Just After Sunset

  No. She wouldn't do that. But what did that leave? She could feel time fleeting, fleeting. The clock on the wall still said 9:15, but she thought the beat of the rain had slacked off a bit. The idea filled her with horror. She pushed it back. Panic would get her killed.

  The knife was a can't and the stove was a won't. What did that leave?

  The answer was obvious. It left the chair. There weren't any others in the kitchen, only three high stools like barstools. She guessed he must have imported this one from a dining room she hoped never to see. Had he bound other women--other "nieces"--to heavy red maple chairs that belonged around a dining-room table? Maybe to this very one? In her heart she was sure he had. And he trusted it even though it was wood instead of metal. What had worked once must work again; she was sure he thought like a hyena in that way, too.

  She had to demolish the prison that held her. It was the only way, and she had only minutes to do it.

  -7-

  It's probably going to hurt.

  She was close to the center island, but the counter stuck out slightly, creating a kind of lip, and she didn't trust it. She didn't want to move--didn't want to risk falling over and becoming a turtle--but she did want a surface wider than that projecting lip to beat against. And so she started toward the refrigerator, which was also stainless steel...and big. All the beating surface a girl could want.

  She shuffled along with the chair bound to her back and bottom and legs. Her progress was agonizingly slow. It was like trying to walk with a weird, form-fitting coffin strapped to her back. And it would be her coffin, if she fell over. Or if she was still whacking it fruitlessly against the front of the KitchenAid when the man of the house returned.

  Once she tottered on the edge of falling over--on her face--and managed to keep her balance by what seemed like willpower alone. The pain in her calf came back, once more threatening to become a charley horse and render her right leg useless. She willed that away, too, closing her eyes to do it. Sweat rolled down her face, washing away dried tears she did not remember crying.

  How much time was passing? How much? The rain had slackened still more. Soon she would start to hear dripping instead of raining. Maybe Deke was putting up a fight. Maybe he even had a gun in a drawer of his cluttered old desk and had shot Pickering the way you'd shoot a rabid dog. Would she hear a gunshot in here? She didn't think so; the wind was still blowing pretty hard. More likely Pickering--twenty years younger than Deke, and obviously in shape--would take away any weapon Deke might produce and use it on the old man.

  She tried to sweep all these thoughts away, but it was hard. It was hard even though they were useless. She shuffled forward with her eyes still closed and her pale face--swollen at the mouth--drawn down in effort. One baby step, two baby steps. May I take another six baby steps? Yes, you may. But on the fourth one, her knees--bent almost into a squat--bumped against the front of the refrigerator.

  Em opened her eyes, unable to believe she had actually made this arduous safari safely--a distance an unbound person could have covered in three ordinary steps, but a safari for her. A fucking trek.

  There was no time to waste congratulating herself, and not just because she might hear the Pillbox's front door open anytime. She had other problems. Her muscles were strained and trembling from trying to walk in what was almost a sitting position; she felt like an out-of-condition amateur attempting some outrageous tantra yoga position. If she didn't do this at once, she wouldn't be able to do it at all. And if the chair was as strong as it looked--

  But she pushed this thought away.

  "It's probably going to hurt," she panted. "You know that, don't you?" She knew, but thought Pickering might have even worse things in mind for her.

  "Please," she said, turning sideways to the refrigerator, giving it her profile. If that was praying, she had an idea it was her dead daughter she was praying to. "Please," she said again, and swung her hips sideways, smacking the parasite she was wearing against the front of the fridge.

  She wasn't as surprised as when the chair had come free of the floor all at once, almost causing her to flip headfirst onto the stove, but almost. There was a loud cracking sound from the chair back, and the seat slewed sideways on her bottom. Only the legs held firm.

  "It's rotten!" she cried to the empty kitchen. "The damn thing's rotten!" Maybe not actually, but--God bless the Florida climate--it sure wasn't as strong as it looked. Finally, a little stroke of luck...and if he came in now, just as she'd had it, Emily thought she would go insane.

  How long now? How long had he been gone? She had no idea. She had always had a fairly accurate clock in her head, but now it was as useless as the one on the wall. It was uniquely horrible to have lost track of time so completely. She remembered her big clunky watch and looked down, but the watch was gone. There was just a pale patch where it had been. He must have taken it.

  She almost swung sideways into the fridge again, then had a better idea. Her bottom was partly free of the chair seat now, and that gave her extra leverage. She strained with her back as she had strained with her thighs and calves while working to free the chair from the floor, and this time when she felt a warning pain way down low, just above the base of her spine, she didn't relax and wait and recycle. She didn't think she had the luxury of waiting anymore. She could see him coming back, running right down the center of the deserted road, his feet spatting up sprays of water, the yellow slicker flapping. And, in one hand, some sort of a tool. A tire iron, perhaps, that he had snatched from the bloodstained trunk of his Mercedes.

  Em strained upward. The pain in the small of her back deepened, took on a glassy intensity. But she could hear that ripping sound again as duct tape let go--not of the chair, but of itself. Of the overlapping layers of itself. Loosening. Loosening wasn't as good as freeing, but it was still good. It gave her more leverage.

  She swung her hips against the refrigerator again, letting out a little scream of effort. The shock jarred through her. This time the chair didn't move. The chair clung to her like a limpet. She swung her hips again, harder, screaming louder: tantra yoga meets S&M disco. There was another crack, and this time the chair slewed to the right on her back and hips.

  She swung again...again...again, pivoting on her increasingly tired hips and smashing. She lost count. She was crying again. She had split her shorts up the back. They had slid down crooked over one hip, and the hip itself was bleeding. She thought she had taken a splinter in it.

  She took a deep breath, trying to calm her runaway heart (small chance of that), and whacked herself and her wooden prison into the refrigerator again, as hard as she could. This time she finally struck the lever of the recessed automatic ice dispenser, releasing a jackpot of cubes onto the tiled floor. There was another crack, a sag, and all at once her left arm was free. She looked down at it, stupid-eyed with amazement. The arm of the chair was still bound to her forearm, but now the body of the chair hung askew on that side, held to her by long gray strips of duct tape. It was like being caught in a cobweb. And of course she was; the crazy bastard in the khaki shorts and Izod shirt was the spider. She still wasn't free, but now she could use the knife. All she had to do was shuffle back to the center island and get it.

  "Don't step on the cubes," she advised herself in a ragged voice. She sounded--to her own ears, at least--like a manic grad student who had studied herself to the edge of a nervous breakdown. "This would be a very bad time to go skating."

  She avoided the ice, but as she bent for the knife, her overstrained back gave a warning creak. The chair, much looser now but still bound to her midsection by those corsets of tape (and at the legs, as well), banged into the side of the island. She paid no attention. She was able to grasp the knife with her newly freed left hand and use it to saw through the tape binding her right arm, sobbing for breath and casting small darting glances at the swing door between the kitchen and whatever lay beyond--the dining room and the front hall, she assumed; it was the way he had gone out, a
nd the way he would probably come back in. When her right hand was free, she tore off the broken chunk of chair still bound to her left arm and tossed it on the center island.

  "Stop looking for him," she told herself in the gray, shadowy kitchen. "Just do your work." It was good advice, but hard to follow when you knew your death might come through that door, and soon.

  She sawed through the band of tape just below her breasts. This should have been slow, careful work, but she couldn't afford to go slow and nicked herself repeatedly with the tip of the knife. She could feel blood spreading on her skin.

  The knife was sharp. The bad news about that were those repeated nicks just below her breastbone. The good news was that the duct tape split away without much argument, layer after layer. Finally it was cut through from top to bottom, and the chair sagged away from her back a little more. She set to work on the wide band of tape around her waist. Now she could bend further, and the work went faster, with less damage to her body. She cut all the way through at last, and the chair fell backward. But its legs were still bound to her legs, and the wooden feet suddenly shifted, digging in low on her calves where the Achilles tendons surfaced like cables just below the skin. The pain was excruciating, and she moaned miserably.

  Em reached around and used her left hand to push the chair against her back again, relieving that horrible, digging pressure. It was a filthy angle, all wrong for her arm, but she continued to press the chair to her while she shuffled around so she was once more facing the stove. Then she leaned back, using the center island to relieve the pressure. Gasping for breath, crying again (she wasn't aware of the tears), she leaned forward and began to saw through the tape binding her ankles. Her exertions had loosened these bands and the others binding her lower body to the fucking chair; consequently the work went faster and she cut herself less frequently, although she managed to give herself a fairly good slash on the right calf--as if some mad part of her were trying to punish it for seizing up while she was trying to push the chair free of the floor.

  She was working on the tape holding her knees--the last ones left--when she heard the front door open and close. "I'm home, honey!" Pickering called cheerfully. "Miss me?"

  Em froze, bent over with her hair hanging in her face, and it took every last scrap of will to get moving again. No time for finesse now; she jammed the blade of the butcher knife under the belt of gray tape binding her right knee, miraculously avoided stabbing the tip into her own kneecap, and hauled upward with all her strength.

  In the hall, there was a heavy cluck sound, and she knew he had just turned a key in a lock--a big lock, from the sound. Pickering wanted no interruptions, probably thought there had been interruptions enough for one day. He started up the hall. He must have been wearing sneakers (she hadn't noticed before), because she could hear them squelching.

  He was whistling "O Susanna."

  The tape holding her right knee parted, bottom to top, and the chair fell backward against the counter with a noisy clatter, now bound to her only at the left knee. For a moment the footsteps beyond the swing door--very close, now--stopped, and then they broke into a run. After that it all happened very, very fast.

  He hit the door two-handed, and it burst open with a loud thump; those hands were still outstretched as he came racing into the kitchen. They were empty--no sign of the tire iron she had imagined. The sleeves of the yellow slicker were pulled halfway up his arms, and Em had time to think, That's too small for you, asshole--a wife would tell you, but you don't have a wife, do you?

  The hood of the slicker was pushed back. His power haircut was finally in disarray--mild disarray; it was too short for anything else--and rainwater dripped down the sides of his face and into his eyes. He took in the situation at a glance, seemed to understand everything. "Oh, you annoying bitch!" he bellowed, and ran around the counter to grab her.

  She stabbed out with the butcher knife. The blade shot between the first and second fingers of his splayed right hand and sawed deep into the flesh at the bottom of the V. Blood poured down. Pickering screamed in pain and surprise--mostly surprise, she thought. Hyenas don't expect their victims to turn on th--

  He reached out with his left hand, grabbed her wrist, twisted it. Something creaked. Or maybe snapped. Either way, pain bolted up her arm, as bright as light. She tried to hold on to the knife, but there was no chance. It went flying all the way across the room, and when he let go of her wrist, her right hand flopped, fingers splayed.

  He bored in on her and Em pushed him backward, using both hands and ignoring the fresh scream of pain from her strained wrist. It was instinct only. Her rational mind would have told her that a push wasn't going to stop this guy, but her rational mind was now cringing in a corner of her head, able to do nothing but hope for the best.

  He outweighed her, but her bottom was pressed against the chipped lip of the center island. He went staggering backward with a look of startlement that would have been comical in other circumstances, and came down on either one ice cube or a bunch of them. For a moment he looked like a cartoon character--Road Runner, perhaps--sprinting in place in an effort to stay on his feet. Then he stepped on more ice cubes (she saw them go spinning and glinting across the floor), went down hard, and rapped the back of his head against his newly dented refrigerator.

  He held up his bleeding hand and looked at it. Then he looked at her. "You cut me," he said. "You bitch, you dumb bitch, look at this, you cut me. Why did you cut me?"

  He tried to scramble to his feet, but more ice cubes went zipping out from beneath him and he thumped down again. He pivoted on one knee, meaning to rise that way, and for a moment his back was to her. Em seized the chair's broken left arm from the center island. Ragged strands of duct tape still dangled from it. Pickering got to his feet and turned toward her. Emily was waiting. She brought the arm down on his forehead using both hands--her right one didn't want to close, but she made it. Some atavistic, survival-oriented part of her even remembered to choke up on the red maple rod, knowing it would maximize the force, and maximum force was good. It was a chair arm, after all, not a baseball bat.

  There was a thump. It wasn't as loud as the swing door had been when he hit it coming in, but it still sounded loud enough, perhaps because the rain had slackened even more. For a moment nothing else happened, and then blood began to run out of his power haircut and over his forehead. She stared at him, into his eyes. He stared back with dazed incomprehension.

  "Don't," he said feebly, and reached out one hand to take the chair arm from her.

  "Yes," she said, and swung again, this time from the side: a slicing two-handed blow, her right hand giving up and letting go at the last moment, her left one holding firm. The end of the arm--ragged where it had broken, splinters sticking out--hammered into Pickering's right temple. This time the blood burst at once as his head snapped to the side, all the way to his left shoulder. Bright drops ran down his cheek and pattered onto the gray tile.

  "Stop," he said thickly, pawing at the air with one hand. He looked like a drowning man begging for rescue.

  "No," she said, and brought the arm down on his head again.

  Pickering screamed and staggered away from her in a head-tucked hunch, trying to put the center island between them. He stepped on more ice cubes and skidded, but this time managed to stay upright. Only by luck, she had to believe, since he had to be all but out on his feet.

  For a moment she almost let him go, thinking he would run out through the swing door. It was what she would have done. Then her dad spoke up, very calmly, in her head: "He's after the knife, sweetie."

  "No," she said, snarling it this time. "No, you won't."

  She tried to run around the other side of the island and head him off, but she couldn't run, not while she was dragging the shattered remains of the chair behind her like a ball and fucking chain--it was still duct-taped to her left knee. It banged against the island, slammed her in the butt, tried to get between her legs and trip her. The chair s
eemed to be on his side, and she was glad she had broken it.

  Pickering got to the knife--it was lying against the bottom of the swing door--and fell on it like a football tackle covering a loose ball. He was making a guttural wheezing sound deep in his throat. Em reached him just as he started to turn over. She hammered him with the chair arm again and again, shrieking, aware in some part of her mind that it wasn't heavy enough and she wasn't generating anywhere near the amount of force she wanted to generate. She could see her right wrist, already puffing up, trying to address the outrage perpetrated on it just as if it expected to survive this day.

  Pickering collapsed on the knife and lay still. She backed away a little, gasping for breath, those little white comets once more flying across her field of vision.

  Men spoke in her mind. This was not uncommon with her, and not always unwelcome. Sometimes, but not always.

  Henry: "Get that damned knife and put it right between his shoulder blades."

  Rusty: "No, honey. Don't go close to him. That's what he expects. He's playing possum."

  Henry: "Or the back of his neck. That's good, too. His stinking neck."

  Rusty: "Reaching under him would be like sticking your hand into a hay baler, Emmy. You've got two choices. Beat him to death--"

  Henry, sounding reluctant but convinced: "--or run."

  Well, maybe. And maybe not.

  There was a drawer on this side of the island. She yanked it open, hoping for another knife--for lots of them: carving knives, filleting knives, steak knives, serrated bread knives. She would settle for a goddam butter knife. What she saw was mostly an array of fancy black plastic cooking tools: a pair of spatulas, a ladle, and one of those big serving spoons full of holes. There was some other bric-a-brac, but the most dangerous-looking thing her eye fell on was a potato peeler.