Yes, the memory was there, circling her mind like a halo, so weightless it couldn’t penetrate fully tonight. It couldn’t send her backward. She was rooted in the present. These moments of her life that would never come again. Washing her hands beside her at the sink in the bar’s bathroom was an old and vivid woman in a violet shawl and thick glasses. Evvie gave all her attention to her. “It’s getting awful cold out there, isn’t it?” Whose voice was coming out of her now? She sounded just like Dorothy in Kansas!
“It is. But I don’t mind.”
“Me either, I don’t mind a bit!” Had she always had this capacity to sound like Dorothy and just never known it?
The woman laughed, looking at herself, and Evvie joined in. Evvie was not sure what they were laughing about. All she knew was that soon she’d have hours and hours, locked in a room with Ben. The happiness of anticipation was worth the price of admission. Then later, after it was all over, she’d reveal her Dorothy voice. There’s no place like home.
She had one more beer and made small talk at the bar, the kind that Dorothy might make, with wide eyes. Then a call came, and she saw it was from them and she rushed outside.
Rocky spoke clearly, with the quickened ease of someone who knew his speech by heart, the tone of voice level and reassuring now, like a pilot on a plane. “We’ll be wearing masks tomorrow, of course, and you can have a say about what kind of masks you want us to wear. And even what kind of voices you want us to talk in. Remember, this will be like going to a great show, and you should enjoy it. So. Animal masks? Prince Charming? Politicians? We could be Reagan and Bush.”
“Not animals. Otherwise I think I’d rather be surprised.”
“Good, good,” Rocky said. “I love a woman who likes to be surprised. A woman who respects the show.”
Evvie fell silent. She looked at the bright, blue-white moon, smiling.
Is this me? Am I still myself?
Ben
The last time Ben had a gun pointed at his head he was seven or eight years old, and it was a toy pistol. A lot of boys played at war, but the next-door neighbor pretended with disturbing passion. “Bang, bang, you’re dead! Say Sayonara!” the boy would say, trying to make his voice deeper, louder. In a cold flash Ben sees the neighbor boy’s face as it appeared in the window of the boy’s mother’s car the last time he saw him. It was a lost, bloated face, a face that had soaked up the atmosphere in a family that was infamous for being rowdy and broken. They’d moved suddenly, running from the father, there had been violence in the home that leaked out onto the street the night before. From his bedroom window Ben had seen the mother crouching in a nightgown like an animal, and nobody running to help her, though Ben’s mother had shouted to his father, “Do something!” The woman sprang up and ran back into her house, and her husband told everyone to mind their own goddamn business, and everyone did. And now, even though this man in his office tonight has a real gun, a Dracula mask, a deeper voice, and is saying, “Don’t say a word” instead of “Say Sayonara,” Ben hears the old neighbor boy’s words swim up and ring in his head. Part of Ben, nervously laughing, eyes roving the office looking for Evvie, hopes the man with the real gun will suddenly step back, rip off his mask, and say, “It’s a joke, dude, we’re checking your reflexes.”
But Dracula mask stays utterly still and presses the gun harder against his temple. Hard, cold, insistent. Ben closes his eyes and feels his stomach drop. He thinks of falling to his knees, desire for his own life bursting inside of him like a great fire. Please. No. This can’t happen. He hears the man breathing behind his mask. He opens his eyes. The man is wiry, of medium height, wears white, feminine-looking gloves and black clothing. The bottom of the mask has been sliced off, so he can see the man’s real mouth and chin. Was it someone he knew? “Dude, who is it?” Ben tries, but feels something in his heart tumble and rise, circle around and do backflips just to reach a single strand of hope that this is someone’s sick idea of a practical joke. But it doesn’t feel like a joke, and where is Evvie? “Please,” he manages, but the man drills the gun harder into his head and tells him to shut up once and for all and keep his eyes shut. The night’s turn of events has the feel of something utterly random. They—he and Evvie—are someone’s playthings now, and knowing this, he feels his spine turn to water, and his throat closes up. God help us God please help us God help us. He hears another man saying to Evvie, “You’ll keep nice and quiet if you like life.” Someone bored, crazy, and cruel is going to have some fun with them, then hack them into pieces and throw them in a Dumpster somewhere out of town. Such things happen somewhere in this world on a daily basis. Again he thinks of hitting his knees, pleading for mercy, but somewhere he’s read that revealing weakness in these situations lowers your chance for survival. Weakness was something people like this could not stand for. It would all be over unless he could find some strength.
“Open your eyes.”
Trembling, he looks across the room to where Evvie stands. She is by the black window in her dark coat, her head pressed on the glass. “Evvie?”
She turns around, stricken. Her face, always pale, is sickly looking. Evvie! It was as if the fact of her had never made it all the way through to the center of his consciousness, until now, in these tunneling moments, when she opens her mouth to speak but no words emerge. The other man, a bit larger and wearing a raincoat and a Wolf mask, stands several feet away from her, but has a gun pointed at her head too. Evvie clenches her eyes shut.
The men had come out of nowhere; he hadn’t heard their footsteps, hadn’t sensed anyone coming into the office, and is now furious with himself. Why hadn’t he locked the fucking door downstairs? Why hadn’t he had the modicum of vigilance that might have prevented this nightmare? He’d locked the door most other nights, why not tonight? Evvie had been visiting again—she’d dropped by twice this week, and he’d almost enjoyed her company, now that she was less desperate. She’d told him about a new friend at the animal shelter, how she was thinking of a documentary about crows, how she’d actually been going out at night sometimes, to hear music, and some funny stories about Tessie, the landlady he hadn’t thought about in years. Tonight she’d shown him photographs of her extended family, but that now seemed to belong to another day, another year, even. One of the photographs was very old—Evvie at two, anxious and alien, sitting alone on a patch of grass. The back of the photo read Fourth of July! Evvie! As he looked at her now, he saw that strange child in her face, and for an instant he somehow seemed to blame her for the gun at his temple. Somehow she looked like the kind of person this would happen to. He’d known that, always. Or so it seemed in these few moments.
“And none of us says another word,” Dracula says. “That’s something we all have to understand. We ain’t nothin’ but four church mice walkin’ down the steps and out to the car to take a ride with Jesus. Nobody’s wayward. The correct car is a white caddy with the back door open. Now, put these masks on. Whoever sees us needs to think we’re four people going to a little costume party. If someone asks to join us, you say you wish everyone could come dance, but it’s invite only. You say you’re feeling lucky and can’t wait to get where you’re goin’.”
Dracula hands Ben a cheap plastic mask from a child’s SpongeBob Halloween costume. He swallows down a streak of hysteria that threatens to become laughter and tears. “I can get you a lot of money,” he tries, but Dracula shakes his head and moves the gun so that it rests on the side of his throat. He gives Evvie an even cheaper-looking mask, some kind of brown squirrel or chipmunk.
They walk out o
f the office, two by two, Evvie and the Wolf up front, with his hand on the crook of her arm, as if using her for balance. They leave the lights blazing, and walk down the stairs, then single file out the glass door at the bottom of the steps. In the dark street the air smells like someone nearby is having a real wood fire. Ben takes a deep breath, and then another. Across the street a young woman in very high heels walks quickly, talking on her cell phone. Other than this, the street is empty for two blocks. In the distance Ben can see an old white-haired man standing alone on the corner near the Dairy Queen. The man is walking slowly toward them, like someone in a dream.
“Get in,” says the Wolf, smiling, and Evvie slips into the car.
“Get in,” says Dracula, in the deepest voice on earth, and Ben obeys, but not before taking another gulp of the air, then looking up at the sky, and all around at the street, as if some last-minute miracle might reveal itself. He wants his life! It takes everything he has not to cry out in terror.
In the three seconds that he sits there alone with Evvie, while the kidnappers are opening the front doors, he says, “We’ll get out of this. Don’t worry.” But his quavering voice says otherwise and he wishes he’d stayed quiet. She, Evvie, has gone still and silent as stone. He’s never seen her that way. He is worried she is in a state of such shock that it’s physically dangerous. People can die of shock.
They drive a few blocks down the street and he says, “I think she’s sick. I think she needs to go to the hospital. She’s not very—”
The Wolf turns around with the gun. “You speak when you’re spoken to, boy. And both of you fools can take the masks off and breathe easy. Right now.”
Ben and Evvie take their masks off and look at each other.
“Can you tell me why us?” Ben says, still looking at Evvie. “Why you’re doing this? Is it just for kicks? If I knew I maybe could—I have a lot of cash. We can go to the ATM machine.”
The car screeches to the side of the road. Dracula puts the car in park so he can turn around with his gun too. “Who’s in charge?” he says. “Who’s the master of the operation here? Is it you?”
“No.”
“Shake your head no, you don’t need to say it!”
Ben sits there, blinking. The man’s voice is raspy; it’s unclear if he’s old or young.
“I said shake your goddamn head no,” Dracula says, softly, in yet another voice.
Ben shakes his head no.
“Now, let’s all go on, all of us quiet. Beautiful. Pretend you’re in church. A little church of mice on wheels, checkin’ in with the risen one.”
“We’ll tell you everything you need to know, once we get there,” says the Wolf. “If you follow directions, you’ll be fine.” This was punctuated with the Wolf’s high-pitched giggle. Then he turns around to stare at them for a moment. “You people can swim?” Ben looks at Evvie and sees she has her eyes clenched shut. “Yes, we swim.” He instinctively reaches for Evvie’s hand, and squeezes it tightly. In this moment, he can’t imagine ever letting go.
They drive for well over an hour, and in the back they look out of their respective windows, holding hands, and breathing. The Wolf and Dracula aren’t saying a word, except every so often when one of them says to the crazy radio talk show host, “Fuck you.” Ben had considered jumping from the car, even though they’re speeding down the road at seventy or eighty miles an hour, but how could he jump and leave Evvie alone with these two, even if he could survive such a thing?
They change the radio station to some kind of polka music.
“You said you bought chips,” Dracula says to the Wolf. “These aren’t chips, these are Doritos.”
“I’m sorry—I thought Doritos were a kind of chip.”
“No, buddy. No.” Dracula eats the disappointing Doritos anyway. “Doritos are not a kind of chip. Doritos are Doritos.”
Their lackadaisical way of speaking to each other is terrifying. They must go on these sprees whenever they get a little bored. Ben is afraid to speak up, afraid to jump out, and afraid that if he does nothing, his heart will explode or just give way. He tries to listen to Evvie’s heavy breathing. Focus the mind, he tells himself, and then you won’t do anything stupid. Just focus your fucking mind.
With his finger he writes on Evvie’s palm the letter U, and then the letters OK. She doesn’t respond.
After a while, he can see the rising moon, bluish, enormous, and perched above a line of black trees that rim the field of rolling hills to the right. His window view. He can’t get enough of it. Evvie’s view is similar, only the line of trees is a bit closer to that side of the road, like a black wall. He sees a solitary house, small and white on the hill with a single lit window. Do the people inside know how lucky they are to be there? Lifting their forks? Evvie’s hand is cold and damp. He has an urge to put his ear against her chest to hear her heart beat. He knows it’s pounding, racing like his, but probably faster and louder.
“Let’s go to Warehouse X,” Dracula says. “That has music.”
“It’s still filthy, last time I checked,” said the Wolf.
“No, no. I got Wilma.”
“That’s not so good! Wilma’s too old for that!”
“I paid her well,” said Dracula. “And I ain’t about to put on an apron myself. Though I did help her out.” He says this in a high-pitched, mocking voice.
The Wolf laughed and said he’d have liked to have seen that.
“First they swim, then Warehouse X.”
“First they swim,” the Wolf agrees.
“Give me one of those cheese sticks, and offer some to our guests.”
The Wolf laughs, and briefly glances back at them. “Cheese stick?” he says.
Ben shakes his head no. Evvie doesn’t move. Ben wishes they’d said they didn’t know how to swim.
“I think Warehouse Y is better,” the Wolf says after a silence. “I can get the music from X and move it in easy.”
Ben likes hearing this. Maybe these were just perverts who captured people for some kind of sadomasochist disco parties. Nothing involving death. It was unbelievable what people got off on these days.
They’re the only car on the road for a long while. Finally one of them changes the polka station back to the talk show. The host is speaking of Osama bin Laden.
“Jasmine thinks he’s good-looking. She has his picture up on the wall. Says he has eyes like Jesus.”
“Osama bin Laden,” Dracula says, and glances toward the backseat for a moment. “Osama bin Laden can’t help it. He’s a pawn. He didn’t want to be himself, but that’s what happened. We’re all pawns! We have to do what we have to do and it’s a crying shame.”
The Wolf laughs. Then, as if to punctuate the statement, rolls down the window and fires a shot into the sky.
Evvie squeezes Ben’s hand so hard it hurts, and he hears her gasp.
The Wolf rolls his window back up and says to Dracula, “Remember that woman who walked all those dogs at the Point in Pittsburgh? What’d she say when she fired at the sky that one night?”
“I’m shootin’ God,” Dracula says. “You know that’s what she said.”
“I’m shootin’ God,” says the Wolf.
“She was nice,” says Dracula.
“I’m shootin’ God,” says the Wolf. “That wasn’t right. I mean, shoot the stars, shoot the moon. But shootin’ God?” He’s whining.
The Wolf turns around for a sec
ond and looks at them, then turns back to the front.
“You can’t judge a lady like that,” says Dracula. “She’d been through hell. And God can take it! God can take anything, and make it nothin’. This anyone with a nickel’s worth of gray matter will come to know. God can take it!”
They pull the car off the road, onto a bridge, down another pitch-black road. They stop before a chipped white bench that sits before a river.
“We’re not swimmers, ourselves,” Dracula says. “You two go on and swim back and forth now. Fitness is important.”
They could swim to freedom! Once on the other bank, they could run for their lives. They would risk being shot at, but it was the best chance they had.
“We’ll be in a canoe. Just in case. Don’t make us use the paddle. Just swim as fast as you can, side by side, over to the other bank of the river. When you get to the other bank, stand there, count to fifty, touch your toes, then dive back in.”
The canoe is leaning against a tree, just yards from the white bench. It’s small, but big enough to hold the two men. And now they’re all out in the cold.
The river is wider than it looks. They swim naked and the water is freezing cold, as Ben knew it would be, but he hadn’t counted on it being a great release, a deep, exhilarating entrance into another state of consciousness, where the breath of night that enters him creates a room in his mind, and then expands to become a wide expanse of country under stars, all of it inside of him, shimmering. The stars in his mind burn brighter and bolder, his whole mind filled with the fire of stars, his tears entering the river, Evvie’s body right there, slick as a seal, as she gasps, Ben, are you making it?, and he says yeah and wants to tell her of this world in his mind, where silence is music and deepening and he can think, think of what to do next, but then a shot is fired and everything collapses into darkness.
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