by Leah Stewart
What else can he observe? He resists counting the cinder blocks, because that seems like the thing he’ll do when he starts to go crazy. Will he be here long enough to go crazy? How long will that take? How would he play that if it were a scene—kidnapped man, losing his mind? He could count the blocks. He could thrash and scream.
Don’t imagine.
He should observe his way to an escape route. He should make a plan.
Like what?
Like what?
He pictures the blond woman’s face above him, her swinging braids. There’s an exercise where you look at a stranger, assign her a name, then an occupation, a family history—but he can’t even give the blond woman a name. Her face induces terror. He used to struggle to conjure terror when a scene demanded it, and now here it is uninvited, all the terror he could possibly want. But it’s not useful terror, because how can he ever use it in performance? He can’t imagine a future in which he gains an objective distance on any of this. To picture this woman’s face will be to shut himself in a tiny room. He will not be able to act. He will be using all his resources trying not to scream.
Is it ransom they want? He hopes so. He hopes he’s a commodity to be traded rather than a symbol of American cultural imperialism, a propaganda star. It is too easy for Charlie to imagine what notions his celebrity might give a terrorist, the power of diminishing by torture or death the object of your enemy’s worshipful attention. He hopes the studio will pay the ransom, not his family. Everyone in his family is upper middle class, but still they have mortgages and car payments and student loan debt and college savings plans. After his oldest sister and her husband bought their house, she had fifty-six dollars in her checking account. The kidnappers may have unreasonable expectations about what his family can afford. He knows about K & R insurance, but he can’t imagine the production company has a policy on him. They don’t travel to Third World countries for the show. They hardly ever leave the lot. What if the kidnappers approach Josie? She’d have to sell her house to raise money, and she loves that house. Despite everything that’s happened in the last nineteen days, and though it would leave her without assets, he knows she would sell her house for him. There’s comfort in that thought because it brings with it a return of the certainty that Josie loves him, that if she could see him chained on the floor right now she would do anything to set him free. He feels a stab of guilt, as if the house were already sold, Josie already broke and without a place to live. Maybe he can pay the ransom himself, go online and transfer funds. But he has $38,000 in his bank account, and he knows people expect him to have millions. He hadn’t had a steady job in five years before he landed the show, which meant substantial credit-card debt and no savings. Will they believe him when he says that’s all the money he has?
It has to be ransom they want. It has to be.
This room has blue cinder-block walls and one shelf and one window and blue paint mistakes on the ceiling and floor. What is going to happen to him here?
Three.
The contents of Charlie Outlaw’s backpack are strewn across the enormous table in the kitchen. A long-ago owner built the table inside the room, and it’s far too big to fit through the door. So it will stay in here until someone takes an ax to it. It’s the only furniture in the house, which is small, with one bathroom. The kitchen, too, is small, but all the kidnappers are gathered here now. Everyone leans against a wall or a counter, eating bowls of noodles, except for Darius, who stands at the table sifting through Charlie’s possessions again, studying each one as though it might eventually become a thing the kidnappers wanted: Charlie’s passport, his money, his phone. They’d all expected a little windfall, a first payment of some kind. Instead: a bedroll, a dish, extra socks. Charlie packed from the list they gave him at the outdoor store, checking off each item as he went.
Darius drops Charlie’s flashlight on the table with a sigh of disgust. He catches Denise watching him over her noodles and instantly smooths his face, gives her an authoritative nod. “Stay here,” he orders the room, as though anyone were planning to follow him. He retrieves the key to Charlie’s cell from the nail by the kitchen door. It’s on a key chain imprinted with the resort’s logo, a native tree endangered by deforestation. The resort’s marketing campaign emphasizes their environmental efforts, the concern for the community, the replanting of trees. Normally any reminder of the company infuriates Darius, but right now he’s so distracted that the logo brings no stab of murderous irritation. He didn’t even notice it. He thinks they should call the prisoner’s room the guestroom in case of anyone overhearing.
He doesn’t really want to go in the guestroom. But what can he do? He set these events in motion but no longer feels in control of them. He makes himself stride down the hall as though he hasn’t a single doubt. The hinges creak when he pushes the door open, and the man on the floor opens his eyes. “Hello?” he says, or rather tries to say, the word as hesitant and creaky as the hinges, and then he lifts his head to look at Darius, but the way he’s bound he can’t lift it very far. Maybe they need to loosen his chains.
Darius, to be courteous, moves to where the man can see him just by turning his head. But he won’t crouch. After one glance down, he puts his gaze on the wall and keeps it there. The empty shelf looks odd. Shelves shouldn’t be empty. Then what is the point of them? He doesn’t want to look at the man.
“Who are you?” asks the man on the floor.
“I am Darius.”
“No, I mean, what is this group?”
Darius glances down again, frowning, and waves an impatient hand. “No money in your backpack,” he says.
“I didn’t bring any on the hike.”
“No passport in your backpack.”
“I didn’t bring that either.”
Darius makes a frustrated sound. “Why?”
“I didn’t think I’d need it in the woods.”
Darius wants to pace, but the room isn’t big enough. He walks to the back wall and for no particular reason reaches out to touch it, looks up at the ceiling. The man on the floor takes up a lot of space. Darius does not want to step over his long splayed limbs, which limits where he can go in the room.
“The forest,” the man says.
“What?”
“It’s not woods. It’s tropical rain forest.”
Darius looks at the man—he can’t help it—and sees he’s closed his eyes again. Not with a sleeping face, a peaceful face, but with forehead and eyelids scrunched, like someone bracing against pain.
Tropical rain forest, tropical rain forest, Charlie thinks, as if these were magic words.
From above him, he hears the question: “Where is your money?”
He keeps his eyes closed. “At the rental,” he says. Last night he was sorry to be staying alone in a cottage instead of at a hotel among people. He’d paced from the canopied bed to the table bearing a bottle of champagne and two flutes, suffering a fervent wish to be in a blank hotel room instead of this honeymooned hell.
Now he’s glad. No key card in his bag printed with the name of the hotel, therefore no easy way for these people to raid his room. On this first day in captivity, his perspective has not yet caught up with his reality; he still cares whether they steal his passport, get his phone with its famous contacts, see his photos, read the texts and e-mails between him and Josie. Maybe that was even their plan: to sell that stuff to tabloids and gossip sites. Maybe they’re hoping he’s got naked photos of his costar.
On some level, he knows that motive is nonsense, yet the idea has the weight of reality. All things seem possible now.
“What is in your pockets?” Darius asks.
“My pockets? Nothing.”
Darius makes a skeptical sound. Charlie’s wearing hiking pants, which have a lot of pockets, but everything was in his backpack. He hates having things in his pockets. At home he carries a messenger bag.
No, wait. He does have things in his pockets, put there just before the morning’s catastrophic collapse: in one, a half-eaten protein bar, in another a pocketknife. He’d taken the knife from his backpack to peel a lychee, then tucked it in his pants after the Brazilian woman laughed at him, plucked the lychee from his fingers, peeled it with her own, and popped it in her mouth. She’d spit the glossy black seed impressively far. Before putting the knife away, he did a little comedy routine. “What, I don’t have to attack it?” Pulling out another lychee, pretending he was going to impale the thing.
“Wait?” Darius asks, and Charlie realizes he said that word aloud. Oh shit. What should he do? He has a knife! Surely he should try to keep it.
He opens his eyes. He is very good at sincerity. He tries to meet Darius’s gaze, but the man won’t look at him. “I have half a protein bar.”
“Protein bar?”
“Food,” Charlie says. “Hiking food.”
“Where?”
“Top pocket. On your left.” Charlie points with his chin.
Darius squats and reaches in for the bar, a tricky proposition involving wiggling his fingers into a space near Charlie’s groin. He frowns and looks away, as if to pretend he doesn’t know what his hand is doing. He fishes out the bar and his frown adds a quality of disgust. The bar has started to melt. He has chocolate on his fingers. He goes hastily from the room without checking the other pockets, taking the bar with the obvious intent of throwing it away.
Charlie is nauseous with relief. He still has the knife. The man didn’t find the knife. Now how does he keep it? He looks around again, but there’s no good hiding place in here even if he could get the knife out of his pocket to hide it. Which he can’t. His adrenalized sense of purpose begins to ebb back into despondency. The knife will stay where it is, which means eventually he’ll be caught with it. Someone will think to search him, someone less squeamish than that man. He sees again the blond woman leaning over him, braids swaying. Her appraising eyes. His instinct tells him she’ll feel no compunction. Not about putting her hands in his pockets. Not about anything she does. What will the consequence be for failing to disclose a knife in his pocket? Maybe he should call the man back and confess. What could he do with it, anyway? A tiny little blade that won’t cut through chains and will dramatically fail to intimidate anyone holding a gun.
Now Charlie realizes he’s hungry. The protein bar was the only thing he’d eaten in two hours of hiking and he hadn’t even finished it. Because it wasn’t that good. Many times in the days to come he’ll think with envy and scorn of the person he was when he put that half-eaten protein bar back in his pocket because it wasn’t that good. He should’ve tried to keep it instead of the knife.
The hero thinks of a plan, Charlie. The hero doesn’t opt for a half-eaten protein bar over a knife. The hero takes risks, because he knows that if he doesn’t the world will end. Charlie knows he’d be less frightened if there was someone else to save instead of just himself. That’s the function of babies and sweet grandmothers and wide-eyed girls—to keep the hero from admitting he’s scared. He thinks of something Josie once said to him after glumly accepting what she called a “screaming-girl part”: “Once you’ve been the badass, it’s hard to go back to damsel.” She made her eyes big, her voice breathy and high-pitched. “You saved me,” she said to him. “Oh, Charlie.” She pressed her hand to her heart. “You saved me so well.” Discomfited, he tickled her until she shrieked with laughter then rolled over on him and pinned his wrists. She kissed him aggressively. She liked to be on top. Why discomfited? Because he hadn’t really minded her looking at him like that.
He’ll ask to go to the bathroom. They must be prepared for that eventuality. They’ll have to unchain him. When they do, he’ll have another chance to scope out the room, and he’ll pay attention this time when they take him down the hall: Where are the open windows? Where are the doors? In the bathroom, he’ll find a hiding place, and then once the knife is hidden, he’ll have some time to figure out what to do with it. That is his plan: bathroom, knife, hiding place, quickly, quickly, before they open the door. What if they don’t let him go alone, don’t let him close the door? He’ll have to move with confidence so it doesn’t occur to them to object. Maybe he’ll have to shame them, look them in the eye, say, “Why do you want to watch me urinate?” His heartbeat quickens at the thought of the performance he’ll have to give. What if they search him before they leave him alone? Well, then, he forgot. He has to believe he forgot. I forgot, I forgot, he says to himself. I didn’t know it was there. He closes his eyes, fixes these beliefs in his mind: that he forgot he had the knife, that he has the right to use the bathroom unobserved. He breathes in through his nose, out through his mouth, in through his nose, out through his mouth, in, out, in. He opens his eyes. “Hey!” he shouts. He waits a beat, hears nothing, shouts again. He thumps the floor with his heels, rattles his chains. There’s a weird exhilaration in making all this noise.
Finally someone comes in. It’s the young one who, a million years ago, ordered him onto the floor. He’s slight and sweet faced, so Charlie imagines he’s even younger than he is, which is twenty-one. “How are you?” asks the boy.
“How am I?” Charlie repeats. “What kind of question is that?” He feels anger urging him to say more, but the boy still has his rifle. “I need the bathroom,” he says.
The boy—his name is Adan—frowns. He looks over his shoulder as if hoping someone will appear to give him an order. In obeying Darius’s command to go check on the prisoner, Adan hadn’t thought that anything further would be required. Is he allowed to take the prisoner to the bathroom? “One minute,” he says.
He leaves, then returns. With him come two other men, one to unchain Charlie and one to join Adan in training rifles at him. When Charlie tries to stand, his legs give way, and Adan lets the gun barrel drop so he can grab Charlie’s arm. Charlie utters an involuntary cry, as if the catch had been a blow. “I help you,” Adan says irritably. Charlie could swear the look on the boy’s face is reproachful.
They march him back down the hall, one man in front, two behind. One of them checks the bathroom, as though to make sure Charlie doesn’t have an accomplice in there, and then nods him inside. This is Charlie’s cue. He steps confidently forward, turns to shut the door. He sees the hesitation on Adan’s face and gives him the reassuring, resolute look his TV character gives his patients’ families. Adan lets him close the door. Heat in his face, blood throbbing in his skull—he notes the physical symptoms of nerves but his mind is lucid and calm. It’s like being onstage. The bathroom is very small—toilet, sink, no tub or shower, not even a cabinet. He can hear the men just on the other side of the door, the three of them, talking, shuffling, thumping against the walls like little boys who can’t stand still. There’s really only one option, so he lifts the lid off the tank, slowly, slowly, wincing against the sound he’s afraid he’ll make but manages not to, then he sets the lid on the closed toilet seat, drops the knife in the tank, replaces the lid. His shoulders are clenched, his heart rioting. He almost forgets to use the toilet before he opens the door.
On the way back down the hall, Charlie begins to shake. He doesn’t want to go back in the chains. He slows his steps. They pass the woman with blond braids watching from the doorway of an empty room. Her eyes stay on his face the whole time, and Charlie, reflexively, tries to smile.
Back in the room, they instruct him to lie down. “Please,” Charlie says. “I need some water.” He looks at Adan, whom he’s begun, unreasonably, to think of as the nice one. “What is your name?”
Adan looks at Darius, who nods. “I am Adan,” he says.
“Adan, I need some water,” Charlie says. “It’s very hot in here. Please.”
“Lie down first,” Darius says. “First the chains.”
“How can I drink if I’m chained on the floor? Please.” Charlie brings his hands into a prayer
position, looking first at Darius, whom he now assumes is the leader, then the other two. “Please. You could just do one ankle. Then I could sit.”
Darius narrows his eyes. He takes a deep loud breath through his nose. “For now,” he agrees. He nods at his subordinates.
Having won a small victory, Charlie knows to be submissive. He sinks immediately to the floor, proffering his left ankle for the chaining.
Darius tells Adan to watch Charlie, and the other man—Thomas—to get water. Darius himself goes outside to the spot that gets the best cell reception—next to a wild hibiscus, not the white one but the red. He’s been googling—kidnap and U.S. embassy, hostage and demands—because only now that stage one of the plan has been executed has he realized he has little idea how to accomplish stage two. How exactly does a kidnapper issue his political demands? Is there someone he should e-mail? He can find the main number for the embassies of the various citizens he’s detained, but if he just calls, they’ll be able to trace it. Won’t they? It’s a conundrum he needs to resolve quickly. It’s important that no one working for him realize that he doesn’t quite know what he’s doing.
So it’s inevitable that the person who should come outside as he’s standing in consternation by the hibiscus bush, staring at his tiny screen, is Denise. Denise seems to suspect him of being unqualified for this mission—has, in fact, seemed to suspect him from the moment he asked her to take part. He couldn’t rescind the invitation, though, because to do so he’d have had to acknowledge to himself her evident doubt, and then that her doubt bothered him, and then perhaps he would’ve arrived at the conclusion that her doubt bothered him precisely because he knew it was justified. That was a conclusion Darius couldn’t—can’t—afford. So here comes Denise, that walking accusation.