Perhaps it is all her fault.
So, I am alone and bold and very beautiful, and the driver of the van—the one they called Donnie—is increasingly attracted to me as time passes. He sneaks glances at me as often as he dares. My shirt has chanced to fall open slightly so that he can see just a trace of the curve of one breast and the lacey pink fabric of my bra. Because the floor of the van is dirty, I have lifted up the bottom of my skirt and twisted it into my lap. He is aroused and wonders if I too am aroused. If I am wet beneath the hippie skirt balled in my lap at the thought of a lover who is young and strong, ready to satisfy me on a warm spring day—because the sun is so pleasant after a long winter, because the road is deserted, because it is as easy as breathing to walk off into the fields and lie with him, as it happens in a foreign film or in a song. No ties. No trouble. A few minutes of pleasure. Then we say good-bye.
That is his fantasy.
I believe he did not have a plan to rape me, or to do anything, really. But when they stop to relieve themselves and I walk past the bushes that screened the meadow from the road, his eyes follow my every movement; undress me, see the movement of my flesh beneath. I smile and make a joke that it isn’t as easy for me as it is for them, who only need to unzip their pants. And he, in his fantasy, sees my smile as, perhaps, the sign he had wanted. He thinks that I am waiting for him to be bold.
And Donnie says to his friend that he will try his luck with me. What is there to lose? The respect and friendship of a woman hitchhiker picked up along the road? And his friend laughs aloud because there really is nothing to lose.
Donnie pushes first through the screen of bushes into the small meadow of tall brown grass with Jake just behind him, looking over his shoulder, his camera pointed at me. Together, they see me still relieving myself, crouched on the ground with my skirt pulled up carefully, and they see that I have a new expression on my face, of irritated indulgence, as though they are two slightly unruly children having a coarse joke at my expense. But fantasy is stronger than perception. So, they approach me and I am helpless until the flow of urine stops, squatting there with the dress rolled up, exposing the curve of my thigh all the way to my waist, my underpants twisted at my ankles—bright pink, with tiny white hearts. Donnie extends his arm to help me stand, but I am increasingly aggravated that their joke has gone too far. The anger and disgust on my face is a complete rebuff—as though dismissing as absurd the idea that I wanted any part of them.
They are angry. They think, ‘Such utter crap!!’ Not ten minutes before I'd been drinking their beer and puffing on their joint and entertaining them with my stories—seducing them, really, with the freedom of my life—and now I turn away to pull up my underwear and to straighten my skirt, a very prim and proper lady.
They say nothing. In their minds, forever afterward, they would think that they might have treated it still as an ill-advised joke, except for that manner of mine. My patronizing snobbery—as if I were a woman and they were mere boys.
I refuse to look at either of them as I walk back to the van. I despise them. It is written all over me: in my eyes, in my gestures, in my walk. I brush past them as though they were nothing. And the one called Jake thinks again of his fantasy and believes I am wrong to pretend that I hadn't desired him even briefly, that it had never been my purpose to seduce him with my airy talk or to make him want me, even if I never wanted him.
So Jake grabs me and pulls me to the ground. He is infuriated at this change in me and believes he should make me realize that I cannot play with him this way—and that I must realize that he is the indulgent one to let this affront pass.
And a part of him still carries the delusion that this is, in fact, what I wanted all along; that we will wrestle in the tall grass and I will resist a little because it is part of the game; that I will force him to be bold and match his strength against mine, and then I will not resist any more.
But I cry out for help and strike him hard across the face, scratching his cheek—he who is young and strong and who would not have hurt me if I had not provoked him. I strike him and cry out and curse him, and his anger explodes.
Perhaps even at this moment the two of them seek only to show me that they are not powerless children, and with Jake holding my arms fast to the ground, Donnie lifts my long skirt and pulls off my underpants and rips open the buttons of my blouse. And there is a pause as they catch their breath. My exposed breasts have an unnatural loveliness in the sunlight, lifting and falling with my exertion. My skin is pale and perfect over the curve of my hips and belly to the triangle of hair between my legs that seems to glisten in the sun. I am helpless, but I don't plead with them to stop. Tears do not stream down my face. Instead, I cry out again, kicking and clawing at Donnie, and so they stuff the underpants in my mouth and tie my arms with a belt and Jake spreads my legs, and still I tighten myself against him, refusing and enraging him.
His finger jabs into me and his elbow digs hard below my ribs, distracting me with that pain until he is inside me, laughing because he has won, and he says to me—I remember this—"Now what bitch? Now what you bitch?"
He grinds deeper, plunging as if with a weapon, coming with a short, hoarse cry of triumph.
Then Jake pulls Donnie off and climbs on top of me for his turn, and they think that I have been subdued, that I have realized I have no power left and I am now ready to enjoy my screwing. But I am able to spit out the underwear from my mouth, and I scream again, “Help me! Rape!” And for the first time, we can all hear a tractor in a field beyond the woods, and Jake has had too much to drink and his penis is not hard enough to get into me, no matter how hard he pushes, no matter how much he jabs at me and slaps my face.
The tractor seems to be coming closer and Donnie is saying they have to leave, fearful now that they will be caught and afraid to leave me here, and so Jake pushes himself off me, unfulfilled, angrier than Donnie that I have won this small battle. And in his impotence, he hits me across my face with his fist, and he tells Donnie that I will not get away with this, and so they drag me through the brush and into the van and Donnie steps on the gas and accelerates down the road.
My arms are still bound and now Jake binds my feet as well, and he lies beside me on the floor of the van, whispering that he will have me; telling me that I will apologize to him before the day is over and beg him for his cock in me. And as Donnie drives the van into the mountains, Jake reminds me over and over again what he will do as his fingers probe me with no pretext of pleasure now, but merely because he can and there is nothing I can do about it. Nothing.
It is all her fault.
She deserves it.
She asked for it, and now she will get it.
He is off on a new fantasy.
Chapter Fifteen
On Monday morning, Detective Glaser sat at the end of the counter in the Black Dish Diner on Tenth Avenue, his long legs curled beneath him as he sipped coffee from a cup and saucer that were black as pitch. The owner was making his way down the scattered row of customers, refilling coffee cups, taking away empty plates, topping out water glasses with a smooth assurance of many years practice. He was a smallish man, rail-thin and neatly attired in black shoes, black khaki pants, a black apron, and a black shirt with sleeves rolled up midway to his elbows. By contrast, his hair was almost pure white, with just a tinge of gray.
“Yeah, like I was sayin’, Detective, when we were just getting organized ten years ago, we were offered this great deal on some heavy duty table settings—cups, saucers, dessert plates, platters, the whole nine yards. Ten cents on the dollar. So my wife there comes up with an idea—she’s the one with the brains, let me tell you. So she says to me, ‘Arty, I got us a name for the business.’ See, we were going to call it Art and Sam’s—Sam is my wife, short for Samantha. But with that deal we got, we called it the Black Dish Diner, and the rest is history. Ten years we’ve been here, right Sammy-doll? Ten years?”
Sammy was at the grill making a western omelet for
Glaser, which she expertly flipped left-handed onto a plate with a large serving of home fries. Her dark blond hair was loosely pinned up on her head, and she wore only blush and flesh-colored lipstick on her face. She was wearing an oversized t-shirt with a swirling green, blue and pink tie-dye pattern, and a pair of hot-pink drawstring pants. Roughly the same height as Art, she was big and round as a beach ball. Glaser thought that standing side by side they would look like the number 10. Neither of them ever seemed to stop smiling.
A matchbook in the victim’s pocket had drawn Glaser here for a visit. So was this rotund female also a suspect? Glaser himself had never had sex with a woman as heavy as Sammy, but he was surprisingly fascinated by the mounds of firm flesh moving under her loose clothes. Who said the killer had to be beautiful?
“Eleven years next February, Arty,” Sammy said. “February fourteenth.”
“That’s right. Valentine’s Day,” Art said, picking up the omelet platter and sliding it in front of Glaser. He grinned. “We made about fifteen bucks that first day. It was horrible. But we still celebrated Valentine’s, right Sammy?”
“Yes we did, Sweet Face. You know we did.”
She stood with her body facing the grill, legs spread for balance, her right hand perched on her ample hip, her left holding a spatula, now working on a cheeseburger. She turned her head to look fondly at Arty. Her face resembled a smiling full moon.
Could a woman with such a smile be capable of murder and mutilation? The simple answer was that such knowledge was impossible to divine from mere appearances. And yet for the past several days, Glaser had been searching the faces of all the females he passed on the street or talked to in the office or took to bed. But what exactly was he looking for?
“So I don’t know what else I can tell you, Detective,” Arty continued. “Jack used to come in here for breakfast sometimes. Dinner, maybe once or twice a month. Like I said, I think he came from upstate, west of Albany ... He didn’t come in too much for the last couple of months, though.”
“Did he ever go by the name of Jake?”
“Jake?” Arty made a face, thinking a moment. He was wary in his answers. Glaser wondered why. “Never heard it. Course, you know how young guys are. Sometimes they like to use another name when they’re out picking up girls.”
“Did he have any friends? Girlfriends? We’re coming up empty on this guy.”
“He was empty!” Sammy said, throwing the comment over her shoulder in the direction of the detective. She was not smiling at that point. Mention of Jake had turned her sour. This was what would make this particular investigation so difficult, Glaser thought. They were all so damned changeable.
Arty frowned and leaned forward, resting his forearms on the counter, glancing in Sammy’s direction before talking.
“I think he worked off the books for a carpet installer during the winters. Summers he did roofing work. Not exactly the high-class of the construction trades. Jobs nobody else wanted.”
Detective Glaser nodded and took a big bite of the omelet, which was delicious. How did this guy stay so thin?
Arty whispered.
“There was this girl who used to come in here. Real nice girl. Lived alone. Worked as a secretary.”
“Administrative assistant,” Sammy yelled.
Arty grinned.
“Sammy don’t miss nuthin.” He filled a cup of coffee and came back again, leaning forward to talk as before. “She wasn’t the most attractive female you’d ever want to see, Detective, but very nice. Colleen Maguire, her name was. Irish Catholic girl. Would make some guy a great wife, you know?”
Detective Glaser nodded. He tried his best to steer clear of the ones who wanted to become wives. But who could ever tell what women were thinking behind their smiles—their mysterious, all-knowing fucking smiles.
“Anyways,” Arty continued. “Your boy Jack starts to pay attention to Colleen. Always says ‘hello’ when he sees her. Tries to leave when she does. Even starts taking a few meals with her. And Sammy and I thought this was nice, you know. Thought this might be the girl who gets this guy to straighten out.”
“I never thought so,” shouted Sammy. “I warned her about him. He was trash!”
Arty frowned again and shrugged.
“So anyways, one night she invites him up to her apartment after a movie. She told Sammy later, she had one drink. He told me she started downing whisky sours like they were lemonade. She says next thing she knows she wakes up in bed, naked as the day she was born, with your boy Jack on top of her, humping away. She says she told him to stop. He said just the opposite, ya know?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“It was a rape, is what it was!” Sammy said. Now she turned directly toward the detective, her legs planted, as though daring him to say otherwise. “And that girl was never the same. A couple of months later she left New York. Went back to her hometown. Some place in Pennsylvania. I keep hoping she’ll be back, you know. Turn it around. Sometimes I think I see her walking on the street, but it’s not her. Son-of-a-bitch! I had Arty tell him, ‘don’t you set foot in our place ever again.’ I would’ve sat him down on the damn grill until his balls were fried, I was so mad at him. But time passes. When he came in a few months later, I let it go. He stayed away from me, though. He knew what I thought of him.”
She turned her back to them, chopping some onions and peppers on the grill with a thick knife, watching them sizzle before placing them on top of a hefty portion of thinly sliced steak and melted cheese. She deftly slid her spatula underneath the pile of food, stuffed it into a long roll and put it on a plate that Arty brought to a table.
Glaser was getting hungry again.
“How long ago was this,” Glaser asked.
“I dunno,” Arty said, glancing at Sammy, obviously wishing now that he’d never started with this topic. “Six months. Maybe a year.”
“Did she file a complaint?”
Arty cringed, knowing what was coming.
Sammy put the spatula down abruptly and walked over to where the Detective sat. Her face was red and puffed with anger.
“You guys are all the same.” She folded her arms across her ample chest and lifted one hand to point at Glaser as she talked. “If a girl don’t go to the police, nothin’ happened. All it was as far as you jerks are concerned is a girl who got drunk, changed her mind mid-stream, and wants her virginity back. Well, I knew that girl, Detective, and I can tell you that piece of shit drugged her and it was a rape.”
Glaser sat calmly and waited for her to finish, lifting his eyebrows occasionally to show that he was listening. He didn’t want to argue with her; he needed any information she could give. And what she said might even be true.
“You misunderstood me,” he replied mildly. “If there had been a complaint, there might be a file of some sort.”
“There isn’t. I wanted her to go, but she wouldn’t. Let her be, now.”
For an instant, that round, red face seemed on the verge of soft female tears.
“I’m sorry. But I still have a murder to solve.”
“I’d file Jack’s murder under ‘Who cares?’ and move on,” Sammy said, and walked away. “I’m going to the ladies room, Arty.”
“Okay, Babes.” He waited for her to disappear.
“Detective, Jack was a real low-class kid. If he talked at all, he was yammering about some woman he’d been in the sack with. Very graphic, ya know? He was not someone I took to. But I listen, ya know, because it’s my job. I’m like a bartender that way.”
“Sure.”
“So, anyway, he’d been talking about this new woman for a month or more. Thought it was real hot stuff.”
“In what way?
“First of all, she was rich. Or at least her hubby was rich. A lawyer, doctor, something like that.”
“It might be important, Arty.”
He let out a breath.
“I’m pretty sure he said a lawyer. Yeah. He got off on the whole idea of doing this rich g
uy’s woman. He usually couldn’t touch class like that. Only once before did he have a piece of ass that highbrow, he said.”
“Interesting. Anything else?”
“Yeah. He said she had two kids. Liked to talk about her kids.”
“Did they have sex?”
“They didn’t hump yet, if that’s what you mean. He said she jerked him off a couple of times. She had this habit of watching his face. Creeped him out a little but didn’t put him off. He was thinkin’ he was going to live on this one awhile.”
“What?”
Arty looked toward the ladies’ room door.
“She was already giving him money. A hundred bucks was nothing to her. Pocket change. He said that once he found out where she lived, the fun would really start.”
“You’re shittin’ me?”
“I told you he was no damned good.”
Sammy returned and Glaser knew that was all he was going to get on the subject of his victim. He took the last bite of the omelet and pushed his plate away, sitting back and rubbing his belly with satisfaction.
“Best omelet I’ve had in a long, long time,” he said to Sammy.
Her face was one big round smile again.
Glaser reached into his pocket and unfolded a sheet of paper that contained several pictures he had downloaded from the Internet.
“Have you ever seen any of these women?” he asked.
Arty took a pair of wire-rimmed glasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on, shaking his head as he looked at it. He pointed to one.
“The face seems familiar, but I don’t think she’s ever come in here. Sammy, what do you think?”
Sammy came over to look and eyes widened.
“That’s Maggie Edwards, the author,” Sammy said. “I’ve never seen the others.”
“Didn’t I tell you she was the brains around here?” said Arty. “I must have seen that face on a book jacket or something. Sammy is always reading and listening to the talk shows, Oprah and all that.”
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