The Violet Hour

by Richard Montanari

  He had once offered a research assistant at NBC a thousand dollars for the original broadcast tape of the nightly news from October 31, 1988. A thousand dollars. And that was back when a thousand dollars could buy a pretty good used car, or about the best stereo there was. But the young man had refused. He’d refused and one day met an untimely death when his car accidentally backed off the Ninth Street pier after dinner and drinks at Captain Frank’s.

  When the tapes were fully rewound, he hit the Play button on all three machines, starting the evening’s television schedule, sending the signals through the coax cable to the TVs in the dorm rooms.

  Everything was coming together nicely, he thought, although he hadn’t anticipated Amelia’s friend Paige cutting and dying her hair. Or Johnny Angel’s laptop. He had erased the desktop at St Michael’s – no doubt sending the parish finances into a vortex of confusion – but he had missed Johnny’s laptop. The two mistakes had nearly cost him everything. He would not make another.

  He took out the small vial of PCP, prepared a syringe.

  He cooked a few hits of heroin, too.

  Now that all of his friends had arrived, he could change his clothes, start the festivities.

  51

  SHE WAS IN Donna Turley’s bedroom. Donna was playing Like a Virgin for the eight millionth time and was probably dancing like a spastic chicken around the room.

  She couldn’t open her eyes for some reason, but for some reason, that was okay. She felt good, warm. Young. Warm and cozy and . . . well . . . sexy, kind of.

  But why can’t I move? How come I can’t—

  Maddie, she thought. Her body was suddenly wracked by a wave of fear and guilt. I’m drunk and I don’t know where Maddie is.

  Not drunk but . . .

  ‘Hello.’ The voice came from right in front of her. Just a few feet away. She squinted, trapped a shadow or two, but still couldn’t bring the man’s face into focus. He tapped her gently on the forehead, as if knocking on the door to her mind. ‘Question for you,’ he said. ‘You up for a question?’

  Amelia stirred, tried to gather her wits, her bearings. Where was she? Why did her shoulders suddenly feel so heavy? Why couldn’t she move? Was she tied up?

  Jesus Christ, was she tied up?

  ‘How does it look from the inside?’ he continued. ‘I mean, from inside the buzz? Can you see me?’

  She could. Sort of. But why did he sound so weird? And why was he dressed like that? He wore a white jumpsuit and a black sequined mask.

  Was it Halloween?

  She remembered, vaguely, the hum of the car, the thrum of the freeway. Slam. Slam. Slam. Then: loud, oily machinery. A pinch in her arm. That’s it. Her memory in toto.

  Five more minutes, Mom. It’s soooo warm.

  ‘Because this is what it looked like to Julia, see?’ the man in the white jumpsuit and black mask said. ‘This is what it looked like that night. From the inside. All fuzzy around the edges, that good/bad feeling in your stomach.’

  The bad part of whatever he was talking about reached her, made her feel sick. But only for a few seconds. Then it was gone. Floating again . . .

  Amelia decided to take a little nap.

  Somewhere, in the distance, Bono sang about how he just can’t live with or without her.

  52

  BLACKNESS. THE BLACKNESS of the dead.

  The floor where he fell was wet, concrete, smooth. Luckily he didn’t hit his head, but he was nonetheless robbed of his air for a good minute and a half, which didn’t help him in the scrambling-to-his-feet department.

  Now he was fine, he had his wind back.

  Just fine enough to be scared shitless.

  Nicky cocked his head to the stillness, listened. A thick blanket of nothing. Then the nearby rumble of a truck. Euclid was to his right; that meant the door was behind him. He began to spin, slowly, his hands extended out in front of him. He turned a full one hundred eighty degrees, leaned forward. Nothing. He took a tentative step, groped with his fingertips. Still nothing. He took another step and his foot came to rest against a curb of some sort, a curb that seemed to angle outward, upward. Not a curb, a concrete ramp. He got down on his knees, felt along the surface. Slick. Oily. He must’ve slid down the ramp when he’d fallen in, although he couldn’t recall it. He tried mounting the ramp, but as expected, he kept sliding back down.

  He wasn’t getting back out that way.

  ‘Shit,’ he said aloud.

  And was rewarded with the sound of his voice boomeranging back to him, as if he were enclosed in a big cedar chest.

  Why does it sound like I’m in a closet? he thought.

  ‘Hey,’ he tried, a little louder. Same thing. A soft finish to the sound. No echo.

  He turned back to the expanse of the room, squinted. Nothing. He had never been in a darker place than this. There was no darker place than this. He stepped forward and to the right, groped the air in front of him. Before he could take five full steps, he hit a wall. A wood-paneled wall, by the feel. He pushed on it, felt it give slightly, but still hold firm.

  He put his back to the door that adjoined East Fifty-first Street and began to feel his way along the wall, moving farther into the ink black warehouse.

  He lost track of the number of steps he had taken at around the hundred mark, right around the time he began to get the sinking feeling that he was in a makeshift maze, cutting across the expanse of the warehouse, a maze created exclusively for him.

  But before he could let that paranoia wash over him fully, he barked his shin on something cold and unforgiving.

  Steps. Steps leading upward.

  When the pain in his leg subsided a bit he started up the stairs, his hand sliding up a rusted iron railing. Forty-three steps later, at the top, was a door, closed but unlocked. He opened it and the sound of the hinge echoed throughout the warehouse. He was now above the paneled walls. It was some sort of makeshift rat maze.

  He stepped through the door and found himself in another hallway, this one wider, brick walls. He knew this because there was a window to his left, and the light, even the thin nicotine stain of yellow struggling through the grime, filled him with joy. He was over the alley in the back of the warehouse now, clearly on the second floor. He had his bearings.

  He climbed onto the massive sill, pressed his face against the pane, looked down.

  Willie T’s big Ford was in the alley.

  The cavalry had arrived.

  53

  AMELIA SAT UPRIGHT in her chair, nauseous, filled with dread, but wide-awake now. Her vague sense of uncertainty, that buoyant unpleasantness, had now become a razor-sharp panic. She may not have known where she was, or what time it was, but she sure as hell knew who she was. She was Amelia St John and it was 2008 and she had been trick-or-treating at Mom and Dad’s and someone had jumped her in Pete Cameron’s backyard.

  And she didn’t know where Maddie was.

  She felt ill, powerless, terrified.

  She glanced around. She was in a dorm room of some sort. An impromptu dorm room. There were two windows, through which she could see the top of an office building. She had to focus. But her head felt light. Her stomach was on fire.

  She looked to her right, beneath the window. A student desk with a turntable on it. Makeup and brushes. There was also a bottle of wine, a pair of goblets. Everything looked dated, as if they were museum exhibits dedicated to 1980s collegiate life.

  Except that she was part of the exhibit. She was tied to a chair, there was duct tape around her mouth, and she did not know where she was.

  She struggled against the ropes that bound her hands. They were very tight. She tried to move her feet, but found them to be part of the chair itself, well lashed with nylon cord. She tried to rock forward, but the moment she did she heard a sound behind her, inches away.

  A footfall.

  Amelia froze.

  Then she felt another pinch on her arm, a slight nick that was followed by a warm, wet feeling all over.
And soon after that, nothing mattered.

  Nothing at all.

  Moving now. Rolling. She was being wheeled across a dark room. Cold, drafty, damp like a basement. Something in her mouth, soft and spongy. Had to breathe through her nose. Head so heavy. Music. Bad smells nearby. Rotting meat? Gotta clean the kitchen, gotta get the garbage out. Still tied. Hands, feet. Her stomach leapt, spun, settled.

  Maddie? Where was—

  Then came a flash of white from the man’s jumpsuit as he stepped in front of her. A fisheye view now. He was still wearing his sequined mask. Then reality, or what she could conceive of as reality in her present state, came shrieking back. Along with some very loud music. Loud and scratchy. The Rolling Stones’ ‘Sympathy for the Devil.’

  The man parted the curtains to a new room, another dormitory cubicle out of the eighties. A roomful of candles. He stepped behind her and they continued forward, slowly. The first thing she saw was the slide projector on the shelf near the desk, the huge images being projected onto the canvas wall over the bed. A city street scene. Then Roger’s college yearbook picture. Then a picture of Molson, sitting in the park.

  They were fully inside the room now. The music roared like an angry monster. The maracas slashed at her ears. The chorus pounded.

  As she was wheeled inside, as the music became her world and the rancid smells filled that world, her first reaction was that it was some sort of documentary film freeze-frame of a horror scene. A concentration camp, perhaps. The killing fields of Cambodia.

  Bodies, everywhere, strewn at unhealthy angles. Broken forms. Former people. The candlelight danced over the musculature, the smooth curves of flesh over bone.

  She fought her tears, lost.

  My God.

  Not bodies. No. Please God, not bodies. Not Maddie. Not Dad.

  The tears obscured her vision for a few moments, but soon her chair came to rest. Her eyes cleared somewhat, and she tried to take another visual inventory. A masculine room. Pennants, pinup posters, a couple of trophies. There was a desk and chair against the wall opposite her, placed beneath a pair of windows. A number of photos in frames sat on top. Family shots.

  She stared at the pictures and felt her heart jump in her chest. Roger’s family. Roger’s family pictures from the den. She focused on the form that was propped in the chair at the desk. And that’s when it dawned on her. She looked around the room.

  Mannequins.

  Amelia felt an enervating wave of relief. She dared another look. Yes, a mannequin sat at the desk, a mannequin wearing a red dress, a flapper’s dress out of the 1920s. A mannequin was also propped up on the bed, dressed like a doctor. Something dark and wet-looking was attached where its lips should be. A soldier sat on the floor, thin, rotting skin for a face. A cowboy lay nearby.

  But where was Maddie? Who had Maddie?

  God she couldn’t think straight.

  Minutes later the nausea returned in full force. She battled it back. There was still a gag in her mouth and she knew that if she brought something up from her stomach, she surely would choke. She had gone from such a warm high to such a freezing low in just minutes. She began to shake, just as another chair was wheeled into the room, coming to a stop next to her.

  At first she did not have the courage to look. Then, slowly, reluctantly, she glanced to her left, moving her eyes only.

  And saw that it was no mannequin.

  It was Roger.

  Her husband was sitting in a wheelchair, not two feet from her. But instead of a sense of relief and joy at seeing her knight in shining armor arrive, Amelia felt the bile rise in her throat, soaking the gag in her mouth with the sour taste of fear.

  Roger was naked.

  And he was shackled hand and foot.

  The man in the white jumpsuit put the wheelchairs back to back. Amelia was facing the bed now; Roger was behind her – at least she thought he was – silently facing the wall.

  Her mind was clearing by the minute. She watched the man carefully. She would find a way out of this.

  More slides on the wall. Yearbook pictures of people she didn’t know. Then, suddenly, one she did. A pretty young woman whose picture she once found among Roger’s college papers. Julia, it was signed. She had always wondered about Julia, if she was a conquest of Roger’s.

  The man took a glass hypodermic needle from the desk and stepped behind her. ‘Do you know what this is, Roger?’ Silence. He continued. ‘I want you to think back, Roger. Way back. Twenty years ago tonight. Right about, well, right about now, you dropped a couple of pink pills into my hand. Do you remember?’

  Instead of the slurred answer that Amelia expected, Roger’s answer was clear, lucid. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And do you remember what you said?’

  A few moments of silence, then: ‘No.’

  ‘Well, it’s understandable. Twenty years and all. You told me it was speed. You told me you wanted me wide-awake at the “witching hour.” Your words. Witching hour. Can you believe that? Well, I took them. Like the asshole I was in those days. And do you remember what they were, Roger?’

  More silence. ‘I don’t exactly—’

  A hard slap. A pause, then Roger spoke again. ‘I don’t remember exactly.’

  ‘No matter,’ the man said, casually. ‘I think you do remember. But I think you’re just embarrassed, even after all this time. I think you’re embarrassed that your wife will find out what a manipulative little cocksucker you are. As if she didn’t know, right?’

  The man poked Amelia in the shoulder blade, sharing some secret wisdom, a joke at Roger’s expense. Every muscle in her body tightened.

  ‘But what you’re not considering, counselor, is just how far I might go to get you to confess. So here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to inject you with this needle, you’re going to become totally incapacitated, and then I’m gonna spin you around and you’re going to watch.’

  Silence, then: ‘Watch?’ Roger asked.

  ‘Yes. You’re going to watch me fuck your wife.’

  Then Amelia heard Roger grunt. The man in white had injected him. The used needle went flying across the room, landed next to the wastebasket, next to the desk. The slide show continued. Now a chunky young woman and a retarded girl, sitting at a food court.

  ‘So, tell me,’ the man began, matter-of-factly. ‘Do you think you’ll enjoy it? Seeing me fuck her? Do you think you’ll get a hard-on? Some men like it, you know.’ He stepped around, in front of Amelia. He looked at her legs, her breasts, her mouth. Amelia had to turn away, her revulsion growing. ‘Does she like it from behind?’

  Her husband remained silent.

  ‘You know I’m pretty well hung, Roger. Funny how that happens, no? The goofy guys always getting the big dicks. She might just like it and want to stay with me. Wouldn’t that be justice? After all these years?’

  All Amelia could hear now was Roger’s steady inhale and exhale of breath.

  ‘Of course, we all know how you like it,’ the man said. He reached over to the desk, picked up the remote for the slide projector, clicked ahead a few slides. The canvas wall now showed a series of telephoto shots, outdoor shots of a car. Closer, closer. A man and a woman inside the car, a naked woman, the woman sitting on the man’s lap, facing him. A familiar car.

  It was Roger and Shelley Roth.

  The man in the white jumpsuit sat on the edge of the bed, his elbows on the desk, cooking heroin in a spoon held over a candle. Amelia had not heard a noise out of Roger since his injection.

  ‘I’ve just been giving you little tastes, Amelia,’ the man said. ‘Just enough to keep the edges ragged. You know what I mean? Enough to keep you manageable. Now it’s time to rock.’ The liquid in the spoon began to bubble. ‘Those other shots were in your arm. This one is going in a vein. This one’s a mainline. Whole different story.’ He reached over to a powder compact on the desk, patted his cheeks, his chin, his forehead above the mask. ‘Do you know what a full spike of heroin does to you? Especiall
y some really good junk like this? Especially to a clean system like yours? I’ll bet you don’t. I’ll bet that Roger never shared that savory part of his past with you.’

  He put the spoon down on the desk, leaned forward, tied a rubber tourniquet around her arm. She tried to see his eyes through the holes in the mask, failed. For some reason Amelia felt that if she could just make eye contact, she could reason with this man. But the holes in the mask offered nothing but darkness.

  ‘Well, let me see if I can describe it,’ he continued. ‘Someone once said it was like taking a ride on a giant white swan. You might want to hold on to that image.’ He found a vein, tapped it, then took a disposable hypodermic needle out of its plastic. He dropped in a small piece of cotton, put the tip of the needle carefully into the bowl of the spoon, and drew the liquid inside. Amelia cringed, but couldn’t move.

  He knelt in front of her. ‘And God save you if you like it, Amelia. God save you indeed. Because I’ve seen it, you know. Working at the inner-city missions.’ He drew himself closer, rested his arms on her thighs, began to run his hands up and down her legs. ‘I knew this junkie once – white girl, maybe twenty years old. Hadn’t fixed in two, three days. Well, when she was done sucking me off this one time I tossed her a dime bag, put my coat on. But she was so shaky she couldn’t get the GemPac open, kept fumbling with the spoon, the matches. The last thing I remember about her, as I walked out the door, was her sitting on the edge of the bed, vibrating. And that’s when she took a single-edge razor blade, slit her arm, and dumped the junk right into a vein. Can you imagine? Something having that much control over you? She couldn’t even wait.’

  Amelia began to sob.

  ‘If you understand her, you understand me,’ he said.

  And then the liquid was inside her.

  He untied the tourniquet as the top of her head seemed to peel itself away. He drew his face very close to hers and kissed her, running the tip of his tongue over her lips. ‘I love this part,’ he said, softly. ‘There is nothing, nothing in the world, quite as sexy as a pretty woman on heroin.’