by Naomi West
“Is it ready?” I ask when I’m back in the office.
Whisper zips up the duffle bag. “It’s ready,” he says. “And your man here has been turned into a true technological wunderkind by yours truly.”
“And the shank?”
Whisper reaches into his pocket and takes out a three-inch blade with a small plastic handle. “I need to show you how to hide it,” he says. “The trick is to get it right in the crook of the knee and keep your leg slightly bent so it don’t feel like nothing.”
“As long as it does the job.” I take the shank from him, and then take a long slow breath.
“Never known you to be nervous,” Whisper says.
“No,” I agree. “Neither have I.”
Chapter Ten
Selena
I work for hours at the screw, so long that I get used to the taste of metal and the ache in my neck. I twist, take a breath, twist, take a breath. This becomes my world. Talking to Dante was reassuring, but these men are capable of anything. It terrifies me to think about, but I can easily imagine them simply killing him when he arrives. I overheard the men in the hallway talking about how he’s just going to give himself up: “Not such a big man now, is he?” Surely they’ll just kill him, or lock him up like they’ve locked me up. It touches my heart that Dante wants to save me, but what if everything goes wrong?
It must be evening now, or close to evening. Outside in the hallway the chatter gets quieter as some men leave their shift. I hear them saying goodbye to each other, and then it sounds like there’s two men out there. I pause in my unscrewing and listen carefully.
“See the game the other night?”
“Nah, I got one of those new TVs last week and I’ve been hooked. Watching all sorts of crap on there.”
“You didn’t miss much.”
The conversation goes on, and only two men speak. So either there’s a silent third out there or only them. I go back to unscrewing.
I try not to think about what’s going to happen to me if Dante can’t save me or I can’t get out. I try not to think about a thousand horrors and a thousand pains and all the times Clint made me feel small and weak and useless. I try not to imagine myself in that position again, weeping and begging for mercy. I’m a strong person now, I tell myself, my teeth grinding against the rust. I’ll never let myself be that weak little flower again.
Finally, the screw comes loose. I’m so surprised that I lurch back, leaning against the wall. Hours of screwing and now the screw lies on the floor, tinkering against the tiles as it rolls over and over. I rest for a minute, hiding the screw with my foot, and then slowly slide the cuffs down the length of the pipe to where it meets the wall. I tug on the cuffs and just like that one of my hands is free, the cuffs dangling from the wrist. I reach across to the opposite pipe and grip the screw, pinching it between my thumb and forefinger. For a second the resistance is too strong and I panic—this was all for nothing—but then it begins to turn.
I stand up, both hands free, stretching my legs out. Walking around the room quietly, I look at the door. I’m still confident I could kick it open. That is, if it’s even locked. Why would they bother locking it if I’m handcuffed to the pipes? But when I get out there, what am I going to do? There are two of them and one of me … I imagine a scenario in which I creep out there and beat the hell out of them both, slamming their heads together and then swaggering down the hallway. That might feel good to think about, but there’s no way I’m going to be able to pull it off. No, if I have a chance it’s against one of them: sneak out, hit him over the head, run.
I feel like a zoo animal meekly returning to the zoo as I slide the cuffs back onto the pipes and wedge the screws into the holes. I don’t turn them, so I can pull them free again. But if they come in here and notice the missing screws, my plan is dead before it starts.
I close my eyes, readying myself. If there was one thing I got good at being with Clint, it was pretending to be something I’m not. Some nights he wanted his abused wife to be sexy, and to avoid further abuse I had to be sexy. Some nights he wanted meek and I had to be meek. Some nights, countless nights … countless faces, I wore them all. After it ended and Clint was gone, Mom said to me, “All women are actresses, dear. We have to be.” I couldn’t argue with her. So I’ll do the same now. I’ll play the pouty, hungry little woman.
As long as the man whose face I spit in isn’t out there …
I grit my teeth, and then force myself to relax. It’s time to play my role.
I make loud sobbing noises, hunching over and trying to force tears out of my eyes. I cry in the most pitiful way I can manage, the sort of crying which most men—even cruel men—can’t help but hear. I cry so loudly that I know they can hear it out there; there’s no way they can’t. I cry until the door opens and a man steps through. He’s younger than the others with a softer-looking face. He’s wearing a T-shirt with a superhero logo on the chest.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asks, trying to sound biting and tough but coming across as a concerned kid.
“I’m so, so hungry,” I whine. It’s easy to make these words sound true. They are true. “I haven’t eaten all day and, oh, oh, ohhhhhh—” I break into sobs again. “My belly hurts so much!”
“What’s up with her?” A gray-haired man pokes his head around the door. I’m glad to see he isn’t the one whose face I spit in.
“Says she’s hungry,” the kid says. “What shall we do?”
“Did the boss say anythin’ about food?”
“No.”
“Then we leave her.”
The kid turns away from me, lowering his voice. “Look at her. She’s just hungry. I can run down to the burger joint on I-10. Won’t take more’n twenty minutes, if that.”
“The boss didn’t say shit about food,” the old man says. “What if he comes by?”
“You know he’s waiting on the highway for that Dante son of a bitch. They’re gonna grab him. We’ll hide the food wrappers. Or if he sees, I’ll take the heat.”
“You’re too soft, kid.” The man shrugs. “If you wanna risk your neck, go ahead. Just don’t get me involved when shit hits the fan.”
The younger one turns to me. “I don’t want you thinking I give a damn about you,” he says. His voice is cold now. His eyes are colder. He doesn’t look like a kid anymore. “If the boss ordered me to put a bullet in your head I’d do it without second-guessing him, all right? But I don’t wanna hear you whining all night about how hungry you are.”
“Thank you,” I whisper, playing the pathetically grateful prisoner.
“Right.”
I hear him walking down the hallway, and then his footsteps are merely echoes. Gray-Hair closes the door and paces up and down the hallway, whistling. I work quickly, getting the pipes loose again and then standing up. I’m suddenly nervous when I get to the door, pressing my ear against it and listening to Gray-Hair’s footsteps. I feel that out-of-body sensation that’s the bane of my life, a constant disjointed feeling pulling me out of the moment. But even if it bothers me usually, right now it’s a blessing. If I was forced to endure this, I think I would become paralyzed with fear. I’m about to open the door when an idea occurs to me. I return to the pipe and try to pull it away from the wall. It doesn’t budge. Maybe if I didn’t have to be careful of making noise I could get it loose.
Instead I grip the dangling handcuffs together to make a solid lump of metal. Surely if I hit him over the head with this he won’t be getting up. I wait near the door for Gray-Hair’s footsteps to go in the opposite direction, and then try the handle. It’s open! I push it as quietly as I can, wincing as it creaks on its hinges, and emerge into the same hallway they carried me down not that long ago. Gray-Hair has his back to me, hands in his pockets, watching a portable TV in the corner of the room.
I don’t think. I don’t have the time or the luxury to think. I just run headlong at him, hands over my head. He reacts at the last moment, gasping and going for a
metal baseball bat leaning up against the wall. I smash him over the head with the cuffs, a sickening flesh-metal sound rising into the air. I hit him twice, and then he slides to the floor as though boneless. I kneel down and root around in his pockets as he lies on his side, moaning softly.
“You … you hit me,” he mumbles.
“Sorry.” I find the keys in his back pocket. “I had to. You know? I …” He looks just like a scared old man, his face wrinkled, his lips parted stupidly. I back away with the keys, feeling absurdly guilty.
I unlock the cuffs and then look up and down the hallway. In Gray-Hair’s direction there’s a door, so I head back down that way. He’s half-kneeling now. I approach him warily, still holding the cuffs as my weapon. “I’m leaving,” I tell him. “I’ll hit you on the head again if you try and stop me.”
“I can’t let you go,” he says. “No way. The boss’ll freak if I let you go!” He sounds drunk, slurring his words.
I step forward. He lurches, grabbing blindly. I grit my teeth and hit him twice more in the head, and then a third time, and then a fourth, until he’s lying on his back wheezing and opening and closing his mouth in shock. I step over him, not letting myself wonder if I’ve done any serious harm, and then open the door. No—it’s locked. Dammit. No, no!
I search Gray-Hair’s pockets again, turning them inside out. A packet of cigarettes, his cellphone, and a key ring. I try each key on the ring, but they’re clearly his apartment keys.
“The kid has them,” I mutter, knowing it’s true.
I check Gray-Hair’s phone, going to his recent texts. I have a hunch that if the kid took the keys, Gray-Hair might’ve texted him. At first I think I’m wrong. There are no texts mentioning keys. But then the cell vibrates in my hand and someone named Charley says, Sorry Rolf! I locked u in! Will b back soon!
“Shit shit, shit.” I grab Rolf by the ankles and drag him toward my cell, stowing him in there, and then return to the door. Lifting my leg, I kick. I kick hard and fast and violently, not caring about sound anymore, only caring about getting out of here as soon as I can. I can’t stay here, not after what I did to Rolf. I kick for several minutes, but this door is made of metal. I’m doing more damage to my leg than I am to the door.
“Okay,” I whisper under my breath. I pick up the baseball bat and stand behind the door, ready to strike. It will be simple, I tell myself. He walks in, I hit him, I run.
I hold the bat above my head, afraid that if I don’t I won’t be quick enough when he opens the door. Time seems to slow, compress, bend. Minutes pass but they feel like hours, and yet simultaneously they feel like seconds. Time goes too slow and too fast, and all I want is for that door to open so that I don’t have keep going over and over it in my head. I want to act; thinking is toxic.
After what feels both too fast and too slow, the metal door opens. I hold my breath, waiting for Charley to walk through the door. I don’t let myself feel bad for what I’m about to do. It’s me or him. I have to believe that. He walks through with the takeout, but drops it the second I swing at him. It’s like he can sense it coming, or maybe hear my exhalation as I bring the bat down.
“Fuck!” he yelps, ducking the bat and leaping backward. His face goes from surprise to rage when he sees me with the bat. “That was a mistake,” he growls. “That was a big fucking mistake.”
“You better stay there or I’ll—”
He reaches behind his back and pulls out a pistol. He levels it at me, and then says, “Stupid fucking woman.”
I have no choice but to drop the bat.
“Step forward.”
I do as he says, the barrel of the gun forcing me to obey.
“Stupid fucking woman,” he repeats, and then smacks me across the forehead.
For the second time in under twenty-four hours, I fall unconscious.
Chapter Eleven
Dante
“Are you sure about this, boss?” Lion asks.
“It’s a bit late for that question, ain’t it?” I reply as we load the duffle bags into the back of the jeep. “The men are already whispering about electing a new president. Make sure to keep an eye on that. Might be useful to know who can be trusted in every circumstance and not just when things are rosy. You asked if I’m sure? Hell, no, I ain’t sure. But I don’t see that I’ve got a choice, apart from letting her die, and that ain’t no kind of choice. And listen.” I place my hand on Lion’s shoulder. “This is about more than Selena. At least it can be. Those trackers are gonna lead you straight to Brose. I want you to promise me something, Lion. If Brose clips me the second he gets these bags, you find him and you kill him. You kill him for Markus. You kill him for the club. And you save Selena.”
Lion smiles sadly. “I remember when Markus asked me to join the club. I was seventeen, and my dad had just got out of prison for killing my mom. You remember that?”
“I remember Markus mentioning it.”
“He comes swaggering out of that prison like he’s the biggest badass in history, so Markus takes me to his apartment and we do our work. Bastard killed and raped my mother and thought he could just walk about town and nothing would happen. I became a Saint that day, and I’m never going to stop being a Saint. Sorry for the ramble, boss. What I mean to say is that Markus was my friend as well as my president back in the day. I’ll end Brose if shit goes south; I’ll save the girl. But don’t let them go south, all right?”
“I’ll try.” I climb behind the wheel of the jeep. “I can’t help but feel like I’m riding to the hangman.”
“Let’s hope that isn’t true,” Lion says.
I follow Brose’s directions out onto I-10. The sun is setting now, its slow summer descent turning the world the color of a ripe apple. My anger hasn’t gone but I’ve pushed it far back in my head, not allowing myself to feel it. When I get my hands on Brose, when I get Selena back … those are the times for emotion. I turn onto the dusty track and bump along the road, feeling the shiv taped to the back of my knee, wondering if it’ll work, wondering if any of this’ll work.
I keep thinking about the way Selena looked when I asked to know more about her, all shy, all cagey, and then I imagine two futures. In one, we’re back in my apartment and we’re talking, just talking and I’m happy just to talk because this woman is so interesting to me. In the other, I’m at the bottom of a waterless well and her corpse is watching me, making the place stink. I don’t want my mind to go there but I’ve lived a violent life, and with a violent life comes violent thoughts.
I drive until bright headlamps cut across the darkness. There are five sets of them, all shining at crossed angles so that they appear like overlapping glow worms. I squint against the light, covering my eyes with my hand. I’m all too aware that at any second now a bullet could take me through the head. One shot from the darkness and this is over. It’d make more sense than dragging me in. But Brose isn’t the sort of man who does anything because it makes sense. Brose is the sort of man to twist the knife just for the thrill of twisting it, the sort of man who never learned how to cash out after a winning streak.
Brose steps into the light, dressed like a peacock as usual with his fancy suits and fancy hat. He swings his silver wolf-pommel cane back and forth as he walks. Then he approaches the jeep and taps the window with it. “Howdy there, Dante,” he says, smiling. “Would you mind stepping from the vehicle? I certainly hope you brought the merchandise like I instructed you.”
Instructed you. I want to break his jaw for those words alone.
I don’t have a choice, though. I step from the car and wait as Brose’s men remove the duffle bags and take them into the darkness. Brose just watches me, hands overlapped on his cane, smiling like an indulgent parent. Everything about him reeks of smug.
“A nice evening for it.” His smile gets wider. “I love a Texan sunset. It makes one feel in tune with nature, does it not?”
“Sure,” I say.
“Don’t you want to call me sir again?”
“That’s not happening,” I say.
“Oh, really?” Brose leans forward. “What if I said I’d let my men have their wicked way with your woman if you didn’t? But I won’t. Don’t worry. I have plans for you and the cunt.”
I bristle at the word. Every instinct I have is telling me to grab this man’s head and twist it so quickly that his neck snaps, and then keep twisting and twisting until his head comes away from his neck.
“Wow,” Brose says, watching me. “You really care for this girl? How curious. I always thought you and Markus were stupid ape-headed morons, but this is another level. I suppose your father was the same, a true idiot.”
“You didn’t know my father,” I say.
“I’m quite a bit older than you, in case you hadn’t noticed.” Brose grins that shit-eating grin. “But no, you’re right. I didn’t know him personally. But I’ve heard stories. I heard that he cheated on your mother so much the poor woman tried to take her own life. I suppose it was a relief to her when she finally died.”