I was swallowing back my utter hysteria, but I felt as if a hole were forming in my chest. I realized I needed to take deep breaths to keep from fainting.
“You hungry?” he asked. “I can make us some tea, and we can have homemade biscuits with jam. I made the biscuits myself, and not from some ready mix. My mother taught me how to cook and bake when I first moved down here. She said, ‘You’ve got to learn how to be independent, Junior.’ She always called me Junior because my father’s name was Anthony, too. She could have called me Tony. Dad didn’t want anyone to call him Tony, but my mother thought it would make my father angry if she called me that. ‘Junior,’ she said, ‘you’re going to be on your own sooner or later in this life. We’re not going to be around forever.’
“They were both much older than most parents when they had me. My mom was forty-one, and my dad was fifty-two. My mother was surprised she got pregnant. She thought it was change of life and didn’t realize I was inside her until the sixth month.” He smiled. “I started knocking on the door. But you know all that. Anyway, I’ve been making my own food for years. It’s not easy going to restaurants when you’re alone, you know. People look at you, and you can see it on their faces, the question: ‘Why is he alone? Where’s his girlfriend, or even a boyfriend?’ It’s always easier to eat at home. But I told you all that. I just like telling you things face-to-face now. It’s better this way, right?”
“You’re going to get into
very big trouble for this,” I said, gasping after every word. “My sister will tell my mother, and they’ll have the police here soon. I was supposed to go right back to the movie theater and get her because she got sick.”
“Still talking about a sister, and a twin to boot,” he said, smiling. “How come you never mentioned her before? You can make up stories faster than . . . than Scheherazade. You know her, the One Thousand and One Nights. It’s on the bookshelf there. I’ve got lots for you to read. I promise. You’ll never be bored down here, even though there’s no television. My mother wouldn’t let me have a television, and I haven’t bothered hooking one up. I’ve got lots of good board games and magazines. You’ll take care of this place, too, clean it daily. It gets dusty somehow. After tonight, you’ll wash all the dishes and keep the kitchen as spotless as I do, okay? You said that would be okay because you were so used to doing it at home. There’s a vacuum cleaner in the corner there,” he said, nodding to my left. “And in the bathroom, in the cabinet, you’ll find dust cloths and cleaning fluids, polish. The bathroom has to be extra clean. This is a germ-free place, and we don’t want that to change, right? Oh,” he added, moving toward the cabinet over the counter, “I got a dozen bottles of that vitamin you said your mother gives you every morning. So,” he said, pausing to rub his palms, “I’ll fix us some tea, okay?”
He went to the stove. The cat suddenly ran past me.
“I’m sorry about the chains,” he said as he filled the teapot with water. “I don’t expect you’ll have to have them forever, of course. Someday in the not-so-distant future, you’ll never want to leave.” He turned and smiled at me. “I know. I could tell from all you told me about yourself. I told you what I missed and needed, and you told me much of the same. We were meant to be, huh? The Internet is the new Cupid. There are companies that advertise matchmaking. We just bypassed them.”
He opened the stove and took out a platter of biscuits.
“These are perfect. Look at that,” he said, holding them up for me to see. “I know you’re not much of a cook, but no worries. I’m a great cook. Before they died, I used to cook dinner for my parents, and I always made them lunch before I left for work. On weekends, I’d do a breakfast to die for, things like French toast, pancakes, poached eggs. You name it, I did it, and I’ll do it for you.”
He put the biscuits on the counter and waggled his right forefinger at me.
“You’re a bit spoiled, I know. You admitted it. I don’t think you should have taken advantage of your mother like that,” he added with a scowl. “Mothers are precious. Until . . . they’re not,” he said, and laughed. “What do you prefer? Strawberry, orange, or grape jam?”
He looked at me and waited.
I slowly rose. “Where are my clothes?”
“Those? They’re going to that bin for poor people. I’m surprised your mother let you wear something like that. You told me she was once a fashion model.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“I’m hungry,” he said. “I didn’t eat much tonight. I was so excited about meeting you.”
“Why are you keeping me here?”
“Why? Because we should be together. You said that many times, Kaylee.”
“No, I never did. That was my sister, Haylee. I’m not Haylee!”
He shook his head. “We’re not going to get along if you keep that up,” he said.
“This is kidnapping. You can go to jail for a long time for doing this.”
He thought for a moment and then shook his head. “No. Think of it more as convincing. Kidnapping is not the right way to put it. That sounds like I’m doing it for ransom or something.”
The teapot whistled.
“You like milk in your tea or honey? Or both?”
“I don’t want any tea. I want my clothes, and I want you to unchain me.”
“Why are you acting like this? I’ve done nothing you didn’t expect.”
“Nothing I didn’t expect? How can you say that?”
He shrugged. “We agreed we should live together. You said your mother would stop us from even just seeing each other and that you wanted me to come up with a way to make it possible. Voilà!” he said, holding out his arms. “It’s all right. You have nothing to fear. I don’t intend to hurt you in any way. I’m going to make you happy, not sad. Oh, for a little while, you might be sad, but that goes away. Believe me, I know.
“I’ll tell you a secret. There are lots of secrets I’ve never told you, but we’ll have plenty of time for them. But here’s one. Sometimes, when my mother thought I was being nasty or disrespectful, she would lock me in down here. One time, she did that for almost ten days. She cried about it afterward, and I didn’t hate her for it. I got over it. So don’t worry. You’ll get over it,” he said, putting biscuits on a tray.