Unwrapped by The Billionaire

by Joanna Nicholson

  Vanessa reached the far edge of the street—her headphones still hooked into her ears—romancing the world around her in jovial juxtaposition of the danger that just materialized in a puff of proverbial smoke. There was a streetlight shining on the corner ahead and the darkness of the residential area behind her was quenched, somewhat, by the flashing headlights of passing cars on the high-traffic intersecting street in front of her, a major vein in the little body of suburbia that she was raised to call home. She made sure she was alone in a swatch of cars whipping by, solo in a sea of people, and called Jessica.

  Three rings. Three rings of Vanessa wondering whether or not she would answer, whether or not she was busy wrangling Emma back into consciousness on the floor of her home, whether or not danger was still lurking in the darkness behind her. In those three rings, Vanessa’s panting normalized. Her heartbeat diluted from the monstrous roar of a fearful woman to the passionless pulse of a disappointed cynic. She calmed down, the furious tsunami of her soul simmering down to naught but angry waves in the wind, not because she was any less scared and not because she was any more safe… but because she simply had no choice. Time was seeping through the cracks that had been set before her, and it was through this time—the seemingly mediocre three rings—that Vanessa was forced to garner all her strength.

  She heard rustling behind her and turned to see those two glimmering rows of sinister squares, caked with his saliva and gleaming at her like headlights. "Hey, girl," he sneered with a smile on his face and evil in his voice. Like a mosquito drawn relentlessly to the ocean of blood just below the surface of the skin, he wouldn't just go away. He wanted something more, and apparently, in his mind, he was entitled to it.

  Vanessa poured herself onto her bike gracelessly, sloppily, and in sheer terror. She sped off into the obscurity of night—charcoal now from the intermittent illumination of the street lamps—feeling her pocket quake a few times with the angry vibrato of Jessica calling her back, and her fear mounting with every moment of restraint that she practiced in not looking over her shoulder. Not checking to see if he was there. Not giving him the satisfaction of knowing that he'd rattled her. Not letting him see how he'd affected her, how he'd changed the course of her evening, how he'd inserted himself into her routine. If he couldn't manage to physically insert himself into Vanessa, at least he could do this to her: the emotional rape of fear.

  As she pedaled at full force into the distance, unsure of where she was going or what her next move would be, Vanessa heard a screech ring out through the darkness. Unable to contain her curiosity, she peeked behind her at the scene unfolding just over her shoulder. A figure—dark and chiseled—bounded through the neighborhood on foot, a monstrous being that was just surreal enough to her to believe that now she was actually hallucinating. Had someone drugged her at work? Had they slipped something into her drink? It was wild enough that she was put on this detour because some man couldn’t move out of her way or let her go home without making a comment. Now this—now seeing this beast running behind her—was too fantastical, too hyperbolic to be unwrapping itself in real life.

  The beast hissed and screeched, tackling the man on the child’s bike with torrential force. The two tangled with each other on the pavement, ripping hairs and strangling each other, gurgling and panting. Punches were thrown, arms were bound. The onslaught of brutality clashed in waves, with the muscular figure roaring and pinning the man on the sidewalk, rendering him useless. Vanessa, too unnerved by the presence of just the first man (let alone the second, more threatening figure), sped off into the night, away from the danger that had nearly overtaken her.

  Chapter 9

  Every business in Vanessa’s small, sleepy town closed early, when nighttime was more of a fun idea than a pair of purple lips smothering whatever purity one thought they possessed. Finding a place with people and lights and the ensuing safety was more of a game of hide and seek than a regular task. Vanessa could see lights and signage illuminated through the darkness of night but no people or protection in the windows. There was a fast food restaurant which appeared to be closed, but the lights were still on to illuminate the half-hearted, sighing close-up tasks of the employees still inside.

  It didn't seem real: the workers inside, hemming and hawing about their humdrum lives, every mundane wipe and sweep of their occupational duties and Vanessa outside, pedaling for her life away from someone who has displayed a longing to cause her harm. She was just minding her own business. She was just trying to go home. She wasn't bothering this man on the bike. She couldn't get it out of her head, this stabbing, shanking idea that a woman is always—whether in high heels and a dress that hugs her in all the right places or grubby old workout clothes that are begging to be washed—prey for some man lurking close enough to worry but just far enough to be hidden in the shadows.

  Vanessa stood against the grimy stucco of the outside of the building and, with shaking hands attached to quaking arms, dialed 911. She was able to hold it together. She was safe now. The man wasn't there. She had shaken him off in the threat of light and safety. The only people near Vanessa at this point were a couple of bored-looking girls cleaning up inside and a man, semi-conscious, slumped over a stone table outside.

  The operator picked up immediately and it was disorienting to hear someone speak without the thin ringing of the phone. It knocked Vanessa off her axis mentally, made her forget what she was going to say, or that she even had an issue.

  "911, what is your emergency?" The voice of the operator blared through the line as Vanessa recalled, hauntingly, the reason for her call. She was tugged back into the moment, snapped into a horrifying reality of cat-callers on bikes who harass women, because to them they're nothing more than curvy, painted bags of meat.

  "I… was on my bike," she stammered, not knowing where to begin. Where could she begin? What would she say to convey the terror of the absolute uncertainty that just unfolded rather than its passive twin, nonchalance? How could she phrase the unease of being followed? How would she articulate the injustice of being sent on some wild goose chase away from danger that lurked right outside of her home, blockading her out?

  "There was a man," Vanessa continued. "He was on a bike, too, and he followed me—"

  "So, there was a man following you on your bicycle while you were riding at night," there was a cut-glass tone to her voice. She was professional yet curt, adding in connotations that suggested, menacingly, that this was all Vanessa’s fault. That she shouldn't be riding at night. That she brought it on herself. She expected this from a man, a person of the lucky gender who never had the shiver of self-doubt when walking alone at night, who never had to think twice about wearing what he wanted to wear when he wanted to wear it, whose existence from his time of birth wasn't meat-mallet pounded with warnings and disclaimers that the world was at the ready-set-go mark to swallow him up whole. And yet, from another woman? Maybe she's done this too long, washed up on the shoreline of human empathy a different form, her once jagged edges of morality and compassion smoothed over by the mundane nature of the work into something spineless, soulless.

  "I was riding home from work. I was just trying to go home," Vanessa broke in, trying to create something human, something tangible to this person who heard the battle cries from countless people all night in exchange for money to pay her car insurance and buy her groceries. "I was just trying…" and that's where Vanessa became totally, senselessly unhinged, crying into the phone and into the ears of a person who was paid to care, and probably not enough. Why is this our world? That's the only thought that came to mind, ringing out like church bells through a foggy, shameful Sunday morning, waking up the world from its collective slumber and the residual immorality of Saturday.

  "Okay, it's okay," the operator interjected curtly, dispensing a plastic sense of humanity as if she were reading it from a script. "So, I need the facts. What's your name and where are you?"

  "Vanessa McCarthy," she managed to choke out as she re
gained her composure. "I'm at the corner of Martin Street and Pendleton Road, at Burger King. I was just trying to get home when a guy blocked my way into my neighborhood’s gate and started shouting at me." Vanessa found herself in a swirl of unforeseen calmness, an invisible hand resting on her soul, soothing her, and allowing her to give the operator the information she needed. "I was afraid, I didn't know who he was or what he was going to do to me, so I just rode away as fast as I could. I came to a busy traffic area at the end of my neighborhood, and I was standing at Martin and Jackson for a few minutes while I called my neighbor, and um, she basically couldn't make it to come get me, so then I saw the guy again behind me when I heard a noise and I rode away again because he was following me still, he had caught up to me, and I was just pedaling through the dark as fast as I could until I saw this Burger King down the street with lights on—"

  "Okay," the operator cut in again, saving Vanessa from her suffocation by what seemed, at the time, like the world's longest run-on sentence. There was silence, then there was the clicking of keyboard keys, there was the whooshing of late-night traffic, and louder still than all of that was the booming uncertainty that she felt bubbling up through the phone line. "So," the operator piped up finally, "what is it that you're wanting to do? What action do you want to take?"

  Everything—the wistful women working inside, the drugged and drunken man draped over the outdoor table, the cars clamoring—it all seemed to stop and dissipate into the late-night listlessness of the air in that moment, the moment where Vanessa was forced to actually ask herself what she wanted done, how she would solve the issue, the concrete steps that she wanted taken to resolve this matter. What could be done? What did this operator have in her power to do for Vanessa, here, now? The guy on the bike was gone. She was alone and, in the eyes of a casual observer who was unbiased to the situation, relatively safe. No one was approaching from the obscurity of nightfall to cause her harm at this exact moment. Something about the question, the operator's tone while posing it, and Vanessa’s own crippling anxiety about being a burden on other people made her freeze up inside, feeling like she was crying wolf. What did she expect? What, actually, did she think could come of this phone call, this lifeline for help?

  "I… don't know…" Vanessa stammered, searching somewhere in her fear-laden brain for the right answer. What was she supposed to say? What did people, women, anyone do in this situation? She called for help because she didn't know what to do, because she felt scared and needed assistance. And yet, the person who was paid to help her, the person who represented a string of numbers that have been pounded into Vanessa’s brain for as long as she had the power to form cognitive thoughts, who was a liaison for safety, was asking this pointless, demeaning question. If Vanessa knew what to do, why would she have called? Why would she be standing here under the spotlights of desperation as the night inched along to its raw and vulnerable middle, crying to a stranger?

  "Vanessa," the woman said, unsure if she was still there, still paying attention. "Vanessa, do you want to just go home, since you stated that the man on the bike behind you is no longer there?" The operator’s voice was even and rich, not spindly and skeletal like Vanessa’s. Did she think this was some sort of game? No, Vanessa didn't want to go home. The man knew where she lived. He knew she was afraid. He knew she was trying to escape from him. How would this woman react if this situation were happening to her? How would she want to be consoled here? A stranger whose capacity to inflict harm ranged from innocuous catcalls to relentless, ripping fatality, and the person employed to help in this crisis was responding as if she had called to complain about breaking a fingernail? Vanessa’s fear was giving birth to an anger she hadn't quite felt since her parents died, a fury unique in its bubbling hatred that broke her reluctance to be an imposition in the world like hailstones on a car's windshield.

  "No," Vanessa said in a voice she didn't recognize, a tone matching the operator's. "I don't want to go home. He could be there. Or near there. I've seen him twice already tonight. Why would he just leave me alone now?" She turned the spout of difficult questioning on the operator, putting her in the hot seat, making her feel the pressure of having to answer for all the horrible people in the world.

  "What do you think his intentions were? Did he try to hurt you?" she asked, and Vanessa’s soul sank a little before puffing up in livid loathing.

  "I don't know," Vanessa spat back, her arms beginning to shake and her face twisting with contempt. "I can't read minds, and I wouldn't talk to a stranger in the middle of the night while riding my bike. I wouldn't even ride my bike at night if I didn't have to. This man screamed at me, objectified me, and took away my feeling of safety in my own neighborhood. Now you're telling me to just ride back there, through the darkness, and accept the fact that some creep knows where I live and can come back and hurt me? No. I don't need to know his intentions, because whatever they were, they weren't good."

  Vanessa was growling in tones low and menacing, just a hair above a whisper and leaving an impression that she hoped scraped across the operator’s soul like gravel. She was unlocking a new piece of herself, unearthing a different side to her soul that had been dormant in the soil of her own solace for so many years. If this person wouldn't stand up for Vanessa, she had to stand up for herself. The transition from a person who always tried to float in the waves and adapt to the tides to someone who now defiantly lashed out in swimming strokes was exhilarating in a way that left her wondering what sort of out-of-body experience she was having. She felt like, for the first time in her life, she was grabbing a surfboard instead of striving (and failing) to grow gills.

  Chapter 10

  Aaron could barely control his breathing. Plastered in sweat to the seat of his Porsche, his memory of the last hour had been wiped clean from his mind’s eye. The time on the clock didn’t seem right. There’s no way it was almost 1 a.m. What crept up on him—haunting his newfound consciousness—was that there seemed to be a lurid, almost evil sense of danger hovering in the air. Was he, himself in danger? Did someone try to hurt him, only to fail and slink away?

  Against his better judgment, he started the car and drove forward through the residential area where he woke up. He felt shaky again—queasy with confusion—not unlike the way he felt the morning before after his sudden collapse in the conference room. Aaron knew he shouldn’t be driving, but a part of him didn’t care. His father was dying, his business was tanking, health problems were now creeping up on him as well, and he’d spent a good chunk of his day chasing after some wild ideal of a woman he’d only just come to know. What struck him as even more disgraceful was that he didn’t even know her. They exchanged only a few sentences, and she was so embroiled in her own embarrassment that Aaron knew he caught the subpar side of who she is.

  And yet, even the subpar side was ambrosial. She was a book that Aaron couldn’t put down, hungry (for reasons even unknown to him) to turn page after page. He wanted to know her. He wanted to see how she looked after getting out of the shower, the direction her hair flopped in disobedience in the sunlight of morning. He wanted to know how she stretched, how she moaned. Vanessa was an enigma to him, a language in which he dreamed but couldn’t yet understand.

  And somehow, as if this were actually all a dream—as if Aaron’s reality could bend to the whims of his own mind—there she was. Aaron pulled into the parking lot of a closed Burger King where Vanessa stood with her back along the chalky, stucco wall and a phone in her trembling hands. She looked lost there, shaken by a world that wanted to hurt her. Not knowing how to approach her, or even if he should, Aaron kept his distance, only to watch her face contort into something agitated, something powerful. Seeing her like that—seething into the phone—called him back to life again, shook off the dust that had formed on his psyche.

  Without thinking, he zipped his car around to where she stood. “Do you need help?” He blurted out through the open window, as if they were old friends. In his mind, they were
already entangled together, losing track of which pair of legs belonged to whom.

  Looking up, her face glimmering with recognition, she hung up the phone. Vanessa chained her bike to a nearby pole and wordlessly got into the car. For the first time since high school, Aaron was nervous around a woman. She suddenly evoked this sense of inadequacy in him. The way she danced earlier left him unable to form cognitive thought, especially when juxtaposed against the relatable clumsiness, the humanness of earlier that day. And here she was again, sitting in his car in silence, controlling the aura. She was stoic and stern, a mountain his muscles were aching to climb.

  “Hi,” he started, unsure of what to say, gripped by a panic that felt indissoluble.

  “What are you doing here?” She asked defensibly, yet kept her position inside the car.

  “I… saw you,” Aaron began, not wanting to divulge just yet that he’d been watching her dance. “I saw you here alone.”

  The silence racketed in waves between them. Neither knew what to say, what to do, how to respond to the other.

  “I don’t want to go home yet,” Vanessa said, finally, slicing the stillness that had fallen over the car.

  Without a word, Aaron revved the Porsche and drove them away from Burger King, toward the direction of his hotel.

  Chapter 11

  Vanessa, at her wit’s end, knew she was making a mistake. She could count all the ways that what she was about to do was wrong, braiding them through each other like strands of singular missteps all their own in a rope of regret. And yet, there she was. She was on her way to a hotel room with a rich man she didn’t know, sloughing off her responsibilities to her little sister just to be able to get out of her own head for a while. Just to take back some of the life that had been stolen from her. Just to put some gas back in the tank.