The Last Goodbye (32 page)

So I started pressing back against the tape, which, to my horror, hurt even more. It wasn't going to work that way, not unless I pushed with everything I had, in which case I might dislocate both my arms, and still be in the tape, only now in a darker agony. So I waited a while longer, maybe an hour, playing fear against pain, listening to each, wondering if I could survive a moment of exponential increase, and then I said fine, I'm even going to let go of this, letting go is the only thing that has ever worked, and I prayed to the prophet Sammy Liston—he who had taught me the value of stripping everything down and acting as if there was nothing left to lose—and I pushed my legs and arms out as hard as I could.

A bright wave of anguish engulfed me, and I passed out. There was an indeterminate time of blackness, and I finally came around. I tentatively moved my legs. With a bit more struggling, they were free. In that moment, everything changed. Inch by painful inch, I worked my way into a sitting position. Then, with infinite care, I pulled my hands underneath my buttocks and underneath my legs. I lifted my hands to my eyes and pulled off the tape around my eyes and mouth.

It was pitch-dark in the closet; no light came underneath the door. I sat for a while, grateful to be able to breathe. Blood began to
flow
into my limbs. But my hands were still brutally bound, and it took a good twenty minutes of pushing and biting to get them free.

Finally unbound, I attempted to stand up. I failed, collapsing to all fours, breathing heavily. Every muscle, joint, and bone in my body ached. I was dizzy, and I leaned against the wall for support. I tried again to rise, leveraging myself against the wall. Gradually, with effort, I stood. Blood rushed downward, pushing open closed veins. I stood unsteadily for several minutes, carefully moving wrists, bending elbows, gently bending knees. I tried the door; it was locked, as expected. There was nothing for it, so I lunged with my good shoulder against it. It hurt, but in comparison with what I had already experienced, it was tolerable. After three more tries, the cheap lock pulled apart from its plywood anchor, and the door flung open. I walked carefully out, expecting an assault at any moment. I tried the door from the small office to the main reception area; again, it was locked. Here I made a mistake; I began kicking it with a vengeance, and with the first impact on my foot, I nearly fainted with pain. I resorted to the shoulder again, which, I was sure, was rapidly turning black-and-blue. Eventually the lock gave way, and the door flung open. I stepped through. The place was deserted.

I limped through the office to the front door and walked out into the hall. Apparently, the entire floor was unoccupied, because in spite of my banging, there was no activity. I looked at my watch; it was 5:30. The light was fading outside. I had been in the closet for more than five hours.

Cautiously, I took the elevator down to the parking garage. I pushed the door open a couple of inches, wincing at the screaming noise the metal door made as it moved. I opened the door, half expecting to see my captors. But the place was empty. My car was sitting in its place, undisturbed. I opened the door; the keys were still sitting in the ignition. I fell into the seat, unable and unwilling to use my arms to lower myself. Everything hurt, but everything also worked, which was a relief. With the blood flowing again, the pain was subsiding.

I started the motor. I sat awhile, listening to the engine, getting my bearings. I looked into the rearview mirror. There were fragments of gray adhesive clinging to my skin. The line of the tape was visible, the skin reddened from irritation. I backed the car out of the spot, drove out of the garage, and, swiveling my head painfully to make sure nobody was following me, drove back toward Atlanta. Instead of the crush of rush hour traffic I had expected, there was almost none. It took a few minutes to realize what had happened. The sun, so low in its arc, was not setting. It was rising. It was five-thirty in the morning, not the evening, and I hadn't been in the closet for five hours. I had been there for more than seventeen.

THERE WAS THE DRIVE HOME,
still hurting. Then crawling into bed fully clothed, falling thankfully into real sleep. I woke up some hours later and realized I was ravenous. Walking was still painful, so I hobbled to the kitchen and made something to eat. I slept some more, and finally, at about one in the afternoon, took a hot shower. I let the water run over me, exhausting the water heater. I dried off, walked naked to my bedroom, and looked at myself in the mirror. There were wicked, dark purple and blue marks on my wrists and ankles, and it hurt to move around too fast, but other than that, I was okay.
So you were kidnapped, taped, and put into a closet. They didn't rob you. They didn't steal the car. They didn't say a thing, and they didn't ask you any questions. They just stuffed you into a room and walked off.

I dressed, but the next few hours were on again, off again; I slept, and ate, and drank more water than I'd ever imagined possible. There was some cramping, sudden contractions that would jar me up out of bed like a hot iron inserted into my flesh. But they subsided, and I came back to myself for real about seven that evening.

I tried Robinson again, and predictably, got his machine. I walked back toward the bed, thinking about falling back into it. I sat down, closing my eyes, letting my limbs relax. I must have drifted a little, because I wasn't sure when the quiet knocking on my door began. I stood up and listened; there was more knocking, gentle, almost cautious. I stood, reaching quietly into the night-stand by my bed. I pulled away a stack of magazines and pulled out my disused revolver, a relic from teenage target practice in Dothan. It wasn't particularly threatening-looking, but it was all I had. I wasn't actually sure it would even fire. I moved through the apartment to the front door, which, frustratingly, had no peep hole. The wavy hardwood floor creaked as I approached, and the knocking stopped. I moved to the side of the door, my cover blown. “Who is it?” I asked, grasping the gun.

“Jack, oh, Jack,” a voice said. “For God's sake, let me in.”

Only one woman on earth had a voice like that. I unlocked the door, pulled it open, and Michele, crying, pushed into my apartment.

She flung her arms around me, holding me tightly. She buried her face into my shoulder, pressing against skin still raw from my capture. I winced, and she pulled back. She pulled down my collar, seeing the red marks from the stretched tape. “My God, Jack, what happened to you?”

“Some guys,” I said.

She reached out and gently touched my face just underneath my right cheekbone. In addition to my soreness from being tied up, I was still a little the worse for wear from my time with Folks Nation. “There's swelling here,” she said. “Oh, darling, I'm so sorry.”

“I went back into the Glen to find you, and ran into our friend Darius and his pals. The kidnapping came later.”

She looked up. “Kidnapping? What are you talking about? Who did this to you?”

“I'm thinking your husband, actually.”

She turned rigid. “Charles?”

“I've been to see him.”

Her eyes widened in shock. “Why did you do that?”

“He invited me. Well, he used Stephens to do it.”

“God, Jack.”

I looked away. “Stephens has a little different version of events than you do. It wasn't pleasant listening.”

She grabbed my arms, pulling me close. “Before you say another word, I'm sorry I lied to you. I did it to protect someone.”

“If it was me, I'd have to say it was a total failure.”

“I lied to protect Briah.”

I disengaged from her and walked away, leaving her in the doorway. The truth was, I wasn't sure I wanted to have the conversation. It was time to get off the roller coaster. “I tell you what, Michele,” I said, “maybe you should find another guy to help you work through your problems. Somebody with more tolerance for dishonesty.”

She looked at me imploringly. “Explain how that works to me, Jack. My whole life is a lie, and you want me to find the right moment to stop. It doesn't get easier, you know. It gets harder. There are layers. . .” She stopped, unwilling to continue. She was trapped between the residue of fourteen years of illusion and the growing realization that the game was over. But whatever sympathy I might have had for her difficulty, I knew I had reached my own limits for the way she handled her life. I wanted clarity, and if I didn't get it, I was going to walk away and not look back.

“This is how it works, Michele,” I said. “You've taken the lie as far as it stretches. Maybe it made sense in the beginning. But you can either watch things slowly unravel and take you down, or you can take control of your life and declare your independence.”

She was breathing heavily, obviously frightened. “I'll lose everything,” she said. “Even Briah.”

“You'll lose her anyway, if you don't start telling the truth.”

She looked at me, frustrated. “Don't you understand what's going on here? Of course Charles knows about Briah. He knows everything about everyone. But the only thing that keeps her safe is keeping her existence secret.”

I watched her, not wanting to be taken in again. “Talk to me. But if you so much as whisper something that isn't true, I'm gone.”

“Charles and I were a terrible match, right from the beginning. He knew all the best people from his days at Groton and Yale. From the beginning, it meant everything to him to fit in. God, Jack, he even picked out my clothes.
This
dress,
these
shoes, no, not
that
brooch, you can't be serious, darling. Down to the fingernail polish.”

“You seem to have moved past that.”

“Yes, the street look is my little rebellion. Charles despises it, but he realizes it has a professional use. I was younger, then. I had no feelings of my own. Charles told me what to feel, even how to think. I believed him, for a while. He was born to the life I was living as an impostor. I assumed what he did was right. He gave money, joined charitable causes. But there was an ulterior motive for every penny. He had a chart of all the best people, and when we were invited anywhere by them socially, he checked them off his list.”

“I don't see what this has to do with you lying to me about Briah.”

“It has everything to do with her. Years passed, but I couldn't get Briah completely out of my mind. I decided to look for her, just to see if she was all right. At least that's what I told myself. I don't know what would have happened if I had actually found her. But I was clumsy, and Charles found out. He was more angry than I've ever seen him. I actually thought he was going to hit me.” She looked away. “It wasn't that I had a baby, although that was bad enough. It was that his wife was a lying little ghetto girl with an illegitimate child. It didn't help that the father was a gang member. You simply cannot imagine what the thought of that did to him. He said he didn't get his Ph.D. to pick up some welfare boy's trash.” She grew still. “That day was like a death,” she said quietly. “It was the day I learned what kind of man my husband really was. My husband
despises
the ghetto, Jack. It took me years to find out why, but when I finally understood it, it was like a bolt of lightning. Everything about him—his whole life—suddenly made sense.”

“Why is it?”

She looked at me, her face like stone. “My husband is ashamed to be black,” she said. “He is bitterly ashamed that he is
negro.
And every time he looks at me, he is reminded of that fact.”

There was a long, bitter silence in the room. At last I said, “You could leave him, you know.”

She shook her head. “I can do no such thing, not as long as there is a Derek Stephens,” she answered. “People think Charles runs Horizn. That's a joke. Derek Stephens is in charge of every major decision.”

“You're saying your husband is just a puppet?”

“In the beginning, Charles was merely distant, but not evil. He was more of a machine, I guess. But since he began working with Derek, he's changed. Derek is a very bad man, Jack. He's poisoned whatever was good about Charles. They spend hours together, talking and scheming.”

“So why does Stephens care if you divorce your husband?”

“Because I'm an asset to Charles, and therefore an asset to Horizn. Maybe when the IPO is over, he'll find some way to get rid of me and make Charles look like a martyr. But I have no doubt that he would sooner see Briah killed than have the CEO of Horizn ridiculed by her existence.”

I looked at her warily. “Stephens says Social Services took Briah away from you because you were negligent.”

She shook her head. “How could I be a negligent mother, Jack? I never even left the hospital room with her.” She walked to me quietly, crossing the room to where I stood. She took my hands in hers and lifted them to her face, gently pressing my fingers against her mouth. “I'm sorry, Jack. I lied to protect Briah. It will never happen again.”

“I want to believe that.”

“Forgive me. I'm trying to do too many things at once.” She put her arms around me, and I stepped a little awkwardly, off balance. I limped with pain, and she apologized, taking me by the hand. We walked through the apartment to my bedroom, where I sat on the bed. She gently pulled off my shirt, running her smooth, beautiful fingers over my skin. “Do you have something for that?” she asked. “Any antiseptic or anything?”

“In the kitchen,” I said. “Under the sink.”

She nodded, kissed my shoulder, and went to see what she could find. There was a rustling and she came back, holding a white tube. “This will help,” she said. “It'll soothe you.” She walked to me, pressing me down on my stomach. “Lie still,” she said, sitting beside me. She rubbed the cool ointment into my skin, gently kneading my muscles. “I'm so sorry they did this to you.” I closed my eyes and let her rub my muscles, gently kneading the sore, overextended joints. I relaxed, and life flowed back into me. She turned me over, and she fumbled with my pants, pulling them down over my hips. I lay in my underwear, bare-chested, and she gently kissed my chest, my stomach, moving her hands over my legs, inside my thighs. I was tired, not just physically, but in my soul. With every moment, I relaxed more deeply, until I was fluttering just above sleep. I heard her voice, soft in my ear. “Get some rest, sweetheart.”