by Britney King
I do as I’m told. Life is easier this way.
“Now, repent.”
Sean likes it when I beg for forgiveness. He says it makes me pure again.
I say the usual verses.
The clock reads 11:27.
When I’ve finished, he asks me to lie on the bed, face down.
The clock reads 11:44.
I feel him move over the top of me. The entry is rough. My fingers grip the pillowcase. “He didn’t fuck you like this, did he?” he asks, his mouth is hot and wet on my ear.
“No,” I say into the pillow.
“No, what?”
“No, not like this.”
“It’s too bad. You dirty, filthy slut.”
I do not cry. I will not. It wouldn’t matter either way. It’s just an act. Skin on skin, flesh on flesh. It’s important to remove emotion from the equation and focus on the mechanics.
“Let me hear you,” he huffs, and so I moan like my life depends on it.
It’s over faster that way.
I am so good at pretending that by the time the clock reads 11:48, my husband is snoring.
In the end, the business my parents purchased at auction wasn’t only lucky for me. It turned out to be very lucrative for them, at least to the extent that lucrative can be in a community where most of your earnings go to the church.
It was a blessing, they said, to be able to give so much. Of course, it helped that it raised their status within the community, and that there weren’t any laundromats within a sixty-mile radius. We were seen as outsiders as it was, so the church elders decided to make an exception and allow non-believers to wash their dirty laundry where we could keep a good eye on them.
Our laundromat was the old-school kind of place, the kind where you fed coins into the machines. It was my job to do the bank run for my parents. By the time the business was purchased, my brothers, ten and twelve years older than me, had set out on their mission work. Of my seven sisters, I was the only one not married and also interested in work outside the home. So when it came time for someone to help out, I was the chosen one.
Sometimes I feel I’ve lived several lives in one. It’s difficult for me to recall the girl I was back then.
I didn’t know—not until I met Sean—that people actually had a working washer and dryer in their homes. I’d only ever seen the commercial kind.
It didn’t take long for me to catch on that life outside of our community was more different than anyone I knew was willing to let on. Our elders warned us about the evils that existed. With commoners, they called them. But I wasn’t worried. I was willing to go head to head with them if it meant a shot of getting out of that town.
I started planning right from the start. I learned early that I could make deals with the girls coming to do their family’s laundry—that if they gave me an extra quarter, I’d do the washing for them, and for a second quarter I’d do the drying too.
I wasn’t sure it would work at first. Doing the Lord’s work, chores were bred into us from the time we could stand. But to my surprise, it did. At first, they sat around and watched me work or chatted up a friend. You didn’t dare leave our neighborhood. Our borders might have been invisible, but everyone knew where they were.
I realized really quickly that if I wasn’t careful, I was going to get caught. It would be a simple mistake. I wasn’t supposed to keep the money for myself. My parents had no idea that I’d created another arm of the business or that I was skimming off the top. So, the girls chatting helped. Within a week, I knew everyone’s secrets. Within two, I’d gained enough leverage to keep mouths closed, if that’s what it came down to.
But I also knew that it’s better to catch flies with honey and that if I wanted to keep my earnings up, I’d have to innovate. I’d have to offer them something other than the opportunity to be lazy. That gets old quick. They’d figure out they could do their own laundry, still pack in the same amount of gossip, and keep the coins for themselves. If that happened, I’d end up back at square one, and I’d never be able to afford a new life.
To remedy this, I stopped by the library. This wasn’t allowed, obviously, but given I went to the bank every day, I had not only the information I needed to apply for a library card but the excuse to leave the area.
So long as they were paying customers, the girls could read while they waited for me to finish their laundry. This killed two birds with one stone: It gave them a reason to come more often, families never had so much dirty laundry as they did after I got the book idea. My arms certainly ached at the end of the day and on occasion, my fingertips were prone to bleeding, but my profits skyrocketed.
It isn’t as easy as one might think to hide books. First, I hid them in the storeroom behind a shelf, but after a rat got to some of them, and I had to pay the library for the damaged books, I began hiding them in a broken dryer. I was only allowed eight at a time, and with over two hundred families in our community, it became clear that was hardly enough books. Eventually, I could afford to buy the books the library no longer wanted. For this reason, I played up book series with the girls. The library always purchased several sets, and this meant as time went on, they had more they were willing to part with.
Over the years, the girls got smarter. And my parents got richer, gaining status. I had a little savings. Not a lot, but enough to possibly get me out of there.
When a coffee shop opened up down the street from the bank, one day I wandered in. Never mind that it took almost two months to work up the courage. What if someone saw me? What if the elders were right? What if I became like the rest of society, drunk, stoned, void of morals? What if I became a zombie addicted to television and corporate profits? What if I no longer wanted to serve the Lord?
After sixty days, which I marked on a calendar to boldly profess my willpower to myself, I could no longer not go in—the aroma wafting out the doors as I walked by in the cold was too enticing, and I had all that extra laundry money burning a hole in my pocket. Just one time wouldn’t hurt. Then I could see for myself. And see for myself, I did. There was music playing, strong music, music like I’d never heard. The guy at the counter had a ring through his nose. When he asked me to place my order on the computer, I had no idea how to use one, and so he had to help. He didn’t seem like a zombie—maybe not even an addict. In fact, he was really nice. Even when I paid in quarters. He complimented me on my dress. Like the Amish, he said, pointing. I dig your style. I didn’t know what he meant by any of that, and I didn’t much care for the taste of coffee, but still, it was the most interesting place I’d ever been.
On my next library run, I was determined to go back and get it right. If I was ever going to leave my family, my community, the church, I was going to have to learn how to move in the world. I would need to understand what people meant when they addressed me. I’d need to figure out what the word Amish meant, listen to some modern music, and learn how to use a computer. At the library, I asked the librarian to help me. She ran through the process of logging on to the computer and how to access the internet. I didn’t even know what the internet was. But I learned it meant I could look up pretty much anything I wanted.
Over the next year or so, other kids my age would come in—kids not from our sect—and I’d observe the things they did online. I listened to their conversations, to the things they spoke about when they thought no one could hear. One thing they referenced over and over was what had happened on Instalook. Eventually, I decided I needed to know too, and so I joined one day, on a whim. I learned about things like bios and profile pic, likes and followers. No one I knew even knew about the internet, at least not to my knowledge, and so it all seemed so pointless at first. I didn’t have a profile pic, and posting one of myself when I was so obviously different from the other kids around me—well, that seemed far too embarrassing. Plus, I didn’t even own a camera. No one in my community did. In the end, I used an image of another girl, a stock photo I found online.
Due to the
camera issue, I didn’t post much. Just the occasional stock photo here and there. The free ones weren’t very good, and I couldn’t afford to buy any. Anyway, it required a credit card, and Mother and Father said credit cards were the mark of the beast, so mostly I just liked other people’s photos until I got the courage and the hang of what others were doing, and I started commenting on them too. That’s how he found me.
Chapter Sixteen
Elliot
When we sleep, we become almost entirely paralyzed. We can’t even shiver. That doesn’t stop our eyes from periodically darting behind closed lids as though they are seeing. Maybe they are. No one really knows. What we do know is that throughout the night, we become sexually stimulated, both men and women, repeatedly. But even with the knowledge we have, no one in science can pinpoint with any certainty exactly what we are doing when we sleep.
Ever since Emily left, sleep has felt as rare as a hand-written letter. I’ve been toying with a remedy in the lab, but perhaps decent sex has been the answer all along. Thanks to “Amanda,” I got in a solid eight hours last night. It was hard sleep, the kind from which you wake disoriented and edgy. I wish the haze would last, but it doesn’t because all the things going wrong in my life come flooding to the forefront of my mind. I recall what I saw on Emily’s Instalook page, and I can’t forget that she’s keeping our daughter from me, suggesting that I’m a bad father, suggesting that I’m mentally unstable.
The silver lining, in all of it? Now that I have access, I have a lens through which to better see the truth about my wife and what’s happening in her life. I can see she isn’t to blame. It’s him. He has her under some sort of spell. He’s the reason she didn’t come to the hospital, this and I’m sure she couldn’t bear to see me hurt. Emily always avoided pain in one way or another.
I can’t dwell on that now. Everything is coming together. I have to get up, pull myself together, and make plans, given this new information. Pain radiates through my body, which doesn’t help with the rest of it. The bruises may be beginning to fade, but the pain lingers. All wrongs can be righted.
My mother has left a bottle of aspirin on my nightstand. I consider it for a second, but only a second. I hate taking drugs for anything I know my body can do on its own, because what they don’t tell you is the reliance on any substance chemically lessens the chance your body will ever do naturally what it’s meant to do. Fortunately, for me, and for the pharmaceutical industry, everyone has their weaknesses.
On that note, I pull up Emily’s feed. She hasn’t posted since yesterday, and even then it was only scenery, unfortunately. She likes to post inspirational quotes, as if people can’t find the meaning in their life on their own, as though if some random person says just the right thing, it might change everything—suddenly they’ll be motivated to get off an app and actually do something with their life. This…this charlatan, whoever she is, is nothing like the Emily I knew. Further proof that she’s unhappy with her decision: she’s drowning, and instead of trying to save herself, she’s trying to save the whole internet.
She’s projecting because she’s too prideful to say she made a mistake, so she cries out with desperation disguised as inspiration. She’s not speaking to her followers. She’s speaking to herself. She wants someone to see her, to save her. Help her. I can be that person.
All it takes is seventeen minutes to do a quick analysis of her most recent posts, and I get the full picture. She’s desperate—she’s grasping, and she’s most often active in the morning. I refresh the page, just in case. I don’t want to miss anything. Everything is a clue, a map to how to win her back.
When there’s still nothing, not after checking my email, not after refreshing the page seven times, I head for the shower. That’s where I get my best ideas. Christmas is coming, and I refuse to spend Christmas without my family. No matter what it takes.
But I can’t worry too much over the future. Not yet. I have to be on today. A major contract is on the line, and it’s one I prefer not to lose. If that were to happen, my plan would require some major reworking, and I’ve already let enough slip through my fingers. I’m not letting this go too.
I’m grabbing coffee when the idea comes out of nowhere. In fact, I’m mid-pour, my cup just about full, when an intern from downstairs corners me in the break room, toggling the idea loose in my mind.
“Hey,” she half-giggles as she tucks a strand of red hair behind her ear.
I think her name is Claire or maybe it’s Courtney…I can’t recall, and anyway I’m too focused on my idea to care about being polite, so I simply nod. I do, however, make sure to speed up my coffee-making process. I’ll take it black if I have to. It’s not her fault. I hate redheads.
Claire or Courtney clears her throat. “I said, hey.”
Fine, I’ll bite. “Hay is for horses,” I say, because I don’t know what kind of business the prostitute is running, but apparently not a very good one. She didn’t leave any contact information, and if I leave things up to fate, I may never have sex again.
Her face falls. She recovers with her words. “What about jackasses?”
I move toward the exit, but not for the reason she thinks. I’m not actually insulted. I’ve been called worse. Claire or Courtney is the kind of woman who needs a bit of the chase. The overbearing type—the wannabe caretaker, the micromanager—the kind who leaves things in your apartment after the second date and wants to lock you down by the third.
She shifts, boxing me in, which is irritating because she should be able to tell I’m avoiding her without me having to spell it out. “I—I was wondering…I had the Jensen report sent over, and I’m having trouble making sense of the data. Do you think you could take a look at it with me? Another set of eyes might help…”
“It’s not conclusive?”
“That’s the thing.” She shakes her head. “I can’t tell.”
“I’m sure Rogers or Chapman would be happy to have a look.”
Her eyes shift. “I’m asking you.”
I shove my hands in my pockets. “I’ve got a full plate.”
“I could bring it over to your place after work, if you want.”
“I have plans,” I say. “At the lab.” I want to be clear. You never know, she’s the kind liable to show up whenever, wherever.
“I hear you’re working on something new,” she mentions, her voice hopeful.
I sip my too-hot coffee, burning my lip.
“What is it?”
“Nothing yet,” I reply, blowing at the coffee. “Just something I’m toying with. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”
“Elliot…you don’t have to avoid me.”
“It’s not personal.”
“Fine.” She looks like she might cry. I don’t understand. We only slept together once, and she didn’t even seem that into it. “But you don’t have to be such a jerk.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, even though I’m not. Her emotions are a reflection of the way she sees the world. I refuse to let her pin them on me. I don’t understand why women always want what they can’t have.
“It’s just…well, it does feel a little personal. I thought we had something. I thought we had a connection.”
It hits me then.
Whatever action I take next to win Emily back, I have to strike hard. I have to make it personal. I’ve done everything I can think of to make my wife want me back. Everything except beat her at her own game.
Her voice plays in my mind all afternoon. Prove me wrong. I have no idea what the prostitute meant when she said that. I might have asked, if I’d had any idea at the time I’d actually care. Now, it’s all I can think about.
Maybe it is like my father says—you appreciate something more when you have to pay for it. Or maybe the fact that she has to kill what she eats, so to speak, makes her better at it than the rest of the women I’ve had. At least since my wife. I don’t know. But I do know a good thing when I see it. And God, did she ever remind me of Emily.
&nb
sp; The latter part of my workday turns out to be the first productive stretch I’ve had—the first time I can think straight, really think—and it’s nice because my mind has several issues to work out at once.
The detective left a voicemail. The cameras in the parking garage were useless. He wanted to know if I received any threats prior to the attack and if I’ve given any thought to who might have done this. When I call him back, I tell him I haven’t. But the truth is, I have a few ideas. Marcia Louis, if I had to make an educated guess. She’d do anything in her power to slow the competition. I’ve seen it firsthand, and I’ve heard she’s trying to close a deal on a similar drug. I heard she has a buyer for something she’s been working on under the table. Same as me.
I don’t want to point any fingers; it’s equally as likely to have been my wife’s new boyfriend. Like Marcia, he’s afraid of the competition too. He should be.
In the lab, things don’t go as planned. Something is off with the rats. Or something is off with the formula. I open the lid and lift a female from the cage, dangling her in front of my face by her tail so I can chart her number. Number 322. Placing her in the Skinner box, I observe her behavior.
She isn’t interested in mating with any of the males who occupy the Skinner box. She’s only interested in tapping the lever, and when I move it from one location to the other, she runs in circles just to do so again. Like Emily with Instalook, she fights off any male who attempts to engage. She does not seek out food or water, despite being deprived—just the lever. No rat in the wild would indulge in such useless behavior: Rats want to mate; they want to survive, not run in circles forever. Mindless chasing makes an animal less likely to meet its real needs because it short-circuits intelligent behavior.
Not even as a first-year student, when that sort of thing was fashionable, did I name my rats. I’ve always found it best not to get attached to something you’re just going to kill in the end, but this one I think I’ll name Emily.