They made room for her at the table and somebody bought her a Bud,
and she nursed it slowly, watching the animated faces and enjoying the hilarity
as the group collectively shrugged off the stress created by weeks of
confinement. Who else in the world but a musician would work killer hours,
then spend his precious free time watching other people do the same thing? It
was a busman’s holiday, but Casey felt the same draw they all did: she
couldn’t escape from the music. It lived inside her head, night and day, and
when she wasn’t creating her own, she was compelled to listen to others create
it for her.
During lulls in the cacophony, she tried to carry on a
conversation with Kitty Callahan. Kitty was twenty years old and had a voice
like an angel, and singing backup for Bryan Silver was her first professional
job. Like Casey, Kitty was a farm girl, raised in Ames, Iowa, and during
endless hours on the road, the two of them had struck up a friendship of
sorts. But tonight, the music was too loud and the crowd too raucous, and
after ten minutes of trying to talk, their throats hurt from shouting, and they
gave up. Then the band began a rousing rendition of
Jambalaya
, and Rob
swooped down on Kitty and carted her off onto the dance floor, leaving Casey to
watch the dancers.
Across the table, Bryan Silver lifted his beer bottle and emptied
it in a single long draught, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he gulped. Eyes
boring into hers, he wiped his mouth and added the bottle to the growing
collection of empties. Casey quickly looked away, but the uncomfortable
sensation of being watched remained with her. When the band slowed its tempo
with a waltz, Silver got up from the table. Skirting Kitty, who was just
returning, he made a beeline for Casey. “Hey, doll,” he said, “let’s take a
spin around the floor.”
He’d deliberately put her in an awkward position. Everyone at the
table was watching, and she couldn’t refuse him without making a scene. Swallowing
her distaste, she plastered on a smile so fake it hurt and let him lead her out
onto the dance floor.
She knew she’d made a mistake the moment he put his arms around
her. He pulled her so tight against him that her breasts were crushed. His
breath reeked of beer, and she turned her head to avoid his sour smell. “Oh,
baby,” he said, one hand moving in the direction of her ribcage. “You don’t
know how long I’ve been thinking about this.”
She pointedly removed his hand from her left breast. “Back off,
Silver,” she said.
“Come on, baby. Be nice to old Uncle Bry.”
She shoved hard at his chest. “My family tree,” she said,
“doesn’t include simians.”
“What I got for you, baby, will really make your motor purr.”
With the heel of her boot, she stepped down hard on his instep.
He stumbled and missed a step. “Oops,” she said.
Regaining his balance, he lowered his head and began to slobber
all over her neck. “I’ve been watching you,” he said. “Waiting.”
She struggled to push him away. “Bryan,” she said, “you’ve had
too much to drink. I’d like you to let me go. Right now.”
“Come on,” he said, sliding his tongue into her ear. “A hot chick
like you can’t be saving it all for Fiore. Share the wealth, baby.”
Casey gave him a hard elbow to the ribs. He uttered a soft
explosion of sound and staggered backward. “Come near me again,” she said,
“and you’ll regret it.”
The music followed her out into the sticky Arkansas night. Fueled
by anger, she stalked past the mud-spattered pickup trucks that littered the
parking lot, past the tattered screen door of the motel office, past the
crimson neon sign that buzzed and sputtered its
no vacancy
message. She
had just reached the first ugly cinder block building when a hand caught her by
the elbow and she was thrust up against the gritty concrete wall. “You didn’t
really think you’d get away that easy, did you?” he said, his face inches from
hers.
His eyes were glassy, his breath fetid. “Bryan,” she said,
“you’re drunk.”
“Not that drunk,” he
said. “Not too drunk for what I have in mind.”
“I’m not interested,” she said. “I’m a married woman.”
“Fuck me once, baby, and you’ll never go back to him.”
“You’re revolting,” she said, shoving at his shoulders. “Leave me
alone.”
“I don’t think so,” he said, pinning her wrists against the wall
with a single powerful hand and crushing her against the concrete with his
body. “I’ve been waiting too long to nail you, doll.”
“Damn it, Bryan,” she said, “let go of me!”
He cupped her breast with his free hand. “Don’t fight, sweet thing.
You’re gonna love it.”
Mingled with the revulsion was the first stirring of fear. His
mouth was wet and slack against hers, muffling her protests. Casey choked on
his beer breath. He forced his tongue into her mouth, and she gagged. She
tried to knee him in the groin, but her boots kept slipping in the moist red
earth, and his hips, pressed close enough against hers to make his intentions
impossible to misunderstand, pinned her fast against the wall. He tore open
the front of her shirt, scattering buttons, and then his palm touched bare
flesh and she panicked, struggling like a wild animal. He toyed with the lacy
edge to her brassiere, followed it down to the hollow between her breasts,
hooked two fingers beneath it, and yanked. The fabric tore, and her struggle
escalated. Undaunted, enjoying the struggle, he changed tack, insinuating a
hand between their bodies, running it down her bare belly to the waistband of
her jeans. While his tongue continued its drunken exploration of her mouth,
his hand maintained its southbound progress and slipped between her thighs.
And she bit him.
He howled like a wounded animal. Eyes wide with disbelief, he
released her and his hands went to his injured mouth. His fingers came away
wet with blood. Casey kicked him hard in the shin, knocking him off balance.
He grabbed at her drunkenly, catching his fist in her hair and taking her with
him as he fell. They rolled in the dirt, Silver bellowing with rage, Casey
kicking and gouging and cussing him out with words she hadn’t realized she
knew. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked hard enough to bring tears
to her eyes, and then she was on her back in the dirt and he was on top of her,
both of them gasping for breath, his eyes hard and cold, his hand crammed against
her mouth so hard she felt the imprint of her teeth on the back of her lips.
“Bite me again, bitch,” he said, “and I’ll kill you.”
Then, suddenly, he was gone, torn off her with a surprised yelp.
Rob MacKenzie slammed him up against the wall with enough force to elicit a
sharp crack when his skull made contact with the concrete. Pressing a bony
forearm flat against Silver’s windpipe, Rob held him there, a half-inch off the
ground, scrambling for a foothold. “You stupid son of a bitch,” he said. “You
pathetic piece of shit.”
Silver’s eyes bulged, and he flailed his arms and legs
frantically. Rob pressed harder, and Silver made a guttural choking sound.
Rob leaned into his face. “Touch her again,” he said, “and I’ll shove my foot
up your ass so far it’ll come out your throat. Understand?”
Silver nodded in terror, and Rob released him. He fell to the
ground and slumped there in the dirt, gasping and coughing and spitting up
blood. Rob nudged him with the toe of his sneaker, as if he were something
rank and dead. “Consider yourself lucky,” he said, “that it wasn’t Danny who
caught you mauling his wife. If it was, you’d be a dead man right now.”
The hard look in his eyes was unfamiliar. Rob had just displayed
a side Casey had never seen, and she wasn’t sure she liked it. “Cover
yourself,” he said curtly, and she realized that her buttonless shirt was
hanging open over tattered lace for all the world to see. With sweaty hands,
she held her shirt front together, and while Silver continued to gasp and
retch, Rob placed a hand between her shoulder blades and escorted her to the
door of his motel room.
He locked it behind them. Casey sank onto the edge of the bed,
her legs suddenly weak, her body quivering now that the moment of danger had
passed. Rob disappeared into the bathroom, returning a moment later with a
paper cup. He knelt on the carpet in front of her, placed the cup in her hand
and folded her trembling fingers around it. “Drink,” he said.
She looked stupidly at the cup in her hand. What is it?” she
said.
“Something to make you feel better.”
Casey drained it in a single gulp. Her eyes watered as the liquor
burned all the way down, but she felt its soothing effects almost
immediately. She licked the bitter taste from her lips, then shuddered at
the memory of Silver’s mouth on hers, his hands on her body. “How did you
know?” she said.
Rob’s mouth thinned. “I saw him follow you.”
She took a deep breath, struggling to fight off tears. Her eyes
filled, and a small, strangled sob broke deep in her throat. Mortified, she
covered her face with her hands, more embarrassed by her tears than by her
state of undress.
Rob patted her shoulder awkwardly. “It’s okay to cry,” he said
gruffly. “It doesn’t mean you’re weak.”
She didn’t want him to be nice to her. Right now, she couldn’t
handle nice. The floodgates opened, beyond her control, and the flood began in
earnest. “Ah, hell,” Rob said, and wrapped his arms around her and rocked her
gently, rhythmically, while she bawled like a baby all over him. It might have
been five minutes, might have been an hour, before the sobs subsided and she
pulled away from him, reclaiming what was left of her dignity. “I’m sorry,”
she said. “I don’t mean to be a baby.”
“You don’t always have to be strong, Fiore. Sometimes it’s okay
to lean on someone.”
“If you hadn’t come along,” she said, “he would have raped me.”
Rob squared his jaw. “I know,” he said.
She got up from the bed and began pacing. “I was so afraid. I
felt so vulnerable. And I hated it.” She wheeled to face him. “I hated it!”
“Sweetheart,” he said, “you did more damage to him than he did to
you.”
“But I should have been able to stop him!”
“You’re a woman. And stop looking at me that way. The guy’s a
foot taller than you and he outweighs you by sixty pounds. Those are crummy
odds.”
She glared at him. “Maybe it’s time I did something to even up
the odds.”
Rob dragged a battered brown suitcase out from under the bed and
snapped it open. “Like what?” he said, pulling out a wrinkled tee shirt and
tossing it to her.
Still pacing, she said, “Like carrying mace. Or taking a
self-defense class.”
“Or like telling your husband.”
She paused, tee shirt in hand. “I’m not telling Danny.” Green
eyes met green eyes, searched deep, and came to an understanding. Both of them
pondering the secrets that lay between them, some spoken, some merely
understood.
Rob unfolded like a gazelle. “You’ll feel better after you take a
shower. I’ll be right outside, having a smoke.”
She peeled off the ruined shirt and bra and discarded them in the
bathroom wastebasket. If she could have, she would have cut them into small
pieces and flushed them down the toilet. She felt dirty, used, violated. He’d
had no right to touch her that way, and she wished Bryan Silver a slow and
painful death. Preferably one she could watch.
Every muscle in her body ached. Even her scalp hurt where
Silver had pulled her hair. Her wrists were already turning color, and her
back was scraped raw in places. How the hell would she keep this from Danny?
The needle-hot spray of the shower hurt her chafed skin, but she forced herself
to stay under it because it made everything else feel so much better.
She dried herself off awkwardly, her aching muscles screaming in
protest, then borrowed Rob’s comb to work the snarls from her wet hair. She
dusted off her jeans, wiped the mud from her boots, and pulled Rob’s tee shirt
down over her head. It clung to her damp body, revealing far too much of her
unbound breasts. But Rob wouldn’t notice, and it was only a short walk from
his room to hers.
He was waiting outside in the hot, sticky night. There was no
sign of Silver; he must have slithered back into his hole. Rob angled a glance
down at her, then quickly looked away, leaving her with the uncomfortable
impression that she’d been wrong, that he had noticed precisely what she wore
beneath the tee shirt. They walked to her room in a silence broken only by
their footsteps and the whine of a distant eighteen-wheeler.
At her door they paused, and Rob leaned a bony shoulder against
the door jamb. Looking at the neon sign that loomed over the yellowed grass of
the courtyard, he said softly, “Will you be okay?”
Although it was nearly ninety degrees, she shivered and folded her
arms across her chest. “I’m fine.”
He looked at her then. “Silver’d better leave you alone,” he
said, “because I’ll be watching.”
“I don’t need a bodyguard.”
“Just say thank you, Fiore, and leave it at that.”
She opened her mouth to argue. Closed it. And swallowed. “Thank
you,” she said.