by Maggie Estep
Christ.
“But go ahead,” she adds, “he’s probably used to it.”
I can’t believe this girl, this prisoner, is making me feel like shit about what I feed my dog.
I pick the sandwich up and stuff it into one of my huge pockets. I reach for the bottle of water and give that to the girl. She takes the top off and drinks loudly.
“Thanks,” she says, after draining half the bottle.
I remove my gun and the cell phone out of my other pocket and though I’m not actually pointing the gun at the girl, she takes a step back and turns paler than she already is.
“Oh, sorry,” I say reflexively before remembering that yes, I should be pointing a gun at this girl, particularly right now.
“I’m going to let you call this neighbor of yours, but at the slightest hint of asking for help or letting him know where you are…” I let the sentence trail off and I wave the gun at her a little, trying to act like it means nothing to me to use it. And it wouldn’t have meant anything to me to use it earlier in the day, when I so clearly saw this girl’s jockey boyfriend as an immediate threat to Darwin. But things are a little different now. Though I don’t want her to know that.
“Thank you,” the girl says softly.
“Number?” I ask, keeping the gun pointed at her with one hand while preparing to punch the numbers in with the other.
She recites the number and I dial. It rings once and I hand her the phone, bringing the gun very close to her face. I watch her blink several times.
“Ramirez,” she says into the phone, “it’s Ruby.”
I can tell the guy is asking her where she is and I carefully watch her face.
“Don’t worry,” she says, “I’m fine but I won’t be home for a while. I wonder if you could please feed the cats until I get back.”
Her voice sounds pretty tense but she’s not up to any direct funny business that I can see.
“Don’t worry about it,” she’s saying. “Please just feed the cats, okay?”
At that I snatch the phone away from her and hang it up and I’m worried now, feeling like a jackass because surely the neighbor can have the number traced.
“That was bad,” I say, bringing the gun closer to her face. “You sounded upset.”
“I didn’t say anything to make him suspicious,” the girl says, “though maybe the way you snatched the phone away and hung it up might get him wondering.”
“Don’t be a smartass, girl,” I say between my teeth. “This isn’t a game.”
“I’m aware of that. Even though I don’t know what the hell good having me here is doing you.”
“You mentioned that. But I don’t think you know your own value. That jockey of yours is pretty crazy about you.”
“Not anymore he’s not, and anyway I don’t know what you want from him. He’s a powerless person, you know.”
“And powerless people take it out on helpless innocent animals.”
“What?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do? No, I don’t. What are you talking about?”
The girl looks genuinely puzzled.
“Your boyfriend is up to no good.”
“I’m not sure what kind of ‘no good’ you mean.”
“I don’t need to discuss this with you,” I say then because I feel myself getting sucked into this girl and her deranged point of view.
I turn my back to her, call to Crow, and go out the door.
She’s protesting as I lock her back up and walk away.
I get back into the main house and start walking around in circles in the living room. Eventually, I try Ava again. At last she answers the phone.
“Ava. What’s going on? I’ve been trying to call you. I’m up here. In Saugerties.”
“I know, Ben, thank you. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.”
“But I am. It’s not necessary. The plan is off.”
“What?”
“Attila isn’t going to do anything to your horse. Or any horse.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I misled you, Ben. I’m sorry.”
“What?”
“I was upset with Attila and wanted to teach him a lesson, but I’m afraid there was never any danger of his actually harming a horse. Or harming anything at all.”
“This is crazy. What’s going on here, Ava?”
“I’m sorry, Ben, forgive me. You can release the girl. There’s no point in any of this.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“No, Ben, I’m not.”
“I don’t believe you, Ava. I’m not letting this girl go.”
“Ben, you have to. Kidnapping is against the law.”
“It wasn’t my idea.”
“I realize that. But I was wrong. I led you to believe Attila would harm your horse but it’s not true.”
“I just don’t believe you, Ava.”
“Ben, you must. It’s true. Let the girl go.”
“I will not. And that guy’s going to jail. I don’t care what I have to do to bring attention to it. I know these things. I know what he’s planning.”
“Ben, please!” Ava is begging now. I hang the phone up and then turn it off.
Outside, the rain has let up and the thunder is distant.
Crow lies down on his blanket and puts his face on his paws.
RUBY MURPHY
35.
Crawling
I’m curled under the filthy quilt I found in the cardboard box. It’s very cold in here and I’m starving, which doesn’t help. The tips of my fingers have gone numb and I’m dizzy. It’s gotten dark out and there’s no electricity so I had to stop reading. I finished Père Goriot this morning and devoted the afternoon to reading through the children’s books that were in the box. There weren’t any delectable Dr. Seusses but I did find a copy of Charlotte’s Web and a nice book of fairy tales. Pretty weird to be reading The Princess and the Pea while some nutjob is holding me prisoner in a cold cabin in the woods and is trying to feed me bologna. To the psycho’s credit, after finding out I’m a vegetarian, he did bring me an orange and two pieces of white bread—which I inhaled—but now the acids from the orange are eating through my mostly empty stomach.
I don’t know if it’s physical discomfort or the onset of some form of confinement-induced psychosis but I find that I just can’t wait anymore. I have to take some sort of action. I have the carpet knife and I certainly considered trying to jab at my captor but a carpet knife doesn’t hold much of a candle to a gun. I would have to take him by surprise and there just hasn’t been any way to do that.
I throw back the quilt and begin pacing the floor, listening to it creaking in protest. After a few minutes of this, I begin noticing where the floor is sagging badly. I jump up and down in one spot, feeling it give. I could probably jump right through but I’m not sure what’s underneath the cabin. I kneel down and start picking at a corner of one of the linoleum squares covering the floor. It’s slow going until I remember my carpet knife. I begin slicing into the stuff, ripping up the squares. Beneath the linoleum are old rotting floorboards. I start kicking at one of these. It gives after a few kicks and I get my whole foot through. I stamp some more until I’ve made a large hole in the floor. I get down on my belly and peer into the darkness. I can’t see anything but I can smell the cold dark earth below. I reach down and I can just touch the dirt with the tips of my fingers. There’s enough space for me to get in there and crawl, but I’m not sure if I can actually crawl to freedom or if I’ll just be trapped under the cabin. It’s not like I have anything to lose though so I push my whole torso through and climb down. I am soon on my belly, under the cabin. It’s pitch dark and I’m sure there are monstrous insects down here if not rats. Thinking about it makes my heart start pounding too fast. But it’s either crawl through this or go back up into the cabin and await my fate. Neither seems an appealing prospect.
ATTILA
JOHNSON
36.
Long Shot
My wife’s thighs are more generously fleshy than the last time I was between them. She’s put on a few pounds, which is probably the only reason I am here. At her thinnest, she is craziest. At this weight, which I’d wager is about one-twenty she is usually okay, because she has enough meat on her bones to keep her connected to earth but not so much that she feels and acts leaden.
It’s shocking to taste her. It has been three months, but it feels like as many decades. And if someone had told me this morning when I woke up to the horrible wheezing sound of a dying old man that I’d be making love to my estranged wife a few hours later, I’d have told them they were crazier than Ava’s ever been.
Ava is wiggling her hips and moaning in pleasure and for a moment I think of Ruby and a spear of guilt shoots through me. I was on the verge of loving her, but I probably never could have crossed over that precipice because of this woman, this savage, this moaning she-beast Ava who is in my blood just as I am in hers. My wife shakes in orgasm and I pull my head away and am about to enter her, to descend softly into her world, when the phone rings.
I jump to my feet.
“Attila! Calm down! It’s just the phone, come back here.”
“No. They’re after me,” I say, panicked, already looking for my clothes.
“Baby, if anyone is really after you, they’re probably not going to call first.”
“Answer it, Ava, please.”
“You want to talk to your assassin?”
“Just answer it.”
Ava reaches over and picks up the phone.
She listens then waves her hand at me, signaling that it’s nothing to worry about.
I go into the bathroom and throw water on my face. I stand naked in front of the mirror, looking at my torso. The muscles that will be of no use to me now. The muscles that will never again know what it’s like to hold back a thousand pounds of thoroughbred for the first half mile of a route race, the muscles that will probably turn to Jell-O now that their purpose has been taken from them. I can hear Ava, still talking on the phone. I walk down the hall to look at Grace’s room. It doesn’t look like a little girl’s room. It’s bare and tidy, the only decoration a huge poster I gave her of the racehorse Cigar. On the dresser is a little toy stable with some plastic horses arranged in order of size. Next to these there’s a bobblehead doll of the great race mare Xtra Heat. I’d never before noticed that my daughter’s only toys were representations of horses. There are no dolls or stuffed animals. It occurs to me that I don’t know my daughter at all anymore. I’m not sure when she turned into the creature who would inhabit this formal, minimalist room. I feel my chest tighten but I also feel relief just to know I’ll see her soon.
“Baby,” I hear Ava calling me.
I walk back into the bedroom.
“Who was that?”
“It’s a long story,” she says, looking sheepish, “and not necessarily one you will like. But I’ll tell it to you later. Please get on top of me,” she says, reaching for me.
“What, Ava? What have you done?” Between the false lightness of her tone and her evident urge to get me preoccupied, it’s clear that she’s done something bad.
“Just come here,” she ventures.
“No, Ava. Tell me,” I say, sitting at the edge of the bed.
“I thought I had to do something drastic to get your attention.”
I don’t like the sound of this.
“What? What have you done?”
“That awful girl,” she says, thrusting out her bottom lip.
“What awful girl?”
“That little rat-faced girl you’ve been fucking.”
“What! What have you done to Ruby?”
“Well, nothing. I just got someone to take her somewhere. I wasn’t going to have him hurt her or anything…”
“Ava! What the fuck have you done?”
I’m shaking her by the shoulders now and she starts crying.
“Don’t shake me, Attila,” she protests weakly. I can already tell she wants nothing more than to confess. She mutes her sobs and begins spilling the story. She evidently convinced a dim-witted groom that I was out to hurt horses and that the only way to get me to stop was to kidnap me, and failing that, kidnap my girlfriend. I feel my blood pumping through my head. I am dizzy and furious.
“So you tried to have me drowned, Ava? And you had Layla killed? What are you fucking nuts?” I’m screaming at her and feel very close to killing her. She’s sobbing and protesting that no, she doesn’t know anything about anyone being killed or my nearly being drowned or any of it and I keep shaking her by the shoulders as she sobs. After many long minutes of this, something shifts and I sense that her protestations are genuine, that my wife is indeed insane but she did not try to have me killed nor was she involved in Layla’s murder.
“Who the fuck is after me then?” I ask rhetorically.
She doesn’t answer me, she just stares ahead. She’s not sobbing anymore but tears are still sliding down her cheeks.
I pace.
“And so this guy has Ruby in a cabin up in the boondocks somewhere and won’t let her go?”
Ava nods.
“Is he going to hurt her?”
She shrugs.
“Ava, this is very serious, we have to call the police.”
“And say what? I had someone kidnapped but now I want to call it off and the guy’s wacko and won’t back off?”
“You should have thought of that sooner, Ava.”
“I couldn’t think. I needed you,” she says, and in that moment I feel a great confusion. I feel the entire history of me and Ava passing through me, the repulsion and attraction linked so closely they nearly choke each other, just as we have nearly choked each other with passion and sickness.
“We have to go get her then,” I say. I start putting my clothes on. My wife continues to sit on the bed. She is naked. Her small breasts look sad against her unearthly pale skin. Her face is still wet with tears, her blond hair is tangled.
“Get dressed, Ava. Now.”
She gets up and walks slowly to the closet. I watch her methodically put on simple cotton underwear, jeans, and a white sweater.
A few minutes later, as I frantically pace the length of the living room, Ava gets on the phone and makes arrangements for Janet, the beady-eyed woman who takes care of Grace, to pick our daughter up at school. Ava is being quite rude to Janet, but I’ve noticed that Janet seems to take some sort of pleasure in being barked at by my wife.
I say nothing to Ava as we go out to the Gremlin. Ava makes little cooing sounds over the funny-looking little car and I ignore her. She has the damnedest way of acting completely normal and nonchalant under the direst of circumstances.
We get in the car and pull out into traffic. It becomes evident that Ava doesn’t really know how to get up to this cabin in Ulster County.
“Haven’t you been there before?” I ask her, frustrated.
“Of course I have. It’s my friend’s cabin,” she says, a bit mysteriously, probably trying to provoke me into asking what friend.
“But you don’t remember how to get there?”
“I took the bus.”
“Ah,” I say.
We stop at a gas station where I buy a road atlas and where Ava takes an extraordinarily long time in the bathroom, emerging very sullen looking. I know she wants me to ask what’s wrong, to have me coax an improved mood from her, but this isn’t a time for games. I feel my insides churning over the harm I’ve brought to Ruby.
The Gremlin sputters forward on the thruway and I pray that it will make it up there. I don’t really care what happens once we’ve gotten there and rescued Ruby from Ava’s lunatic kidnapper. But we must make it there.
We are both silent for a long spell. I am turning things over in my mind. Ruby. My wife. What could have driven her to do something like this? Eventually, I start talking to her.
“Have you bee
n having a bad time, Ava?” I ask her, trying to inject my tone with an empathy I don’t quite feel.
“What do you mean?” she asks, pivoting her head toward me.
“Have you been feeling unwell?” I ask softly, as I stare at the road ahead, peripherally taking in the bleak late winter landscape of brown grass and naked trees.
“Are you being ridiculous, Attila?” Ava asks sharply.
“What do you mean ridiculous?”
“Don’t tippy-toe around me. You’re asking if I’ve been particularly nutso lately and the answer is yes, I have. I have missed my husband and it has done bad things to my containment device.”
“Your containment device?”
“My body. My brain chemistry. You know me, Attila. You know that change affects me unfavorably.”
“That’s not true, Ava. And half the time you were the one instigating major changes. Like sleeping with other people.”
“Let’s not discuss that.”
“Why not? You’ve kidnapped my girlfriend, Ava, and let’s not forget that the only reason I ended up in someone else’s arms was you, your behavior. And I don’t just mean your sleeping around. You are mysterious, Ava. For years you have kept yourself hidden.” I glance over at her. Her lips are parted. She looks very young and terribly sad.
“She’s really your girlfriend? You tell people that?” she asks with a pout.
“She’s a very kind and good person. We never discussed exactly what we were to one another. But I don’t want her hurt. I have already hurt her.”
“You have?” she asks, hopeful.
“I have. Because I could never be hers. Not completely.”
“Because of me?” she asks, a note of triumph coming into her voice.
“Something like that,” I say. I feel myself gripping the steering wheel tighter.
She knows that all will be restored between us. The love and hate, the passion and sickness. For better or for worse, we are bonded.
BY THE TIME we reach the outskirts of Saugerties, night is falling. For the last half hour I’ve been unable to speak. I’ve kept my eyes on the road but this hasn’t prevented the images from coming. Images of Ruby. All the good that she represents. It was meeting her and feeling her faith in me that caused me to clean up my act and stop holding horses back. Sure, I’d been feeling like shit about it for a long time, but it was Ruby who made me want to come clean. It was Ruby who guided me to winning that last race. And I’ve done nothing but bring her harm. A sick feeling spreads through my stomach like ink in water.
