by Ros Baxter
‘Heidi,’ I started. ‘It’s not what you think —’
‘Do not interrupt me, Lola. I’m not finished. “Question four. If your partner was an animal, what would he be? Options: (a) tiger (b) stallion (c) grizzly bear (d) teddy bear.” None of these circled either.’ She paused. ‘Oh but wait. What’s this in the margin? St Bernard? No, that’s scratched out, I see. Lassie? No, no, scratched as well. Zebra. Why the hell do you think of Clark as a zebra?’
Heidi had clearly forgotten the whole elephant conversation with Steve three years before. And I was glad, or I knew it would only make things worse.
‘Heidi,’ I tried one last time. ‘You know me, silly jokes —’
‘I am still not finished.’ I could tell she was building to a crescendo. She should have been the host on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? ‘“Question ten. Imagine your partner has died. What is your first thought?” I’m not even going into the options here, Loll. Seriously, they are too ridiculous. But so is this notation in the margin. “Who’s going to keep me safe now?”’
I didn’t have anything to say.
So Heidi had said it. ‘Lola, this is not right. This is not normal. He’s your guy, not a…human shield. You’re meant to want to rip his clothes off, not feel pathetically grateful.’
Now, Heidi and I never fight. Not because of me, because of her. She’s a ‘turn the other cheek’ type. But this time, when I’d fired up, she had too. I went first.
‘Goddamit, Heidi! You’re making out like it’s wrong to have a relationship where I feel safe, and happy, and taken care of. You’d rather I was miserable? Maybe I should be with some guy who beats me up? Would you be happy then?’
‘Are you happy now?’ she countered. ‘Tell me, Lolly. Tell me you’re happy, and I’ll back right off. Because I swear to God, if I find you hiding in the toilet in ten years time, scratching notes in the margins of women’s magazines, I’m gonna kill you. What a waste.’
‘A waste of what?’ I was confused.
‘A waste of you!’ She really started going off then. ‘You. All your energy and your life force and your magic. All that passion. Don’t you squander it. Don’t. You. Dare.’
All the fight had gone out of me.
‘It’s okay, Heidi. I am happy. I really dig Clark. I thought you liked him too.’
‘Of course I like him,’ she agreed quickly. ‘What’s not to like? Everyone likes him. But he’s a bright guy. Does he like himself in this relationship?’
I hadn’t been able to answer that. He seemed happy. He seemed thrilled, actually, with where things were heading, our inexorable march towards cohabitation.
Anyway, Heidi had hugged me after that and said she really was glad I was happy and she’d shut up about it from now on. But she said just one more thing.
‘You know, Loll, this isn’t about Wayne. I know that’s what you’re thinking. That I’m saying this because I want you to still be with Wayne. It’s not that. It’s about you. I love you. I want you to have everything.’
‘I know.’ But I was tired. And I didn’t know what to say. I had to change the subject. So I’d dangled a carrot in front of her that I knew she couldn’t resist. ‘Hey, let’s get cheesy crust pizza and watch Baywatch re-runs. We can yell at the starving girls.’
‘Okay,’ she agreed. ‘But only if you don’t do the Pammy impersonation. I almost choked on my chicken dippers last time.’
A moment whose time has come — Back at the dinner party
Heidi had finally realized I didn’t want to be talking about issues of chemistry and compatibility right now. So she resorted to vintage Heidi tactics when a diversion is required.
‘Steve!’ she suddenly screamed at the top of her lungs. ‘I hope you haven’t left that chocolate soufflé in the oven!’
After that, the night descended into the appropriate degree of semi-controlled chaos. There really was a chocolate soufflé, and it really was very good. There was dancing — things can only stay all grown up and civilized for a little while — and more drinking and more telling of stories. And the inevitable happened, of course, and Joe and Sarah were discovered in Heidi and Steve’s bedroom.
Heidi was outraged at the idea of sleeping where someone else had already made their mark, so to speak, on her birthday. So she made them change the sheets, and they spent the last hour or two of the party in the laundry. But they didn’t seem to mind. ‘As long as we’re together,’ I heard Joe whisper in Sarah’s ear as they disappeared in disgrace with the offending bedclothes.
And so a good time was had by all. But, through it all, I could feel the weight of Clark’s stare on me. Don’t get me wrong, he didn’t get all moody and useless. He still danced, and drank, and told his fair share of clever stories.
But I felt him weighing things up, and pondering me in a different way.
I knew it wasn’t good.
And, because I have classic avoidance syndrome, I didn’t want to leave. Ever. I kept staying for ‘one more’, long after Sarah and Joe had fled to the nearest dark alley and Maria and Max had fallen asleep on each other on the couch.
Eventually Steve intervened. ‘Okay, Loll, time to go now. I’ve got clean sheets and a birthday girl waiting for her real present.’
‘Ick, Stevie,’ I whined, slurring my words. ‘How many times do I have to tell you not to talk to me about sleeping with my best friend? I can plant evil thoughts in your head, you know. I can make up a story about seeing your Mom and Dad at that shop where I got Heidi’s present. Yeah, I think I did actually. I think they were in the bondage section…’
‘Go home, Lola,’ he ordered, handing us our coats.
And before I knew it, we were out on the street, making our drunken way home.
I managed to keep up a light drunken banter the whole way in an effort to stave off the conversation I’d been trying not to have for the last two days. It was reasonably effective because Clark couldn’t get a word in.
Until we got home.
I could tell by the set of his shoulders and the definite way he closed the door that another ‘conversation’ was about to happen. But really, I was too weak tonight. I suspected I would always be too weak. There was only one thing for it.
‘Clark,’ I purred. ‘Can you help me get my dress off?’
Seven hours before, the dress had been reasonably impressive. But I knew that after six hours at a party, too many cocktails and too much dancing, it was now less tempting. Several suspicious looking stains and possibly a tear across the ass from when Max had tried to lift me up like an ice skater — long story; I was being Jane Torville. But I also knew that underneath it lay some seriously delicious underwear. No men’s cast-offs for me tonight. I’d gone the full package. Black. Lace. Suspenders. And a bra with that weird jutting out cup thing that makes your breasts like hors d’oevres on a gorgeous party platter.
Clark swallowed when he saw the get-up. ‘Wow,’ he muttered. ‘Look, that’s real nice, Lola, but listen, I really think first we need to —’
But he was no match for my iron avoidance. I pulled him to me.
Ten minutes later he was asleep in a semi-drunken bubble of post-coital bliss.
And I was not far behind him.
I kept thinking there was something I’d forgotten as the room spun a little around me. But within seconds sleep pulled me into oblivion with its clever, practiced fingers.
Two hours later I woke with a start and a slow, spreading awareness.
I was lying in something very wet and very sticky. I was utterly confused about what it could be, until the night’s events clicked into place in my alcohol-traumatized brain and I realized I have, for the first time in living memory, violated my condom rule.
I felt a momentary flare of panic before getting up to the bathroom and formulating a hasty plan involving an early morning trip to the after-hours clinic for some emergency contraception. But I sat on the toilet for a long time afterwards, turning over the events of the past two days in m
y mind. There was so much to process.
The arrest. Clark’s political plans. Wayne. Wayne.
One phrase kept spinning through my consciousness, like the refrain of a bad pop song. Good chemistry. Good chemistry. Good chemistry.
It was only a matter of time before I was fishing in the waste paper basket beside the toilet for the tiny pieces of paper that had been burning a hole in it since I threw them there in disgust the night before. Six little shreds in all.
As I carefully taped them together, they revealed a cell phone number. One he’d given to me, the day before. One I’d been trying not to think about. It was four in the morning, but I was oblivious to decorum.
‘Hello?’ His voice was low, slow and scratchy. Hardly surprising, I guess.
‘Why did you come?’ We’ve never been very good at the social niceties.
‘Rocket?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s your mother. Hope you’re at church. Ha ha.’
‘Ha ha,’ he echoed. ‘What is it, sweetheart?’
Oh God no, not sweetheart. Don’t undo me with that casual intimacy.
‘I’m afraid.’
‘Of what?’ He sounded very awake now.
‘The dark.’
I was suddenly serious. I was afraid of the dark. Of being alone in the dark with my thoughts. Of being trapped in the dark not knowing what the hell I’m doing or who I’m meant to be doing it with.
‘Come over,’ he suggested. ‘I’ll sing you to sleep.’
Bastard. I’d forgotten he could sing as well as cook and repair things and do everything else on earth. I was assailed by jagged memories of all the dirty drinking songs and sweet lullabies he’d ever sung me. I wanted more than anything to be in his big, warm arms listening to his honey Guinness voice right now.
‘I’m coming,’ I said. ‘Give me the address.’
A noise behind me startled me, and I saw Clark’s outline in the door of our room.
I couldn’t see his face, but I could tell by the set of his body that he had heard at least some of my conversation with Wayne.
‘I…I’ve got to go…’ I whispered into the earpiece.
‘Rocket, no…’
But I was already hanging up.
Clark was right in front of me now. And I knew this time that no amount of seduction was going to get me out of this conversation.
It was, as they say, a moment whose time has come.
Part Five: The Third Time
Crossing the line — A factory; October, 2006
I looked over the group, huddled behind the cluster of industrial dumpsters at the back of the car park. I held the article tightly in one hand and ‘The Thing’ in the other to remind me why I was here. It was dark and cool so early.
I checked my watch and motioned to the others. Two minutes.
As I scanned their faces, looking at me, a cold, scratchy hand raked my spine. I wriggled my shoulders to shake it away and ran a finger over the shiny-smooth paper of the article. Heat rushed through my body as I did, as my brain remembered.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘It’s straight in and out. Disable the machines. Milosh?’ I motioned with my head to the small, dark man crouching towards the front of the group. ‘You know which ones to target?’
He nodded, his mouth set. A thin, white scar ran the length of his face. ‘Yep, I got the blueprints. It’ll be easy. I just need the time. Ninety seconds, Lola. Let’s do it. We’re all in. It’s personal for us.’
A young woman beside him nodded furiously. ‘Some of us have been there. We know what those things can do.’
I smiled at Consuela. I knew just how was personal for her. Her scars were less visible, but no less real. She had come so far in the time I’d known her. When I’d first met her, the year before, she’d been like an automaton, shuffling about, speaking little. But slowly, piece-by-piece, she had come back to herself. With the help of the counsellors, and the others who’d been through it too, she’d found her voice. And her rage.
‘Okay, so we’ll go in at oh-six-hundred exactly. Break time. They’ll be preoccupied. Maria?’ I motioned again with my head, this time to an older woman. ‘You got the cans?’
She nodded, her brown face pale. ‘Si,’ she lisped.
Something squeezed my heart. ‘You okay?’ I duck-walked over to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, speaking low. ‘You sure you’re okay?’
‘Si, Lola,’ she lisped again. ‘I want to be here.’
I squeezed her again, then waddled back to the front and spoke a little louder. ‘Okay, remember. Maximum noise, maximum disruption. So Milosh can do his thing. But no violence. No matter what. Like we practiced. Okay?’
A hundred faces nodded at me.
No violence.
I said it to myself to still the pure white rage that bubbled in my throat every time I thought too closely on this. Because I felt murderous. I wanted to smash things.
I held ‘The Thing’ up. ‘Remember. This is why. This Thing.’
There was a hiss from the crowd as I held ‘The Thing’ aloft. It looked like a cattle prod, but we all knew better. It had been modified, and not for use on animals. And the manufacturing happened right here in Queens. I shuddered.
‘Okay,’ I whispered. ‘Masks.’
The group pulled the masks, which had been sitting high on their heads, down over their faces. Then I stuffed the newspaper article into my bra. It was the one where I had first read about ‘The Thing’, and about the factory, right here. I brought a finger to my lips in the quiet sign, and motioned with my other hand towards the back door of the factory. Maria began to hand out spray cans to some of the group as everyone picked up bags, placards and assorted paraphernalia. I grabbed the air horn from my backpack and led them over to the door, the crisp morning still and quiet. There was no noise from the group, just as we had practiced. I looked out at the sea of people, masquerade masks atop black clothing. My shoulders felt heavy and my head spun.
I help up my hand, fingers extended. Three. Two. One.
In the milliseconds after I yanked the door open and before I propelled myself forward, I smelt dust, cigarettes, machine oil and beans. Machinery noise assailed my ears.
Then I moved, running down the corridor towards where I knew the main factory floor lay. As I hit the entryway of the massive space, the group behind me, I squeezed the horn. The noise cut through even the metallic squawk of the machinery.
My eyes took in the scene in fractured flashes as the place descended into chaos.
The floor was littered with dirt, trash and pieces of broken equipment. Heavy black machines whined their deathsong across one half of the space. A hot, smoky smell snaked into my nostrils and I almost gagged. A dozen or so small, dark men and women jumped up from where they had been sitting, at tables too close to the machines, upending chairs as they did. Cigarettes, drink cans and bowls of food spilled onto the floor. Some of the workers started screaming in Spanish. My eyes flickered up a narrow staircase to the next level, where a grimy viewing window overlooked the scene. I saw more faces appear at the glass, and then disappear.
And then there was the noise we were making.
A massive stereo, perched on the shoulders of Jose, blared out abrasive rap music. With the box on his shoulder, the ghost mask and his long grey beard, the old man looked like a spectre from Pirates of the Caribbean. Others of our group squeezed horns like mine, or rattled homemade noise-makers. Some started to work with the spray cans. I placed myself between our group and the workers, who had moved back against the wall, and gave Milosh the signal. He sprinted towards the back of the machines. My breath was coming hot and hard in my chest, and I felt like everyone could see my heart pounding a tattoo inside it.
I watched the cowering workers and squeezed my eyes shut against the memory of hundreds of others I’d seen sick and broken, coming to the centre for help. Not so different from these people. I pulled Maria from where she was scrawling the word ‘TORTURERS’ across the fla
t black wall of one huge machine.
‘Come with me.’ I pulled her towards the workers, pressed against the sidewall.
I started speaking urgently to the group, telling them not to worry, that we would be gone soon. This was not about them. Maria was translating in rapid fire Spanish. My heart squeezed again as I watched the women crunching in behind the men, trying to make their bodies small. The men were screaming back at me, but I couldn’t understand their words.
Maria yelled in my ear. ‘They’re telling us to go away. That they will get into trouble. They are worried about the police coming. And the IRS.’
At those words, three of the men who had been looking out from the upper window thundered down the stairs, wielding baseball bats. The largest of them, a huge man with ragged black stubble and a filthy cap, waved one of ‘The Things’ in the air and bore a smile that looked like he was heading to a party.
‘Get out!’ the big man screamed ‘Get out, you fucking hippies. The cops will be here any minute!’
I looked at my watch. Thirty seconds. Milosh needed thirty more seconds.
‘We’re not going anywhere,’ I screamed back at him, pushing my glasses up my nose and Maria back towards the machines and the rest of the group, who continued to yell, spray and make noise.
The man advanced on me, smiling like he was inviting me to tea. He held the modified prod aloft and waved it menacingly. ‘You know what this is, girl?’
My fingers tingled and the noise died in my airs. It was like the whole scene shrank to this. This big man. And his ugly weapon. I opened my mouth but, as I did, I saw Milosh out of the corner of my eye, emerging from the tangle of machines. He gave me the thumbs up.
No violence.
I gave three short blasts on the airhorn, and the protestors stopped their noise and moved as one towards the exit at the front. I started away from the men but as I did the big man grabbed me, holding the long silver rod close to my face.