Edge Play X

by Wilson, M. Jarrett

  “Be smart,” the woman said before she dissolved.

  7.

  It was a vintage motorcycle, heavy-engined, a 1979 Harley Sportster, white.

  When he returned that afternoon with the tuned-up bike, Michael asked X if she would like to go for a ride, and she eagerly accepted.

  Michael showed her around the area, taking her to The Palace of the Governors (where he bought her silver bracelets and earrings from the Native American vendors), the Plaza, and the churches and museums. He was a good man. He didn’t want to control her and he didn’t want her to control him.

  They stopped at a restaurant, a little Mexican place where Michael’s parents used to take him. They ate chips and salsa as they talked about how the house was coming along, discussed other repairs that would need done before it could go on the market.

  X scanned the restaurant, making sure that Simeon wasn’t in some corner booth watching her, fearful that she might see the man’s face among the patrons, but she did not. Their meals arrived, an enchilada special. They ate a few minutes in silence.

  “I want you to know,” Michael said, “that you are welcome to stay at the house as long as you want. Even once it’s for sale. In this economy, I’ll be lucky if it sells at all.”

  X looked up from her meal, smiled at him. X noticed the other patrons again, the couples immersed in conversation, the seniors in their quiet staid. What were they discussing? Important matters, sideline trivia. She could feel the slipstream that their conversations left.

  “I’ll pay you rent, take care of the utilities, finish up the painting.”

  “I’m not concerned about that. It will be good for the house to have someone there, put some life back into it.” He continued. “I know you have a lot on your mind. I have a lot on my mind, too. But I want you to start thinking about if you are going to come back to California at all.”

  Michael noticed the pained look on X’s face, the subtle tightening of the muscles of her cheeks and brow.

  “I haven’t decided what I’m going to do yet,” X said.

  “I want you to come back eventually,” he said, “for my own selfish reasons. I’ll help you in whatever way I can. But you’re the one who really knows Compton, the one who understands what he’s capable of.”

  “I don’t, really.”

  “And that’s the danger. I want you to think about whether it’s safe for you to return, and if it isn’t, don’t come back. The world is a big place. Whatever threats he made to you…a man can do terrible things to a woman when he thinks he owns her, when he thinks he’s entitled to her.”

  X and Michael looked at each other, oblivious to the milieu of the restaurant. She knew then that he understood more than he usually let on. She quietly admired that about him.

  X and Michael finished their meals and got back onto the bike.

  They traveled the mountain roads near town. The temperature was just warm enough to ride, had a cold bite to it, but Michael had put on his leather jacket and gloves, and X had dressed in layers, having covered a thick sweater with a denim jacket. She held onto him tightly as they sped along.

  The Sportster, old as it was, hugged the curves. Their speed turned the trees and brush at the side of the road into a blur. Even when Michael seemed to push the bike to the limit of its controllable speed, X felt no fear, only a wild exhilaration. She knew that just one error could be the end of them both, but she reminded herself that every activity was a calculated risk. And being with Michael, whatever they were doing, made her feel safe, gave her a sense of security.

  So when Michael slowed the bike down and turned onto a dirt road, X didn’t question him, just held on to him tighter as they went over the bumps. He stopped the bike near an outcropping of rocks, turned off the engine, and dismounted. X followed, getting off of the bike and removing her helmet, giving it to Michael who put it on the ground next to his own.

  He kissed her long and deep, ran his fingers through the hair at the nape of her neck, giving it a thrilling yank that made X’s loins, still throbbing from the vibration of the engine, pulse with pleasure. She liked his rugged nature, the taste of his lips, the abandoned kisses that he gave her, the smoldering residue of his tongue in her mouth. She wondered if maybe she could love a man like him, a man who would never allow her to dominate him. Maybe it was the only kind of man she could ever really love.

  And when he turned her around and bent her over so that her elbows were on the low seat of the motorcycle, she allowed him to do this, allowed him to unbutton her jeans and push them down to her ankles. His fingers found their way into her, the digits cool inside her warmth. And when he opened his own pants and entered her, X surrendered to the feel of him inside her, to the winnowing current of his movement, to the sensation of his flesh so hot against her cold skin.

  He pulled at her ponytail, bent her neck back until she could see only the horizon where the ridge met the darkening sky. A thought arrived, a needled summation, simple, that the success of the human race was because people were generally more interested in fucking than killing.

  A few raindrops started to hit them, and Michael began to fuck her even harder, the inky clouds darkening and turning into a rainstorm and then a torrent, the downpour soaking them as he finished with her and let his seed be sown in her moist warm world.

  Within a few hours the cacti would bloom, pushing out small yellow, red, orange and pink fireworks of color.

  By the time they returned to the house, darkness had fallen. They cuddled together in bed until they were warm again. They made love once more, long and slow, and then sleep visited them both.

  They spent three more days together.

  Michael had his motorcycle shipped back to California, said that he didn’t trust a bike that old to not break down on the long desert highways. And by the time X took Michael to the airport so that he could return to California and his business, she had fallen in love with the town. She loved the adobe structures, people, flora and topography of the region, but she especially loved all the artists and galleries. Little by little through the next several weeks, she made friends with other artists. She went to exhibitions and parties. And every few days, she and Michael talked on the phone. He promised to come see her every month or so.

  Most evenings, X would paint by the outdoor kiva fireplace or take her easel to an impressive vista to paint as the day turned to dusk. And yet, the woman painted very few landscapes. It was during that time that X began a string of paintings that would eventually become known as her Compton series. She painted him as a goose shitting out a golden egg, as Midas turning everything he touched to gold, as Ebenezer Scrooge, as a piranha; there were images of Compton as the face on each denomination of the greenback.

  After finishing each one, she sent them to Michael who in turn gave them to Anne, each with the very clear instruction that the paintings could be sold, could be bought by anyone as long as they signed an agreement that the work would never, as long as the painting existed, end up in the hands of a Mr. Terry Compton or anyone on his payroll, past, present or future.

  8.

  It was a squeak that awakened her, the long aching whine of the hinges on the front door. X was a light sleeper.

  It took her a moment to realize what was going on. A break-in. A scalding rush of adrenaline went through her, a napalm burn. She looked at the clock. The red numbers told her that it was 4:15 in the morning. Maybe it’s Simeon, she thought. Maybe he’s found me. But then she heard two male voices.

  She got out of bed quickly and went to the door of the bedroom. Usually, X slept with the bedroom door open, but since she had been in Santa Fe, she had closed it each night. There was a grandfather clock in the living room and X could hear the monster tick if she didn’t close the door.

  She put her finger on the doorknob and pressed in the lock, then hid in the nearly empty closet, tucked herself into the corner behind the military jackets that had belonged to Michael’s father.

  Beyon
d the darkness, X could hear the men speaking quietly to one another and then she heard them try the doorknob.

  “It’s locked.”

  “Kick it in.”

  The cheap hollow-core door gave way immediately and then slammed against the doorstop. The light turned on, sending a sliver of illumination under the bottom of the closet door.

  “She’s in here,” one of them said. He had a smoker’s rasp.

  “How do you know?”

  “Somebody had to of locked the door, stupid.”

  X shivered. She knew that she would be found.

  “Come out come out wherever you are,” the other man said and then laughed. “Not under the bed. Leaves one other place. Stupid bitch. You might as well come out now, lady, make it easy for yourself.

  X crouched in the closet, wishing that she had bought a gun like her gut had told her to do. Now it was too late. There was nothing to defend herself with. A couple wire coat hangers, that was it. She picked one off the rod and straightened the hook as much as she could, wrapped her fingers around the metal. It was a pathetic attempt at a weapon. She might as well defend herself with a thimble.

  The closet door opened, letting in a flood of light. One of the men, the short one, yanked the jackets out of the way. Their eyes met. He had a dark complexion, dark eyes.

  “I told you to make it easy for yourself, bitch.”

  X aimed for the man’s dark eye, missed, left one hell of a scratch on his cheekbone.

  The man wrestled the coat hanger out of her hand, tossed it behind him, grabbed her by the hair and pulled her out of the closet before throwing her down to the floor.

  “Fucking whore tried to take my eye out. Tried to take my eye out!”

  The man hit X, a blunt strike near the eye socket.

  “He said not to fuck up her face!”

  That was what the tall man said, his words coming out in a loud rasp. He had a gun in his hand, a Glock.

  The pinnacle of pain came in conjunction with the man’s statement. What began as a sharp jab in her nose and cheekbone subsided to a pulsing ache that radiated through her face. She was going to have a black eye, she knew, a real shiner.

  Suddenly she remembered how her brother used to ask her when they were kids, Is your face hurting you and when she would ask why he would respond, ‘Cause it’s killing me. Now, she would have been able to tell him that her face was killing her. Ha-ha.

  X could feel her left eye swelling up and she clenched the lids together uncontrollably, causing fat tears to run over her cheeks. She put her hands up to her face and sank her head into them, her eyes continuing to tear, and the warm streams rolled down her face. A few hot drops of blood pushed themselves out of her nose. X wiped off the blood, hot and sticky, with her forearm.

  She thought about what the tall man had said. Someone had given her kidnappers specific instructions not to hurt her face and the short man had ignored it. Maybe the instructions meant that they wouldn’t kill her. Who cares if you fuck up the face of somebody you’re going to kill? Or maybe the short man wouldn’t be able to stop himself from killing her in the same way that he wasn’t able to stop himself from striking her.

  She silently nicknamed the tall one Laurel and the fat one Hardy, hoping it would help somehow. But it didn’t make a difference. They were men of testosterone and sweat and caustic reactions. The short one was stout, a thick man with big tattooed arms and a smooth, shaven head. He had a dark complexion, but X was unable to pin down his ethnicity. Mexican maybe, Italian, Native American? Jesus-Christ, who could tell anymore? The taller man with the raspy voice had green eyes and a full head of dirty-blonde hair that was tied into a low ponytail.

  “What do you want from me?” X asked.

  Laurel pulled some clothes out of her drawers, a white shirt and a pair of jeans, tossed them to her feet.

  “Get dressed,” he said. “And hurry it up. And you,” he said to Hardy, “find her purse, get the keys to the car.”

  “I don’t get to watch her dress?” Hardy said, smiling a little as he looked at X in her nightgown.

  Laurel motioned toward the bedroom door with the gun still in his hand.

  “Remember what the man said,” and Hardy left a few moments later.

  X dressed as quickly as she could, wanted to get her clothes on before Hardy returned. And after her clothes were on, Laurel told her to turn around. He slapped a pair of cuffs, police-issued, over her wrists. He pressed the tip of the gun into her lower ribs.

  “I’m gonna tell you something, lady. I’m just doing this for the money. I don’t want to have to kill you but I will if I have to. Or he will. So do as you’re told. Now go to the garage.”

  X walked out to the garage, the gun still at her back, and when they got there, Hardy unlocked the trunk, told her to get in, and she obeyed.

  In the dark trunk, X was able to wriggle her cuffed hands to the front of her body. She searched unsuccessfully for a trunk release (wasn’t this model supposed to have one?) as the men drove the car for over an hour, down towards Albuquerque X guessed, and they arrived at a run-down crack house when morning had broken. The men opened the trunk, told her not to scream, and then followed her into the house, the Glock pointed at her again.

  Why does this keep happening to me? X had asked herself as they took her into the structure. She remembered how when her mother had been going through her chemo treatments, X had asked her once if she ever asked, “Why me?” Her mother had answered simply, “Why not me?”

  The abandoned house had no electricity, no water. Someone had ripped the wire out of the walls. The furniture consisted of a ratty wing chair and couch, and a bare, stained mattress that sat on the floor at the far corner. Small corners of plastic bags littered the floor next to pieces of aluminum foil and empty liquor bottles. The house smelled like cat piss, an ammonia stench that burned the nose.

  “Go over to that mattress, baby,” Laurel said. “We’re going to make a video.”

  Timidly, X looked at her captors, wondering what kind of video they intended to make. A rape video? Snuff film? Maybe one and then the other.

  But before she sat on the mattress and resigned herself to her fate, X was going to try to get out of the situation herself. It was no use fighting them, or trying to escape. These men would crush her in a moment. She could sense the savageness of their natures; it bent the air around them. But maybe she could buy her way out. What did her father used to say? Money talked.

  “I can pay you if you let me go,” X offered.

  The two men looked at each other.

  “How much?” Hardy asked.

  “Hundreds of thousands,” she answered.

  “Where is it?” Hardy asked.

  “In a safe deposit box in California.”

  Laurel and Hardy looked at each other again, considering. But Laurel spoke.

  “She’s full of shit. It’s a lie. She doesn’t have any money,” Laurel replied. “She’s an artist. That place she was staying isn’t even her own.”

  “But,” the stout one said, “she’s got that car.”

  “Terry Compton bought it for you, didn’t he?”

  X nodded her head yes, wondering how they knew about her connection to Terry Compton. And then she realized that they were going to try to get ransom from him. Steinberg had said that there was a risk in being involved with Compton, and this was it, kidnapping for ransom. Why settle for hundreds of thousands from her when Compton might give them millions?

  “See,” Laurel said. “Fuck a billionaire, get a Mercedes. You’re nothing more than a high-priced whore, lady.”

  And what X did not know was that the tall one had been told by his boss that the woman they were being paid to kidnap would probably try to buy her own freedom. They had been told not to believe her, and that if they took any money from her, not only would they not get the money that had agreed to be paid for this job (one they didn’t completely understand but knew better than to ask for details), that their
boss would deal with it if they disobeyed, and the men knew what that meant.

  Likewise, the men had also been told the following: never leave the woman alone or give her access to anything that could be used as a weapon; don’t rape her or touch her sexually in any way; and if you must strike her, don’t fuck up her face. And whatever you do, don’t kill her. Scare her. Scare the shit out of her. Along with those instructions, they had also been told how much they would be paid for the work they were doing and how long it would last. They were told what to do with the video they were about to make and how to act in the event that there was a knock at the door. And for the successful completion of their duties, they would receive a hefty sum for just a few days of work.

  X sat down onto the mattress. The tall man told her that they were going to make a video and that she was going to ask, no, beg, Terry Compton, to hand over two million dollars for her release, telling her to tell Compton that her kidnappers were going to put a hole in her head if he refused.

  “How much do you think you are worth to your boyfriend?” Hardy asked.

  “Terry Compton isn’t my boyfriend,” X said.

  Hardy backhanded her after X said this, making her nose bleed again. A thick stream of blood flowed out of her right nostril and over her lips and chin before landing on her white sleeveless shirt. She tried to wipe the blood off her face with the back of her hand, continued to paw at it until her lower face and hand were covered in a hazy red smear.

  X didn’t know if Compton would surrender that amount of money, didn’t think he’d hand over the ransom even if the men did threaten to kill her, especially since she had just blackmailed him, took the car he had given her, metaphorically given him a one finger wave goodbye, and split.

  She would make the video and hope that Compton would hand over the money and that these men wouldn’t kill her.

  A few narrow beams of morning light were coming through the broken slats of the mini-blinds which hung on the windows.

  The tall one pulled a small video camera out of a duffle bag and pushed a few buttons to turn it on. X didn’t speak until he took off the cap that covered the lens. And then, X made her appeal to the camera. Once she was finished, the man removed the disk, put it into a case, then placed it into an envelope that was already addressed to Terry Compton.