The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets (9 page)

“Take the aspirin.”

She forced herself to think. He wanted her to take these
pills. The light escaping from the curtained window was bright. Was anyone missing her? Probably not yet. She had told Jonathan she was too busy to have lunch. Lacy was at school and then orchestra. The tennis teacher would be pissed but not concerned. She could not think of anyone who would worry, not for a long time.

Her stomach growled. She had to pee. Bizarre that no matter what, threat of murder and dismemberment, after kidnapping and violent confrontation, her body continued as it always did. Hunger. Elimination. Only death would stop its functions. She would wet the bed and then he would kill her and she would die on a mattress soaked in her own urine and stinking of sweat.

She had been a fool to get into his car. She should have waited for the van. She caught her breath. The van. The van would have come to get her and when she wasn't standing outside, the driver would have gone into the shop. The manager would say he thought she was waiting. She had said she would wait. They would be the first to be concerned. They would call the rental place to see if she had walked there. The van driver would look for her as he drove back. When she never showed up, they would call the police. People were already searching for her. She knew it. She had to know it. And she was still alive. There had been plenty of opportunity to kill her, but it seemed he wanted her around.

“C'mon,” her kidnapper whined. “We have to go.”

She wanted the water and aspirin so badly. Her tongue was dry and swollen. She held the glass up to the dim light, looking for powders or pills.

“You idiot,” he said. He took the glass out of her hand and had a drink. “I'd swallow your aspirin too, but then it wouldn't do you any good. Look. It says fucking ‘Bayer' right on it.”

He gave her back the glass. She took it. She picked up the
aspirin and put them in her mouth and had a sip of water. It was cool all the way down her throat and through her chest. She had never tasted anything so delicious. She took another drink and closed her eyes for just a moment, holding the water in her mouth, letting her tongue soak in it.

“Thank you.”

The asshole almost smiled. His shoulders were knobby, his collarbone pronounced. He looked fragile, his body still that of a skinny ten-year-old. His back curved in a letter “C.” Not so long ago he had been watching Sesame Street. He shook his hair off his forehead. He was barely more than a child. And all the more terrifying because of it. Children don't know right from wrong. Children don't understand that a person stabbed by a knife was dead forever.

“Now I really do need to go to the bathroom,” she said.

“What?”

“I didn't before. I admit that. But now I really do.”

“I'll bring you a pot.”

He moved to the side of the bed. He stood close. His eyes slid from her thighs to her breasts, then back to her belly trembling under her thin bloody shirt. Winnie squeezed the empty glass willing it to break. He pulled it out of her hand. He had gotten too smart for her heroics.

“We need to talk,” he said. “Maybe in the car.”

“We're going somewhere?”

“I have… I have to—”

“How old are you?”

“I have a plan.”

“This is going to ruin your life.”

“Shut up.”

“Where do your parents live? Are they nearby?”

“This has nothing to do with them.”

“You'll go to jail for a hundred years and you'll never see them again. You'll never see your mother again.”

“Shut up!” He slapped her.

Her neck cracked and she saw flashes of white. She fell over on the bed, hiding her head with her arms.

“Get up. We have to go. I mean it. I have to take you with me.”

Winnie nodded. It was better to go. If they were out someone would see her and realize she was in trouble.

“You have to untie me.”

His face had gotten darker and darker until it was a black mark looming over her. The room had grown darker too. The sun could not have set so fast. The water in her empty belly mixed with her strong need to pee.

“Please,” she whispered.

“Please what?”

He stepped closer. One freckled hand grabbed her upper arm. Her flesh collapsed like Play-Doh. Her gaze was just at the crotch of his jeans. She looked down to his feet in brand new sneakers; the laces were so white they glowed. When had he bought them? Did the salesman know he was selling shoes to a psychopath? She moved up his body to his face, his mouth open and his breath coming fast. He had missed shaving a small cluster of reddish hairs under his chin.

“Please may I go to the bathroom?” He wouldn't take her in his car if she wet her pants. “I'll leave the door open. Please.”

He sat down beside her without letting go. “You play tennis with these arms?”

“I told you I'm not very good.”

He bowed his head. He changed then, as if he had taken a step back, forced himself to breathe. His voice was calmer. “I have an errand I have to run.”

“You can leave me here.”

“I don't think so.” He stroked her arm. “Your skin is soft.”

“You're softer than I am.” Winnie ran a finger across his bicep. “You're so young. You still have perfect skin.”

They paused like that, his hands on her upper arm, her hand on his. They were close enough to kiss. He studied her as if searching for something in her cheekbones, her eyebrows, or the curve of her jaw. Winnie learned the constellation of four freckles on his cheek. She saw the tiny pimple beginning beside his nose. A boy, she told herself, just a boy. If she fucked him, would he let her go?

Oren touched the tiny scar above her ear behind her hairline. “That your plastic surgery scar?”

She pushed his hand away. “I have not had plastic surgery. No way. I am not that vain.”

“All women are vain.”

“Not enough to want plastic surgery.”

“You're only thirty-eight. Wait ‘til you're fifty.”

“Am I going to be fifty? Huh, Shithead? Am I going to make it to fifty?”

He squeezed her arm hard and she hit his cheek as hard as she could.

He leapt away from her, one hand to his stinging cheek. “You hit me. You keep hitting me.”

“Of course I do.” Winnie tried not to, but she began to cry.

“Don't do that.”

Fuck him, she thought, covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

“No crying. No, no, no. It's fine. Listen, okay? You can use the bathroom on our way out. Shh. Shh. I'll untie you.”

He got down on his stomach and reached way under the bed to undo the knots. She wished she had any kind of a weapon,
an object like a lamp or even a heavy book, but her hands by themselves weren't strong enough to hurt him.

“Fuck it.” He got to his feet and took his knife out of his pocket.

Winnie flinched and her stomach roiled. His grim smile was no help. He leaned toward her slowly with the blade out. She closed her eyes. He would cut off her legs, he would kill her because he had to leave and he couldn't undo the rope.

But he bent and cut the rope around her ankles carefully and did not even graze her skin with the knife. “There. Get up.”

She tried, but her legs had fallen asleep. Past the pins and needles stage, they were like logs attached to her hips.

“Get up,” he said again. “My legs are asleep.” She rubbed them, wiggled her ankles and pulled one knee up and then the other. “What is that thing on the ceiling?”

“A fairy.” He said it without looking. “It's my uncle's.”

“It's a monkey.”

“Monkeys don't have wings. It's the skeleton of a fairy.”

“A fairy? Like in the woods?”

“Girls like it.”

“Bullshit.”

“Why do you talk like that?”

“You think you're going to attract a girl with that? It looks like a monster.”

“I told you, it's my uncle's.”

Oren walked over and opened the closet. She couldn't see inside as he rummaged around. The door was in the way. She tried to get up and run, but her legs were almost useless. She slid off the bed onto the floor as he turned around. He was holding a gun.

“Where do you think you're going?”

Winnie knew she was done for. The gun ruined any chance she had. She was only surprised he had not used it earlier when she was half way out the bathroom window. She had to assume he had been saving it. Later, he would spread a dirty shower curtain on the floor to keep things clean. He would make her stand in the middle of the plastic. She would beg him not to. She would offer deals to him and to God, but neither would be interested. Then he would take a pillow, some old pillow with a blue flowered pillowcase, and hold it over the muzzle and shoot her. She imagined it would hurt. She imagined it would not be graceful. She knew dying for real wasn't like it was in the movies. She had watched her mother die in one of her early films, but in that movie the rapist had strangled her. Daisy had died naked, slowly and beautifully. Her bowels had not let go. There was no blood or vomit. Perhaps his plan was to make a snufffilm. She almost smiled. She would finally have a starring role. What was the old joke? Hey Mom, good news: I got a big part in a movie. Bad news: no chance for a sequel.

The first time she saw Jonathan act he had carried a gun. It was bigger than this one, but it was not real. It was a lousy play, he wasn't particularly good in it, but when he saved his co-star, a buxom blond hooker with a heart of gold, it was real to Winnie. He was a savior; he had saved the blond and he would save her. Never again would she be nothing but Daisy Juniper's daughter. Never again the afterthought; the ‘I didn't know she had a child;' the dark-haired oddity in the corner. She would be Jonathan Parker's girl. He was handsome and on his way. He didn't care who her mother was. Her past was wiped clean. He was her knight in shining armor who pulled her up on his white horse and galloped away with her. Jonathan Parker's girl.

But he could not save her this time. Even if he wanted to. No one could save her now. Two defeated tears slid from the corners of her eyes.

“No more crying.”

A gun would not hurt as much as a knife. One blast and it could be over.

“Get up,” he said.

She held onto the side of the bed and stood, awkwardly, trying to keep her skirt down and her ass hidden. She took one step, stumbled, and grabbed him for support.

“Hey, hey. Watch it.”

“I'm sorry.” She let go, but her legs were not steady.

“Okay,” he said, “You can hold onto me.”

“Thank you.”

They hobbled out the door, a grandmother leaning on the attendant at the nursing home. If she lived through this, she would never complain about getting old again. Please, God, she thought, let me be old.

He sighed as they crept up the hallway. “Why did you get divorced?”

Winnie's head came up in surprise. “What?”

“Did you get divorced because of your daughter?”

She didn't want to talk about Lacy. She didn't want him to know anything about her. She refused to answer.

“She got in the way, didn't she? You had to stop being an actress.”

“I never wanted to be an actress.” Why did he think that? She never told him anything like that. In the car? No, they had chattered about nothing. Nothing. She should have asked him a question, his name at least. She could have asked to see his license. If her head would stop pounding she could think. What had she told him in the car?

“Don't lie to me,” he said. “If there's one thing I hate, it's lying.”

“Really,” she said, “I'm not an actress. My husband, my ex,
I told you, he's the actor. He was going to be a movie star, like Anthony Hopkins or Paul Newman. He loved them. He wanted that. I loved being a mom, being married, having a home.”

“I don't believe you.” His hand tightened around her arm. He pulled her faster down the hall.

“I swear, please. I swear. It was Jonathan, my ex. He left me for a girl he met on his show.”

Jessica had been a contestant on
Tie the Knot
. She was young, pretty, and corn fed, fresh from Iowa or Idaho, one of those Midwestern states famous for growing carbohydrates. She was a yoga instructor hoping to teach Downward Dog to the stars. Her energy, Jonathan said, that's what attracted him. What a cliché.

“She's ten years younger than I am. Not much older than my daughter.”

“That's harsh.”

“She has red hair, darker than yours, but irresistible, I guess.” Winnie paused. “I bet the girls just love your red hair.”

He smiled and blushed. Good. She wanted him to feel good, stay happy with her. They reached the bathroom door. He had re-hung the shower curtain—it was just one of those rods with suction cups at each end. He had gone outside and replaced the screen.

“You fixed everything,” Winnie said. She hoped he could not hear her disappointment.

“I did.”

No evidence of their fight or her attempt to escape. Nothing for a neighbor to notice. Winnie put a hand on the wall to steady herself.

“Leave the door open a little.” He gestured with the gun. “I'm staying right here.”

As she stepped into the bathroom she suddenly had to go so
badly, she wasn't sure she would get her pants down in time. The tennis panties were tight and sticky against her hot skin. She had to wiggle and dance. But she made it. She sat and released the warm stream of urine. It had to be the best moment of her life. It was a joy to have a clean toilet and a semi-private room and this feeling, this feeling of relief.

Thank you, she said silently, to him, to the universe, to herself. Thank you for not letting me die in my own urine.

“Jesus,” he said from outside. “You really had to go.”

Winnie almost laughed. She finished, flushed, and washed her hands, then her face. The cold water coming from the tap was another gift. Please, she prayed, if I live through this I will never take water for granted again. The gold streaks in the fake marble were like veins in raw meat.