The Wild Zone (6 page)

“What difference does it make?”

Her answer was the back of his hand as it came crashing against the side of her cheek. Suzy fell back against the cream-colored wall, then tumbled to her knees.

“Get up,” Dave directed, looming above her. At almost six feet tall and a hundred and eighty pounds, he had five inches and nearly seventy pounds on her. A man of substance, she’d thought when they were first introduced five years earlier. The handsome prince, come to rescue her. A man who’d take care of her. A man she could look up to.

Which is exactly what I’m doing now, she thought from her position on the floor, and strangled a laugh in her throat.

“What? This is funny to you?”

“No. Of course not.”

“You’re laughing?”

“I’m not. I didn’t mean—”

“Get up,” he said again.

She struggled to her feet. “Please don’t hit me again.”

“Then don’t lie to me again.”

“I’m not lying.”

“Tell me where you met her.” Ice-blue eyes stared at Suzy, radiating fury.

To think she’d once found those blue eyes kind. “She works in this place in South Beach.”

“What place?”

“It’s called the Wild Zone,” she whispered.

“What? Speak up.”

“I said it’s called the Wild Zone,” Suzy repeated, her body bracing for another blow.

“The Wild Zone?” Dave repeated incredulously. “What the hell kind of place is that?”

“It’s just a bar.”

“A bar called the Wild Zone,” Dave said, his fingers forming impatient fists at his sides. “And just what were you doing in said Wild Zone?”

“Nothing. Honestly. I’d been at the beach. I got thirsty—”

“So, naturally, you popped into the nearest bar.” Another disbelieving shake of his head, another tightening of his fists.

“I was only there a few minutes.”

“Long enough to hook up with the local ‘wildlife.’”

“She works there.”

“She’s a waitress?”

“A bartender.”

“You made friends with the bartender,” he repeated incredulously.

“We just talked for a few minutes. She seemed nice.”

“What’d you talk about?”

“What?”

“I asked you what you talked about.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Sure you do, Suzy. Unless you need me to remind you.” He raised his right hand into the air.

“No!”

“Tell me what you talked about, Suzy.”

“I asked her for a pomegranate martini. She said she’d heard they were good for you.”

“You were drinking martinis in the middle of the afternoon?”

“It was after five o’clock.”

“What else did the two of you talk about?”

“We talked about the weather,” Suzy said, trying to recall the exact words of her conversation with Will.

“The weather?”

“She asked me if it was still so hot outside, and I said it could never be too hot as far as I was concerned, and she asked where I was from, and I told her I’d just moved here from Fort Myers.”

“You told her
you’d
just moved here?”

“I meant ‘we.’”

“But you didn’t say that, did you?”

“I don’t know. I probably did. I’m sure I must have.”

“Tell me what you said.”

“I said we’d just moved here from Fort Myers.”

“You talked about me?”

“What? No.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Nothing. I didn’t say anything about you.”

“You didn’t say a word about the hardworking husband you swore to love and obey? About my recent appointment to the staff of Miami General? That I was attending a radiology conference in Tampa and wouldn’t be back until Saturday night? You didn’t mention any of that?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“What?”

“Didn’t she ask?”

“No.”

“She just asked about the weather,” he stated.

“Yes. And where I was from.”

“And then what? She just happened to mention she was free to go to a midnight movie with you on Friday night, one of the busiest nights of the week, I would imagine, for a place called the Wild Zone?”

“I don’t remember what she said.”

Suzy didn’t see Dave’s fist until it collided with her cheek. She staggered back into the dark living room, grabbing at the end table by the sofa in order to keep from falling, and knocking over the lamp.

“Pick it up,” he commanded, advancing toward her.

Suzy struggled to return the lamp to its former position on the small, cloverleaf-shaped table.

“What—do you really think I’m that stupid? You think I can’t tell when you’re lying?” he demanded, knocking the lamp back to the floor, its delicate, pleated, ivory-colored shade coming dislodged. “Pick it up.”

Again, Suzy returned the lamp to the table. Again, he knocked it to the floor.

“Fix the goddamn shade.”

Suzy’s shaking fingers wrestled with the now severely dented shade, eventually succeeding in securing it in place.

“Now pick it up,” he directed again.

Suzy hurried to replace the lamp, but his arm was already descending. The lamp went shooting out of her hand, its shade coming loose and flying toward the ceiling, its coral-colored, oval-shaped base missing the end of the beige and green needlepoint carpet and shattering against the cold marble floor. “Oh, God,” Suzy cried as he lunged for her, dragging her to her feet and throwing her against the far wall. Beside her head, a famous black and white photograph of a sailor embracing a woman in the middle of Times Square at the end of World War II wobbled precariously for several seconds before dropping to the floor.

There was no stopping him now, Suzy knew, so she closed her eyes, gave herself over to his fists, and waited for it to be over.

SIX

F
ORTY
MINUTES LATER, TOM
finally turned into his driveway on Northwest Fifty-sixth Street, in the so-run-down-it-was-almost-fashionable neighborhood of Morningside. Damn that Coral Gables anyway, he cursed silently. Finding your way out of there was almost as impossible as trying to navigate those damn caves in Afghanistan. Roads twisting this way and that without any rhyme or reason, dead ends popping up out of nowhere like snipers, streets doubling back on themselves like snakes. It was a miracle anyone ever got out of there. Three times he’d thought he’d escaped, only to find himself back on the same damn road. He’d been almost embarrassingly grateful when the massive, blocks-long concrete skeleton of the condo-and-shopping complex known as Midtown Miami suddenly loomed into view.

He turned off the car’s headlights and tossed a stick of Juicy Fruit into his mouth, on the slight chance Lainey was still up and he could persuade her to make him some tea, then proceeded slowly into the carport, shutting off the ignition and feeling the car shudder to a complete halt. Was Lainey watching him from an upstairs window? he wondered, opening the car door, his eyes scanning the exterior of the plain white, two-story house. Ostensibly, Lainey’s parents had bought them the house as a wedding gift, but it was registered only in Lainey’s name. Tom understood that, in the event of a divorce, he’d be out on his ear.

It wouldn’t be the first time he was out on the streets, he thought, remembering when his parents had kicked him out of the house after he’d been caught cheating on his final exams and was told he wouldn’t be graduating high school with Jeff and the rest of his friends. Jeff had immediately headed south to the University of Miami, while Tom had been stuck in dreary old Buffalo.

Without Jeff at his side, everything changed. Pretty girls no longer hovered; they didn’t tell him he had soulful brown eyes and a cute butt; their hands didn’t accidentally brush against his when they walked by; they no longer giggled and deserted their girlfriends when he beckoned. If anything, they avoided him entirely, unless it was to ask about Jeff. What was he doing these days? Was it true he’d dropped out of college, that he was thinking of settling permanently in Miami? Was he planning to come back for a visit any time soon, and did Tom happen to know when that might be?

Tom got a job at McDonald’s, then quit as soon as he’d saved up enough money to join Jeff in South Florida. He’d met Lainey within days of his arrival, and she’d glommed on to his side, like gum to the bottom of a shoe. Several months later, still reeling after a night of boozing and whoring, with Jeff egging him on, betting him a hundred bucks he didn’t have the guts, Tom had walked into an army recruitment office and enlisted, then turned around and bet Jeff that same hundred bucks he lacked the cojones to do the same. What the hell? they’d reasoned, signing on the dotted line. It was an adventure, an opportunity to see the world, a chance to shoot the big guns. Besides, the war was only going to last a few months, right?

“Right this way, gentlemen,” the recruiting officer had said with a smile.

“Next stop, purgatory,” Tom said now, pushing his way through the humidity to his front door, painted a noxious shade of purple. His mind returned to the tasteful, tan-colored bungalow in Coral Gables as he fumbled in his pocket for his keys. Who paints a front door purple? he wondered, listening to the key twist in the lock.

“Purple’s supposed to be good luck,” he heard Lainey say, bracing himself as he stepped over the threshold. Lainey wasn’t above jumping out at him in the dark, accusations, like bullets, raining down on his head as she pursued him from room to room, her voice like the whine of a guided missile, mercilessly honing in on its target.

But there was no one lurking when he stepped into the tiny front foyer, no one waiting to chop off his head when he peeked, turtle-like, into the dark living room. He sank into the nearest chair, staring at the empty space where the plasma TV used to sit. After several minutes of trying—and failing—to get comfortable in the too-small flower-patterned chair, he got up. He’d never liked this room, never adjusted to Lainey’s parents’ castoffs.

He headed up the stairs, wincing with each creak in the wood.

Something was wrong, he realized when he reached the top of the landing, and he stood there for several seconds, not moving, barely breathing, his muscles on full alert, trying to figure out what it was. And then he knew—it was too quiet.

His eyes shot to the ceiling, as if he half expected a bomb to drop suddenly out of the sky. He reached for his gun, pulling it from his belt and holding it out in front of him as he proceeded down the narrow hallway, sidestepping invisible land mines as rockets exploded silently behind him.

The doors to the kids’ bedrooms were open, which was unusual. Didn’t Lainey prefer them to be closed? He tiptoed into Cody’s room, approaching his crib slowly, listening for the soothing sound of his son’s breathing.

He heard nothing.

Saw nothing.

Even in the dark, he could see his son wasn’t there.

What’s going on? Tom thought, rushing into the next room, his eyes immediately absorbing his daughter’s empty bed, the imprint of her little body clearly visible on the pink-striped sheets, as if someone had awakened her in the night and spirited her off.

Racing down the hall into his bedroom, Tom reached up and flipped on the overhead light, his breath freezing in his lungs at the sight of the neatly made bed. He slammed his fist against the pale purple wall, finally forced to admit what instinctively he’d known all along.

Lainey had taken the kids and left him. She was gone.

And if he hadn’t spent the better part of two hours trailing after that stupid bitch from the bar, he might have been home in time to stop his wife from leaving. Damn that Suzy anyway, he thought, watching her in his mind’s eye as she slowly approached the man waiting ominously at her front door.

This was all her fault.

“
COME HERE,” DAVE
said tenderly, smiling at Suzy and patting the space beside him in their king-size bed as he drew back the crisp, white sheets to allow her entry. He was naked from the waist up, his tanned chest lifting up and down with the regularity of his breathing.

Suzy swayed in the doorway, damp hair falling on the shoulders of her pale pink terry-cloth bathrobe, her toes gripping the thick, white broadloom, reluctant to let go.

“Come on,” he said, his voice soft and reassuring, full of forgiveness, as if she were the one who’d done something wrong.

She took several tentative steps forward.

“Did you bring the ice?” he asked.

Suzy held up her bruised right hand, displaying the Baggie full of ice cubes he’d instructed her to get from the freezer.

“Good. Now get into bed. Let’s have a look at what we’ve got here.”

As if he doesn’t know, Suzy thought, crawling in beside him. As if he isn’t responsible. She winced as he reached for her chin, manipulating it up and down and from side to side as he examined his handiwork.

“Not too bad,” he commented dispassionately. “A little ice should take down the swelling. Some makeup will take care of the rest. Not that I’d recommend you go anywhere for a few days.”

She nodded.

“In fact, I was thinking of taking the next couple of days off, staying home to look after my girl.”

“Can you do that?” Suzy asked meekly.

His answer chilled her more than the ice in her hand. “I can do anything,” he said.

“I just meant, you’re new at Miami General. . . .”

“They think I’m at that stupid conference,” he reminded her. “Besides, I ask you, what’s more important, my job or my wife?”

Suzy said nothing.

“I asked you a question.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”

“You didn’t think my question was worthy of a response?”

“I thought it was . . . rhetorical.”

“Rhetorical,” he repeated with a raise of his eyebrows. “Good word, Suzy. I’m impressed. The next time people ask me what a successful, good-looking doctor is doing married to a skinny high school dropout, I’ll just ask them if that’s a rhetorical question. That ought to shut them up. Here, hold the ice against your cheek. That’s a good girl.” He leaned his head against hers, burying his mouth in her hair. “Mmmn. You smell so good.”

“Thank you.”

“Nice and clean. What is that? Ivory Soap?”

She nodded.

“How was your bath?”

“Good.”

“Not too hot?”

“No.”

“Good. You shouldn’t make your baths too hot. It’s not healthy.”

“It wasn’t too hot.”

“I cleaned up the mess in the living room.”

The mess in the living room, Suzy thought. As if it got there on its own. As if he’d had nothing to do with it. “Thank you.”

“We’ll have to get a new lamp.”

She nodded.

“I’ll have to take it out of your allowance.”

“Of course.”

“Sounds like I’m giving you too much anyway. If you can afford to waste it on midnight movies and places like the Wild Zone.”

Suzy felt her body stiffen. The last place she wanted him to revisit was the Wild Zone. She swiveled around in his arms, tilting her head up toward him and lifting her lips toward his, hoping to distract him. She thought of Will, the sweet tentativeness of his kiss, as her husband’s mouth pressed down hard on hers. Of course, Dave’s kisses had started out just as sweet, just as tender, she remembered. Just as soft. As soft and as soothing as his voice the first time they’d met.

“This is Dr. Bigelow,” the nurse had said. “He’s been studying your mother’s X-rays. He’d like to talk to you, if you have a minute.”

“Alone,” Dr. Bigelow added with quiet authority. “Before your father gets here.”

“Is something wrong?” she’d asked, thinking he was handsome in a bookish sort of way. Dark, curly hair. High forehead. Strong nose. Nice mouth. Wondrously long lashes guarding pale blue eyes. Kind eyes, she’d thought.

He took her elbow, led her gently from her mother’s hospital room into the corridor. “Suppose you tell me.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, although she understood all too well.

“How did your mother receive her injuries?”

“I already told the other doctors. She was walking the dog. Her feet got tangled up in the leash. She fell face-first into the road, hit her head on the curb.”

“You saw her fall?”

“No. She told us what happened when she got home.”

“Us?”

“My father and I.”

“My father and
me,
” he corrected, then smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. A little bugaboo of mine. You wouldn’t say ‘She told
I
when she got home.’ You’d say ‘She told
me.
’ That doesn’t change just because you add another name. I thought your father was at work,” he continued in the same breath.

“What?”

“You told the admitting doctors your father was at work at the time of your mother’s accident, that he didn’t know anything about it.”

“That’s right. He was. He didn’t. He didn’t have anything to do with this.”

“I didn’t say he did. Is that what you’re saying?”

“What? No. You’re confusing me.”

“I’m sorry . . . Miss Carson, is it?” he asked, checking her mother’s chart. “Suzy?” he asked tenderly, her name as soft as a wisp of cotton candy. “Why don’t you tell me what really happened?”

She shook her head. “I can’t.”

“Tell me, Suzy. You can trust me.”

“Nothing happened. Her feet got tangled up in the dog’s leash. She fell.”

“Her injuries are inconsistent with the type of fall you describe.”

“Well, maybe I got it wrong. I told you I wasn’t there. I didn’t see what happened.”

“I think you did.”

“I didn’t,” Suzy protested. “I wasn’t there.”

“How’d you get those bruises on your arms, Suzy? Another accident with the dog?”

“These are nothing. I don’t even remember how I got them.”

“What about this one?” He pointed to a red mark on her cheek. “It looks pretty fresh.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Your father did this, didn’t he? He caused your mother’s injuries. And yours,” he added softly.

“No, he didn’t. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Am I through here?”

“You don’t have to protect him, Suzy. You can tell me what really happened. We’ll go to the police together. They’ll arrest him.”

“And then what?” Suzy demanded. “Do you want me to tell you what happens next, Dr. Bigelow? Because I can tell you exactly what happens next. My mother gets better, her bruises heal, she comes home from the hospital, she drops all charges against my father, the way she always does. And then we move to another city, and everything’s all right for a few weeks, or maybe even a couple of months, and then bingo—surprise! It starts all over again.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way, Suzy.”

“I’m twenty-two, Dr. Bigelow. This has been going on ever since I can remember, probably since before I was born. You think you can just come along and wave your magic stethoscope and make everything better?”

“I’d like to try,” he said.

She’d believed him.

She’d let him talk her into going to the police, let him persuade her to testify against her father, despite her mother’s wishes and fervent denials. He’d been by her side when her father was convicted and sentenced to six months in jail. Of course, he’d ended up serving less than four before being released and sent home to the welcoming arms of his wife. Three weeks later, those same arms had been broken in half a dozen places, along with her collarbone, and she was back in the hospital. Two weeks after the doctors signed her release, her father decided to move the family to Memphis, their eighth move in almost as many years. This time Suzy hadn’t gone with them. She’d stayed in Fort Myers, to be near her protector, the kindly Dr. Bigelow.

She and Dave were married ten months later. Nine weeks after that, he hit her for the first time. She’d misused “I” and “me.” Of course he apologized profusely, and Suzy blamed herself. He was less apologetic the following month, when he slapped her over another egregious grammatical error. A full-scale beating wasn’t long in coming. Over the last five years, there’d been many such beatings: She took too long getting ready for bed; the pasta she’d prepared wasn’t al dente enough; she’d been “flirting” with the clerk in the bookstore. Too many beatings to keep track of, Suzy thought now, not bothering to resist as Dave’s hands pushed her head down toward his groin.