“Panic them? Richard, all Reenie’s been saying is when’s Mommy coming home? They’re hungry.”
“So feed them, Mom.”
“Reenie doesn’t want anyone cooking her dinner but Didi. She threw a fit when I touched that steak.”
“So don’t feed them the steak. Feed them macaroni and cheese.”
“They don’t want macaroni and cheese. Manda knows her mom was going to make steak, and that’s what she wants.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!”
Rich kept the phone to his ear. “Mom,” he said in a low voice. “I’m asking you please to take care of them, please, as best as you can. Don’t tell them anything.”
“Richard, what am I going to tell them when they ask where their mommy is?”
“Tell them mommy is trying to have a baby, and Grandma is going to take care of them tonight.”
“And what if—”
“Mom!” he exclaimed. “I don’t want to hear this from you. Say a prayer if you’ve got five seconds free. I’ll call as soon as I have any news.”
When Rich hung up, he thought, well, that was as bad as I thought it was going to be.
5:30 P.M.
Lyle finally found a pawnshop in Valley Mills, near a desolate intersection of Highways 6 and 56. To call the roads highways was generous. One standing stop sign survived. The other had been knocked down. Didi had noticed that after leaving Johnny’s, Lyle stayed on the interstate only until the next exit and then took the local roads. Was that in his plans? He seemed to know the roads quite well and never checked a map.
They parked in a small dusty lot in front of a place called Smokey’s. Didi tried to stretch her achy body, but her big bag was in the way of her feet. She wanted to kick it out of the way, but there was nowhere to kick it to. Her sandal became tangled up in the strap of the bag, and Didi struggled to break free. It was ferociously hot. With the vents off, Didi had trouble breathing. She thought of again asking if she could roll down the window. She didn’t think he’d mind, because there was no one in the parking lot.
Of course there was nothing to drink in the car. Though he had gone inside Johnny’s to get some drinks, he had run out empty-handed. What Didi had drunk in Johnny’s bathroom was on Lyle’s shoes—a small solace. She was sweaty, thirsty, and the baby was tightening in her belly. Her tongue now felt like a fat, immobile slug in her mouth, and her breast hurt where he had grabbed her.
But when Lyle looked at her left hand again and told her to take off her engagement ring, all the thirst and pain vanished.
“No,” she said, pulling her left hand away across her body, away from him. Why couldn’t she have belonged to another religion, one where they wore the wedding rings on their right hands instead of their left? She had heard the Greeks or somebody did that.
Not that it would have mattered to him. His thin, wiry body rubbing against her belly, he leaned across the bench seat and grabbed her hand.
Holding her left wrist painfully tight, Lyle said to her, “Didi, what are you doing? Don’t you know me by now?”
She started crying. “Please don’t take my ring. Please.”
“Oh, what’s the matter, pretty Didi?” he cooed sarcastically. “Don’t tell me you’d rather lose your life than your precious little ring.”
“Take my ring and let me go,” she sobbed. “That’s a fair exchange. My ring for me. It’s a one-and-a-half-carat stone—a good one. It must be worth six thousand dollars. Take it and let me go.”
Still holding her wrist painfully hard, his breath assaulting her face, he said, “Six thousand dollars for your life. Now, now, my bologna. You don’t value yourself very highly. Don’t you think you’re worth more than six grand?”
Trying to pull away from him, she repeated, “Take my ring and let me go.”
He said gently, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll take your ring and keep you with me. How would that be?”
“No,” she said. “No.”
“But Didi,” said Lyle, trying to pry the ring off her numb finger. “I have big plans for you. I can’t let you go. That’s like asking a lover to leave the love of his life. What kind of lover would I be? Did Othello let Desdemona go?”
Crying, she fought him. She pulled in her fingers toward her wrist and pushed him away with her right hand.
“Goddammit! What’s gotten into you?” he yelled. He was in an awkward position. He couldn’t get the ring off. They struggled. Pinning her against the seat with his body, he let go of her wrist for a moment and swiped her in the face with his forearm.
“Didi, you have a lot to lose here,” he said menacingly, panting. “Stop being stupid. I see that I’m going to have to teach you. Education doesn’t come from books, you know. And you have no common sense, you crazy bitch.”
“Wait,” she said plainly. “Wait.”
Squeezing her hands together, Lyle reached over the bench seat into the back. After rooting around briefly, he pulled out a hunter’s knife from under the seat.
“See this knife, Didi?”
Before Didi had time to think or speak, Lyle brought the knife down and sliced the fingers on her left hand, opening four of them right across the second knuckle.
Didi cried aloud and tried to pull her hand away, but Lyle was stronger. Blood dripped onto her yellow dress. Holding her bleeding fingers in one hand and the knife in the other, Lyle said, “This is just a warning. Now take off your ring, or I promise you, I will cut your finger off, and then the finger and the ring will be mine. Wouldn’t you rather just give me the ring?”
Made temporarily breathless by the wound, Didi couldn’t speak.
Lyle calmly said, “Take the ring off. Now.”
Didi said, “Let go, and I’ll take it off.”
He let go, still holding the knife against her.
The weight gain during her pregnancy had made the ring a tight fit. In a few minutes, as the finger swelled from the knife wound, the fit would be even tighter. However, right now, the blood created a slick, slippery surface helping the diamond ring slide off her finger.
Lyle took the ring and then wiped the knife on the hem of Didi’s summer dress, picking it up high enough to expose most of Didi’s thigh. She wanted to pull the dress down, but didn’t dare. In any case, she couldn’t move at that moment even if she wanted to.
“Diamonds are forever,” Lyle said, smiling and kissing the ring. Then he saw there was blood on it, and he put the ring in his mouth and sucked on it, saying, “Mmmmmm.” He bent to her. “Your blood, Didi, it tastes so sweet,” he whispered.
She moved her head away in disgust. She heard him mutter, “Do you taste this sweet all over?”
Didi stared away from his face, mere inches away from hers. She wished she had something sharp and ragged in her hands at that moment. God help me.
He moved away.
“Lessee if I get six thousand dollars for it,” Lyle said cheerfully. “Oh, and while I’m gone, could you clean yourself up?” he asked. “Wrap your hand in your dress and squeeze tightly. The dress is as good as ruined already, and you don’t want to bleed to death in my car, do you?”
That is my idea of hell, Didi thought, as he leaned over her to reach inside the glove compartment. He pulled out the cell phone, chortling lightly, and left her in the car with all the windows shut.
Didi quickly rolled down the window to let in some air. She wasn’t going to just sit there in hundred-degree weather as the car gained five degrees a minute.
She was alone in the car.
Didi looked around the parking lot, and then on the floor for the knife, but he had taken the knife along with the gun. Taken it with him when he went to sell her ring, the ring that Rich had bought her when they had no money. It had taken them five years to pay off that ring, and it was the only piece of jewelry she owned, because no other jewelry in the world could compare to her emerald-cut diamond. Often her girlfriends would advise Didi to put it in a safe deposit box so it wouldn’t get stolen. One day she
had mentioned the idea to Rich, who was opposed to it, saying that sure, if someone stole the ring, she wouldn’t have it, but if she put it in a safe deposit box, she wouldn’t have it either.
“Well, I’d have it,” she had argued. “I just wouldn’t have it with me.”
“Same difference,” Rich said. “You can’t see it, you can’t look at it, you can’t show it to anyone. With this ring I thee love,” said her husband. “What are you going to do? Every time you feel warmly toward me, you gonna run to the bank?”
That’s what he had said, but now she was sitting here with slashed fingers and she didn’t have her ring. The small parking lot glistened with heat. It looked as hot as she felt. But it was not an animate object. It could not feel pain. It didn’t have another animate object inside itself.
She sat, her fried brain trying to figure Lyle out.
It was clear he didn’t want money. He had taken her ring, but as an afterthought, as something malicious, not something essential. He wasn’t concerned about money, that Didi was sure about.
Also, he didn’t seem to want to kill her.
She hadn’t served her purpose. But what would happen, after she had?
What did he want? Did he want to take her home to meet his parents and pretend she was his wife? He already had a wife. Did he want to take her to a bar and make his wife jealous? She leaned back against the seat and breathed heavily. Did he want to have sex with her? She felt bile come up into her throat.
With a pregnant woman?
Was that a fate worse than death? That lascivious way he’d touched her thigh as he cleaned the bloody knife, his lecherous laugh when he asked her for a kiss outside the gas station bathroom, these things cut her and ate at her, they gnawed at her flesh and emptied her heart of compassion for him. She closed her eyes. That it may please You mercifully to pardon all his sins and make him stop, we beseech You to hear us, good Lord.
Didi wondered where Lyle was taking her. Where were they going? He could have driven to any deserted place in Dallas, raped her, killed her, driven off. He had mentioned a place before. Why would he need to drive her away from Dallas?
Didi wanted to believe—needed to believe—his plans for her didn’t include extreme violence to her and her child. Sitting in his car, keeping her wounded fingers on her lap, Didi Wood needed to believe she would be safe. God wouldn’t let her die. She opened her lips and mouthed her prayer as if it were a weapon against him. Lord, be near me, Your faithful servant Didi, in my time of weakness and pain, sustain me by Your grace, that my strength and courage may not fail.
That’s it, I’m not sitting here anymore. He’ll have to shoot me in plain sight.
But she didn’t want to be shot.
Didi got out of the car. Holding her bleeding hand gently with the other, she walked as quickly as she could to the road, never turning around to look at the pawnshop. I’m going to stand in the middle of the highway and wave till a car pulls over, she thought.
She took her position in the road.
They were west of West, Texas. They were nowhere and no one was around them. There was unfarmed flatland on Didi’s left and a pasture on Didi’s right. The pasture was ungrazed, too hot even for cows.
Didi stood.
One minute passed.
No cars came.
He’s going to come and kill me, thought Didi. Kill me, kill my baby, take my life and my ring, and never be seen again.
Didi could barely get her lips open to pray.
I don’t want him to kill me. I have two little girls, God save them, back home, waiting for their mom, oh, God, I hope that Rich remembers that Amanda doesn’t like her steak and French fries on the same plate, or there’ll be a scandal.…
She turned around and slowly, sadly, walked back to the car, looking back at the empty road.
She didn’t get in but stood leaning against the car, and soon the door of the pawnshop opened and Lyle walked out with a tall, heavyset man, who nodded silently to her.
Lyle ran to Didi, blocking the man’s view of her. “Sit down, honey, sit down, you shouldn’t be standing!” And when he got to her, he hissed in her ear, “Do you want him to die, Didi? Do you want me to kill him? Get in the fucking car.”
Didi got in the car.
The man walked around the vehicle, wrote something down, and then disappeared inside the shop. Lyle smiled falsely at her, waved, and went back inside himself. A few minutes later, he came out of the pawnshop and headed toward her. His face was dark. Oh, God, Didi thought, what now?
When he got in the car, he sat there for a second not saying anything.
“Everything okay?” Didi asked him.
He said, “No. Everything is not okay. It’s not okay at all. Why did you get out?”
“My legs were numb from sitting. I wanted to stretch them a bit. I’m so hot, Lyle. Does Smokey have a drink machine?”
“No,” he said. “Do you want to know why everything is not okay?”
Why did she fear whatever it was that wasn’t okay had something to do with her? “Because you kidnapped a pregnant woman?” she offered.
He hit the steering wheel, gritting his teeth. “No, that’s not it,” he said quietly. “Everything is not okay because when I tried to sell your goddamn cell phone, do you know what the guy behind the counter said to me?”
“Uh,” Didi said, her breath catching. “That he wasn’t going to buy it because you could get them so cheap in the stores?”
“How did you know that? How did you know that?” he said loudly.
“I didn’t for sure. Just a hunch.”
“Well, you should have told me about your hunch before I went in there looking like a real idiot with that thing.”
“Sorry. You didn’t ask. I thought you just wanted to make a phone call.”
“To call who? Who would I have to call?”
“I don’t know,” replied Didi. “My husband. Your wife.”
“Oh, shut up with the wife shit, all right? Well, the guy pushed some numbers and said, hey, is everything all right, and I said, sure, and he said, because I see here you dialed nine-one-one.”
Didi stopped breathing. She moved slightly away from him, toward the partly open door. Thinking quickly, she said, “That was the last call I made. I dialed nine-one-one when I was at the mall. In Warner Brothers.”
“Did you indeed?” Lyle said. “Why did you do that?”
“Because I thought you might have been following me and I didn’t like it.”
“Why would you think I was following you?” he asked.
“Because you went after me into the store. I thought it was strange.” She moved a little closer to the door.
“You thought it was strange, did you?” Lyle grimaced. “What, do you think the whole world revolves around you? A thousand people in the mall, and just because two people happen to be in the same store, you think I was following you?”
His words made Didi shudder. What do you think, the universe revolves around you? was what her husband Rich had said to her yesterday when they had fought.
“No, I don’t think so,” she answered, thinking she had been right, right, right. And she was right now. The whole world did revolve around her. Certainly the world in the last few hours. “You just looked suspicious to me.”
“Suspicious, did I? Why?” Lyle was kneading the wheel with tense hands, his teeth gnashing against each other.
“Because you were wearing a jacket, that’s why,” said Didi, moving farther away from him, her dress wrapped around her wounded fingers.
“So what’s so suspicious about that?”
“Nothing normally,” replied Didi. “Except it’s the middle of July and it’s a hundred and five degrees outside. No one wears a jacket. It’s like seeing someone in a tank top in the middle of winter. It looks out of place. Peculiar.” Now she knew why he needed to wear the jacket, of course. Without the jacket, there would be nowhere to stash the gun.
Didi sneaked a peek at L
yle’s face. His expression didn’t read anger at her anymore. It read anger at himself for slipping up, for not thinking of everything.
“Just a mistake on my part,” he said slowly, not looking at Didi.
Didi thought, with other people a mistake, yes, an oversight. With you, Lyle, it’s a character flaw.
He broke out of his short reverie. “Okay, get out of the car,” he said. Instantly Didi thought maybe he would let her out and drive off himself.
She was obviously suffering from heat exhaustion, because Lyle said only, “We can’t travel in this car anymore. It’s too dangerous.”
Maybe the police are on to him, maybe Rich is looking for me.
“So about this little detour. Don’t worry. We’re still on schedule. I know this area like the back of my hand. We just have to be a bit more careful. No more getting out to get drinks. Okay, go on now, and I’ll take your bags.”
Didi got out and then looked back inside, feeling a tiny measure of happiness at seeing her blood all over the seat. She was almost happy he had cut her. Someone—maybe Smokey, maybe prospective buyers—would see the blood.
“I traded my car for a truck,” he said, smiling crookedly at her. “Got some cash for your ring. Good thing, too. Otherwise we’d be taking the bus.”
What could be better, she thought bitterly, slamming the car door.
As Lyle came around, Didi asked, “Where’s the other car?”
“Out back.” He looked her over. “Listen, it’s too hot for you to walk. Get back in, will you? I’ll drive us to the truck.”
Didi hoped the truck would at least smell better than the station wagon.
It didn’t.
It smelled different, but not better. It smelled of old sweat and sausage. Or old socks and tortilla chips. She didn’t want to examine the smell too closely. Lyle now owned an old blue Toyota two-seater pickup, with a little bit of space behind the seats for her shopping bags. The backyard of the pawnshop was densely covered with trees; it looked like an overgrown forest. Trees provided shade, and in the shade it was a bit cooler. Didi lingered near the open door of the Toyota, gulping the hot air. Her thirst went unabated. “Lyle,” she said. “You didn’t by any chance get anything for us to drink?”