Fag Hag (Robert Rodi Essentials) (31 page)

He backed away from her.

She looked around the room. “I don’t think this is so bad,” she said, coiling the leash in her hands as she surveyed the setup. “There’s a big bed and lots of comfy furniture, some Nautilus equipment so you can stay in shape, a TV, and a VCR with all your favorite movies. A bookshelf with all those classics you’ve been meaning to read since forever—
Moll Flanders, Lolita, A Remembrance of Things Past.
Some artist’s equipment so you can keep up your painting.” She gestured to the other side of the room. “Plus, your own refrigerator, a private bathroom—
God,
Peter. What
else
could you want out of life?”

“Freedom,” he said. “Self-determination. The ability to choose.”

She shook her head, as if he’d said something terribly childish. “Accept the fact that your life has changed.”

He went to the bed and sat on it, and rubbed his forehead. “What did you drug me with?”

“Never you mind. Just something to keep you nice and quiet for a few hours, that’s all. Perfectly safe. Not that it was even necessary. This whole place is soundproof. You could’ve screamed bloody murder, and no one at the party would’ve heard you.”

He sighed. “Where’d you get the money for all this?”

“My father left it to me. Well, I’ve had to borrow some beyond that, but it’s weird—once you’ve got a couple thousand in the bank, it’s easy to get a loan. The more you have, the more they’ll give you. I think that’s kind of funny.”

He grimaced. “My sense of humor is a little blunted at the moment.”

She sat in the easy chair across from the TV. “When did you wake up?”

“Couple hours ago.”

“Really? I’ve been listening on the intercom and I didn’t hear you. What’ve you been doing?”

“Just sitting here, trying not to hate your guts.”

“Oh, good,” she said with a smile.

“I said ‘trying.’ I didn’t say ‘succeeding.’”

She scowled. “Look, it’s no use fighting this. I’ve got you. You’re mine.
Accept
it, Peter.”

“Is this how you want me? Like some kind of fucking pet?”

“It’s not permanent,” she said, her face growing red.

“Oh, no? When am I allowed out?”

“When you accept that you belong with me. When you realize we were meant to grow old together.”

“In other words, never.”

Her face felt suddenly swollen; she thought she might cry. “I don’t know why you’re being so horrible about this.”

He laughed and shook his head. “You really don’t, do you?”

“No, I just said so.”

He looked away from her. “I’m going to sit tight and wait this out. It’s ridiculous. It can’t last the week. Lloyd won’t rest till he finds me, and how difficult can it be to figure out you’re behind it?”

“I’ve got news for you,” she said with a smile of triumph. “Lloyd isn’t even looking. He thinks you went off with someone else last night, and says he’s through with you. He never wants to see you again.”

Peter grinned at her. “You’re lying.”

“You wish!”

“No, I
know.”
He leaned back on his elbows. “I suppose you’re at a disadvantage here. You’ve never had a lover. You don’t know what it’s like to know someone better than you know yourself. You’ve never had that kind of total intimacy. I
know
Lloyd. And, to a lesser extent, I know you. I know he’d never give me up. And I know you’re a cheap little liar.”

Her anger flared. “Better watch what you say, Peter. I can starve you into submission if I feel like it.”

“As if I’d eat anything you put in front of me!”

She blanched. “You can’t refuse food!”

“‘Can’t,’ Natalie? You may have made it impossible for me to do a lot of things, but even now, even though I’m nothing more than a fucking prisoner, I still have the power to choose. I don’t want to eat your food, and I won’t.”

She got up and started towards the door. “You’ll change your mind.”

“Lloyd always said you were an animal,” he sneered. “A completely amoral creature, all id. But no, I had to go and convince him otherwise. I had to make him think you had some sense of ethics.”

She whirled and shook the coiled leash at him. Brynocki got to his feet, on sudden alert. “This is the whole trouble,” she said, her voice breaking. “You talk just like
him
now! You’re not even close to the man you used to be!”

“I don’t deny that.” He stood and faced her.

“You’re brainwashed, Peter. By a lunatic, gun-hoarding survivalist! And I’m going to deprogram you. You were happy with me before, you’re going to be happy with me again.”

He shook his head. “I was never happy with you, Natalie.”

She laughed.
“Now
who’s a liar?”

“Are you by chance referring to all those times I used to cry on your shoulder because I was so lonely and lost? When I’d join you in dulling my senses with coke and X because I was so fucking miserable? When I couldn’t get up before noon, and couldn’t sleep without drinking myself unconscious? When I’d spend every night of the week desperately running around with you, in search of some sensation to distract from the gaping abyss in my heart?
That
happy, carefree time of my life?”

She reeled, as if he had struck her. She’d never anticipated this—never known that this was how he felt, that this was how he regarded their years together. To her, those years had been precious, a sort of personal Golden Age, but Peter spoke of them as though they’d been an ordeal.

The disparity between their perceptions frightened her; she couldn’t suppress her urge to flee. It was as if her entire sense of reality had been called into question. Caught by Peter’s cold, baleful gaze, she backed up all the way to the door; then, her hands trembling, she hooked Brynocki to his leash and left without another word, locking the door behind her.

She ran all the way up the stairs, a mystified Brynocki at her heels.

L
LOYD CALLED AT
a little after four. “Have you heard anything?”

Still shaken by her confrontation with Peter, she had to command herself to sound innocent and sympathetic. “Not a word,” she said in hushed tones. “Oh, poor Lloyd!”

“Don’t pity me, Natalie. I’m not drunk anymore. I’ve had six hours of sleep. I’ve got a clear head now, and I know something’s wrong. Peter hasn’t left me.”

“I only hope that’s true.”

“What you hope is scarcely the issue here,” he said. Why was he being so brusque with her? “I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know the moment you see or hear from him.”

“Of course, Lloyd. You don’t even have to ask.”

“And yet,” he said, “I think I will.”

A
S IF THAT
weren’t disturbing enough, Curtis Driscoll, of all people, called her about an hour later. “Did you see the paper today?”

She’d almost forgotten. “Oh, yes. Poor Curtis! I’m so sorry. Is it horrible for you?” She was fixing Peter’s dinner. She cradled the phone between her chin and shoulder as she stirred her spaghetti sauce.

“Not really. Luigi’s bad news. I loved him, but I knew that all along. Listen, I’m going away for a couple of months; I don’t want to be around when he starts talking.”

She stopped stirring and took the phone in her hand. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you must know he doesn’t have the highest moral profile around. Wouldn’t surprise me if he started naming all the names he can, just to take a bunch of us down with him.”

She had to sit down for this. “Surely he wouldn’t!”

“Listen, I’m his lover, and
I’m
scared of that happening, so
you’d
better be goddam
terrified.”

And she was.

S
HE FOUND IT
difficult to carry the tray of spaghetti down the stairs with Brynocki’s leash looped to her wrist as well. The dog raced ahead and nearly jerked the entire dinner from her grip; as it was, a glass of mineral water crashed on the stairs, and she had to be careful not to cut her feet.
Need to think of a better way to do this in the future,
she told herself.

“Brynocki,
heel,”
she snapped. The dog stopped, panting heavily and excitedly, and waited for her to catch up.

She reached the door and took a deep breath, summoning up her confidence. Then, propping the tray atop her bosom, she unlocked the door to Peter’s room and pushed it open.

It was completely dark.

She reached in and switched on the light. Peter was seated on the bed, wide awake.

Her anxiety gave way to anger. “For God’s sake,” she said, shifting the tray back into her hands. “You might as well make the best of this. Read, paint, do
something.”

Brynocki tugged her in. She entered, put the tray on the butcher-block table by the TV, and unhooked his leash. “Sit,” she said, pointing to the door. The dog trotted over to the spot indicated and sat, drooling patiently.

“I thought we might watch a movie with dinner,” she said brightly. “I have all your favorites here.
Star Wars, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Young Frankenstein
…your pick.”

He cocked his head and stared at her. “I’m giving this one last chance. Do you deny that, by keeping me here against my will and threatening my safety if I try to leave, you’re violating every principle of civil and human rights, as recognized and upheld by this and virtually every other country on the planet?”

She waved a hand in dismissal. “More Lloyd talk. I don’t have to listen to this.”

“Do you deny it?” he asked again.

“Who Framed Roger Rabbit,”
she said definitively, taking the videocassette from the shelf. “We both loved that when we first saw it.”

He sighed. “Okay, I tried.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed. “I told you that I still have some power to choose. And I choose not to acknowledge your presence.”

“You can’t keep that up,” she said, smiling at the preposterousness of it. “It’s not possible.” She inserted the tape into the VCR. “Now get over here and eat your dinner. You must be
famished.”

She sat at the table and tucked a napkin into her collar. The movie started, and, recognizing that in so small a room it would be difficult for Peter not to watch it, she turned up the volume to a level at which it couldn’t possibly be ignored.

He got up from the bed and shut himself in the bathroom, thwarting her.

She put her hands on her hips as the raucous din of the cartoon filled the room.
He’ll have to come out sooner or later,
she told herself, and she patiently ate her spaghetti.

But he didn’t come out, and forty minutes into the movie, she realized he wasn’t going to. She put her head in her hands and started crying. The movie continued at its riotous pace until she couldn’t stand the sound of it any longer. She turned off the VCR, put Brynocki on his leash, and locked the room for the night. Then she went up to bed and sobbed in her pillow until she fell asleep.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
was Monday. She got up early and made Peter a breakfast of oatmeal and wheat toast. She took it down to him, and found him sleeping on top of the bed, fully clothed.

She left Brynocki by the door and tried to shake him awake. “Peter. Peter, honey. Breakfast.”

But he wouldn’t rouse; either that, or he pretended to remain asleep. Eventually she had to give up, or be late for work. She left the oatmeal on the table.

“C
ALL FOR YOU
,” said Bettina the moment Natalie walked into the office. “Guy’s been on hold seven minutes waiting for you to get here.”

Natalie furrowed her brow, threw her purse into her chair, and slipped off her coat, then reluctantly picked up the phone. “Natalie Stathis.”

“Natalie, it’s me.”

“Oh, Lloyd! Tell me you have good news.”

He laughed. “I almost have to admire you,” he said.

Her blood went chill. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re good, that’s all.”

“I don’t underst—”

“Peter didn’t show up for work today.”

She checked her watch. “It’s only a little after nine,” she said. “You worry too much.”

“No, I think I worry exactly enough.”

“Lloyd, I hope you’re not beginning to crack. That wouldn’t solve anything.”

“I really owe you a lot, Natalie,” he said, in a voice whose tone was too cool, too neutral. “You’ve taught me so much in the year that I’ve known you. Want to know what the latest lesson is?”

Her heart was beating wildly. “What?”

“All my life I’ve believed in reason, and in rational thought, as the highest calling of an intelligent mind. I’ve never given credence to any other means of charting a course through life. But now I’m learning the value of intuition. Now I find myself believing that it’s possible to obtain objective knowledge in the absence of any empirical evidence.”

“Lloyd, English, please,” she said with a laugh. But he was frightening her, and frightening her good.

“Fine, I’ll put it into words even you can understand. I’m saying that it’s possible to have a valid hunch. Like the one I’ve got.”

Her eyelids dropped shut.
“Oh,”
she said, trying to sound excited; “do tell!”

“Not yet,” he said. “Even though I’m sure I’m right about this, I’m going to try to get proof, first.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“No,” he said, and it was his turn to laugh; “no thank you, Natalie. You’ve already done more than enough.”

He hung up without saying goodbye, and Jennifer, on her way to the soda machine, caught sight of Natalie’s face and said, “If that look of horror is in any way related to business, I may have to fire you. If it’s personal, I insist you fill me in.”

She shook her head. “I think I left the curling iron on, that’s all.”

“Oh. How disappointing. Well, run home and check, then. I’m not an ogre. I don’t demand your beautiful new home burn down in the line of duty.”

“Thanks,” she said, grabbing her purse, “I think I will.”

Fifty minutes later, she pulled up to her house and saw that Lloyd and Peter’s Celica was gone. She rushed inside and found, to her relief, that the padlock was still in place; Lloyd hadn’t broken in and made an assault on it, as she’d feared. Still, she wanted to see for herself that Peter was still there, still hers. She summoned Brynocki and went quietly down the steps.