Every Breath You Take (27 page)

Day slipped into dusk as the quartet headed to a diner for a late lunch and a new round of ruminations on “the game” and “the team.” Yet another contribution he couldn’t make.

He sped back to the city, slipping into his underground hideaway and emerging an hour later with a change of clothes and a black leather bag to hail a cab to take him to her place. Where he stayed. All night.

The whole day depressed Joey. This dude sat atop a mountain he would never scale. Good-looking. Confident. Successful. Liked. People
liked
him.

Which made it that much easier to murder him.

T
hree days.

From morning (she thought) until night, he sat at the foot of the bed, pelting her with creepy smiles and intense gazes. Never saying a word.

It was the quietest he’d been since she’d been here.

He would leave to bring in lunch and dinner, leaving her a sliver of time to run to the bathroom free from his prying eyes to relieve her straining bladder. But then he’d be back, resuming his perch, watching her. Always watching her.

It almost made her miss his incessant chatter.

Her lids were heavy against her eyes as she rolled over, wondering how long she’d been asleep, grateful to have woken up. He’d given her something at dinner. She was sure of it. Her head began to droop to her chest as he kept spooning papery mashed potatoes into her mouth. It was different from the blue pool but pulled her down nonetheless. She didn’t remember hearing the door beep to announce his exit. She just remembered sleep. Long, lumbering sleep, uninterrupted by the need for the bathroom in the middle of the night, of dreams of life before. Of nightmares of life now. Just a rolling, quiet blackness.

She burrowed her face into the pillow, content to stay in the darkness, afraid to open her eyes to him. Him. Him. Him.

She rolled onto her other side, her eyes drifting open for a moment.

Which was all it took.

She screamed.

She’d never heard a sound so horrible.

Wrenching. Guttural. Tortured.

Dennis. Twitching on the floor, unable to defend himself against Joey’s blows.

Joey. Plunging the knife into Dennis wherever there was bare skin: a leg, an arm, a cheek, a belly button, a hip, a foot.

Natalie. Jumping on Joey, trying in vain to stop him from shredding Dennis. To stop the blood, the grunts, the screams.

To just make it stop.

He turned on her. Blaming her. Swiping the knife across her stomach, nicking her wrist, slashing her hands. Grabbing her, holding her, and plunging the tip into her neck, slicing her open.

The blood spewing. Whispering that if she made love to him he would stop. It would all stop. Whispering that it didn’t matter to him if Dennis lived or died.

Dennis moaning. Joey agitated. Dropping her to the floor. Bolting toward Dennis.

And in that split second, another scream. Not the tortured howls from before. More like a tinny, squealing sound, like having a car door slam against your hand or stepping on glass. A protracted and piercing wail that would haunt her dreams for years.

More blood. Puddles of it. Trailing from her neck. Gushing from Dennis in ugly spurts.

Dripping from his groin.

Natalie. Opening her mouth to scream, but can’t.

Joey. Lunging for her again, pushing her back on the bed.

Dennis. Heaving. Whimpering.

Joey. Triumphant she would never have that bastard inside her again.

Dennis. No longer squirming, his whimpers receding into a pathetic rasp.

Natalie. Begging Joey to let their first time be special, claiming she had a pretty little nightgown hanging on the back of the bathroom door on the other side of the apartment. Just let her change.

Joey. Smiling. Agreeing. Happy.

She could only smile as she walked as calmly as she could toward the bathroom, which happened to be by the front door. She was quivering all over as she eased the door open, grateful there were no accompanying squeaks, ignoring the throbbing in her neck and warm ooze of blood spreading across her shoulder. She closed it quietly behind her and ran, searching for any window with a beam of light shining out of it. Every window was black, and her panic swelled to the surface. It was only a matter of time before he would realize she’d slipped through his fingers.

Finally, at the end of the row, a light. Her legs threatened to send her plummeting to the dewy grass. She glanced behind her, half expecting to see him lumbering after her, that knife secure in his hand, ready to do more damage.

She banged on the door, praying someone was on the other side to hear her.

“Help,” she whispered, near hysteria now, as she continued her assault on the battered metal door. “Help me, please. Open the door, please.”

The door swung open to reveal a petite, startled redhead. “What the hell—?”

Natalie fell against the girl. “Please,” she said. “He’s going to kill us.”

N
ooses.

Hanging from the ceiling. A field of nooses made of slender nylon rope looped through hooks he screwed (drilled?) into the ceiling overnight while she slept so soundly. Some low, some high, some holes big, some holes small. Swaying like wind chimes.

She sat upright on the bed, paralyzed, terrified, certain the moment her foot made contact with the carpet her neck would be scooped up in one of those holes and snapped like a piece of chalk.

The beeping door. Joey meandering in. Smiling. Pleased to see her heaving, soaked in tears and hysteria.

“Joey—” she sobbed, barely able to get the word out before he yanked on her arm and tried to pull her out of bed. She was screaming, her breath pushing against her like a vise. She tried to dig her heels into the carpet, but they slid across the fibers like they were on ice. He fastened his hands underneath her arms and swung her around until the top of one of the nooses kissed the top of her head.

“Nat, I swear to God, I’ll hang you and that baby, you don’t tell me what I already know—”

“Please, stop, stop—!”

With one hand firmly locked around her arm, he dragged the chair from the vanity over to them with his other hand and tried to force her onto it. She knocked it over and tried to twist away from his wrenching grip, but, as usual, he was too strong for her. Too determined. He picked up the chair and flung her toward it as if she were a rag doll. The bottom of her foot scraped the metal leg as the ropes batted her face, even the smallest loop looming as large as the hole of a gaping volcano.

He succeeded in pushing one leg into a straight position and was working on the other when her foot slipped and she had to grasp one of the ropes to stay upright. She gasped and tumbled against Joey, and he shoved her back onto the chair.

“Don’t think I won’t do it, Nat,” he panted, grabbing one of the swinging loops and winding it around his palm.

“Okay!” she screamed, defeated. Terrified. Sobbing. “I’m pregnant, I’m pregnant, I’m pregnant.” She kept repeating the words as he slid an arm underneath her knees and placed her on the bed. Her heart slammed against her rib cage as she began to hyperventilate, wary of the hiccups likely to follow. Joey snuggled in bed next to her, his hand slinking underneath her shirt to rest on her stomach, his head nestled against her chest.

“Nat,” he murmured into the plump curve of her breast. “Why didn’t you tell me we was having a baby? Huh? Why didn’t you want me to know?”

Natalie’s heart stopped its assault as she looked down at the top of his head. “What?”

“You was afraid, huh? Afraid I wouldn’t want this baby. Afraid it was too soon after we got back together. Nat, don’t you remember how much we wanted a family?” He ran his palm over her stomach, her skin crawling with the sensation of his scaly hand against her. “It don’t matter if it’s now or if it’s later . . . our child is a blessing.” He kissed her. “You’ve made me the happiest man in the world, Nat. I love you.”

“Joey, I—”

She quivered as he kissed her neck and pushed his body against hers. “Everything’s going to be great, Nat. You, me, and our baby. One big happy family.”

H
e was finally going to be a daddy.

Joey looked at his face in the hand mirror he kept locked in the freestanding cabinet in the bathroom. Would the baby have his lips? His mama’s nose? His daddy’s forehead?

He started to pace the room, his mind racing with all the things that had to be done to get ready for the baby. They needed a name. A nursery. Diapers. Bottles. She’d need maternity clothes. Then, of course, there would be clothes for the baby.

And what about all the things he’d have to teach his son? All his daddy’s truisms started rushing toward him like a freight train, all the lessons, all the
things
he wanted to pass down to his namesake. Joey wanted his son to know all those things. Maybe he should start to write them down. He didn’t want to forget any.

He remembered the first time they talked about having a family. It was Sunday dinner at his house, and after playing with his nieces and nephews, they reclined on the porch with tall, sweaty glasses of Mama’s honey lemonade. He had a flash of them in the future, at home, kids piled on top of them like pillows, legs, arms, and fruit-juice stained breath swarming over them both. He’d grabbed her hand and said he couldn’t wait until it was their turn, that he wanted as many children as her body would allow, boys, girls—he didn’t care. She’d smiled, said she couldn’t wait either.

Now, finally. Another dream realized. He and Nat. Parents. Their family.

His son.

“I
had to do it, Jason, I had to. I had to let him think the baby was his. If he thinks the baby is his, he won’t hurt us. I know he won’t. He was ready to lynch me. He won’t starve me. He won’t try to . . . make me lose the baby. If he knew this was your baby, he’d try to kill her. I know he would. I don’t know what he’d do, but it would be something horrible and painful . . . something I wouldn’t survive. I’m just trying to keep us both safe. I’m trying to survive. You have to know that, you have to. That’s the only reason . . . the only reason I would ever,
ever
let that maniac think this baby is his. Sonja and I know the truth. You know the truth. You’re her father. You’re her father. You’re her father. My baby daddy (she laughed). Isn’t that what you said to me that last morning? ‘Come here and give your baby daddy a kiss goodbye,’ you said just before you left. God, I’ve thought about that morning over and over. If I could just go back, I wouldn’t have let you walk out that door. I would have made you stay with me.

“Sonja, I did it for you. To protect you. You know that bastard . . . that
madman
isn’t your father. Jason is your father. I promise you, I’m going to do everything I can to survive this. I’m going to get us out of here. And if that means I have to let that bastard sweat and grunt all over me every night, then that’s what I’ll do. If I have to suck his dirty, goddamned fingers and play dress up for his fucking peep shows, then I’ll do it, I’ll do it. If you don’t know anything else, baby, just know I am doing everything for you. I just hope you can forgive me one day. God, Jason, and Sonja, please forgive me.”

She retreated farther into the closet, her back pressed against the wall, preferring to have clothes hanging in front of her instead of a room full of nooses.

“M
ontgomery, Juneau, Phoenix, Little Rock, Sacramento, Denver, Dov—no something comes before that one—Hartford, that’s it. Hartford, Connecticut. Then Dover, Tallahassee, Atlanta, Honolulu, I—damn it, what comes after Honolulu?”

She threw the plastic hairbrush down, watching it bounce off the counter and fall to the floor. Why did she attempt state capitals? And alphabetical by state, no less. States were easier. She wanted a challenge, she supposed. Except she couldn’t remember the capitals. She couldn’t fucking remember anything.

Natalie frowned at the puffs of hair pooling inside her underarms as she struggled to pull the shapeless beige sack dress over her head and hump of her stomach, wishing she had a grungy pair of sweats to shrug into instead. She shook her head, muttering to herself, as she spread the deodorant stick against the bushes, the chalky white powder straining against the kinky curls. She squirted a glob of lotion into her hand to smooth against her legs, though they were no better, thick black pins of hair sliding down her thighs, shins, and calves in angry, wayward sheets. The bulging balloons of her breasts and the bowling ball poking out of her stomach—itself draped in downy black fuzz—were her only two clues that she was indeed still a woman.

Natalie sighed and squatted down to the bathroom floor, her joints screaming and creaking in protest. It was getting harder to do this, but it was one of the few—the very few—things keeping her sane in this madhouse. She waited a few minutes to let her raspy, heavy breath settle down before she dipped her index and middle fingers into the conditioner bottle and smeared a milky blue blob against the wall, spreading it into a thin vertical line. By the time she smudged another splotch next to it in the morning, it would be dry.

She leaned back to look at the crude, multicolored calendar, a waxy coalition of pinks, greens, and blues used to mark the passage of time. Since she’d started to keep track, ninety-three days had come and gone. If Joey had noticed the pastel-colored collage on his all-too-infrequent trips in here to take a half-hearted pass at scrubbing the toilet, he didn’t say anything.

It had been a long ninety-three days. If she could have, she would have counted the minutes and seconds. She missed that. Time. She thought about “time” all the time. She tried not to think about thinking about time. She used to take time for granted but for silly things like meetings and conference calls or running late for drinks or running home to let the cable guy in or just having time on her hands to do whatever she wanted.