Stacking in Rivertown

by Barbara Bell

  I began sitting with her, never going down to a play without doing the candle. After awhile, I got a cup. We’d light the candle three times, then I’d turn the cup over, thinking of the dangers buzzing everywhere.

  So I take the candle and cup out of my bag, setting them both on the floor. I perform our ritual kneeling. It’s the first time I’d ever done it alone, which almost starts me crying. I sit quiet then, trying to get up my nerve.

  After a time, I leave the room, pulling the doors shut behind, feeling a bit floaty in the head. I take the elevator down and hit the restaurant. A table is reserved for Elizabeth Boone.

  My waiter flirts to beat the band. He wants me to order a large spread. I’m sorry to disappoint him, keeping it light. A salad. No wine. Alcohol and Ben never mixed for me. I did acquire a poisonous taste for smack. Ben didn’t mind. He was the one that got me started, handing it out for a reward like it was candy.

  I’m forcing myself to eat when the concierge arrives, offering me a note on a small tray. I wait for him to leave before I open it.

  It says: “Finish up quick and return to your room. We need to talk.”

  Something must have gone wrong. Maybe they didn’t like me. I charge the meal to the room. The waiter helps me up, smiling hopefully. I blow him a kiss and grab my purse, then head for the elevators.

  As I’m going up, I think I might lose that nice salad. One to five, I say to myself. Count one to five and then start again. Don’t mind the lights. (I tell myself this because I’m seeing a few lights roving in the air.) One to five.

  The elevator opens. My heels tick, tick over the marble entryway floor. I’d thought the play was going to be a grab. Now I’m not so sure. I walk into the anteroom, closing the doors behind me and dropping my purse on a boringly tasteful table. Then I stroll into the sitting room, expecting to see Ben.

  Across the room, and sitting with drinks in hand like they’re in their own home, are a man and woman wearing masks that look like something out of a costume ball. I stand, shocked. That goddamn Ben has tricked me again.

  That’s when they get me.

  The first guy jerks back on my mouth so hard, I bite my lip. So I’m thinking, shit, shit, shit. So much for leaving the face clean.

  He stuffs a wad of cloth deep into my mouth. I fight hard. Ben appears out of nowhere, similarly masked, and helps them hold me down on my back.

  One of the boys, a blond Aryan type sporting a Lone Ranger mask, holds my mouth and starts fondling. That’s when I get a nasty surprise. They begin taping me.

  Tape is playing dirty for Ben.

  I try to scream, shooting a nasty look at him.

  “Shut up, bitch,” the blond says as he’s taping my mouth. He slaps me good and hard a couple times after he’s done.

  From the look in Ben’s eyes, a mixture of anger and delight, I’m beginning to get the feeling this isn’t play. He leans down and slaps me a good one. They tape my eyes, then turn me over, taping ankles, knees, and my wrists behind. I hear somebody laugh and I’m slapped on my ass, and then they all three stand back from me. I’m breathing hard and still kicking.

  What do you think? Ben says. I hear the lovely couple walk over to me. Ben kicks me.

  Turn on your side, he says.

  I turn, curling my knees up. Ben grabs my hair and turns my face toward them.

  Perfect, a woman says.

  She’ll do fine, a man says.

  You could start on her here. It’s Ben’s voice.

  I feel hands on my breasts. I struggle, trying to get away. I’m pushed over and held tight to the floor on my back.

  A knife cuts my dress open from my neck down to my waist. My bra is cut in front and pulled back.

  Someone’s touching my head and my cheek. Hands move down to my nipples.

  You’re beautiful, the woman says. We’re going to have a little fun with you tonight.

  Let’s get her out of here, the man says. It makes me nervous.

  All right then, Ben says. Boys, go ahead and pack her up.

  I hear them walk away and return, dropping something heavy near me. Turning me on my side, they tie my knees to my neck and my ankles to my wrists so that I’m folded up tight.

  As I’m lying there in my helpless state, one guy kneels over me and says in my ear so that the lovely couple can’t hear. “Ben wants you to know that you’re a newborn again, Beth.”

  I almost lose it then. The basement comes into my head. I attempt to count one to five, but I try to scream anyway. He laughs a little, sounding too much like Ben. The two of them lift me up and settle me down in what I’m assuming is a luggage trunk, just big enough for me. The lid is slammed shut, latched, and locked.

  Panic slams into me. I try to breathe steady. I try to count. Time passes. I hear voices, then the trunk is lifted onto a wheeled cart and off I go. I’m stopped after a rough ride during which my tailbone is jarred into the base of my brain. The trunk is lifted and set down. I hear something slam shut.

  Shit. They’ve packed me into a van like a piece of cargo. For some reason, this finally breaks me. I start to cry, breathing heavier now from the heat and the lack of air. I begin to sweat.

  I don’t remember how long the drive is because I think I pass out for a bit, the lights flashing in front of my eyes to beat the band. I wake when the van doors are opened and slammed. I feel myself lifted out and set down. The lid is unlatched. Fresh air curls around my body and face. I could weep for it. They turn over the trunk and I tumble out, hitting the floor hard. Someone cuts the ropes holding me so tight together. I stretch out, moaning.

  Then the two guys each grab an arm and drag me off, I’m assuming in front of the lovely couple so they can take in the whole show. Now they haul me through several halls and then down a flight of stairs. I start to cry again, start to fight.

  I’ve gotten out of practice, I guess.

  A door is opened and they dump me on a cold tile floor. Something about the room seems surgical, maybe the smell. I begin to wonder if the clients are just going to watch, or if they’re going to be players too.

  I hear the door open. They walk in. The door closes. A knife cuts the tape on my ankles and knees. It’s ripped away. They stand me up. Somebody socks me hard in the stomach. Lucky for me, I’m ready. That’s one of Ben’s favorite moves. Hit them when they can’t see. I buckle good and drop. They stand me up again and my gorgeous dress is cut off. I’m stripped.

  The two guys hold me by the arms to display. The clients approach, stroke me, fondle. Then I’m slapped. Slapped again.

  “Okay,” the man says, and we’re off on the play.

  Ben works me hard. It seems like they do me for hours, Ben using a whip on me. Sometime near the end, I break. I start to scream, pushing against the straps. I can’t stop. They’d removed the tape from my mouth a long time ago, for obvious reasons. Ben quick-jams a gag in before I start spewing trash out at him, which I have a knack of doing. The berserks get hold of me. Then I cry again.

  I know Ben must be all smiles. What a good show I gave. Command performance. Not just any whore can do that.

  I hear them talking.

  Keep her, they say. We’re in town until tomorrow. We’ll pay. Tomorrow evening. Early. Maybe five.

  Holding fees are high, he says.

  We’ll pay, they say again. Tomorrow at five. Can we watch you put her away?

  Sure, says Ben. He scratches out a figure on a pad. I hear the man get out a wallet. Bills are exchanged. Ben calls on the intercom. They come in, undoing me from the contraption I’m in and cuffing my ankles and wrists together in back, just like in that damn basement. They drag me to another room, fitting me in a dog cage.

  It was probably Buster’s, I think. I’m crying hard now. I hear the door close. They all go away.

  Every summer, Vin, Mandy, and me would try to build a raft. One of us, must have been Vin, read about Tom Sawyer in school. When we were little, we didn’t have any idea what we were doing. We’d work on a
raft for weeks, weaving charms as we built and making up stories that grew increasingly bizarre about the raft and where it would take us.

  Vin was always adding little time-saving devices like the automatic fishing pole. He’d nail on some contorted-looking arm with a string and hook hanging off it. Mandy and me added stuff willy-nilly. Who knows why.

  By the time we were done, our rafts looked like fantastic multi-limbed creatures in an agony of protuberances. No wonder they all sank. I figured that if we lost enough rafts at the same point on the river, sooner or later, at least we’d have a dock.

  We mined our materials from the wreck of an old barn, long ago fallen in, that lay a ways upriver. Each year, we practiced our craft, learning through trial and error how you keep something afloat. It wasn’t until Mandy’s last summer that we got one to work. I’m still not sure why it floated when all the others sank. Maybe because of Mandy. Maybe she got lighter and lighter that last year.

  I think of us gliding. Damselflies skirt the brown water. The heat makes us sleepy, and Vin lets the river carry us, using the pole to keep us off the banks.

  It was like a dream you’d make up, because you knew it would never be true. But there it was, the three of us floating. The willows draped above. The cottonwoods flicked. We saw two herons on stalk legs and a doe with a fawn.

  The raft floated past the rise and the cemetery where the stones caught the light.

  This is the river then. It is passing by slow, leaving even Rivertown behind.

  I’ll never forget that feeling of watching it all go by, not guiding, not pushing. And listening to the lapping of the doe.

  After Ben leaves with his clients, I wait for the boys to come and let me loose. I wait a long time, getting a bad feeling about the whole thing. I kick the side of the cage. I scream into the gag. All in all, I’m pretty ineffectual. I start thinking about what the guy said about me being a newborn again.

  That’s when it comes clear. Ben has decided to make me the star in his own personal play. Sure, there are the other plays, this weirdo couple for one. But Ben’s getting his rocks off big. He’s probably watching me on video right now. I kick the cage again for his benefit.

  And what occurs to me next, which should have occurred to me sooner before I got myself into this mess, is that Ben might be playing for keeps again. This weekend could stretch out into God knows how many years.

  But I’m old, I think. He doesn’t use players this old.

  I lie quiet, pissed off at myself for being such an imbecile.

  We had an imbecile in our school. Well, I like to say we had a lot of imbeciles, but only one that we actually called an imbecile. He tended to drool and he liked to rock with one arm bent over his head. I felt sorry for him because he didn’t look comfortable the way he sat in the back of the room with his legs clutched up under the chair. He preferred to do his rocking on the floor, but Miss Summers always made him get back into the chair. Maybe she thought he would learn better that way.

  He never made any bother. He just rocked, sometimes drooling, with his other hand tight in a fist and jammed in his mouth.

  Mandy didn’t like him. She said he gave her the shivers. I sat close to him and just watched, not saying a thing, chin on my hand. I studied him like he was an African bird or something.

  We’d read about Africa and its borderlines that week. Rwanda. Zaire. Funny-sounding names. I raised my hand.

  “What about the birds, Miss Summers, ma’am?”

  Miss Summers in her pretty cotton print dress looked stumped. “The birds?”

  “They have good birds there, don’t they, ma’am?”

  Now she was getting that twitchy way like I’d said something stupid. A few kids giggled. I marked them. I’d beat the shit out of them later.

  “Big birds with green and blue wings, ma’am?”

  I was thinking about the magazine I found in one of the Dumpsters where Mama looked for her groceries. On the front it said: “Africa, Land of Wonders.” I took it home, angling for extra credit.

  “We’re not talking about the birds,” Miss Summers said. “We’re talking about Zaire.”

  “The birds are more interesting, ma’am.”

  She sent me to the back to sit in the corner. So there I was next to the imbecile. I have no idea what his name was. Miss Summers forgot about me, so I stared at him.

  He’s a bird from Africa, I thought. Look at that nose and the way he curves over his wing. No wonder. Somebody made a mistake and he got dumped in the whole wrong country. Somebody should take him home.

  I knew that I would take him there if I knew the way. It would be so good to go home.

  That’s when ice-cold water starts peeling off my skin. I must have fallen asleep. It’s a high-pressure spray. I try to turn away in the cage, but another spray hits me from the other side. Now I’m freezing.

  I hear them leave.

  They come back every so often and spray me again. I never get any sleep.

  After seven or eight doses of this, the two boys drag me out. They put me on my knees with my wrists still cuffed behind to my ankles, and then buckle a collar around my neck, hooking it somewhere above.

  That’s a nasty position. You lose all the feeling in your legs and arms, and it hurts like hell. They wind something else around my neck, leaving the grip dangling down my back. I know what it is. It has BETH written on the handle. Ben is playing me ripe. They spray me with water again and leave. I wait, shivering.

  That’s when the ghosts come like they’d never been gone. In the basement, when you get the ghosts, Ben knows that you’re almost ready. And now the ghosts whisper all around me. I feel their breath against my face. As I watch their twisting shapes forming behind the tape on my eyes, I miss the fact that Ben has come into the room.

  “You thought you’d take your time,” he says. “I’ve got five years stored up for you.”

  His hand rests on my head, then slides down and lifts my chin. Ben’s other hand reaches behind my head and loosens the gag.

  “You’re not going to make it home until Monday morning,” he says. “I’ll put the phone up to your ear and you tell that to Jeremy.”

  “Fuck, Ben,” I say as soon as the gag is out.

  He slaps me.

  I hear him dialing. The phone is against my head.

  “Hello.”

  Jeremy’s so cheerful to answer the phone, as though it’s always good news. I never answer the phone unless I have to.

  “It’s me, Jeremy. Something more has come up. I won’t make it in until Monday sometime.”

  “Are you sick, sweetie? You sound sick.”

  No, just fucking scared shitless.

  “Doing these talk things gets on my nerves,” I say. “I’ll be glad to get home.” If I ever get home. That’s a big if.

  “You’re so sensitive, honey. You need to get a thicker skin.”

  Thinking about Ben’s whip around my neck, I say, “I’ll work on it. See you Monday.”

  Ben takes the phone away. “Are you thirsty?”

  I nod my head. He holds a bottle to my mouth and I drink. Gatorade. Ben swears by its beneficial properties. He always hands it out after the plays.

  I hear the empty bottle hit the floor behind me. Then I feel him unwind the whip.

  In my book, there’s nothing worse than being whipped bound and blind. I know how to fake the punches, how to drop. I know how to play the men so they don’t hurt me too much. But when you’re bound, there’s not a damn thing you can do about a whip but take every stitch. And Ben is a mean whipper. To him, it’s all about business.

  He whips me front and back. I lose count after sixteen. When he’s done, he says, “You’re back home, Beth. You’re back with your family.”

  That’s when I pass out.

  The first time I saw Violet, she was in the basement on the mattress, bound, gagged, and blindfolded. He started us all that way. Kat was gone by then, and I was the only girl Ben had.

  Toni, M
att, and I worked Violet good. We made over her. We kissed. We stroked. We said, count your breaths one to five. It looked to me that Ben had been especially rough with her.

  I remember her lips, so talented eventually, but then, so guiltless, so chaste. I tasted them over and over.

  Violet’s breasts were small. She always looked to be about thirteen. While she was bound down there, I cleaned her, fondled her, and fed her. I held her and whispered strange songs to her that I made up about water moving and the river.