by Harley Fox
“Well well well. I fucking knew it.”
Marc
My eyes fly open to the sound of somebody yelling.
It echoes all around, a loud, booming sound, and for a crazy moment I think it’s the voice of God. But then I recognize it: Edward. A second later I realize that Persephone’s not lying next to me, and a second after that is when I put it all together.
He’s got her. He’s finally going to kill her.
Without thinking, without any consideration to repercussions at all, I jump out of bed, grab my gun out of its holster, and leave my corner.
“You fucking bitch! How do you explain this!”
“I was—AUGH!”
“Come here!”
A struggle, the sound of feet on metal, and I point my gun upward. I can see two shadowy figures moving around up on the platform. They’re fighting against one another. One is leading, while the other is being led.
Just then, the overhead lights all flick on and my vision of the two of them is gone.
“What’s going on?”
Julian’s voice.
“Stop struggling!” From up above.
“Let go of me!”
I find myself in the common area, where the clearing of wooden crates gives me a better view of the stairs leading up. The struggling figures make their way to the top of the stairs and I raise my gun up, aiming. I see Edward leading the way, pulling Persephone by her hair. She’s trying to pull back but is having no success. I follow them with my gun, my heart hammering, debating whether to shoot. Halfway down the stairs Edward turns and sees me. He looks directly at me, my gun aimed right at his head … but he just keeps on walking.
“Marc!” My gun stays where it is while my head snaps to the side to see Rebekka and Julian come into the common area too. “What’s going on? You’re naked!”
“Edward’s got Persephone,” I answer, as though that clears everything up. We three of us watch the struggling couple disappear behind wooden crates at the bottom of the stairs. Persephone didn’t look hurt. Just captured. Still, I keep my gun up and when she and Edward show up in the common area I have it aimed directly at his head.
He sees me first. His eyes give my naked body a quick once-over and he grimaces.
“Here,” he says, yanking Persephone by the hair and shoving her toward me. “Take your fucking traitorous whore.”
Persephone stumbles and lands into me, her hands grabbing onto my body to stabilize herself. I drop one arm to encircle her, but keep the gun on Edward.
“What’s going on?”
“You’d best lower that pea-shooter, boy. Unless you wanna wind up dead.”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
“I caught her,” Edward spits. “Up there. Red-handed. She was trying to wreck the air conditioner, leave us all in the lurch.”
“No I wasn’t!” Persephone yells by my side, and I give her a squeeze with the arm that’s around her.
“Oh yeah?” Edward yells back. “Then what were you doing up there with this?”
He throws something onto the ground where it lands with a clang in front of me. I drop my eyes to it and see the monkey wrench. So far I’ve been following along, but this is the first time that my brain has trouble making the connection fit.
“I was trying to fix it!” Persephone yells back, and I feel that connection strengthen. “It was broken, and I wanted to fix it. As a goodbye.”
“Is that so?” Edward sneers. “Then tell me, pretty lady: how do you fix an air conditioner?”
I’m looking forward to the answer, looking forward to that connection cementing itself in my mind. But Persephone doesn’t answer, and I feel it start to wriggle loose.
“Go on,” Edward goads. “Tell us. In fact, you don’t even have to name any parts. Just tell us how, using only a monkey wrench, you could fix that size of an air conditioner?”
The connection is weakening. With every passing second, I feel it fizzle and short out in my brain. Why was Persephone up there with a monkey wrench? And then I look down at her, and her face is a mix of anger and frustration and something else. Embarrassment. She’s got tears in her eyes.
“All right, fine!” she finally says, pulling away from me. “Fine, I was going to ruin it. But that was before I got here! Not tonight! Before I got to know you!”
I blink at her. My gun is no longer pointing at Edward, but I don’t remember lowering it. She’s stepping away from me, away from all of us, but she’s trapped, trapped in this makeshift room of contraband.
“Wait,” I hear myself say. “You mean … that first night when we were on the catwalk? That’s why you were up there?”
She looks at me with apology in her eyes, and yet still I just don’t seem to understand.
“But you said you couldn’t sleep.”
“Hook, line, and sinker, boy,” Edward says. “I told you. That’s why she knocked that crate over today. It was when I said I was gonna go check on the unit. She didn’t want me to find that wrench.”
I wait for Persephone to correct him, to contradict him … but she doesn’t say a thing.
“Jesus Christ,” Julian says, and I look over at him and Rebekka, forgetting that they were there. Rebekka’s shaking her head. “All that work lost. All that frustration!” Julian is yelling now. “And for what? Just so you could drive a wedge between all of us? Is that why you broke Rebekka and me up?”
“Wait, what?” Rebekka says, looking at Julian now. “We’re not broken up. I said I wanted to take a break. Fuck, Julian, I just needed some space!”
“If you needed space, then why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Because you’re so hard to talk to!”
And off they go, fighting, caught in their own world. I turn back to Edward, who looks smug about all this.
“She can’t be trusted,” he says in a calm voice, despite the arguing from Julian and Rebekka. “I would suggest handcuffing her to her cot again, but who knows? She might try to burn the place down. No, we’ll have to stay up and watch her. Until the contact comes.” He lets out a sigh. “I’m going to make some coffee.”
He leaves me and Persephone alone together, with an arguing couple on the other side of the common area. I look at her. She looks back at me.
“Marc …” she says, but nothing else.
“Is it true?” I still can’t believe it. “You were planning on wrecking the air conditioner?”
Again, she doesn’t say anything. She blinks and two tears roll out.
“But … that would have fucked us completely. I mean … I even told you, when I … is it because of what I told you, when I showed you around? Is that why you …?”
She doesn’t say anything as more tears fall down. But this time she nods.
“I’m sorry,” she croaks. “I didn’t … I mean, this was before I really got to know you. And I—”
“I didn’t handcuff you.” The memory comes back to me. “You said it was because you had trouble getting to sleep. But … it was to do that.”
Persephone starts to say something, but I shake my head. Either I can’t hear it or I don’t want to hear it. I don’t know which.
“I need … to go for a walk.”
And without saying anything else to Persephone, or to Julian or Rebekka, I turn and leave the common area. Part of me thinks Persephone’s going to chase after me, tell me to stop, that this was all just a big game or misunderstanding and that none of this is real. But that doesn’t happen. I blink when I find myself at the door leading outside. I push on the handle and step out.
It’s cold. I’m harshly reminded of the fact that I’m naked, and holding a metal gun with nowhere to put it. But it’s refreshing, too. Invigorating. I can see my breath. And I can see the stars.
The stars. They make me think of the conversation I had with Persephone up on the balcony outside. About appreciation. How some people are fine with just a replica of an experience, like going traveling or seeing the stars. But for those
people who’ve actually experienced it, they know it’s not the same.
I think about Persephone. All the connections I’ve had—the women I’ve fucked, the ones who’ve told me they’ve never met anybody else like me—they’d been fake. Maybe not entirely fake, but they weren’t the real thing. And maybe I knew that, going into them. I’d certainly been fine with it. It hadn’t stopped me from living the way I liked to live.
But now … now Persephone has shown me something. Something I didn’t even think was possible. I knew no other relationship would ever be the same, but the dumb thing is, I actually hadn’t considered any other relationships after this one. Whenever I thought of my future, even though it doesn’t make sense, I thought of it with Persephone in mind.
And now … it’s all fake. She didn’t mean it. She was just out to fuck us over. What about the connection we had? What about what she told me, about her past? Was that all a lie too? Did she make everything up to get in my good books? Did she even want to sleep with me that first time? Or did she go along with it because she’d almost been caught?
I’m out here for who knows how long, and by the time I go back inside the cold of the night has penetrated all the way down into my bones.
It’s quiet in here. I guess Rebekka and Julian have stopped fighting. I head over to my corner, both to drop off my gun and to put on some clothes. When I go back to the common area everyone’s there. Edward’s standing, holding a cup of coffee. Julian and Rebekka are sitting in chairs away from each other, not talking, not even looking each other’s way. Persephone is sitting at the table in the center, alone. She’s got her hands in her lap, and from where I’m standing I can see the handcuffs back on her ankles and wrists.
She looks up when I walk in.
“Marc—” she says, but she’s cut off by Edward.
“Shut up,” he snaps. Still, that doesn’t stop her.
“Marc, I’m sorry.” She isn’t crying anymore, but she doesn’t try to get out of her chair. Instead I take a few steps toward her, not quite reaching her.
“Were you lying?” I ask her, in a voice low enough that only she can hear.
“What?” Her voice is equally low. “No. About what?”
“Your past. Everything that you said, when you were growing up. Was it a lie just to keep me happy?”
“No,” she says, and I can tell from her eyes that she’s sincere. “Marc, that wasn’t a lie. I was telling you the truth.”
I can’t tell if that makes me feel better or worse. I nod.
“I had to go back up to get that monkey wrench,” she whispers to me. “If I didn’t, somebody would have found it and they would have realized it was me who left it there and then they would have blamed you. Marc, I wasn’t trying to wreck the air conditioner. I wanted to make sure I didn’t get you in trouble!”
This could be a lie. What has she got to lose? I don’t say anything. Instead I walk away from her to the other common area entrance, near where Edward is standing.
“She’s trouble,” Edward says to me as I make to pass. I stop instead. He shakes his head and takes a sip of coffee. “I don’t blame you, boy, wanting to get your dick wet in a piece like that. But you don’t ever let your feelings get the better of you. You understand me? Honestly. I thought you were smarter than that.”
I don’t respond. Instead I leave, heading to the kitchen area, intent on making my own cup of coffee.
The hours pass by slowly. Nobody speaks. Every now and again either Rebekka or Julian will get up and leave, and the other will inevitably follow. But they come back separately, their eyes red and puffy. They’ll sit away from one another, not talking.
Persephone doesn’t move from her spot. She doesn’t try to explain her way out of it again, or even try to talk to me. At some point she starts nodding off to sleep, although I can tell she’s trying to stay awake. Without really thinking about it, I go into the kitchen and make another cup of coffee and then take it back and place it on the table in front of her. The sound of the mug hitting the table makes her snap awake, and she looks up at me. Neither of us say anything, but I walk away, and when I do I see Edward watching me. Persephone uses both hands to lift the mug to her lips and take a sip.
Daybreak comes. I don’t know what time the contact is coming. Edward never said an hour, just “morning.” The hours pass. Julian gets himself some breakfast, and so do Edward and Rebekka. I don’t feel hungry, however. Persephone doesn’t say anything one way or the other.
And then, finally, we hear three hard knocks on the warehouse door.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“That’d be them,” Edward says, and he puts down his bowl of oatmeal to go receive our contact and client. Persephone’s awake now, but she’s still not talking. I feel like I should say something, but I don’t know what. This is the last I’ll ever see of her. So why does it feel like a part of me is leaving with her?
Mumbled voices float through the warehouse, and then silence as shoes scuff on the concrete. Edward appears in the entrance followed by our contact and nobody else. I’m about to ask if the client is still waiting outside when Persephone’s voice suddenly jumps from her lips.
“What the fuck?” she says, and when I look at her I see she’s staring at our contact. “What’re you doing here?”
A condescending smile creeps up over Dr. Coolidge’s lips.
“I’m here to do a business transaction,” she says to a flabbergasted Persephone. “And it sounds like you’re here to fuck hot men and ruin your future.”
“You two know each other?” I ask.
“She’s my fucking supervisor.”
I stare at her. “The one who hates you?”
“Hates you?” Dr. Coolidge says, sounding honestly surprised. “Well, I’d never thought of it that way before. But ‘hate’ is such a boorish word. How about despise? That sounds much better.”
“I can’t believe you’re their contact,” Persephone says.
“Hey!” Edward cuts in. “Shut up!” He turns to Dr. Coolidge. “Sorry. She’s been a bit of a bitch lately.”
“So I’ve heard. Don’t worry. I brought the blindfold you requested.”
“Hey, is the client outside?” Julian pipes in.
“No,” Dr. Coolidge says. “I told Edward already, but he couldn’t make it today.”
“Well, it’s a tricky situation, considering,” Edward says. “When can we expect him?”
“Well now, that’s the part I haven’t told you. Our client says that due to the lack of professionalism, he’ll only be willing to buy what you’ve got for half of the agreed-upon price.”
I can tell Edward doesn’t like that at all.
“Half the price? For what? A little delay?”
“Delay, the police getting involved. Everything. This little one’s stunt of working late trying to impress me,” she looks down at Persephone with something like disgust and I get a sudden urge to punch her in the face, “ended up ruining lots of things for everyone.”
Edward suddenly snaps, as though the stress of everything is finally getting to him.
“RRAARGH!!!”
He wheels around and kicks one of the wooden crates, succeeding in breaking a hole in its side. Wood shavings spill out, and when he spins around again he pulls his gun out of his holster and points it right at Persephone.
Everybody immediately reacts. Both Dr. Coolidge and I yell, “No!” while Rebekka and Julian just yell. Persephone cringes, but she doesn’t cower in her seat. She stares the gun right down the barrel.
“I should kill you!”
“No, Edward, don’t!” Dr. Coolidge says, her voice carrying amid the commotion. “I need her. Alive. She’s the only way I’ll be able to prove to the police that she’s all right to get them off of my back.”
This seems to reach him. Edward hesitates a moment, the gun pointing right between Persephone’s eyes, and then he lowers it.
“Fine,” he says, reaching into his pocket and handing Dr. Cooli
dge the keys to the cuffs. “Just get this fucking bitch out of my sight. I never want to see her or hear from her again.”
“With pleasure,” Dr. Coolidge says. She stows the keys in her purse, then pulls out a black ribbon. I look at Persephone, and she looks up at me right before Coolidge wraps the band around her head, covering her eyes.
“Hold still,” she says as she ties it.
Persephone looks like a real prisoner now. I stand there, watching all of this happen.
“Come on, you,” Coolidge says, and she yanks Persephone to her feet. But with the lack of sight and the two sets of handcuffs, Persephone’s having trouble walking.
“Here, wait,” Rebekka says. “I’ll help.”
So she comes forward and takes Persephone’s hand, helping to lead her. And that’s the last I see of her: blindfold over her eyes, being led by two women, Persephone stumbling her way forward out of the common area, and out of my life.
Persephone
Well, this is probably one of the worst things that’s ever happened to me.
A set of hands on my upper arm—Rebekka’s—helps me not trip over my own feet as I try to shuffle through the warehouse.
“Just a bit more … that’s it. Okay, we’re at the door now.”
A creak of metal, and then a blast of dry heat. I wince behind the black ribbon as I’m led out onto the sand, its heat radiating up through my shoes. It’s funny how my other senses already seem heightened now that one of them has been taken away.
Taken away. There’s that tightness in my throat again. The one I promised myself I wouldn’t let manifest into tears while I sat at that fucking table, having to sit for hours awaiting my fate.
I just hope I can keep them down for the ride back, too.
The sound of a car door opening reaches my ears, and a hand places itself on top of my head.
“Here you go,” comes Rebekka’s voice as I sidle into the passenger seat of a car. I lift both legs up at the same time and swing them in.
“Are you going to undo the handcuffs?” I ask.
“Don’t you worry.” Dr. Coolidge’s voice this time. “I’ll take care of that.”