But who was this man? Quickly she recalled the hour she had spent awake in Paul’s apartment—there had been no one else there, she was certain. She tried to remember if someone had mentioned Paul’s roommate. But even if this were Paul’s apartment, and this Paul’s roommate, why was Andrea in bed with him, naked?
She eased up into a sitting position, taking care not to disturb the man beside her. She could not shake the feeling of weightlessness that almost overwhelmed her. She ran her fingers through her hair and pressed the backs of her cold hands to her eyes. As her consciousness returned slowly, she looked round the room again and saw that her clothes were scattered about the floor. Her jacket was balled in one corner.
She bit her lower lip in concentration, trying desperately to jar her memory. Pain shot through her jaw, and she touched her fingers to her mouth. It was quite tender, and she felt an encrustation of blood there.
There was something familiar about the room, but she could not immediately determine what it was: something about the molding, or the papering, or the height of the ceiling . . .
It was all three. She was not in Manhattan at all, but back in Jamaica Plain; this was one of the rooms she had seen only in passing down the second-floor hallway of Jack’s house. But how had she got here without any of the journey impressing itself upon her memory? She hadn’t had more than a single joint after they had arrived in New York, but that was hardly sufficient to affect her in this fashion—unless Jack had treated it with something. She remembered now that he had prepared a joint especially for her, and not allowed her to share his. She had been drugged and brought back to Jamaica Plain; there had been no chance to escape at all.
Andrea looked at the man beside her and wondered if she had had sex with him. Probably several times, considering the pain between her legs and the uncomfortable stickiness there. Yet she could remember nothing.
Andrea wondered if she had responded to his love-making. Or had she been under such heavy sedation that she had known nothing at all? It was rape, wasn’t it, when a man took you when you were unconscious?
She touched her feet to the cold floor and padded quietly to the window. Parting the blinds, she discovered that it was dark out—but what day? Had the sun just set, or was it just about to rise? When was it her parents were due back from Canada? Was that today or tomorrow? Or were they already at home, frantic because of her absence and the missing porcelain figurine?
A wave of nausea swept over Andrea. She leaned against the wall to steady herself. When she had recovered a little, she looked round at her clothing on the floor and decided that she hadn’t really the presence of mind or the energy to dress. She went to the door and eased it open just enough to slip through.
She moved along the wall toward the staircase. Now she could hear soft music floating up from the first floor; several voices melded in simultaneous conversation, but she could not distinguish or identify any of them. On her way past an open door she halted and stared inside. On the platform bed within the room a man and woman were having sex. The woman moaned softly and flung her head from one side to the other on the mattress as the man moved rhythmically on top of her. The man caught sight of Andrea, smiled at her, and with a flick of his head motioned her to join them.
Andrea shook her head quickly, moved on to the top of the stairs, and grasped the banister convulsively. Leaning over, she could see the open doorway of the living room and several shadows that fell across the floor of the first-floor hallway. The music, New Wave rock, was suddenly turned louder, and she heard Jack’s voice demanding it be lowered again. Footsteps sounded in the hall below. Andrea saw Morgie, with a can of beer and a box of crackers, walking unsteadily from the direction of the kitchen. She wore her work shirt and a pair of fluffy white mules—nothing else. Morgie hiccuped, fell back a step, giggled, and then, concentrating hard, stepped through the doorway into the living room.
Andrea’s head throbbed. She had become aware of a prickly pain on the inside of her left elbow. She rubbed it and looked back down the hall. Groans came louder from the couple in the bedroom. Andrea shivered violently with the cold, and wiped away the perspiration on her forehead. Unwatched, she could make her escape. There was a back staircase in the house, and she would have to hope no one was in the kitchen when she descended.
She closed her eyes and wondered at the chain of circumstance that had brought her here: to an unheated house in Jamaica Plain, where people had sex without bothering to close the door, where people shot up heroin and screamed at each other, where people were kept against their will. How could she have explained to her parents that she hadn’t meant any of this to happen when she tried to catch Jack’s eye in the Brimmer House?
Unsteadily—for she felt sore in a dozen different places—she stepped across the landing and into the bathroom. Easing the door shut, she pulled on the chain light and stood before the mirror. The tiles were gritty and sharply cold; she took a towel from the rack and placed it beneath her feet. Her hair was dishevelled and greasy. Her lip, surprisingly, was neither bruised nor swollen, though still tender to the touch. As she lowered her hand, she caught sight of a mark on the side of her elbow. In the middle of a blotched circle of purple was a puncture mark. She had been kidnapped and then shot up with heroin. She had been put in bed with a strange man—and it might be that he wasn’t the only one. Andrea watched her expression harden in the mirror. It was the first time in her life she had ever really been victimized.
She ignored the pain she felt, she ignored the lassitude that pervaded her body. She pulled a comb through her hair, washed her face, and sponged her body clean. As she leaned forward, the heady scent of perspiration that was not her own filled her nostrils. She towelled dry and swallowed three aspirin.
Creeping back to the bedroom in which she had wakened, Andrea found the other side of the bed vacant now. She left the door ajar for light and bent stiffly to retrieve her scattered clothing. A rasping on the floor behind her caused her to whip around startled. A man leapt from the darkness behind the door. One hand was cupped over her mouth, and the other locked her arms to her sides. She was shoved roughly onto the bed on her back. The clothes she still held were flung away from her. In the slash of light from the doorway, she saw Jack’s face above her; his eyes were bright, hard, and angry. His jeans chafed against her belly as he straddled her. His stale breath came hot against her face. Without a word he took a syringe from the upended crate that served as a nightstand. Andrea screamed beneath his muffling hand; he poked two fingers down her throat until she gagged and choked.
The syringe was full; a minuscule arc of liquid sparkled as he emptied it of air. Jack lowered the syringe and slipped the needle into the hollow of her elbow. His thumb jammed down the plunger, and he whispered, “Relax, little Wenham girl, relax yourself, or this is going to hurt you. Janis died because she didn’t relax, you ever hear that, she didn’t know when to relax herself . . .”
She went limp; her eyelids were heavy, heavier than she had ever known them to be, but she could not lose consciousness. All the movement she was capable of was spiraling her eyes in their sockets; she saw the room as through gauze.
Jack took off his clothes, and suddenly he was on top of her, grunting, pressing her sluggish, damp body into the mattress. She had no strength to fight him, none to respond. Jack had not finished when she saw, over his heaving shoulder, another man in the doorway, naked and unconcernedly pulling himself into an erection.
One face blended into another. She tried to distinguish them by their shoulders, by their sweat. Sid smiled leeringly, and never even removed his jeans. Dominic grabbed her arms roughly and turned her onto her stomach before he climbed onto her.
Thumbs were pressed against her throat in ecstasy; other hands held her arms to the mattress. She was smeared with tongues and hot breath until she felt she could never be clean again. Either her memory faulted or
the humiliation became a circle: faces and shoulders and smells began to repeat.
At last, at some point, she realized that she was alone. There was no weight on top of her. She lay on her side; her groin ached, and her breasts were sparked with pain. Her cheek was slimy against the pillow. Painfully, Andrea opened her eyes. She was staring at the doorway. Morgie stood there, silhouetted in pink light.
“Oh please—” whispered Andrea, and choked on speech.
As she approached the bed, Morgie slipped the work shirt from her shoulders and kicked her slippers into the corner.
When Andrea found consciousness again, she was alone in the bed. She heard excited hushed voices in the hallway, but could see no one through the open door. Jack’s voice, nearby, harshly commanded, “I said get it now!” Footsteps came down the hall, and Andrea clawed at a button on the mattress—the sheets had long before been worked free. Sid passed the doorway without even looking in; she felt the vibrations of his heavily shod feet as he mounted the stairs that led to Jack’s room on the third floor. Dominic, wearing a heavy corduroy jacket, paused before the door and shouted, “Hurry the hell up! God, what does it take to get you people moving?!”
Morgie appeared in the doorway, zipping up a green army fatigue coat. Andrea closed her eyes. “She’s asleep,” said Morgie, and Dominic replied: “The whore’s exhausted.”
Andrea heard the heavy footsteps descending from the third floor. Through the chink in her heavy-lidded eyes, she saw Sid hand Dominic a small, shiny revolver.
Dominic spun it round his fingers. “Were there enoughbullets to fill it?” he asked.
“No,” said Sid, “I put in five, though.”
“How do you feel, Morgie?” asked Dominic.
“I feel great,” said Morgie.
“You drive, then,” he said.
“Oh great!”
Their voices trailed off as they descended the stairs, and Andrea could hear no more. She held her breath and listened for the front door scraping open. She felt the vibrations of their feet on the front porch; she heard the doors of the jeep slam. The house was deathly silent. The jeep started up, and she followed it as it backed out of the driveway.
She struggled to raise herself, but before she could sit up, the breath deserted her. She fell back heavily, panting, and in a few moments drifted again into oblivion.
30
When she waked again, the house was still silent. There was a change in the density of light; it was probably day now—but what day, following what night, Andrea had no idea. She stirred and turned on the sheets—those sheets felt cooler and crisper. And she was clothed—that was different too.
She was in her own bedroom, in her parents’ house, in Weston. The last thing she remembered was Morgie’s form back-lighted from the hallway. How had she come back? Had she escaped, and had that escape been so harrowing she retained no memory of it? Or had she been brought? She didn’t like the stillness and silence of the house. She could hear the blood beating in her ears. When she began to tremble, she clawed the bed covers to quell the shaking.
When her hand slid underneath the pillow, it slid over hard, cold metal. When Andrea pulled out the revolver, the acrid scent of gunpowder stung her nostrils.
She pulled herself up onto the edge of the bed. Weak light from the window fell across shapes familiar to her. She pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes and rubbed, hoping to clear her mind of sleep and confusion.
What if Jack and the others were in the house, rifling the bedrooms or waiting to jump out at her from behind half-opened doors?
Rising unsteadily, she moved quietly to the window and drew back the curtains and sheers. Beyond the glass the light was weak; a thick winter fog shrouded everything, and she could not even make out the greenhouse she knew to be no more than fifty feet away. A sense of unreality began to overwhelm her; she pressed her hand flat against the cold glass pane and was steadied. She was aware of a wavering nausea and jabs of aching in her joints.
She cocked her head slowly: still she heard nothing. She let the curtains fall back into place.
The digital clock-radio by her bedside had been unplugged. She had no idea what time it was, but supposed it must be soon after dawn. She looked all round the room in hope that something she saw might tell her how she had come to be there. She adjusted her pants and blouse, and realized that she was wearing no underwear; she knew then that she had not dressed herself. Very probably then she had been brought here.
Andrea was dizzy. When she feared she was going to faint, she sat on the edge of the bed and lowered her head to her knees. She took many deep breaths and then sat up again. She wondered if the amount of heroin she’d been shot up with was sufficient to create an addiction in her system. The sickness she felt now might be a result only of her incarceration, the lack of food, the repeated rapes—but it might also be withdrawal.
The continued silence in the house allowed Andrea to believe herself alone. She didn’t yet know what to do, but at least she was safely home and her parents had learned nothing of her ordeal. If she were allowed a little good fortune, they never would. She flicked on the outside switch of the bathroom light and opened the door. Her bare foot had no more than touched the threshold when she stopped and sucked in her breath. Her hand clamped over her mouth to hold in her cry.
Squeezed awkwardly between the blue porcelain toilet and the blue tiled wall, her back to Andrea, was Vittoria LoPonti. Her long black hair was loose and matted with congealing blood from a gaping wound at the back of her neck. Lines of blood mapped the floor tiles around the corpse. Vittoria’s shoulders were hunched, and one arm was extended above her head. It rested flat against the wall. The skin had been broken where her diamond wedding ring had been wrenched off.
Andrea slapped her hand against the light switch, dissolving the image. She yanked herself away from the door and pulled it shut. Her breath seared her lungs as she expelled it. No longer convinced that she was alone in the house, she forced back the screams that welled in her throat.
She went to the door into the hallway, unlocked it, and flung it back, more than half expecting to be confronted by Jack or one of the others.
The hall was dark. When she moved nearer the staircase, she could just make out the slight glow of colored lights that blinked on the Christmas tree downstairs. It wasn’t until she flicked on the hallway light that she saw the dark blotches on the gray carpet. The bloody prints of four fingers were streaked on the door frame of her parents’ room. Andrea moved down and looked within.
Cosmo LoPonti lay beside the bed. He wore a winter jacket, the thick quilted material ripped with tiny red explosions of batting across his unmoving chest. His head lolled to one side and his glassy eyes stared blankly at Andrea. She stared back, but her own eyes remained dry. The house was cold, and she returned to her room for a sweater.
She was no longer quiet in her movements. She felt neither weariness nor fear nor grief. In her bedroom she took the gun and stood at the window fiddling with it until she had succeeded in opening the chamber: of the five bullets that had been loaded, three had been fired and two remained intact. She went downstairs and unplugged the Christmas tree. Her boots and jacket had been tossed at the foot of the couch; she sat down to put them on. She thought for a few moments where she had last left her car keys and, after a moment, went directly to them on the dining room buffet.
A few minutes later Andrea started her car and backed out of the drive. She had left the house unlocked. Now she was glad of the fog and the sense of timelessness it lent to the world.
She drove to Jamaica Plain and, following a street map of Boston in the glove compartment, located the street on which Jack lived. She drove past the house, then parked on a side street three blocks away.
As she expected, the back door of Jack’s house was unlocked. She peered through t
he grimy glass, but nothing stirred in the kitchen or in the hallway beyond. She went quietly inside. She moved down the hall slowly and carefully, staying close to the wall to avoid the creaking boards in the middle.
Sid lay on his back on the sofa. Andrea watched the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest until she had assured herself that he was in deep slumber. Rita was curled up in one of the armchairs. She dreamt, not pleasantly; moaning and twisting, she pushed herself into the back of the chair. Her arm twitched and dropped to her side.
From Rita’s wrist dangled a gold bracelet. Andrea moved to the side of the sleeping woman, leaned down and examined the bracelet. With the nail of her index finger, she pulled the bracelet back just enough to see the words Daughter’s Love engraved on the inside.
Andrea fell back on the carpet. She rocked herself on her haunches, covering her mouth to keep from crying out in her anguish.
She stopped of a sudden, lowering her hands by force of will and fisting them in her lap. She regulated her breathing and stared blankly at Rita’s birth-scarred face. She turned slowly on the carpet and studied Sid’s immobile form on the sofa. Her eyes skitted about the room, catching at items randomly. On one of the low shelves beneath the stereo amplifier were several packets of heroin bound with a rubber band, and next to these an empty syringe—and an enamelled dagger in a heavy chased sheath.
Andrea stood, her face a mask of cold determination.
She no longer considered her own safety. They were all asleep, they wouldn’t wake so long as she was quiet in doing the things she had to do. She was in the kitchen, heating three packets of heroin in a little cup above a candle flame. Remembering carefully what Paul had done in New York—and how long ago had that been?—she filled a syringe and returned to the living room. Without hesitation she jammed the needle into Sid’s neck. He flinched but did not wake, and she slowly pressed the plunger.
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