Eleven Hours

by Paullina Simons

  * * *

  He was a man of his word, though Didi didn’t think he’d meant to go quite this slowly. They were stuck in traffic. What had been a three-lane highway was now a single lane. The diamond orange signs warned of no quick resolutions to the traffic jam.

  SLOW

  MEN

  WORKING

  Didi’s cool driver turned red in the face. His hands became jittery. He was past one exit, some indeterminate distance away from the next, and trapped with cars all around him. Pulling the cars in the left lane to the right, the orange cones were lined up alongside his station wagon. Up ahead, the yellow arrow blinked insistently. Move over there, the arrow seemed to say. Now.

  The man turned on the radio and began humming to country music. Didi was about to try to engage him in some superficial conversation when suddenly her senses returned to life.

  She thought there might be a way out of his car.

  They were in the right lane. Next to her side of the car a low concrete divider ran as far as her eyes could take her. The car was stopped. Zero miles per hour. He was drumming his fingers on the wheel and singing softly along to the radio.

  At zero miles an hour Didi could easily open the door and get out. However, the station wagon seemed so perilously close to the divider that Didi feared the door might not open. She was alive right now. What if she pulled a stunt like that and he killed her?

  She placed her hands on her belly and then on her heart. It was beating too fast. He won’t kill me, Didi thought. I have to believe that. He seems … almost decent.

  2:20 P.M.

  Rich called the office again and told Donna that he was expecting an urgent call from his wife. “Has she called?” he asked. Donna said no and asked if everything was all right. Rich didn’t know how to answer that and didn’t.

  Then he called home again. Ingrid had come home with Amanda. No, Ingrid said, she hadn’t heard from Didi. Yes, both kids were home and everything was fine.

  “Daddy, Daddy.” His five-year-old was on the phone. “Are you coming home early for dinner?”

  “I don’t know yet, honey. Maybe.”

  “Where’s Mommy?” Amanda asked.

  “I’m meeting Mommy for lunch. She’ll see you soon, okay? How was school?”

  “Good,” said Amanda. “Mom has to see how much homework I have. I have to cut and paste a whole dinosaur.”

  “Mommy will be home soon, okay?”

  “Okay. Love you.” Her conversation finished, Amanda hung up.

  Rich smiled, returning the receiver to the headset.

  Yet the empty ache inside Rich would not subside. Where was his wife? Where was his ready-to-give-birth wife? He felt ridiculous, standing at a Mobil station on 15th Street in the broiling heat. He was going through the motions of his day without having the motion of a wife.

  Realizing he was dying of thirst, he went into the Mobil minimart and bought himself a six-pack of Coke and some bottled water. The drink made him feel marginally better for a few seconds.

  Then Rich drove to the Valley View Mall.

  Up and down, up and down, up and down the rows of cars. If she was at this mall, he’d find her. And when he found her, lost at the hair salon and having forgotten to call him, he’d yell at her till her hair turned blue.

  2:30 P.M.

  Didi and the man sat in the car for ten minutes, moving a few feet a minute. The man seemed increasingly anxious. He kept turning on his right blinker and then turning it off again. Didi suspected he would get off the highway as soon as he could. She thought she heard her phone ringing, but the radio played too loudly to be sure. The phone was buried deep inside her bag. She listened carefully again but heard only the radio. Must have been my imagination, Didi thought.

  Now the car wasn’t moving.

  It was time.

  She grabbed the handle and swung open the door.

  Didi had been right. The door was too close to the divider. It opened no more than a foot. The man immediately swerved to the right, scraping the divider and pushing the door shut.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he yelled, pulling her by the neck away from the door. Didi cried out as he yanked her down on the seat, pressing his hand on her head to keep her down. She struggled to get up and bit his hand. She heard him muttering as he fiercely pressed her into the seat.

  The car soon started moving, but in stops and spurts. It turned one way, then another. Didi tried to keep track of the direction, to no avail. She tried to sit up half a dozen times before the man told her to give up.

  “Stay down, please,” he told her. “You’ve caused enough trouble already. Stay down.”

  Did I cause trouble? Didi thought, uncomfortably scrunched up below window level on the bench seat. Have the police come? Have we been stopped? Am I with my husband? No, I don’t think I caused much trouble at all.

  Her eyes, level with the radio controls, darted past the glove compartment to the floor. She thought she heard the phone ring faintly again, but she couldn’t hear above the country music.

  Were they off Central Expressway? Didi thought so; she could see the tops of trees and houses. He must have got off and was driving through the side streets. Where was he taking her?

  “Can I get up?” she asked.

  He said nothing, but lifted his hand from her head, and she took that to mean yes. She got up.

  “So what were you doing back there?” he asked. “What were you thinking?”

  When Didi didn’t reply, he said, “Look, I don’t blame you. I’m not even mad.” He smiled as if to prove that. “See? But you have to understand, it’s useless.”

  She rubbed her head where his hand had been.

  “Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. You have to behave. We’re going for a little ride, that’s all, but you’re carrying a baby and you have to be careful. Do you understand?”

  “Please let me out,” Didi said dully. “I have a husband … children.”

  From the corner of her eye she saw a slight smile. He wasn’t touched. He was just bemused.

  Turning down the music, he said, “Look, I’d prefer not to argue with you. Don’t get out of my car anymore. I want us to be friendly, but you have to show me I can trust you.”

  “Friendly?” she repeated, thinking she’d misheard. “Yes, of course. Friendly. Sure.”

  “Don’t you think falling out of my car would have hurt the baby?” he asked.

  “I wasn’t going to fall out of the car,” said Didi. “I won’t do it again, I promise.”

  “Good. Then we won’t have any trouble,” the man said. “Now be a good girl and let me drive. We’ve lost over an hour because of the work on Seventy-five.”

  “Where are we headed?” Didi asked carefully.

  “Mazatlán,” he said.

  Didi said nothing. She didn’t want to know.

  “Mexico,” the man said.

  He told me anyway, Didi thought, shuddering.

  Didi again thought she could hear the phone ringing.

  Soon she recognized the stark warehouse clubs and tattoo joints that defined Deep Ellum—the funky, loud, slightly dangerous boozing and dining section of downtown Dallas. There were a couple of interstates they could take from there. Interstate 30 to Houston, or Interstate 20 to Shreveport, or Interstate 35 to Waco, Austin, San Antonio, and eventually Mexico.

  No one would ever find them—find her—in Mexico. Not Rich, not the police, no one. Mexico was where people went to disappear.

  The prospect of disappearing—disappearing with him—dried up Didi’s throat. She licked her lips and realized she had no spit in her mouth. For the first time since the mall she acknowledged to herself that she was thirsty.

  Didi was about to ask him if the air-conditioning was on, and then she looked over at the dashboard. There was no air-conditioning. Oh, great, she thought, and for the next silent fifteen minutes, she obsessed about the fact that there was no AC in her kidnapper’s station wagon.

&n
bsp; No air-conditioning was an immediate problem. Didi was hot. Her own minivan had a gauge that told her, among other things, the outside temperature. However, his old car was not AC equipped. The dash clock was broken. The vent inside the car was blowing hot air, and the windows were closed.

  Didi watched him get on Interstate 35E going south to Waco.

  “We’re going to Waco?” Didi asked.

  “No,” he said, his tone losing some of its earlier courtesy. “I told you where we’re going. Now don’t ask me again.”

  Didi sighed tensely, looking away from him. The road was hypnotic. It usually was so easy when Rich was driving to let her mind go blank and disappear into the road. However, not today. Not when she was this hot, this short of breath, this scared.

  Didi reached over to roll down the window, and the man immediately lost his temper, shouting, “What are you doing?”

  She gasped, stunned by his outburst, and said, “I’m hot. I was going to roll the window down.”

  “No,” he said firmly. “No windows. Don’t want you screaming again, do I?”

  “Who’s going to hear me here on the highway?”

  “I said no.”

  “I won’t scream,” she said. “I’m just real hot. I need air.”

  “Yeah, well, you should have thought of that in the mall. Didn’t need air then, did you?” he said coldly.

  What was he talking about? And what’s happening to him? Why did he sound so angry?

  “I’m real hot,” Didi repeated.

  He swirled one of the central vents on her. “Here,” he said. “Here’s some air.”

  Didi sat back against the brown vinyl seat and closed her eyes. She wiped her sweating head, opened her eyes, and said, “Couldn’t we stop for a drink? I’m thirsty.” She was hoping to bring some of his earlier politeness back.

  “No, we can’t stop for a drink,” he snapped. “What do you think this is? A trip to Disney World? Sit and be quiet. Please,” he added, composing himself.

  Didi had no choice about sitting, but she did shut up. He’s moody, she thought. Is this ma’am and please thing just a facade? God help me if it is.

  After a few moments, he said, “Look, I’m sorry, but we have to make tracks. I have to concentrate, okay? Don’t want to go too fast, don’t want to go too slow. We’ll stop soon.”

  Oddly comforted by his courteous demeanor, Didi nodded and then said, “Don’t you want to call my husband?”

  “No!” His nasal voice was shrill. “Why would I want to call him?”

  Beads of sweat ran down her cheeks. “To ask him for money?”

  Shaking his head, he leaned toward her and touched her gently on the arm. “You’re so naive. That’s what I like about you.”

  Didi wiped her face and then licked her fingers. Ten minutes later, the salt in the sweat made her crazy for a drink, but she didn’t talk.

  What was her Rich doing? He must have realized by now she wasn’t coming to the Laredo Grill. Where was he? Was he trying to call? Then she remembered her cell phone. She’d left it on standby at Warner Bros. after she called him. Could he have called already and she hadn’t heard? Or was that the phone ringing?

  3:25 P.M.

  Rich Wood didn’t find his wife at the Valley View Mall. He didn’t find her at the Galleria Mall, either, though the parking there was more complicated.

  Rich knew his wife liked to use valet parking at the Westin Hotel adjacent to the Galleria; Didi loved to just get out of the car and pay four bucks and not worry about parking space. So he drove over to the Westin and asked about Didi’s van at the valet window. The valet, whose name tag read José, asked Rich to describe the van and Didi. Rich did. “Oh, jes, Didi, no, she no park here today. She have baby soon?”

  José said that the last time he’d seen Didi was four days ago, and he always tried to park her car close for her because when she came out of the mall with the bags, “she no like to wait so much.”

  The fact that the valet knew his wife by name because she visited the Galleria so often amused Rich. Oh, you Didi. You lead a secret life away from me. While I work, you’re getting to know José. You never told me you were on a first-name basis with the Westin valet.

  But he didn’t have a wife to say that to just then. He didn’t even have her van.

  Before he left, he dialed her cell phone number again from the pay phone inside the Westin.

  3:30 P.M.

  The light trill of the cellular phone was unmistakable this time. Didi didn’t move. Glancing over at the man from the corner of her eye, Didi saw he was hypnotized by the road and the radio’s loud music. He wasn’t acknowledging the muffled ringing. She panicked, then became exhilarated.

  The phone was buried deep inside her big black carryall on the floor between her and the door. Very, very slowly she reached to her right and in one motion stuck her hand in the bag without moving the rest of her body forward. The phone had rung four times. Keeping her eyes on the road, Didi hunted for the phone inside the bag. Please let me find the damn thing. Her other bag was so small, the phone always lay right on top—on top of her wallet or makeup bag or mail. The cramped bag had been so inconvenient—hence the new one—but now she would give away one of her cats to be able to reach the phone. Six rings. Maybe the man’s hearing was bad, because Didi thought the phone sounded like a church’s noontime bells. Finally, she felt the phone’s smooth leather-covered exterior. Instead of taking the phone out, she flipped it open inside the bag. It stopped ringing. She waited. The man continued to drive, saying nothing. She was silent for a few seconds. And then Didi said, “Rich?”

  The man came out of his torpor and turned to her.

  “Rich?” she said again.

  “Who are you talking to? I’m not Rich,” the man said, looking suspicious and on guard.

  “Well, what is your name?” she said. “You never told me.” She was hoping Rich could hear her through the muffling effect of the bag.

  “Why are you talking so loud?” he said. “I’m not deaf, you know.” A pause. “And what was that ringing?” He slammed the radio power off. Didi’s heart stopped. She couldn’t answer.

  “That ringing? What was that?” He looked over at her. Her hand was in the bag.

  “Was that a phone?” he screamed. Falling sideways over Didi, he grabbed the bag away from her. The car careened to the right.

  Didi heard honking in the distance. She tried to grab the bag, crying weakly, “No, no.” And then louder, “Rich! Help me! Help me!”

  The man hit her with the bag. He struck her again and again, making guttural sounds and barely keeping the car on the road. Passing cars honked.

  Trying to shield herself from the blows, Didi turned away from him toward the door and saw a car in the right lane beside her. The driver, an old woman, was looking over at Didi with great concern. Didi put her hands together as if in a prayer and mouthed help me, help me.

  Then the man, having thrown down the bag, yanked her head away from the window and down onto his lap. Didi fell over, hitting her nose on the steering wheel. She saw him floor the gas. Maybe the cops would stop him, Didi thought. Maybe Rich was still on the phone. Encouraged by his phone call, she forgot all caution. She screamed as loudly as she could, “Rich, help me, help me!”

  And then the man brought his fist down on her ear.

  3:31 P.M.

  The phone rang six times and then stopped. Rich listened intently and heard nothing, but as he put the receiver back on the hook, he thought he heard a very faint “Rich?”

  By the time Rich thought he heard Didi’s voice, it was too late. He had already begun hanging up; momentum carried the receiver the rest of the way. The receiver clicked on the hook. “Oh, shit,” he said. Had he really heard her voice calling him? He picked the phone up again and got a dial tone. The first time he redialed the number he did it so fast he dialed only six digits. The second time the line was busy.

  Busy again, a minute later.

  And a m
inute later.

  And another minute.

  He waited five minutes and then called his office, thinking she must have tried to call him back. He hated crossed calls making both numbers busy.

  There was nothing.

  He called the cell phone again, and the useless message came on: “The AT&T customer you have dialed is not available or has traveled outside the coverage area. Please try your call again later.”

  He tried to remember what the “Rich” he thought he had heard sounded like. He couldn’t recall. It was muffled and distant. He could have been mistaken. It could have just been a ringing in his ears and not his wife calling his name, whispering it. “Rich. Rich.”

  He must be imagining things.

  * * *

  Rich drove to the NorthPark Mall. If she wasn’t there, he didn’t know where she could be.

  Dillard’s at NorthPark was just off Central Expressway. He found two white Town & Country LXi minivans near Dillard’s, but they weren’t Didi’s.

  What was their license plate? TRX something. Or was it THX? No, THX was the sound system he was trying to talk Didi into buying. The license plate was TRX 6 something—or was it 7?

  He saw a third Town & Country and slowed down. TJX 672. That was their car. He couldn’t believe it. She was at the mall. He had been wrong about her. She was at the mall and had forgotten all about him.

  Rich was first mad, then relieved, then mad again. He parked his car a few spaces away from hers and walked over. He opened the door to look in. The car was as they had left it last night after going out to Applebee’s for dinner. Toys on the floor, newspapers, some shopping bags. Nothing new, nothing he hadn’t seen before. The shopping bags were from last weekend’s shopping expedition. Rich had been with Didi when they bought some clothes from Gap Kids.

  He slammed the door shut and locked it. The car beeped once to let him know it was locked.

  That’s when Rich saw a white paper bag on the ground and bent down to pick it up. He thought it was something that had fallen out of the minivan when he opened the door, but when he looked inside the bag he saw it had one whole and one half-eaten pretzel in it. He felt the pretzels through the bag. They were soft, and this surprised him. He had expected them to be hard. This bag was not something that had been in the car for two weeks. The bag itself was ripped, with a chunk missing. Rich pulled out a receipt for 2x items at 1.19 ea., bought and paid for with $3.00 at 12:25 P.M. today.