Every Breath You Take (21 page)

Natalie opened the door to find Joey reclining on the bed, having shed his clothes save his white boxers. He was fondling himself and smiling. The food was nowhere to be found.

“Damn, Nat. Damn! Man, now that I can see your body . . . Man, I am a lucky dude. Now,” he licked his lips. “What you got for me? Oh. Should I put on some music?”

“No, Joey.” She sounded tired. She
was
tired. Sick and tired. Such a cliché, but clichés existed for a reason.

He twirled his finger. “Come on, Nat. Turn around for me.”

She took a deep breath and did a slow turn. She heard him grunt and moan a little. She rotated back around to see him furiously rubbing his bulge through his shorts.

“Come on, where’s the rest of my show?”

She rubbed the heel of her hand against her runny nose and did a slow walk toward him before turning back to her original spot.

“Move your hips, Nat. Shake it a little, come on now. I guess you must not be hungry after all.”

She pursed her lips and ignored the tears pooling in her eyes. Her mouth set in a firm, straight line, she shimmied a little, which elicited more grunts from him. She twirled a few more times and did a few more walks. His moans were getting louder, the sheets rustling like paper.

“That’s right, Nat, keep dancing for me, come on,” he said, his eyes locked on her, his hand jerking up and down like he was maneuvering a puppet on a string, which in a way she guessed he was. He gripped the side of the bed and arched his back as he cried out, creamy liquid spurting into his hand. He flopped against the bed, beads of sweat peppering his forehead, the clogged rasps of his breath filling the room.

Natalie could only stand there holding her stomach and shaking as he lay prostrate on the bed, his eyes closed, his hand draped across them. Her eyes darted around the room in search of the food, her stomach rumbling in agony.

“Whew,” Joey said as he raised up and smiled at her. “Damn. One more fantasy coming true. You’re so beautiful, Nat. You know, I really do love you. So much.”

“Can I eat now, Joey? Please?”

He stood up and ambled over to her. He snaked a hand up her arm, causing her to flinch. He cupped her cheek with his damp, sticky palm before he kissed her. She wanted to bite his lip, knee him in the groin, but she was too afraid. She couldn’t take any more demands or punishments.

He pulled back and smiled before he flicked his head toward the closet. “Your dinner’s in there.”

She flew away from him and into the dark closet, diving for the plastic plate of food. She stabbed the chicken breasts with the plastic fork, but it snapped in half, so she dug her fingers into the cold, slippery flesh, pulling out strings of rubbery chicken and shoving them into her mouth, not caring about the ribbons of grease streaming down her chin or the bits of chicken stuck to her cheeks. She polished off the squishy roll in two bites, licking the smudges of butter from her palms. She groaned as she swirled her finger in the thick pink frosting, crumbs raining down into her cleavage as she devoured the piece of cake with both hands.

Joey stood over her, smiling as she leaned back in ecstasy, happy to have at last quelled the hunger pangs.

“Thank you,” she murmured, her eyes closed. “Thank you.”

“Don’t get undressed,” he said. “I’ll be back later tonight.”

She had stabbed him in the back. Betrayed him. Lied to him.

Still, he knew he’d forgive her. He loved her too much not to.

And they’d reunite because they belonged to each other. Ever since that first day in Mrs. Tucker’s class, they’d belonged to each other.

He’d get back what belonged to him.

He just had to teach her a lesson first.

It was the middle of the day. He peered around the corner to make sure the hallway in front of her dorm room wasn’t bustling with giggling girls. He quickly walked down the hall, his thick thighs making a noisy “swish” as he hurried in the direction of her door. He took the two metal hangers from his pocket that he’d unwound earlier, unfolded them and slipped the head of the unwieldy contraption under the door crack. He maneuvered the top hook over the door handle, gave it a quick yank and the door fell open. He slipped inside and closed the door, his heart racing but his mission secure.

He stood staring at Dina’s side of the room: a hurricane of DVD’s, piles of clothes, and thick fashion magazines strewn across the unmade twin bed. The desk and dresser were crowded with robust bottles of perfume, rows of glittery nail polish, mountains of multicolored compacts, and a forest of makeup brushes.

Natalie’s side was neat yet sparse, the tiny twin bed made with military precision and covered in the burgundy comforter and papery pink sheets he’d taken her to Wal-Mart to buy one Sunday afternoon this past summer. His heart somersaulted up and down his ribcage as he realized the prom photo of them that had been prominently displayed at Thanksgiving was now gone.

He unzipped his pants and aimed for Dina’s bed, smiling at the general release of emptying his bladder and the satisfaction of knowing she’d never get that smell out of her nose, no matter how often she changed the sheets or switched mattresses.

He flung open Natalie’s closet door, searching for the box, finally finding it wedged in the top right corner. He rummaged through its meticulously kept though well-worn contents: stacks of love letters between her parents, faded pictures of Natalie being cradled by one, then the other, then both parents. A grubby white rattle with a toothy pink rabbit stamped across the front. A squeaky yellow baby book filled with silky wisps of baby hair tied together with pink ribbon, a limp teething ring, and pages and pages of Laura Scott’s loopy, girlish handwriting documenting every breath of her daughter’s life.

He picked up Ricky and Laura’s wedding photo, all smiles after saying ‘I do’ and vowing to spend the rest of their lives together. He gripped the photo in both hands and tore a tiny slit across the top, the slow rip like a zipper. He kept splitting the photo until it was only shards. He dropped one in the middle of her bed.

He picked up the box, took a final look around the room, and smiled.

N
atalie had always been a tall, lanky girl. Flat as a board. All legs. All those ridiculous clichés and metaphors assigned to girls whose chests forgot to sprout and whose hips stayed firm and concave. “Staying in shape” had never been of concern to her, and exercise was something she was forced to pretend she was doing for thirty seven and a half minutes every day in gym class. She was intrigued when she got to college and saw stringy girls like herself confidently dashing around campus in their neon sports bras and muted biker shorts. Dennis always rhapsodized about his runner’s high, so she decided to try it. That first afternoon, the freedom of the wind gushing past her ears and long, empty road stretching out in front of her was like someone turning the key on her cage.

Then came the throbbing aches spreading across her body like the slow wax of a candle. Pinpricks of pain flared up her shins. Her feet swelled and burned inside her shoes, necessitating two days of limping. Every time she rolled over in bed, her organs squirmed like blobs of drooping lava inside a lamp. Her lungs continued to blaze with each inhale.

Natalie turned over on her side, her head pounding, her body as limp and raw as that first day she’d run three miles.

Everything hurt.

Joey had finally slipped out of the bed after demanding more performances from her and violating her more times than she could count. He seemed wound up, shunning sleep in favor of endless one-sided conversations. He prattled on for hours about life in the hospital, especially his friend, Flynn, and how good he got at checkers, how his doctor, an uptight German from what she was able to suss out, stunk of tuna fish and Diet Coke. He finally yawned, stretched, and said he’d see her in a few hours for breakfast. She plunged into sleep before he was out the door.

Plan. She needed a new plan for escape. She was disintegrating, whole chunks of her were falling away and landing on the floor in a pile of gritty sediment. If she didn’t do something, there wouldn’t even be a carcass left for Joey to pick at.

What was
her
plan?

She stared at the ceiling as she tried to push through the spaghetti of her brain. Thoughts had become like slippery fish, squirming away from her in flopping fits no matter how hard she tried to clutch them in her butterfingers.

Nightly assaults aside, she was exhausted. She wanted to sleep all the time and often did, which helped her escape the incessant clawing of the hunger and boredom. At times, it was like she was carrying a stone around her neck, the only relief to be found beneath the sheets of that cavernous bed. The sheets. A grimy Petri dish of his sweat, sperm, drops of his blood, minute flakes of his skin. Would he come in and change the sheets? Give her some sheets and let her do it herself? Of course, maybe while he was smoothing the rounded edges of the fitted sheet around the mattress, she could hook the top sheet around his neck and squeeze until his windpipe snapped. She’d gotten that comb into his side, which had to count for something.

But was she strong enough to strangle him?

No. No, no, no.

But, what if. . .

What if she gained his trust?

She sat up, surprised this germ of a viable idea hadn’t poked its way to the surface until now.

Of course.

Gain his trust.

Make a real effort. Make conversation. Apologize for being so difficult. Most importantly, get him to let her out of this room so she could get a snapshot of the rest of the house, scope out the exits, form a strategy.

The phone. That phone he was always carrying around was the nerve center, turning the lights off and on, controlling entry and exit into the room. . .

And car keys. He must have brought her here in a car or a truck—something. He’d never come into this room with keys, so the keys had to be somewhere out in that mysterious hinterland of the rest of the house.

A car key.

The phone.

One or the other, it almost didn’t matter. Each one represented some measure of freedom.

Rescue.

Escape.

If she couldn’t get the car keys, she’d get the phone and call 911. They could trace the call, bust down the door in a hail of bullets with Joey caught in the crossfire. They would save her.

The keys to freedom.

All she had to do . . . was gain his trust.

He’d struck her where he knew it would hurt the most.

The box . . . the plain brown cardboard box lovingly curated by her grandmothers. The box with the flimsy, fluttering flaps that she kept hidden from Zach, Cheryl and her cousins in a forgotten hall closet under two old coats while she was growing up. The dusty old cardboard box that was the only thing precious to her, the only thing she had left of her parents.

Gone.

• • •

The fourth scrap of their wedding photo arrived the same way as the previous three; orphaned inside a plain white envelope. No note. Not taped to a piece of paper or cardboard to protect it from any further damage. No return address—just her name in Joey’s familiar spindly blue ballpoint letters. It was delivered to the front desk of her dorm by a delivery service was all anyone could tell her.

When the first one showed up a few days ago, it fluttered out of her hand and blew across the lobby. She ran after it, equal swells of panic and elation rising in her chest. She clamped the old photo paper under her palm against her heart and scurried to her room, afraid to let it out of her sight. It wasn’t even that significant a piece: the shiny black dome of her father’s shoe. She laid on her bed, staring at it for hours until Dina got home and forced her to put it in a new envelope and tape it to the inside of her desk drawer.

Over the next few weeks, one by agonizing one, the jagged shards appeared: her mother’s smile, a wisp of red lipstick slashed across the top of one tooth, her father’s hand, the small gold wedding ring dwarfed against his massive quarterback hand. And now this one. Laura’s bouquet, white carnations and red roses swathed in baby’s breath.

There’d been no more phone calls begging for another chance. There’d been no long and rambling e-mails drowning in run-on sentences, misspellings, and mangled syntax.

Just the fragments of a faded photo.

She laid all the pieces out on the desk, moving them around, trying to make them fit. There still wasn’t enough to tape the picture back together. She leaned back against the chair, staring at the patchy mess.

All she could do now was wait and wonder what would come once she had all the pieces.

N
atalie chewed on her nail, flakes of residual polish from her last manicure dotting her bottom lip and sticking to her tongue. She repeatedly pushed the tip of her tongue against the tight “O” of her mouth to dislodge the bitter pearl-pink chips. She kept watching the door, waiting for Joey to make his grand entrance, having spent the morning going over her grand plan to get him talking and escape from this room for the start of Operation Get The Hell Out of This Nightmare.

The door beeped and Joey slithered in, that perpetual leering, shit-eating grin smeared across his face.

“Well, look who’s up. You look real nice this morning. You’re not usually showered and dressed when I come in.”

Natalie looked down at the garish calico sundress from the back of the closet and shrugged, its cheap polyester smell finding her nose. “The dress is so pretty, I thought it might be nice to wear it. It was nice of you to buy it for me.”

He set the breakfast tray down, a plastic bowl of oatmeal pitching forward slightly. “Took me a long time to buy all those clothes. You like ’em? Better than those other clothes you used to wear.”