Faith gently steered her back to the attack. “You were hit in the head with a hammer. You were missing for thirty-six hours. You had—”
“I had a gift.” Her tone made it clear that she was certain of this one thing. “Rod was going to drag me into court and air every single piece of our dirty laundry. And believe me, there’s a lot. Not just about me, but about my family. My mother. Her business. Rod wanted to burn all of us in effigy. But then he gave me this gift, this abhorrent, savage gift, and I traded my silence for my freedom. Rod slithered back to Wyoming with nothing but the clothes on his back. I walked away with my life.”
Faith looked down at the glass in her hand. Callie Zanger sounded triumphant, avenged. But the more she talked, the more Faith was convinced that she was wrong.
She tried, “Do you remember how you got from your car to the woods?”
“No. The doctors said that amnesia is normal after a significant blow to the head.” She had finished her vodka. She motioned towards Faith glass. “I know what it looks like when someone is pretending to drink.”
Faith slid her glass toward Callie. She knew what it looked like when someone was an alcoholic.
“I remember waking up in the woods.” Callie tossed back her head. Half the liquid disappeared. “I woke up several times, actually. I don’t know if it was the head wound or the shit he was forcing me to drink, but I kept falling asleep, waking up, falling asleep.”
“What did he make you drink?”
“Whatever it was, it made me absolutely stoned. I was delirious. I couldn’t control my thoughts. One minute I was terrified, the next minute I was floating in the ether. I couldn’t move my arms and legs. I kept forgetting where I was, even who I was.”
Faith thought that sounded a hell of a lot like Rohypnol. “Did you recognize the taste?”
“Sure, it tasted like piss and sugar. I prefer this.” Callie raised the glass in a toast, then finished the vodka in one go. The alcohol seemed to catch up with her all at once. Her eyes turned glassy. She had trouble placing the empty glass flat on the counter.
Faith reached over to help.
“You know, it’s bittersweet that Rod’s downfall was the thing that made me fall in love with him in the first place.” She explained, “He always needed to control me. He couldn’t just leave me there to die. He had to keep coming back. Three or four times, I would wake up and he was there.”
“Did you see him?” Faith asked. “Did you see his face?”
“No, he was too careful. But I could sense it was him.” She slowly shook her head side-to-side. “He always loved watching me. When we first met, I thought it was unbearably sexy. I would go to the café or the library and see this tall, strapping cowboy hiding behind the corner with this intense look on his face.”
Faith watched her bring the glass to her lips, then frown to find it empty.
The bartender had disappeared into the kitchen. Will sat at the bar drinking a Coke, staring into the mirror.
“When you’re that young, you think that kind of behavior is desperately romantic. Now, I realize he was stalking me.” She gave Faith a knowing look. “I figure it takes about three months of fucking you before a man really shows you how shitty he is.”
Faith pushed her back into the woods. “What else do you remember?”
She lazily rubbed her eyes. The vodka had made her loose. “Shadows. Leaves falling. The sound of Rod’s cowboy boots getting caught in the mud. It rained quite a lot while I was out there. I’m sure he planned it that way?”
She had asked a question Faith did not know how to answer.
The hair tie. The woods. The Gatorade. The paralysis.
Callie said, “I remember having this dream that he was brushing my hair. He started crying, then I was crying. It was so strange, because I felt at peace, you know? I was ready to give up. But I didn’t. I wouldn’t. And the best part is, it’s all his fault. He really, really fucked up.”
“How?”
“Because he raped me.” She shrugged as if it was nothing. “He’d done it before. I mean, my God, how many times? So boring, Rod. Get a new playbook.”
Faith knew her matter-of-fact tone was a coping mechanism.
“He waited until it was dark. I couldn’t see his face. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t feel my skin. But my body started—” She raised herself up on the rungs of the barstool, then let herself down, then raised herself again, simulating the motions of sex. “And I remember thinking, ‘this is the last time you are going to do this to me, Rodney Phillip Zanger.’”
Callie shrugged it off again, but she was looking for the bartender.
Faith said, “Callie, what—”
“Whatelsewhatelsewhatelse?” She slurred the words together. “I spent fifteen years of my marriage in training for the what else. Taking a punch, learning how to pretend that my ribs weren’t fractured or my collarbone wasn’t broken or my ass wasn’t bleeding.”
Her hand went to her mouth, as if she’d said something comically inappropriate.
Faith asked, “What else?”
“He finished raping me. He made me drink the stuff. I swallowed it. He left. I threw it up.” She smiled. “Thank you, nasty teenage cunts at my boarding school, for teaching me how to vomit on command.”
Faith’s throat felt like she had swallowed fire.
“I must’ve sloughed out the lining of my stomach, that’s how hard I threw up.”
The pride in her voice was devastating.
“It was such a weird color.” Her hand sloppily brushed the front of her blouse. “I had to get rid of my clothes. I mean, not that I’d want to keep them, but it looked like one of those guys from that group where they dance and there’s drums—what’s that group? The one where they’re blue? They played Vegas?”
“Blue Man Group?”
“Right.” Callie searched for the bartender again. “I looked like I was gang banged by the Blue Man Group.”
She was laughing, but Faith could see the tears in her eyes.
“Anyway, I puked it all out. I stood up. I started walking. Stumbling, really. My legs were like spaghetti. I found the road. This nice couple picked me up. My God, I felt bad about that. I looked a mess, and they were so worried. I tried to pay them afterward, a sort of reward for saving me, and they refused, and I kept pushing, and finally, they had me donate the money to their church building fund.” She told Faith, “It’s a 501(c)3, but I didn’t take the tax deduction. Please don’t tell anyone. My career would be over.”
Faith tried to swallow the burning in her throat. She asked, “Did Rod ever admit to you that it was him?”
Again, she laughed. “Oh hell no. He’s too much of a coward. That’s his deep, dark secret. That’s why he beats women: because he’s terrified of them. And now, he’s terrified of me.”
Faith gripped together her hands. Callie was clearly drunk. How could Faith tell this woman that her moment of triumph, her final revenge, was a lie?
“Rod and I had this moment in my lawyer’s office.” Callie turned toward Faith. “It was just the two of us. I told the lawyers to leave. I took my hair down. I shook it out like Cindy fucking Crawford. I said to Rod, ‘Your life is in my hands, asshole. I can destroy you with the snap of my fingers.’”
“What did he say?”
“Oh, the usual. He called me a crazy bitch, kept insisting I was making the whole thing up, but it was the look in his eyes.” Callie pointed to her own eyes. “He was scared of me. His hands were shaking. He started groveling, begging me not to go to the police, whining about how he would never do anything like that. That he loved me. That he would never hurt me.”
Her bitter laughter carried across the room.
“You know what I said to him?”
She clearly wanted a response.
Faith had to swallow before she could ask, “What?”
“I got in his face, looked him straight in his beady little pig eyes, and I said, ‘I won.’” She banged her fist on the bar. “Fuck. You. Rod. I. Fucking. Won.”
23
Gina couldn’t open her eyes.
Or maybe she could open them, but she really did not want to. She had forgotten what it felt like to sleep. Like, for real sleep. The way you slept when you were a kid and you reached that sweet spot between puberty and college and you could close your eyes and wake up at noon the next day in a state of full bliss.
Where was she?
Not where was she in the metaphoric sense. In the physical sense. Like, where the fuck was her body located on planet earth right now?
Her eyelids slitted open.
Dusk, leaves, dirt, birds singing, trees swaying, insects insecting.
Good God, Target’s camping display was brilliantly realistic! She could practically smell s’mores cooking on an open flame. Or baked beans, like that scene in Blazing Saddles where they all started farting.
Gina laughed.
Then she coughed.
Then she started to cry.
She was lying on her back in the woods. She was bleeding where the hammer had cracked against her head. She was going to be raped. She needed to get the hell out of here.