I try to focus my eyes on Henry, who is splitting and coming back together, again and again. It reminds me of watching Evelyn’s old television when she worked nights: scrambled soft-core porn channels, a flash of skin here or there, maybe a blinking Technicolor breast. I close my eyes, yellow spots and flashes of color.
When I open my eyes again, Henry is standing in front of me, naked, erect, cupping his penis. His hands move and slide up my thighs. I turn my face away and he pulls me back by my chin. I realize that I’m naked under the negligee and I kick my feet. I struggle to sit up.
“No,” I mumble. The drugs are wearing off, I think. The “No” sounds clearer to me but I can’t tell.
“Settle, my love.” Sometime in the last few minutes, he’s lit candles, turned off the lights. He lies on top of me, kissing my neck, and I push against his chest. “Goddamn it, Zoe. Just for once, be compliant.” He stands up, hastily, embarrassed, slapping at his thigh, at his flaccid failure. “This has never happened before.” He’s both apologetic and accusing; his eyes shine with hatred and he hovers over me until I think he might hit me, his fist clenched, knuckles white. I set my jaw, prepare for the punch, and close my eyes.
He turns away and dons his pajama bottoms. When he turns back, he’s holding a syringe. A quick pinch in my other thigh and my vision swims.
? ? ?
He brings me trays of food, and I become fixated on the clock each time I’m awake. 6:27 a.m. 4:13 p.m. 5:42 a.m. I try to track the days, but I keep losing count and have to start over. I give up trying to remember and with my free hand, press my thumbnail into the skin along my hip bone until it comes away tinged pink with blood. One half-moon for each day. Or what I think is a day, sometimes it’s hard to remember if it was a.m. or p.m. when I woke last, and therefore has it been a day or twelve hours? I can pass my index finger over the healing lines, feel the scabs, and count. Sometimes, when I bolt awake, panicked and gasping, I feel for these small incisions. Six, I’ve been here six days. Then eight. Then ten.
I think he dresses me in Tara’s clothes, black cocktail dresses and silk pantsuits. Where would an agoraphobic wear pantsuits?
He walks me to the bathroom, two, maybe three times a day, handcuffed with the steel tip of the gun in my back and then plank-walks me back to bed. Then, he props me up, feeds me crackers and juice. Talks to me, tells me about his day. His words float around, echoing as though he’s in an airplane hangar. If I say what too many times, he gets angry. I wonder what he wants with me? Will I just be here forever? His replacement Tara, chained to the bed like an animal?
Will I die here?
Will anyone miss me?
Does anyone care?
A shot to the leg. I barely feel it.
? ? ?
I’ve started getting sick. Throwing up, hot green bile on the bed, which makes Henry furiously angry.
“What will you do with me?” I ask him, weakly, a long string of spit trailing from my mouth. I’m lying on my side, my face sweating. Whatever he’s injecting me with, it’s too much. My body has started to reject it. It’s making me nauseated and weak. I will die here, in this isolated house in clothes that are not mine.
He’s toweling up my filth and he smiles, a clever, Henry-ish smile. “Yates called me, said she’s been trying to call you. I said you’d left me. You were staying at a hotel in the city and I didn’t know which one. She said she had news on Mick, so I’m guessing she’s discovered his death. A shockingly good detective for a woman. He was living under a different name. WITSEC, you know?” He says all this conversationally, as he works at a stubborn sticky spot on the bare mattress. “After you left town, he turned state’s witness, brought down the whole organization. He did a very small amount of prison time, then went into witness protection. I figured it out easily enough, but then again, I’m fairly well connected. The feds, they don’t talk much to the police.”
My head feels heavy and I let it sink down to my arm, my face wet with tears, sweat. Maybe spit. I am starting to stink.
“But what will you do with me?” I ask again, dumbly, not knowing if he’d even answered the question or not.
“We have three months until hunting season. See, you’ll come back to me then. Realize your mistake, how much you’ve missed me. You’re all alone in the world, Zoe, you have no one. You only have me. You leave your hotel, come back here. To beg for my forgiveness. You try to find me in the woods behind the house, as a surprise.” His voice has lowered to a whisper, his finger caressing my cheek. “I’ll think I’ve hit a deer. It’s tragic, really.”