by Harley Fox
My first thought is I’m going to die. And then my second thought, just before the door slams shut, is So what?
Muffled voices make their way to my ears, but even with my slightly more acute sense of hearing, I can’t make out what they’re saying. The conversation is short though, and then a span of silence before the door to my left opens and the car shifts under the weight of the woman climbing in next to me. It shuts. The sounds of metal sliding into metal, and then the engine starts, the transmission shifts, and we’re away.
I’m breathing through my mouth. I have to, to keep myself from sobbing. I wasn’t even doing anything this time. I was trying to fix it so Marc …
Ah, what’s the use? It doesn’t matter anymore. Marc is gone. All of this is done. I’m going back to my old life now. No, wait. My old life with the minor change of being moved to some random museum, wherever it is. I have no idea. It might be some small one-room place in the middle of Buttfuck, Nowhere. What does it matter anymore? Even just the thought of going back to that life makes me feel sick.
“This is awful,” I say out loud. “Everything. How could you do this?”
Dr. Coolidge doesn’t respond. The road—if there even is a road—is making the car lurch up and down. I have a feeling we’re just driving over sand dunes right now.
“Seriously, how can you do this? How can you be a part of … of antiquities smuggling?”
Again, no response.
“Hello? Can you even hear me?”
Click. The radio suddenly turns on, but instead of anything resembling music, all I hear is static. Loud, blaring static. Click. KSHHHHHHH. Click. KSHHHHHHH. Welcome to Desert Radio. All Static, All The Time.
Click. It turns off. But still, she doesn’t say anything. I decide not to either. What’s the point in trying to talk to someone like Dr. Coolidge anyway? If she doesn’t bite my head off, she’ll probably just lie.
So instead I sit. Staring at nothing. The blindfold is forcing my eyelids down, so they’re closed. I can open them a bit, and when I do I can just make out my hands in my lap, silver bracelets adorning both wrists, connected by a chain. I can tilt my head back and see a blurry version of the glove compartment, but that’s when the back of my head hits the headrest and I can’t go any further. I could try tilting it back more to see out the windshield, but then Dr. Coolidge would surely notice. And besides, what, am I going to spend hours with my back arched and my head tilted back, trying to see where we’re going? No.
So I let my eyes close again. I guess I could take off the blindfold. Lift my hands up and slip it off. But then I still have the cuffs. And there’s nothing stopping her from stopping the car and … just leaving me out in the desert, I guess. I’d never considered that before. That she could kill me. She wouldn’t, though. Would she?
“Are we going back to town?” I ask.
No response. I let a few seconds go by, but hear nothing.
“Because I know I’ve been gone for a while … for almost a week … but there are some people there who are expecting me back, and if I’m not there …”
Again, no response. And it’s now that I remember Dr. Coolidge telling Edward back in the warehouse not to shoot me. She said she needs me to prove to the cops that I’m still alive so they’ll get off her back. She’s not going to leave me in the desert to die.
So I stop talking. It doesn’t seem to matter anyway. Dr. Coolidge isn’t saying anything. I relax back in my seat. It’s hot in here. Already I’m sweating through my clothes.
“Any chance you can open a window?” I ask her. “Or put on the … the air-conditioning?” I have to choke out the phrase, my throat tightening again. “It’s really hot.”
No response, and I’m about to slump back in my seat, but then I hear a click and the familiar rush of artificially cold air turns the sweat on my skin to ice.
“Thanks.”
Now the only sound between us is the sound of air blowing out of the vents in the car. It’s marginally more comfortable in here. The ground has leveled out so we’re either on flat sand or the road now.
“So seriously,” I try again, “why are you helping out with this smuggling antiquities stuff?” Dr. Coolidge doesn’t respond, but the cold air is invigorating me, so I go on. “It’s bad. It’s bad for the museums, and bad for the people. Think about it. You’re taking something away from the people who are paying money to go appreciate. Doesn’t that make you feel bad about yourself?”
“You think they appreciate it?” Dr. Coolidge’s first words. “Those people don’t care. The fat sacks who take their families there on the weekend, who spend more time in the gift shop than in the museum itself? They don’t care. You’d get more interest out of them if you put a Twinkie on display. No. They’re only there to waste their time and get out of the house. They wouldn’t care if what they were looking at is fake or not. It doesn’t matter to them.”
“I think you’re wrong,” I tell her. “When I tour those school groups, the looks in the kids’ eyes when I tell them that what they’re looking at is five thousand years old? That matters. That makes an impact. If I had to tell them that what they were looking at was some plaster cast, it wouldn’t mean the same thing.”
“The same kids who are on their phones all the time? The same kids who are more busy making out with each other behind displays than they are in actually paying attention?”
“Well, sure, not everyone is perfect. Or is going to act the way you want them to. But does that mean you have to take it away from everybody?”
She doesn’t respond. I stare at the blackness of the backs of my eyelids, waiting. But she doesn’t respond.
Finally I slump back in my seat. At least I’m not feeling so overheated anymore. My mind wanders to the massive air conditioner at the top of the warehouse. I can’t imagine what would have happened if I’d actually broken it like I intended to. Everything in there would have been ruined. Just cooked alive.
In fact, with the air-conditioning and lack of light, my body is actually starting to relax. I’m sure that if my eyes weren’t already closed, they’d be starting to get heavy. It’s like my muscles are melting into the seat. My breathing becomes more regular, and behind my eyelids I see visions, swirls of image and color.
Marc. He’s there, the first thing I see. His smile, his eyes, and his face. He walks toward me. His strong arms wrap around me. I can actually feel him. Maybe this is reality, and the whole blindfold/car thing was the dream.
“I know you didn’t mean it,” he says in my ear, whispered words that seem to come all at once.
“What?” I say, and I say it out loud, jerking myself awake. I’m in a car, and I can feel it moving under me. I blink my closed eyes and feel wetness behind them. There’s no response from Dr. Coolidge, though. Not even when I lift my hands to wipe the tears from my eyes.
I breathe the tiredness away from me. Now that I’ve broken the seal of sleep, it’s all my body wants to do. It occurs to me that I was up all night. Of course I’m sleepy. I feel my body start to relax, despite my best efforts to stop it. It’s like I’m melting into the comfortably warm seat.
This time it’s Edward facing me. But unlike Marc, he’s not smiling. He’s got a gun in his hand. Behind him is the warehouse, the air conditioner broken, all the wooden crates melting into light brown puddles on the ground. And then a spark catches and this liquid wood suddenly catches fire, and Edward starts laughing right before he points the gun in my direction and pulls the trigger.
BANG!
“Ah!”
This time I shout myself awake, my entire body spasming in the seat of the car.
“Whoa!” comes Dr. Coolidge’s voice. “Settle down!”
My heart is pounding. “Sorry,” I say without thinking.
I’m breathing heavily. I can hear the low hum of the tires. Does that mean we’re on an actual road now? How long was I asleep? I have no way of telling, and I know Dr. Coolidge won’t tell me.
I urge myself t
o stay awake, sitting up more straight in the seat, giving my head a shake every now and again. But even so, soon enough my head starts drooping and before I know it I start seeing things, visions of Marc, of Edward, of Rebekka and Julian and even of Kiara and Henry and all the rest. They dissolve in and out of my mind, telling me things that I immediately forget. The one I never want to leave is Marc. But he’s gone quicker than the others. And every now and again I jerk awake and sometimes yell something. Dr. Coolidge never says anything, and it’s not long after that that I’m back asleep, swimming between fantasy and reality.
And then at one point I’m jerked awake by the feeling of the car coming to a stop. I open my eyes—or, rather, open them a crack before remembering and closing them again—and feel the transmission shift and the engine cut out and then the driver-side door open and close. And then there are footsteps. Coming around the front of the car. I can’t hear anything else. No other cars, no people talking, nothing.
My door opens and a second later the blindfold is slipped off of my head, and I open my eyes but the light is blinding and I have to close them again.
“Augh,” I say, squinting. I can only make out vague, blurry shapes. It actually hurts to see. A thought runs through my mind: Is this what it’s like for newborns? But I keep blinking, and the images start to sharpen and form themselves into Dr. Coolidge frowning down into my face. Behind her is the edge of a city, surrounded by desert. I turn my head and see a long stretch of desolate highway in front of us leading into town.
“Okay, listen,” she says. “We’re almost there. Which means I need to take off your cuffs.”
I smack my mouth. It tastes sour.
“How long have we been driving?”
She gives me an angry look for a few seconds before replying: “Five hours.”
I blink up at her, but don’t respond.
“Taking off the cuffs,” she goes on, “doesn’t mean you’re free yet. I just don’t want to have to answer any annoying questions when we get back into town.”
“You mean like how I was kidnapped against my will and kept prisoner for five days and then I was kidnapped again to go back? You mean annoying questions like that?”
“Do you want to be driven back into town?” Dr. Coolidge asks me. “Or do you want to walk back?”
I glare up at her, and then look out at the town. It actually looks farther away now than it did a minute ago. I turn back to her but don’t say anything. She nods.
“That’s what I thought. Once I take off these cuffs, you are going to behave. We’re going to drive into town, to the museum, where the police are still hanging around like annoying insects. You’re going to tell them how you decided five days ago to go on an impromptu trip without telling anyone, in order to get away from the stresses of your job. And how you called me and asked me to come and pick you up.”
“Why should I lie for you?”
“Because if you don’t and if you decide to tell them the truth about what happened, you can kiss your little boyfriend Marc Anthony goodbye. He’ll most certainly go to jail. And for an escaped convict like him, I’m guessing it won’t be one of those minimum-security places. It’ll be the kind of place where you either get raped or get killed.”
Oh my God. I’ve never heard Dr. Coolidge talk like that. But she’s not wrong. Her words cut into me, and my heart hurts thinking about what would inevitably happen to Marc if I turned him in.
So I nod. “All right. I’ll behave.”
Dr. Coolidge gives me another glare, as though trying to figure out if this is a trick, but eventually she does unlock my cuffs. I don’t try to attack her or run away or anything. Because after all, where would I run to? And how can I prove anything to the police without implicating Marc? It’s over. I just have to accept that my old life and my five-day-long temporary life are both over. I’ll be starting a new one soon enough, at a different museum, in a different place. I just need to finish the chapter of this one first.
Dr. Coolidge shuts the passenger door and walks around to her side, climbing in. She puts the cuffs in her purse and starts the car back up, pulling us back onto the highway. Now that I can see, I realize that reality doesn’t look so great. We drive into town and go through the familiar streets, the place that I’ve been calling my most recent home. I feel like an intruder. A tourist. Even though I recognize everything, I realize now that it’s like I’ve never really settled.
We drive up to the museum, and Dr. Coolidge parks up next to the sidewalk. I try to open my door but can’t. She’s put the child safety on the locks. That’s understandable. She turns off the car and gets out, walking around, opening the door for me and letting me out. I get up, my body stiff from the long ride. She shuts the door behind me and power locks the car.
“Come on.”
I’m led up the stairs to the front doors where we go in. It’s so familiar yet strange, like I’m going through childhood toys I found up an in attic that I completely forgot I had.
Past the line to buy admission, past the ticket-takers who nod to us as we walk in. Dr. Coolidge leads me through the main foyer to the cafeteria, where two police officers are sitting, having a coffee. She marches me right up to the table and when we stop the officers look up at us.
“Here,” Dr. Coolidge says to them. “Here she is, safe and sound. Just like I told you.”
The officers stand up, both of them, and from that point on it’s all business. They speak into the walkie-talkies up near their shoulders and sit me down and start asking me questions. And I answer them just like I told Dr. Coolidge I would. I was stressed. I needed an escape. Yes, it was irresponsible of me. Yes, I know, I should have told somebody I was going somewhere. But I guess I didn’t consider it. I guess I didn’t think about anybody except myself.
Dr. Coolidge stays during the interview procedure, and I notice some of the museum patrons craning their necks to see why somebody is being questioned by all these police officers. But I don’t mind. I just want it to be done. This place means nothing to me now. I just want to go, forget this life and start up my new one.
It takes about two hours before we’re done, during which the officers brought me a meal from the cafeteria and a cup of coffee. The food is gone. The drink is gone. And, when it’s all done, they’re gone as well.
“Well, sorry about taking up so much space here,” the last remaining officer says to Dr. Coolidge. I’m standing now, quiet, the good little girl waiting for the officer to stop talking to my mommy. “We take missing persons cases very seriously.”
“And I appreciate it. I just wish Persephone would have told me or anyone about it all when she left. Then all of this could have been avoided.”
“Yes, well.” The officer gives me a look. “Sometimes stress can get in the way of levelheaded thinking.”
He keeps looking at me, so I nod.
“Sorry,” I mumble under my breath.
“It’s all right.” He nods. “Well. So long.”
And with that he leaves. Dr. Coolidge and I stand together and watch him go, out of the cafeteria, through the foyer, and out to the street.
“So I guess that’s it,” I say. “Now I can start at that new museum. Do you know where it is, or …?”
Dr. Coolidge lets out a snort of a laugh and shakes her head.
“Oh my God, Persephone. Get your head out of your ass.” She looks at me. “There is no other museum. You’re fired, effective immediately. Pack up your stuff and leave.”
Marc
The door to the warehouse closes, and with it the sound of Persephone’s footsteps. She’s gone. Just outside, though. I could go after her. But to do what? Yell at her? Ask her again why she did what she did?
Tell her that I already miss her and want her back?
No. None of that is going to happen. So instead I’m just standing, staring at nothing, feeling this emptiness take hold of my insides and eat away at a place that just yesterday felt so full.
“Fucking bitch.”
Edward steps up beside me. “Got what she deserved, huh?” I see him shake his head out of the corner of my eye. “She should have known you don’t just get away with something like that without paying the consequences.”
“Edward …” I say. Even my voice feels heavy, leaving my mouth. “Not right now.”
For a second I think he’s going to make some comment about Persephone being a cheap fuck or something equally vulgar. But instead he just nods, respecting my wishes and stays quiet.
I hear the door open again, followed by footsteps on the concrete, and for a horrible fleeting second I think Persephone’s come back. But of course it’s just Rebekka. She doesn’t look as sad as I feel, but she certainly doesn’t look happy.
“She said the client will be here tomorrow morning,” she tells us. “We’re to have everything ready and outside.”
“Fine,” Edward says.
“Did she say what’s going to happen with Persephone?” I ask before I can stop myself. Rebekka gives me a pained look.
“No, Marc,” she tells me. “I think she’s just going back to her old life. But with a different job.”
“Whatever,” Edward says, and he claps a hand on my shoulder. “Get your mind off of that piece and onto better things, like the next job! Where we won’t pick up stray women and keep them with us for almost a week.”
“Yeah,” Rebekka says.
“Right,” says Julian, sitting in a chair. I only nod.
“Okay,” Edward says, and then he turns and leaves the common area. Rebekka comes over and stops in front of me.
“You all right?” she asks in a low voice. I nod, even though it feels like somebody’s ripped my heart out of my chest. “You know that this couldn’t last forever, right? She wasn’t meant to be here. It was a … mistake.”
I nod again. “Yeah, thanks,” I manage to croak out. “But I’m fine.”
And Rebekka nods, even though I can tell she doesn’t believe me. I turn and walk over to our stash of books, pick one up at random, and sit down, opening it to the middle without even looking at the cover. I start reading, forcing myself to comprehend words, sentences, anything, just to get my mind off of Persephone. But it doesn’t work. All I can think about is her.