The Other Side (15 page)

I should know better, should ask him to mail them to me instead. But then he will make excuses. And then we'll argue. And if we argue, he'll pull the words right out from under me. Anything I say, he'll twist around and use against
me. He'll twist my words until I'm apologizing and he's in a rage. I should know better, but agree.

Pulling into the abandoned parking lot, I think
Where is the moving truck?
And just as I suspect but do not believe that something is terribly wrong, I turn to see the stun gun in his outstretched hand. My mind goes blank, empties completely. My stomach enters free fall. He says he will drive now and I can either go peacefully, or in the trunk with permanent nerve damage.

My hand reaches to open the door to run. My legs move so quickly. An opening between the bushes. A backyard. A bike. A ball. He moves more quickly. He catches me by the hair and reels me back in.

You won't escape
. He whispers this with his lips near my ear, my hair in his hand, holding the stun gun to my throat, in the place where blood enters my face through the jaw. I hope, but do not pray to God, that he does not pull the trigger.

He pushes me into the passenger seat, sliding me over his lap, puts a black wig and a hat on my head, sunglasses over my face. The lenses are covered in thick black tape. I can see out the sides, but I don't tell him that. When he asks whether I can see, I tell him I can't see. I don't want him to know that I know exactly where we are the whole time he's driving around in circles. That when we pull up to a
stoplight near the apartment we once shared, I can see the woman in the next car over. So close I could almost reach out and touch her. She sings to the radio and looks straight ahead, tapping her fingers on the wheel. I could open the door. I could scream or flail or run.

He makes a U-turn at the stoplight near the apartment we once shared and goes the opposite direction, fast, through an intersection and down a hill. We exit the boulevard and turn to the right, onto a quiet residential street lined with redbrick apartment buildings I've never seen before. When we pull off the street, into a driveway, behind a tiny fourplex, I can see that half of it is buried underground. I know, having lived here all my life, that burying things during a long summer keeps them cool.

While he comes to my side of the car to open the door I wait in my seat. Terrified. Obedient. He leads me by the arm toward the building, fishes a ring of keys out of his pocket. He opens the storm door first, leans against it while he unlocks the deadbolt, and pushes open the heavy steel door. He leads me across the threshold, into the dark basement apartment, through a dark living room. Out of the edge of the glasses, I see building materials stacked on the floor: scraps of two-by-fours, boxes of nails and screws, a hammer, a drill. Plastic shopping bags discarded in corners. The first door on the
right is the one he opens, leads me through, closes behind us and locks. The light comes on. The glasses and wig come off.

The room, maybe a bedroom under any other circumstances, is small. Thick blue Styrofoam covers every surface but the gray-carpeted floor: the walls, the ceiling, the door. I can see no windows, but I'm not looking for them yet. All I see is the moment of my death, not far away.

In the middle of the room there's a giant wooden chair constructed of two-by-fours and four-by-fours. Like an electric chair. A hole in the seat opens to a bucket underneath. Two steel U-bolts are attached to the thick wooden arms with galvanized fencing staples. A choke collar hangs from the headrest.

I'm going to rape you now
, he says while I undress.
Or I'm sure that's what you'll call it, anyway
. In the corner of the room there are several sheets of paper folded into a neat square: a letter he'll read to me after he's bolted me into the chair, after he's fed me a turkey sandwich, his hands hot and sticky with his own semen. While I'm swallowing and choking and spitting it out he explains that I'll call My Good Friend to tell her I've decided to take him back. On the phone, I clear my
throat nervously and tell her I'll come by in a few days to pick up my clothes. She wants to know what clothes.
Sorry, I can't come by tonight
, I say.
I'll come by in a few days
. She's so confused.
Where are you? What is happening?
I can't speak, with him sitting right beside me, demanding I hang up the phone. I want to say,
Send help
. Instead I say,
I don't know
.

Or maybe the phone call happens first. At one point he tells me to put his penis in my mouth—he's so angry he can't get it hard for this—and at another he tightens the dog collar around my neck, gesturing toward the places he's planted explosives in the walls, a camera in the corner, a detonator in the kitchen. All the possible outcomes play like a movie in my head: He cues the explosion. Pieces of my body fly in every direction. But then he puts his face close to mine and says
No one can hear you. Go ahead and scream
.

I do not scream.

I sit on the edge of the mattress, which is sloppily dressed with a fitted white sheet covered by a clear plastic sheet, covered by a goose-down duvet, the same one he gave me on my birthday. The mattress lies on the floor in the corner.

He doesn't live here. No one lives here.

He asks who might be expecting me. I consider whom to call, who could best handle answering the last phone call I ever make. Not my parents. They aren't expecting me. I have just moved into my new apartment, and I planned to spend the night unpacking. Yesterday, my parents took me to the store to get new sheets, new towels, a new comforter for the bed. The mattress hasn't been delivered yet. Mom said,
I don't think we can afford to keep setting you up all over again like this
.

I lie and call My Good Friend. She'll tell me later that she knew something was wrong. She spends the whole night driving around looking for me: the old apartment I used to share with him, the new apartment, my favorite bars downtown, ditches beside the road.

He says,
I'm going to rape you now
. And it doesn't matter that I am on my period, because he pulls my tampon out by the string and lays it beside the mattress. The police will find it later and catalogue it into evidence. My blood pools on the clear plastic sheet, which they will also catalogue into evidence.

At first, I have a body, a wild animal body I throw and thrash against his cage. I almost break a limb before he catches me in his hands. I growl and hiss and bare my teeth. But then, my body is not a wild animal body. It's a
human girl body: the two arms pinned, a cross; the two legs spread, a tomb. It's the mind that goes thrashing so wildly. The body remains calm. The body undresses and lays itself down.

But the mind goes thrashing so wildly. The body lays itself down on a clear plastic sheet, hears but does not listen to the soup of human-like speech boiling in its ears, spilling exactly the length and width of the room. The mind skitters safely out of reach.