by Barbara Hall
“More like I’m in the middle of it.”
Now he is standing. “I’m sorry I came here.”
She follows him to the door and they reach for the door handle at the same time and their hands touch and something shoots through him that he can’t name. Revulsion, he wants to believe, but it isn’t.
She takes her hand away and says, “If she’s driving she probably went up the coast. Not down. And I agree it’s unlikely she got on a plane.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Good luck.”
“I don’t believe in luck.”
“Neither do I. It’s an expression.”
“Goodbye,” he says.
“I don’t believe in goodbye,” she taunts after him and he resists turning around.
Chapter 27
As kidnappers go, Willie is a hospitable one. He keeps going to the minibar and bringing me food, little feasts of miniature Reeses and smoked almonds. He tries to give me alcohol but I don’t take it. I just watch him chug one little bottle after another, like magic love potions. I am waiting for them to do their trick so I can figure out how to get out of this situation.
He hasn’t tied me or anything. He doesn’t need to. A couple of times when I ran for the door he pushed me so hard it winded me. The second time I hit my head and was unconscious for a little while. I’m entirely convinced that Willie can kill me now, so I decide not to test him anymore.
He is in a big leather armchair watching a movie on TV and I am in the armchair beside him and there is a fire in the fireplace. It is a homey scene, all but for the hostage factor, and the coziness of it disorients me and makes it difficult for me to think. On the one hand my heart is racing like a meth addict and on the other I feel comfortable and reassured by the pop of the fire and the drone of the TV and even the taste of chocolate and nuts in my mouth.
I could use the guides about now. But they have gone completely silent. Every attempt to contact them leaves me feeling more defeated. My prayers are like bodies thrown down a well. I don’t even hear them land. I know this is my fault. It is because I went off the path and it is because I felt I had better ideas and now I’m left to my own ideas. It’s not a punishment. It’s permission. Do it your way, they are saying to me. Have at it. And now that I don’t want to do it my way I can’t hear them because I am so afraid. There is a reason that the angels and Jesus and the burning bush and every other heavenly representative said, “Be not afraid.” In fact, I read somewhere that it is the most often repeated phrase in the scriptures. But being not afraid is like trying not to think of a white bear or whatever the adage is. Fear builds on itself. It is a vortex and once you are in it you just spin and flail around. I am in it.
A memory swims to the surface of a time when I was young, in college or just after, when I was denying my history and my experience and joining the merry band of intellectuals, when we were all atheists and socialists and scientists and we were going to take it from here. When I was running my own life in the most literal and dualistic way and I somehow made it work. It’s not as if I was unhappy then. Quite the opposite. There is a kind of security in knowing that you’re at the helm and as long as you keep your wits about you things will be fine, perhaps even perfect. The reason you can go with that theory for so long in your twenties and, if you are lucky, well into your thirties, is that nothing much happens to you. Then things begin to happen to you. Things you did not organize, things you could not have predicted, things that bring you to your metaphorical and sometimes literal knees. Like a guy crawling in your apartment window and raping and nearly killing you. My intellect did not line that up and couldn’t do much to get me out of it.
In this instance, sitting in front of the fire with a bipolar potential murderer, I have to give my intellect almost full credit. This was my idea. So it stands to reason, I think, that my intellect should be able to get me out of it. I am forced to go with logic, survival instincts, situational awareness, and strategy. The problem is that I haven’t relied on those things in so long. I barely know how to conjure them. It’s like trying to start a car that has been rusting on the front lawn for years.
This is no time for dissecting my psyche but I do it anyway.
Why am I here with Willie? Because I felt a desire to save an artist. This is why I believe I came back. Well, to be fair, I never thought about why I came back until Dr. David Sutton brought it up. I try to dial it back to an instinct that might be more pure, less influenced by the doctor. What was happening the first time I saw Willie?
He was looking for red wool for his art piece.
Why was he looking for red wool?
He wanted to depict a woman being killed by a shark.
So I was drawn to an artist who was deprived of expression.
Or I was encountering a man who wanted to kill a woman.
Questions, I think. Begin with questions. That’s what Socrates did.
What is his plan? What does he want out of this situation?
“Willie,” I say as evenly as I can. “Do you know how long you want to stay here?”
He turns his head slowly away from the TV. “What?”
“I was just wondering if you had an idea of how long you want to be here.”
“No.”
“Do you want to call Emily?”
“No.”
“Are you hungry for real food at all? Because we could get room service.”
“No, no,” he says and his voice rises a little and I can see irritation building.
I back off and we stare at the TV screen for a little while.
“Do you know what movie this is?”
“No.”
The questions might have worked for Socrates but they are getting me nowhere.
“Willie,” I say, “I would really like to go home.”
He slams his hand on the coffee table and glares at me.
“Stop talking to me,” he says. “I can’t think. My head is full of noise.”
“What kind of noise?”
“Just noise. Like static. I told you. I want to put you through a wall. I am trying to decide if I am going to do that or jump off a bridge.”
“Why does that have to happen?”
“One of those things has to happen and if you don’t shut your fucking mouth you’ll decide for me.”
I shut my fucking mouth and stare into the fire.
I am just like everyone else. I am at the mercy of others. I am stranded with my thoughts and my thoughts are scattered and unhelpful. I am praying to a God I can’t hear, that I don’t believe in anymore, and my desperate mewling makes me feel weak and disgusting. If I were an omnipotent God I wouldn’t listen to me either. I’d be thinking, Oh, really, now you need me? You’re so smart, figure it out.
I sink back in my chair and get quiet and try to find another scrap of logic.
I can remember my friends, Laurie and Samantha. I can remember my ex-fiancé, Ben. I can remember that the first time I saw Willie, he was trying to create a piece of art depicting a dead woman.
If you can’t remember what you came back for, said Dr. David Sutton, you might be unaware of your purpose.
You are an artist, he said.
Was, I said.
Are, he said.
A true seer, a prophet of her century.
From where I sit I can see into the bathroom and I see a telephone on the wall. I try to keep my breathing slow and quiet.
“Willie, I need to go to the bathroom.”
“Yeah, okay.”
I get up and make my way there.
“Leave the door open,” he says.
“I’d rather…”
“Leave the fucking door open, cunt.”
I pretend to use the toilet and then I flush it and while it is flushing I pick up the telephone receiver.
“How may I help you Mrs. Rabbit?”
“Please send help,” I whisper. “Help me.”
Willie turns his head toward me and stands. I scrambl
e to put the phone back.
I pull up my jeans and flush the toilet again and walk toward him so he won’t come into the room.
“Who were you talking to?” he asks.
“No one.”
“You were talking to someone.”
“Myself. I’m crazy, remember? Jesus, Willie, I just wanted to pee by myself. It’s over. I’ll come back to the fire now.”
I walk back and he turns and follows me.
“I forget you’re crazy, too,” he says.
We sit in front of the fire for a long time and then someone is suddenly knocking on the door.
Someone says, “Mrs. Rabbit, did you call us?”
Willie looks at me. I try to shrug but even in the interest of survival my lying is bad. Willie walks to the door and stands right next to it and speaks.
He says, “We don’t need anything, thank you.”
“Someone called from the room,” the voice on the other side says.
“No one called,” Willie tells the voice.
“All right then,” the voice says. “Do call if you need anything.”
My shoulders are up around my ears. I try to get my body to relax. Willie turns and looks at me.
“You fucking cunt,” he says. “You called somebody.”
“No. I didn’t.”
He advances on me. He is six foot four and descending on me. I think about standing but find I can’t, find it wouldn’t matter if I could.
“Willie, please.”
He is on me now. He puts his hands around my throat and lifts me up. I can’t breathe. He is going to throw me through a window or something. He is going to catapult me. This isn’t going to be some kind of typical dying scene. It is going to be spectacular, something beyond our imagining.
I suddenly recall living. I remember how to live and how to be and I want more of it. I am sorry for all the days I spent listening to the guides. I just want to be a normal person being alive. But I cannot draw a breath.
Chapter 28
Out of nowhere, without warning, David and Jen have sex. They don’t discuss it before or after. The fact that they are pretending it is normal for them to have sex makes him sad. In a reversal of roles, she falls asleep immediately after and he lies awake, staring at the ceiling, wanting to talk. He feels needy. His thoughts are racing. He is cycling wildly between thoughts of marrying Jen and breaking up with her. This relationship is fine. You won’t do better. It is dead. It has been dead a long time. It is dragging us both down. She knows me. I could get old with her. My family likes her. We are in the same field. I can talk to her. I can’t talk to her. She only knows what I show her. I don’t want to reveal myself to her. I don’t trust her. She is dedicated to her profession. Her profession is a load of nonsense. She helps people. Do I help people? She has a good body for her age. For any age. She can take care of me. But she won’t take care of me. All she does is work. But that is all I do, too. We are perfect…
He begins to feel sleepy. He loves the feeling of sleep suddenly taking him under. It is like stepping out of the world. Heather Hensen said something to him like that. Doesn’t the world ever wear you out? He feels worn out.
His eyes give way and then his body gives way and then he is in something like sleep. He goes into a dream and he is aware that he is dreaming. This rarely happens to him. In fact, he rarely remembers his dreams, which has always made self-analysis more difficult. But this is a dream, the kind that people talk about in his office, but more pronounced. He is on a winding road, a cliff, with a sharp drop to the ocean. He is on this road and he is not the driver but is inside the driver’s head. He feels confused and at the same time excited. He is not afraid of going over the cliff. Something in him wants to go over the cliff. Then he goes deeper into the dream and almost loses the sense of dreaming and finds himself in a state of near reality, a swapping out of realities, and he is standing on a small beach and he is staring at a rock formation with a hole cut perfectly in the center of the formation. When the waves crash they explode through this hole and it is beautiful and dramatic and specific. He knows this is a real place. He does not want to move from the beach but suddenly he wants to run from the beach and when he tries, his feet start to sink in the sand. His breath is coming in labored fits and he wants to scream and can’t do that either.
He starts awake and sits up in bed. Jen doesn’t move.
He gets out of bed and goes into his study. He begins rifling through the books in his library. He has some picture books about California and he finds the one he is thinking of and begins flipping through the photographs. He is looking for the rock formation. He is certain it is a real place and he has seen it before.
Finally he comes upon it. Pfeiffer Beach in Big Sur.
He turns on his computer and brings up all the hotels in Big Sur and begins calling them. On the second try he reaches The Ventana Inn. No, the woman says, they don’t have a guest by the name of Sarah Lange or Willie Cranston. He describes them to her. He is very tall and she is short and pretty and blonde and—he wants to say ethereal but stops himself.
“You might have noticed something a little exceptional about them,” he says instead. “An odd couple.”
“Well, that sounds like Mr. and Mrs. Rabbit. The staff has been amused by them since they got here. In fact, we just got a strange call from their room.”
“What was strange about it?”
“Wait, who are you, sir?”
He explains his situation.
“Well,” she says, “there was a call from their room. The woman was asking for help. So we sent someone but when they got there, the guests wouldn’t open the door. Mr. Rabbit said they were fine. We tried calling, too, but no one answered.”
“And you just left it at that?”
“We can’t just go into a guest’s room, sir.”
“Even if a woman is in distress?”
“The woman didn’t say she was in distress. And Mr. Rabbit said everything was fine.”
“She said she needed help.”
“Guests often say they need help. With the fireplace or the cable.”
“Did it sound like she was worried about cable?”
“We’ve had no reports of noise or struggle in their room.”
“Is the hotel full?”
“No, sir.”
“So they probably don’t have any neighbors to report such sounds.”
“Sir, people come here for a lot of reasons. We are a kind of sanctuary.”
“You are a hotel. Churches and embassies are places of sanctuary.”
“What would you like us to do?”
“Send someone back there.”
“Sir…”
“And call the police. You don’t understand. This man is dangerous. Her life is in danger.”
There is a protracted silence followed by some mumbling.
“All right,” she finally says.
“Call me back immediately.”
“Yes, sir.”
He hangs up and a feeling of panic comes over him. That she may be dead. That he might be crazy. That he’s doing all this based on a dream. He doesn’t even believe in dreams in this way. He doesn’t want to know what it all means. He hopes he is wrong. He wants to go back to not knowing.
He knows there is no going back.
Chapter 29
So for the second time in my life a man is choking me and I leave my body and hover somewhere around the ceiling and watch it unfold.
Why does this keep happening? Why am I trying to die this way?
You are homesick for Heaven.
Where have you been?
You wanted to do this your way.
I don’t want it anymore. I want to come back and I want to stay there and I want to know what it feels like to be normal. I want to live on Earth and play nicely with others and see what they see and hear what they hear and do what they do.
Are you sure?
Yes. No. Let me think about it.
Y
ou don’t have much time.
I will think fast.
Then there is a banging and then everything hurts.
Chapter 30
His hand trembles as he dials Emily’s number.
Her voice is foggy.
“This is Dr. Sutton,” he says.
“Yes?”
“They found them.”
“Who found them?”
“I found them. It’s a long story. They’re in Big Sur.”
“Are they okay?”
“She’s alive but injured. They’ve taken her to the hospital. He’s okay but they took him into police custody.”
There is a deep silence and he hears her sigh.
“What happened?” she asks.
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t ask?”
“They don’t know. I’m going to Big Sur.”
“Big Sur?”
“That’s where they are. Do you want to come with me?”
“Yes,” she says. “Of course.”
She gives him her address and he hangs up without saying goodbye. He fumbles in the dark for some paper and a pen to leave Jen a note. He doesn’t want to wake her. She has trouble sleeping lately and he doesn’t want to disturb her. This is what he tells himself. He wants to kiss her but he is afraid. He wants to marry her. He wants to leave her. His mind will not settle. He is glad to have something else to think about.
He leaves her a note saying where he is going and that he will call when he gets there.
Emily meets him in front of her apartment building. She is pacing. She is wearing a leather jacket and a scarf and is carrying a messenger bag.
“I didn’t know how to dress,” she says, getting into the car. “Is it cold there? I don’t even know where it is besides north. And there are winding roads. And people go there to drop out. Henry Miller, right? Kerouac. People like that.”
“Yes.”
“How far is it?”
“Five hours or so.”
“Are you going to be like this the whole time?”
“Like what?”
“Monosyllables.”
“What would you like to talk about?”
“I don’t know. Nothing. I should probably sleep. Or listen to music. Can you turn on the radio?”