The body is in full panic mode when I come aboard. Serena, Victoria, and Martha have fled and Kirk is nowhere to be found. That leaves me or Tina to face the emergency and it ain’t gonna be Tina. Still, they’ve picked the right sibling. Although terrible images continue to shred what little mind I possess, I force my brain to calm. I’ve been in tough situations before. That’s what I tell myself. I’ve been in tough situations and I’m still around and you can kiss my ass.
Besides, who’s to say it’s Hank Grand? Like Kirk, I’ve seen the mug shot taken when our father was arrested. He was forty at the time. Now he’s sixty-seven.
I study the man on the other side of the store. He’s standing before a display of refrigerated jars, probably salad dressing. I can see the resemblance, but I also find differences. In the mug shot, Hank Grand had a full head of hair, but this man’s nearly white hair is receding front to back. He’s sporting a gut, too, whereas the Hank Grand on those movies was trim. The nose is softer as well, and the jowls entirely new.
I watch him take a jar from the shelf, watch him spin it in his hand as he examines it. The gesture is so casual that I’m unprepared when he looks up, his head slowly turning until his dead eyes meet mine. I’m expecting to find pure malevolence but instead discover calculation, the look of a man weighing his options. I reach into Martha’s purse and wrap my fingers around a canister of mace given to me by a cop who didn’t say no. The canister reassures me to an extent, but it doesn’t tell me what to do.
From somewhere off in the distance, I hear Tina whisper, “Daddy’s come to get me. Daddy always comes to get me.”
I’ve never had all that much patience with Tina. Maybe she mopes for all of us, but she still mopes. Me, I want to live. I don’t want to be a mope or a prune, either. Indecision doesn’t become me.
Okay, it’s time to confront, time to look the bastard in the eye, to gauge his intentions, to measure the threat. After all, the man’s on parole. If he admits to being Hank Grand, he can be arrested. According to our lawyer, parole violators are not eligible for bail. Hank would remain behind bars until he receives a hearing that won’t take place for six to eight months. Even better, if the scumbag’s charged with violating an order of protection, years can tacked on to his original sentence.
“Oh, hey, Carolyn.”
The voice comes from behind me. It belongs to a creep whose name badge reads Crespo. He’s smiling what he imagines to be a seductive smile.
“What do you want?” I demand.
He draws back, offended. Tough shit. “I just wanted to tell you that we’re having a flash sale on tuna fish.”
I shake my head and mutter, “Jesus Christ.”
Crespo’s eyes widen as he raises a hand and backs off. Good riddance, but when I return to Hank Grand, I find him gone.
Now what? I’m standing in a supermarket, leaning over a shopping cart loaded with groceries, wearing a hideous housedress, my sweat-soaked hair pinned to the side of my head like a fucking helmet. I hear voices, Martha and Victoria rapidly approaching. They want the body returned to their care, but I’m not ready for exile.
“Get your cowardly asses back where they came from,” I tell them.
I’m shocked when they quickly retreat, leaving me to a shopping cart loaded with groceries. My first instinct is to abandon the cart where it is and head off. I haven’t been out of the apartment in weeks and playing housewife is not on my agenda. But I have to go home anyway, what with the dress and the hairdo. Plus, when you get right down to it, the body has to eat. It’s my body, too.
I check out, using the dollars in Martha’s wallet to pay for an eight-pack of generic paper towels and two bars of soap. The rest, $67.80, comes off our food stamp allowance. Outside, I cross to the shaded side of the street before heading home. The sidewalks are almost deserted, what with the heat and the humidity, but I’m still scanning the pedestrians—mostly male but occasionally female—for suitability. That said, I’m not the “drug-fueled” nymphomaniac described by my dear sister.
If there’s to be a sexual life for us—the way there is for everyone else in this world—the sex will always be casual. It’s either that or cross your legs and try to forget. And that’s because a true relationship between caring human beings is a nonstarter. No man would put up with the identities rotating through Carolyn Grand’s body. Or woman, for that matter.
Maybe two months ago, I met a banker named Mario Spaulding at a club in Lower Manhattan. I was sitting by the bar when he asked me to dance and I said yes without thinking too much about it. Mario wasn’t a great dancer, wasn’t beautiful, wasn’t a hard-body athlete. But something in his manner convinced me that he not only knew where he wanted to go, he knew he couldn’t get there unless I came along with him. Partners in crime, both vital to pulling off the job.
The club was on the first floor of a hotel and Mario, a native New Yorker, already had a room. I teased him about his arrogance on the way to the elevator. He refused to deny the charge, but when the door closed on an empty car, he took me in his arms and I felt his erection pushing into my belly. I was thrilled. No performance anxiety tonight. Right to work.
Upstairs, Mario was in no hurry. Me, either. We played with each other’s bodies, fingers, hands, mouths, and tongues, until I couldn’t bear it for another second. I fell onto my back and he slid inside me, taking his time, moving oh so slowly, filling me, pulling back to the very edge. I reached up, took him by the shoulders, and drew him down so that our chests and bellies met. Smiling, he wrapped an arm around my back, pulled me tighter against him, then leaned down and kissed me, our mouths forming an instant partnership. After a very short time, without Mario speeding up, I came so hard my toes were still curled five minutes later.
We went at it all night. Sex, food, drink, sex, food, drink, talk, talk, talk. I found myself really liking the guy, body and soul. I wasn’t a conquest. I wasn’t to be dismissed, as I’d been many times before. Our talk was light and teasing, full of promise, of exploration. It continued until shortly before dawn when Mario asked for my phone number. As I kissed him and said goodbye, I rattled off the first set of numbers to cross my mind. I only remember they began with 212.
Imagine Mario trying to call me at our real number. Who would answer? Would they know of his existence?
Even the simplest connection—let’s get together next week at the same place—doesn’t work for a woman with restricted access to her own body.
Nope. Gals like Eleni Grand, we gotta take our lovin’ whenever and wherever. But not, as the prunes insist, however.
I listen to the squeaking wheels on the cart as I make my way home, but I’m thinking of my father. It’s pretty obvious that his appearance wasn’t some kind of coincidence. He must have followed Martha and that means he knows where we live. So, what next? I hear Martha now, very distinctly. There’s a Post-it note attached to the refrigerator, she explains, with the phone number of a hotline written across the face. If I would be so good as to relinquish the body, she will use that number to report Hank Grand’s appearance. The relinquishing part isn’t going to happen. I waited too long to get here. Besides, there’s something else that needs doing. The files Marshal hacked are yet to be read because Kirk is being denied any active time.
I don’t know how to fight for Kirk. I’m only sure that if the prunes succeed, if they banish him, Serena will be the next to go. Then me.
I take the meat out of the shopping cart as soon as I get into the apartment. I put it in the refrigerator but leave everything else. I can’t help but notice the Post-it note with the phone number written in red ink. On impulse, I punch the number into our landline. I’m expecting some kind of breathless response. It’s a hotline after all. Instead, I reach a man who identifies himself as Detective Phil Wocek. I explain the situation as best I can, Hank Grand out on parole, the order of protection, the conditions of parole. Wocek maintains complete silence—I’m not even sure he’s still there—until I finish.
“Okay, lemme check it out,” he says.
For the next ten minutes, I listen to the faint chatter of a police radio and the voice of a desperate-sounding man who keeps shouting, “No, no, no.”
Finally, the phone’s picked up. “Sorry for the delay,” Wocek announces. “But it looks like your order of protection hasn’t been processed yet.”
“My father’s release has been in the works for months. But what? The judge couldn’t get around to it?”
“No need for the sarcasm, Ms. Grand.” The cop’s tone has all the passion of a computer-generated voice on a corporate phone menu. “We’re paddlin’ as fast as we can.”
I take a breath. “He still violated his parole. Why don’t you call his parole officer?”
“As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I’m gonna do. But I wouldn’t expect much. I mean, your father was on the other end of the store when you saw him for the first time in twenty-seven years. He never spoke to you, never even approached you. So, unless he admits to deliberately making contact, he’s not gonna get arrested. Period, end of story.”
The state has failed us again. How shocking. I hang up and head for the shower. On the way, I double-check the dead-bolt locks on the door, making certain they’re engaged. I’ve got a hot date with the showerhead and I don’t care to be interrupted.
As I pull off my clothes, I become more and more aroused, that glow in the darkness making its very specific demands. It’s a pure pleasure to strip off the sweaty housedress, to shed bra and panties, to adjust the water temperature, then switch the shower to pulse. I stand beneath the water for a moment, allowing the heavy jets to wash through my hair and across my face before reaching up to lift the showerhead off the hook.
That’s when the present drops away.
I’m little and I’m in a tub and the water is hot, so hot I’m burning and I’m screaming and I can’t get out. I can’t get out, I can’t get out. Daddy holds me down and he’s so strong, too strong, please, please, please, and then his voice, his calm, calm voice.
“This is what happens to bad girls, Carolyn. I told you not to be a bad girl. I told you again and again. Now, see what you made me do?”