“My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,”
—Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale”
Time had lost all meaning. Alfonso’s nervous doctor had returned, armed with pills and needles. She had been ordered to drink, to swallow, had her arm swabbed with icy alcohol and been stabbed, ineptly, with needles. Almost immediately, she had felt a euphoric wave of pain relief and was plunged into dark sleep.
She was kept prisoner in the realms of sleep, coming to the surface occasionally like a marine mammal coming up for air. Gray and gloomy morning blended into drizzly gray afternoon, afternoon to a gradual lightening and a partly blue sky that faded into dusk, and dusk into a cold, clear night with twinkling stars and a rich, blue-black sky that deepened, finally, to black. In the darkness of the bedroom, she only told one from another when someone raised the shade to look out.
Alfonso came once. Stared, poked and prodded her in ways she was helpless to prevent, and held a muttered conversation with her captors, the only clear word she caught was “clothes.” The doctor returned, stabbed her again with drugs, and proclaiming himself satisfied, went away. Alfonso would be pleased. The swelling was already going down. Her color was better. Her chemically-induced sleep was doing her a world of good.
The rest might be healing her physically, but inside her head, prisoner of chemicals she couldn’t escape, nightmare followed terrifying nightmare as she tossed, sweating and miserable, in a swaddling tangle of sheets. She was being pursued relentlessly through the caverns of her mind by grunting, blood-drenched, faceless men. She woke, screaming, to find a strange face looming over her. He pinned her to the bed with iron hands and ordered her to calm down. No one was trying to hurt her. He was hurting her.
She looked around a strange room. Nothing familiar. She didn’t know who he was. Why she was naked in this stranger’s bed? She tried to push away the confining hands but they only tightened, pressing her firmly onto the bed. “Calm down,” he ordered. “Calm down.”
The harsh, shadowy man pinning her to the bed merged with the faceless figures from her nightmare. She struggled to free herself from those confining arms, screaming at him, “Let me go! Let me go!” She flailed at him with her hands, with her fist. He was a stranger, the enemy, and was forcing her down. The need to free herself from this nightmare exploded. She fought with fury and a desperation driven by primitive instinct. Fighting to survive.
“Cut it out. Goddammit!” he yelled into her face, tightening his grip.
She tried to wiggle away. The slippery sheets caught at her legs. Her feet, planted for leverage, stung and burned. She remembered running through fire. Ghostly hands grabbed and clutched. “No!” She screamed into the invisible face. “No!”
With her good hand, she clawed at him, searching for eyes, for something soft and vulnerable, some way to disarm him so she could escape.
The commanding voice of her self-defense teacher reminded her, “You don’t have to be polite to someone who has invaded your space, who has grabbed you, who is trying to take you away. Get over your conditioning about not hurting others. He doesn’t have it, and if you want to save your own life, you can’t either. Look for his vulnerable points. Nose. Throat. Don’t bother to go for the groin. Men expect that. But you can take your two fingers and go for the windpipe.” The whisper of fingers on Jenny’s throat. “Right here, and in a few seconds, bingo!”
Screaming at him to take his hands off her, screaming out the rage built up over days and nights of pursuit and captivity, screaming out her fear of being trapped, pinned down, of being chased, mauled, mangled, murdered, betrayed, awake or asleep. The hands wouldn’t let go. He was going to let her go, dammit! No way was he keeping her pinned down on the bed one second longer.
Screaming, roaring, the freeing of her voice giving her a surge of energy powered by a rage so intense it felt like it was breaking right through her skin, Jenny brought her head up and slammed it as hard as she could into his face. He grunted with pain as he released her and brought his hands to his wounded nose. She slammed her fist into his throat. He rolled away from her, choking and gasping, clasping both hands to his face and throat.
The instant his hands were gone, she dashed across the room and locked herself in the bathroom. She crouched on the floor as tremors shook her, the aftershocks of that volcanic explosion. She’d deliberately attacked another person with the intention of doing harm. She’d never known she was capable of such rage, or deliberate violence. They had brought her down to their own level, degraded and terrified her until she had to fight for her life.
She huddled in the corner, her back pressed against the wall, the edge of the tub cold against her skin, arms wrapped tightly around her legs. She stared down at her bandaged feet. They were mottled purple with cold. Goose bumps rose like Braille under her fingers. She closed her eyes and rested her head on her knees. In the aftermath of such extreme anger, she felt fragile and exhausted. If it hadn’t been automatic, she would have been too tired to breathe.
She recalled where she was, and who was responsible, but why was she naked? She hadn’t been when she fell asleep. And then she knew. Words she’d heard dimly through sleep. She was naked because Alfonso wanted her as vulnerable as possible. Helpless and degraded and unable to run. She probably only had blankets and water because they were necessary to her physical recovery, to help heal her battered face so he could use it. The knowledge reoriented her, setting her right back in the middle of a simmering pool of anger. She would never help him, never cooperate, no matter what it cost her. She couldn’t allow him to use her to help him win. She needed food. Clothes. Shoes. A way to escape.
Someone banged on the door. “Jenny? It’s Morrissey. Will you let me in or do I have to break down the door?”
She didn’t care. It was his door. Besides, to open the door, she’d have to move again. She was too tired to move.
“Jenny? Are you all right?” Another pause. “Please let me in. You know I just painted this door. I’d hate to have to break it but I will if I have to. Sooner or later you have to deal with us. There’s no other way out of there.”
Morrissey’s voice had startled her. She was crying now, involuntary tears, like a fitful pump jolted into action. Big girls don’t cry. These tears were anger, not sorrow or fear. Sometimes she thought she was brave. Sometimes she didn’t know. She knew only that she wanted to be left alone here unless they were going to treat her decently. She would trade him an unmarked door for the things she needed. And no more drugs. Otherwise, she’d fight them every step of the way.
“Jenny, please. Let me come in and talk to you.”
She got up, using the wall for help, and limped as far as the sink, leaning on it heavily. “Make you a deal,” she said.
“You’re not in a very good position for deals.”
“It’s your door, Morrissey. Go ahead and break it. What can you do to me that hasn’t already been done? Hurt me? Drug me? Humiliate me?”
She undid the lock, then retreated to her corner, arms around her knees, waiting for a repeat of this part of their game, when Morrissey would burst in and carry her off again. Didn’t he ever get tired of the same old same old?
The door opened. He stepped in and closed it part way behind him. At least he hadn’t brought a battery of staring eyes so that they could all revel in her nakedness. In her abject vulnerability. It was a small room once Morrissey was in it. He crouched down on the floor a few feet away and studied her. “What the hell happened out there?” he asked.
Her mind was a jumble. Perhaps such strong emotions had left a wake of misfiring synapses. She searched for words. “You really want to know what happened out there?”
He nodded.
“Then don’t yell at me.”
“I didn’t think I was yelling.”
“I am fragile as tissue paper.” She stood, hands at her sides, and looked at him. “ “‘What happened’? I was so…” Words eluded her. “Scared.”
She searched for more words. “I was dreaming. Nightmares. Endless nightmares. All those drugs… I couldn’t wake up. Huge, bloody men were chasing me. I ran and ran and I was falling.” Tears ran down her face. “Then he grabbed me.”
She could see it. She could feel it. But how to convey the frantic terror of it? She was too shaken to go on and hated herself for it, expecting him to yell or seize her and take her back into the bedroom, exposing her to the others, forcing her onto the bed where the needles, the drugs, the nightmares would start again.
He just stayed there, as if he had all the time in the world, as if he sat nightly on cold bathroom floors and listened while terrified women constructed their painful sentences. Perhaps he did.
“He was holding me down,” she said. “I thought the people in the nightmare had finally caught me. I was trying… to make him let me go. With all the drugs and everything, I couldn’t get out of the dream. I didn’t know he was real.”
He handed her a wad of toilet paper.
She wiped her eyes and blew her nose.
He took the crumpled paper, threw it away, handed her some more. “Take your time,” he said.
“When I realized he was real, I panicked. I thought I was being attacked by a stranger. I didn’t know where I was or why I was…” She hesitated. “Naked.”
Had hitting her head on the sidewalk damaged her brain? She couldn’t find words. “I’m not very experienced. Sexually. I mean, maybe some people, waking up like that… but I’ve never woken up naked with a strange man.”
She didn’t mean to tell him this. “All I could think was what was he going to do to me. How could I escape.” Her laugh was more like a sob. “I sure got far, didn’t I?”
She watched his face. She hadn’t said these things for a purpose, but could see she was making a connection.
“You’re hell on wheels, Jenny,” he said. “There are plenty of big burly men not a quarter as capable as you are. Or as brave.”
She pulled in a long, shuddering breath. “Oh, please. Don’t.”
Being told she was capable and brave wasn’t comforting. She was like a rat in a maze. She’d escape and run like crazy, wearing herself out, and then they’d pick her up and stuff her back in a cage. She’d always hated being helpless.
He was crouching. She was standing. She straightened. There was no way to hide it, so just let him how naked she was. How real she was. “Don’t say nice things to me. It’s not fair. Not with what’s going here. I don’t know how much…” She finished in a whisper. “How much more I can take.”
He stood, like he was going to reach for her, then hesitated. She could feel the heat of his body. She was so cold it hurt. A silent stand-off, facing each other. Jenny made no move to hide her body. It seemed too abject to attempt the meager modesty of an arm across her breasts, a hand across her crotch. It reminded her of Betty, in the kitchen. He’d probably seen it all already. Someone had undressed her.
She put out a hand to steady herself. Took his arm, sensing a shift in the power balance. “I think you’re a good man,” she said, “and I wonder how you can allow yourself… allow them… to do this to me.”
“I’m trying to keep you alive,” he said. “There are people out there trying to kill you.”
They were only a foot apart now.
“More quickly, you mean. Less painfully. They just want me dead. They aren’t planning to exhibit me for public scrutiny first. They want to close my eyes forever; you want to exhibit me to the press like something brought back from the wilds of Africa, so everyone can see how much my blue eyes look like Senator Buxton’s. Will you at least let me get dressed first, before you parade me before the press? Or do I appear like this? Mottled and multi-colored?” She twirled slowly, dizzily, and came back to his arm.
“That’s not fair, Jenny.”
“What’s fair got to do with anything that’s happening here?”
She took his hand and brought it to her face, to her tender, battered, cheek. “You did this, Morrissey.” She moved the fingers to the alarming lump on the back of her head. “And this. And then you threw me in the car and would have left me there in freezing misery, crumpled up like an old suit, because your ego was hurt. Like you might treat a criminal you were mad at. Like a criminal, when my only crime was trying to be free. To be safe.
“You would have left me there, if it hadn’t been for Joe. Tender-hearted Joe. I worry about what this is going to do to him. How he’ll go on calling himself a good guy?” Jenny swallowed. She wanted to move closer, drawn by his heat. “After what I did to that man, how am I going to call myself a good guy? That’s what you’ve done to me. All of you. Made me more like you. More than this.”
Moving his hand with hers, she traced the bruises on her shoulder down across her chest, over her breast, along her ribs and down her stomach. Heard the sharp intake of his breath. He didn’t pull his hand away. She stepped closer and slid his hand to her back, tracking his fingers down her spine, every inch of it sore from being slammed onto the pavement. She left his hand just below her waist, in the hollow of her back. Now they were only six inches apart.
“I’m real,” she said. “I’m a real flesh and blood person, just like you. I’m not a piece of printed campaign material. I breathe, I eat, I bleed. I suffer. I desire. I dream. Just like you. Can’t you feel it?”
She could feel his heat. His trembling. He put his other hand out and pulled her against him. Belt buckle in her chest, shirt button in her ear. She didn’t even come up to his shoulder.
His hands cupped her buttocks, ran up her back to her shoulders. Something deep in her belly clenched. A primitive urge to be warm, to be touched, to connect. To blow away all this gritty reality. To make this man want her. Force him to acknowledge her humanity.
Very gently, he pushed her away. “Oh, God, Jenny. You’re so real. Don’t tempt me.” His voice was ragged.
“Tempt you? I didn’t chose to be naked, Tom. Someone took my clothes away. Was it you?” She looked down at the floor. “I guess it doesn’t matter much. I’m sure you’ve all seen me.” She looked at her bruised body. “Sexy as hell, aren’t I?”
She was so cold. He had been so warm. She moved toward him again. Saw him hesitate, then back away. “Please,” she said. “I’m just so desperate to be warm. But I won’t walk back out there like this. I can’t.”
She turned away from him. “How can you be so cruel?”
“Jenny, Jesus, I didn’t—”
“Did you think it wouldn’t matter, because I’m not someone you know? Because you were just following orders?”
She needed to lie down. Her legs felt like spaghetti.
“You never let a guy get a word in, do you?”
Like they were just two people talking. Well screw him. All her life she’d been letting the guys get in most of the words. “You’re not just a guy, Morrissey. You’re a kidnapper. You’re a guy so twisted he’ll knock a poor beaten down girl to the pavement and half-kill her. When you found me after the car crash, I thought you were a nice guy. I thought that you were kind. Hard to say which of us is the bigger dope. Me, for thinking that you’re one of the good guys, or you, for believing it.”
She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. “Why don’t you just go away?”
“I can’t leave you like this.”
“Oh, please, Morrissey. Why the hell not?”
He touched her shoulder lightly with a warm hand. “You’re freezing in here. Come back to bed.”
“And then it starts all over again?”
“At least you’d be warm.”
“I’m afraid of the dreams.”
“You can’t stay here.”
She knew it was true. Sooner or later, he’d run out of patience and do whatever he wanted anyway. “I’ll make you a deal.”
“What?”
“Send them out of the room. Anyone who’s waiting out there. Then I’ll come out.”
“Sure.”
“You haven’t heard the rest. I want a cup of cocoa. Lovely, warm cocoa. And I want you to be the one to stay with me. So if the dreams come back, at least the face I see will be familiar.”
He fingered his nose cautiously. “I’ve always rather liked it the way it is.”
“I can’t make any promises. And I want some clothes.”
Morrissey was silent for a while. “Oh, hell, yes!” he exploded. “I’ll send Joe for cocoa. I’ll tell the other guys to wait outside. Will that do?”
“You make it sound like I drive a hard bargain.”
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “And don’t lock the damned door again.”
He was gone a while. Jenny didn’t think. Didn’t plan. She huddled in her corner and waited. She was getting out of here somehow. And Morrissey would be the key.
Eventually he came back, carrying a blanket, and held out a hand to pull her up. He wrapped the blanket around her and she limped back to the bed. On a chair across the room was a small pile of clothes. He pointed to it. Then he went to his drawer and got a T-shirt, tossed it to her, and sat down in a chair, watching her like he was afraid to get too close.
Joe Trask knocked on the door and came in with a mug of cocoa. She had to hold it in two hands to keep it from spilling. “Thanks, Joe.”
He gave her a cautious smile. “No problem.”
Cocoa flowed into her like a voluptuous chocolate river, tasting better than she ever remembered anything tasting. She struggled into the T-shirt, feeling almost normal, and wiggled down into the pillow. Sleep was tugging at her again. “Is it day or night?” she asked.
Morrissey raised the shade a little so she could see. “Night,” he said.
She closed her eyes and slept. It wasn’t long before the nightmares returned. When she woke, whimpering, Morrissey was lying beside her, stroking her like he’d done in the car. She reached over and pulled his head to hers, seeking the warmth of his lips. Knowing what she needed and knowing that never in life could logic explain it. In a world of dislocation, connection mattered. “I am human,” she’d said.
He didn’t argue. He didn’t mention temptation, hers or his. He just said, “Jenny, are you sure?”
Her mumbled affirmative must have constituted informed consent. He switched off the light. Seemed to be able to find her just fine in the dark. Before she’d slept with Drew, Jenny had imagined a lover a lot like Morrissey. Gentle, tender, careful. Maybe he’d had to learn to be, because of his size. She heard the sound of tearing foil, and the latex snick of a condom. He said, “Jenny, I promise I won’t hurt you,” and slid slowly in. Just as he reached the first shuddering gasp of his climax, the headboard above them exploded in a shower of splinters.
Grabbing her, he rolled them both sideways off the bed. They landed on the floor with a jarring crash, Morrissey on top. At first, Jenny thought that his sudden somnolence was simply post-orgasmic bliss, until she felt his blood dripping onto her face. She struggled to get up, but she was trapped beneath him. Still intimately connected when she didn’t know whether he was alive or dead.
She began to scream.