Safe House (10 page)

I did that too.

It was a few minutes before she spoke. “Does my story make you . . . feel anything?”

“Yeah,” I told her true. “Jealous.”

She nodded like that made perfect sense to her. Didn’t say anything else.

“Was this your purpose?” I asked her finally. “This . . . shelter?”

“Not a place,” she said softly. “A place is never a purpose. I knew my purpose was to protect. Like my father did Starr.”

“Like your mother did . . . ?”

“Me? Maybe. I didn’t think so at first. I thought it was just revenge. My mother believed in balance. Natural balance. The others, they never really understood that. Oh, they
said
they did. Hippies worship anything ‘native,’ even though they don’t get it. Not really. They used to argue with my mother sometimes. About hunting, that was one. My mother never argued back, but my father did. Oh, he
loved
to argue, my father. But he would always do it with a smile, with a joke. I remember once, he asked some of the others if they thought my mother’s people should be farmers instead of hunters. ‘Should they grow wheat on the bloody tundra, then?’ I remember him saying. I don’t know why my mother did . . . what she did. All she ever told me was she was going to be with him. And I know she is.”

“But sixteen, that was a . . .”

“Long time ago?” Her smile flashed in the darkness. “Sure. I’m not a girl anymore. It took me a long time to find . . . this. I wandered for a while. Tried other communes. Looking for the music. But there were always too many chemicals in the mix. I wasn’t at home there. Then I went to school.”

“High school?”

“College. I was schooled on the commune. We had so many people there who could teach. There was this place, not far from where I was raised. A place for girls who had been abused. I wasn’t abused, so I never lived there. But I was friends with one of the girls, and she took me to her counselor, her education counselor. And he told me how I could get advanced-placement credit by taking exams. CLEP exams, they were called. I was almost twenty when I started, but I went right into my junior year.”

“For what?”

“To get an—oh, you mean, what did I study? Just a bunch of different stuff. Looking for the blend. Science and math, history and literature. Even philosophy . . . although I never liked that stuff much. I was trying to get . . .”

“. . . closer to your parents?”

“Yes! How did you . . . ?”

“The courses—the ones you studied—the mix sounds like them.”

“I guess it was. But the truth is, or it
was,
anyway, that it didn’t work. The books always seemed so hollow. If there was anything valuable in them, it was in a vacuum, kind of. Not connected to anything. The way I was . . .”

I waited a few minutes after her voice trailed off. Until I could see there wasn’t going to be any more. “What then?” I prompted her.

“I thought about the Peace Corps, but . . . I remembered my mother telling me about the missionaries who came to her village, and I crossed that one off. So I became a VISTA volunteer. In Appalachia. I didn’t like the trainers much. They kept giving us a whole bunch of long stupid speeches about ‘shedding our middle-class attitudes’ and stuff like that. I didn’t
have
any middle-class attitudes.
They
did. It was mostly the males. White males. Just another way of asserting dominance. Pressuring the women. For sex, mostly.

“But once I got out into the field, it was great. Just like it should be, I thought. I taught and I learned. I just didn’t learn enough, so I moved on. That’s when I came to my first shelter.”

“For the homeless?”

“For battered women,” she said. “I never realized how . . . frightened people could be until I worked there. They were so helpless. Nobody would listen unless they were half-killed. Even then, sometimes. And I had trouble fitting in. The director, she wanted to do therapy all the time. For the men, mostly. The perpetrators, the ones who needed all the ‘understanding’ so they could ‘break their patterns,’ ” Crystal Beth said, her voice heavy with scorn.

“And the director liked to give speeches too,” she went on. “Fund-raising. She
worshipped
the media. Any reporter who wanted to talk to the women, that was okay. There was no . . . privacy for anyone.”

“Like on the commune?”

“No! You don’t understand. We didn’t have private
property,
that isn’t the same thing. But you could be by yourself. The others would always respect that. In that shelter where I worked, even your thoughts weren’t your own. Everything had to be . . . examined. Talked about. That’s what it was.
All
it was. Talking, not fighting.”

“Who did you want to fight?”

“Not who, what. The . . . Beast. The Stalking Beast. There’s a legend . . . Never mind, now isn’t the time to tell it. I left there with a couple of the other women. We wanted to start our own place. I thought . . . runaways. That’s where it started for me anyway. Not just girls, we took in boys too. Most of them were prostituting themselves for—”

“Them
selves?
”

“Okay, you’re right. That’s what I thought too. At first. People call them child prostitutes, but they’re not. They’re prostituted children. The girls, anyway.”

“Why just the girls?”

“Some of the boys, they went into business for themselves. They didn’t have pimps.”

“Sure. I get it. Just ran away from a nice home where everybody treated them good and started peddling their bodies for cash to buy clothes and CDs, huh?”

“I didn’t mean that. I know they were mistreated at home. Just—”

“You ever read about the cops busting a whole whorehouse full of girls from another country?”

“Yes. Just last week. On the West Coast. All the girls were from Thailand.”

“Sure. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old, right? At least that’s what they told the cops. You think that was the first time they turned a trick?”

“No. I’m sure they started . . . Oh, I see.”

“Sorry I interrupted you.”

“That’s all right. I mean,
you’re
right. I should have said—”

“It doesn’t matter. Tell me what happened next.”

“They closed it down. The pimps. They just closed it down. They hung around outside. They dropped on the girls like hawks as soon as they left the place. A couple of them even came inside. By the time the police got there, they were always gone.”

“And some of the girls recruited for the pimps themselves.”

“Yes,” she said softly. “You know about that too. Some of them did that. We weren’t . . . prepared for it. We thought we could all stand together, but some of them, they
wanted
to—”

“You can’t want something else unless you believe something else really exists.”

“
We
really existed. We were really there.”

“You’re not there now.”

“I know,” she said. Not ashamed, just stating a fact. “It didn’t work. It wasn’t my . . . purpose. But this is. This truly is.”

“This is a shelter too?”

“Yes. But not for battered women. Or prostitutes. Or runaways. It’s a safehouse from the Beast. From stalkers.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Maybe it’s just the degree, I’m not sure. But some men, no matter how ugly they were in the . . . relationship, when it’s over, they let it go. And some women, they aren’t afraid enough. Or they still think things can be fixed. I’m not a psychologist. I couldn’t give you a name for the difference. But we know it when we see it.”

“So where do I come in?” I finally asked her.

“It’s too dark in here now,” Crystal Beth said by way of reply. She stood up, walked over to the desk, took out a candle, held a match to the bottom until it was soft, then jammed it against the desktop and lit the wick. The flame was faint, but it bathed her in a red-yellow glow.

Then she studied me. Or my face, anyway. If it was a patience test, she was playing with a pro. I let her do it, not challenging, just waiting.

“You’re here because now I have one too,” she finally said.

“One what?”

S
he didn’t say anything more. I went back to waiting.

“You never stared at my body,” she said suddenly.

“What?”

“My body: My chest. My legs. My hips. You never stared. Not once.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.
Look
isn’t the same as
stare.
I meant, oh,
leering,
I guess. You know what I’m talking about. Some men are more subtle about it than others, but a woman can always tell when they’re doing it.”

“You don’t exactly . . . display yourself.”

“No, I don’t. But that wouldn’t matter. That only . . . frustrates some men, doesn’t it?”

“I guess so. What I don’t get is the point.”

“You’re not gay,” she said. A flat statement, not a question.

“If I was, I wouldn’t score any style points for not checking you out?”

“No, I don’t mean that. Gay men do that too. Especially your butt, for some reason.”

“Where are you going with this, Crystal Beth?”

“You like my name, don’t you? Most men don’t. They always call me ‘Crystal,’ like that’s easier for their tongues. Do you know why?”

“No.”

“Neither do I,” she said, getting to her feet. “You’re very into self-control, aren’t you?”

“I’m not saying.”

It got me the laugh I was playing for. “You don’t drink, right?” she asked. “Or take drugs?”

“No. Unless you count nicotine.”

“I’m not a hypocrite,” she said, nodding her head toward her own cigarette makings. “I know it’s a drug. But that’s not what I mean. About self-control. I’ll bet I could come and sit on your lap and we could talk. Just talk. Comfortable. What do you think?”

“Depends on how much you weigh,” I told her.

She chuckled, a deep, chesty sound. Then stood up, turned her back and sat down, saying “Let’s see, okay?”

Crystal Beth was warm on my lap. Rounded and dense, heavier than she looked. Her hair smelled of rich tobacco and bitter oranges. Her solid thighs were across my knees, her bottom off to the side, crammed against the arm of the easy chair, right arm around my neck. The candle’s flame lit the tattoo along her right jaw, the arrow of her purpose still against her silence, poised and ready. She leaned back against me, closed her eyes, made a little sound I didn’t understand—I’d never heard it before.

“There’s only three women staying here now,” she said after a while. “One got an Order of Protection after her husband beat her too many times. It said he had to keep away from her. She stayed in the house. He came over one night and did it again. He tore up the Order of Protection. Then he made her eat it. Then he raped her. When the police came, it was too late.”

“Too late for what? They could still lock him up on her say-so.”

“He was educated. Somebody taught him. He beat her with an open palm against the top of her head. She thought her brain was going to fracture from the pain. He was wearing gloves. Doctor’s gloves. When he raped her, he wore a condom. And he had an iron-clad alibi. Four other men, all playing cards at one of their houses. He told her. About being educated. That was the word he used: ‘educated.’ And he told her it was going to happen again and again. Anytime he wanted.”

I rested my right hand on top of her thigh, balancing her weight, smelling her scent. Waiting.

“Another woman, she’s a young one. Do you know what ‘R and R’ is?”

“Military? Like Rest and Recreation?”

“Were you a soldier?” she asked, shifting her weight slightly.

“I was never in the army,” I told her, dodging the question.

“Ummm,” she said. Letting it hang there. Then: “It means something different now. To some . . . people. R and R, it stands for Rope and Rape.”

“Kidnappers?”

“Not the way you think. Not for ransom either. ‘Rope’ is Rohypnol. The ‘date-rape drug.’ A cute name for the Devil’s own brew, isn’t it? Rohypnol is a potent tranquilizer, ten times more powerful than Valium. And it has no taste. Slip it into a woman’s drink and she comes around a few hours later. While she’s down, you can do whatever you want.”

“Like a Mickey Finn . . . ?”

“No, not like chloral hydrate. It’s not knockout drops, it’s a paralytic agent. The victim is semi-conscious. When they come out of it, they know
something
happened, they just can’t be . . . sure.”

“And they can’t testify?”

“That’s right. It’s legal in Europe. They use it to pre-tranq a patient before major surgery. Supposed to work very well. But now it’s a big black-market drug over here. They sell it in the original packaging and everything. Little white pills, two to a pack. Clear plastic.”

“They got bathtub versions of that too,” I told her.

“Bathtub versions . . . ?

“Home brew,” I said. “GHB. Gamma hydroxybutyrate. There’s no legal version of it, like what you’re talking about. Any freak can mix it up. It’s got a lot of street names: Liquid X, Gook, Gamma 10 . . . It all works the same.”

“Oh,” she said, sad-quiet.

I tightened my hold on her waist, not asking her how she could describe the drug so accurately. Maybe not wanting to know. Feeling an old friend wrap its comforting cloak around my shoulders. It’s been with me almost as long as Fear, that friend.

Hate.

“There’s no defense against it,” she said quietly.

“Seems like there could be,” I told her, keeping my voice level. “It’s a chemical, right? So what you need is a reagent. Some other drug that would react with it, turn it a distinctive color. Like the DEA uses to field-test cocaine.”

“Oh God, that makes so much
sense,
” she gasped, squirming in my lap. “Is that what you . . . really do?”

“You mean, am I a chemist?”

“No. I know you’re not. I mean . . . solve problems. Figure things out.”

“Some things,” I said, letting an undertone of warning into my voice.

“That’s what . . . Anyway, this young woman, the man who did it to her wasn’t a stranger, it was her boyfriend. Her ex-boyfriend. After they broke up. He talked her into having a last drink together. In a public bar. All she remembers is getting sick, him helping her out of there. When she came to, she was in his apartment. Naked. And it was hours later. She called the police too. But when they came, he told them they made love.
Love,
” she said, her voice trembling with something I thought I recognized. Somebody had told her that same lie, once.