Dressed again, I’m shown to another waiting room, where I pass the time reading a dog-eared gossip magazine left by some woman before me. It’s an hour before a guard appears to summon me on—he’s young and hard-faced, this one, with sharply clinical eyes. African American. A bodybuilder, I think. Nobody I’d want to cross.
He leads me into a small, claustrophobic booth with a stained, worn counter, a chair, a phone fastened to the cubicle wall. Scratched, thick Plexiglas for a barrier. There’s a whole row of booths, and desperate people sit hunched in every one of them, searching for some peace, some humanity in a place that offers none of that. I hear whispers of conversation as I go. Momma’s not feeling right . . . brother’s been locked up for driving drunk again . . . Can’t afford to pay the lawyer this time . . . I wish you could come home, Bobby, we miss you.
I sink into the chair without feeling it, without thinking, because I’m looking through the cloudy plastic barrier at Melvin Royal. My ex-husband. The father of my children. A man who swept me off my feet with charm and grace, who proposed to me in a swinging bucket on top of a Ferris wheel at the state fairgrounds—and it doesn’t escape me now that he’d waited until I was stranded and isolated to do it. I’d thought it wildly romantic at the time. I can guess he found it fun to imagine me plummeting to the ground, or arousing to have me completely at his mercy.
Everything he’s done is tainted now to me. Every smile was just mechanics. Every laugh was manufactured. Every public sign of affection was just that: for the public.
And always, always, the monster lay just under the surface of it all.
Not a large man, Mel. Deceptively strong, but we learned at the trial that he still relied on tricks and guile to lure women in close, and stun guns and zip ties to keep them under control once he had them. He’s put on weight, a soft, shivering layer of fat over those long muscles, and it’s blurred the once-sharp line of his jaw. He was vain about his looks. And about mine. He always wanted me to be trim and neat and reflect well on him.
There’s not much else I can recognize easily about him right now, because he’s been beaten to shit. I let myself gaze at the destruction, the ripening bruises, the cuts, his right eye completely closed, his left just barely cracked open. There are ugly red bruises around his throat, and I can see the clear outlines of fingers. His left ear is heavily bandaged. When he reaches for the phone, I see that several of his fingers are broken and taped together for healing.
I can’t tell you how happy all this makes me.
I pick up the phone and hold it to my ear, and Mel’s voice comes out raspy, but controlled as ever. “Hello, Gina. It took you long enough.”
“You look great,” I tell him, and to my surprise, my voice sounds entirely normal. I’m shaking inside, and I don’t even know if it’s from visceral fear or savage joy at seeing him hurt. He says nothing. “No, seriously. That’s really a good look on you, Mel.”
“Thanks for coming,” he says, as if he fucking invited me. As if it’s a dinner party. “I see you got my letter.”
“I see you got my answer,” I tell him, and I lean forward to make sure he can clearly see my eyes. The coldness burning in them like dry ice. He makes me afraid, constantly afraid, but at the same time, I am completely unwilling to let him see that. “This was a warning, Mel. Next time you play with me, you fucking die. Is that clear enough? Do we need to have another round of bullshit threats?”
He doesn’t seem afraid. He has the same indifference that I remember from the arrest, the trial, the sentencing—though there’s that one particular picture of him looking over his shoulder in the courtroom that betrays the monster in his eyes. It’s chilling precisely because it’s true.
He hardly seems to be listening to me. The noise in his head, the fantasy, must be very strong right now. I wonder if he’s imagining taking me apart as I scream. Taking our kids apart, too. I think he probably is, because the pupil that I can see has contracted to a greedy little pinpoint. He’s like a black hole: not even light can escape. “You must have bought yourself some friends in here,” he says. “That’s good. Everybody needs friends, don’t they? But you surprise me, Gina. You were never good at making friends.”
“I’m not fucking playing with you, asshole. I came to make sure you understand that you need to forget about me and leave us alone. We are not connected. Not in any way. Say it.” My palms are sweating—one grips the phone, the other is pressed on the stained counter. I can’t see his eyes very well. I need to see his eyes to see what’s looking out of them.
“I know you didn’t mean for me to be hurt like this, Gina. You’re not a cruel woman. You never were.” His voice. God. It’s exactly like the one in my head, still. A perfectly calm, reasonable sort of voice, with a hint of compassion. He’s practiced it, I’m certain of that. Listened to himself. Adjusted it to hit just the right notes. Predator camouflage. I think about all those nights we sat side by side, his arm around my shoulders as we watched movies or talked. About the nights I curled up to his warmth in our bed, and he said something in that same, soothing tone.
You fucking liar.
“I meant it,” I tell him. “Every bruise. Every cut. Get it through your head, Mel, it doesn’t work on me anymore.”
“What doesn’t?”
“This . . . charade.”
He’s silent for a while. I could almost believe I’d hurt his feelings, if I legitimately thought he had any. He doesn’t, none that I’d recognize in any way, and if I managed to bruise them as much as his flesh, I wouldn’t care at all.
When he does speak again, his voice is quite different. Same voice, I suppose, but the tone, the timbre . . . very different. He’s dropped the disguise, the way he drops it every third letter he sends. “You shouldn’t make me angry, Gina.”
I hate hearing my old name in his mouth. I hate the way he almost purrs it.
I don’t respond, because I know not responding throws him off. I just watch him, sitting quietly in my chair, and suddenly he leans forward. The guard stationed on his side of the barrier focuses on him like a laser beam, and his hand hovers near the stun gun he’s carrying. I guess they don’t want to shoot prisoners in front of their family members.
Mel doesn’t seem to notice, or care, that the guard’s behind him. He lowers his voice even more to say, “You know, your Internet fans out there are still looking for you. It’d be a shame if they ever found you. I can’t imagine what they’d do. Can you?”
I let the silence hiss between us like a live wire, and then I slowly lean forward until I’m an inch away from the Plexiglas. Two inches from him. “The first hint I have that they know where I am, I will put an end to you.”
“Tell me how you plan to do that, Gina. Because I have the power here. I’ve always had the power.”
I just stare at him. He has the phone in his right hand, but his left hand is under the level of the tabletop. Blocked by his body from the guard, who is almost directly behind him. The guard is now looking at me, not at Mel.
I realize with a jolt that Melvin is massaging his crotch. It’s making him hard, thinking of how he could arrange my murder. I feel sick, but I do not feel horrified. I’m past that now. I can’t see his eyes, but I know the monster’s looking out.
And I’m revolted. I’m angry.
I keep my voice low as I say, “Take your hands off your dick, Melvin. Next time you piss me off, you won’t have one left. Understand?”
He gives me an untroubled smile. “If I die in here, everything I know goes online. I’ve made arrangements. Just like you have.”
I believe him. It’s the kind of thing Mel would do, one last spit from the grave. He wouldn’t care that it destroys his children—not anymore. He loved them once, I have no doubt of that, but it was a selfish kind of love. He was proud of them because he was proud of himself. He loved them because they loved him, without question or condition.