Held (14 page)

I sat up too and stared at him. He finally uncovered his face but he wouldn’t look at me. “I have to go,” he said.

“No, no!” I cried out. “I can’t be alone again, not yet. I’m too scared—I’ll go crazy if I you leave. We don’t even have to speak …” My voice trailed off.

“I need you to promise to respect the line between us.”

What line?
I thought. I had a sudden image of the chalk border my friend Belinda and her sister drew on the floor of their bedroom, to mark their sides of the room, and it made me smile.

“I promise,” I said.

I removed my jeans and slid in between my hostage-taker and the wall. I relaxed for the first time since I’d been left alone; I felt my body unwinding muscle by muscle. I was more tired than I’d realized, and before long I was asleep.

I woke up an hour later. My hostage-taker was still asleep, but he’d turned over on his side, and his arm was draped around my waist. His body felt warm and lovely against my back.

Our bodies are a perfect fit
, I thought drowsily. I knew he must have moved toward me in his sleep. Probably he was dreaming that we were ordinary people in ordinary circumstances and that it was okay to drape his arm around my waist.

Or maybe it wasn’t even me in the dream. Maybe it was some girlfriend of his. Why not, after all? I lay very still, not daring to move. Eventually I drifted off again. When I woke, he was gone.

Angie Shaw
trying not to lose my cool but really getting tired of all these scenarios people are coming up with for Chloe. We don’t know how she’s being treated, what’s the point of imagining sick stuff? I mean, there’s enough to worry about as it is without all that negativity. Yes she’s a virgin. So what? If anything’s happening to her it doesn’t make a difference if she is or isn’t. And the group might be psychos but they might not be. No one knows who they are. Even if they’re a cult, not all cults are like Manson. Some cults they just sit around and meditate. We just DON’T KNOW. So please everyone stop speculating.

16 minutes ago   Comment   Like   Wall-to-wall

Kimmy Xuan
yeah, my favorite is that she’s sleeping in a coffin. So random. I personally don’t think the hostage takers are off the wall because look at their demands. They’ve studied all the cases, they know the laws, the name is probably to throw people off track. So I agree, we can’t know anything and people have to stop acting as if Chloe is a character in a movie or something. I just wish there was more we could do.

11 minutes ago   Comment   Like   Wall-to-wall

Angie Shaw
Thanks, Kimmy. I was thinking one thing we can do is maybe volunteer at Happy Sprites. Chloe’s mom must be up to her ears trying to keep things going smoothly there and doing all the work for Chloe at the same time. So if anyone has some time to hang out at the reception desk and keep an eye on things, I’m sure she’d be eternally grateful.

9 minutes ago   Comment   Like   Wall-to-wall

CHAPTER 15

Luckily, I wasn’t on my own for long. I didn’t feel up to an entire day by myself; I was sure the irrational terror I’d experienced was still lurking in the shadows, ready to creep back into my thoughts. But my hostage-taker returned just before noon.

I was lying on the bed, listening to Coldplay and daydreaming about my hostage-taker, about our kiss. I kept wondering whether he had a girlfriend. I felt I had to know. I had to know or I’d die.

When I heard the key in the lock I jumped up and ran to the door. I was both excited and nervous; I suddenly felt a little shy.

“Do you want tea?” he asked, as if nothing had happened between us, as if he hadn’t kissed me, really kissed me, for a few seconds, and then held me as we slept.

He opened the fridge door and put away the containers he’d brought. He always lined things up neatly in the fridge; I’d never known anyone who did that with food.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” I blurted out.

He didn’t answer. I was still wearing the T-shirt I wore for sleep—his T-shirt. I went to the bathroom and pulled on my jeans and purple sleeveless top. I was getting really and truly bored with wearing the same thing day in, day out. Using my all-purpose compact mirror, I put on lip gloss and my mauve eye shadow.

“How do I look?” I asked him, when I emerged from the saloon doors. vzyl

“You look well rested.”

“Are you … religious?”

He stared at me, but I couldn’t decipher the look in his eyes. Finally he said, “No.”

“So … like … it isn’t against your religion or anything to date?”

Again he seemed to be looking at me in a complicated way. I went over to his chair, sat down on his lap, and started kissing him lightly on the lips. I couldn’t stop myself; he had the most irresistible mouth I’d ever seen. Appropriately, “Speed of Sound” was playing. I too was wondering—how long would it take before he let me in?

He kissed me back for a second, his lips responding instinctively to mine. I wanted us to merge into one; my whole being was drawn to him as if magnetically.

I don’t know whether we would have gone on kissing for more than a few seconds had I not touched him. My hands were on the arms of the chair; instinctively I moved them to his shoulders. My need to touch him was overwhelming; it was a physical craving like thirst or hunger. I was holding back, in fact, because I wanted to run my fingers through his hair, press him to me as hard as I could.

But as soon as my hands settled on his shoulders, he rose from the chair and pushed me away.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just want to feel close to someone. The last time someone touched me was to hurt me. It made me feel like I was nothing. That I wasn’t a person. I just want to replace that memory, I want to erase it.”

“This is not the way to erase anything,” he said. He sat back down, but he pulled his chair away from the table, as if for safety. His body was wary, alert. “I don’t want to see you emotionally unbalanced.”

“What can be more unbalancing than loving someone who doesn’t love you back!”

“I’m not someone you would ever have chosen in ordinary circumstances.”

“That’s not true,” I protested. “If I’d met you, I would have chosen you. It’s your personality I love. It’s you.”

And you liked when I kissed you
, I thought. I was sure of it. Both times he’d kissed me back for a few seconds. His body was going in one direction, his mind in another.

“You’re bored,” he insisted, “with nothing to occupy you and no one else in your life right now.”

“You couldn’t be more wrong,” I replied.

“I’d like to change the direction of this conversation.”

“Okay, okay, we won’t talk about it.” I opened the fridge door and took out one of the containers he’d stacked on the shelves.

“Oh goody, rice pudding. Where did you learn how to cook? You’re so good at it.”

“I brought a chessboard,” he told me. “It said in the paper you used to play with your grandfather.”

“God, that was years and years ago! I don’t even know if I remember the basics. Anyhow, I was a horrible player.”

“I could remind you.”

He set up the board and I watched his slender fingers arrange the pieces as he went over the rules.

“It’s coming back,” I said. “You’ll have to remove your queen, otherwise you’ll win in two moves. That’s what my granddad did. You’ll win in two moves anyway, but you’ll have a bigger sense of accomplishment if you do it without your queen.”

We began to play, but we were both unfocused and kept blundering.

“I guess you have a lot on your mind,” I said, wishing I knew everything about him. In the beginning I’d wanted to know what he was like so I’d know whether I was safe. Now I wanted to know more so we’d be closer.

“You could say that.”

I almost apologized, but I caught myself and laughed. “I almost apologized to you! But it’s your fault. You’ve really got yourself into a mess now. How could you do something so incredibly stupid?”

“Check,” he said.

I couldn’t be bothered saving my king. I got up and put on one of the compilation CDs. “Young Folk” came on and I began to dance. My hostage-taker watched me in his usual indecipherable way.

“You never smile,” I teased as I danced. “Or maybe you just don’t smile here. Maybe you smile when you’re with your friends. Come, dance with me.” I tried to pull him up.

He sighed. It was the first time I’d heard him sigh. He got up, took his things, and left the warehouse without looking at me. I heard the key turn on the outside. It occurred to me that he never said hello or goodbye. He never smiled and he never said hello or goodbye.

CHAPTER 16

I dreamed I was trying to hug my hostage-taker, but when I touched him I realized it wasn’t him, it was a hologram he’d left for me in the warehouse so I wouldn’t feel alone. My monkey, on the other hand, was alive—he was jumping around and trying to mime something, but I couldn’t tell what it was he was trying to tell me. I felt frustrated and confused in the dream, and I was relieved when I woke up, though my reality wasn’t much better.

I was very restless. I tried to exercise: I had by now revived my walkovers, cartwheels, handstands, and even some back handsprings. My hostage-taker had brought me a mat, but it was old and scruffy and smelled of stale peanuts. I wondered where he’d found it.

I showered out of boredom and then wrote in my notebook. Recording our conversation reminded me of Chad. What else had he told the press? I hoped Angie would set the record straight.

We’d met at one of Angie’s pool parties. He asked me on a date and I agreed—mostly because I couldn’t think of an excuse on the spot. The date wasn’t memorable until he tried to kiss me in the car. The gesture felt imposed and insincere, as if he was trying to prove something. He was offended when I moved away. “So what they say about you is right,” he snapped. “They call you the Ice Queen behind your back.”

The next day he texted an apology. He confessed he’d invented the Ice Queen accusation to save his wounded pride, and he begged for a second chance.

Our second date was not much better. We went to an exhibit about natural disasters that he wanted to see. Then we sat at the fountain and had ice cream. He kept saying, “It’s a dog eat dog world.” So annoying! Dogs don’t in fact eat other dogs, if you want to be literal about it, and that’s what I finally told him. Things went downhill from there. He didn’t call me again, and luckily I didn’t run into him.