Body and Bone (12 page)

Otto cut his eyes at Nessa. “Oh, yeah? What did she say?”

“That you're a brilliant producer.”

Of course Nessa hadn't said that, but Isabeau was the queen of encouragement. Maybe Nessa should try to be more like her.

Naaah.

“So no bottle opener,” Otto said. “Well, no problem. I've been wanting to try this thing I saw on the Internet.”

He took off his left Doc Martens boot and removed the foil from the wine bottle. Then Otto slipped the wine bottle into his boot, bottom first—­
eeewww
—­and said, “Which wall should I smack this against?”

“How about you go outside and do it on that oak over there?”

Isabeau made a follow-­me motion and headed out the back door. Nessa watched out the window as Isabeau led him to the tree and he smacked the heel against the trunk of the oak several times. She could see Isabeau talking while Otto worked. Finally, he held the bottle up triumphantly and worked the protruding cork out of the bottle neck.

Nessa's mouth watered. She missed wine.

They came running back in like a ­couple of kids who'd just caught tadpoles.

“Success!” Isabeau said, her arms in the air. “That's pretty cool.”

“Where are your pots and pans?” Otto asked Nessa.

She opened the cabinet and showed him where everything was.

She fought to push away her disdain for this guy that she didn't really know. When had she become so judgmental? Was it inevitable after marriage and kids? Her mother had been judgmental of everyone, commenting on ­people's choice of clothes, car, language, hairstyle. Maybe she'd turned out just like her mother after all.

O
TTO MADE PAELLA,
and it was actually quite good. He and Isabeau drank the wine he'd brought while Nessa stuck to iced tea.

He proposed a toast. “Here's to a better working relationship.”

The three of them clinked their glasses together, and Daltrey thrust his sippy cup forward. They clinked his too.

After dinner the four of them walked the property as Nessa explained the hops farm idea. Otto grew excited.

“You should totally keep going with it,” he said.

“Now that my husband is . . . gone, I just don't have the time or energy.”

“Are you getting a divorce?”

Nessa and Isabeau exchanged glances.

“Long story,” Nessa said.

“Oh. Hey, Daltrey,” Otto said. “You like playing hide-­and-­seek?”

He nodded, all smiles.

“You want to play right now?”

He nodded more vigorously.

Daltrey was “it” for the first game, and the three adults made sure they were just visible enough for him to find them.

Nessa was impressed with Otto's easy manner with Daltrey. Not that she'd ever tell him that, but it was nice to observe Otto out of context. When Daltrey chased him, he pretended to run fast, and Nessa caught a glimpse of Otto as a little boy before the irony bug bit him.

“Bedtime,” Nessa called.

Daltrey got limp, slumping as he walked reluctantly toward her.

“Hey, Daltrey,” Otto said. “We'll play again sometime, okay?”

Daltrey nodded and signed “Good night” to him.

“I'll put him down,” Isabeau said.

“Let's go in too,” Nessa said. “I can't take any more of this heat.”

“Good call,” Otto said.

They all trooped inside, and Isabeau and Daltrey went upstairs.

“Another beer? More wine?” Nessa said as she washed her hands at the sink in the kitchen.

“I'll have another beer,” Otto said, pulling a PBR out of his cooler.

“Mommy,” Isabeau called down the stairs. “Come say good-­night!”

“Be right there,” she said, drying her hands.

“Where are we going to hang out?” Otto said. “Kitchen or living room? Where do you normally?”

“Living room,” she said, and went upstairs.

Daltrey was all jammied and toothbrushed and all tucked into bed.

“Good night, Daltrey,” Isabeau said.

Nessa hugged and kissed him. “I love you,” she said.

He held up his hand in the abbreviated ASL “I love you” sign and closed his eyes. She turned on his night-­light and sound machine, turned out the light, and followed Isabeau out of the room.

Down in the living room, Otto occupied the wingback chair and Isabeau sat on the floor with her back against the couch holding a glass of wine.

“That is one cute kid,” Otto said.

“Thank you,” Nessa said, plugging her phone into her minispeakers, then set iTunes to shuffle. “Ideal World” began to play.

She sat on the couch

“Is that . . . Girlpool?” Otto said, incredulous.

“Yeah,” she said.

“I thought you were strictly a Led Zeppelin/Bad Company midseventies classic rock type.”

“Have you ever heard me play either of those bands? Ever?”

“Well, no, but—­”

“She's turned me on to a whole bunch of music I'd never heard of before,” Isabeau said. “She's a very interesting person.”

“Well, I wouldn't know,” Otto said. “Nessa doesn't talk about herself.”

“I'm a very private person,” Nessa said. She didn't like where this was going.

“You can't be a private person nowadays,” Otto said. “Everyone is out there and exposed, and there's nothing you can do about it. So you might as well just let it all out.”

This was truer than Otto could possibly know. She needed to steer the conversation away from herself. “Right,” she said. “So what about you, Otto? Where'd you grow up?”

“Mulvane, near Wichita,” he said. “My dad's a farmer. Mom's a schoolteacher.”

“Did everybody pick on you when you were a kid?” Isabeau said.

He drew back, shocked. “No,” he said, drawing it out, which Nessa took to mean “yes.” She saw in his face the younger version of himself that no one liked. And she imagined her own oddball son, and how it felt when he was shunned or shut out by other kids at the park because he didn't talk.

This and the way he was with Daltrey were what she needed to see to stop hating him.

“Everybody picked on me,” Isabeau said. “I was the tallest girl in my class. It sucked.” She yawned and stretched. “I can't keep my eyes open. I'm going to bed.” She stood and stretched again. “See you, Otto.”

“Good night,” he said, looking panicked.

Nessa wanted to laugh. Was he afraid to be left alone with her? They worked alone together twice a week.

“I'll help with the dishes,” he said resolutely.

“I'm going to just leave them,” Nessa said.

“I'll just do them for you. You can go on to bed, Nessa.”

“What, and let you dig through my stuff? Not on your life, princess.”

His laugh sounded nervous, as if he thought she believed he'd really do this. He stood and walked into the kitchen.

Isabeau winked at Nessa and went upstairs.

Nessa joined Otto in the kitchen and put Otto's leftover food into his cooler while he rinsed dishes. She loaded the dishwasher.

“What do you think,” Otto said. “Think I could do your job?”

“Sure,” Nessa said. “A chimp could do it.”

He leaned back against the counter. “That's always been the goal,” he said dreamily. “To get an Altair satellite show, but I'd do it right. I'd play super-­obscure stuff that only a handful of true connoisseurs would know.”

“That is antithetical to the business model, which is actually to get ­people to listen, not to drive the larger audience away, you dumbass.”

He laughed. “I know. I can't help it.”

“Sure you can. You don't have to be this way. You can be a real boy.”

“ ‘I got no strings to hold me down, to make sad or make me frown,' ” he sang in a surprisingly good voice. He smacked himself in the forehead with a wet hand. “Shit. I can't believe I just made an
Ultron
reference.”

“And a
Pinocchio
reference at the same time. A two-­for-­one! What you just said? Can't you see how many antihipster points you hit there?”

He smirked at her and dried his hands on a dish towel. “I gotta use the bathroom. Be right back.”

Nessa wiped the counters, waiting for him to return, and thought about how pleasant this had been, how nice of him it was to show up and make dinner. Which didn't seem like him at all. But maybe she'd misjudged him.

When he returned, he'd obviously been mulling over their conversation.

“You know, although I don't self-­identify as a hipster, I believe it comes from a sincere place,” he said earnestly. “In a world that so desperately cherishes the super-­popular and conformity of values, there's significance in seeking out the talent that maybe the masses don't quite recognize because it doesn't cohere to the norm, to the elite-­approved idea of what's good. Our taste has been developed by corporations desperate to sell products. It's all manufactured for us and shoved down our throats. It's fast food for the soul, for the mind. It's not good for us, you know? We've lost the ability as a species to declare what we like instead of having it done for us.”

“Although it's corny as hell, that may actually be the best
un
ironic explanation of hipster I've ever heard,” Nessa said. “Okay, I'll grant you all that. But what really bugs me? It's the smugness. The sense of superiority. That you're better than the masses, the
sheeple
, as your ­people so compassionately call them.”

“But isn't that what we all do, on some level? Try to elevate ourselves to drown out the chorus of self-­hatred that threatens to destroy us all on a daily basis?”

“What just happened?” Nessa said, straightening and fixing him with an astonished gaze. “Did you just . . . say something real to me? Did you really just peel back your veneer of bullshit to give me a glimpse into your existential fears?”

He looked away from her.

“You'll have your own show one day,” she said. “After a millennia of being the joke of humanity, the tables have turned and nerds now run the universe. Maybe the year of the hipster is coming, and you'll have your supreme day in the sun, where you run everything—­organically and sustainably, of course—­and turn the world into a flax-­wearing, beard-­growing, locavore-­arama!”

Otto barked a laugh. “My real name is Jim,” he said.

“Of course it is,” Nessa said.

After Otto left, Nessa realized he'd never told her what had happened to him Thursday night.

 

Chapter Fifteen

Saturday, June 18

N
ESSA FELT AS
though she'd been sleeping with her eyes open because it seemed like she'd been staring at the same dark object for hours. It was like the ceiling fan. Since they'd lived in this house, she'd awoken several times, and upon seeing the ceiling fan, each time she'd thought it was something different: a seagull, a cross, Superman.

But this time her mind was making it into something sinister. It was just a shadow from the window, moving with the wind, trees, maybe.

She blinked in the dark.

But the image resolved into the shape of a man.

John?
And she almost sat up.

But then a strange scent met her nostrils. It was Southern Comfort and cigarette smoke. A spear of terror impaled her chest, cutting off her wind.

John was not a smoker.

Nessa did not know this person.

The man stood next to the dresser, unmoving. Nessa resolved not to move either. If she pretended to be asleep, he could take what he wanted and leave.

He turned slowly toward her.

A second sharper wave of panic rippled through her body.

Pleaseleavepleaseleavepleaseplease. . .

The man lunged toward the bed and clamped a large hand over her mouth, bearing down and mashing her lips into her gums, pressure under her nose.

A dark face lowered to hers and whispered, “Don't make a sound. If you fight me, I will kill you.”

She saw that the darkness of the face was due to a black knit ski mask. His lips touched the skin of her face and the revulsion she felt was so extreme she thought she might faint. His saliva dribbled down her forehead.

A hoarse whisper. “I've got a gun, and one way or another, I'm going to use it.”

He raised up and she saw a gun-­shaped shadow above her face. He put it in his pocket and leaned back in. “I know you want this, bitch. You want it hard, don't you? Tell me how you want it.”

Nessa felt pressure on her stomach moving southward. Everything slowed down.

It
was
happening again, this time in her own house, with her son sleeping next door.

“Nathan?” she whispered. She had to talk him out of this.

“Shut up,” he said, but the shape of him was all wrong. He was shorter, had thin arms. This wasn't her rapist from California. This was a new rapist.

“Please,” she said.

“Please what?” he said. “What do you want me to do? Say it!”

Her breathing came in ragged gasps and her heart battered the inside of her chest. When his hand reached her crotch, without any agency from her, her arms and legs began flailing wildly, as if restraints had just popped off of her. Her left hand caught the man in the nose.

“Ow!” he howled. “What are you doing?”

The absurdity of this question made her freeze again momentarily.

“That wasn't part of the deal!” the man yelled.

Nessa's door flew open and Isabeau stood there, all five foot ten inches of her, with a slim purple knife in her hand.

“Get off her, motherfucker,” Isabeau said. “Or this knife is going right into your back.”

The ski-­masked asshole looked back over his shoulder, and Nessa took the opportunity to wind up and punch him right in the balls. He pitched over, gasping, clutching his crotch and groaning.

Nessa scrambled to get the nightstand drawer open and reached for the Walther PK380. It wasn't there, of course. The cops had it.

“What is this?” the man wheezed. “Some sort of femi-­nazi ambush? This is false advertising!”

With the knife still in her hand, Isabeau bounded over to the bed and yanked the guy's ski mask off. Nessa switched on the bedside lamp, temporarily blinded by the light. She focused on her attacker. He had glossy black hair, smooth pink skin, and blue eyes.

She'd never seen him before.

What had she expected? That it was Otto? Detective Dirksen?

She gripped her chest, her hands suddenly freezing cold, panic rising inside her. She swallowed, willing her heartbeat to slow, but her heart ignored her and went on thundering.

“Call 911, Isabeau,” she said, hoping she didn't sound quite as terrified as she felt.

“But this is what you wanted!” the man said, his voice pitched high with hysteria.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Isabeau said.

“Am I at the wrong place?” he said, still clutching his crotch.

His eyebrows were several millimeters higher than Nessa would have thought possible. The pain and fear that contorted his face made her own abate to an almost tolerable level.

“Who are you?” she demanded, her voice sounding strong in her own ears.

“Is this part of the thing?” the man asked.

“What thing? What are you talking about?”

“The ad! Your ad! If I'd known it was supposed to be a threesome, or that you had weapons, I wouldn't have—­”

Isabeau stared at Nessa, then at the guy. “Okay, shitbird,” she said. “I want you to tell us exactly what ad you're talking about. Where you saw it. What it said. Et cetera.”

The poor guy's voice shook so badly Nessa could hardly understand him. “It was online, on that site Fantasy Island. The ad said that you—­” he inclined his head toward Nessa “—­had a fantasy about being rrrr . . . rrrr . . . raped in your bed in the middle of the night.”

So Nathan had sent someone to do his dirty work for him.

“I knew this was too good to be true,” the guy said. “I knew it.”

Nessa grabbed her phone and stumbled out into the hall, closing the door behind her, confident that Isabeau could handle this guy. Nessa dialed 911. While she explained to the operator what was happening, she kept her eye on Daltrey's door.

When she opened her own bedroom door and slipped inside, Isabeau was still interrogating the would-­be rapist, brandishing her knife at him with one hand and holding an unfolded piece of paper in the other.

“Here, Nessa,” she said.

Nessa took the paper from her and tried to read it while her attacker blubbered in the background.

Have you always fantasized about raping someone? I've always fantasized about being raped. We should get together. Come to my house at three
A.M.
some morning (but don't tell me when!) and let's make our dreams come true. Nessa Donati, County Road 8, off John Brown Road.

The header indeed said FantasyIslandXXX.com on top and was dated yesterday.

“And you expect me to believe that you saw this ad online?” Nessa said. “That you didn't just type it up and print it out as an excuse or whatever to attack someone in her sleep?”

The man was crying now. “Oh, God, I didn't know it wasn't real. I'm so sorry.”

Nessa was clobbered with an intense, almost overwhelming craving for a shot. Right now.

“Hey, scumbag,” Isabeau said. “How did you get in the house? Slit a screen? Break down the back door?”

“No,” he said.

“How'd you get in, then?”

He reached for his pocket, and Isabeau raised her knife at him.

He whimpered. “I need to show you,” he said. “I'm getting something out of my pocket, okay? Take it easy!”

He pulled out a brand-­new shiny house key.

“Where did you get that?”

“I got it in my post office box. The return address was this house.”

Nessa and Isabeau looked at each other.

Nessa looked at the piece of paper again. The email that was from [email protected].

That was not her email address.

The paper floated to the ground.

Her name. Her address. Her troll had broken through the fourth wall and had invited every freak within five hundred miles to come to her house and rape her in her bed.

When the patrol car pulled up in front of the house, the would-­be rapist was hauled to his feet, crying and choking out excuses and explanations to the cop, who cuffed him and took the piece of paper from him.

Once the cops left, Nessa went into her bedroom and dialed Marlon.

“I need a shot,” she said, then told him what happened.

“Are you drinking now?” he said, speaking slowly and deliberately.

“No.”

“Did you drink before you called?”

“No,” she said.

“You did the right thing—­you called your sponsor before, not after, you took the first drink. I'm going to throw another AA aphorism at you, and I want you to think hard on it. ‘Man's extremity is God's opportunity.' You know what it means, right?”

“Yes,” she said. But she knew he was going to tell her anyway, and that made her smile.

“It means that you can't handle this. You really can't. But God can, and you need to let him. But you still need to do your part. First, don't drink. Second, you need to get a security system out there. This is insane.”

“You're right,” she said.

“You can do what
you
can do, and God will do the rest.”

Would He though?

“Thank you, Marlon,” she said. She did feel better, especially with an action plan. “I'm going to go to the locksmith Monday and see if they do security systems too. The cop who came out here to arrest the guy told me he'd see to it that a patrol car is sent out here for the next several days.”

“Excellent,” he said. He yawned into the phone. “And now I'm going back to sleep.”

“Good night,” she said, and clicked off.

She went back downstairs and Isabeau was sitting on the living room couch clacking away on her laptop keyboard. Nessa got hers, sat down next to her nanny, and typed the Fantasy Island website URL into her browser. She searched the site for the ad the creep had brought with him.

“I can't find the ad,” Nessa said.

“I know,” Isabeau said. “I think whoever posted it took it down. We could try to get the owners of the site to turn over the IP address the troll's using to post this shit, but I'm guessing they're not exactly paragons of virtue.”

“Can we use the email address to try to lure him out of hiding somehow?” Nessa said. “How would we do that?”

“I don't know. I'll do some research and see what I can come up with.”

“By the way,” Nessa said. “What you did tonight was totally badass.”

Isabeau smiled at her, pleased. “Thanks.”

“Where did you get that knife?”

“I have a whole collection of them,” Isabeau said. “I used to throw knives competitively when I lived in Alaska.”

This blew Nessa's mind. “You threw knives?”

Isabeau nodded.

“And you lived in Alaska?”

“Yup. In a tipi.”

“Why didn't you ever tell me?”

“You've never asked,” Isabeau said. “I keep them right upstairs in my room.”

“You—­what?” Nessa said.

“Don't worry,” Isabeau said. “I keep them way up high in the closet where Daltrey could never get to them.”

“You know,” Nessa said. “Maybe we should keep them in the kitchen pantry up high. Just in case, with all this crap going on around here.”

“Okay,” Isabeau said. “You want to see the set?”

“Definitely,” Nessa said, and Isabeau's smile widened as she bounded up the stairs.

She returned with a black nylon carrying case, which she unrolled. Six purple metal handles protruded from pockets in the sheath. She slid one out and handed it handle-­first to Nessa. It was much lighter than Nessa would have expected.

“They're titanium,” Isabeau said. “I can show you a video of one of my competitions if you want.”

She rolled the knives back up, then got her laptop and set it on the coffee table. She typed into it and spun it toward Nessa, then clicked on the play button of the YouTube video.

The camera swung toward Isabeau, who held her knives and did an outstretched arm curtsy before turning toward six archery targets attached to an outdoor wall.

The camera focused on the targets, and one by one, each was pierced by a knife, most of them near the bull's-­eye.

“Cool, huh?” Isabeau said, waggling her eyebrows, her wide smile proud and delighted.

“That's amazing,” Nessa said with real admiration. “You are a woman of many talents.” She reached forward and grasped Isabeau's hand. “Thank you so much. You saved me tonight. You really did.”

“You're welcome,” Isabeau said, then got up and went in the kitchen. Nessa heard the pantry door open and close.

Nessa realized she'd never asked Isabeau anything about herself, and it made her ashamed. She was so swept up in the drama that was her life Isabeau was just a bit player, a prop, an extra.

But by rescuing Nessa tonight, she'd earned top billing.

Sunday, June 19

A
T NINE THE
next morning, Nessa stuck Daltrey in front of the TV—­something she was doing far too often these days—­while Isabeau worked on her computer in the same room.

Nessa went up to her bedroom and steeled herself to call John's parents. Then she dialed her mother-­in-­law's cell phone.

“Linda, I have a problem.”

“Oh?” her mother-­in-­law said. “What is it
now
?”

Nessa ground her teeth. “Is there any way you can push up your Kansas City trip with Daltrey? And then take him back to Russell with you for a week or so?”

Nessa was grateful that, other than cell phone usage, her in-­laws were completely technophobic and had no knowledge of or interest in the Internet, so they wouldn't have read her blog and all the horrific comments.

“Need a little break, do you?” Linda said.

Nessa bit her tongue. Actually, since ­people were now invading her house at all hours of the night, she feared for Daltrey's safety. But she wasn't about to let slip this bit of info. She'd always had the feeling that Linda was just waiting for her to screw up so she could swoop in and take control of Daltrey's life.