Vapor

by Amanda Filipacchi

  “Oh, don’t spend so much money on me.”

  “Answer.”

  “Well, if I must, I’ll take the bicycle. But a reclining one.”

  “All right. One recumbent bicycle coming up! Now we’re in business,” he said, and blew a loud bubble.

  “These stock phrases,” I muttered, disgusted.

  “I’m trying to be cheerful.”

  “Oh yes, I forgot that stock phrases are renownedly cheery.”

  He gave me a small sandwich, which I gobbled down. He ate one too.

  He then made me do some squatting exercises, while he looked at himself in a hand mirror and tried to unstick the gum from his face. By the time he was done with me, I had cramps and a hard time limping over to my bed.

  “Cheer up,” he said. “After dinner we’ll have the wishing session. It’s an important part of the program. It’s the more spiritual part, shall we say. You’ll get to make some wishes, which I will attempt to fulfill.”

  Damon left for town, to buy the recumbent bicycle.

  I stayed on my bed, staring at the ceiling in a depressed trance. I started crying, and the tears ran into my hairline and itched, and when I tried to raise my arm to wipe them, the pain of a cramp was too great, so I had no choice but to allow the tears to collect in my ears.

  It was in this pathetic state that I thought of a plan of escape. It wasn’t the type of plan that cool prisoners would have thought of. It wasn’t a graceful plan. But maybe it was its very lack of grace that would make it unpredictable and effective. I would try it early in the morning the next day, if I hadn’t already escaped by then.

  I turned on the TV and found the news. It didn’t take long for the story about the mysterious pursued woman to come on again. The nation was obsessed, it seemed. And then, to my surprise, I heard something that made me sit up in bed. Apparently, five women had stepped forward, each claiming to be the real pursued woman. One of them was even interviewed in the newsroom. She seemed vulgar, tacky. How could they think, when they saw me running from the back, that my front would look so tacky? I stayed on my bed, lethargic, until Damon came back.

  He entered my cage and paced the floor at the foot of my bed, gesticulating broadly. “I got you an amazing reclining bicycle! The most expensive one. The most electronic one.”

  “How exciting,” I moaned.

  “It’ll be delivered tomorrow.”

  “That’s too bad: I’ll be gone by then.”

  “Oh? Where will you be?”

  “I will have escaped.”

  “Good for you. Or rather, too bad for you, because you’ll be missing out on quite an enviable future, but hey, it’s your life.”

  “That’s right, so would you mind giving it back to me? People are stepping forward, assuming my identity. You can’t let this happen. You must let me set them straight. Otherwise, by the time you release me, I will no longer exist out there. They will have stolen me away from myself. I will no longer be me. They will be me.”

  “Really? Women are claiming to be the pursued woman? It doesn’t surprise me, come to think of it. But don’t worry about it. You should be above all that. Leave them to their petty schemes.”

  He tossed a videocassette on my bed. “I rented La Femme Nikita for us to watch after dinner, after the wishing session. I hope you haven’t seen it.”

  “I don’t even get to pick the movie?”

  “No, this film might inspire you to view your stay here more positively. It’s about a woman who, like you, gets trained and is improved. The similarity ends there, for she gets trained to kill people.”

  “Why didn’t you just rent My Fair Lady? That should satisfy your Pygmalion leanings.”

  “Not a bad idea, but La Femme Nikita is more modern, more likely to be an inspiring role model.”

  “You are like a Nazi. You want to make me into some sort of superhuman. Do you have any German blood?”

  “No, I’m out of it at the moment. I usually keep some in my freezer, but I might be getting some more in tomorrow. What did you want it for?”

  “That’s a really insensitive thing to say to someone who’s kidnapped and who might be the one ending up in your freezer, as far as I know. Or in your stomach. Or both. I would then become your excrement.”

  “Lovely. Okay, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you still had any fear that I might kill you. And I don’t think I have German blood in my veins.”

  “Well, then, have you read too much Nietzsche? Doesn’t he talk about supermen?”

  “I’m not interested in making a superhuman, or super-person. I’m interested in your happiness. If you had told me that your dream was to be a bag lady, I would have given you bags. If you had told me you wanted to find the man of your life and live with him in a house with a white picket fence, I would have searched the earth for him and brought him to you and bought you the house.”

  “You’re insane,” I said. “But I’m repeating myself. What if I had told you I wanted you?”

  “I would have warned you. But then I would have acquiesced.”

  “Warned me of what?”

  “That having me may not make you happy.”

  “But then you would have given in?”

  “Yes.”

  “You would have sacrificed yourself to that extent?”

  “It would not have been a sacrifice. What I’m doing now is a sacrifice.”

  “What do you mean it wouldn’t have been a sacrifice? Are you saying you’re in love with me?”

  “Too bad we didn’t record it, cause we could play it back and check if I said that. But I don’t think I did.”

  Damon made me stretch again. I got mad: “Did I ever, at any point, say that I wanted to be flexible? No! Flexibility is not in the list you so conscientiously made of my desires. So leave me alone!”

  But he didn’t. He said, “I remember one time when you saw how flexible I was and you said you wished you were as flexible.”

  “I didn’t mean it.”

  He ignored me. After the stretching, I was allowed to take a bath and relax for the rest of the afternoon, since it was the first day, he said. I took that opportunity to go over my plan of escape.

  As for Damon, he worked in his lab. I watched him on the monitor. He typed at his computer for a while, and then, with the big machine in his lab, he made three new clouds, which came out of a sort of horizontal chimney, or exhaust pipe, like a slow, aerial defecation, or birth. He then placed each cloud under a glass cover and left them there.

  We had dinner in my cell, at a folding table that he brought in. The food was good considering how healthy it was: dark, whole grain pasta with steamed vegetables, cut up in small pieces. We ate with plastic spoons, for safety reasons. When we finished the food that was on the table, I felt some panic and my scalp was sweating, because nothing was happening: no dessert was coming.

  “What’s for dessert?” I asked.

  “Oh, are you still hungry?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” I answered.

  “If you’re still hungry, you should eat more. Have more pasta.”

  “I’m not still hungry. I want dessert. The dessert to this meal.”

  “There is no dessert.”

  I felt my throat clenching. “Oh, so you do want to kill me after all.”

  He looked confused and pushed the bowl of pasta toward me, saying meekly, “Have more pasta.”

  I restrained myself from knocking the bowl across the room. “I need sugar.”

  “Oh. Okay, if you want I can give you a piece of fruit or a yogurt.”

  “No.” I was on the verge of tears. “I want real dessert. Real sugar.”

  “I’m sorry but I don’t think I can give you that. What type of dessert did you have in mind?”

  “Anything with chocolate is fine. Some desserts without chocolate will do too as long as they’re good, and contain sucrose, not fructose.”

  “I know it’s hard at first, but in a few days your body wi
ll adjust to not having sugar or chocolate.”

  “No it won’t; it never does, and even if it did, I wouldn’t adjust. Believe me, your dealings with me will go better on every level if you give me dessert. So please call up that restaurant now and order some.”

  “No. But let’s try to get your mind off this, and you’ll forget about it in five minutes.”

  “Demon, listen to me. If you don’t give me dessert, you will regret it. I’m warning you. This is the worst possible thing you could do to me, next to kidnapping me. It’s worse than making me swim in the watair. It’s worse than not letting me smoke.”

  “To categorize no dessert as the worst thing is a little premature, wouldn’t you say? You’ve only been here one day.”

  He didn’t give me dessert. He gave me a banana and yogurt. I didn’t accept them, out of pride and lack of hunger. I asked him for a cigarette. He refused, saying, “No smokey dokey.”

  After dinner, he made me sit in a chair against the wall, and sat in front of me with a pad of paper and a pen. He offered me a piece of grape Bubblicious, which I reluctantly accepted. He had one too.

  “Okay, you can start now,” he said. “Make your wishes.”

  I stared at him blankly, chewing, and then, in a tone dripping with sarcasm, said, “Hmm, this is tough, every wish of mine is fulfilled. I’m so happy in every way. I couldn’t ask for anything more.” I paused. “Oh, but wait a minute, I just thought of a wish: that you let me out of this god-awful fucking cage.”

  “No, real wishes about your life, your future.”

  “That you give me dessert.”

  He gave me a reproachful look.

  “That I won’t be obsessed with killing you when I’m free.”

  “I told you I want some real wishes. Apart from wanting to be an actress, what else have you always wanted?”

  “Why in the world would you think I would ever again tell you any wish of mine? You must be insane.” I paused. “But of course, you are that. You must also be dumb.”

  “I think you’ll tell me because otherwise I’ll shoot. Now wish!”

  “I wish that you have a life of endless misery.”

  “Already done,” he said, and shot me. I screamed. He was now standing over me, his gun pointed. “Stop annoying me and wish. Otherwise …”

  “No, don’t,” I said, holding out my hands as a shield. “Wait. I don’t know. I need time to think.”

  “No, you can’t have time. That’s the whole point of this wishing session: that you don’t have time.”

  The barrel of the gun was an inch from my forehead, and I found it very upsetting that he next intended to shoot me there.

  I tried to come up with a safe wish that would not offer him any opportunity to torture me.

  “Okay. I wish that I had a better sense of style.”

  He seemed stunned for a moment, and then screamed, “No! That’s a trick wish. You’re just avoiding your real wishes.”

  He shot me in the collarbone, and I howled and plucked out the shard, yelling, “Do you have to use the shards? You could at least use the bullets of hot water.”

  “Boiling water. They don’t hurt less,” he warned.

  “But you already know all my real wishes. I told them all to you when we were friends.”

  “I want to hear about your other wishes, the things you may not know you want. Getting what we want is not enough to ensure our happiness. Getting what we don’t know we want ensures it more. But for that to happen, we have to realize what it is that we don’t know we want. Then we can get it. So search deep within yourself.”

  “I do have some wishes, but I don’t want to say what they are.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m afraid of your gun. You might not think they’re good.”

  “Okay, I won’t shoot. Tell me what they are.”

  “That you kill yourself.”

  “Okay, you got that one out of your system. What are the others?”

  “Oh my God, I just realized that if you die, then I’ll die!”

  “I’m touched.”

  “No, I mean literally I’ll die. Of starvation.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Give me lots of wishes now. Quick, lots.” He snapped his fingers rapidly.

  “I would like never to die, nor my family … Not to think too much. To be free of any obsessions. Always to see things in perspective. To live a full life and die a painless death (but only if my wish of never dying isn’t possible). To go to the moon—”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “So that I could be in a rocket.”

  “Why?”

  “To experience weightlessness.”

  He smiled sadly, dreamily. “Don’t you think that’s a little far-fetched?”

  “You didn’t say it couldn’t be far-fetched.”

  “What else?”

  “To be able to forget what I want, and that you, too, are able to forget what I want and forget about making me want things and forget about making me think of what I don’t know I want.”

  He rolled his eyes and sighed and blew a bubble. “Your wishes are getting monotonous. Give me different ones.”

  “To jump on a real trampoline. I’ve only jumped on the tiny ones in sporting goods stores.”

  He looked at me, and I was afraid I had again gone too far in ridiculing his wishing session. I said, “I’m sorry, you don’t like that wish, right? I take it back.”

  “Are you kidding? On a trampoline you could jog without the jiggle. There might still be some jiggle, but gentler jiggle. And none of the pounding. In addition to the bicycle, I’ll get you a trampoline. Now tell me more good wishes like that one.”

  “I would like you to give me a beautiful antique sword.”

  “What else?”

  “Wait, aren’t you going to tell me it’s a brilliant idea because it’ll make me less homesick and help me concentrate more on your regimen?”

  “No. Tell me more wishes.”

  “I can’t think of any more.”

  “Yes you can. Think!”

  “That when I’m famous the press won’t hound me too much, and will let me have some privacy.”

  “What else?”

  “That’s it. I just can’t think of any more. I’m not good at this sort of thing.”

  “This sort of thing? What sort of thing?”

  “You know, things like wishing sessions.”

  “Okay, we can stop for now, but we’ll have another session soon, so you should keep thinking of more wishes, and write them down.”

  He handed me his pad of paper, on which he had not written down any of my wishes. He then dismantled his Bic pen, pulling out the flexible inner ink tube by its little writing tip. He handed me the tube with tip.

  “Why only this?” I asked, the puny writing tool erect between my fingers like an uncooked spaghetti strand.

  “If you can’t guess why I’m only giving you the pen’s vein, you’ll know when we watch the movie. I’m sure you’ll manage writing with it.”

  We stretched out on my bed, his gun pointed in my direction, and started watching La Femme Nikita.

  “How do you feel?” he asked. “It feels good to exercise, doesn’t it?”

  I didn’t deign to answer.

  The scene with the pen came early on. The heroine stabbed it in the hand of a policeman.

  “Brava,” I muttered.

  A few minutes later he said “Huh,” as if he had noticed something.

  “What?” I said.

  “It just occurred to me that if a Bic pen were alive, it would not feel pain. Bic pens are like insects. They’re invertebrates. Their skeletons are on the outside and they are soft inside. They would be classified as insects. Or perhaps mollusks. If Bic pens were alive, they, like all invertebrates, would not feel pain.”

  I stared at him. “What useful knowledge. I’m sure it’ll come in handy in my life when I’m around a lot of live Bic pens. I’ll rest easier knowing they don’t fee
l pain. Especially considering all the harm I intend to inflict on them.”

  After the movie, which I could tell I normally would have liked more than I did in the present circumstances, he took out of his bag some stapled pages, placed them on my bed, and said, “This is a scene I wrote that I want you to memorize tonight. We’ll act it out tomorrow.”

  I didn’t answer. He left me for the night. I turned on the TV and waited for the news.

  On the monitors, I saw Damon stretch in his bedroom for fifteen minutes. He was incredibly flexible.

  The news came on. The story of my chase was not talked about until halfway through the broadcast. They revealed that the count was now up to thirteen: thirteen women had stepped forward claiming they were the pursued woman. In addition, there were reports, from all walks of life, that it was becoming fashionable to insinuate that one was the pursued woman. Even some men were doing it. An expert came on to talk about this phenomenon. His expert insight was that the chase had sparked the public’s imagination.

  I turned off the TV, bitter.

  I read the scene that Damon had left for me, and was appalled. It was about a couple, sitting in a restaurant, who see a movie star walk by, who happens to be me, Anna Graham (although it wasn’t my part). The woman in the couple (my part) becomes jealous of her boyfriend’s admiration for Anna Graham.

  And I had to memorize this absurd, embarrassing scene. For a moment I considered not doing it, but the thought of having to pluck shards out of my body quickly put an end to that fantasy. The dialogue was indescribably ridiculous, memorably ridiculous, which was lucky, for it was easy to memorize, and the scene was not very long. In a short time, I knew the damn thing by heart and went to bed. I set the alarm clock for 6:30 A.M. Damon had told me he’d come in at eight.

  I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, but my muscles were so sore that I could barely move. And it wasn’t as if I had never worked out before, or never been in serious pain as a consequence. I had, but not like this. Nevertheless, I had to go to the bathroom, so made my way there, bearing the unbearable.

  I held on to the counter to lower myself onto the toilet seat, because my leg muscles were in too much pain to support my weight.

  On my way back to bed, when I glanced around the corner to see if everything was still the same, I saw a large vase of colorful roses just inside my cell. I limped over to them. On the monitor, Damon was sleeping. He must have quietly brought them in during the night. Near the vase on the floor was a small white card. With great difficulty and suffering I bent down and picked it up. On it was handwritten: