by P. J. Fox
“You confuse an accident of birth with sophistication. Which, in case no one has explained this to you, is earned. And not by aping the world-weariness and pained sense of irony you think you see in your parents. They’ve probably actually worked for a living. Or maybe you just read The Sun Also Rises too many times. But you know, that guy had earned his rest. He was a veteran, and World War One stank.
“The fact that your parents bought you a BMW and told you to get an education is not the same as fighting in the trenches.” She paused for breath. His expression hadn’t changed. “I mean, what are you, twenty-five? You—”
“I’m thirty-three,” he said. “And I don’t smoke.”
They regarded each other for a long moment. Belle felt suddenly deflated. “And I don’t drink.”
“You’ve made that plain.”
He stepped aside slightly, managing to make even that small movement seem graceful. She’d rejected him, but somehow she’d managed to end up feeling like the one rejected. And had she rejected him? He’d certainly given her no indication that he was interested. Their two tables, his friends’ and hers, were the only two occupied in the entire balcony. He was undoubtedly just being polite. And it wasn’t as though he’d sought her out; he hadn’t come over to her table, she’d ambushed him as he’d been using the facilities.
She supposed that even Eurotrash had to pee.
She couldn’t picture him engaged in any of the mundane activities that ordered everyone else’s life: washing his hands, trying on shoes. Eating. “I….” She wondered if she should apologize. No. That would only make things worse, make her look even more ridiculous than she already did. And she didn’t want to apologize. Both because she’d meant every word she said and because he scared her.
“The lady has somewhere to go.” His tone was still cultured. But pointed.
“Yes.” She swept by him. “I do.”
In the bathroom, staring at the mirror, she half expected him to come in after her. And do what, she didn’t know. All she had to do was calm down, maybe get herself a glass of water, and convince Charlotte that she wasn’t feeling well and they had to go. It couldn’t be much past midnight, but Belle had never adapted to the collegiate attitude that ten was when you went out. Ten, still, in Belle’s mind, was when you came home. And Charlotte routinely stayed out until four or five in the morning. But she was a good friend, after her own fashion, and she’d listen.
All Belle had to do was not go out next time.
She ran her hands under the water, splashed some on her face and realized that she had to use the toilet after all. Emerging from the stall, still clutching her stupid little purse, she rummaged through the contents and set about trying to repair her makeup. A compact with pressed powder, a lip gloss, mascara, tissues, some loose change, a credit card, her passport. She’d reflect, later, on how stupid she’d been to fill almost her entire bag with cosmetic products when she should’ve saved room for something more useful. Like a knife. Or at least pepper spray. Or a Taser.
Or a gun.
In the heat and humidity of the club, her eyeliner had migrated down her face. As she dabbed at the twin smudges beneath her eyes, she wondered if she’d looked this bad when she’d told off her watcher. Probably. And what did she care? She didn’t.
He’s not Eurotrash, her inner voice reminded her. He’s not even European.
There is no Indiatrash, she told her voice. Eurotrash is a general term and trust me, he fits the bill.
She balled up a tissue and pitched it into the waste bin. She was still alone in the bathroom; apparently no one else in Prague peed. They were too glamorous for pedestrian things like bodily functions. She ran her fingers through her hair, mourning the fact that it was stick straight. No amount of humidity gave her mousy locks even the slightest curl. If her watcher looked like a dark, Through the Looking Glass sort of Prince Charming, then she looked like a postwar British schoolchild.
FIVE
After spending too long in the bathroom, Belle emerged to find that Ash had vanished. She was relieved, but strangely enough her sense of being watched hadn’t entirely dissipated. It had, if anything, gotten stronger. Through the Looking Glass had been the right descriptive term—if a book title could be a descriptive term, that was. He looked and dressed the part. Only where Prince Charming was vapid and Prince Eric stupid and Prince Phillip pointlessly heroic, her watcher was evil.
No, she chided herself, not evil.
Of course not.
Her common sense was at war with her gut. She tried to put the issue out of her mind. He was gone now. As if he’d hang around, after how she’d spoken to him. And she hadn’t wanted him to. Genuinely. She was just…still coming down off the effects of adrenaline. Speaking her mind had been a rush. One that made her sick to her stomach and would probably keep her up tonight, beating herself up over what a terrible person she was, but a rush just the same. That, she decided, was the source of her lingering fear. She’d been told her whole life that nice girls kept their mouths shut. This was just, what her old therapist had described as her rulebook rearing its ugly head. By speaking out, she’d broken the rule and now the axe would fall.
She returned to her table, only to find it empty.
Save for a lone coffee cup. Espresso, served in a plain white demitasse with an artfully curled piece of lemon rind posed on the edge of the saucer. She glanced over at Ash’s table but it was empty. Wiped down, the forest of glasses removed. As though he’d never been.
She smiled in spite of herself. And then, sitting down, alone once again, she took a sip. She, if not hated espresso, then strongly disliked it, but she was exhausted and she had a sense that it was going to be a long night. That Charlotte was back out on the dance floor was a bad sign; dragging her off it would be harder than dragging her mother out of a sale at Dress Barn. Polyester, made by child slaves. Half off.
The espresso wasn’t half bad. She ignored the rind; she’d never been really sure what she was supposed to do with it. A brief thought flitted through her head, that you weren’t supposed to touch a drink that had been unattended. Because, according to the upperclassmen who’d led the clubbing safety seminar at TUD, every restaurant, pub and club on every continent was filled with armies of roving rapists.
Were men, she wondered, ever given seminars on how not to spike girls’ drinks?
She fiddled with her folder, carefully aligning its edges with those of the table. A few minutes later, she finished her espresso. She hadn’t started dancing on the table or anything, so it hadn’t been spiked. She hadn’t had a drink all night—she really didn’t drink, except for the occasional celebratory glass of champagne—and she felt tired but clear-headed.
Where the devil was Charlotte? Belle couldn’t spot her on the dance floor. She must be at the bar, Belle decided; the bar was directly below where she was sitting now. She must have been concentrating harder than she realized, because she nearly jumped out of her chair when fingertips tapped her shoulder.
She whirled around. It was only the waiter. Undoubtedly coming to ask her how she’d liked her espresso. Or maybe bring her the check; that would be rich. “Hello,” she said.
“Hello.” His lips pursed into that same half-nervous smile she remembered from before.
Belle paused, waiting to see what he wanted. “Hello,” she said hesitantly, when he added nothing further. He looked to be just on the cusp of middle age, the kind of man who in other circumstances she would’ve taken to be an accountant. He was balding; he had a thin, aquiline nose and a general air of timidity. A more bland, inoffensive person she couldn’t imagine. She wondered how he’d ended up working here, and if he was frightened of his customers. “The coffee was excellent,” she told him. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He pursed his lips. They were thin and bloodless. “Now, if you’d come with me.”
“What?” she asked, startled. “Why?”
“Your friend is ill. She’s asked for you.”
“Charlotte?”
“Yes.”
“Well I…I was just in the bathroom and I didn’t see her there.”
“She’s in the manager’s office.”
Belle considered this information. “Oh,” she said finally. “Alright.” She stood up. She considered leaving her purse but then decided to take it. She thought she might have some aspirin in the bottom. She considered taking her folder, too, and then decided that that would be ridiculous. No one was going to steal that. And if they did, she hoped they enjoyed learning about ancient Sumer. More power to them.
The waiter half bowed, gesturing toward the aisle between the tables. He looked like he belonged in some classic setting. Like the first class deck on the Titanic. Belle, unused to such courtly behavior, smiled and blushed.
“Please,” he said. “Follow me.”
She did.
SIX
They very quickly moved from the club itself into a warren of cramped and foul-smelling halls. Belle didn’t see how the manager’s office could be here; she was fairly certain that she wasn’t even still in the same building. She’d noted the club’s approximate dimensions from outside, before she’d gone in. Granted, the club was one business in a connected row, but the façade had been tall and thin. On the left was a restaurant and music venue and on the right, a candy shop with apartments above.
She’d been walking for so long that she should have been in someone’s kitchen by now.
She stopped. Her waiter, hearing her footfalls cease, turned. His expression was perfectly bland. He didn’t seem concerned in the least. “Yes?” he asked.
“This…isn’t right,” she said.
She noticed now that the wall she was standing next to smelled overpoweringly of urine. Dark stains marred the exposed concrete. Someone had peed here. Fluorescent lights flickered in their sockets. Belle had gone along with this man, because he’d asked her to. And his explanation had seemed perfectly reasonable when she was sitting at her table. But it occurred to her now, too late, that she didn’t know anything about him. She was in a strange city where she didn’t speak the language and she was in a pee-drenched hall with a total stranger. She’d followed him blindly, her mind on other things; she wasn’t sure if, if she tried, she’d be able to find her way back.
She did feel like she’d been walking an awfully long time.
“I, ah…think we should go back.”
Saying the words was harder than it should’ve been. She’d been trained since childhood to agree. To let older relatives hug her, even when doing so made her uncomfortable; to submit to cheek pinchings and pats on the bum and invasive questions about whether she liked boys. To not talk back when people criticized her goals as unrealistic, because that would be impolite.
Moreover, a sense of unreality had settled on her. She kept thinking, this can’t be right. Why would someone lead her here, to nowhere? Did the waiter want to rape her?
At Harvard they’d handed out rape whistles. As though someone who pulled a girl’s pants down as she struggled and forced himself inside her would be frightened off by loud noises. Or was it that, as one sociology professor claimed, people were more likely to investigate loud noises than they were cries for help?
She began to edge backward. “I think,” she said, “that it’d be best if I went back. Charlotte can find me in the club, when she feels better.”
The waiter still hadn’t spoken. But almost before her eyes, he began to shed some of his mouse-like attitude. His back straightened, and his shoulders rolled back. He was the same man but…different somehow. When he strode toward her, his attitude was confident.
She should’ve run. Screamed. Something. Instead she stood there, waiting. For what? Morbid curiosity? Because she knew she couldn’t outrun him? She didn’t know.
He stopped in front of her. “We’re not going back,” he said bluntly.
In fact, he spoke the words so bluntly that it took a minute for them to sink in. He might as well have been discussing the weather. Belle frowned. “Well yes,” she replied, “we are. We—”
“You can make this easy, or you can make this hard.” His tone continued to be as casual as if they were still in the club. He evidenced no nervousness, no fear. The man she’d met earlier, whom she’d dismissed as almost too awkward to function, was gone. In his place was a man who reminded her of nothing so much as a lizard. Cold, patient, and calculating.
“This—what this?” Still overwhelmed by the transformation, Belle fumbled for words.
His hand fastened on her arm. “You’re coming with me.”
“What—no!” She tried to pull back. She’d be damned if she went anywhere with this creep. She berated herself, again, for having ever left the club. How easily she’d bought his explanation. How gullible she’d been, traipsing through what was clearly not part of a nightclub. Or any legitimate establishment at all. She’d been at train stations in New York City that smelled better than this. “Let me go!” she demanded, finally fighting.
She felt the impact before she saw his hand move. He hit her, hard, on the side of the head. The movement had been neat, practiced, and efficient. Her ears rang and her vision doubled. She felt a sudden urge to vomit. He pulled her along, stumbling.
They hadn’t gone more than three or four paces when a door opened and another man stepped out. The door looked like any other, like all the other doors in the hall: plain and nondescript, with no special markings to differentiate it. Likewise, this man too was nondescript.
They had, Belle thought numbly, been almost at their destination. Her thoughts were jumbled. Whether from injury or terror, she didn’t know.
“This one’s trouble,” said her waiter, his iron grip never loosening. Belle realized that they were speaking in German. She said nothing, not wanting to give away that she understood.
“Good. The feisty ones always go quick.”
“You’d better give her a shot.”
The other man hesitated. “They won’t be able to see that she’s got spirit if she’s doped up.”
“They won’t be able to bid if she’s screaming at them.”
Her waiter—she couldn’t help thinking of him like that, as her waiter, even though he clearly wasn’t a waiter or at least that wasn’t all he was—forced her through the door. The room beyond was cleaner and lit with soft light instead of harsh fluorescents. It smelled of bleach. “The point is to see her charms.”
Belle, who’d been shepherding the last of her energy as she fought the terror that threatened to paralyze her, sprang into action. She twisted wildly as she wrenched her arm free, breaking that awful iron grip. One of the men exclaimed in surprise, she didn’t see which one, as she turned and dashed toward the door. She expected to feel hands on her at any minute, but she didn’t. She cursed inwardly as her fingers scrabbled first at the knob and then at the deadbolt above. But, miraculously, she managed to work the complex mechanism and pull the door back. Determination, from some inner well she hadn’t known she had, gave her strength. She dashed out into the hall, barely pausing as she considered what to do next. In both directions, the hall looked exactly the same.
Turning left, she ran.
She’d go back toward the club. There were people there; they’d help her. All she had to do was find another person. People didn’t kidnap people with witnesses. Right? And other people, they’d know what had happened and call for help. She wouldn’t just…disappear.
Charlotte wouldn’t think anything of coming back to the table and finding Belle gone, because a sudden disappearing act was something Charlotte would pull. She’d find the folder and undoubtedly assume that Belle had gone home with some man. Finally.
She’d probably be happy. Belle sobbed with exertion, the air burning in her lungs as she turned heedlessly this way and that. She didn’t recognize where she was!
She hadn’t heard footsteps behind her, hadn’t heard anything but the beat of her own heart and the blood buzzing in her ears
, but a hand landed on her shoulder. And then another one. And then she felt the minutest pinprick in her upper arm.
A warm, numbing sensation spread through her. It seemed to start, both at the site of the pinprick and at her extremities and it was, she thought disjointedly, so bizarre. She lost sensation in her fingertips first; they felt like they’d gone to sleep. She tried to take a step and almost fell, tripping over her own ankles. Someone caught her. As if from very far away, she heard them debating whether they’d given her too much. Too much what? She knew something was wrong but…she couldn’t remember. Her thoughts were like an electric current that kept failing at the critical juncture. She just couldn’t quite…connect them.
Was she asleep, she wondered? She felt like she had at the dentist, when one time she’d gone in for a root canal and been given too much nitrous oxide. She’d forgotten where she was, convincing herself that she was at home in her bed in Scarborough. Still, the thought that she should be doing something, should remember something—something critical—kept intruding. Finally her dentist, convinced that she was asphyxiating, had turned off the gas. Belle, surprised to hear her dentist’s voice, had tried to open her eyes and focus—only to discover that they were already open and she’d been staring at him the whole time. How embarrassing that had been.
She was back in the dimly lit room. She swayed on her feet as an unseen hand held her steady. Her purse was dumped out on a table in front of her. Hey, she wanted to say, that’s mine. She watched with interest as another pair of hands, these belonging to a man she’d never seen before, rifled through the contents. “Keep her passport,” he said. “Toss the rest.”
“Where?”
“The incinerator. We don’t want to leave trace evidence for the police, if she is reported missing.” The voice paused. “And Paul? Put her passport with the others.”
