Mr and Mrs Gerald Burlingame, spending one last long night together.
Looking at the beer-stein and the batik butterfly, unlikely neighbors which could be tolerated only in a one-season-a-year house such as this one, Jessie thought that it was easy to reflect on the past and just as easy (although a lot less pleasant) to go wandering off into possible versions of the future. The really tough job seemed to be staying in the present, but she thought she’d better try her best to do it. This nasty situation was probably going to get a lot nastier if she didn’t. She couldn’t depend on some deus ex machina to get her out of the jam she was in, and that was a bummer, but if she succeeded in doing it herself, there would be a bonus: she’d be saved the embarrassment of lying here almost starkers while some sheriff’s deputy unlocked her, asked what the hell had happened, and got a nice long look at the new widow’s fair white body, all at the same time.
There were two other things going on as well. She would have given a lot to push them away, even temporarily, but she couldn’t. She needed to go to the bathroom, and she was thirsty. Right now the need to ship was stronger than the need to receive, but it was her desire for a drink of water that worried her. It wasn’t a big deal yet, but that would change if she wasn’t able to shuck the cuffs and get to a faucet. It would change in ways she didn’t like to think of.
It’d be funny if I died of thirst two hundred yards from the ninth biggest lake in Maine, she thought, and then she shook her head. This wasn’t the ninth-biggest lake in Maine; what had she been thinking of? That was Dark Score Lake, the one where she and her parents and her brother and sister had gone all those years ago. Back before the voices. Back before-
She cut that off. Hard. It had been a long time since she’d thought about Dark Score Lake, and she didn’t intend to start now, handcuffs or no handcuffs. Better to think about being thirsty.
What’s to think about, toots? It’s psychosomatic, that’s all. You’re thirsty because you know you can’t get up and get a drink. It’s as simple as that.
But it wasn’t. She’d had a fight with her husband, and the two swift kicks she’d dealt him had started a chain reaction which finally resulted in his death. She herself was suffering the aftereffects of a major hormone-spill. The technical term for it was shock, and one of the commonest symptoms of shock was thirst. She should probably count herself lucky that her mouth was no drier than it was, at least so far, and-
And maybe that’s one thing I can do something about.
Gerald was the quintessential creature of habit, and one of his habits was keeping a glass of water on his side of the shelf above the headboard of the bed. She twisted her head up and to the right and yes, there it was, a tall glass of water with a little cluster of melting ice-cubes floating on top. The glass was no doubt sitting on a coaster so it wouldn’t leave a ring on the shelf that was Gerald, so considerate about the little things. Beads of condensation stood out on the glass like sweat.
Looking at these, Jessie felt her first, pang of real thirst. It made her lick her lips. She slid to the right as far as the chain on the left handcuff would allow. This was only six inches, but it brought her onto Gerald’s side of the bed. The movement also exposed several dark spots on the left side of the coverlet. She stared at these vacantly for several moments before remembering how Gerald had voided his bladder in his last agony. Then she quickly turned her eyes back to the glass of water, sitting up there on a round of cardboard which probably advertised some brand of yuppie suds, Beck’s or Heineken being the most likely.
She reached out and up, doing it slowly, willing her reach to be long enough. It wasn’t. The tips of her fingers stopped three inches short of the glass. The pang of thirst-a slight tightening in the throat, a slight prickle on the tongue-came and went again.
If no one comes or I can’t think of a way to wiggle free by tomorrowmorning, I won’t even be able to look at that glass.
This idea had about it a cold reasonableness that was terrifying in and of itself. But she wouldn’t still be here tomorrow morning, that was the thing. The idea was totally ridiculous. Insane. Loopy. Not worth thinking about. It-
Stop, the no-bullshit voice said. Just stop. And so she did.
The thing she had to face was that the idea wasn’t totally ridiculous. She refused to accept or even entertain the possibility that she could die here-that was loopy, of course-but she could be in for some long, uncomfortable hours if she didn’t dust away the cobwebs on the old thinking machine and get it running.
Long, uncomfortable…and maybe painful, the Goodwife said nervously. But the pain would be an act of atonement, wouldn’t it? After all, you brought this on yourself. I hope. I’m not being tiresome, butif you’d just let him shoot his squirt-
“You are being tiresome, Goody,” Jessie said. She couldn’t remember if she had ever spoken out loud to one of the interior voices before. She wondered if she was going mad. She decided she didn’t give much of a shit one way or the other, at least for the time being.
Jessie closed her eyes again.
CHAPTER FOUR
This time it wasn’t her body she visualized in the darkness behind her lids but this whole room. Of course she was still the centerpiece, gosh, yes-Jessie Mahout Burlingame, still a shade under forty, still fairly trim at five-seven and a hundred and twenty-five pounds, gray eyes, brownish-red hair (she covered the gray that had begun to show up about five years ago with a glossy rinse and was fairly sure Gerald had never known). Jessie Mahout Burlingame, who had gotten herself into this mess without quite knowing how or why. Jessie Mahout Burlingame, now presumably the widow of Gerald, still mother of no one, and tethered to this goddamned bed by two sets of police handcuffs.
She made the imaging part of her mind zoom in on these last. A furrow of concentration appeared between her closed eyes.
Four cuffs in all, each pair separated by six inches of rubbersleeved steel chain, each with M- 17-a serial number, she assumed-stamped into the steel of the lock-plate. She remembered Gerald’s telling her, back when the game was new, that each cuff had a notched take-up arm, which made the cuff adjustable. It was also possible to shorten the chains until a prisoner’s hands were jammed painfully together, wrist to wrist, but Gerald had allowed her the maximum length of chain.
And why the hell not? she thought now. After all, it was only agame…right, Gerald? Yet now her earlier question occurred to her, and she wondered again if it had ever really been just a game for Gerald.
What’s a woman? some other voice-a UFO voice-whispered softly from a well of darkness deep inside her. A life-support systemfor a cunt.
Go away, Jessie thought. Go away, you’re not helping.
But the UFO voice declined the order. Why does a woman havea mouth and a cunt? it asked instead. So she can piss and moan at thesame time. Any other questions, little lady?
No. Given the unsettlingly surreal quality of the answers, she had no other questions. She rotated her hands inside the cuffs. The scant flesh of her wrists dragged against the steel, making her wince, but the pain was minor and her hands turned easily enough. Gerald might or might not have believed that a woman’s only purpose in life was to serve as a life-support system for a cunt, but he hadn’t tightened the cuffs enough to hurt; she would have balked at that even before today, of course (or so she told herself, and none of the interior voices were mean enough to dispute her on the subject). Still, they were too tight to slip out Of.