She pulled down harder, her lips parting to show her teeth in a grimace of pain and effort. The muscles on her upper arms now stood out in shallow white arcs. Sweat began to bead her brow, her cheeks, even the slight indentation of her philtrum below her nose. She poked out her tongue and licked off this last without even being aware of it.
There was a lot of pain, but the pain wasn't what caused her to stop. What did was the simple realization that she had gotten to the point of maximum pull her muscles would provide and it hadn't moved the cuffs a whit farther down than they were right now. Her brief hope of simply squeezing out of this flickered and died.
Are you sure you pulled as hard as you could? Or are you maybe only kidding yourself a little because it hurt so much?
"No," she said, still not opening her eyes. "I pulled as hard as I could. Really."
But that other voice remained, actually more glimpsed than heard: something like a comic-book question-mark.
There were deep white grooves in the flesh of her wrists--below the pad of the thumb, across the back of the hand, and over the delicate blue tracings of vein below--where the steel had bitten in, and her wrists continued to throb painfully even though she had taken off all the pressure of the cuffs by raising her hands until she could grip one of the headboard slats.
"Oh boy," she said, her voice shaky and uneven. "Doesn't this just suck the big one."
Had she pulled as hard as she could? Had she really?
Doesn't matter, she thought, looking up at the shimmers of reflection on the ceiling. Doesn't matter and I'll tell you why_if I am capable of pulling harder, what happened to Maddy's left wrist when the car door slammed on it is going to happen to both of mine: bones are going to break, posterior ligaments are going to snap like rubber bands, and radio-ulnar whojiggies are going to explode like clay pigeons in a shooting gallery. The only thing that would change is that, instead of lying here chained and thirsty, I'd be lying here chained, thirsty, and with a pair of broken wrists thrown into the bargain. They'd swell, too. What I think is this: Gerald died before he ever had a chance to climb into the saddle, but he fucked me good and proper just the same.
Okay; what other options were there?
None, Goodwife Burlingame said in the watery tone of a woman who is just a teardrop away from breaking down completely.
Jessie waited to see if the other voice--Ruth's voice --would weigh in with an opinion. It didn't. For all she knew, Ruth was floating around in the office water-cooler with the rest of the loons. In any case, Ruth's abdication left Jessie to fend for herself.
So, okay, fend, she thought. What are you going to do about the handcuffs, now that you've ascertained simply slipping out of them is impossible? What can you do?
There are two handcuffs in each set--the young voice, the one she hadn't yet found a name for, spoke up hesitantly. You've tried to slip out of the ones with your hands inside them and it didn't work... but what about the others? The ones hooked to the bedposts? Have you thought about them?
Jessie pressed the back of her head into her pillow and arched her neck so she could look at the headboard and the bedposts. The fact that she was looking at these things upside down barely registered. The bed was smaller than a king or a queen but quite a bit larger than a twin. It had some sort of fancy name--Court Jester Size, maybe, or Chief Lady-in-Waiting_but she found it harder and harder to keep track of such things as she got older; she didn't know if you called that good sense or encroaching senility. In any case, the bed on which she now found herself had been just right for screwing but a little too small for the two of them to share comfortably through the night.
For her and Gerald that hadn't been a drawback, because they had slept in separate rooms, both here and in the Portland house, for the last five years. It had been her decision, not his; she had gotten tired of his snoring, which seemed to get a little worse every year. On the rare occasions when they had overnight guests down here, she and Gerald had slept together--uncomfortably--in this room, but otherwise they had shared this bed only when they had sex. And his snoring hadn't been the real reason she had moved out; it had just been the most diplomatic one. The real reason had been olfactory. Jessie had first come to dislike and then actually loathe the aroma of her husband's night-sweat. Even if he showered just before coming to bed, the sour smell of Scotch whisky began to creep out of his pores by two the next morning.
Until this year, the pattern had been increasingly perfunctory sex followed by a period of drowsing (this had actually become her favorite part of the whole business), after which he would shower and leave her. Since March, however, there had been some changes. The scarves and the handcuffs--particularly the latter--had seemed to exhaust Gerald in a way plain old missionary-style sex never had, and he often fell deeply asleep next to her, shoulder to shoulder. She didn't mind this; most of those encounters had been matinees, and Gerald smelled like plain old sweat instead of a weak Scotch and water afterward. He didn't snore much, either, come to think of it.
But all those sessions--all those matinees with the scarves and the handcuffs--were in the Portland house, she thought. We spent most of July and some of August down here, but on the occasions when we had sex--there weren't many, but there were some--it was the plain old pot-roast-and-mashed-potatoes kind: Tarzan on top, Jane on the bottom. We never played the game down here until today. Why was that, I wonder?
Probably it had been the windows, which were too tall and oddly cut for drapes. They had never gotten around to replacing the clear glass with reflective sheets, although Gerald had continued to talk about doing that right up to ... well ...
Right up until today, Goody finished, and Jessie blessed her tact. And you're right_it probably was the windows, at least mostly. He wouldn't have liked Fred Laglan or Jamie Brooks driving in to ask on the spur of the moment if he wanted to play nine holes of golf and seeing him boffing Mrs. Burlingame, who just happened to be attached to the bedposts with a pair of Kreig handcuffs. Word on something like that would probably get around. Fred and Jamie are good enough fellows, I guess_
A couple of middle-aged pukes, if you ask me, Ruth broke in sourly.
_but they're only human, and a story like that would have been too good not to talk about. And there's something else, Jessie ...
Jessie didn't let her finish. This wasn't a thought she wanted to hear articulated in the Goodwife's pleasant but hopelessly prissy voice.
It was possible that Gerald had never asked her to play the game down here because he had been afraid of some crazy joker popping out of the deck. What joker? Well, she thought, let's just say that there might have been a part of Gerald that really did believe a woman was just a life-support system for a cunt ... and that some other part of him, one I could call "Gerald's better nature," for want of a clearer term, knew it. That part could have been afraid that things might get out of control. After all, isn't that just what's happened?
It was a hard idea to argue with. If this didn't fit the definition of out of control, Jessie didn't know what did.
She felt a moment of wistful sadness and had to restrain an urge to look back toward the place where Gerald lay. She didn't know if she had grief in her for her late husband or not, but she did know that if it was there, this wasn't the time to deal with it. Still, it was nice to remember something good about the man with whom she had spent so many years, and the memory of the way he had sometimes fallen asleep beside her after sex was a good one. She hadn't liked the scarves and had come to loathe the handcuffs, but she had liked looking at him as he drifted off; had liked the way the lines smoothed out of his large pink face.
And, in a way, he was sleeping beside her again right now ... wasn't he?
That idea chilled even the flesh of her upper thighs, where the narrowing patch of sun lay. She turned the thought aside--or at least tried to--and went back to studying the head of the bed.
The posts were set in slightly from the sides, leaving her arms spread but not uncomfo
rtably so, particularly with the six inches or so of free play afforded by the handcuff chains. There were four horizontal boards running between the posts. These were also mahogany, and engraved with simple but pleasing wave-shapes. Gerald had once suggested that they have their initials carved in the center board--he knew of a man in Tashmore Glen who would be happy to drive over and do it, he said--but she had poured cold water on the idea. It seemed both ostentatious and strangely childish to her, like teenybop sweethearts carving hearts on their study-hall desks.
The bed-shelf was set above the topmost board, just high enough to ensure that no one sitting up suddenly would bump his or her head. It held Gerald's glass of water, a couple of paperbacks left over from the summer, and, on her end, a little strew of cosmetics. These were also left over from the summer gone by, and she supposed they were dried out by now. A real shame, too--nothing cheered up a handcuffed woman more reliably than a little Country Morning Rose Blusher. All the women's magazines said so.
Jessie lifted her hands slowly, holding her arms out at a slight angle so her fists wouldn't fetch up on the underside of the shelf. She kept her head back, wanting to see what happened on the far end of the chains. The other cuffs were clamped to the bedposts between the second and third crossboards. As she lifted her fisted hands, looking like a woman bench-pressing an invisible barbell, the cuffs slid along the posts until they reached the next board up. If she could pull that board off, and the one above it, she would be able to simply slip the handcuffs off the ends of the bedposts. Voila.
Probably too good to be true, hon--too easy to be true --but you might as well give it a shot. It's a way to pass the time, anyway.
She wrapped her hands around the engraved horizontal board currently barring any further upward progress for the cuffs clamped to the bedposts. She took a deep breath, held it, and yanked. One hard tug was enough to tell her that way was also blocked; it was like trying to pull a steel retaining rod out of a concrete wall. She could not feel even a millimeter's worth of give.
I could yank on that bastard for ten years and not even move it, let alone pull it off the bedposts, she thought, and let her hands fall back to their former slack, chain-supported position above the bed. A despairing little cry escaped her. To her it sounded like the caw of a thirsty crow.
"What am I going to do?" she asked the shimmers on the ceiling, and at last gave way to desperate, frightened tears. "Just what in the hell am I going to do?"
As if in answer, the dog began to bark again, and this time it was so close it scared her into a scream. It sounded, in fact, as if it was right outside the east window, in the driveway.
5
The dog wasn't in the driveway; it was even closer than that. The shadow stretching up the asphalt almost to the front bumper of the Mercedes meant it was on the back porch. That long, trailing shadow looked as if it belonged to some twisted and monstrous freakshow dog, and she hated it on sight.
Don't be so damned silly, she scolded herself. The shadow only looks that way because the sun's going down. Now open your mouth and make some noise, girl-it doesn't have to be a stray, after all.
True enough; there might be a master in the picture somewhere, but she didn't hold out much hope for the idea. She guessed that the dog had been drawn to the back deck by the wire-covered garbage bin just outside the door. Gerald had sometimes called this tidy little construction, with its cedar shingles on top and its double latches on the lid, their raccoon-magnet. This time it had drawn a dog instead of a coon, that was alt--a stray, almost certainly. An ill-fed, down-on-its-luck mutt.
Still, she had to try.
"Hey!" she screamed. "Hey! Is anyone there? I need some help if you are! Is anyone there?"
The dog stopped barking instantly. Its spidery, distorted shadow jerked, turned, started to move ... and then stopped again. She and Gerald had eaten sub sandwiches on the ride up from Portland, big oily salami-and-cheese combos, and the first thing she'd done when they arrived was to gather up the scraps and wrappings and dump them into the garbage bin. The rich smell of oil and meat was probably what had drawn the dog in the first place, and it was undoubtedly the smell which kept it from bolting back into the woods at the sound of her voice. That smell was stronger than the impulses of its feral heart.
"Help!" Jessie screamed, and part of her mind tried to warn her that screaming was probably a mistake, that she would only scrape her throat raw and make herself thirstier, but that rational, cautioning voice never had a chance. She had caught the stink of her own fear, it was as strong and compelling to her as the smell of the sandwich leftovers was to the dog, and it quickly carried her into a state that was not just panic but a kind of temporary insanity. "HELP ME! SOMEBODY HELP ME! HELP! HELP! HELLLLLLP!"
Her voice broke at last and she turned her head as far to the right as it would go, her hair plastered to her cheeks and forehead in sweaty licks and tangles, her eyes bulging. The fear of being found chained up naked with her husband lying dead on the floor beside her had ceased to be even a casual factor in her thinking. This new panic-attack was like some weird mental eclipse--it filtered out the bright light of reason and hope and allowed her to see the most awful possibilities of all: starvation, thirst-induced madness, convulsions, death. She was not Heather Locklear or Victoria Principal, and this was not a made-for-TV suspense movie on the USA cable network. There were no cameras, no lights, no director to call cut. This was happening, and if help didn't come, it might well go on happening until she ceased to exist as a life-form. Far from worrying about the circumstances of her detention, she had reached a point where she would have welcomed Maury Povich and the entire film crew of A Current Affair with tears of gratitude.
But no one answered her frantic cries--no caretaker, down here to check on his places by the lake, no curious local out rambling with his dog (and perhaps trying to discover which of his neighbors might be growing a little marijuana among the whispering pines), and certainly not Maury Povich. There was only that long, queerly unpleasant shadow, which made her think of some weird dog-spider balancing on four thin and febrile legs. Jessie took a deep, shuddery breath and tried to re-establish control over her skittish mind. Her throat was hot and dry, her nose uncomfortably wet and plugged with tears.
What now?
She didn't know. Disappointment throbbed in her head, temporarily too large to allow anything like constructive thought. The only thing of which she was completely sure was that the dog meant nothing; it was only going to stand out there on the back porch for awhile and then go away when it realized that what had drawn it was out of reach. Jessie made a low, unhappy cry and closed her eyes. Tears oozed out from beneath her lashes and spilled slowly down her cheeks. In the late-afternoon sun, they looked like drops of gold.
What now? she asked again. The wind gusted outside, making the pines whisper and the loose door bang. What now, Goodwife? What now, Ruth ? What now, all you assorted UFOs and hangers-on? Any of you--any of us-- got any ideas? I'm thirsty, I need to pee, my husband is dead, and my only company is a woods-dog whose idea of heaven is the leftovers of a Three-Cheese Genoa Salami sub from Amato's in Gorham. Pretty soon it's going to decide that the smell is as close to heaven as it's going to get, and then it will bug out. So ... what now?
No answers. All the interior voices had fallen silent. That was bad--they were company, at least--but the panic had also gone, leaving only its heavy-metal aftertaste, and that was good.
I'll sleep for awhile, she thought, amazed to find she could actually do just that if she wanted to. I'll sleep for awhile, and when I wake up, maybe I'll have an idea. At the very least, I can get away from the fear for awhile.
The tiny strain-lines at the corners of her closed eyes and the two more noticeable ones between her brows began to smooth out. She could feel herself beginning to drift. She let herself go toward that refuge from self-regard with feelings of relief and gratitude. When the wind gusted this time, it seemed distant, and the restless sound of the
door was even farther away: bang-bang, bang-bang, bang.
Her breathing, which had been deepening and slowing as she slipped into a doze, suddenly stopped. Her eyes sprang open. The only emotion she was aware of in that first moment of sleep-snatched-away disorientation was a kind of puzzled pique: she had almost made it, damn it all, and then that damned door--
What about that damned door? Just what about it?
The damned door hadn't finished its usual double bang, that was what about it. As if this thought had brought them into being, Jessie now heard the distinctive click of a dog's toenails on the floor of the entryway.
The stray had come in through the unlatched door. It was in the house.
Her reaction was instant and unequivocal. "You get out!" she screamed at it, unaware that her overstrained voice had taken on a hoarse foghorn quality. "Get out, motherfucker! Do you hear me? you GET THE HELL OUT OF MY HOUSE!"
She stopped, breathing fast, eyes wide. Her skin seemed woven through with copper wires carrying a low electrical charge; the top two or three layers buzzed and crawled. She was distantly aware that the hairs on the nape of her neck were standing as erect as porcupine quills. The idea of sleep had disappeared right off the map.
She heard the initial startled scrabble of the dog's nails on the entry floor ... then nothing. I must have scared it away. It probably scatted right out the door again. I mean, it's got to be afraid of people and houses, a stray like that.
I dunno, toots, Ruth's voice said. It sounded uncharacteristically doubtful. I don't see its shadow in the driveway.
Of course you don't. It probably went right around the other side of the house and back into the woods. Or down by the lake. Scared to death and running like hell. Doesn't that make sense?
Ruth's voice didn't answer. Neither did Goody's, although at this point Jessie would have welcomed either one of them.