by Sean Rodman
He sighs heavily a couple of times, sniffs, pulls himself together.
“This can work. What does not kill me makes me stronger.” He quickly swings the gun straight at me. “You know who said that?”
I try to swallow, but my throat is suddenly dry and sandy. I just shake my head.
“Nietzsche. Great philosopher. Punk like you probably never even heard of him.” Still keeping the gun trained on me, Mr. Blank moves closer to me.
Close enough that I can smell a mix of sweat and sickly sweet cologne. “You need to educate yourself.” With the butt of the gun, he smacks my head.
I stumble.
Big O takes a step forward, grunting.
Mr. Blank swings the gun back to him.
“Uh-uh. You don’t want to do that. Just watch.” He turns back to me. “Today’s lesson is this. The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you.”
He looks satisfied with himself. I try to look interested and not just terrified.
“Know who said that?” Mr. Blank says.
I answer quietly, “Nietzsche?”
“No!” I can’t help flinching when he raises his voice. “No, that’s Tony Robbins.
Wise man. The point is, I know how to use pain particularly well. I am also currently in great pain because of what you did.”
He raises his right hand, swollen and purple. He scans a row of kitchen utensils in a rack on the wall. “So I am going to use that pain to help teach you a lesson.Which will give me pleasure.” Shoving the gun back into his raincoat, he picks out a heavy meat tenderizer—a hammer with nasty ridges on both sides.
“Wilbur, when I’m done,” he says, “you’re going to tell me where the girl is. And I’m going to get on with my job.
And you will not interfere again.”
Mr. Blank gestures with the meat tenderizer. “Put your hands on the counter. Spread them out.”
I look over Mr. Blank’s shoulder at Big O. He stares at me helplessly over Final Crossing the duct tape across his mouth. Then I see Marissa rise up beside Big O, emerging from the shadows like a ghost.
I try not to let my expression change.
I need to keep Mr. Blank’s attention, so I slowly do what he says. I put my palms down on the cool surface of the metal countertop. Behind Mr. Blank, I see Marissa cutting Big O’s hands free with a kitchen knife.
“Now, only one of my hands was crushed,” mutters Mr. Blank. “You can tell me what two smashed hands feels like, tough guy.” He firmly holds one of my wrists and, with his other hand, raises the hammer. Ready to smash it down on my splayed fingers. I close my eyes.
“Wait!” I yell. “I’ll tell you where she is!” I don’t feel any pain, so I open one eye and cautiously look at Mr. Blank.
He’s still ready with the hammer.
“I told her to wait for me by our truck,”
I say. “That we’d get her off the ferry.”
Mr. Blank pushes in close to my face and looks in my eyes.
“You expect me to believe that?”
Mr. Blank says. The hammer swings down, smashing into the counter with a metallic crash. I yelp.
But there’s no pain. I look down at the big dent on the counter where the meat tenderizer crashed into it. Mr. Blank lifts the hammer back into the air, ready to swing again.
“One. More. Try. This time, the truth.Where’s the—” he begins but is interrupted by a loud voice from a speaker mounted in the ceiling. It sounds like someone speaking through a toiletpaper tube, with extra fuzz on top.
“This is a passenger announcement,” the speaker rasps. “As we are nearing our destination, all drivers should return to their vehicles now.”
Mr. Blank squints angrily and takes a deep shuddering breath. Trying to stay cool.
“This is not working out the way I planned. Okay, fine. Let’s speed this up.Where’s the girl?” he yells.
“Right here,” says Marissa quietly from behind him. Mr. Blank spins around in surprise, right into the castiron frying pan that Big O is swinging like a baseball bat at him. There’s a crunch as the pan lands somewhere between his shoulder and neck.
Mr. Blank drops in a crumpled heap to the floor. For a second, we all just stare at the gently breathing body on the floor.
“Wow,” I say. “That was a ten out of ten.”
“Maybe I’ll make it to the Olympics, coach,” says Big O. “You got anything to say to me?”
“Thank you,” I say. “Thank you for saving me. Again.” I wrap my arms around him in a bear hug, and he shrugs me off.
“No big deal. Gotta take care of family.”
“You guys done?” asks Marissa.
“Can we go?”
Mr. Blank groans on the floor. Big O and I nod and head for the door. I freeze when I see the handle turning by itself.
Someone is coming in from the other side.
I grab Big O and head in the opposite direction as fast as I can. There’s another way out—a white swinging door at the other end of the kitchen. I’m not sure where it leads, but at this point it doesn’t matter. Big O goes through first, and I’m about to follow when I look back over my shoulder at Marissa. She hasn’t moved—she’s just standing next to the unconscious form of Mr. Blank.
“You coming?” I say.
She shakes her head, smiling sadly.
“Go. Run. I have to stay,” she says.
I don’t want to move, but Big O drags me back through the swinging door. We’re in a dark storage cupboard that’s like a small hallway with racks of cans and plastic buckets lining the walls.
I start to move toward the other end, where there’s an exit. But I suddenly stop when I hear Dorkney’s voice, muffled by the door to the kitchen.
I can’t make out what he’s saying. But then I hear Marissa—clearly.
“Two guys? No, there wasn’t anyone else,” she says. “I’m lucky I escaped on my own.”
Chapter Thirteen
The next door leads into a main corridor, and we mix in with the crowd heading to the lower decks. A few minutes later, we’re back in the pickup truck. Right where we started. Big O looks in the rearview mirror, delicately touching a bruise on his cheek. I loosen the bandage around my ankle a little. It still hurts like hell. We’re a mess.
“You know,” I say, “I have a new rule.”
“Why am I not surprised?” says Big O.
“Here it is. You are never, ever allowed to come up with the plan. Only me.”
Red taillights flare ahead of us, and the engines of the cars surrounding us rumble to life. Big O turns the key in the ignition. Our pickup coughs twice, then starts.
“Really? I thought my plan worked out pretty well,” Big O says. “At least we made our hundred bucks.”
“Ah, you are wrong again,” I say.
“Mr. Blank emptied my pockets, remember? He took it all. We’ve got no money. I lost my tools. Nothing but bruises and aches to show for your plan.”
Big O stares at me. The car behind us honks, and that snaps him back to reality. He shifts the truck into Drive and inches it forward toward the exit ramp.
“In that case,” he says, “I can see your point. You make the plans from now on.”
We rumble over the ramp and down to the road. In the distance, I can see flashing red-and-blue lights. A line of cop cars coming down the highway toward the ferry terminal. For a moment, I have a vision of a roadblock, of an officer asking me questions I don’t want to answer. But we drive right by and out onto the open road. The pale light of dawn is starting to wash over the sky.
We pick up speed as we hit the highway.
“Could’ve been worse,” says Big O after a while. “We helped Marissa.
Instead of being bad guys, we got to be heroes for a moment.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That felt pretty good.
Maybe you should plan on sticking with being a hero.” Big O looks at me Final Crossing to see if I�
�m joking. “After all,” I say, “you’re kind of useless at the whole criminal thing.”
Big O reaches over and punches my shoulder, laughing. I’m not sure how we’re going to get to our uncle’s, or what is going to happen to us after that. But it feels like we’ve finally left the bad stuff behind. That maybe we’ve escaped.