by David Wiltse
At intervals Ash would smile at something and point his finger toward the action on the screen, glancing at Bobby to see if he was appreciating it, too. Bobby knew that the man was trying to be friendly. There was a calm and gentle quality to him, despite his size and appearance, that led Bobby to think he was more to be trusted than the woman, Dec. She seemed to love him, but she was too familiar, she pushed too hard.’ She might be a nice lady, Bobby thought, if only she would relax a little bit. And listen to him. She never seemed to actually hear what he said; she acted as if she were always responding to a conversation he could not hear. Bobby was used to that quality in adults, of course. Many of them did it, but few with the ardor or intensity that Dee displayed. It had occurred to him that she might be insane, but the idea was too frightening to persist with. It was bad enough to be kidnapped, but as long as his kidnappers were reasonable people, he felt that it would be all right. It was clear they didn’t want to hurt him. Why should they? If he could just figure out what it was they did want, he would give it to them… But if they were insane, how could he ever figure them out? It was too horrible to contemplate. Bobby put the thought from his mind.
Bobby’s eyes slipped closed and his head fell toward his chest. He bounded upright again immediately, blinking to regain control of his treasonous senses. From the bathroom he could hear the sounds of the woman puttering around, brushing her teeth, combing her hair, screwing and unscrewing the lids of creams and lotions. He had seen his mother go through the process many times and there was a certain comfort to knowing Dee was doing the same, familiar thing.
She hummed a tune to herself and as Bobby tried to remember what the song was, his eyes drooped and closed again.
And then Dee was in the room and she didn’t look the least bit like his mother. A white nightgown was scooped low in front and trimmed with lace that only partly concealed the bulge of her breasts. Her legs were bare from the mid-thigh down, and as she stood silhouetted against the backlighting of the bathroom Bobby could detect the outline of her body through the thin muslin.
Dee twirled once, holding her hands over her head like a ballerina.
“Well?” she demanded. “How do I look?”
“You look beautiful. Dee,” Ash said in a voice so thick with desire that Bobby turned to look at him.
“Thank you, thank you.” she said. She executed a brief curtsy, then turned her attention to Bobby. “Well?”
Bobby stared at her, fighting the tears that threatened him again. He felt his throat beginning to squeeze shut.
“Do I look all right?” she demanded.
“You look beautiful. Dee.” Ash said again, this time for Bobby’s benefit. He tried to use his eyes to tell the boy how to respond, but Bobby wasn’t looking at him.
“You shush.” she said to Ash. ‘Tommy?… Don’t you have anything to say to me. Tommy?”
“I’m Bobby.” he said, forcing the words past an uncooperative tongue. He clutched the good luck medal around his neck and squeezed it tightly.
A cloud of anger crossed Dee’s face but quickly faded into disappointment. She pinched the nightgown in both hands and held it out wide from her body. It rode up even higher on her thighs.
“I went to a lot of trouble, you know.” she said. “I wouldn’t do this for just anybody. I wanted our first night together to be special.”
“He thinks you look beautiful, don’t you. Tommy?” Ash said.
“I’m talking to Tommy,” Dee said.
“Bobby,” said the boy, his voice so low he was barely audible.
“What? What did you say?”
Bobby looked frantically around the room, hoping desperately that he had missed what he sought before.
Dee stood right in front of him now, her body close to the chair. Bobby could see through the nightgown to the dark mounds of her breasts, the darker shape below. He hadn’t allowed himself to look at these parts of his mother for years.
“What do you have to say to me after all the trouble I’ve gone to for you?” Dee asked.
Bobby’s anxiety burst forth in an uncontrollable gasp. “Where am I going to sleep? There’s only one bed!”
He began to cry, hating himself for it but unable to stop. Dee chuckled indulgently and pulled him to his feet so that he stood on the chair. His head was level with hers when she pulled his naked body into an embrace. He could feel her breasts pressing against his bare chest.
“You silly goose,” she said. “Where do you think you’re going to sleep? You’re going to sleep in the bed. Is that what’s bothering you, is that what’s bothering my little boy? Why didn’t you say so? You can always talk to me, you know. You can always, always, always say anything at all to me. And do you know why?”
She released him from the embrace but kept her hands on his shoulders and she leaned her face in close to his.
“Do you know why you can say anything you want to me?” Bobby shook his head to indicate he did not know.
“Because I love you. Tommy. That’s why.” She hugged him again, this time so hard it took his breath away. “Oooooh, I love you sooo much!”
Her whole body was pressed into his. Bobby tried to slip his hands over his groin so she wouldn’t know that he was growing hard, but he couldn’t do it without touching her. He knew that if they saw he was stiff they would make fun of him and if they did that now he was certain he would never be able to stop crying.
“But now it’s lime for you to get some sleep, young man,” Dee said. ‘Today was a special day so we let you stay up late, but enough is enough.”
She lifted him onto the bed and pulled the sheet over him. Bobby didn’t think she noticed his stiffness.
For a moment it looked as if everything was going to be all right. Bobby looked at the man by the door to see if he was coming to bed. Ash was watching Bobby and smiling, but he made no move to leave the door.
Dee noticed and laughed. “Did you think you were going to have to share the bed with him? No wonder you were upset. Don’t worry about Ash, he never sleeps, do you. Ash?”
“I never sleep,” Ash said.
“He’ll stay by that door all night making sure nobody comes in that we don’t want in. That should make you feel nice and safe.”
Dee sat on the bed beside him as his mother did at home, tugging the covers up under his chin. Bobby tried to keep from looking at her breasts, whose shape he could make out just above his face. Her breath was still sweet.
“Now we had a very exciting day together, didn’t we? We had fun, didn’t we?”
Bobby nodded.
“You’re going to have to learn to talk more, honey. When I talk to you I want you to take part-but don’t worry about that now. There are a lot of things you’ll have to learn, but no more for tonight. You just close your eyes and go to sleep now.”
Bobby dutifully closed his eyes. He felt her lean down to him. The kiss on his check was no harder to take than the ones from his mother.
“Aren’t you forgetting to say something?” Dee whispered.
Bobby kept his eyes squeezed closed.
“Who do you love?” she asked.
He knew what she wanted, but he also knew how much his mother would hate to hear him say it.
“Tommy?… Who do you love?”
He was so tired; if only they would leave him alone and let him sleep he could figure everything out tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow the police would come.
“Who do you love?”
“I love you. Dee,” he said.
He could detect her pleasure without opening his eyes. Her weight lifted from the bed and he was alone at last. It was going to be all right after all, he thought. He would have his own bed and tomorrow he would make them give him his clothes back and when he had a chance he would open the window and… he felt her pull the covers back on the other side of the bed, then sensed the change in balance as her body slipped onto the mattress. She wasn’t touching him, but she was there, in his bed.
He opened
his eyes and was looking directly into the eyes of Ash, who remained at his position on the floor in front of the door. The huge man stared at Bobby with the face of longing of a dog made to stay behind while his master went away. Next to him. Dee still had not touched him, but Bobby could feel the heat of her body.
He grasped the medal around his neck, squeezed his eyes closed, and vowed not to open them again until his parents burst through the door to save him.
Chapter 11
Becker rose with his plate and carried it to the sink, prompting Karen to say, “I’ll do the dishes. It won’t take a minute. You two just go in the other room and relax.”
“We’ve been relaxing all through dinner,” Becker said. He returned to the table and picked up his glass, his silverware, the crumpled napkin. They had eaten in the kitchen and the trip from table to sink was only a few steps.
“Go on, go on,” Karen protested. “I can do it quicker if you’re out of here.”
Becker looked at the sink, which now held all of the plates, the cutlery, the serving dishes, the two cooking pots. All together it looked to him as if it would take something less than two minutes to rinse, scrape, and stack everything in the dishwasher. It had taken little more than that to prepare the meal in the first place, a warmed-up conglomeration of a chicken and tomato ragout, rice, and a green salad. Karen cooked four entrees on the weekend and froze them for use later in the week, she had explained. On the fifth day she and the boy either went out to eat or ordered Chinese food delivered. She had not mentioned the weekend, but Becker knew that Jack’s father frequently had the boy with him then. It was not hard to imagine Karen eating leftovers while standing over the sink when she was alone. It was the way Becker took most of his meals himself.
“Happy to help,” Becker said.
“It’s basically a one-person job,” she said, standing with her back to the sink, protectively.
Becker understood that the object of the exercise was not to get the dishes done but to put him alone with the boy for a few minutes. Dutifully, he turned and walked to the living room, where Karen’s son was already sprawled on the floor in front of the television set.
“No television. Jack!” Karen called from the kitchen.
“Mom!”
“I mean it!”
Sullenly, Jack turned off the set.
“She’s tough,” Becker said.
Jack nodded his head in agreement and looked at an area in space about three feet to the side of Becker’s head. After an initial stare of surprise when he first arrived at the door, Becker had noticed that the boy had never looked directly at him. Nor had he volunteered a word of conversation. On the few occasions when Becker had directed a question to him. Jack had frozen as if stunned by the need to come up with an answer. His shyness and embarrassment were so palpable that Becker changed his method of converse. He worded his statements so that they could be agreed to or denied with a simple movement of the head. In that way he was able to string several sentences together, giving both the questions and voicing the answers himself, with Jack registering some sort of involvement so that it appeared to be a dialogue. It certainly wasn’t an exchange of ideas, but it wasn’t silence, either. Neither of the participants was fooled, of course, but Becker hoped that Karen was. It seemed to be important to her that all should go well.
“Your mother’s a good cook, don’t you think? That was a delicious, uh, stew thing, with the chicken and the tomatoes. If you eat like that every night, you’re doing all right. Jack.”
Jack kept his gaze fixed on empty space in Becker’s general direction. An unhappy hint of a smile seemed frozen on his face. Becker realized it was the boy’s approximation of politeness. He was being addressed by an adult. He clearly was expected to stand and take it, but liking it was out of the question.
Becker sought a way to end the child’s discomfort as well as his own and conversation clearly was not the solution. The two of them sat for a minute in awkward silence, still playing a game neither of them understood.
“How’s it going out there?” Karen called from the kitchen.
“Great!” said Becker. He pictured her standing by the door, ears straining to pick up every sound. The dishes must have been stacked in the dishwasher long since. He wondered how long she was going to put them both through this form of torture. And for what reason.
“Just a few more minutes,” she said.
“Can I go to my room. Mom?” the boy called.
“You keep Mr. Becker company.” she called back. “I won’t be long.”
The boy’s smile seemed to become even more firmly fixed, Becker thought. He wondered if the boy was really as close to tears as he looked.
“Can you find yesterday’s newspaper for me. Jack?”
The boy looked at him directly for the first time. It was as if Becker had just pronounced him a free man. He darted out of the living room and into the kitchen. Becker heard a flurry of conversation between mother and son, and then the boy reappeared bearing The New York Times.
Poor kid thinks I’m going to read it and get off his case, Becker thought. No such luck.
“This is a famous trick,” Becker said. “Performed originally by the wazir of Baghdad. Using the Baghdad News, I believe.”
Becker separated the sections of newspaper and laid them so they overlapped. He then rolled them diagonally into a long tube and proceeded to tear it halfway down from the top. The boy was watching, almost despite himself.
“A lot of your magicians will make coins disappear, but there’s no trick to making money vanish. We all do it every day. And then where are we? Poorer.” Drum roll, please, Becker thought. “Or they’ll pull a rabbit out of a hat. You’ve seen them do that. I imagine.” Jack nodded. He seemed uncertain whether he wanted to participate in this affair or not. Becker kept tearing the paper into thin shreds, alternating each rip with a flourish of the hands as if every motion were special and magical.
“But what are you going to do with the rabbit when he’s done? Did you ever have a rabbit as a pet. Jack?”
“No.”
“A good thing, too. All they do is eat and poop.”
Jack laughed.
“Eat and poop, eat and poop, eat and poop,” Becker said. Jack’s shoulders shook and explosive sounds burst forth in his throat, where he tried to hold them.
Scatology, Becker thought. Works every time. Nothing funnier than bodily processes.
“And you know who would get stuck with the job of cleaning that rabbit’s cage, don’t you? You would. Jack. The rabbit would poop and you would scoop. Poop and scoop, poop and scoop. You know what that would make you, don’t you?”
“What?”
“The pooper scooper. You be the pooper scooper.”
“No, you be the pooper scooper,” Jack said, grinning.
“Thanks very much, but not to worry. This is not going to turn into a rabbit.”
Becker held the tube to his eye and looked through it at Jack.
“You know what it looks like to me?”
“What?”
“A fart tunnel.”
Jack clamped his hand to his mouth, his eyes jumping gleefully. He looked to Becker like someone about to explode.
“Does your mother ever fart. Jack?”
“Sometimes.”
“Well, when she does, you could look through this and say, ‘I spy.’ ”
“Or… ”
“Or what?”
Jack took the newspaper tube from Becker’s hand. He held it to his nose.
“You could smell her,” he said, sniffing loudly.
“What a fine idea. Why didn’t I think of that?”
Jack shifted the tube to his ear. “Or you could listen to her fart,” he said happily.
“That’s a good idea. Seek her out wherever she goes, listening, listening.”
“You could hear her if she farts in the other room,” Jack said, turning the tube toward the kitchen.
“Or under the cover
s,” Becker said.
“You could hear her when she does it under the covers!” Jack agreed gleefully. “Or in the car, or in the kitchen, or…” His imagination flagging, he looked to Becker for help.
“Or in the garage?” Becker offered.
Jack grunted, clearly disappointed.
Becker tried again. “Or when she farts in the soup.”
Jack liked that one. “Or when she farts in the milk,” he added.
“Now how is she going to fart in the milk?”
“She has to sit on the cow.” Jack said, delighting himself with the sudden burst of inspiration.
Becker laughed aloud in appreciation, then looked up to see Karen standing in the living room, glowering at them like naughty children. Jack saw her, too, and continued to laugh. Becker took the tube from Jack and put it to his ear and pointed it at Karen. Jack laughed harder.
“Cute,” said Karen.
Becker looked at Jack, shrugged as if he couldn’t hear anything, then handed the tube to the boy. Jack imitated
Becker, leaning to listen to his mother.
“Nice influence, John.”
“It’s a magic trick,” Becker said. He pulled from the center of the tube and transformed the newspaper into a five-foot length of fringed pillar. “It’s a eucalyptus tree,” he said. “Or whatever suits your fancy.”
“Real talent. Bedtime, Jack.”
The boy exited promptly but returned after a moment and took the tube from Becker’s hand.
“Good night,” he said.
“Good night,” said Becker. “Nice talking to you.”
“Nice talking to you,” the boy said. He paused for a fraction, seemed to consider saying more, then hurried out.
“Nice with the shit jokes,” Karen said when she returned from putting her son to bed.
“I did my best.”
“He thinks you’re a scream. He was aiming that damned newspaper thing at me the whole time I was reading to him.”
“He’s a funny kid once he loosens up.”
“He’d probably say the same about you.”
“He doesn’t see many adults, does he?”
