by Susanne Beck
My muscles turned to liquid beneath her skilled touches, the pain fading like a distant memory. My head lolled back to rest against her shoulder as her hands continued to probe, soothe and caress in an orgy of sensation. It was bliss.
"Oh God," I groaned as the massage softened and turned sensual. "Where did you learn to do that?"
"Assassins need to keep loose. We can’t afford muscle cramps. It screws up our aim."
"Oh."
"Yeah. ‘Oh’."
"I guess there really are some questions that I don’t wanna know the answers to, huh?"
"Most likely."
I allowed my eyelids to drift closed so as to better appreciate her welcome touch. There was nothing overtly sexual about her movements, but I felt energized just the same, her hands waking dormant parts of my body in pleasing tingles. "You’re not trying to divert my attention from the subject at hand, are you?" I mumbled.
"Would I do that?" Her voice was innocence personified.
"Mmmm hmmmm."
She laughed. "Well, actually, I was just enjoying touching you. But if you want me to stop. . . ."
"Oh no. You can keep doing that till your hands fall off. You won’t hear me complaining."
As her hands moved beneath the sheet to continue their dance across my skin, she cleared her throat and picked up her tale once again. "To answer your question, I headed west. There was a decent stand of woods at the back of the house that I knew from previous experience led to the highway. It hadn’t really sunk in that my parents were gone yet. I tried to tell myself this was just an adventure and that worked for awhile."
"Kids are really good at pretending."
"Yeah. I was pretty lucky in that way. My parents encouraged my fantasy life." She shrugged. "I think it was an art thing."
I hid my smile. "Must have been."
"Anyway . . . ." The timbre of her voice let me know that my ruse had been discovered. "I made it out to the highway pretty quick. After that, it was just a matter of waiting for the right ride to come along."
"You hitchhiked?"
"Well, I didn’t exactly walk from Baltimore to Pittsburgh, Angel."
"Don’t you realize how dangerous that was?"
"Of course I realized it, Angel. I was young. Not an idiot. But what choice did I have? My parents were dead and I wasn’t about to sit around and wait to be shoved in some home somewhere against my will. I saw the opportunity to get out and I took it. I didn’t really have much time to think about anything else, even if I had been thinking clearly, which I wasn’t."
Hearing the defensiveness in her tone, I reached down and clasped both of Ice’s hands in my own, briefly stopping their delicious motion. "I’m sorry, Ice. That was incredibly pretentious of me to say."
She sighed. "It’s alright. It was a stupid thing to do. But I knew enough not to accept rides from certain people. Boomer was a pretty good judge of character as well." I could hear the smile in her voice. "I got pretty lucky. It was near the end of summer and a lot of kids were going back to college. I managed to hook three rides, the last one all the way to Pittsburgh. I had intended to go further west, but for some reason, just wound up staying here. I guess when you’re a kid, even a few hundred miles seems like a world away."
"What did you do then?"
"Well, my options were kinda limited. I had about five hundred dollars of my mother’s money and that could last a long time, especially considering I didn’t need to pay for a roof over my head. Not too many people would rent to a twelve year-old, you know?"
"But where did you live?"
"Here and there. Pretty much any place that would keep the rain off would do. Abandoned buildings, highway underpasses. Places like that."
"Weren’t there shelters?"
"Sure. But that would have been, to my mind anyway, just like being in the orphanage. I didn’t want to be hemmed in. So I stayed away. I was able to live almost six months on the money I’d taken. It probably would have lasted longer, but I didn’t know anything about living on my own. When you’re twelve, five hundred dollars seems like a gold mine. You don’t think it’s ever gonna run out."
I nodded in agreement. On the rare instances I received cards with money in them, I felt wealthy beyond the dreams of kings. And invariably I’d wind up blowing the whole thing in an orgy of gumballs and cheap paperbacks.
"When the money ran out, there weren’t a whole lot of options for me. I could have joined a gang, but I’ve never been much of a follower. Plus, girls weren’t treated any better than non-paid whores, so that was out for me. I tried shoplifting food and stuff, but it isn’t easy to be inconspicuous when you’ve got a hundred and fifty pound attack dog at your side."
Her hands, which had resumed their lazy caress of my body, abruptly stilled and I felt a small shiver of dread flow down my spine. Suddenly, I was sure I didn’t want to hear her next words. Suddenly, I wanted to be anyplace but where I was.
I battled down my fear. After all, this is what I had asked for, right? Right. Whatever I was going to hear would give me insight into the woman with whom I’d fallen in love, and no matter what it was, that was something I wanted more than anything.
Behind me, Ice took several deep breaths. I could feel the strong beat of her racing heart against my back and knew that whatever this secret was, it frightened her worse to say it than it frightened me to hear it.
Minutes ticked by before she softly cleared her throat. "Anyway," she said in a horse voice, "word on the street was that there was this guy who’d pay decent money to take . . .pictures of kids. Boys, girls, it didn’t matter." She cleared her throat again. "As long as they were young. The younger, the better, in fact."
I couldn’t suppress the shiver of revulsion that ran through me at her words. "A pedophile." More things made sense to me now. Like why Cavallo would set Ice up using the lie of pedophilia, something obviously guaranteed to get her fire up.
"Yeah. Into selling child pornography. By that time, I’d started going through my growth spurt and looked older than I was, but I needed the money and figured what the hell. It seemed as good an option as any. After all, what harm could a few pictures do?"
"Jesus, Ice . . . ."
"Yeah, well, I didn’t think about those things then. I just needed money and it seemed an easy way to get it. So I got directions over to his place and took Boomer with me. Figured with Boomer there, he couldn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to do."
She pulled her hands from under the sheet and I sensed she was going to try and distance herself from me during the rest of this tale. I grabbed her wrists as I’d done before, demanding contact with my body to let her know that it was safe to tell me her story. "Please, Ice, go on. I need to hear this and I think you need to tell it. It’s been festering inside you too long."
Relaxing slightly, she allowed me to pull her arms back around my body and laid her cheek against my hair. "He was an older man, maybe mid or late fifties. Longish greasy gray hair and always a day’s growth of beard. He lived in a really seedy apartment in a run-down building on the outskirts of the city. I tell you, if there were a quintessential pedophile, this guy would probably rate a picture in the dictionary."
When I didn’t laugh, she sighed. "Yeah, I know. It isn’t very funny."
"Not by a long shot."
"Are you sure you wanna hear this? It’s not something about me you really need to know."
"Ice, I want to hear it. I think it’s very important that I do. Please."
"Alright. Anyway, the guy didn’t seem to have enough money to buy decent furniture or even a mop or vacuum cleaner, but he had this extremely expensive studio in one of the bedrooms. The photographic equipment alone must have set him back big time, let alone the lighting and other stuff. I went up to the door and knocked and when he opened it, I thought Boomer was gonna take his head off. The guy almost peed his pants, though by the look of them, I doubt anyone would have noticed. He asked me what I wanted and I told him. He said
that the dog had to say outside. To which I replied, of course, no dog, no pictures. He thought about it a minute, then let us both in. The apartment was dark and smelled like a gas station bathroom."
"I bet you were pretty scared, huh?"
"Scared isn’t the word. I was terrified. But I just kept telling myself that both Boomer and I needed the money. It got me into the studio. He didn’t talk much. Just told me he’d give me twenty five dollars if I’d get undressed and sit on the bed so he could take pictures of me."
"Twenty five dollars?" I gasped.
"Yeah. Doesn’t sound like much, does it. But it was a huge deal for me, considering I had about quarter to my name by that time."
"So you did it."
"Yeah. I had Boomer sit in the corner and I stripped down to nothing. He just kinda stared at me for awhile, then told me to sit down. He shot a few pictures. Then he began to put me in some pretty suggestive poses. I just kept reminding myself how much I needed the money."
I could feel the sting of tears as they leapt into my eyes. Ice rubbed her hands briskly up and down my arms, comforting us both.
"After he was done," and here she took another deep breath, "he offered me another twenty five to have sex with me. I took him up on it. Fifty dollars could keep me alive for a week, if I played my cards right. My virginity didn’t seem that high a price to pay, given what I’d already been through."
That did it. The sob broke out before I could even attempt to stop it. Ice immediately wrapped me in her strong arms, kissing the crown of my head and rocking me. "Don’t cry, Angel. Please don’t cry. It happened a long time ago."
It incongruity of it all hit me hard. That a young woman who’d given up her innocence for the price of a few meals would be holding and comforting me, a woman who’d never had to worry about food or shelter, made my tears of sorrow turn to tears of shame.
I tried to pull away, but she only held me closer, stroking my tangled hair in an almost desperate way as she continued to beg me not to cry.
My shame and sorrow quickly turned to burning anger. I raged at the man, and so many others like him, who had preyed on the innocence of my friend and untold hundreds, if not thousands, of other young children just like her, forced by tragedy to trade something so overwhelmingly important for a pittance.
I longed to lash out at the image in my mind. The image of Ice as she was in that photograph; young, pure, beautiful being posed and fondled and invaded by a slathering, unnatural beast masquerading in the guise of a man. My body followed through on what my mind so desperately wanted and before I knew it, my tightly clenched fists impacted sharply on warm skin.
My eyes flew open in stunned disbelief. Ice stared down at me, shock naked on her beautiful features. She released me quickly as if my body burned and stood up from my bed, the stoic mask quickly settling over her face.
"Oh God," I moaned.
"It’s alright, Angel," she said in a totally calm tone of voice. "It isn’t something I haven’t imagined doing to myself a dozen times over since it happened." Her eyes were hooded. "I was right to have wanted that story kept where it belonged. I’m sorry you had to hear it."
"No, Ice! God no. Please, listen to me. It wasn’t you I was lashing out at. It was him! That monster that took your innocence away from you."
"Angel, my innocence left the minute I found out my parents had been killed. He didn’t take anything that I didn’t give freely."
I sat up straight on the bed, bringing the sheet up with me. "Freely?!? As freely as a bear gives up its life when it walks into a hunter’s trap?"
"A bear doesn’t know it’s walking into a trap, Angel. I knew what I was doing."
"Ice, bears and all kinds of other animals are lured into traps all the time. Just like young children are lured into cars by the offer of candy or some other treat. You weren’t any different. You went because he offered you something you needed. Money to stay alive."
Though she didn’t say anything, I knew my words were penetrating that thick shield of guilt that she wore, twisted around herself, like a shroud. Her body relaxed slowly and I thought I detected just the faintest glint of gratitude in her eyes. I held my arms out and, to my great surprise, she came into them, allowing my embrace.
I moved back on the bed, gently guiding her down with me and, for the first time since we’d met, she allowed me to hold and comfort her. I molded her against me, stroking her hair and murmuring nonsensical phrases, feeling oddly maternal, as if I were soothing the young girl Ice had once been. And, in a way, that’s exactly what I was doing.
She didn’t cry. I think all of her tears had been used up long ago. But I knew that there was some deeply hidden part of her that was taking comfort in my love just the same, and that knowledge filled me with an elemental joy. After all, I had asked for this. Strove for it for two years now. To know the woman behind the mask. And here she was, snuggled tight against me, her head on my chest, showing a naked vulnerability that I had never thought to see. It was a gift of such immense proportion that mere words will never do it justice.
When she began speaking again, I was surprised, but held her close and listened to her cathartic words, knowing that I was most likely the first person ever to hear them spoken aloud.
"When it was over," she began, her voice soft and faintly muffled as she spoke against my chest, "he gave me the money he promised and told me I was welcome to come back anytime. He also said that, if I wanted, he could give me the names of other people who would be able to ‘give me a hand’ in the same way he did." She sighed. "I didn’t much care at that point. I had my money and the only thing on my mind was finding a place with a hot shower and plenty of soap. I was sore and dirty and just wanted to get as far away from him as I could."
Taking a deep breath, she pulled away from my embrace, sitting back to lean against the wall of my cell, though she kept us connected by laying a hand on my thigh. "The money ran out pretty quickly and I found myself going back to him. Pretty soon, I was going to his friends as well. Some paid better, some not as well. Some wanted sex, some didn’t. It didn’t seem to matter much anymore."
She ran a steady hand through her midnight hair. "It went on for three years, almost. By that time, I’d gotten too mature to be of much use to the pedophiles anymore, but there was this man in Chicago who had apparently purchased some pictures of me and wanted to see me very badly. He was offering five hundred dollars and free airfare if I would come and pose for him. I did some asking around and found out that this guy was pretty reputable in certain artistic circles. I saw it as a one-in-a-million chance, and took it. The only problem is that I needed to leave Boomer behind."
"What did you do?"
"I’d developed, I suppose you could call it an acquaintance, with one of the corner store owners in the city and Boomer seemed to like him well enough. He promised me that he’d keep Boomer in the store to act as a guard dog until I came back, no charge. Seemed like a fair deal to me."
As her voice trailed off, a premonition stole through me, humping my skin into gooseflesh. "Ice . . . ."
"Yes?"
"Corinne told me that you . . .well, you went crazy after your best friend was killed. She was talking about Boomer, wasn’t she."
The tears I thought used up sprang into her eyes then, magnifying their luminescence. "Yes," she whispered in a choked voice. "It was Boomer. There’d been a break-in at the store where he was staying; local street thugs looking for drug money from the till. Somehow, they overpowered Boomer and took him out. When I got back, I heard that they tortured him to death over three or four days, then threw what was left of his body in front of the store as a warning."
She blinked once, freeing the tears from her eyes. They rolled down her cheeks silently as her gaze became lit with the fire of rage. "I knew who did it. They weren’t shy in their boasting." When she grinned, it was like a shark displaying a mouthful of deadly teeth to a baby seal. "I stalked them for a month. I learned every little detail of
their day-to-day lives. When one of them even so much as took a piss against a brick wall, I knew about it. I was patient. Very patient."
Her fingers mindlessly plucked at the sheet trapped around my body. She didn’t even seem to be aware that I was still in the room, and I made myself as still and quiet as possible. I didn’t want that rage turned on me. "My patience paid off. I found out they were having a little get together of the whole gang in honor of the leader’s birthday. It was gonna be in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of the city and everyone would be there." She laughed. "They just didn’t plan on having an uninvited guest."
Her hand convulsed suddenly, trapping a corner of the sheet against her tightly clenched fingers. Her face was a grinning death’s head mask. "I killed them all. Slowly. I wanted them to hurt just like the defenseless animal they had tortured to death. I wanted them to feel pain. Exquisite pain. I wanted to see the fear in their eyes and smell it coming out of their pores. I thrived off of their screams. I laughed when they begged for mercy. They were less than nothing in my eyes and that’s what I made them. Stains on the floor."
When Ice started her tale of her killing spree, I felt my still-weak stomach knot up. By the time she had finished, I found myself hung over the bed, expelling water and bile into the basin she’d left there, my guts heaving and threatening to turn themselves inside out.
Ice’s warm hands came down gently on my back, rubbing in circles as the last of the dry heaves left my system weak and reeling. When I was sure I was done, she handed me a rag and I wiped my mouth, then sat up slowly. "Sorry about that," I croaked around a raw and aching throat. "That hit me unexpectedly."
She nodded, cupping my cheek. "I told you it was a pretty ugly story."
"Yes, you did. But I needed to hear it as much as, I think, you needed to tell it."
Ice snorted. "I never need to tell that particular story, Angel. Believe me when I tell you that getting it out in the open hasn’t made me feel any better about what I did. The courts were right. I did murder them. Intentionally. Calculatingly. In cold blood. I may have regretted it afterwards, but regret doesn’t erase my actions."