by Cesare, Adam
Tobin shot her a pretty smile at that and then pressed his belly up to the edge and hooked himself over the lip of the dumpster.
“He’s adorbs,” Allison whispered, sidling up beside her. “But be careful around the locals. You don’t know where they’ve been.” It was a good thing that Tobin was rooting through bottles and spoiled food, or else he would have heard.
Tobin smacked both feet back against the asphalt and tossed a wine bottle and Budweiser can into the bag. “Where are you from originally?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but flipped his torso back into the bin and kept searching for recyclables.
“Boston,” Allison said. That was an oversimplification, Claire would have said New York for herself and Connecticut for Allison, but Boston worked. They’d been there for almost a decade. When did it become their home?
When Tobin came back up for air, he had a few more treasures. He threw them into his bag with a clang and Claire jumped at the sound. She understood why Brant didn’t like him doing this. The noise he was making was definitely enough to wake the guests with windows facing the parking lot.
“Before I forget,” Allison said, closer to him now than Claire was. “I’m Allison and this is Claire.”
“It’s nice to meet you both,” Tobin said, offering a cute little salute that said, “I’d like to shake your hand, but I’m covered in last Tuesday’s breakfast buffet.”
Allison kept the conversation going, not letting him jump back into the dumpster by sheer force of flirtation. “Hey, Tobin. You look like the guy to ask.”
“Ask what?”
“If someone is only in Mission for one night, what is the one attraction they have to hit?”
“Chamber of commerce-type stuff?” he asked. He looked about ready to put his thumbs in his front pockets, but then remembered the grime he was covered in.
“Yeah,” Allison said. “Or locals-only hotspots. Whatever you feel are the highlights. There’s not, like, a Zagat for Mission.”
“You’d need to drive about an hour for anything with a brochure,” Tobin said. “There’s the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge.”
“Do we look like we want to go to the Norman Rockwell Museum?” she asked. Claire could see the sex falling out of her lips in rivulets. “Besides, I asked, ‘What is there to do in Mission?’ Not Stockbridge.”
“Nothing,” he said. “But there’s always a party somewhere out in the woods.”
Allison turned to Claire, done with her one-on-one session with Tobin, reporting in with her intel. “There you go. Now you know what you’ll be doing on the weekends.”
They talked with him for a little while longer, then watched his ass as he disappeared back into the woods.
Chapter Seven
Claire had set the alarm on her phone so that it would vibrate before it rang.
Although she’d slept soundly, she woke with the first buzz beneath her pillow and switched it off before the unpleasant chirp of the alarm could sound.
Sitting up, she looked at the room for the first time in the sunlight. According to Daisy, it was one of only three rooms in The Brant that came equipped with two twin beds instead of one king size.
These rooms were usually rented out to parents who were traveling with their children. The children slept in the twin beds while mommy and daddy shacked up in one of the rooms down the hall. “Shacked up” was Claire’s term, not Daisy’s.
The décor was tasteful, not at all what the pictures on the website had led her to expect. There were no doilies on the nightstands, for one thing, just smooth oak. Not only that, but the blue-and-white quilt that looked so uncomfortable was merely decorative. There were modern fleece blankets and linen sheets underneath.
The room lacked the antiseptic smell of a Holiday Inn or Motel 6. Claire liked that. There were small touches that let you know the furniture hadn’t been mass produced, like the small golden rabbits etched into the knobs of the dresser drawers. She doubted that there was a warehouse somewhere with a thousand of those knobs.
As her mind returned from the edge of sleep, as she stopped apprizing the uniqueness of the furniture (something she’d never do with a clear head), she realized that the bed across the room was empty.
The sheets were tousled, but Allison was no longer under them.
Allison often didn’t make her bed and she made it a habit not to wake up before noon. It was possible that she’d had trouble sleeping in a strange bed. Claire usually had the same problem.
Claire tossed her legs over the side of the bed and checked the bathroom. Allison wasn’t there.
A mental shrug manifested itself as a physical shrug. Allison must have went out for a morning cigarette, was planning on meeting her downstairs at breakfast.
Checking her emails with one hand, Claire pulled down her panties and sat on the toilet.
*
“Eat, please,” Ms. Brant said to Claire while taking a biscuit from the tray Daisy held out. “Don’t wait for Daisy or you’ll be waiting all summer.”
“She’s right. Even when I do eat breakfast, it’s never much,” Daisy said, walking to the middle of the table and setting down the tray within arm’s length of Claire. “So much to get done in the mornings, but you’ll know all about that.”
“I guess I will,” Claire said. She picked up her fork and cut her egg. Bits of the egg whites were still gooey and see-through. It would have been great hangover food if she’d had one, but now it mildly repulsed Claire.
The dining room was five circular tables orbiting a long rectangular one. The large table looked like it could seat eight or nine. Alternating green and white tablecloths, with a set of gold rabbit salt and pepper shakers on each table. The effect of the room’s size and order was striking and the impression it left was very unlike a bed and breakfast. Brant must have taken great pride in that.
“Is your friend not joining us?” Ms. Brant asked.
“She had left the room before I woke up to come down. She’s probably on the phone with work. You’ll have to excuse her. She’s a workaholic,” Claire said, then asked herself why she was still lying. She already had the job, no reason to disseminate lies about Allison.
Daisy interrupted Claire’s thoughts with a sound. It was the kind of “stupid-me!” utterance that people make when they realize that they’ve left the stove on.
“Dang it,” she yelled and turned to Brant. “Sorry, Ms. Brant,” she said before turning back to Claire. “I was supposed to tell you that Allie had to head back to the city. She said that she didn’t want to wake you,” Daisy said, flattening the back of her dress before sitting down beside Claire. “She also wished you luck for the summer, of course, said that she wanted to come stay a weekend at the hotel.”
Don’t call Allison Allie. I don’t even do that, Claire thought. She hated Daisy in that moment for no reason other than that it felt good.
The single buzz of a text message went off in Claire’s pocket, but she ignored it.
“That’s really strange,” Claire said, feeling every word of it, staring into her runny eggs and burnt sausage. It was strange, but not unbelievable. Allison was a flake, ruled by impulses baffling to empathic life forms.
“She seemed like a sweet girl, I look forward to her next visit,” Ms. Brant said. “Claire, please let her know that she will stay and eat at a significant discount, should she make the trip.”
“I will. Thank you.” Claire said. I’ll let her know that as soon as I’m done breaking her fucking shins for leaving me in Mission, Massachusetts, without even saying goodbye.
Claire took a few breaths through her nose and realized that both women’s eyes were on her. She grasped for something to end the silence, diffuse the rage. “The breakfast is great, Ms. Brant. Did you make it, Daisy? You prepare sausage just how I like it.”
Claire wondered if it was possible to fake a blush and watched Daisy scrunch up her plain face in embarrassment.
“Not me, no,” Daisy said. “I’m afrai
d we’d have to be calling poison control if any of my cooking made it to a guest’s plate. It was Roy, the cook. He’s just fabulous.”
Ms. Brant cut in, timing her words with Daisy’s break. “He’s wonderful,” she said with small nod. “When you’re done with your breakfast, Claire, we’ll have a line-up so you can be introduced to the rest of the staff. Roy included. After that, Daisy can explain your duties in greater detail.”
The phrase “line-up” reminded Claire of a prison movie.
Claire excused herself and asked Daisy for directions to the bathroom nearest the dining room. She didn’t have to go, but she needed a break to check her phone.
The text had been from Allison.
Sorry to ditch u. Have to get back home. Good luck!
It was the most grammatically correct text Allison had ever sent.
Chapter Eight
Allison woke up in pain, but that wasn’t the worst part.
Her mouth was gummed shut with blood and she had to work her tongue around the corners of her lips a few times before she could scream.
Where was she? Last thing she could recall, she had gone to the bathroom, looking to flush her mouth out after too many cigarettes, and then what?
Why was she in the woods? What time was it? There were slashes of dim light poking through the branches, but was it dawn or dusk?
These questions were no longer important as soon as she noticed the tooth.
Her front left tooth was missing. Well, not quite missing, but broken so badly that only a gritty stump remained.
She jabbed her tongue into the shard of enamel, tasted a splash of fresh blood welling up, and she began to sob.
Growing up, Allison had nightmares like this: that her teeth were falling out one by one. It got to the point where these dreams were so familiar that her conscious mind would echo through the nightmare. Her own voice would talk over her mind movie, reassuring young Allison and reminding her that it wasn’t real.
Ride it out, honey. You’re just having a bad dream. Remember what the dentist said, “That’s a very common nightmare. But don’t worry: your teeth are staying put.” The dentist let his hand rest a little too long on your chest when you got to high school. You stopped going back after sophomore year.
Her dreams felt real at the time, but she’d never lost a tooth as an adult, only baby teeth. She’d never had one knocked out or shattered. Turns out that her imaginings had been way off-base. This was so much worse. She’d had nothing to compare it to.
Allison gagged on the taste of her own blood, felt the pulsing ache from her face and mouth and knew that she was awake.
The events of last night came back, not like a flashback in a movie when a character asks “What happened?” and the audience is treated to a soft-focus, third-person version of events. This was someone else’s memory thrust into her own mind.
The memories were tactile and disjointed. There was the running faucet, the gold flash, then the crack, the hands, the muffled words, then the blood, then nothing.
Male or female? Familiar or strange? Glasses or no glasses? She played Guess Who, trying to Nancy Drew her way into identifying her attacker. It didn’t work. She hadn’t seen anything beyond the smack in the head.
She rubbed her thighs, smudging dirt and blood all over her plain white nightgown, the one that Daisy had supplied. “You didn’t come prepared to stay, I’m guessing, those bags don’t look big enough. I’ve got all the essentials. They’ll fit,” Daisy had said before coming back to their room with two matching nightgowns.
The woven cotton pajamas were frilly, ugly and too big, kind of like Daisy herself.
Allison remembered back to last night. They’d gone inside after they were done smoking. Claire hadn’t worn her nightgown to bed. Allison didn’t intend to either, but had put it on as a joke and found it warm enough to keep on.
She was thankful for it now. The woods were cold, and going to sleep in her panties last night would have made the situation even worse.
Either her eyes were adjusting or the sun was rising because she could see better than she could a few minutes ago.
Inspecting the ground around her bare feet, she could see the long, brown streak where, she assumed, she’d been dragged. If the streak wasn’t enough evidence, the back of her ass was slick with mud and dead leaves.
Her upper lip and nose burned, even in the chill of the morning (night?). Did the heat mean that something was broken? She raised a hand, ready to check the injury as gently as possible, but stopped herself.
An idea shot to the front of her mind, a bright, burning road flare of a notion. The burning question she should have been focusing on this whole time. Was her attacker still here?
Allison fixed her attention on the world around her.
Admittedly, this was not her strong suit. Allison’s world was ninety-eight percent Allison and two percent the world around Allison. “I don’t give head,” she’d told her high school boyfriend. “Why? Because I’m too selfish, that’s why.”
Her mind was a disjointed jumble of images and sounds. She had to will herself to focus.
Most of the trees around her were too skinny to hide an assailant. If there was someone out here with her, they weren’t close. If they were coming back, why would they have left her out here on her own?
Maybe they had to set your big ass down and then head back for their chainsaw, she answered.
There were very few times when Allison’s own sense of humor failed to amuse her. This was one of them.
Her hand shot to her hip, groping for her phone. The nightgown had no pockets, so she’d stuffed her iPhone into the elastic waistband of her panties before she’d gone to bed. Either her attacker had taken it, or it was somewhere on the forest floor between wherever she was and the hotel.
Thinking of the hotel reminded her to take note of her surroundings. She had to figure out where to run to if she was going to run. The hotel was nowhere in sight. There were no landmarks, just trees and rocks.
She spun a few times, trying to figure out what direction to head in. The sky was bluer now. It was morning, then. That was one mystery solved.
“Jinkies,” Allison whispered to herself. Even that much movement hurt her face.
On her third spin, she heard a noise behind her. Without thinking, her legs moved.
The balls of her feet thudded against the ground in front of her as she ran from the sound. She didn’t look back to confirm it wasn’t a squirrel or deer. Some deep part of her knew it wasn’t.
Allison’s gait was clumsy, her legs were sore and her eyes seemed to buck against her control as she tried to keep them in front of her.
In high school, she’d worn a special bra to run track. Even then she’d been all woman. The bra was heavy duty, taped her tits down like a Caucasian Mulan.
The brassiere and her training had worked for her, All-State, baby, but now one massive head injury and almost a decade later, she wasn’t burning up the track.
There were sounds of pursuit behind her and she couldn’t help her curiosity. She looked.
Who the fuck was this guy?
She was almost disappointed that she didn’t recognize her pursuer, as if the sight of Daisy or Tobin or even crazy old Ms. Brant would have fit better. At least a familiar face would have given this insane narrative a little more coherence.
Instead of any of them, it was a burly guy dressed in all white. He was huge and bestial with thick black hair not only on his face, but the backs of his hands as well.
He was big and athletic. His arms pumped back and forth, his mouth fixed in a perfect runner’s “O”. She could hear him sucking air in and out, the way she wished she could. Efficiently.
Whoever he was, he was going to catch her. That much was certain.
And what would he do when he caught her? Was he going to take the rest of her teeth? Or was it going to be worse? All Allison could remember from self-defense class was to claw her attacker with her car keys and use
her knees to aim for his nuts.
She didn’t have her car keys.
Ducking low under a branch, she decided that bobbing and weaving was her best bet. She would take the most obfuscated path she could, bounding over rocks, cutting between the closest set trees that she could spot, hopefully causing the beast to get tripped up.
That’s what he was—a beast.
Judging from the sounds behind her, he was outpacing her worse than she first estimated. For such a swarthy-looking guy, he was quite a runner.
Snippets of the next hour (or less) of her life flashed through her imagination. She played herself a greatest-hits clip reel of her death. Big callused European hands tightened around her throat, his beard mashing up against her already broken mouth, that feeling she’d had once off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard—drowning.
No! She forced her drunken eyes to fix on a mossy rock and she bent down to it. The nail on her pinky finger bent outward and broke in on itself as she pried the stone out of the earth. It would hurt like hell later, but now all she cared about was prying the rock free.
Pill bugs ran for cover as she lifted it up, leaving a smooth void in the ground.
Dirt and lichen sprinkled her nightgown as she hoisted the rock up even with her breasts. Taking a breath, she turned to face her attacker.
She had a picture-perfect idea of how this should go down. She had to wait until just the right moment, let his momentum draw him to her so she could lower the sharpest edge of the flat rock into his face. It was almost cartoon violence, the way she wanted it to go. In her mind, she would cleave his fucking face in half.
Allison never got the chance because the beast had slowed his approach as soon as he saw her arm herself.
“What do you want?” Allison screamed. Of all the questions she’d asked in the last five minutes, it was the only one she’d spoken aloud.