He explains that he wants to do an experiment. To see who’s right about his ending. You are too afraid to consider what that means, exactly. There were a lot of terrible things that happened at the end of his script, none of which you want to be part of. He opens his hand, shows you some pills.
“It’s just some Valium,” he tells you, “to calm you down.”
“I don’t want to be calm.” You get up and start for the door, but he’s on you, tackling you down to the floor. He’s on top of you, a disturbing weight, and you try not to look at his face. He holds you down, hard, with such force that it hurts. He is trying to decide if he wants to rape you, but he doesn’t. He pulls you up, his hand slowly brushing your thigh. It is a gesture of power, you realize; a threat.
“You’re going to have to calm down.” He pushes you down into the chair. “Take the pills.”
There is no way in hell that you’re taking those pills.
“Look.” He smiles a little, nods as if he understands something about you, something highly personal—something that even you don’t understand. “Either you take the pills, or I shoot you. You decide.”
“You’re going to shoot me over this?”
“I’m not myself. I’m feeling very unbalanced.”
“You’re not going to kill me,” you say in the most patronizing voice you can muster. “Even I know that.”
But then he puts the gun to your head. “Are you sure?”
Within seconds you lose your resolve. Your courage drains out of you like blood. “I don’t know what you want. I don’t understand what you want from me.”
“Make me happy.” He opens his hand. “Take these.”
But you can’t seem to move. This is what they call being paralyzed with fear.
“Don’t make me shoot you, because I will.”
Maybe they are Valium, you think. Maybe he is going to rape you. Maybe he will rape you and leave and you find yourself hoping that this is his plan—as if it isn’t everything. As if it isn’t enough to ruin your life.
You think of Fatima. You think of her mother’s poor friend. What it must have felt like taking those stones, being surrounded by people you’ve known all your life—people you’ve trusted, who’ve watched you grow up—who have watched from afar as you grew hips and breasts and the countenance of a woman—people who suddenly hate you—the betrayal of that—who want you dead. You think of all the women you know who have found themselves in this kind of situation. And you are thinking of the next woman. You are thinking of her too.
He nods at the pills. “Please.”
You take the pills, drinking down the entire glass of water as if the water might dilute their effect. “You’re dead,” you tell him. “You’ll never work in this town.” You have never been so sure of anything in your life. If you survive this, you will stop at nothing to destroy him.
“All right. If you say so.”
He sits there watching you, a satisfied expression on his face. His little plan is working. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
But you won’t give him the satisfaction. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“I’m glad. I’m not a very scary person.” He laughs.
“You realize this is a mistake.”
“Perhaps.”
“What were you doing at Bruno’s party?”
“Watching you.”
“You think you know me. You’ve made assumptions about me. You think I’m this horrible person, right?” He shrugs, seemingly disarmed by your clarity, your honesty. “But you don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know enough. I know that you’re very sad.”
For some reason the comment upsets you. Tears spring to your eyes. It occurs to you that he’s right. And you’ve been sad for a long time. You just haven’t figured out what to do about it.
Your legs and arms begin to tingle and you realize that you are losing sensation. The idea of it terrifies you beyond description.
“I want to tell meaningful stories. I want to make people feel better about things, not worse . . . I want to make people feel . . .” But you cannot go on. All of a sudden your voice, your mouth, even your teeth don’t work.
“Feel what, Ms. Chase?”
And still, you try . . . but you can’t push out the words. You watch the kitchen turn on its side and when you hit the floor you don’t even feel it.
14
Waking in the darkness, you realize two things. First that you desperately need water and second that you must figure out a way to free your hands. The first few moments of consciousness are worse than any you have ever experienced. Swiftly, you come to the conclusion that you are in very grave danger, that this place—this tomb—that contains your body—your collapsed limbs, your mind, your thoughts, your entire history as Hedda Beatrice Chastowsky—is exceptionally small and hot and smells strongly of tar and gasoline. Under your head you discern that you are moving. It occurs to you that this passage from one place to the next may in fact constitute your very last hours alive.
It is raining. You can hear the rain on the roof. And you are assuming that it is night because the space around you is completely dark. At least he didn’t blindfold you; you don’t think you could have dealt with that, but your mouth is taped, which presents a problem. And your hands are taped too.
The car stops and you hear the muffled sound of voices. A male and female voice. They talk briefly, and then they’re driving again and the radio is on, some pulsing rap tune. Your body jerks with the motion of the car, a jumble of something at your back, something that makes a sound so familiar and particular that you are certain you can identify it, and yet the words and pictures refuse to come. When the car stops again your stomach clenches. Will they be opening the trunk, pulling you out? You can only imagine their plans for you. You must prepare yourself. And in your terror, instead of gaining strength, your muscles go flaccid as jelly.
The doors open then close with a dull finality. You brace yourself, expecting them to open the trunk, but they don’t. And you hear their footsteps fade. Now it is quiet. The car waits. Sweat runs down your limbs, your back, and it makes you cold, it makes you feel ill. In the distance, you hear other voices, the sound of a crowded place. And very faintly too there is the sound of music.
In the minutes and hours that follow, it becomes increasingly clear to you that you are going to die. You try to remember when you last had something to drink, food. Many hours have passed. It is impossible for you to tell. Your pants are damp, you realize you have peed—you don’t recall doing it, you don’t recall anything, really, except for the fact that that awful man came to your house with a gun. You try to picture him now, but your brain won’t allow it.
Time slips by. The minutes vanish, one after the other. You must become a version of Houdini. You are too smart for this. And yet, getting out seems impossible. There’s a feeling in your head, the profound knowledge that you’ve been trapped, contained. That someone else is in charge of your destiny. That someone else has power over you. That you are at their mercy.
You assess the situation. You’re in a fetal position, your hands bound behind your back, your ankles bound, gaffer’s tape in your mouth. You twist your wrists, trying to stretch the tape, to loosen it. It burns, but that is of no consequence to you. You will continue to do it until you have no more strength. At intervals, you rest. You inch along the floor, hoping to encounter something sharp; nothing. Once, you had seen a program about a girl who’d been kidnapped and put into a trunk. The trunk had an emergency release—but that was a newer car. This is your car, you realize. Of course it is. There are no emergency releases in this car. This car is old. It was built during more civilized times, when people knew how to behave. They didn’t put people in the trunks of cars. That sort of thing was reserved for thugs in the Mafia, not for ordinary people like you.
You regret buying it now. You are beginning to regret so many things.
If this was a scene in one
of your movies, how would the girl get out? You rock your body back and forth, feeling the car shake. You scream with all your might, but only a muffled terrible sound comes out. Still, you scream and you scream and it sounds like a dying cow. You hear a dog barking in the distance. Maybe the dog can hear you, you think. Now your throat is sore. Even your ears hurt, the back of your neck. You think of your parents, how terrible this will be for them, when they hear about it. It will be the sort of news that could kill them. They are old now; fragile. News like this will make them sick.
You think about the way things are. The world out there. The big awful world. It has always been awful, you realize, accessing scraps from history. There have always been wars. Wars fought by men! Beowulf. Great epic battles. Fields of blood and carnage. Terrible methods of torture and death. Beheadings. Hangings. Burnings at the stake. Stonings. Crucifixions. Suffocation. Drowning. Stabbing. Arrows. Bullets. Swords. Daggers. Drugs. Abuse. Neglect. Many have suffered. And the reasons are never good enough. The reasons are stupid. Even the good reasons, when you come right down to it, are stupid.
You conclude: The way things are now is the way they have always been.
No difference.
People are ugly and cruel. They are relentless. They will stop at nothing to get what they want.
Darkness envelops you—a horror so pernicious you fear it will kill you. And then, almost as suddenly as it came, it lifts, and what you need to do next becomes clear. First, you must refuse to die. You must focus on what is left that is good, the shallow breath pushing through your nostrils, the vivid clarity inside your head. You must concentrate very hard. You twist your wrists once more, jiggling your hands. Your arms prickle and burn as if they are crammed with bees. The tape’s sharp edge cuts your skin, opening a wound. No matter. You must keep trying. For some reason you think of Jesus. You think of nails through His wrists. The blood. You picture His face, the famous tilt of His head, His crown of thorns. Only now can you fully appreciate His suffering. Even as a Jew you are not above praying to Him now—in fact, any God will do—the idea of God—of being saved—preoccupies your thoughts.
Death, intimate as love, so impossibly near.
You will have none of it!
You must concentrate. Think. But your thirst is too great. You are sick with thirst, desperate—and there’s that jumble at your back. You rock against it, trying to decipher the sound it makes. Almost instinctively, with a certainty reserved for those who refuse to die, you know it’s a plastic bag, and the bag contains something you need. That the sound it made before and the sound it is making now is the crinkle of plastic, the ruckus of dented tin, the tine of glass against glass—your collection of deposit bottles to return to the market—your favorite organic root beer, Orangina, the fancy water from Sweden. You can almost taste the pulpy sweetness, imagining the dregs of liquid you left behind—so careless—so wasteful. Furious, you begin again, twisting and twisting, feeling the blood dripping down your wrists. No matter. You are willing to suffer now, you are willing to bleed. There will be time to heal later. Once the tape is off. Once you’re out.
They’re coming back. You hear the girl crying. “You didn’t have to do that,” she’s saying, her voice squealing. “He’s nice; he wasn’t a creep like the others.”
“Get in the car,” he says.
“No.”
“Daisy, get in the fucking car.”
“You’re crazy, you know that?
“I’m just trying to protect you.”
“He looked fucking dead.”
“Not even close. Now get in.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“Come on, you know you want to. You don’t want to stay here with these people.”
Then you hear the unmistakable sound of someone vomiting.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“I’m sick.” Again, she vomits.
“You drank too much.”
“You don’t know me,” she says.
“I want to know you.”
The door opens and you can feel the car adjusting to their weight. The doors close.
“You don’t know anything about me!”
“Start talking. It’s a long way to Nevada. I should know you real good by the time we get there.”
15
Ida had not answered his calls. He felt somewhat at a loss. He supposed he’d been pretty rough on her. She hadn’t liked what he’d done to her, more than once she’d cried out, begging him to stop—but you never knew with women what they really wanted, and it had felt so good he wasn’t able to. It was a powerful feeling, as though he had gotten to the very core of her, as though he had tapped into her soul—a dirty place, a dark place—the place that most defined her—and he possessed that part of her now. It was for him and nobody else. And she’d never get it back.
It had been selfish, he understood that now. She had decided not to forgive him. And he had decided that it was all right with him. Maybe he didn’t care. Then again, she was in his thoughts. He thought about her constantly.
He sat on the edge of the unmade bed, watching the people down on the street. A crowd emerged from the old stucco church and the bells were ringing in the tower. He liked the sound they made. It was hot that morning, the sun white on a white sky, and there was talk of a heat wave. As usual, the little dog across the street was yapping at the window. Out in front, its oblivious owner was shoveling a hole in the grass, wearing a house dress, her hair in curlers, her husband in a lawn chair on the red-painted stoop, shielding his eyes with a newspaper. It was a strange house, Hugh thought, and they seemed a strange couple. All the while the dog went on barking.
He had gotten a call earlier from Marion’s lawyer, a man who was once a personal friend. Hugh thought he could hear Marion in the background and wondered if the lawyer and his wife had become lovers. He wanted an address. She was suing him for divorce. The lawyer had mentioned that his position at Equitable Life had been terminated.
Hugh dressed and went to get something to eat. At the coffee shop, he sat at the counter and ordered a turkey sandwich. It was the same waitress. She brought him the meatloaf instead then disappeared. He sat there looking at the plate. He got up and went to the men’s room and saw her smoking in the back, talking to somebody on her cell phone. In the sunlight, he saw that her hair was red.
He spoke through the screen, “I didn’t order that. You brought me the wrong thing.”
She looked up, confused. “What? I can’t hear you?”
“That meal. It wasn’t what I ordered.”
“I’m on my break.” She turned her back on him, muttering into the phone.
When he returned to the counter he picked up the plate of meatloaf and dropped it on the floor. It made a loud sound and everybody stopped what they were doing and looked at him. He stood there a moment, gathering his thoughts. He walked out without paying, jerking the door, shaking up the sleigh bells along the side of it.
When he got back to the motel he saw a FOR RENT sign on the front lawn across the street. On an impulse, Hugh went over and rang the bell. The dog started to bark and growl as if it smelled something on Hugh it didn’t like. The woman answered the door in her housecoat, unfazed, holding the dog like a parcel she wanted to mail without a return address. Now the dog was grimacing, baring its teeth, nudging him with its pointy wet snout. The woman had curlers in her hair, secured under a plastic shower cap. Thick tortoiseshell glasses rested on her rather prominent nose. Under the housecoat she wore support stockings and orthopedic shoes. As they walked past an open doorway Hugh saw the woman’s husband sitting at a table having a meal, watching some routine catastrophe on TV. The woman took Hugh up the red-carpeted stairs to see the room. It was a furnished efficiency with the same red carpet and a Murphy bed and it smelled a little like bug spray. Still, it might work, he thought. For a little while anyway. “I’ll take it,” he told her.
That afternoon he went out and bought a computer and a printer,
charging the items on his credit card, then stopped in a bookstore and bought the Leo Zaklos tapes to see what all the fuss was about. When he returned to the apartment he could hear his landlords bickering and the little dog torpedoed up the stairs after him and ran around his apartment in circles, yapping and shrieking with delight as Hugh tried in vain to catch it. Then it came in again and urinated on the carpet. Hugh was so incensed that he kicked it out into the hall. The landlord scooped the whimpering, mop-headed creature into her arms and gave Hugh a dirty look.
He set up his desk near the window and dug out his old screenplay, The Adjuster, determined to revise it. Going over the script, making notes in the margins with a number two pencil, he felt like a real writer, and he quickly concluded that the script he had sold to Cory Rogers wasn’t any good, it had been beyond miraculous that he had sold it in the first place. Hedda Chase had been right. Philosophically, he understood that the thing he had done to her had been wrong, the result of some tragic compulsive neurosis or, even worse, some deep, unfounded sadness. And yet, he didn’t really feel that bad about it. It was like something that had happened to him in a dream, not in real life, and when he thought about it from time to time, he tried to understand the lesson in it, tried to fathom the impending consequences, but he could not.
As the sun gently descended the façade of the motel across the street, Hugh poured his first drink. It was his little ritual. He had bought the whiskey around the corner from an Indian with a glass eye who made his wife work the register while he roamed the filthy linoleum floors, helping customers. The wife’s eyes were green and spectacular, Hugh thought, although she had met his gaze only once and by accident. She only dressed in saris, some red, some green, gold. Hugh wondered if the owner and his wife thought he was an alcoholic; since his arrival in Los Angeles he’d made frequent visits to their shop, and he imagined the two of them discussing Hugh at home, trying to understand why he drank so much. Sometimes, Hugh felt guilty going in there, and he’d make up an excuse about why, again, he needed a bottle of whiskey, claiming that he was having a party. The wife would smile a little if her husband wasn’t around. If you were a good customer, they lowered their eyes whenever they saw you, as though you were committing a royal sin. The wife would lower the bottle into the paper bag, symbolically, he thought, and try not to look at him when she handed him his change. Sometimes he would ask her a question so that she’d have to acknowledge him, something about the weather or the time, and he’d get a brief flash of recognition.