Two Peasants and a President (13 page)

Molly had been staring straight ahead, having not uttered a word since he’d confronted her.  He wasn’t entirely certain she’d decided to cross the line between her current employer and what he was offering her.  They played hardball in
Boston
;
he knew that.  She had to be very scared now. 

Twenty minutes later they turned into his drive.  As he locked the car, he glanced up and down the empty street.   Once inside, he rearmed the alarm system and took her coat. 

“The guest room is upstairs on the left.  If you need anything, I’ll be down here for awhile.”  She didn’t even look up at him, just turning and trudging up the stairs.  A part of him liked it better when she was playing him, at least it felt good.  But the thought of having a lewd film, in which he was the star, circulating in the press and online made him shudder.  He forced himself to focus on what he had to get done before tomorrow noon. 

22

‘Greasy spoon’ would be a compliment,
thought Molly as she watched Chuck eat a hamburger that was dripping gre
ase onto his plate.  His fries
glistened with whatever oily substance they had been cooked in.  She figured that was the reason Chuck had insisted on meeting here, because it was just the sort of place she detested, and he knew it.  Ever since she had rebuffed his clumsy advance, he’d done his best to be obnoxious.

“Did ya get it?” he asked, as he squeezed the plastic catsup bottle, its sputtering sound the perfect counterpoint to his disgusting persona.

“No,” she replied, relishing another opportunity to piss him off.

“What
da
ya mean?” he asked angrily, a greasy piece of burger tu
m
bling out of his mouth.

“I mean no,” she answered, looking directly into his eyes.  “He got drunk and passed out.”

“So what the fuck!” Chuck said.  “I don’t give a shit if you screw his corpse, as long as you get it on tape.”

“Is that what you like to do,
Chuckie
, screw dead bodies?” she retorted, enjoying her taunt. 

“Look, you fucking bitch,” he said, spraying spittle
on the table
.  “I might just arrange to screw yours if you don’t shut the fuck up.”

“Relax,
perv
.  He fell for me and I’m going to spend the night with him.  You’ll get your sleazy little video.” 

“When?” he asked.

“Tomorrow,” she replied.

“Yeah, well it better be tomorrow,” he said, wiping a gob of catsup off his mouth with a cheap paper napkin.

The disgusting spectacle made Clifford glad he’d decided to skip breakfast.  He’d had his hands full this morning anyway just getting ready for the job he’d only found out about last night.  He played back the sound; everything was crystal clear, same with the video. 
Virgil’s lady friend is a handful
, he thought to himself as he watched her turn her back defiantly on the dirt bag from
Boston
.  The thug just glared at her back as she walked away, the toothpick twitching between his lips. 

23

Holly slept fitfully, both anxiously awaiting and dreading the morning.  When it finally came, she was exhausted and nervous.  When her fruit a
r
rived, she ate it unenthusiastically, thinking simply that she needed the vit
a
mins.  Then she sat on her cot, knees up to her chest, as if to protect herself from she knew not what.  She had almost dozed off, chin resting on her knees when she heard the lock.  It startled her and she jumped.  The same man stepped inside the door and looked around as usual. 

What came next paralyzed her with fear.  The familiar sound of the wheeled bucket rounding the corner was followed by. . . a different person!  Holly panicked, her heart racing, knowing that the new cleaning lady would find the rolled paper in the drain.   The man had sat down in his usual spot and was looking right at her.  Her mind spun dizzily, grasping for a way out, something to stop the inevitable.  She was cert
ain the man could see her fear;
she was shaking, she could feel it.   

The woman began her mopping on the side of the room opposite the sink.  She was working her way across and would be by the sink in less than two minutes.  Holly coughed, then coughed again, expectorating as though expelling phlegm.  She jumped up and lunged toward the sink, pretending to spit something into it.  Then she grabbed the toilet paper roll while stealing a glance at the cleaning lady who had looked up at her. 

When the cleaning lady looked down at the floor again, Holly leaned over, gurgling as if she was about to spit up more sputum.  Placing her body between the sink and the cleaning lady, she palmed the rolled up paper and spat again into the sink.  With her free hand, she ran water into the sink while the other hand slipped the paper under her waist band.  She wiped her mouth and hands with toilet paper and turned around, certain the woman behind her had noticed something and would alert the man. 

The new cleaning lady had stopped mopping and was looking at her.  Holly nearly peed as she slunk back to her cot.
The woman’s face had a frown on it now.  She cocked her head and looked suspiciously at the young American.  The man sitting outside
looked up.  Then he said something gruff in Chinese and the woman
started mopping again.  When she was through, she washed out the sink and replaced the tattered towels and w
as
h
cloth with another set, glancing one more time at Holly.
Then she and the
man were gone.

When she had
finally
stopped trembling, Holly’s body seemed to slowly wither into a fetal position on the cot.  She lay there for some time, staring at the wall, her spirits at lowest ebb since she’d been dragged away from her husband, her honeymoon, and her life.  Her thoughts wandered to suicide, wondering how it would feel to bash her head against a concrete wall.  Her eyelids crept slowly closed, finally releasing her to the dubious refuge of sleep.

An hour later,
robo
-doc came in, startling her awake, plunging her back into the depths of fear and depression.  She wanted to hit him with all her might as he went through the usual routine, not even bothering to speak.  Briefly she wondered if life in a Communist country turned people into i
n
different zombies like this man.  She
didn’t pause to dwell on it
because she had a new and frightening problem to deal with.  What had happened to her ‘angel’?

The afternoon was excruciating.  The questions, the numbing silence, the fear.  She paced back and forth, not knowing what t
o think, not knowing what to do, wondering if the other cleaning lady had told anyone that the American was up to something.
  Had her friend been arrested?   Had they discovered what she was attempting to do?  Could that shot have been her angel crumpling to the ground in the courtyard?
  The mere thought chilled her
deeply.

But it was nothing compared with what would happen that evening. 

They’d brought her dinner, she guessed around six.  For once it vaguely r
e
sembled food.  What seemed like a half an hour later, she was lying on her back on the cot, head resting on her hands.  She’d been staring at the ceiling for some time, thinking of her family and of Ray, trying not to think about what had happened to her angel, but fearing it might soon happen to her. 

The sound of the door at the end of the hall opening brought her u
p
right.  Seconds later she heard her own lock turn.  No one had ever come after dinner and the sudden change in routine alarmed her.  She drew her knees up to her chest in the now familiar response to fear.  Two men in p
o
lice-style uniforms came into the room.  One of them motioned her to stand; he was holding handcuffs.   The other man held what looked like a blindfold.

Part of her wanted to bolt through the door and somehow escape.  But it was futile; there were two men standing in her way, and she didn’t even know the layout of the building, much less the grounds around it.  She stood submissively and turned around, cursing her weakness and the abject hel
p
lessness that had been her existence for she knew not how many days.

Once again, she was being led down a long hall.  She listened, hearing
only Chinese voices in the distance.   Then she was led into a room and pushed down into a chair.  When her blindfold and handcuffs were removed, she found herself sitting at a table.  Across from it was a large window in which she co
uld see her reflection –
another one-way mirror.  Had she been brought here for interrogation?  Would they ask her about the cleaning lady?  The men turned and left, locking the door behind them.  She could hear muffled voices on the other side of the mirror.  Her knees had begun to tremble and she badly wanted to pee. 

For what seemed like hours, she heard nothing but the faint voices on the other side of the wall.  Then abruptly the lock on the door was turned and the two uniformed men returned.  Once again, she found herself being led cuffed and blindfolded back down the hall. 

Later, when they had turned out the light in her room, she lay in the darkness trying to make sense of what had just happened.  Someone had looked at her through the one-way glass, that was obvious, but for what purpose?  Dark imaginings returned.  The hirsute, pot bellied Arab.  A forced marriage somewhere deep in China
to a hunchbacked dwarf farmer,
a place
where she would never be found.  Medical exper
iments ala Dr.
Mengele
.  S
he felt more dispirited than at any time during her captivity.  The message from her angel had lifted her heart, giving her hope.  Then the a
p
pearance of a new cleaning lady and the fear of discovery had crushed it all. 

******

Two days passed.  The routine had been the same, save for the new cleaning lady who seemed sullen and uncaring. 
Robo
-doc seldom spoke and each time examined her like a veterinarian might a goat.  She had read a
book, or perhaps it was a movie;
she couldn’t remember, in which the prisoner had been slowly brainwashed until he became utterly submissive, without a will, without a personality, a person in name only. 

Holly told herself that she must not stop thinking rationally.  To totally surrender was to die inside.  Somehow she had to summon the will to co
n
tinue fighting, to be stronger than they were.

On the third day, after eating her fruit, she sat listlessly on her cot, staring at Uncle Tom’s Cabin lying on the floor.  Again she heard the familiar sounds but scarcely looked up when the man and the cleaning lady arrived.  With her head bowed, all she could see was their feet.  Then her heart leaped as she saw that two of them were clad in pink canvas shoes.  She looked up into a familiar, smiling face.  Her heart leapt so high she tho
ught she would float off the cot
.  

Holly desperately wanted to hug this tiny woman who had been her only friend, the only person in this vile place who seemed to care about her.  But she forced herself to stifle the smile that had begun to brighten her face.  The man sitting across the hall was watching her again. 

As the cleaning lady mopped the floor, starting as always on the side opposite the sink, Holly got up and walked slowly to the sink.  She grabbed the roll of toilet paper and pretended to blow her nose, while checking to see that the man could not see her from where he sat.  Then she quickly retrieved the scrap of tightly rolled paper from her bra and carefully inserted it into one the small holes in the sink drain.  

She walked back to her cot, pretending to rub her nose with the back of her hand.  As she sat down again, she glanced at the man in the hall.  His expression had not changed; he was examining his fingernails.  The cleaning lady worked her way across the room, Holly’s heart thumping louder and louder until she was certain it could be heard.  When her angel finally reached the sink, she paused, but only briefly.  Then she quickly palmed the message and continued her work.  As she prepared to leave, she glanced over at Holly and smiled, not broadly but as a conspirator might, confirming what had taken place. 

24

It seemed like the hiss of rushing air had been part of their lives for years.  It hissed while they were eating, it hissed while they watched movies, it was hissing when they awoke from a nap.  Hour after hour after hour, it never paused, never changed. 

Sally imagined it must be like that wearing an oxygen mask, listening to the tank sitting next to you providing every breath of air, hour after hour.  Sally had flown before, they all had, but she’d never really noticed it that much before.  Maybe it had been the conversation around her or the sound of the flight attendants rolling the drink tray down the aisle, over and over again.