by David Wood
He inhaled deeply. “But I wouldn’t imprison you, Amy. I want you to be happy more than anything. I want you to be with me, yes, but I need you to want to be with me. And I sure as hell wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize your life.”
“But...” she said, her lower lip quivering. “But the credit cards...”
Craig nodded and looked away. “I’m sorry. I found them when we got back to the flat that night. They were in my carry-on. I must have taken them out of my wallet and slipped them into a compartment, so I wouldn’t have to carry around that bulky leather case in my back pocket during the seven-hour flight. The gypsies who lifted my wallet got nothing but my driver’s license and my old attorney ID. I should have told you. But I knew what you would think. That’s why I tossed the cards up there on top of the cabinets. I apologize, Amy. It was stupid. Beyond stupid.”
She fell into his arms again. He held her, rocked her back and forth on the living room floor as the fado music serenaded them.
He tried to think of ways he could calm her. But in his ear the pulse started beating again. Regardless of whether they were rescued, whether their twisted next door neighbor came to his senses and let them out, for Craig, at least, time was short. Even if he survived this captivity, the pulsing was insistent. The pulsing was clear. He wouldn’t survive long after they got out.
(It’s a tumor.)
He had to write while he still had the time.
(Or an aneurism.)
He gave her one last squeeze and rose to his knees. Then he stood up. He had some sixty thousand words left to write. And he didn’t know how much time he had left. Because with an aneurism you never really knew.
(With an aneurism you go like that!)
Chapter 20
By evening Amy had calmed down some. Once the fado music had finally stopped, she rested in the living room on the couch while Craig tapped away on his laptop. She didn’t like that he was working, didn’t at all understand how he was even able to work, but in the end the familiar sound of his fingers dancing along the keyboard actually had a tranquilizing effect and allowed her to sleep.
A few minutes ago Craig had woken her and said he was off to lie down on the bed. Said he spent the last half hour going through the flat’s drawers and closets and he was exhausted. She asked and he had showed her what he had found.
It wasn’t much. In the bedroom he had discovered some spare blankets and sheets, a few paper-thin pillows. Some clothes, mostly women’s dresses but a few men’s shirts and pairs of pants. All old and ragged, outdated. Nothing else of any consequence. In the hall closet off the living room he’d had more success. There he found a small black and white television set. Attached to it were a pair of rabbit ears and a dusty VCR. Probably one of the first ever made, he’d said.
He had also found a radio, a Victrola and a cassette player, though he had yet to try any of them out. In addition, he had discovered a black metal lockbox. Using the icepick from the kitchen he had been able to pry the lockbox open. Inside were four old black spiral notebooks, each filled from cover to cover with what looked like a male’s neat handwriting. They appeared to be journals. Written, of course, in Portuguese.
In short, Craig had found nothing that could in any way help them escape, short of cannibalizing the electronics in order to MacGyver them into a working two-way radio, but he was a writer, not an electrical engineer.
The rumbling in Amy’s stomach returned again. It was the same dreaded sound her stomach had made almost daily in high school while she was on her perpetual diet. She hated that sound, was embarrassed by it even now.
She also needed a bathroom, and not just to pee. She had been holding her breath against the stench of vomit in the toilet and urinating in the shower up until this point. But what she had to do now—what she’d had to do since yesterday afternoon—she couldn’t do in the shower. She doubled over on the couch and willed herself to hold it in. She was a dietitian; she’d studied this stuff. She knew precisely what would happen. She would hold it until the urge left her and then she would become constipated.
She tried to take her mind off of it. Tried to think of something pleasant. Christmas at her parents’ house in Pawling when she and her brother were children racing down the stairs for first shot at the presents under the tree. The Cabbage Patch dolls and Milton Bradley board games and thousand-piece puzzles for her, the G.I. Joe action figures and Topps baseball cards and Atari video games for him. But the pleasant memories wouldn’t last. Every memory she conjured was swiftly replaced by the image of herself, naked and ruined in the hallway, that she had seen through the peephole. Was that really a hallucination?
She stood. Her legs seemed to be feeling worse every hour. They could barely hold her up anymore. She stumbled back toward the boxes and gently set herself down on the floor.
Most of the boxes were open by now. Only a few remained sealed. None of them really served any purpose anymore but she wanted to keep herself busy. Wanted to keep her mind off of her hunger, off of her sharpening stomach pains. Off of the fact that she could hardly walk anymore.
She slit a seal on one of the boxes with her fingernails. Inside were some of Craig’s clothes, those that didn’t fit in his suitcase. A couple of sweaters and sweatshirts but mostly cheap ringer tee shirts and torn denim jeans. That was what he wore these days. No more Louis Vuitton suits with expensive silk ties. No more cashmere overcoats and Kenneth Cole shoes. Craig said he wasn’t interested in “things” anymore. Craig the fierce trial lawyer had basically become a communist.
All right, maybe that wasn’t fair. But he certainly didn’t want the life they had originally envisioned together. Didn’t want the Jag or the mansion in an elite northern New Jersey suburb. Wasn’t interested in country clubs or posh restaurants, any of the things her mother had so desired for her. The big wedding. The summer house in the Hamptons or even down the shore.
She thought about it. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. Maybe her mother had it all wrong, at least when it came to what was important in life. Really, what was the sense in wanting more, more, more?
Amy pushed the box aside and pulled forward another. It was the box marked Craig’s hardcovers. She slit the seal and opened it. Reached in and pulled out the top three books, all classics. She looked inside. Picked out the next three books. Beneath what was left of the pile she saw something shiny. She dug out more books and set them next to her on the floor.
At the bottom of the box was a small but heavy metal case. A lockbox similar except in color to the one Craig had found in the flat. She grabbed hold of its handle with both hands and yanked it out.
She placed the beige lockbox on the floor between her legs and looked around. Listened for Craig. Then she pushed herself up and went into the kitchen, retrieved the icepick from the wooden drawer and brought it with her back into the living room. She lowered herself onto the carpet again.
It took all of eight minutes but she pried it open. At first she had tried to inflict as little damage as possible. She was worried Craig would have one of his shit fits. Then she measured his reaction against the reality of her situation—their situation—and thought, what the hell. She finally went to work on the lockbox like she meant it. Now the lockbox, when closed, looked as though it had a mouth. A mouth with some very ugly, sharp fangs for teeth.
In the lockbox were eight unmarked videocassette tapes, two stacks, each of them four cassettes high. She sighed. She had been hoping to find his journals.
It was odd though that he would be carrying around videocassettes in the age of DVDs and streaming video. In the three years she had been with him, they had never once popped a movie or anything else into the VCR. In fact, she couldn’t remember if they had even owned a VCR in Hawaii.
She looked toward the open closet door. But we have one now, she thought.
This wasn’t like her, not like her at all. She always respected people’s privacy, especially Craig’s. And she greatly valued her own. She always made
her personal phone calls from her private office at work or from her car, and she usually went for a walk when Craig made his. She had been indignant when she caught him going through her emails and reading her journals. Hell, she didn’t even like when he hung around the bedroom while she dressed.
But something about these videotapes compelled her to stick one in the VCR.
It took her less than a minute to set things up. The television and VCR were already connected to each other and only had to be moved out of the closet and plugged in. She made sure the volume was muted then turned on the power. The screen turned from black to snowy white then she pushed the tape into the recorder and pressed the play button.
She couldn’t believe what she saw.
In the bedroom Craig placed the last Xanax beneath his tongue and savored its acrid taste. He had been eating the tranquilizers like candy, popping them without even thinking about it, and now there weren’t any left. Though the pills hadn’t helped him much in the sleep department, they sure as hell had calmed his nerves. Now that they were gone, he wondered how he would handle whatever came next.
The bedroom was getting warmer and warmer. He had tried the thermostat but it had no effect. He was out of his clothes now, dressed only in light blue boxers. Still beneath his head the pillow was damp with sweat.
(“Get the fuck over here! I’ve got the blow dryer!”)
He was up to nineteen thousand words and he busied his mind with that, dictating notes and ideas into the microcassette recorder now glued to his left hand. Letters from Lisbon was shaping up to be everything he had dreamed and more.
But how much longer could he work like this? He’d heard of the starving artist, but this was ridiculous. Without food, without water, without sleep. Without a place to shit. He wasn’t even a quarter into the book and already his body was shutting down. He needed some air conditioning, a working toilet, something to eat and drink.
He heard Amy in the living room, moving some things around. What was she up to? Why couldn’t she just come in here and lie down? She always had to be doing something. And that something might now include going through his things. Nosy-ass bitch.
He tried to rise but found he didn’t have the strength. His head fell back to the pillow and stayed there. His fingers went limp and the microcassette recorder dropped from his hand and onto the bed. His toes curled, his eyelids fluttered. His body started to shake.
(It’s an aneurism.)
The room was spinning and his ear was pulsing, the sweat pouring down his face. He tried to scream but as though in a dream not a sound would leave his mouth. Suddenly, his jaw shut like a steel trap and his teeth sunk into his tongue. He felt his mouth fill with blood, warm and salty. It disgusted him that it reminded him he was hungry, that it almost seemed like a beverage to his famished palate. Still, he swallowed it down, finding comfort in the mere act of swallowing something, revolting as it was.
And then from beneath him he felt a set of hands or paws scratching and clawing their way out of the mattress, raking his neck and back.
The phone started ringing.
Against the bedroom door Craig could hear a distant but insistent tapping, against the wall a constant rapping, while fado music came from all around. Then the lamp flickered and the dresser and armoire drawers began opening and closing on their own. The room itself began to shake.
Half-conscious and without warning, Craig vomited onto his chest, and defecated in the bed. He twisted his neck and arched his back, choking on the stench.
Then it all stopped. The lamp bulb burst with a pop. And everything in the room went as black as space.
In the living room Amy was into the wine, sucking at it straight from the bottle. Fast-forwarding through the second tape. She was breathing heavily, her cheeks tinged an angry red.
On the black and white screen was Craig’s Battery Park apartment. Craig’s Battery Park bedroom, Craig’s Battery Park bed. And on the bed was Craig. Craig and some red-headed slut he called Kerry, naked as jay birds and doing the deed.
She had scanned the entire six hours of the first tape and half of the second and so far it was all the same. All that changed were the women and the positions, and sometimes the number of sluts on the bed. Several times there were two women and once there were three. Doing things Amy couldn’t believe.
The tapes were made before she had met him—she could tell by the sheets. She had raised the volume and there was talk of the law, of his practice, so they pre-dated her but not by long. Regardless of when they were recorded, they still made Amy feel even more ill.
Yet she couldn’t shut the screen off, couldn’t even turn from it. She had to see each tape through to the end. So she watched him get sucked, watched him fuck, watched him drink and do drugs with women she had never seen before and would never see again.
All the while she kept swigging the wine, the thick red port sliding down her chin. Still, the alcohol that poured down her throat and into her empty stomach was more than enough to do the trick.
Within ten minutes she was drunk. Within twenty she was sick.
Chapter 21
Hours later Craig lay on his back on the bare mattress in the pitch black bedroom with Amy snoring at his side. The fado traveled softly through the wall. He couldn’t see the clock but he guessed it was around midnight. Amy had been sleeping for about the past half hour.
He had woken in the dark about two hours ago covered in his own vomit, lying in his own feces. He dry-heaved, nearly vomited again from the stench. He moved from the bed, careful not to make more of a mess, and headed for the bathroom before he remembered they had no water.
He began to panic, almost to cry, the pulse pounding in his ear, the vomit dripping down his stomach, excrement sliding down his thighs. He moved toward the lamp, felt along the dresser for its base and came away with sharp stabbing pains in his left palm. With his right hand he picked out the tiny pieces of glass, what was left of the bulb.
He stepped into the bathroom and turned on the light. Pulled a towel off the rack and wiped himself down, retching all the while. He left the bathroom door open, the light on, and went back into the bedroom to retrieve his Purell. It took twenty-two minutes and the rest of the bottle, but by the time he was finished he felt relatively fresh. Almost clean, even. He rolled the soiled sheets into a ball and tossed them into the shower along with his boxers. Then he moved back into the bedroom and shut the door against the smell.
It was then that Amy stepped in, head down, face pointed toward the floor. In the glow of the light from the living room he saw that she, too, was naked. Naked…and drunk. She reeked of port wine and stumbled as she moved toward him, slurring words he had never heard from her mouth before. “I need to get fucked,” she said, reaching for him, staggering still toward him. “I want your fucking cock .”
She faltered, almost fell, and Craig extended his arms to catch Her. When he did she clutched him with surprising strength and threw him effortlessly onto the bed, onto the bare mattress with its lingering scent of shit. She climbed atop him and forced her tongue into his mouth, probing with an unprecedented hunger. She straddled him and sucked at his tongue and bit hard on his upper lip. He screamed and tried to maneuver out from under her, but she pinned down his arms and her hundred and twelve pounds atop his pelvis seemed like at least double that.
“Fuck me, fuck me,” she breathed, spittle landing on his face, in his eyes, stinging them, as he tried to push her off. And then his cock somehow swelled, somehow hardened. Somehow it found its way inside her and Amy took him, rode him, cursed him, dug her nails into his chest until he bled.
It occurred to him now as he lay next to her in the darkness that he had been raped. Violated in a way he had never fathomed. He was incensed, but even more than that he was befuddled. Even drunk Amy had never acted anything like that.
Once she had come she turned right over and fell asleep, without a kiss, without a “goodnight,” without so much of a mention of the stench
or a question as to what had happened to the sheets. For that he was grateful, though he dreaded explaining come morning. He was sickened and embarrassed by what he had done.
He had obviously overdosed on the Xanax, put himself into too deep a sleep. The tranquilizers coupled with consecutive days of exhaustion had simply proved too much for his body to handle. The defecation was to be expected, considering he had now gone two days without a Vicodin and was officially in withdrawal. It may have triggered the vomiting, too.
Craig closed his eyes. Listened to the fado. Beneath the soothing sound of the haunting music he heard a whisper. He turned over, rested his hand on Amy’s naked arm and listened.
“Deixe-me empaz,” she murmured. “Nome toque.”
It was no surprise that Amy was speaking in her sleep, no surprise that she was speaking in what, to him, sounded like gibberish. What bothered Craig was her voice. It sounded somehow rougher, older even. Like the voice of someone who had been smoking for decades.
He shook her gently. “Amy?” he said.
She didn’t stir. “Chamo-me Fatima,” she whispered. “De onde é que voce é?”
He shook her a little harder. “Sweetheart, wake up.”
“Desculpa,” she spoke more urgently. “No falo inglês. Socorro, por favor. Ajude-me!”
Craig began to panic. Something about her voice, about her tone wasn’t quite right. He had been listening to her talk in her sleep for three long years and she had never sounded like this. Never sounded worried or scared.
He shook her again. “Wake up, baby,” he said, propping himself on his elbows. “Sweetie, what’s wrong?”
“Chieira mal,” she muttered. “Temos insectos, ratos. Temos baratas.” Craig breathed heavily, inhaled the stench from the bathroom and gagged. He sat up in the bed. In the darkness he listened to her whisper, her voice barely audible over the fado still seeping through the bedroom wall. He tugged at her arm, turned her over so that her open eyes were facing his. The light from the living room was just enough so that he could see her lips moving.