Lunch (20 page)

He won't let go of her, that's all she knows, devouring her skin, he is taking her as he pleases, again, his breath hot, sucking the very life out of her.

He will never let her go.

She has no idea what she is anymore when he forces her head up, she hears a strange sound, liquid, it must be, poured into a glass and brought to her lips. He rips off the gag and she tries to turn her head away, but she can't, she's so tired and this drink is so cool, so comforting on her swollen lips, she is parched dry, she is dying.

The drugs work quickly. When Nick sees her dizzy, long rolling waves of sleep making her droop, he moves away, calmly pulling up his sweats. Finally, comes her last thought before total oblivion overtakes her.
Finally.

Nick taps on the partition. It is my signal to drive him back to his bike, and when I pull up beside it, he clambers out.

I look at him, waiting impatiently for me to hand him back his leather gear, his hair disheveled, the madness of his frenzy still alight in his eyes, and I must say something. Even now, after I'd let him do it, I could never have envisioned such craven, unremitting brutality. I'd told her I wouldn't let him hurt her—­I'd told her—­she believed me—­

“She'll never forgive you,” I tell him, my voice low.

“She won't remember, not with those drugs. They never fail.” He shrugs. The bastard. “Her mind won't let her. She'll blank it all out. She'll wake up and feel fuzzy and wonder what happened and where she is, but she won't remember.”

“You can't know that.”

“Don't tell me what I can't.”

“But what if it does come back, suddenly, in bits and pieces? What if she dreams it? What if—­”

“Shut up,” he says as viciously as he can without yelling. “I don't want your goddamn opinion. Just get the fuck out of my face.”

“You didn't have to do that to her,” I persist. “She would've come with you today, anyway. She said she would.”

He looks at me, a flash of guilty hatred more electric than lightning proving me right. He'll never admit it. He did the unspeakable. It's done with. It's over.

He'd do it again if he could.

“Get out of here,” he says. “Take her back and get out of my face before I kill you.”

He would kill me, I see it in his eyes, if he could find a way to do it, although I am much stronger, and wary, my senses keen, and have trained myself to fight. He has helped create the monster, protector and procurer, and now he must live with it, dependent on me, bitterly resentful that I am silent witness to his irrevocable degradation.

I wonder if it is possible to hate him as much as he hates me, but only for a second, because such a question does not bear answering.

Nick is not worth dying for.

O
LIVIA STIRS,
her tongue swollen, her head spinning, and then awakens, thirsty. The small of her back is aching, her entire body is sore.

I hand her a glass of ice water, propping her up to drink it.

“What?” she says, thickly.

“You got dizzy in the car,” I say, my heart wrenching.

The car. Her heart starts to pound, her head reeling, she can't seem to clear it, trying to remember being in the car, how she got here, in this bed, cozy under the covers in the flat, she realizes, but it is too exhausting to think. It is not unpleasant, this lethargy, her limbs are tingling slightly as if they'd been asleep, she feels too lazy to care. Somewhere in the back of her mind is a pleading little voice, trying to warn her, trying to make her remember that something awful has happened, but the images are too far away, dark and fuzzy, she couldn't see, that was it, a blackness in front of her, the blindfold. The blindfold in the car, and then . . . It was in a box on the seat. She put it on, or did she? She can't remember.

“Did I . . . ? What happened?” she says, noticing that she's dressed in the clothes she was wearing when she'd arrived here yesterday afternoon. “Where's Nick? Why am I so tired?” Her eyes close, involuntarily.

“Hush,” I say. “Sleep.”

W
H
EN SHE
next awakens I knock on the door and come in, already dressed in my biker gear, and hand her a helmet.

“I guess this means we're going on the bike,” she says.

“Yes.” It is better this way, I convinced Nick, don't put her in the backseat of that car, not now, not so soon, she needs the air on her face.

There is already traffic this early on a Monday morning, and I maneuver carefully but fast, it is cold, but I could drive forever with her arms around my waist.

“Better?” I ask, pushing up my visor and turning back to her at a stoplight.

She nods. Her head is still fuzzy, she can't remember, and she is not yet ready to ask me the truth.

No one could be ready for that answer.

When we arrive at her door I back the bike around and turn off the engine. She takes off her helmet and hands it to me, and I rummage in the back carrier for a small package.

“What is it?” she says, feeling it carefully.

I don't want to talk, I don't want to explain. I'd told Nick not to give this to her, to forget it, surely if she saw it she'd remember sitting in the back seat of the Daimler, and it falling off the seat when he opened the door. He would not listen, insistent and crazily certain that she must have it, that she'd want it because he gave it to her, just as she'd given him the sketch of the flat, an unforgettable souvenir.

She unwraps the mauve tissue. It is the jeweled panther, the handbag forgotten in the car. She unclasps it, looks inside, curious, the makeup is still there, and the strangely pungent perfume, the ruby lipstick matching the cross still dangling between her breasts.

Her hands are trembling.

Don't, I am imploring her, a silent pleading, don't remember this, remember instead how you were sated and delirious from an endless surfeit of pleasure in a calm dark room, an intoxication more compelling than all the snatched hours of lunch, across the park, in the other room.

“M,” she says, her voice quivering, “why did I leave this in the car?”

I shake my head.

All I've ever seemed to do in her presence is nod yes, or shake my head no, hiding the truth of my complicity because that is my recompense for sitting, hunched forward, hours flying by, the rectangular plastic boxes neatly labeled in growing stacks in an airless room, watching.

She comes closer to me, pushing up my visor as she'd done only two days before, another lifetime ago, when those queer eyes had still been clouded with a haze of passion. Now they are tinged with drugs, somber pewter, and troubled, trying to read my own.

Eventually, she sighs, and I breathe again. “M, the inscrutable,” she says. “I always wanted to paint you, you know, I know exactly how I'd do it, too, but I was afraid to ask. I know you won't believe it, but your face is much more interesting than Nick's.” She tries to smile. “Don't tell him I said that.”

I murmur a silent prayer of thanks that she is hastily changing the subject.

“How?” I ask.

“How what?”

“How painted.”

She smiles this time, for real. “I'll never tell.” She reaches up to touch my scars, as she has done before, and this time I try not to flinch.

“Thank you, M,” she says, “for everything.”

For everything.

“I won't ever see you again, will I?”

“No.”

“But if I do, will you let me paint you?”

I close my eyes for only a second, conjuring up the unbelievable wonder of sitting for her, alone, in the whiteness of her studio, piano music soft in my ears, watching her brushes dance past the fierce concentration in her eyes, watching her watching me, wanting me there, wanting me.

Yes, I want to scream, yes.

“Maybe,” I say, wanting to leave her light-­hearted. “I'll never tell.”

I push up the kickstand and ride away.

The wind freezes the tears on my cheeks.

 

Chapter 21

N
ick is sleeping in the flat, leaving only when Jamie insists on short stints on the set, and then finally refusing to budge at all, a harsh unnerving weirdness in his eyes, lying in wait, silent and still, only the slight movement of his hand bringing the cigarette to his mouth showing he's awake.

He is listening to the sounds all around him, his hearing suddenly acute, his other senses deprived as he lies there in the dark with no distractions but this despairing desire to inhale the essence of Olivia. Cars in the street he hears, a mother screaming to her brat, kids laughing on their way home from school, the steady rumble of a taxi's engine, a motorcycle, sirens in the distance, a wail like the foghorn off Mendocino, the small groaning creaks of the building, settling, the hiss of the radiator, the refrigerator, humming on and off, the soft chinks of the icemaker, the noise of the wind, muffled sounds he's never heard before.

He thinks he hears a noise upstairs, sitting up in a rush, hardly daring to breathe, but that can't be, there is only silence.

He's never heard anything in this flat but the sound of his lust.

He tells himself over and over that she'll give in, that she will never remember what he did to her in the car, it was no worse, he mutters in a rare paroxysm of self-­reproach, than anything he ever did to her here. She will arrive, breathless, with a suitcase and a sketchpad, and fly off with him into the California sunset of his delusions.

I stand watch. Rather, I sit in my little room, bored and weary. He wants me there, nearby but not with him. Only late at night am I allowed to hurry down to buy food from the Arab grocers that Nick leaves uneaten. Last week when he'd been working for an hour's stretch I snuck off the set to buy more books. They are a comfort. I am reading Stendhal, Chekhov, and Diderot, long, strange stories with twisting polysyllabic names and the kind of moral retribution which is anathema to anyone I've ever met in Hollywood. I memorize poetry, I like Rilke, especially, and Yeats. I work out, shadow-­boxing, then on the door, two hundred push-­ups, three hundred sit-­ups. Stop and check after each fifty reps, but nothing has changed, only Nick lying on the bed, in the dark, smoking.

I
T IS
early evening and Nick is dozing, sprawled nude on the comforter, when he hears the unmistakable clink of a key in the lock, and he springs instantly awake, afraid he is only dreaming.

Olivia turns on the light and jumps back, startled. Her keys fall to the carpet, soundless. I hear the click of the tape starting and sit up to watch, instantly worried.

“Oh, you scared me. What are you doing here?” she says finally, catching her breath, one hand on her chest. “I didn't think you'd—­that now—­at night—­”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Nick says, trying to keep his voice even. “I've been waiting for you. I knew you would come.”

“I was at the baths,” she stammers. Her hair is wet, damp curls sticking to her neck. “And I thought to leave the keys. And find my silver earrings. I know I left them here. And—­”

She doesn't have to say it. They were a gift from Olivier, weren't they, and she must find them.

“Is that all?” Nick says.

“Yes,” she says, her voice starting to tremble. She is trying to avoid his gaze, but she can't help it, she can't not look at him.

“You weren't even going to say goodbye?”

His sarcasm frightens her. His eyes frighten her. She doesn't know what to do.

“You'd let me leave without saying goodbye?” he asks, insistent.

“I didn't know what to say. I was going to call, or leave you a note.”

“You didn't know what to say. You were going to call, or leave me a note.” Mocking her. She has never seen him like this before, and she is beginning to panic, fear shooting down into her feet, rooting her legs to the floor when she most wants to flee.

“Are you coming with me?” He is standing in front of her, his glorious body naked, his eyes so darkly angry they are no longer blue, they are black pools of dread, immeasurable. He sees the answer in her eyes, a solitary tear trickling down her cheek, and he traces its path as he'd done once before, ages ago, and she shivers violently.

Not like this, please, not like this.

He is boring into her, leaning his warm body as close to hers as if he wants to smother her, dissolving her flesh so there is nothing left of her but the shadowy impression of her body etched into the hard wood of the door. What am I going to do? she thinks wildly, but her thoughts are jumbling one atop the other in her trepidation, she cannot think, she cannot breathe, he smells of cigarettes and scotch, with a faint whiff of leather, an animal smell of lust and anger, she has smelled him like that once before, where, where was it, she knows he wants her to feel the full relentless hardness of his body solid against hers, and its suffocating strength.

M, where is M, he must be here, he said he would protect her, he said it but he didn't, where was he, where is he—­

He won't hurt you. I won't let him.

I am standing, sickened, choked by my own cowardly duplicity. I don't know what to do. If I come now will she know I was there, will she, will he—­

His arms around her, ribbons of steel, and he scoops her up and throws her facedown on the edge of the bed, his weight on her legs so she cannot kick out at him, his arms snatching off her jacket and her sweater, she is trying to scream but he is crushing her lungs, he's done this before, she realizes, gulping air as he turns her slightly on her side to yank off her jeans, he's—­

The car.

She didn't think any terror could be worse than that moment of absolute blind panic in the car, but this is, Nick on top of her, shifting his weight slightly as he stretches over, groping for one of the whips stashed under the bed. Even now in this speeded-­up frantic moment he knows what he wants, the slim sleek whip with the lovely glass handle, the same colors as her hair melded stunningly into something he can hold and weld and use to hurt, hurt her now, make her suffer, and make her scream.

For a second he loosens his grip on her as his hand relaxes around the handle, and Olivia tries to crawl away to the door, naked as she is. Nick turns swiftly to reach for her, enraged, but he loses his balance and slams against one of the golden bedposts, smashing the glass into fireworks of fiery sparkles, leaving nothing but a jagged edge near his fingertips, cutting them instantly, blood coursing down his wrist in thin rivers.

He feels no pain, he sees no blood, all he sees is Olivia escaping, and he flings himself at her ankles, imprisoning them, hauling her back underneath him, forcing her over with his weight and his left arm, the whip still clenched in his right, and savagely spreads her legs. The ragged sharp glass slices the tender skin of her inner thigh with a severe stinging pain, and the wound bleeds instantly, copiously, their blood mingling together on the sheets.

“Serves you right, you bitch,” Nick says savagely as he hammers into her like an animal, but she doesn't even feel it, her body is deadened, even the nasty cut on her thigh has stopped hurting, there is nothing worse that she can feel past the voice screaming that she doesn't recognize as her own, a scream so hysterical, so penetrating in its fearfulness, that Nick's frenzy stops. He moves to place his hand over the screaming, to stop its horrid noise, when he hears the only words that could penetrate the mad cloud of his rage.

“In the car,” she is screaming, “you, it was you in the car, it was you.”

“Yes,” he says, “yes. It was me.”

His voice is so calm, so resigned, his body stilled, that she stops screaming, teetering on the edge of hysteria, yet startled by the silence.

“Are you afraid?” he says, his voice so soft, purring in her ears, the same hateful words, the hateful hands raping her in the car, his slave. “Afraid of me? Afraid of what I am going to do to you? Afraid you might like it? Like it too much?”

She never could have liked it, not this, she never—­

“I want you to be afraid,” he whispers. He has said the lines so many times before, rehearsing every second of this long-­planned attack that he has no trouble remembering them now.

Nick was always good with his lines.

“I wanted you to live through one moment of undiluted, inexpressible terror,” the voice is saying, inhumanly serene. “I want you to be afraid, I want you to know how it feels, because that's how Nick feels, all the time, without you.”

“No,” she is screaming again in unadulterated panic, she can't possibly live through that assault again and stay sane, “let me go, let me—­”

The screaming is a violent rushing in his ears, there is nothing but the screaming, she'll never stop screaming, she'll never—­that's what M said, once she knows she'll never—­

He has to stop the screaming.

His hands around her neck, choking her, choking the life out of her, when I hit him from behind, knocking him away with a sharp cry of passionate pain, and I hit him again, anger stored for years uncounted unleashed in a hail of punches, wrestling him down as he tries to turn his fury, raging with adrenaline, on me, but I am stronger.

I have always been stronger.

He won't get away, I won't let him, if he does I know he will kill me, it would be so easy for him, hiding my body, all his secrets snuffed with my disappearance, remarked upon by no one save Jamie and McAllister, no one knows he is here, no one knows I am with him.

No one knows who I am. No one cares.

And then he will redouble his strangling wrath onto Olivia, gasping long shuddering breaths beside us.

She is still alive.

Nick and I have slipped over the side of the bed, I feel his hands searching frantically for something, the other whips he's hidden there, I can't let him reach them, and I slam his head into the metal frame of the bed, once hard, then again till I feel him slump, finally, dazed and bleeding, then haul him up on the bed, imprisoning his wrists with the silken cords he has used so delightedly and so often on Olivia, knowing they will only hold for a minute once he revives. I quickly grab the whips that were just out of reach and bind his ankles together, tight, then look desperately for my keys, the key to the trunk, before I realize they've fallen to the floor, near Olivia's, where I dropped them bursting into the room. When I stoop to pick them up I see a silver earring, delicate filigree studded with infinitesimal diamonds, like stars, caught deep in the carpet, and I pull it out and push it deep into my pocket, my hands shaking.

I flip up the trunk lid, throwing the soft embroidered linen and towels out in jumbled heaps, groping for the handcuffs underneath, finding them, and fasten Nick's wrists securely to the bedposts, just above the drapery cords.

Olivia has slid down to the carpet, leaning against the bed, her eyes closed, wheezing, blood oozing down her leg and seeping into the carpet. I pick her up gently and carry her into the kitchen, easing her down to the cool slate floor and placing her head between her knees. I grab the first-­aid kit from under the sink, and examine her leg. It looks bad, but I don't think it needs stitches, so I clean it carefully and apply a butterfly bandage over several layers of gauze.

Olivia doesn't even flinch when I touch her.

I take out two ice packs Nick keeps in the freezer to soothe the aches and pains of weary muscles after a long day's work, wrapping each in a tea towel and placing them on her neck, picking up her hands and pressing them to the coldness, she deep in shock, obeying blindly mechanical, a jacquard print of fat sweet cherubs hiding the hideous necklace of fingerprints, rounded imprints of lurid pinks and purples emblazoned on her deathly pale skin like a brilliant sunset.

“Don't move,” I say to her, although she couldn't have if she tried, and I worry that she can't even hear me. “I'll be right back.”

I pick up the first-­aid kit and run back to Nick, who is just beginning to stir, disoriented, the gash on his forehead still trickling. I rummage again in the bottom of the trunk until I see the small box with the glass vials lined up neatly inside, all except one, and the syringes. I fill one neatly as Nick has shown me, a dose stronger than the one he used on Olivia, and jab it into his hip.

I gather up Olivia's scattered clothing and dress her calmly, she still dumb with shock, in the kitchen. “I'm going to take you home now,” I tell her, shaking her slightly, sick with worry. “Olivia, can you hear me? You're going to be okay. I'm taking you home.” Her eyes move to mine, and I sigh, relieved, placing the ice packs back on her neck with her hands over them. “I'll be right back. We're going in just one minute.”

Nick's breathing is slow and steady, and I cover him with the comforter. I untie the whip from his ankles and drop it into the trunk, close the lid, then clean his wound and bandage it. He will be out for a long time, lost in the blissful sleep of oblivion.

When I hurry back to the kitchen, Olivia is calmer. She looks up at me, tears trickling down her cheeks in a silent stream, still holding the cherubs to her neck.

“It's okay. We're going now,” I say, and scoop her up in my arms. She shudders at the touch, then buries her head in my neck.

S
HE CRIES
for a long time, sitting helpless in the dark on the smooth tiled floor of her kitchen, where we've gone so I could make her a cup of tea. She won't let me turn on the light there, she doesn't want to see her reflection in the polished metal gleam of the stove, or the hideous necklace of bruises she knows adorns her neck. I hold her tight, rocking her like a baby.

The comfort of the damned.

“Why did he do it?” she keeps asking. “Why why why?”

“Shhh,” I say, trying in vain to console her. “It's not you. He can't help it.” Murmuring over and over again. “It's not you, it's not you.”