Edge Play X (34 page)

A few raindrops started to hit them,
and Michael began to fuck her even harder, the inky clouds darkening and
turning into a rainstorm and then a torrent, the downpour soaking them as he
finished with her and let his seed be sown in her moist warm world.

Within a few hours the cacti would
bloom, pushing out small yellow, red, orange and pink fireworks of color.

By the time they returned to the
house, darkness had fallen. They cuddled together in bed until they were warm
again. They made love once more, long and slow, and then sleep visited them
both.

They spent three more days together.

Michael had his motorcycle shipped
back to
California
, said that he didn’t trust a bike that old to not
break down on the long desert highways. And by the time X took Michael to the
airport so that he could return to
California
and his business, she had fallen in love with the
town. She loved the adobe structures, people, flora and topography of the
region, but she especially loved all the artists and galleries. Little by
little through the next several weeks, she made friends with other artists. She
went to exhibitions and parties. And every few days, she and Michael talked on
the phone. He promised to come see her every month or so.

Most evenings, X would paint by the
outdoor
kiva
fireplace or take her easel to an
impressive vista to paint as the day turned to dusk. And yet, the woman painted
very few landscapes. It was during that time that X began a string of paintings
that would eventually become known as her
Compton
series. She painted him as a goose shitting out a
golden egg, as Midas turning everything he touched to gold, as Ebenezer
Scrooge, as a piranha; there were images of
Compton
as the face on each denomination of the greenback.
 

After finishing each one, she sent
them to Michael who in turn gave them to Anne, each with the very clear
instruction that the paintings could be sold, could be bought by anyone as long
as they signed an agreement that the work would never, as long as the painting
existed, end up in the hands of a Mr. Terry Compton or anyone on his payroll,
past, present or future.
 

8.

It was a squeak that awakened her, the
long aching whine of the hinges on the front door. X was a light sleeper.

It took her a moment to realize what
was going on. A break-in. A scalding rush of adrenaline went through her, a
napalm burn. She looked at the clock. The red numbers told her that it was
4:15
in the morning.
Maybe it’s Simeon
, she thought.
Maybe
he’s found me
. But then she heard two male voices.

She got out of bed quickly and went to
the door of the bedroom. Usually, X slept with the bedroom door open, but since
she had been in
Santa
Fe
, she had
closed it each night. There was a grandfather clock in the living room and X
could hear the monster tick if she didn’t close the door.

She put her finger on the doorknob and
pressed in the lock, then hid in the nearly empty closet, tucked herself into
the corner behind the military jackets that had belonged to Michael’s father.

Beyond the darkness, X could hear the
men speaking quietly to one another and then she heard them try the doorknob.

“It’s locked.”

“Kick it in.”

The cheap hollow-core door gave way
immediately and then slammed against the doorstop. The light turned on, sending
a sliver of illumination under the bottom of the closet door.

“She’s in here,” one of them said. He
had a smoker’s rasp.

“How do you know?”

“Somebody had to of locked the door,
stupid.”

X shivered. She knew that she would be
found.

“Come out come out wherever you are,”
the other man said and then laughed. “Not under the bed. Leaves one other
place. Stupid bitch. You might as well come out now, lady, make it easy for
yourself.

X crouched in the closet, wishing that
she had bought a gun like her gut had told her to do. Now it was too late.
There was nothing to defend herself with. A couple wire coat hangers, that was
it. She picked one off the rod and straightened the hook as much as she could,
wrapped her fingers around the metal. It was a pathetic attempt at a weapon.
She might as well defend herself with a thimble.

The closet door opened, letting in a
flood of light. One of the men, the short one, yanked the jackets out of the
way. Their eyes met. He had a dark complexion, dark eyes.

“I told you to make it easy for
yourself, bitch.”

X aimed for the man’s dark eye,
missed, left one hell of a scratch on his cheekbone.

The man wrestled the coat hanger out
of her hand, tossed it behind him, grabbed her by the hair and pulled her out
of the closet before throwing her down to the floor.

“Fucking whore tried to take my eye
out. Tried to take my eye out!”

The man hit X, a blunt strike near the
eye socket.

“He said not to fuck up her face!”

That was what the tall man said, his
words coming out in a loud rasp. He had a gun in his hand, a
Glock
.

The pinnacle of pain came in
conjunction with the man’s statement. What began as a sharp jab in her nose and
cheekbone subsided to a pulsing ache that radiated through her face. She was
going to have a black eye, she knew, a real shiner.

Suddenly she remembered how her
brother used to ask her when they were kids,
Is your face hurting you
and when she would ask
why
he would respond,
‘Cause it’s killing me
. Now, she would
have been able to tell him that her face was killing her. Ha-ha.

X could feel her left eye swelling up
and she clenched the lids together uncontrollably, causing fat tears to run
over her cheeks. She put her hands up to her face and sank her head into them,
her eyes continuing to tear, and the warm streams rolled down her face. A few
hot drops of blood pushed themselves out of her nose. X wiped off the blood,
hot and sticky, with her forearm.

She thought about what the tall man
had said. Someone had given her kidnappers specific instructions not to hurt
her face and the short man had ignored it. Maybe the instructions meant that
they wouldn’t kill her. Who cares if you fuck up the face of somebody you’re
going to kill? Or maybe the short man wouldn’t be able to stop himself from
killing her in the same way that he wasn’t able to stop himself from striking
her.
 

She silently nicknamed the tall one
Laurel
and the fat one Hardy, hoping it would help
somehow. But it didn’t make a difference. They were men of testosterone and sweat
and caustic reactions. The short one was stout, a thick man with big tattooed
arms and a smooth, shaven head. He had a dark complexion, but X was unable to
pin down his ethnicity.
Mexican maybe, Italian, Native
American?
Jesus-Christ, who could tell anymore? The taller man with the
raspy voice had green eyes and a full head of dirty-blonde hair that was tied
into a low ponytail.

“What do you want from me?” X asked.

Laurel
pulled some clothes out of her drawers, a white
shirt and a pair of jeans, tossed them to her feet.

“Get dressed,” he said. “And hurry it
up. And you,” he said to Hardy, “find her purse, get the keys to the car.”

“I don’t get to watch her dress?”
Hardy said, smiling a little as he looked at X in her nightgown.

Laurel
motioned toward the bedroom door with the gun
still in his hand.

“Remember what the man
said,”
and Hardy left a few moments later.

X dressed as quickly as she could,
wanted to get her clothes on before Hardy returned. And after her clothes were
on,
Laurel
told her to turn around. He slapped a pair of
cuffs, police-issued, over her wrists. He pressed the tip of the gun into her
lower ribs.

“I’m
gonna
tell you something, lady. I’m just doing this for the money. I don’t want to
have to kill you but I will if I have to. Or he will. So do as you’re told. Now
go to the garage.”

X walked out to the garage, the gun
still at her back, and when they got there, Hardy unlocked the trunk, told her
to get in, and she obeyed.

In the dark trunk, X was able to
wriggle her cuffed hands to the front of her body. She searched unsuccessfully
for a trunk release (wasn’t this model supposed to have one?) as the men drove
the car for over an hour, down towards Albuquerque X guessed, and they arrived
at a run-down crack house when morning had broken. The men opened the trunk,
told her not to scream, and then followed her into the house, the
Glock
pointed at her again.

Why
does this keep happening to me?
X
had asked herself as they took her into the structure. She remembered how when
her mother had been going through her chemo treatments, X had asked her once if
she ever asked, “Why me?”
 
Her mother had
answered simply, “Why not me?”
 

The abandoned house had no
electricity, no water. Someone had ripped the wire out of the walls. The
furniture consisted of a ratty wing chair and couch, and a bare, stained
mattress that sat on the floor at the far corner. Small corners of plastic bags
littered the floor next to pieces of aluminum foil and empty liquor bottles.
The house smelled like cat piss, an ammonia stench that burned the nose.

“Go over to that mattress, baby,”
Laurel
said. “We’re going to make a video.”

Timidly, X looked at her captors,
wondering what kind of video they intended to make. A rape video? Snuff film?
Maybe one and then the other.

But before she sat on the mattress and
resigned herself to her fate, X was going to try to get out of the situation
herself. It was no use fighting them, or trying to escape. These men would
crush her in a moment. She could sense the savageness of their natures; it bent
the air around them. But maybe she could buy her way out. What did her father
used to say? Money talked.

“I can pay you if you let me go,” X
offered.

The two men looked at each other.

“How much?” Hardy asked.

“Hundreds of thousands,” she answered.

“Where is it?” Hardy asked.

“In a safe deposit
box in
California
.”

Laurel and Hardy looked at each other
again, considering. But
Laurel
spoke.

“She’s full of shit. It’s a lie. She
doesn’t have any money,”
Laurel
replied. “She’s an artist. That place she was staying isn’t even her own.”

“But,” the stout one said, “
she’s
got that car.”

“Terry Compton bought it for you,
didn’t he?”

X nodded her head yes, wondering how
they knew about her connection to Terry Compton. And then she realized that
they were going to try to get ransom from him. Steinberg had said that there
was a risk in being involved with
Compton
, and this was it, kidnapping for ransom. Why
settle for hundreds of thousands from her when
Compton
might give them millions?

“See,”
Laurel
said. “Fuck a billionaire, get a Mercedes. You’re
nothing more than a high-priced whore, lady.”

And what X did not know was that the
tall one had been told by his boss that the woman they were being paid to
kidnap would probably try to buy her own freedom. They had been told not to
believe her, and that if they took any money from her, not only would they not
get the money that had agreed to be paid for this job (one they didn’t
completely understand but knew better than to ask for details), that their boss
would deal with it if they disobeyed, and the men knew what that meant.

Likewise, the men had also been told
the following: never leave the woman alone or give her access to anything that
could be used as a weapon; don’t rape her or touch her sexually in any way; and
if you must strike her, don’t fuck up her face. And whatever you do, don’t kill
her. Scare her. Scare the shit out of her. Along with those instructions, they
had also been told how much they would be paid for the work they were doing and
how long it would last. They were told what to do with the video they were
about to make and how to act in the event that there was a knock at the door.
And for the successful completion of their duties, they would receive a hefty
sum for just a few days of work.

X sat down onto the mattress. The tall
man told her that they were going to make a video and that she was going to
ask, no, beg, Terry Compton, to hand over two million dollars for her release,
telling her to tell Compton that her kidnappers were going to put a hole in her
head if he refused.