that why you wrote your book? Or have you forgotten that as well?”
“Don’t patronize me, Ivena. I may not have lost my daughter, but I did lose my innocence and five years of my life. I was there as well.”
“Then perhaps your memory isn’t so sharp. Is Helen really so different from my Nadia?”
“Of course she is! Nadia sacrificed her life, like a lamb. She was pure and holy and she embraced death for the love of Christ. Helen . . . Helen doesn’t know the meaning of sacrifice.”
“No. But what about you, Janjic? You couldn’t stop the slaying of my child, but can you stop the destruction of this child?”
Jan stood to his feet. “I tried to stop the slaying of Nadia. You shouldn’t rub that in my face! You have no right to heap this burden on my head. It’s one thing to suggest I look into my heart for the love of Christ, but it’s another thing to suggest I lay down my life for every vagrant who crosses my door.”
