Praise Her, Praise Diana

by Anne Rothman-Hicks

  She insisted that David go without her and thought he had until five o’clock rolled around on Saturday and he called to say he was up in Central Park at the reservoir. She knew he was pleased with himself from the tone of his voice.

  “What are you doing there?” she asked.

  “When I was running the other day, I discovered there are trees in Central Park that are also turning color,” David said. “And so my camera is now full of postcard shots that I intend to force you to look at tomorrow and help me pick out the best ones.”

  “So long as I don’t have to get out of bed, I’ll look at anything. Right now my brain feels as if it’s been squeezed like a lemon.”

  “I hope that’s not too serious. I found a place where I want to take you tonight.”

  “I’m really tired. I feel like we should stay home tonight together. I would really like just to be with you.”

  “Just hear me out. The place is a block away from where we were shooting yesterday. I went in to take a leak and couldn’t believe my eyes. It was a real old-fashioned neighborhood bar. They sell beer on tap, but serve it in a glass, not a chilled mug. And you can buy a shot of your favorite whiskey on the side without having to take out a loan first.”

  “Sounds like my kind of place,” Heather said, licking her lips elaborately. “Straight whiskey. Yum.”

  “But that’s not all, my pretty but very sarcastic young lady,” David replied. “They also have a jukebox. And that jukebox is filled with songs by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and your personal favorite, Bing Crosby.”

  “When should I meet you,” Heather said.

  * * * *

  Heather had some work to finish and David wanted to take a few last photographs, so they agreed to meet at 8:00. She took the No.1 train south to 23rd Street and walked the last two and a half blocks across town. It was a changing neighborhood, to be charitable. Lights burned from some four- and five-story walk-ups in rent-controlled apartments. But many of the buildings on the block were boarded up and she hurried her steps, almost walking past the hand-painted, faded sign—Jarvey’s Bar and Grille. A neon sign in the front window advertised Bud Light in blinking letters.

  She was chilled by the night air when she first stepped inside. The contrasting warmth felt good and the filtered lights and buzz of many conversations at once were pleasing. She slid into a booth in the back corner near the jukebox and looked around. It was five to eight. David would be arriving soon.

  There were mostly men in the room, and Heather noticed that several had expressions that were far from welcoming. One heavy-set man glared at her as she took off her leather jacket and wool cap and folded them on the seat beside her. She wore heavy dark tights and a short purple skirt with a pair of old leather boots. On top she had a long-sleeved black shirt. Nothing suggestive.

  When she looked up, the big man from the bar stood next to her. He had thinning black hair, a large chest and belly and thick forearms. A couple of men stood a step behind him, all three wearing angry looks. Behind them, other men had turned in their chairs to watch.

  “I’m waiting for someone,” Heather said.

  “Hear that, Nat?” said one of the men standing behind the big man. “She’s waiting for someone.”

  Nat let out a grunt and shrugged his shoulders. His eyes never left Heather.

  “I know you,” Nat said.

  “I don’t think so,” Heather said. She smiled nervously.

  “I saw you yesterday over on Ninth Avenue along with your buddies in the fucking down coats. And those fucking hats. I recognized you as soon as you walked in with the hardware sticking out of your fucking face.”

  He reached past her and picked up her leather jacket and started going through the pockets.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Got any M-80s today, Diana?” he asked. “You mind me calling you Diana?”

  “I’m not Diana. Those were models ...”

  He ripped off one arm from the body of the jacket and threw it aside. Then he tore off the other arm and did the same thing with the several pockets that had decorated the front of the jacket. The pieces were dropped on the floor.

  “You fucking asshole, what are you doing?!”

  “Better check the boots, Nat,” the second man said.

  “Get away from me!” Heather screamed as Nat came toward her.

  She backed up into the recesses of the booth, curling her feet under her. Nat grabbed her by the ankles. Desperately, she tried to hold onto the table, but he wrenched her free. Her head bounced hard against the wooden bench and then her back crashed against the floor.

  David came into the bar just as two of the men grabbed Heather’s arms and legs and swung her onto the pool table at the center of the room.

  “Leave me alone!” Her voice was filled with panic now. “Please! Leave me alone! I didn’t do anything!”

  David rushed toward Nat, as he yanked off Heather’s boots. Her skirt had been pulled up high over her thighs.

  “Get away from her!” David shouted. He grabbed Nat by the shoulder, but Nat whirled and hit him with the back of his massive right fist, breaking David’s nose and causing blood to flow down his shirt. Enraged, David rushed at him and this time Nat landed a punch low in David’s gut that doubled him over. A blow with his knee sent him flying backward into the arms of the other two men.

  “I know you too,” Nat said. “You’re the fucking photographer. You were taking pictures of the bitches.”

  “David, help me!” Heather screamed. A handkerchief was shoved in her mouth while others held her arms and feet at the four corners of the table, spreading her body across the surface.

  Restrained from behind, David raised one leg off the floor and kicked Nat in the mouth. The blow stunned Nat for a moment, but then his fists flew quickly, smashing David in the jaw and in his stomach. He grabbed David by the front of his coat and threw him across the room.

  “We lost a friend of ours today, Diana,” Nat said, his body heaving now with the exertion of the beating he had given David. “A real good man died for no fucking reason.”

  He reached across the pool table and pulled down her tights and underwear.

  “And another one of my friends lost an eye. Would you happen to know anything about that, you fucking bitch?”

  He picked up a pool stick. She shook her head frantically, trying to scream. Her eyes widened with fear as he pushed the pool cue toward her.

  “Just checking all hiding places for weapons,” he said. “Spread her a little, will you boys?”

  She spat out the handkerchief.

  “No! Please. No. David, help me!”

  The blunt end of the pool cue was pressing up against her when David jumped onto Nat’s back, hitting him on the sides of his head with both fists. Nat threw him off and this time other men pounced on him, pummeling David with their fists and kicking him with their boots until he finally stopped moving.

  The last thing Heather remembered was a man climbing on top of her, his foul breath in her face. She tried to get away from him. His fist collided with her head twice, and she blacked out. So she had no idea how many men raped her, or how many times, or what all they used to prove that she was nothing but a receptacle for their rage.

  She did not regain consciousness until the EMS medics were loading her into an ambulance. Then it was only for a brief moment, to hear a woman telling her she was going to be okay.

  Heather was sure she was lying.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  The call came in the early morning while Maggie and Jane were still in bed, lying under a patchwork quilt, wrapped in each other’s arms. Jane had been sleeping, the side of her face cushioned against the softness of Maggie’s chest. Maggie was awake. At that point, in the utter darkness, she remained sure that she would find a way through this crisis and they would be protected here together. And then Jane’s cell phone rang in the pocket of her jeans—insistent, demanding.

  Jane sat up, disorien
ted for the moment. By instinct, as a matter of ingrained routine, she started to get out of bed to answer the phone. Maggie pulled her back.

  “Please don’t answer that,” she said.

  “This again?” Jane replied. She stood and tugged gently with her arm. Maggie let go.

  “Please, Janey. Just think about it. That’s all I ask.”

  “I’m a lawyer, Maggie. It’s what I am. And people need me sometimes.”

  She picked up her pants and retrieved the phone. The call was from Harry Lesdock. He wasn’t a client, but that was no longer the point. Maggie could see by the expression on Jane’s face that the news Harry conveyed would bring about their end; it was their fate.

  “Whoever it is does not need you as much as I need you right now,” Maggie said, but so softly that Jane could barely hear her.

  Ten minutes later, Jane had packed up her things and hurried down the stairs to her car. Maggie did not follow her. She sat frozen on the edge of her bed, listening as doors closed one after another; the front door, then the screen door, then the car door; listening to the car’s engine roaring to life, the rumble of the tires moving too quickly along the rutted lane to the main road, the whirr of the back wheels losing traction for a moment, sending up a shower of gravel and dirt before they hit the asphalt with a squeal.

  Dawn was still an hour away and Jane was gone; back to the city, to the hospital where David lay with a broken left arm, several fractured ribs, a punctured lung, cracked vertebrae—a long list, but he was the lucky one. There was no injury that would not heal. Heather was in a drug-induced coma. They had to remove her uterus, her bladder, and part of her colon. When she had reached consciousness after the surgery, and they had given her that news, she had waited for them to leave and then started to pull out the tubes that were keeping her alive. So they drugged her. Her parents had been notified and were scheduled to arrive the next day from New Mexico.

  “What does any of this have to do with you?” Maggie had asked Jane, pleading with her.

  “That’s a question you shouldn’t have to ask, and I shouldn’t have to answer.”

  Jane stuffed clothes savagely into her bag.

  “You have no answer!” Maggie shouted.

  “I do! The city where I live is falling apart before my eyes.”

  “Let others fix it. I need you more.”

  “You say that, and yet when I am here nothing changes. You’re still distant from me, still hiding something.”

  “I need to know you love me, Jane.”

  “Half the fucking world knows I love you and only you can’t figure it out!” Jane replied.

  “What do you mean?” Maggie crawled across the bed to her.

  “I mean that the word is out, that’s all. Everyone knows. I saw David running yesterday around the reservoir. He knew.”

  “So that’s what’s going on here.”

  “What? For Christ’s sake, Maggie, stop talking in your riddles!”

  “No riddles. It’s that simple. You found out something important. Being together is not worth the stigma.”

  “I’m not even going to respond to that, Maggie. You know it’s not true!”

  Enraged, Jane put away the last of her things, zipped the bag shut and looked up at Maggie. She seemed on the verge of saying something but stopped herself. What more could be said? A decision was made, irrevocably.

  She threw the bag over her shoulder and left—down the stairs, out those doors.

  When Maggie finally moved, it was only to follow Jane’s route through the house and to return her haven to darkness.

  The irony was that Harry was not even looking for Jane; he had been trying to reach Maggie but had not been able to because her phone was turned off. So he had called Jane as a last resort. The first thing out of his mouth had not been about Jane’s former boyfriend lying in a hospital. He had wanted to locate Maggie because, with all that was going on, The Portal was ready to offer her a sizeable sum to keep providing them with articles on the Diana “phenomenon,” as he put it.

  “Think of your readers, Maggie,” Harry had said once Jane had given her the phone, talking as fast as he could, desperate to have her agree. “They want to know what you think of all this.”

  No they don’t, she had thought.

  But she had made the deal, calling him back after Jane had left, after the sun had begun to rise, and she could see her way clearly through to the end now. Two final chapters. A fitting conclusion.

  Chapter Six

  ~ Diana ~

  By

  Maggie Edwards

  I awoke from my dream of revenge and death. It was all just a fantasy.

  I was incapable of heroic gestures at that point. I had been broken completely by them. My time with these two young men in the deserted cabin had left me with nothing of myself except a desire for survival. I was willing to do anything to achieve that goal; afraid to do anything that might risk my life. They knew it after the first few hours and they took full advantage, devising new ways to demean and degrade me, all the while laughing at what I was willing to do for them.

  Up to the last minute I was with them, they talked about the ways they might kill me. The knife would be quickest—a stab deep into my heart, a slash across my throat—but there would be so much blood to clean up afterward. They could drown me in the lake that was only a few hundred yards away and weight my body with rocks so it was never found. Or they could place a plastic bag over my head and hold it tight, watching me struggle and finally surrender, so much like the release of sexual orgasm. Or they could simply squeeze the life from me with their bare hands, while they fucked me for the last time. Once, they filled a large bucket in the middle of the cabin and held my head underwater for so long that I was sure it was my time to die. I was so frightened that I lost control of my bodily functions. Afterward, I lay on the floor and begged them to let me live. “What do you want from me? What can I do?” I begged them.

  Have any of you ever begged for your life to be spared?

  When they let me go finally, they dumped me naked and blindfolded in a field beside a deserted road high in the mountains. They removed the battery from my cell phone. My clothes were left on the ground beside me, tied in knots, apparently to assure that I would not try to follow them to the van, perhaps to get a view of a license plate. But I had no such inclination. I was still afraid that they would come back for me. And once I knew they were really gone, and it was obvious to me that they had never intended to kill me, I was in mourning for my soul.

  I sat in the darkness of that field and heard the doors of the van shut; back door, passenger, driver; thump, thump, thump. I had nothing left inside of me.

  It took most of the next day, but I was able to walk to a road where I caught a bus and finally returned to my apartment, where my lover waited for me. Carina was years younger than me. We had known each other for about a year and I had allowed her to move in about six months earlier. It was a relationship that I should have ended long ago, should never have allowed to start. She was very pretty but very vulnerable. Her parents were elderly and she felt little connection to them. She had been unable to fit in her whole life. She had a wry sense of humor but was prone to crying if she didn’t get her way. She had told me that I was the first person she had ever loved. Ever! No boy, girl, man or woman in twenty years had stirred her. It was her total devotion that won me, I suppose. I was in control.

  She was nearly hysterical when I finally returned: “Where have you been? How could you not call me?” She had been so worried that she had notified the police. Every time the phone rang she had been terrified that it was them telling her they had found a body—a woman’s body, meeting the description she had given.

  It was all about her. Every word. Every aspect of her reaction. Finally, I slapped her hard across the face and told her to keep quiet, told her that I had been raped by two men over the course of 48 hours. No, I didn’t need to go to the hospital. Or tell the police. Or do anything
. I just wanted to be left alone.

  To her credit, she took care of me. She went to the store for me. She held me when I awoke screaming at night. She made me soup, coffee, tea, whatever I wanted. She did everything for me and I felt nothing.

  After a week—a week of utter solitude in which I did not speak at all, and rarely ate—we took a walk together in the early evening up 11th Avenue. I could believe that Providence led me to the spot, but then I would have to believe that the same divine principle had planned my rape.

  Certainly, I hadn’t been looking for those men. In fact, I had no reason to even suspect that they ever came into the city. But then the van pulled up to a light on the opposite side of the street, heading downtown. I saw their faces through the windshield before they spotted me, and I quickly covered my face and fell to my knees on the sidewalk, hiding behind a parked car

  “What is it?” my lover had asked breathlessly, her head inches from mine. “Is it them? Is that why you’re hiding?”

  I curled my body up to stop it from shaking. Such a coward I was.

  “Shut up! Please!” I hissed at her, unable to do anything to stop the terrible shaking. “Just shut up. Shut up. Shut up!”

  Soon afterward, I bought a house in Connecticut that was an abandoned wreck: ceilings leaked, windows were broken; plaster walls were crumbling; the yard and fields were overgrown with weeds and brambles and small trees. It was perfect, I thought. I intended to work every minute of every day and forget what had happened. In time, I was sure I would escape that weekend of horror and those two men and make a life.

  I returned to the city less and less, preferring a mattress on a bare floor in Connecticut to my New York apartment. I rarely saw Carina, who wrote me long letters begging me to bring her to the farm, asking me to come back to New York. I answered none of them.