Don't Turn Around

by Jessica Barry

  The bathroom was one of those strangely formal affairs, complete with velveteen armchairs and vanity mirrors lined with lightbulbs, like something out of a Marilyn Monroe film. The designer had misjudged his audience. None of the women frequenting this bathroom wanted to inspect their faces under harsh incandescents.

  There were only three stalls, so the line felt interminable. The women smiled at one another and then tucked in their chin and stared at the floor or their phones. No one wanted to make conversation while waiting for the bathroom. It was too personal, too humiliating. Besides, there was enough conversation waiting for them back in the ballroom. This was meant to be an escape.

  Rebecca leaned against the wall while she waited, checking first to make sure it wouldn’t smudge her dress. Another pastel number, high-necked and below-the-knee, and sprigged with spring flowers even though it was February. Rich had sent it over earlier, along with a note reminding her to wear hose. She’d rolled her eyes but had gone to her underwear drawer and double-checked that she had a pair without a run.

  Four months. He’d been a congressman for four months. A minute and a lifetime. Long enough for her to have gotten the hang of being a politician’s wife, especially if you factored in the months of campaigning. Some things were easier. She knew how to navigate her way through an interview now, and where to stand onstage so that she was visible but didn’t overshadow Patrick. She had learned how to navigate these fund-raising dinners, even if they left her hollowed out with exhaustion.

  Tonight was different, though. Tonight she’d felt exhausted before setting foot in the car. Her head was pounding. The bathroom smelled of intermingled perfumes and bleach and potpourri, and she could feel the bile rising in her throat again, her stomach cramping, something inside her bucking and twisting.

  A gray-haired woman in a twinset emerged from a stall, and Rebecca pushed past the line of women and slammed the door behind her. She didn’t have time to twist the lock before she was on her knees, retching up the buttered dinner roll and the sparkling water and the half a langoustine she’d managed to choke down. Tears stung her eyes.

  There was a knock on the door. “Are you all right? Can I get you something?”

  “I’m fine,” she bleated, just before her stomach revolted again. She was spitting up bile now, nothing more. She pressed her forehead against the cool porcelain.

  Another knock. “Would you like me to get your husband?”

  “No, thank you.” She wondered briefly how they would know which husband belonged to her, but of course, all of them knew about her and Patrick. They had watched him onstage barely a half an hour ago. “My beautiful wife,” he had said, pointing toward her, and they had joined in the polite applause while she practiced her demure smile.

  Humiliation swept through her like a wildfire. She needed to get up off the floor and get cleaned up and go back out there before the news spread. As quietly as she could, she spat one last time in the bowl and then flushed. She pulled herself up and wiped the sweat off her brow and straightened the neckline of her dress and sailed out of the stall as gracefully as she could. “I’m sorry about that,” she murmured apologetically. “There’s a stomach bug going around. I must have picked it up.”

  The women cooed sympathetically as she dabbed water to her wrists and temples, but she could feel their eyes on her in the mirror, watching, weighing her up. She could feel the questions pressing inside them. Had they seen the waiter refill her wineglass more than once? Had she seemed unsteady on her feet or glassy-eyed? Worse: had the langoustines been bad? They had eaten them, too—did the same fate await them?

  Rebecca checked her reflection in the mirror and tucked a stray hair back into place. She looked pale but not too bad. One of the women walked up to her and handed her a mint. “Your breath, dear,” she said, and Rebecca flushed with embarrassment but accepted it gratefully.

  When she got back to the table, Patrick was watching her, eyes anxious. “You okay?” he whispered as she slid in beside him.

  “Fine,” she said brightly. “Just a little upset stomach.”

  But a thought had occurred to her on her walk back from the bathroom, and she was already doing the mental math.

  Her mother had told her once that the term “morning sickness” was a misnomer. “When I was pregnant with you, it was more like all-the-damn-time sickness. I couldn’t keep down anything but saltine crackers for the first three months.”

  Six weeks on Sunday. Usually, she was like clockwork.

  She stared into the distance as the waiter whisked away her plate.

  St. Vrain, New Mexico—207 Miles to Albuquerque

  Cait sensed it before it happened, something tingling at the back of her neck. The sound hit her next. It was nothing at first, the buzz of an insect above the hum of the engine, but it grew louder, quickly, and just like that a pair of headlights was blinding in her rearview mirror. The truck was charging up the road toward them, fast. Too fast. The buzz became a roar.

  The truck passed on her left, a blur of sound and steel, before swerving back into her lane and hitting the brakes. Cait had to slam on her own brakes to keep from rear-ending it. “What the fuck?”

  The truck was moving slowly now, the speedometer barely edging thirty. “What is he doing?” Rebecca asked.

  “I have no idea.” It was a two-lane highway, and there was no one else out there. Plenty of room to pass. Cait moved into the left lane. He swerved in front of her. She moved back into the right. The truck followed. She leaned on the horn, hard. “What the hell is he doing?” The truck slowed down again. Twenty now. Fifteen. “Jesus Christ.”

  “Maybe he wants you to pull over,” Rebecca suggested, but Cait shook her head.

  “We shouldn’t stop. We don’t know . . .” She didn’t have to finish the sentence. They’d read articles, watched films, read books, listened to podcasts, existed in the world as women. They both knew how the story could go if they pulled over.

  Cait’s eyes scanned the road. There wasn’t a barrier in place, so if she could get up onto the hard shoulder, she might be able to get enough room to pass . . .

  She hit the gas and jerked the wheel to the right. Rebecca let out a little yelp as the Jeep surged forward. Cait didn’t have time to apologize. She was even with the truck now, though he was drifting toward her into the shoulder. She wrenched the wheel again and the Jeep stuttered into the dirt, the wheels slipping underneath until they found traction. She swept in front of the truck and hit the gas.

  “What an asshole,” Cait muttered as the truck’s headlights dropped back.

  But the truck accelerated, and soon it was tucked tight behind them. “Shit. I can’t see a damn thing,” she said, squinting to see through the windshield. The truck’s headlights mixed in with the Jeep’s, casting an eerie yellowish glow on the tarmac. The truck’s high beams flashed on and off, and its horn began to blare.

  Cait stepped on the gas, but the engine was slow to respond, and the truck surged ahead, keeping pace with her for a few long minutes before it passed them clean on the left-hand side and swung back in front of them.

  Once again, the truck’s speed slowed to forty, thirty, twenty. “What are you doing?” she shouted. They were crawling now. She moved into the passing lane. He moved, too. She moved back into the right lane. He did, too. She laid on the horn, hard. Nothing.

  They were down to ten miles an hour now, and he was straddling the median, blocking her from passing on either side. She squinted out of the windshield, trying to get a glimpse of the driver in his mirror, but there was nothing but black glass reflecting her own headlights back at her.

  “What do you think he wants?”

  “I don’t know.” Cait saw Rebecca close her eyes.

  She scanned the road. The last time she’d seen another car was a half hour ago. Clovis was twenty miles back, and the next town was still a good ways up the road. Plenty of time for him to do whatever it was he wanted to do. There wasn’t a single other livi
ng thing except the jackrabbits burrowed in their dens and rattlesnakes coiled tight underneath the shrubs, and neither was of any use to them if they found themselves stranded out here because the psychopath in front of them had driven them off the road or worse.

  She’d have to try to get past him. She tossed a glance at Rebecca. “You’re wearing your seat belt?”

  Rebecca nodded.

  “Hold on. C’mon, baby,” she murmured, and cranked the wheel to the right. The tires spat gravel as she swerved off the shoulder and back onto the road. The truck swerved, too, but not quickly enough. It clipped the back edge of the Jeep as it slipped past, a little nudge that Cait knew wouldn’t leave more than a scrape in the already-dinged-up fender.

  The truck’s horn blared.

  She sank the pedal to the floor. The Jeep could still move when she needed it to. Soon they were up to seventy. The truck was dropping back in the rearview. “I think we got him,” she murmured. She stayed at a steady high speed with her eyes trained on the mirror until the headlights were nothing more than pinpricks fading into the night. “We lost him.”

  “What . . . who was that?”

  Cait exhaled. She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath. Her heartbeat was a flutter caught high in her throat, and her palms were slick with sweat. She’d thought they were goners back there. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think it was the man from the diner?”

  “I don’t know,” she said again. She’d been wondering about it herself, but she couldn’t see why he would have waited that long to make his move. Unless . . . unless he wanted to make sure they were out in the middle of nowhere, where no one could hear them. But how would he have tracked them this far without her seeing him? “I don’t think it was the man from the diner,” she said finally, as convincingly as she could.

  Rebecca didn’t look convinced. “I couldn’t see the driver at all. Could you?”

  “No, nothing.” She glanced in the rearview again. Nothing but empty road behind them now. Whatever it was, it was over. No need to dwell on it. No need to scare the poor woman even more than she already was. “Honestly?” she said, making her voice light. She needed to keep things on course; she couldn’t let them get off track. “It was probably just a bored teenager looking to cause trouble. We did stuff like that all the time when I was a kid—drag racing, playing chicken. It’s what happens when you live in the middle of nowhere: you make your own entertainment.”

  “They could have killed us. We could have been run off the road. We could have—”

  “I know, but we’re okay now. Nothing happened.” Cait took a deep breath, willed her pulse to ease up a little. “Teenagers, that’s what I’m betting. Little shits. We’ll be fine now. They’ll find somebody else to pick on.”

  The two of them looked out at the long stretch of dark road. Neither of them pointed out that, out here at this time of night, there wasn’t anyone else.

  Nine Months Earlier

  Cait was checking the bottles in the speedrail, making sure she had enough cheap tequila to make it through happy hour. It was something the barback was supposed to do, same as he was supposed to slice the lemons and limes and restock the ice well, but Jimmy had called in sick that day, so she was stuck doing it herself. It didn’t matter much—it was a Tuesday after spring break, and all the college kids were hiding out nursing their hangovers, which meant she was going to spend her shift watching the TVs mounted behind the bar and trying to stay awake until close. She’d be lucky to walk out with twenty dollars in tips, but it was part of the deal. You had to take the crappy shifts along with the good ones. Saturday, the UT students would come flooding in, eager to show off their tans and swap stories about doing shots off a stranger’s stomach in Cancún, and she’d walk out with three hundred dollars, easy. So she could suck up a slow Tuesday.

  It was March Madness, which meant nothing but college basketball on the TVs, something Cait couldn’t care less about, but at least it made the time pass. She watched De’Andre Hunter sink a three-pointer as she wiped down the bar top for the hundredth time and thought about checking her phone.

  It had been a week since the article came out, and while the full force of the firestorm had passed, a few embers were still blowing around. Miraculously, no one had pegged her to it; she was still officially “Anonymous.” It was a relief. They were welcome to write the occasional shitty line about her on 4chan, so long as no one came knocking on her door.

  She checked the back bar, saw they were low on tequila, jotted it down on the stock notepad. JB was up in his office somewhere, probably smoking weed and watching porn, the manager’s two great passions in life. He’d be able to see her on the security cameras, but she knew he never watched them. He wasn’t the most effective manager she’d ever had, but he was the easiest. Stay out of his hair and he’d stay out of yours: that was pretty much the motto of the place.

  Anyway, she’d been there for, what, two years now? She could be running the place if she wanted—the owner had said as much the last time he was in—but she knew that moving up to management would mean accepting this as her actual job, rather than a way to make easy cash while she waited for her real life as a writer to begin.

  And she was close to it now, so close. Hers was the most-clicked-on article ever published by the website. Her editor had said that she’d made their name, though she had yet to see any of the cash. It had been a flat-fee rate, no share of the ad revenue, so while the website was raking it in, she was stuck with her two hundred bucks. She’d thought maybe she’d be able to convert it into more commissions, but so far, the editor hadn’t liked any of her pitches. “Too worthy,” she’d responded to Cait’s pitch about sex trafficking across the border. “Do you have anything sexier?” Cait had feelers out with a dozen other editors, had even dropped a couple of not-so-subtle hints that she was the woman behind the Jake Forsythe piece, but so far she hadn’t had any luck.

  Still, she had to be close. Something she’d written had gone viral—surely that couldn’t just be down to dumb luck. No, she didn’t want JB’s job. She was going to be a writer, a real one. One who got bylines and paychecks.

  She felt a blast of warm air cut through the air-conditioning and looked up to see a couple of guys walk through the door. She tossed the rag under the bar and started pulling a couple drafts of Bud.

  “Hey, Caity.” Ken took up his usual stool at the bar, Nick sliding in next to him. “How’re you doing this fine evening?”

  “Bored out of my skull,” she said, placing the cold beers in front of them. “How about you?”

  “Ah, you know,” Ken said, taking a long pull from his drink. “Same shit, different day.”

  “I hear you. You want a chaser to go with that? Two for one on whiskey shots. Thirsty Tuesday.”

  “Why the hell not.”

  Cait poured out two shots of Jim Beam, and the two men sank them and placed the empty glasses upside down on the bar. She tossed them in the dishwasher and wiped the bar top clean again.

  “Where’s the big man?” Ken asked. He meant JB.

  “Up in his office, I think.”

  “Working hard or hardly working.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  It went on like this for a while, Ken tossing patter across the bar and her tossing it back while Nick sat nursing his beer and staring silently at the screen above her head. Nick wasn’t much of a talker, and she’d known him long enough not to try to force it. That was her job, more than pouring drinks. She was there to either talk or not talk, and to read her customers well enough to know which one they wanted at any given moment.

  Ken always wanted to talk. He’d been coming in most weeks for the past year, sitting in the same spot and drinking Bud drafts with whiskey chasers until his eyes went a little hazy, at which point he’d climb down from his stool, slap a ten-spot on the counter as a tip, and make his way back to wherever it was he came from. He talked a lot of hot air, Ken, but she liked him. He
kept her occupied, especially on the slow shifts.

  “Hey, you heard about this whole thing with Jake Forsythe?”

  She arranged her features in what she hoped was bland disinterest. “No. What’s that?”

  He shook his head. “You know he’s a musician, right? I saw him down on Fourth Street a few months back, pretty good, too, though the guy needs a haircut and he was wearing his jeans a little too tight.” He flicked a glance at Nick. “Not that I was looking at his ass or anything. Anyway, this chick goes home with him—completely willingly, by the way, she even says so herself—and they have sex—again, completely willingly—and the next thing he knows, she writes some article claiming she’s been violated or something.” He threw his hands up in the air. “Call me crazy, but I just don’t think that’s right. I mean, the poor guy’s just trying to get laid, and this girl uses him to get attention for herself.”

  Cait tried to swallow her pounding heart. “Maybe she didn’t like what happened when they were having sex. Maybe it wasn’t a good experience for her.”

  Ken pulled a face. “If I complained every time I didn’t have a ‘good experience’”—he put air quotes around the words—“I wouldn’t have time to go to work or brush my teeth in the morning. Jesus Christ, Caity, how often does anyone have a good experience in this world?”

  “That’s a pretty cynical view.”

  “Hey, it is what it is, and I’m not complaining. These two people wanted to have sex with each other, so they had sex. That should have been the end of it. Instead, just because this girl didn’t see stars during it, or wasn’t showered with roses afterward, she goes off and writes some article tearing him a new asshole and puts it out there so the whole world can read it.” He shook his head. “If a man did that to a woman, there’d be hell to pay.”

  “Yeah, well, if a woman tried to choke a man during sex, it probably wouldn’t have been as traumatic. He had fifty pounds on this woman. He could have killed her.”