by Susanne Beck
I laughed softly. "Yup. All tucked away and dreaming whatever dreams her evil mind conjures up when it’s not busy thinking up ways to poke holes in someone with her rapier wit."
Intense blue eyes drilled into mine. "Did she hurt you?"
I snorted. "Me? Nah. I can handle the likes of her." Still chuckling, I ruffled her disheveled bangs. "After all, I’ve had a lot of practice over the years."
Her eyes turned back to their study of the ceiling again and the silence stretched out between us, its weight palpable. Though seemingly relaxed, I could feel the coiled tension in the body lying next to me. Something was bothering her, that much was obvious. But what, among the dozens, if not hundreds, of possibilities could it be?
Not one, usually, for beating around low, hedge-like growths, I simply asked the first question that came to mind. "Are you worried that Corinne might have been followed?"
"Andre’s very good at his job."
While that didn’t answer my question exactly, it did serve to bring up another. "Who is Andre, by the way? I’ve been meaning to ask you that for awhile now."
"A restaurateur," she replied after a moment, not moving her gaze from its study of the ceiling.
"Ah," I nodded, as if that explained everything. "And that gives him the skills to make sure Corinne wasn’t followed how?" I laughed. "Good at hiding from angry customers when the steak’s slightly overcooked, is he?"
And that, not surprisingly, rated me another non-answer. Despite our time together and the level of trust which had developed between us, there are still very large parts of Ice’s life which are walled off to me, even to this day.
I’d be lying if I said that that doesn’t bother me a little. Well, more than a little. But if patience is a virtue, then after living with Ice for as long as I have, I’m the most virtuous woman alive.
Well seeing the bright neon roadblock preventing me from merging onto that particular lane of conversation, I decided a slight detour was in order. I paused for a second, ordering the question precisely in my mind, knowing that if I didn’t word it correctly, I’d be flush up against yet another logjam.
Taking a deep breath, I dove in with both feet. "When you told me earlier that my life wasn’t the only one Corinne had saved, were you talking about yourself?"
After a long moment, I could feel the brief nod of her head under my hand. Encouraged, I decided to take things just a bit further, drowning in curiosity as I was. "Could you ...tell me a little bit about what you meant?" I asked finally, treading very carefully. "I don’t know very much about your first time in prison, beyond what little Corinne told me, and I’d kinda like to know how it was for you then. If it’s not too hard for you to talk about," I added, giving her an out if she needed it.
"There really isn’t that much to talk about," she said finally, after a very long span of silence. "I went in, did my time, and got released. Nothing very remarkable."
I could have let it go at that, and perhaps I should have. Her body was sending me very distinct signals relating to the prudence of allowing slumbering canines to rest undisturbed. Still, for all those signals, I couldn’t let it go. She knew so much about my life while I knew so little about hers. And though I knew there’d probably never be a time when those two states would equal out, I wasn’t about to withdraw my foot from a door partly opened.
"Share?" I asked simply, softly as I could. "Please?"
Her breasts rose, then fell beneath the weight of an exhaled sigh. "I was very young and very tired. The trial had taken what little strength I still had left, and by the time that prison door closed behind me," she raised a hand briefly, then let it fall on the blanket, "there wasn’t anything."
I let the silence draw out for a moment before resuming my gentle, and careful, prodding. "Corinne said you just wanted to do your time quietly."
Her eyes tracked to mine briefly before slipping away once again. "Did she? I don’t remember telling her that." She shook her head. "What I do remember is being ...numb. Everything just sorta came down on me and I couldn’t feel anything." She shrugged. "And I really didn’t care if I never felt anything again."
"How did she save your life?" I asked, still finding it hard to wrap my mind around that thought. Even at her weakest, my mind still insisted on picturing Ice as a woman of uncommon strength and will, never needing someone else to do what she was supremely qualified to do for herself; save her own life.
"As I said," she resumed after a small pause, "I didn’t care about anything anymore. And when the predators came, I didn’t bother fighting them. Just let them do what they wanted to me." She laughed bitterly, a choked sound caught in her throat.
I couldn’t muffle the gasp that came from my own throat, much as I wanted to. Suddenly, I was very sorry I had pushed her into telling this particular tale. I wanted to tell her, beg her, to stop, but like a motorist drawn to the sight of a grisly car wreck, I couldn’t.
She turned again to look at me, sensing my distress. She smiled slightly, softly, though there was still that touch of old anger in her eyes. "Don’t be upset, Angel. After all, it wasn’t anything different than what I’d had people pay me to do before. Better in some ways, really. As long as I cooperated, I was pretty much left alone when they were through taking their pleasures from me."
In many ways, her dispassionate tone made things just that much worse, as if her heart and soul were so cold and dead that even the tale of her savage raping at the hands of strangers was of little more consequence to her than a dog passing by on the sidewalk.
But still, the tense, coiled energy of her body belied the casually spoken words, and I knew beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt that this poison within her had been too-long festering and needed to come out before it again released its toxins on a soul not fully mended.
I lay still and near, close enough to touch, but keeping my hands, and my words, to myself, knowing that if I interrupted this self-revelation with even so much as the slightest breath of a whisper, the story would be ended then and there, buried so deep it would never see the light of day again.
"One day, the leader of one of the other gangs caught sight of me and decided she wanted a sample of what I was offering to the others. She dragged me from my cell just as a member of the first gang was coming in to grab an afternoon snack." The bitter smile flashed briefly again. "There was a bit of a tussle over exactly whose ‘bitch’ I was, and after it was over, I became the new trophy of the leader of the rival gang."
"Why didn’t you fight!?" I demanded, my anger spilling over, not caring if I never heard the ending to the sordid tale. "Why didn’t you stand up for yourself? Why did you just let them do that to you? Didn’t you even care?" It wasn’t just simple anger I was feeling. It was rage. Clear and uncomplicated and utter rage. I could feel my teeth grinding against one another with the power of it.
"No."
One word.
Simple. Stark. Brutal.
Heartbreaking.
"Why?" I whispered through my anguished, and angry, tears.
"Why not? They were only getting a body, after all." She turned her head so it faced away from me. "My soul was already dead."
My anger vanished as if it had never been, leaving only a bone deep ache behind. "And Corinne?" I whispered because I had to know.
"I’d met her briefly when I was first locked up. She tried to convince me to fight them. Tried to tell me that I was worth more than being someone’s whore." She laughed. "I didn’t listen, though. Being a whore was something I knew, and if it gave me the oblivion I wanted, it didn’t seem a bad tradeoff. So I basically told her where she could stick her advice. Even offered to put it there for her."
The laugh came again, though this time it held more awe than bitterness. "She told me to go right on ahead and do it. At least it would show her that I still had some spirit left in me."
"You didn’t listen to her though, did you." I asked, already knowing the answer.
"Nope. At the time,
I was too wrapped up in my own misery to recognize the hand she was holding out to me. So I left her standing there and went back to the life I’d chosen to live."
"What happened?"
"The gang leader who’d won me decided to put on a show for her friends, so she dragged me into the laundry room where she could have her audience. She’d just ripped my uniform off and was getting down to business when Corinne walked in, a broom in her hand. She told me that if I was too stupid to fight for myself, then she’d do the fighting for me."
She shook her head in amazement over the memories. "She was a tough old broad even back then. Took out nearly half the watchers before someone got in a lucky shot and stole her weapon from her. She didn’t give an inch though. Not one single inch. They jumped her, punching and kicking her, and she just stared at me, daring me to just lie there while they beat her bloody."
She looked up at the ceiling again, running a hand over her face. "God, her eyes. I can still remember them, burning into me, never showing any of the pain I knew she was feeling. She didn’t blink, not once. Not even when one of them kicked her in the gut and made her lose her lunch. And when I heard her ribs break, something in me snapped. Something raw. Dark. Angry. Something I thought I’d lost when I woke up in the hospital after the shootings."
I could see the tears sparkle in her eyes, but there was a savage joy in there as well. And pride. For Corinne. For herself. "I threw those idiots off of me and got up, half naked and all angry. I walked up to the biggest one and punched her so hard that I thought my hand had broken. And I kept on punching, and kicking, and gouging, until the only person left standing was Corinne. I grabbed her and hightailed us both out of there as fast as we could go." She shook her head again, black hair fanning over her face, partially obscuring it from my view. "It didn’t help any, of course. We both got solitary for a month. It was the shortest month I’d ever done, before or since."
Brushing her hair from her face, she turned to face me once again. "So you see, Angel, Corinne did save my life, in a manner of speaking. She gave me a reason to fight. She gave me a reason to live." She grasped my hand tightly and held it to her chest, letting me feel the passion in the mighty heart which beat there. "And if giving up a little privacy enables her to live out the rest of her life in comfort and love, then that’s a very small a price to pay for giving me my soul back. I’ll be forever in her debt."
She wound down then, like a toy soldier whose spring given out. She lay there looking at me, her eyes asking me to hear her words, to understand the message they imparted to me, and to simply accept without judging the path she’d chosen to travel so long ago.
And because I knew she needed to be strong, perhaps more at that moment than at any other, I laid myself down beside her, resting my head on her shoulder and wrapping one arm around her waist, showing my love and support without smothering her in it.
And when her arms finally came around me, one gently cupping the back of my head, I knew that somehow, God had blessed me with the ability to do the right thing, even if just this once.
I prayed, fervently as I knew how, never to be without that ability again.
* * *
I nearly shocked the starch out of Corinne when I saw her the next morning, giving her a hug that would have popped her eyeballs had they not been so firmly attached to her skull. The bemused look on her face as she pulled away said it all, but all she got in return was another hug, and a laugh from me.
Let her chew on that for awhile, I thought, leaving her to stare dumbfounded after me as I made my way toward the kitchen and some much needed coffee.
Ice was long gone by the time we sat down to a breakfast of eggs, coffee and toast in the dining room, and over an after-breakfast mug of tea, Corinne told me the rest of her tale.
It seems that to throw off any suspicion there might have been, Andre decided to take Corinne a wee bit south of Canada.
Mexico, to be exact.
To hear Corinne tell it, they spent two weeks of fun in the sun, ogling half-naked, tanned bodies as they paraded their wares up and down the beaches; she, the women; Andre, the men.. Then, after doing whatever checks men like Andre do to make sure the coast is clear, they hopped aboard another plane, bypassed the United States entirely, and landed in Canada. She entered the country legally, requesting, and being granted, a tourist visa with the possible option of applying for landed immigrant status sometime in the future.
I was surprised at that. As far as I knew, Canada was pretty much like any other country when it came to immigration laws. If you were young, able-bodied, willing to work, and didn’t have anything in your background which made it likely that you would plant bombs on schoolbuses or office buildings, you stood a chance of being welcomed.
Corinne, however, was elderly, frail, of an age where advancing medical costs would eat up a very large budget very quickly, and had a prison record that would make any immigration official worth his salt sit up and whistle—before he personally escorted her to the first plane headed for points south.
When I expressed my disbelief, she responded with a wicked grin and pushed over a document that contained her financial statement in all its multi-zeroed glory.
The coffee in my mouth sprayed halfway across the room.
"Seven million dollars?"
"And change, yes," she replied, wearing the mask of the eternally smug and loving every minute of it.
"Seven million dollars?"
Clicking her tongue at me, she reached up and placed a hand on my forehead, the way you would do if you were testing a child for fever. "Poor dear," her eyes alight with wicked compassion, "are you coming down with something? Perhaps a trip to the doctor is in order this morning?"
Scowling, I batted her hands away the dollar amount still repeating itself in my head like a jukebox record which had developed an unfortunate scratch.
"Relax, Angel. It’s not as if I’m taking afternoon tea with the Rockefellers, you know." Then she grinned. "Besides, you should be happy. It’s all yours when I finally shuffle off this mortal coil."
I looked up at her. "I can’t accept this, Corinne."
Her smile became hard. "Whyever not, Angel? Afraid to sully your hands with a little ill-gotten gain?" Her teeth flashed. "Blood money not good enough for you?"
"That’s enough, Corinne," I snapped, rising to my feet. "I don’t deserve that from you."
After a long moment of intense silence, she finally backed down, the smile slipping from her face. "You’re right. You don’t. I’m sorry." A plea then came to both eyes and voice. "Won’t you please sit back down, Angel? Forgive an old woman her foolishness?" She paused for just a heartbeat, then whispered, "Please."
A moment later, my anger receding but not yet gone, I sat back down, placing my hands flat on the table. I looked at her expectantly, using a raised-eyebrow expression that I’d only recently begun to truly master.
Reaching into her purse, she pulled out another document, which she carefully unfolded and slid across the table to me. I looked down at it, tracing the dollar amount displayed with my finger. It made the amount on the original statement look almost like pocket-change. Another document was then laid atop the first and I scanned it quickly, then read more carefully as the contents finally wove their way into my brain.
The paper I was reading was a receipt of sorts, which detailed the final disposition of the vast fortune on the document beneath. One half was used to set up a fund to help surviving family members whose loved ones had been killed in a violent crime. A quarter, and I smiled when I read this, went into a fund that helped feed, clothe, house and educate teens living on the streets. And the last quarter went into what was termed the "Fallen Angels" fund, to provide free legal counsel and representation for women who, like I, had been tried and/or convicted of killing their husbands as a result of domestic abuse.
I looked up at her, my eyes wide. "What ... ?"
"That’s the money I made from killing my husbands. Every la
st cent of it."
"But you said ... ."
"I know what I said, Angel," she interrupted, tossing my argument away with a careless flick of her hand. "But things change. And sometimes, if they’re lucky, people do as well." She smiled a little; one that was loving, a touch shy, and totally endearing. "In any event, sitting paralyzed in a wheelchair does give one quite a bit of time for quiet reflection. And while any remorse I might have had over the killing of my husbands had long ago turned to dust, the thought of living high on the money left behind somehow lost the allure it had previously given me." Snorting, she shook her head. "Never grow old, Angel. It makes you soft in all the wrong places."
Though the door was wide open and an entire army of people pled with me to step through it, I wisely refrained from any comment I might have made to her observation. The sparkle in her eye praised my restraint, though I was sure she had already thought up at least one hundred witty, and cutting, retorts.
Reaching out almost primly, she plucked the document that had started this whole conversation and held it up to the light. "This is what became of the sock money I’d earned working at the few menial jobs I’d managed to find before and in between husbands. When I knew the arrest was coming, I gave it, along with the other money, to an accountant friend of mine. And as you can plainly see, she had quite a way with numbers." Her eyes sparkled again with wicked wit. "Among other things."
I just grinned and rolled my eyes. God, I’d missed her.
"And it is yours, Angel. Yours and Ice’s, of course. To do with as you wish. You could use it to line the fireplace, for all I care. You just need to accept it." She smiled. "After all, I’m not going to be around forever and I’d like to know that I had some small part in making your lives, if not easier, at least a bit more interesting."
I winced. "If I agree to think about it, can we get off the topic of death? It’s not something I really want to talk about right now."
"Death happens to us all, Angel."
"I know that, Corinne," I replied, a bit more sternly than I had intended, the images of my lover too near death raising their heads in Technicolor glory. "I’d just like to stop having it threaten to visit quite so often."