“I care.”
“Exactly.”
He came back to the bars.
“And you need me to relieve you of that burden by giving you a name, a mommy and daddy who care.”
He was a foot away from me. I could reach through the bars and grab his throat if I wanted to. But that would be what he’d want me to do.
“Well, I won’t release you, Detective. You put me in this cage. I put you in that one.”
He stepped back and pointed at me. I looked down and realized both my hands were tightly gripped on the steel bars of the cage. My cage.
I looked back up at him and his smile was back, as guiltless as a baby’s.
“Funny isn’t it? I remember that day-twelve years ago today. Sitting in the back of the car while you cops played hero. So full of yourselves for saving her. Bet you never thought it would come to this, did you? You saved one but you lost the other.”
I lowered my head to the bars.
“ Seguin, you’re going to burn. You are going to hell.”
“Yes, I suppose so. But I hear it’s a dry heat.”
He laughed loudly and I looked at him.
“Don’t you know, Detective? You have to believe in heaven to believe in hell.”
I abruptly turned from the bars and headed back toward the steel door. Above it I saw the mounted camera. I made an open up gesture with my hand and picked up my speed as I got closer. I needed to get out of there.
I heard Seguin ’s voice echoing off the walls behind me.
“I’ll keep her close, Bosch! I’ll keep her right here with me! Eternally together! Eternally mine!”
When I got to the steel door I hit it with both fists until I heard the electronic lock snap and the guard began to slide it open.
“All right, man, all right. What’s the hurry?”
“Just get me out of here,” I said as I pushed past him.
I could still hear Seguin ’s voice echoing from the death house as I crossed back across the open field.
GIVE ME YOUR HEART by JOYCE CAROL OATES
Dear Dr. K-,
It’s been a long time, hasn’t it! Twenty-three years, nine months and eleven days.
Since we last saw each other. Since you last saw, “nude” on your naked knees, me.
Dr. K-! The formal salutation isn’t meant as flattery, still less as mockery-please understand. I am not writing after so many years to beg an unreasonable favor of you (I hope), or to make demands, merely to inquire if, in your judgment, I should go through the formality, and the trouble, of applying to be the lucky recipient of your most precious organ, your heart. If I may expect to collect what is due to me, after so many years.
I’ve learned that you, the renowned Dr. K-, are one who has generously signed a “living will” donating his organs to those in need. Not for Dr. K-an old-fashioned, selfish funeral and burial in a cemetery, nor even cremation. Good for you, Dr. K-! But I want only your heart, not your kidneys, liver or eyes. These, I will waive, that others more needy will benefit.
Of course, I mean to make my application as others do, in medical situations similar to my own. I would not expect favoritism. The actual application would be made through my cardiologist. Caucasian female of youthful middle age, attractive, intelligent, optimistic though with a malfunctioning heart, otherwise in perfect health. No acknowledgment would be made of our old relationship, on my part at least. Though you, dear Dr. K-, as the potential heart donor, could indicate your own preference, surely?
All this would transpire when you die, Dr. K-, I mean.
Of course! Not a moment before.
(I guess you might not be aware that you’re destined to die soon? Within the year? In a “tragic”-”freak”-accident as it will be called? In an “ironic”-”unspeakably ugly” end to a “brilliant career”? I’m sorry that I can’t be more specific about time, place, means; even whether you’ll die alone, or with a family member or two. But that’s the nature of accident, Dr. K-. It’s a surprise.)
Dr. K-, don’t frown so! You’re a handsome man still, and still vain, despite your thinning gray hair which, like other vain men with hair loss, you’ve taken to combing slantwise over the shiny dome of your head; imagining that, since you can’t see this ploy in the mirror, it can’t be seen by others. But I can see.
Fumbling, you turn to the last page of this letter to see my signature-”Angel”-and you’re forced to remember, suddenly… With a pang of guilt.
Her! She’s still… alive?
That’s right, Dr. K-! More alive now than ever.
Naturally you’d come to imagine I had vanished. I had ceased to exist. Since you’d long ago ceased to think of me.
You’re frightened. Your heart, that guilty organ, has begun to pound. At a second-floor window of your house on Richmond Street (expensively restored Victorian, pale gray shingles with dark blue trim, “quaint”-”dignified”-among others of its type in the exclusive old residential neighborhood east of the Theological Seminary) you stare out anxiously at-what?
Not me, obviously. I’m not there.
At any rate, I’m not in sight.
Yet, how the pale-glowering sky seems to throb with a sinister intensity! Like a great eye staring.
Dr. K-, I mean you no harm! Truly. This letter is in no way a demand for your (posthumous) heart, nor even a “verbal threat.” If you decide, foolishly, to show it to police, they will assure you it’s harmless, it isn’t illegal, it’s only a request for information: should I, the “love-of-your-life” you have not seen in twenty-three years, apply to be the recipient of your heart? What are Angel’s chances?
I only wish to collect what’s mine. What was promised to me, so long ago. I’ve been faithful to our love, Dr. K-!
You laugh, harshly. Incredulously. How can you reply to “Angel,” when “Angel” has included no last name, and no address? You will have to seek me. To save yourself, seek me.
You crumple this letter in your fist, throw it onto the floor.
You walk away, stumble away, you mean to forget, obviously you can’t forget, the crumpled pages of my handwritten letter on the floor of-is it your study?-on the second floor of the dignified old Victorian house at 119 Richmond Street?- where someone might discover them, and pick them up to read what you wouldn’t wish another living person to read, especially not someone “close” to you. (As if our families, especially our blood-kin, are “close” to us in the true intimacy of erotic love.) So naturally you return, with badly shaking fingers you pick up the scattered pages, smooth them out and continue to read.
Dear Dr. K-! Please understand: I am not bitter, I don’t harbor obsessions. That is not my nature. I have my own life, and I have even had a (moderately successful) career. I am a normal woman of my time and place. I am like the exquisite black-and-silver diamond-headed spider, the so-called “happy” spider; the sole sub-species of Araneida that is said to be free to spin part-improvised webs, both oval and funnel, and to roam the world at will, equally at home in damp grasses and the dry, dark, protected interiors of man-made places; rejoicing in (relative) free will within the inevitable restrictions of Araneida behavior; with a sharp venomous sting, sometimes lethal to human beings, and especially to children.
Like the diamond-head, I have many eyes. Like the diamond-head, I may be perceived as “happy”-”joyous”- “exulting”- in the eyes of others. For such is my role, my performance.
It’s true, for years I was stoically reconciled to my loss, in fact to my losses. (Not that I blame you for these losses, Dr. K-. Though a neutral observer might conclude that my immune system has been damaged as a result of my physical and mental collapse following your abrupt dismissal of me from your life.) Then, last March, seeing your photograph in the paper-DISTINGUISHED THEOLOGIAN K-TO HEAD SEMINARY-and, a few weeks later, when you were named to the President’s Commission on Religion and Bioethics, I reconsidered. The time of anonymity and silence is over, I thought. Why not try, why not try to collect what he owes you.