Beautiful Illusions (36 page)

He smiled. “Good
. You’ve met my mother, and Nate. Now it’s time for you to meet the third-most important person in my life.”

I looked at him quizzically. I guessed that meant that I was fourth most important, behind his mother, Nick and Nate, who wasn’t even living in town. I immediately felt dejected. I thought that I rated higher than that.

He kissed me. “You, of course, are tied for number one. With my mother. And Nick is third.”

I was relieved, and sad that I still jumped to
the conclusion that I didn’t rate high in his life.

“And, when you are Mrs. Gallagher, you will be number one in my life, bar none.”

I smiled.
Promises, promises.

“Ok, then. Let’s do it!” I had a tight smile on my face, and Ryan, unfortunately, was learning all my tells.

“Oh, Iris, I know that you aren’t entirely happy. Just keep an open mind.” At that, he went into the other room and I heard him talking. “Yeah, buddy.” Pause. “Yeah, Friday night, Plaza III.” Pause. “8 o’clock.” Pause. “See you then.”

“8 o’clock Friday it is!”

“Well, Plaza III is incentive enough.” I did love that place. I could never afford it before meeting Ryan, now it was a place that we went to at least once a month.

But little did I know that I would never make it to this particular rendezvous. Neither did Ryan.

It was Friday, the day of meeting Nick
. I was at work, and feeling queasier by the second about what the night held in store for me. I didn’t know what to expect - would they be stealing glances with each other, and talking about me when I went to the bathroom? Would they be discussing the possibility of a three-way between all of us?  I knew that Nick was basically straight, although was definitely more bisexual than Ryan. At least that was what Ryan told me about him – that Nick loved women, and women loved him, and he had dudes on the side. But that Nick also did like his “dudes on the side,” and Ryan did not like “dudes on the side.” So, Ryan was pretty much a one guy guy, whereas I guess Nick was a multi-guy guy.

I tried to make sense of it all, but I had to admit that it was difficult.

“I’m trying to say that Nick gets around a bit with the guys,” Ryan said. “He gets on Craig’s List and finds them randomly. Which doesn’t take away from the fact that he loves his wife, and they have a great sex life.”

I sighed. I was reading more and more books about this, and I was understanding that were lots of men like Nick – happily married and prowling for men.
Mother never told me about this when I was growing up.
Hell, when I was growing up, Nick would be labeled a closet homosexual. Period. Suddenly, however, it was becoming more known that men did like men, and this didn’t mean that they were gay. Or on the way to gaytown. I thought of Cary Grant and James Dean, both rumored bisexuals, and felt comforted.

Anyhow, I had to concentrate at work. Which wasn’t easy on the best of days. I dazedly sat through new client intakes, explaining the rules of bankruptcy to one client,
and how I could help get custody of their kid to another. To another guy I was explaining how I would get him off his latest DUI charge. Then, in the afternoon, I sat through the endless line at the traffic prosecutor’s office, in an effort to reduce a ticket. It was all in a day’s work, really, except that I knew that the evening would be anything but routine.

But I could never, in my wildest dreams, imagine just how non-routine it would be.

At the end of the day, I walked to my car. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a slight figure jumped out at me, and put a rag over my face. I struggled a bit, then everything went black.

I came to sometime later. I had no idea how much time had passed, or where I
was. I had on a blindfold, my wrists were handcuffed to the arms of a chair, and my ankles were handcuffed to the legs of the chair. I felt completely nauseated. Then I realized that there must have been a bucket of vomit on the floor next to me. I could smell its pungent odor.

I tried to orient myself.
Was I dreaming?
I often get disoriented when I first awake, not knowing where I was. I waited for the familiar feeling to kick in, the feeling that I got when I figured out exactly where I was, and I was able to fall back to sleep.

I had a vague feeling that my upper arm was tied off with something. A tourniquet, maybe
. And there was a needle in the crook of my elbow.

What the hell is going on here?
I wasn’t exactly panicking. I felt too out of it to panic, yet I did have some degree of lucidity, because I knew that something was not right. But I still could not yet figure out if I was dreaming or awake.

I prayed that I was dreaming.

Then I heard a voice.

“Hello, Iris.”

“Hi?” I said, uncertainly.

“I see that you are awake.”

“Yes, I am awake,” I said, stating the obvious.

“Do you know where you are?”

“No.”

“Ryan told you about me, I presume?”

Oh, so this is connected to Ryan somehow. At least it was not a random serial killer. If I’m not dreaming, and this is real, at least I have some chance of getting through this.
I was amazed at how logically I was thinking it through. My legal brain, I guess. Or maybe it was the Virgo brain.

I nodded
. I really didn’t know if Ryan had told me about this woman or not. I didn’t know who she was. Literally.

“Fucking bastard.”

It struck me.
Was this Rochelle?
I knew that it wasn’t Alexis. I knew Alexis’ voice. Besides, Alexis was around a little bit, not as much as before, and she was always nice. Was trying to get her life together. She even kinda had a new boyfriend, and we all went out one night. I didn’t think that she would have a relapse so bad that she would kidnap me.

Again, my mind was thinking excruciatingly logically. I always wondered what kind of mindset I would have if something horrendous happened to me. I was proud of my equanimity.

“Goddamned bastard. I had him followed, you know.”

I nodded.

“Fucking asshole went to Tiffany’s yesterday. Fucking Tiffany’s! He bought you the biggest rock I’ve ever seen. Platinum setting, five carats. Perfect rock.” She was breathing heavily, almost hyperventilating. “That should be me! He loves me, not you, you little cunt.” Then she kicked me hard in my shins. I winced. She brought out a belt and wacked my thighs, which were bare. White-hot pain shot through me. I could feel tears coming to my eyes.

Then she had a knife, and she held it to my throat. “I could kill you. He doesn’t need to be with you. He’s not supposed to be with you. He was always supposed to be with me!” The knife was cold and sharp, the point of it digging into my skin, dangerously close to my jugular vein. At least I imagined it was my jugular vein that was beneath the point.

I sighed. My thoughts immediately went to my mother. She would be so devastated when I just never showed up anywhere, ever again. She’d never know what happened to me. I’d be like one of those missing women who were just never heard from again, whose families searched for for years, and never knew what happened to. Somehow, that thought dominated me. My mother. Of course, everybody else would be devastated as well, but none like my mother.

This would kill her.

Because I had no doubt that Rochelle would know how to get rid of my body.

“What do you want from me?” I decided it was time to bargain, to see if there was anything to say or do that would save me.

“Little cunt. I don’t want a thing from you.” Then, WAP, she sliced the belt on my thighs again, twice more. I screamed in pain. The woman took the knife, and sliced my forearm. Again, I screamed out in white hot pain. I could feel her run her fingers in my blood, then I heard her lick her fingers.

“Nobody knows that you’re here. Nobody can hear you scream.” At that, she beat me again with the belt. I started crying, the hot tears streaming down my cheeks. The survival instinct was inside of me, I just had to find it, and use it to try to get out of here
.

“That mother fucker wants to marry you. Fucking Tiffany ring! Well, just wait until he finds out that you’re never coming home” She laughed. “Mother fucker will be devastated. He will feel just a fraction of the pain that I feel, that I felt when he left me.”

Of course, this is Rochelle.
I knew now that it was definitely her, because she referred to him leaving her.

Then she was calmer. “He was a beautiful boy, you know. Absolutely the most perfect specimen of boy that I’d ever seen. Everybody wanted him. And I had him. Me.” She laughed. “God, how we could rock those sheets. We couldn’t get enough of each other.”

Then she said “Fucking every night. God, I couldn’t get enough of him.”

My mind searched.
Ok, now you know that this is Rochelle, what can you do?
I desperately thought of what Ryan had told me about her, in an effort to find something that I could say or do to get out of there.
Think, Iris, think. Did he tell you anything at all that might trip her up, or soften her up, or bring her back to reality?
I didn’t have  a clue how I would physically get out of this, so I had to think about how I could mentally get out of it.

She went on
. “When he started hanging out with you, I didn’t think that it would last. I mean, look at you. Not in his league, at all.” Then she laughed. “Little did I know that he would be more serious about you than anybody else. Go figure. I saw him with some real Victoria’s Secret model types, all the time. Yet he never liked them much. But you…” Then she wapped me again, hard, with the belt. “You! Of all fucking people, he chooses you! I mean, I could almost handle it if he was with somebody who looks right with him. But you! That’s an insult.”

“Uh, I agree. I don’t  know why he's with me, either.” It was honest, but I also thought that agreeing with her might be the best course of action at this point.

At that, I heard her light up a cigarette. She took a long puff, then put the lit end on my arm, for a good 30 seconds. I screamed in pain, and writhed around.

Then, suddenly, I heard something else. It was Ryan! He was here! I had no idea how he figured out I was here, but he was here to rescue me!

“Rochelle! Oh, shit!” he screamed.

“Ryan. How did you know to come here?”

“Iris didn’t show up tonight. I called her assistant, and she remembered seeing somebody fitting your description hanging around the office today. It wasn’t hard to figure it out.”

“Ah, well, of course. You know, I lured you here. I knew that you would figure it out. Now, you’ll do whatever I tell you.” She grabbed my arm. “See this needle? Black tar
. I plunge this into her, and she’ll not survive.” Then she laughed. “Oh, but what a way to go, huh? She’ll go to la la land like she’d never experienced before she dies.”

“What do you want? What can I do?” Ryan asked. His voice sounded desperate, pleading.

“Tell me about the ring, Ryan.”

“Uh, what do you want to know about it?”

“Describe it.”

He quickly responded “Five carats, perfect diamond, perfect cut, clarity, color. Princess cut. Platinum setting.”

“How boring. You really have no imagination, do you?”

“I-I-don’t know what you mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I figured you would go to the Smithsonian and buy the Hope Diamond itself.”

He didn’t respond to that.

“What do you need from me? I’ll do anything you want, just please let her go.”

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

“I can think of a lot of things that I want from you.”

“Ok. If you let her go, I’ll give you what you want.”

I had mixed emotions about this
. I was happy that Ryan had come, and was apparently ready to sacrifice himself for me. But I knew what she wanted, and I wasn’t happy about the sacrifice.

But Rochelle surprised me. “I don’t want anything from you. Not like that. You have to want me.”

Then she said something that chilled me. “All I want is for you to suffer. And I can think of no better way to make you suffer than to make you helplessly watch your precious cunt die.”

I heard him scream “NO!” as I felt the plunger push something into my arm
. Then an amazing feeling of euphoria like I’d never felt. I wondered if I was in heaven. It was like the moment in surgery, right before you’re unconscious. Like I was floating, and nothing could touch me.

Then everything went black again.

Everything was dark. I was vaguely aware that I was in my body, but I couldn’t speak or open my eyes
. I could hear everything, though.

“I went by your office today
,” Ryan was saying. “Don’t worry, everything’s under control there. Melinda had your cases assigned to some guy named David. I even made sure that every judge was called, so they know why you’re not coming in.”