FIFTEEN

Joan felt the shadow first. A small interstice of darkness fell across the bright sunlight that bathed her face. A cloud, she thought. But the chill did not move. Reluctantly she opened her eyes to see what was obstructing the light that had just a moment ago warmed her so deliciously. A colossus stood above her. Its face blocked the sun, and she could see nothing but a black shape haloed with a corona of blinding light.

“Mary?” she asked tentatively, an instant before she looked down and saw that the figure stood barefooted. Dark hair covered the tops of the feet; the nails were thick as claws. A snippet of bright green grass clung to one dirty toe. Joan opened her mouth to speak, but the foot moved. Fast, as if stomping a cockroach, it slammed down on her throat, crushing her vocal cords. When she next opened her mouth it was only to suck in air, to hang on to the slender thread that tethered her to this life.

“You make one sound and I’ll sic my little friend on you.” A man’s coarse whisper rasped flat on the air. He held up a long, twisting snake. Joan stared at it, unable to take her eyes off its darting, flicking tongue.

“Did you say something?” Alex’s voice rose in a question, somewhere to her right.

Joan struggled beneath the foot to reply, to warn Alex, but faster than any thug she’d ever seen on the subway the man knelt and pressed the edge of a hunting knife flat against her throat. The blade felt like ice beneath her jaw and her pulse throbbed hot against it.

“One word and this rock’ll look like a hog-killing.”

“What?” Joan heard the surprise in Alex’s voice. She squirmed to see her raising up on one elbow; then Alex, too, registered what was happening. “What the fuck . . .” she began.

The man turned suddenly and dangled the snake over Alex. Her blue eyes grew huge and wide and she began to gulp air as if she’d just come up from the bottom of the spring.

He sheathed his knife and arranged the snake in a heavy coil on Joan’s chest. The creature rose up like a cobra, its eyes glittering like shiny black seeds. Panic surged inside her. “Don’t you move, now,” the man said. “I’d hate for you to get bit.”

The man pulled some thin rope and a red bandana from inside his shirt and forced the bandana between Alex’s jaws. He knotted it at the back of her head, then rolled her, unresisting, on her side, pulling her arms and legs tight behind her and binding them with the rope.

“Be still!” the man ordered as Alex stared speechless and terrified, her back arching like an inverted hobby-horse.

He tied her arms and legs, then patted her hip as if he’d just won a contest in a rodeo. Licking the tip of one index finger, he reached for Alex’s nipple.

“No!” Joan screamed before she realized what she’d done. The man jumped and turned back to her. His eyes blazed and she saw the index finger that had been bound for Alex’s breast stop and curl into a fist. It rose, then roared down out of the sky like lightning and collided with the bridge of her nose. Bones snapped as her face melted in a furnace of pain.

“You don’t tell me no,” the man said. “You may be Trudy’s partner, but don’t you ever tell me no.”

The man looked down at her. His face darkened with a deeper rage, then he smiled slightly, as if some good idea had just occurred to him. He forced Joan’s mouth open. His hands smelled like rotten meat and the cloth he stretched between her jaws tasted like kerosene. He pulled her head forward by her hair and tied the cloth tight against the base of her skull. Her tongue seemed to double, to triple in size. There was not enough room for it and the rag in her mouth. She tried to suck in more air, but she couldn’t. This is how you will die, she realized. You will not be stabbed.You will not be bitten by the snake.You will die simply trying to breathe in air.

The man put the snake around his neck and raised Joan’s arms high above her head. He pulled up her sweatshirt. The air felt cold on her bare breasts, the sandstone boulder rough against her back. She saw nothing beyond the black underside of her sweatshirt. She tried to keep breathing as she felt hands jerking her underpants down the length of her legs.

Hail, Mary, full of grace, she began to repeat inside her head, picturing the pretty pink rosary beads that she’d left, where, in her jewelry box? In the bathroom drawer with her birth control pills? She couldn’t miss taking any of her pills; she had a date with Hugh Chandler in just a few days.

The hands pried her legs apart, then squeezed her sex as someone might coax juice from an orange. It burned from the outrage while her legs jerked as if she’d just grabbed an electrical wire.

Blessed art thou among women . . .

The hands traveled up her belly to her breasts, pinching her nipples with sharp fingernails. She gasped with pain, but then the fingernails disappeared, replaced by a hot wet mouth that sucked her right breast until it went numb. She squirmed to get away, to fold herself into the rock, but the hands grabbed her hips and jerked her forward. They grabbed her thighs and pushed her legs so wide apart she feared they would snap off like twigs. I am not wet, she thought, this will not work, and she tried to twist back into the woods or the rocks or even into the dark green depths of Atagahi itself. But she could not move. A weight pinned her legs flat as something began to batter an entrance to her vagina.

Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. He rammed into her harder; she couldn’t remember any more of the rosary she’d known since she was four. She thought of Times Square and the Christmas windows on Fifth Avenue and her Aunt Carla the ex-Rockette. Her legs would not break off like this. Aunt Carla could put on her tap shoes and turn this man’s balls to hamburger and the smile would never leave her face. Un vero angelo, her mother laughs when she talks about Aunt Carla. Joan thought of her mother and her mother’s kitchen, where the sun slants across the red linoleum floor and the walls are redolent of garlic and lemons and the yeasty smell of dough rising. Renata Tebaldi, her mother’s favorite soprano, sings from the stereo. Giovanna, her mother calls her by her Italian name. She wished with all her soul that she were back in that bright, warm, infinitely safe kitchen. If she could ever get back there she would never leave again.

He pummeled into her until finally, like a poorly stitched seam, her tissue tore and gave way. The stranger was within.

Time stopped then. Joan felt the beginning of each stroke, its path and its thumping end. She endured each without thought as to when this might cease, knowing only that when the choking in her head met the fire that was ripping up through her vagina, she would die. Surely God would grant her that mercy. Finally, just as she decided to quit breathing, she felt something spew up into her, and it was over. He quivered inside her for an instant, then shrank away. The hands left her hips; a coolness enveloped her.

Then she left, as fully as he did. She flew to a faraway place where her grandmother squabbled with Mrs. Cannanero about the best place to buy tomatoes, where nuns smelling of lavender repeated their prayers like pigeons cooing, and where, on an afternoon just like this one, you could get a hot dog and an egg cream and feel like the world belonged to you.