12 Bliss Street

by Martha Conway

  Chorizo hesitated. “That’s true.”

  “And, hey, it turned out to be good for me. Otherwise, I might have been the have-you-seen-me poster girl last Friday. But what was the other thing? Oh yeah, strength of mind…” Nicola mused. “Do I have that?”

  Chorizo moved his hand up her knee and under the skirt of her lingerie. “No, little one. You do not.”

  Nicola shifted a little on the bed. “How do you know?”

  “That is a warrior skill,” he said. “You are beautiful, yes, and as I said you are smart, clever even, and I mean that as the greatest compliment, but as for perseverance—no, you are someone who backs down. Gives in. Yes? You give in at work, you give in to lovers, you always give in. Right? Well, and it is important for some to be flexible; society couldn’t function otherwise. But a true warrior, someone with courage and cunning and strength of mind, he doesn’t give in. He’s not like the others. He stands out.”

  Chorizo’s voice seemed to be getting smaller and smaller. He was saying things—what were they again?—that she really should argue about, but her mind felt half-borne away on some current of its own. It was all she could do to keep up.

  “Your role is to be someone else,” he said gently.

  “The one who dies,” Nicola said.

  Chorizo smiled. “Don’t worry, first we have a little fun. Now. Do you like this?”

  “It feels a little cold,” Nicola complained.

  “My hand?”

  “I mean, we haven’t led up to it.”

  “Oh we’ve been leading up to it all night,” he said. He began to smooth her hair away from her temple. “Don’t you know why language was invented?”

  “Why was language invented?”

  “Women wanted some foreplay.”

  Nicola looked up at the shelf of rubber dolls, some with their legs crossed, others who looked like a eunuch’s idea of Marilyn Monroe. For a moment their heads seemed to bob toward her, as if they were bowing in prayer.

  “Oh God, are those dolls going to be watching?” she asked. Her voice seemed to be coming out of someplace other than her mouth but she tried not to be distracted by that. “I’m not doing anything if those dolls will be watching.”

  “I don’t think you have much choice,” Chorizo told her, and he pulled her down next to him on the bed. He held her down by her two shoulders and looked at her face.

  “I won’t hurt you,” he said.

  Nicola said, “Bring it on.”

  She wanted to sound tough but instead she felt herself slip further—a soft, sinking feeling as he began touching her hair, her face, her arms. She remembered her fantasy about him. Was it only a week ago? Not even a week. But it’s all right, it’s all right, Nicola said to herself. She tried to concentrate on plan B, the details of which were fading away.

  Because she was finding herself feeling … what was it? Almost content. The room was warm. The chemise was soft. Even the futon felt comfortable beneath her back. And, oh my God, he was good at this. She opened her eyes and found she was right: the dolls were all watching.

  It was important to fight, but at the same time the thought came to her that maybe she wouldn’t. How long had she felt the need to control every little thing? And yet, Nicola thought, I’m essentially powerless.

  But it doesn’t matter. I don’t have to care. She could hear the wind outside, and the heated air coming in through a wall vent. Even the factory smell on the futon frame didn’t bother her. What was it he called her? The competent woman. But I don’t have to be that way, Nicola thought. She let Chorizo touch her and it felt so easy, it felt really good.

  All she had to do was nothing.

  “Are you worried?” Chorizo asked, his mouth close to her ear. “Do you know what is happening?”

  Nicola thought for a moment.

  “I care but I’m unattached to the outcome.”

  Chorizo laughed.

  “Run away with me, Nicola,” he said again. “My wife would love it if I showed up with a girl.”

  Nicola was looking at his face. “You know who you look like? Omar Sharif.”

  “Come here,” he said.

  She started to close her eyes again but a flash of silver caught her attention. Chorizo had something in his hand. Scissors.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Part of the game.”

  He leaned over and snipped off one of the straps to her chemise.

  “What are you doing?” she said. Suddenly her voice sounded shrewish and her mind pulled a little, trying to snap awake.

  “You know the game,” he said. He cut a strip along one of the sheer front panels. “You saw the video. We do a little cutting first.”

  Nicola was appalled. “Wait! Do you know how much this cost?”

  Chorizo laughed. “You really are funny. Listen to the sound.” He cut another strip. “Isn’t that marvelous? The clothes get cut away. Destroyed. Think of it as a symbol. Soon they will be in pieces around you.”

  He cut loosely, not bothering to keep straight lines. She could feel the side of the cold steel scissors touch her belly once, then again. The blades moved up and down like two pistons. The beautiful black chemise would soon be a rag and she couldn’t help herself: the wastefulness of it annoyed her.

  “Let’s move on!” Nicola said. “I don’t like this part.”

  “Don’t fight me on this,” Chorizo said smoothly, and Nicola suddenly felt fully awake. Where had she heard that before? Then she remembered: Guy.

  “Women should not fight,” Chorizo told her.

  “What?”

  “According to a study I read about. It’s not in their nature. They don’t fight or flee, they … what was the phrase?” He stopped cutting and let the scissors dangle for a moment.

  “They tend and befriend,” Nicola said bitterly.

  “Yes, that’s it. Tend and befriend.”

  “You think I’m being friendly?”

  He seemed to consider this. “Well, you could smile more,” he said jokingly. Oh my God, thought Nicola. Something rushed through her: a sharp slice of anger. Was he just Guy in a Turkish suit? Chorizo opened the scissor blades and began to cut through the middle of her garment.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said again. Then he stopped cutting for a moment and bent down. Nicola closed her eyes. She felt his lips on the side of her mouth. She felt stronger, as though that last spurt of anger kick-started her adrenaline. How could she listen to any more of this? It was time to take over.

  “It’s not me I’m worried about,” she said and, pulling back, she lifted her knee and kicked her foot squarely into his groin.

  “Aaaah! Ah ah!” Chorizo shouted, bending over double by the side of the bed.

  “It’s Dave I’m worried about,” she told him.

  Quickly, she pulled her hand out of the handcuff and threw the ring around Chorizo’s hand, locking him to the futon frame. Then she threw the scissors across the room and grabbed Chorizo’s pants, which had the handcuff keys in them.

  She wrapped Chorizo’s pants around her elbow, picked up Dave’s minitool, and ran to the back door. The glass window above it looked thin and old.

  The minitool had GPS software in it but she had to get the tool out of the building so it could send out its mapping signal.

  Nicola pressed the GPS pager, took a breath, then drove her elbow into the middle of the pane. Glass shattered everywhere. Please, Nicola thought, please let Davette have her minitool turned on. She threw the minitool out into the yard, catching a few shards on her hand as she did so. For a moment she stopped to put her wrist to her mouth.

  But Chorizo was up already, moving toward her with one hand cupped over his groin and dragging the futon frame with him. Nicola stared at him for a second. Jesus, he was strong. She took a few steps toward him, then kicked him at his sternum.

  “Dave, get up,” she shouted, as Chorizo struggled to stand again.

  But Dave was way beyond getting up. Nico
la grabbed him and started to fall because her body was getting woozier and woozier from the drug and for the first time in her life she really felt like she was seventy-five percent water, like the scientists said.

  “You broke my nail!” Chorizo shouted.

  Nicola got behind Dave and grabbed hold of him in the lifesaving position then she began to drag him, chair and all, to the door.

  “You’ll never recover,” Chorizo said. “I gave you too much.”

  “Oh shut up, Chorizo.”

  “Stop calling me that! It makes me sound fat.”

  She was trying, but she couldn’t get Dave out the door. The chair stuck in the doorframe and Dave was on the wrong side, facing Chorizo. In a moment Chorizo had gotten hold of Dave’s leg with his free hand. Nicola was on the other side.

  “I don’t really care which one of you dies first,” Chorizo said, and he put his free hand around Dave’s neck.

  Nicola ran to the car and, oh my God, thank God, it was unlocked. Her purse was in the front seat. She grabbed it and dumped everything out on the garage floor and found her last remaining option—the stun gun disguised as a highlighter. It had fooled Chorizo at least. But this was the floor model, the one Morgan used, and she prayed that the batteries were still good. Was the orange light on, or off? It was hard to tell in this light. Staring at it, her eyes felt crossed at the back.

  Well she didn’t have time. What was it Chorizo had said about faith, or hope? But he wasn’t talking about battery power, which at this point was the only thing Nicola cared about.

  It would have to work: after he got through with her, and Dave, he would go after Carmen. Now that he had seen Nicola’s address on her driver’s license, he knew where Carmen was. And, like herself, Carmen knew everything.

  But Nicola didn’t know that going back through the garage would be so hard; she felt she was moving through sludge, she was running in a dream. She had to get back but it would take a couple of months at least at the rate she was going. Help, she thought. Then: I’ve got to do this.

  Her adrenaline burst was fading and meanwhile Chorizo was choking Dave; she could hear Dave gurgle and gasp as she came up behind him with the stun gun in her hand. She willed herself to focus, but it was getting harder. Before Chorizo had time to do anything she thrust the stunner in his face then kept it there as he squirmed. Stick to the task, stick to the task, she thought. She held the stun gun hard to his cheek.

  He didn’t make a noise, just fell away onto the floor. But how creepy—his eyes were still open. She could see how he was struggling even now, a second later, to regain control of his body. How long do I have, she had asked Morgan? Long enough to get the hell out, ha ha. Nicola saw the deep yellow bruises on Dave’s poor soft neck and his bluing lips and she was angry now, really angry.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she said. But was she speaking to Dave, or herself?

  Nicola rolled Dave’s chair into Chorizo, who was still struggling on the floor, then she pushed Dave around the side of the chair and off of it and pulled him through the doorway. Her arms felt like noodles. I will not let the drug take over, she thought. I will not let it. I have to stay conscious.

  Everything now was in absolutes.

  Chorizo began thrashing around under the chair and got it moved aside, then he pulled the futon frame with him to the door and the futon turned sideways a little as he did so. When he saw that he tried rolling it all the way over to fit it lengthwise through but that didn’t work either.

  “You don’t have the time,” he said.

  He pulled on the handcuff then looked around for something, a tool. “I’ll find a way to break the frame. Meanwhile, you’ll be dead. Do you know how much I gave you? You should be dead now.”

  Nicola knew she couldn’t waste energy talking to him anymore. Her mind was fighting to fade, she could feel herself going. The adrenaline was gone. Soon she’d have no more control. Was she dying or just passing out? It felt as though she was dying.

  Strength of mind, she thought. She wanted to close her eyes just for a second but she was afraid she would never open them again. She was afraid even to blink too slowly. With an effort she pulled out the Narcon from her bra and uncapped it.

  “What’s that?” Chorizo said.

  Her mind let go for a moment. She struggled. She wasn’t thinking so much as groping around looking for a handhold. I am here. I am here. She opened her mouth to speak; she wanted to say it aloud, I am here; she wanted to tell herself this in a way she would really believe it.

  “I am,” Nicola said. It was all she could manage.

  Chorizo was watching her. It didn’t matter what she had. Timing was everything. He smiled.

  “It’s too late, little one,” he said.

  “No,” she said, and she turned and took Dave’s arm and plunged the needle into, she hoped, one of his veins.

  Twenty-two

  The kitchen featured a Viking stove, there was a full Jacuzzi in the master bath, but the living room had nothing except stained wall-to-wall carpeting and a cassette player the size of a microwave oven.

  Nicola had brought the cassette player herself. Grandmaster Flash was singing with a voice like asphalt pouring out through the speakers: “It’s like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from going under.”

  Nicola knelt on the stained carpet to lower the volume.

  “You have to picture it with furniture,” she told Audrey.

  But Audrey wasn’t looking at the room; she was standing in front of the picture window next to Lou. “I can’t believe this view,” she said.

  Lou said, “Isn’t it amazing?”

  “Chairs, couches, lamps,” Nicola continued. She stepped up to the doorframe to examine a curl of peeling paint. “Maybe a couple of bookcases flanking the fireplace.”

  “This view is better than mine,” Audrey complained. “That can’t be fair.”

  “It’s not better, it’s just closer.”

  “It’s not fair,” Audrey repeated. She was still wearing her coat, and she looked down at Lester, whom she held by a leash. “Your new home,” she told her.

  “Well, not for a couple of weeks yet,” Nicola corrected.

  “By the way, Carmen called this morning. She found another camera in the closet. She said it was never installed properly, though.”

  For the past few months Nicola had been living with Audrey and Declan while she looked for a place of her own. Carmen was living in the house behind the Russians. Nicola couldn’t wait to start using dressers again instead of cardboard boxes and milk crates. I’ll need a dining room table, she suddenly realized.

  “Oh and here, I have something for you, too,” Audrey said to Lou. She handed him a newspaper.

  “What, my review?”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Your review made it in?” Nicola asked, coming over to look.

  “I found it this morning,” Audrey said.

  Lou looked at the cover. “They said next week.”

  “Good thing I checked.”

  He began turning the pages, dropping the sections he didn’t want on the floor. He was wearing his standard uniform, the white shirt and the clean blue jeans, and when he found the review he folded the paper carefully in half.

  “Do you want to hear it?”

  “Absolutely,” Nicola said.

  “I’ll skip the boring intro.”

  Audrey sat down on the carpet and threw the leash over to Nicola, who unclipped it from Lester’s collar then sat down, too. They were leaning against the wall, their backs to the view. The room was large and square and seemed even larger to Nicola without furniture. How will I fill this up, she wondered?

  Lou cleared his throat then tilted his chin. “Blah blah blah, okay. ‘Nicosia is the first truly upscale Cypriot-inspired restaurant in San Francisco,’” he read, “‘And well worth the problems with parking. After you make your way through the strangely organized menu, you’ll find the food, especially the starters, lu
sty and bucolic.’”

  “What does that mean, lusty and bucolic?” Audrey asked.

  Lou was still standing. “I was thinking in terms of hearty and country,” he said. “I was trying to do some hearty and country combination.”

  “I think it works,” Nicola told him.

  “‘Their house salad,’” he continued, “‘has an interesting ingredient: pickled caper thorns, which are native to the island of Cyprus. The antipasto sampler ($6.95) is another tongue-pleaser, with its assortment of grilled and marinated vegetables—notably the kappari, which is somewhat like a turnip.’”

  He described a few entrees—the slow-cooked lamb, a spicy smoked sausage called loukanika. Nicola listened to his slow, even voice—like the voice of a poet, she thought—while she looked around the room. She realized that her furniture would fill up exactly one-fourth of the space. When she had first seen the house, before she made her offer, this room was filled with low couches and faux jade statues and circular stone tables with little buddhas and framed pictures of students wearing tasseled caps. It was filled with someone else’s life.

  But now that was over. Now every room was empty, waiting to start again.

  Lou moved his fingers over the newspaper. “Okay, I’ll skip the dis on Cypriot wine, skip the lesser entrees, and get on to the desserts.”

  “Those were good,” Nicola said.

  “‘The desserts were good to fantastic,’” Lou read. “‘For my money, I’d go back to the fruit mousse with mango and lime, or the savory vanilla crème brûlée.’”

  “That was good,” Nicola agreed.

  “‘Not all the desserts seemed particularly Mediterranean, but they all come with nuts and a delicious hard cheese called Kefalotiri’—I’m not sure if I’m pronouncing that right—‘along with a pitcher of sweet Cyprus honey.’” Lou moved his thumb to the bottom of the column. “And then there’s just parking information, restaurant times, and prices.”

  He looked up. “The end,” he said.

  “Wow,” Audrey said.

  “That was great!” Nicola told him.

  “One hundred and fifty dollars,” Lou stated. He looked over the paper again, then folded it carefully and put it in his back pocket. “Plus two free meals.”