by Renee James
Albert is on his knees, pulling the scissors out of his belly. I look under the sink again, hoping to find something I can use as a weapon. Nothing. I take a can of shaving cream, just to have something to throw at him, something to buy a few more seconds of life.
Albert gets to his feet, a crazed look on his face, and lunges toward me screaming epithets. The nail scissors are in one hand. He aims to stab them into one of my eyes. I throw the can at him, and he brushes it aside. He takes another step, the last one. He plants his weight on his front leg just as I coil and kick. It’s perfect. My left foot lands first, focusing all my strength on the side of his knee. I can hear the crack, the sickening crack, as the joint shatters and caves, and Albert’s howls fill the basement like a bomb blast. He hits the floor like he’d been dropped from a second-story window.
I crawl over him, Albert so consumed with pain he can’t react. I crawl out of the blood-soaked bathroom and into the main room searching for a weapon. Hoping to find the pruners he used to cut my bindings. Or a knife. A screwdriver. Anything.
The pruners are nowhere to be seen. I start to crawl for the utility room when I hear Albert come out of the bathroom. I’ll never make it that far. I crawl into his bench press area and grab a five-pound plate. It’s not much. Six or seven inches in diameter, a half-inch thick. A ten pounder would have been better. A twenty-five pounder would have been enough to crush his skull. The five is what I can get my hands on. I struggle to a sitting position on the weight bench and turn to Albert.
He hops toward me on one leg, crying and covered in blood. His leg is shot, but he’s coming to kill me and he still can. He takes two hops, totters, and flings his hands out for balance, then hops again.
When he’s five feet away, I unleash the five-pound plate at him. I throw it like a Frisbee, backhanded, wicked wrist snap, lots of spin. Instinctively, I aim for his face. A bad choice—easy to parry and a small kill zone. The only way it would really stop him is by driving his nose into his brain. The odds of hitting such a small target are too minuscule to calculate. I know my mistake as soon as I release the missile. I dive for the weight rack to reload. Albert grunts and gurgles. I look to him. The plate tumbles in front of him. His hands reach for his throat. He crumples to the ground.
The room is suddenly, strangely quiet. All I can hear is a deathly rasping sound as Albert tries to breathe. I’m feeling faint, but I begin to understand. My panicky throw hit him in the throat. He may have a crushed larynx and a crushed whatever else is in there. I start to crawl toward him to check, then stop myself. He might still kill me if I give him the chance. I’m weak and fading. It wouldn’t take much. Instead, I crawl around the basement looking for something, anything I can use to cut my bonds.
A chirping sound splits the air. It’s Albert’s mobile phone. I follow the chirp and find his phone on the boom box next to the sofa bed. I pick it up and sag to my knees. I feel as weak as water. I don’t have much time left. I hang up on the caller and dial Phil’s personal phone number. It takes three tries. I’m losing consciousness and having trouble hitting the numbers.
“Yes?” It’s Phil’s voice. Confused because he doesn’t recognize the caller ID.
“Phil.” I can’t help it. I say his name like I just found Jesus.
“Bobbi?” There’s alarm in his voice. “Where are you?”
“Phil.” I try to collect my thoughts. “I’m at Albert’s.” It takes forever to say it. My mouth isn’t working right. “Albert Larson.”
“The security guy?”
“He’s the seventh, Phil.” I glance at his body, a few feet away. I make my lips work. “I think he’s dead.” Deep breath. “I’m not doing too well either.”
I have to lie on the floor. The tunnel vision is starting again. I think this will be the last of it. The last of everything. But at least I went down fighting. I wonder if my dad would forgive me for being queer if he knew I died like this.
“Where are you, Bobbi?” Phil’s voice is frantic. Oh, God, how sweet. He cares! I want to tell him where I am, but I don’t really know, and it would take so many words to say it. I just can’t.
30
I’M FLOATING, LIGHTER than air, weightless and free. I’ve never felt so serene. I smile luxuriously and stretch my body. The comfort of it is sublime. My body feels trim and petite, toned and soft. I’m glowing with beauty. Large eyes, thick lashes, full lips. I have the voice of an angel, hushed and sweet. I’m wearing a flowing gown that ripples in the breeze and makes me feel like a goddess. Its satin softness strokes my body like the whispers of a gentle lover. I can see how graceful it makes me look, my neck elegant and curved, and my tiny feet adorned with scarlet nail polish, so easily bearing my weight as I dance and bend.
There are interruptions. A loud bang like a cannon firing, thundering feet on stairs, voices, a ride on the clouds. Dings and high-tech beeps. More voices. Everything fades.
I’m either dead or dying. It doesn’t matter which. I’m here and it feels good. It’s much easier than living.
I try to remember what happened before I started floating, but everything seems to be just offstage, and I can’t see it. I’ll miss Roberta. I can see her little face. I remember talking to her when she was in Betsy’s womb. I can see her tears now and feel my own. I’ll miss Betsy, my darling Betsy, whom I have loved every way a human can love a human.
I’ll miss Cecelia. I feel so bad about leaving her. The only way I could ever repay her kindness and love was to be there for her when advancing age attacked her vigor and freedom. I was to be her eyes and arms and legs, the escort who kept her mobile and engaged in the world for as long as she was in it. I apologize to her for failing to be there.
And Phil, sweet Phil. Oh, for one more kiss. One more downy touch. One last I love you, spoken in a lover’s breathless voice. May you be forever happy.
I miss you all.
My eyes blink open. It scares me. I thought they were already open. Light shines in so bright I close them again, and go through a peek-and-close sequence until I can tolerate the light. Sun is streaming through a window, even though a thin curtain covers it. I hear the purrs and beeps of hospital machinery, and the sound of someone being paged.
A woman stands beside me, adjusting an IV fluid bag on the stand next to the bed. Her movements are precise and fast, her small hands practiced and sure. She has dark hair and brown skin, Asian, Filipino, maybe.
“Where am I?” I ask it, but it takes forever to get out the words. My lips are thick and sore and it hurts to move them.
She doesn’t hear me. No surprise. I could barely hear me myself.
“Am I alive?” I try again, louder this time.
The nurse stops what she’s doing and bends to my level. She smiles. “Yes,” she says. “You are alive.”
“Oh,” I say. I sound disappointed. I am. My face hurts, all of it. I must look like a ghoul.
My adventures with Albert come rushing back to me. The beatings. The sensory deprivation. The humiliation. Him wanting to destroy my face and doing it. I wonder if I killed him. I want to ask, but I don’t have the energy and I’m falling asleep anyway.
My face throbs as if I’d been hit a hundred times by the great Mike Tyson. It’s the pain that wakens me. The light isn’t so bright this time. I open my eyes and try to look around. My whole body is stiff and sore. Wires crisscross my anatomy like the strands of a spiderweb. I raise one hand to feel my face.
It’s a mess. My left eye is so swollen my vision is impaired. My lower jaw and both cheekbones are tender lumps of ruined flesh. There’s tape on the bridge of my nose and ointments on my puffy skin, and I can feel scabs everywhere. I can only feel with the tips of my fingers. The rest of the fingers and both hands are swathed in bandages.
“About time you woke up.” It’s Cecelia. I can hear her stand up from a chair off to my side. I turn my head painfully. She looms over the side of the bed. She’s smiling. It’s her mom-sister-I-love-you smile. She’s also worried.
Her eyes are moist. This is Cecelia’s secret tender side that few people ever see.
“Shouldn’t you be holding my hand?” It hurts to form the words, but it’s fun, too.
Cecelia pats my hand. “Just a sec. Don’t go anywhere,” she says. She pecks out a number on her cell phone.
“She’s awake,” Cecelia says.
She listens for a moment.
“Well, she won’t be playing football for a while.” Cecelia smiles as she says it.
She hangs up. “Betsy and Roberta will be here in a few minutes. They’re just finishing lunch.”
“Lunch?” The concept of time has been far from my mind until now. “What day is it?”
“It’s Friday, honey.” Cecelia straightens my sheets and finds a wire-free space on my arm to pat me comfortingly. “They brought you in yesterday afternoon. You’ve been out of it most of the time since then.”
“I must look awful.”
“Well, I don’t want to make you feel bad, but if you kissed a prince right now, he’d turn into a frog.”
“Really? That bad?”
“You don’t want to look in a mirror for a while.” Cecelia’s being funny, but she’s being candid, too. I look as bad as I thought I did.
“Is it permanent?”
“They won’t tell us,” says Cecelia. “We don’t have legal standing, which, by the way, is the first thing you’re going to deal with when you get out of here. Someone has to have power of attorney, and you should designate someone to run your business, all that.”
I groan. “My God, the salon.”
“Don’t worry,” says Cecelia. “Jalela has it running like a clock. They’re all worried about you.”
“You’ve been in touch with Jalela?”
“Of course, Bobbi. I stop in every day in case she needs help on the business side, and she has my phone number. You’ve got friends, kid.”
I try not to tear up. When I’m back in control of my emotions, I ask for the information I’ve been dreading.
“Did Albert make it?”
“Albert got what he deserved.” Cecelia says it with the kind of cold-hearted defiance she wants me to feel about it.
“I killed him?”
“He got himself killed.” There’s real anger in Cecelia’s voice. “He kidnapped you. He kept you tied up. He tortured you. He starved you. When they got you in here, you had cuts and bruises on every part of your body, you were dehydrated, your face looked like you’d been hit by a truck. The nurse said it was a miracle you survived.”
“I killed him.” I’m still trying to comprehend that. It’s not that I feel guilty. Cecelia’s right: the only way out of there was over his dead body. But still, to know you’ve killed someone, to know you have that in you, it’s not an easy revelation to absorb. Bobbi Logan, queer. Bobbi Logan, hairdresser. Aunt. Sister. Business owner. Bobbi Logan, killer.
Jesus.
Betsy and Roberta come in the room. I turn to greet them, the motion coming easier now.
Roberta’s face transforms quickly from eager anticipation to shock as she sees the condition of my face. Tears form.
“It’s okay, Princess,” I tell her. I want to reach out and touch her, but my mummy-wrapped hands might just make things worse.
“It’s all going to heal just fine,” I say. I don’t know that, of course, but the fib helps take the edge off Roberta’s experience, seeing me like this.
She looks at me again, and smiles this time. “Does it hurt?”
“Only when I laugh.” I laugh when I say it. Roberta does, too.
“Wow, Aunt Bobbi, we’re going to need a lot of makeup for you!” Roberta exclaims. Betsy tries to shush her while I try to bear the pain of laughter.
“I’ve got just the niece to do it,” I say.
Betsy bends over me to place a kiss on my forehead, then softly on my lips.
“That’s love,” I say.
“What?”
“Kissing these lips. Cecelia says they’d turn a man into a frog.”
Betsy shoots a faux-angry glance at Cecelia. “That’s so cruel. A raccoon maybe, not an amphibian.”
Roberta takes my bandaged hand softly in her own. “I think you’re beautiful, Aunt Bobbi,” she says.
She’s going to be the first woman pope someday, or maybe just go straight to sainthood. I try to blink back tears.
Betsy softly dabs my eyes and kisses me again. “I think your face is going to heal okay,” she says.
We engage in friendly banter for a few minutes. I want to ask about Phil, but I don’t want to sound pathetic. Albert accomplished what he set out to do. I don’t believe Betsy’s assurances for a minute. I will look like a monster for the rest of my life. Not only won’t I have the affections of Phil to wish for, I won’t even be able to get laid by desperate men looking for a cheap thrill.
“How did they find me?” I ask, moving on to a different question.
“You called Phil,” says Cecelia. “He took it from there.”
“But I didn’t know where I was.”
“You told him Albert’s place, and you called on Albert’s phone. He figured out the address and they had a SWAT team roll in there.” Cecelia is very impressed with Phil’s actions. Me, too.
“So, he’s seen me? Like this?” My heart sinks.
“Stop it, Bobbi,” says Betsy. “You’re going to recover. You’re going to be fine.”
“You know this?” I ask. “How?”
I desperately want her to say a doctor told her so, but she doesn’t.
“I have faith,” she says.
Phil is the first cop in the room. Cecelia texted him when I woke up, a prior agreement. Cecelia, Betsy, and Roberta leave, promising to come back later.
“How are you feeling?” Phil asks.
“Like a mutant suffering from whiplash,” I answer. I add a brave smile.
“You took quite a beating, but the docs say you’ll have a full recovery.”
“How do you know that?” I ask.
“I’m a cop. I know everything.”
“Tom Selleck, the Jesse Stone mysteries.” I cite the source of the line he’s paraphrasing. We used to watch Selleck’s productions of those movies when we were an item, snuggled together on the couch, me feeling the rise and fall of his breathing, the warmth of his body against mine. Me feeling like a loved woman.
“Good one,” Phil says.
“So you don’t know?”
“I do know. The doctor told me. It’s okay. I’m a cop. I had a need to know.”
Somewhere deep inside, relief floods over my anxieties. Maybe my life will go on after all.
He explains that a couple of detectives will be here in a minute to take my statement.
“Tell them everything you remember,” he says. “Don’t worry about getting some stuff wrong—it happens when people survive the kind of trauma you did. You’re not a suspect. You’re a marvel. Everyone who saw the scene was talking about you.”
I smile, hoping it doesn’t scare him.
He leans over and kisses me softly on the lips.
“Could you do that harder?” I ask.
“Won’t it hurt?”
“I’ll be brave,” I say.
His kiss is long and delicious. My mind flutters with romantic images: flowers, autumn colors, long embraces, watching movies together.
When it ends and Phil starts to make way for the detectives, I hold him back for one more beat.
“I killed him, Phil,” I say.
He nods, yes.
“How do I live with that?”
He nods again, his eyes sad. “You learn,” he says.
I’m able to piece together the whole time with Albert for the detectives, starting with the drugged drink. I think they’re impressed, but their expressions never change. It’s like they’re at a funeral, or maybe a really bad movie.
“Any questions we can answer for you?” The lead cop asks it. It’s a pro-forma question, their exit line.
&
nbsp; “Where am I?” I’ve been conscious all afternoon and it finally dawns on me I don’t know where I am.
“You’re at Holy Cross Hospital,” the lead detective tells me. “It was the closest ER,” he explains.
“Where was Albert’s place?” I ask.
“Near Midway Airport,” he answers. No extra information like street address.
“He’s dead?” I make it a question, hoping the detective will fill in the blanks I have. He doesn’t. The detective just nods, yes.
“How did he die?” This is like pulling teeth.
“We don’t have an official cause of death yet, but it looked like he had a crushed windpipe. You have a good arm.”
“Two of them, actually,” I say. The detective scowls at me. These guys have no sense of humor whatsoever.
After they leave, a doctor comes in. She’s a hospitalist. She’s been talking with my doctor who doesn’t admit here. They’ve agreed I can go home tonight if I can stay with someone. I’ll stay with Betsy and Roberta; Cecelia will drive me.
Before the doctor leaves, I ask her about my face. She gives me a clinical recitation of all the cuts and bruises and swelling they found when I was admitted.
“Broken bones?” I ask.
“Just your nose,” she says. “It was almost sideways when you came in. Don’t worry, we set it and it should heal just fine if you can avoid fistfights for a while.” She smiles when she says it. A breakthrough.
“My jaw? Cheekbones?” I ask.
“Not even a loose tooth,” she says. “If you didn’t believe in miracles before, you should now.”
She leaves before I can ask if she’s been talking to Cecelia.
Betsy has Phil over for dinner. I drink mine—a protein shake and pureed vegetables blended with V8 Juice. The thought of chewing something is too painful to consider.
“Why did that man do that to you?” Roberta asks when the conversation lulls.
I glance at Betsy for guidance. The violence of my experience would be more traumatic to her than a pornographic movie right now.