Authors: David Kessler
He stood there frozen with indecision, his feet stuck to the ground beneath him. As she completed her climb to the other side, she held on with one hand as she took a swig from the bottle.
And then she saw him.
For a second his heart went into his mouth as he thought this was the end for her. But instead, she simply smiled.
“Oh hi Elias?” she said, in what sounded a bit like a little girl voice.
He looked at her still feeling helpless, and yet in some way liberated from fear by precisely that sense of desperation. Behind him the sun was setting making her squint, so he couldn’t tell if she had been crying. Was she sad? Lost? Already too far gone?
He looked around. There were plenty of cars on the bridge. But here, behind the suspension column, they were virtually concealed from public view. And at this time, on a baseball day, there weren’t many pedestrians about. They were, effectively, alone.
He had to reach out to her in the only way he could. But now the “only way he could” meant not with his body, but with his mind… with his words.
“Andi don’t do it!”
She was smiling. But he couldn’t
tell if it was
from her mood or the setting sun in her eyes.
“What do you want?” she asked hesitantly, putting the bottle down on the ledge and holding on with both hands now.
“Don’t do it… don’t jump.”
She half turned her head and looked round at the water 220 feet below.
“Why not?”
He tried to take a step forward, but she released the grip of one of her hands, as if warning him of how easy it would be to jump.
“No! Wait!” he pleaded, stopping in his tracks and holding up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Andi listen to me. You’ve blotted it out of your mind. The rape. The pain. It was
me
. I was the man who raped you all those years ago. You’ve closed off the past and shut it out of your mind. But it’s been there all the time... in the background.”
“I don’t understand,” she said weakly, her voice now distinctly like a little girl’s as some distant memory pierced her consciousness.
“You’ve been doing these things to yourself,” he said, the desperation, “…the messages... the threats... switching the DNA files and then leaving a trail for them to get back to you, like you were framing yourself... it was
you
all along Andi. You were doing it to
yourself
!”
“Why would I want to do those things to myself?” she asked. He didn’t know about the pills or how mush she had drunk. But she was clearly out of it.
“It was your way of handling the pressure… the painful memories. You couldn’t take it, so you blotted it out. And then you must have created another person to carry the anger for you, so that you could get on with your life.”
“What do you mean ‘created another person’?” she asked, crying with the pain of recollection as she memories of the rape came fleeting in and out of her mind.
“I don’t know all the reasons. I only know that it’s because of what I did. You wanted revenge. You wanted me to be punished – as I deserved to be. But you also wanted to forget your pain. And I guess you couldn’t handle both. The one wasn’t compatible with the other. So the part of you that wanted to forget, blotted it out. And then the other part of you set about getting revenge. But then, just now at the trial, because you were
helping
me, the other part of you didn’t just want revenge on
me
. It sought revenge
on you too
.”
“Revenge?” she echoed confused, as her mind drifted into some far off world.
“Yes.
You
were the one who modified the jury selection software.”
“No!” Andi whined, wiping back the tears with the backs of her free hand. “It was Lannosea!”
“Don’t you see Andi? You
are
Lannosea. She’s part of you
–
the
strong
part. She’s the part that wants revenge, the part that wants to punish the other part for helping me. Lannosea is just the angry side of
you
. She carries the anger, but you still carry the
pain
. That’s why she hounded you with those E-mail messages and threats. That’s why she broke into the DNA database and framed you. It was you doing to yourself to punish yourself.”
“No you’re wrong! It can’t be that! I wouldn’t betray some one who trusted me.”
“Andi I’m not blaming you. God knows, I’ve got no right to blame
anyone
! But you need help.”
“I don’t need any help from
you
!”
It looked like she was about to jump. He had to stop her.
“Lannosea!” he shouted desperately. “If you let her jump, you’ll die too!”
Alex, meanwhile, was going nowhere. He was snarled up in traffic on the Bay Bridge. In the other direction, much of the traffic was headed towards the baseball game. But on days like this, the whole road network gets clogged up as people try to find alternative routes to beat the bottlenecks. The trouble is that everyone has the same idea and that just creates more bottlenecks.
He had tried calling Martine’s hotel room several more times, but got no answer. He had considered asking the hotel to send a member of staff to check. But they would probably think he was crazy and even if they didn’t they were unlikely to treat it as a matter of any particular urgency.
But Gene must be there by now.
It was strange the way she was suddenly helping him after what he had effectively put her through in court. And yet in a way it made perfect sense. She probably felt guilty about what she had done herself. And this was her way of trying to redeem herself.
But was she right to fear for Martine’s safety?
Alex had no way of knowing that. But he knew that Manning had escaped. He had heard the news reports on the radio, so he knew that what Gene had said about Manning’s veiled threat was true. And he knew that there was a certain underlying logic to her theory that Martine was the intended target.
There was just nothing he could do about it until the traffic cleared ahead of him.
But what about Gene?
He phoned her and waited desperately for an answer.
“Hallo Ale
–
”
Gene’s voice was cut short abruptly.
Something had happened. It sounded like some kind of a struggle, albeit a very brief one. For the next thing he heard was a man’s voice.
“I’ve got your bitch here.”
Holding on with only one hand, Andi swept her hair back with a self-assured, almost arrogant gesture. Then she gripped the rail with both hands. The tears seemed to dry up in an instant her face grew in confidence. Even her posture and body language was different. This was no timid little girl anymore. This was a woman with attitude.
“You were pretty smart to figure it out Claymore.” The voice was deeper now. “How did you know?”
“Some of the things you said
–
she
said.”
“Well that’s pretty smart of you for a nigger! You’re right too, I
was
the one who hacked the jury selection software. I mean I literally hacked it to pieces with two snips of my intellectual scissors. Two lines of code swapped round, two memory heaps expanded and that was it. I did it in five years back in the Big Apple. Actually it was very easy.
While she was talking, Claymore was surreptitiously taking off his jacket.
“The source code was on public record and all I had to do was get my hands on it, switch the object calls in the main object and recompile it. The hard part was slipping it into the system afterward. Most of the States have firewalls in place on the jury selection systems. But I beat them. I beat the bleeding heart liberal motherfuckers! I’m good at what I do Claymore, just as you were good in
your
chosen vocation.”
“Then I guess I deserve to die too.”
“Probably,” she said, with an indifferent shrug of her shoulders.
“Then maybe
I’m
the one who should jump.”
“It’s up to you.”
Seizing his opportunity, Claymore edged nearer and began climbing over the rail, making sure that none of his movements seemed too threatening.
Now, with the menacing waters far below them, they were facing each other on equal terms for the only time in their lives. But he still had to get through to her.
“Why did you frame Andi for the break-in at the DNA database. I mean I can understand why you did the break-in. That was to frame me. But why frame Andi?
“I should think that’s obvious. Andi was making trouble for me. I had to stop her.”
“But in the end that was what gave her the ammunition to save me.”
“Yes, she’s a smart girl, that Andi. But then again that’s not surprising. She’s got part of me in her. But none of that really matters because it’s the end of the line for both us.”
“Us?” he echoed nervously.
“Me and her.”
Claymore was desperately trying to think of something to say – something that would persuade the strong-willed “Lannosea” to reconsider.
“But
she
doesn’t deserve to suffer – and neither do
you
. I’m the one who hurt both of you. And
I’m
the one who should pay for it.”
“What are you saying Claymore? That you care about Andi? That you care about a weak white bitch whom you raped?”
“Yes,” he said, weakly. She still had the upper hand, and they both knew it.
“It looks like you’re pretty weak too.”
Claymore shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
“It’s true. I
am
weak.”
“And you used to be so strong.”
“I guess I was strong then because I was driven by anger. Now I’m weak because I’m restrained by guilt.”
“But if you’re weak, you’re also vulnerable.”
“That’s true. But
I’m
the one who deserves to be punished... not Andi.”
“But it’s the
form
of your weakness that interests me. Your weakness is that you
care
for her.”
“Yes.”
“And so, ironically, now that you’ve learned to care about your victims, you’re more vulnerable to punishment than when they meant nothing to you.”
She was holding on with only one hand again, and starting to turn, as if ready to jump.
“Yes but why should
she
suffer for what
I
did?”
“Because she’s weak too. And because she sold out.”
“Andi!” he shrieked. “It wasn’t meant to be like this!”
She stopped turning and gripped the rail with both hands again.
“What do you
mean
?”
She was whining again.
Andi was back
... possibly.
“
I thought all the suffering was over
–
for my victims as well as me! When I came back to America to serve out my sentence, I was a different man. I thought when I turned my life around I’d lost the capacity to inflict suffering on anyone. I thought from then on the pain would only diminish... I thought that in time all the pain and suffering I’d caused would fade away, maybe not completely, but at least enough to be bearable.”
Her eyes were welling up with tears again.
“You think the pain of your
victims
ebbs into oblivion just because
you
turned
your
life around!” She was whining, like a little girl having a tantrum. “You think it’s that
easy
! Don’t you know that for the victims the pain
never
goes away! And sometimes it just keeps getting worse! That why it’s better to end it!”
She let go with both hands and turned.
“No!” screamed Claymore.
He grabbed her torso with his legs, clinging on desperately with his hands. He didn’t think he would have the strength to hold onto her if she struggled – or the strength in his upper body to hold onto the rail. But he surprised himself just as
she
surprised him. There was no struggling – and no cooperation either. As he looked down at her he noticed that she had lost consciousness.
It must have been the drink, he thought.
And in time with that, he realized that her body was limp. She had lost consciousness. And here he was holding on to an unconscious woman with a leg scissor lock, while supporting the weight of both of them by clinging on to the Golden Gate Bridge for his life with his hands.
“I can understand why you blame me,” said Gene, fighting back the tears. “But I don’t understand why you blame women in general so much, and your father so little.”
“I told you. In the animal kingdom there
is
no such thing as rape.”
“But we’re not animals. We don’t live by the law of the jungle. We live by the laws of civilization. And your father broke those laws.”
“Not the law of nature. Everything he did was strictly in accordance with the laws of nature. But you rebelled against a woman’s nature. A woman’s nature
–
a mother’s nature
–
is to nurture and protect her child, not give it away to strangers. You should have been proud to carry a child with strong genes like mine
–
even if my daddy did have to force you.”
“You don’t think that maybe the circumstances in which you were conceived made that unbearably painful for me?”
“Sex is always painful. All the physiological responses that go with sex are part of the pain mechanism. That’s true of men as much as women.”
“But rape isn’t about sex. It’s about power.”
“Oh yes, that old feminist cliché. But
sex
is always about power, whether it’s the men fighting to get the pick of the females or the power involved in the transaction itself. Why do you think in sex there’s nearly always some one on top, figuratively as well as literally? Why do you think there are so many S & M sites on the web?”
“Okay,” she said, struggling to keep pace with his self-serving rationalization, “and what about all those men who go online in search of some leather-clad dominatrix to whop the butts?”
“But don’t you see that just proves my point? It’s the same process with the polarity reversed. Sex is about an exchange of power. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the
exercise
of power over the other person or giving in to
their
power. It doesn’t even matter whether it’s real power or just make believe. Either way, it’s not about equality. Never was!”