“Why would he lie?”
“Because he knew it was what you wanted to hear.”
“You look like a biker girl. Except I think you have a high IQ.”
His weight shifted, and she heard him remove something from his pocket. Then she heard the snap of a metallic mechanism locking into place. He fitted his left hand on her upper arm. “This same vice cop said maybe you did a couple of hits for the Mob. Was he lying then?”
“Anything I ever did was because I wanted to.”
He moved his hand up the nape of her neck and slipped his fingers into her hair. “Do you think those things I did to you back there were bad? Or did you enjoy them a little?”
She craned her head and, in the corner of her eye, saw the dull-colored blade of the clasp knife and the long sliver of brightness along the bottom edge where it had been honed on a whetstone.
She straightened her arms and shoulders and closed and opened her eyes as a doll might, a pain growing in her right shoulder, her nerve endings coming alive.
“Opposites attract sometimes,” he said. “I can be good to a woman and love her like a father or a husband.”
She stared at the side paneling of the van and, in her mind, went to a private place where long ago she had learned to shut down her sensory system and remove herself from hands that reached down out of the dark and touched her in ways that no human being should ever be touched.
“You’re an attractive girl,” he said. “I may go to work for a very wealthy man. I could take care of you. Are you listening?”
“My father will get you. If he doesn’t, I will.”
“I wouldn’t be talking like that. This could be your last night on earth.”
“I’ll get you anyway. I’ll come back. I’d rather die than have your hands on me.”
She saw his thumb slip higher on the handle of the knife, establishing a firmer grip.
“You stink and have dandruff in your hair. You’re everything a woman loathes,” she said. “Even whores don’t want to fuck a man like you.”
“You’re starting to make me angry, Gretchen.”
She felt his callused fingertips go inside her shirt and move along her collarbone and settle on her carotid. He teased his thumbnail under her jaw and around her ear and spread his hand in the center of her back, pressing the heel into the muscles. “I could have been a lot harder on you,” he said.
“Kill me.”
“You really mean that?”
“Fuck you, asshole,” she said, her hatred and level of helplessness so intense she could hardly say the words.
She heard him snapping on a pair of latex gloves; then he ran the blade of his knife down the back of her shirt and through her bra strap and through the back of her jeans and her panties. He tore the clothes off her body, even pulling off her suede boots and her socks. He opened a bottle of bleach and soaked a wad of paper towels and scrubbed her hair and skin with it, then climbed out of the van and fitted his hands under her arms and dragged her over the bumper onto the ground.
She lay in the mud, the rain falling in her face, while he went to the front of the van and removed a paper sack from behind the seat. He took out a half pint of whiskey and a Ziploc bag of weed and splashed the whiskey in her mouth and on her face and bare breasts and over her hair, then forced weed past her lips and teeth and rubbed it into her hands and forearms and ears and nose, his chest laboring from the exertion.
He gathered up her clothes and boots and stuck them in the sack, then inserted the knife under the ligatures and sliced them loose from her wrists. “I threw your tote bag in the trees about three miles back. Write this off as a learning experience. For me it’s over, in case you ever want to let bygones be bygones. Nobody is gonna believe you, Gretchen. People like me. I’m a good guy. You’re shit on a stick.”
He got in the van and started the engine and drove past her with the window down, lighting another cigarette, the rain slashing across the taillights.
She walked a mile and a half up the road, her skin prickling with cold, her hair matted and dripping with water and dirt and twigs. A Jeep passed her and turned in to the trees at the peak of a hill. A boy and a girl got out and stared at her. A red nylon tent with a lantern hissing inside it stood in a grove of cedar trees. Below the hill, Gretchen could see the riffle on the river gliding between giant boulders, like a long streak of black oil shining in the moonlight.
“Jesus Christ, lady, are you okay?” the boy said.
She tried to cover her breasts with her arms and discovered that nothing she could do or say would explain or change her situation or undo the damage that had been done to her, not now, not ever. The greatest injury of all was the knowledge that her own merciful tendencies had allowed this to happen.
THE PHONE RANG at 7:14 the next morning; the caller ID was blocked. I picked up the receiver and looked out the window. The temperature had dropped during the night, and the tops of the fir trees up the slope were stiff and white with frost and bending in the wind. “Hello?” I said.
“If I give you the address, can you come up to my house now?” a voice said.