Too weak, too scared to defy Sweetness, or the landlord, or Sofia Huxley, there was nothing in the world left to do but stand up for herself finally and confront the first man she had bared her soul to, unaware that he was mocking her. It would take courage though, something that, being successful in her career, she thought she had plenty of. That and exotic beauty.
According to the men at Sally’s he was from a place called Whiskey. Maybe he had gone back there. Maybe not. He could be living with Miss Q. Olive, another woman he didn’t want, or he might have moved on. Whatever the case, Bride would track him, force him to explain why she didn’t deserve better treatment from him, and second, what did he mean by “not the woman”? Who? This here woman? This one driving a Jaguar in an oyster-white cashmere dress and boots of brushed rabbit fur the color of the moon? The beautiful one, according to everybody with two eyes, who runs a major department in a billion-dollar company? The one who was already imagining newer product lines — eyelashes, for example. In addition to breasts, every woman (his kind or not) wanted longer, thicker eyelashes. A woman could be cobra-thin and starving, but if she had grapefruit boobs and raccoon eyes, she was deliriously happy. Right. She would get right on it after this trip.
The highway became less and less crowded as she drove east and then north. Soon, she imagined, forests would edge the road watching her, as trees always did. In a few hours she would be in north valley country: logging camps, hamlets no older than she was, dirt roads as old as the Tribes. As long as she was on a state highway, she decided to look for a diner, eat and freshen up before driving into territory too sparse for comfort. A collection of signs on a single billboard advertised one brand of gas, four of food, two of lodging. Three miles on, Bride left the highway and turned in to the oasis. The diner she chose was spotless and empty. The smell of beer and tobacco was not recent, nor was the framed Confederate flag that nestled the official American one.
“Yeah?” The counter waitress’s eyes were wide and roving. Bride was used to that look, as well as the open mouth that accompanied it. It reminded her of the reception she got on the first days of school. Shock, as though she had three eyes.
“May I have a white omelet, no cheese?”
“White? You mean no eggs?”
“No. No yolks.”
Bride ate as much as she could of that redneck version of digestible food, then asked where the ladies’ room was. She left a five-dollar bill on the counter in case the waitress thought she was skipping. In the bathroom she confirmed that there was still reason to be alarmed by her hairless pudenda. Then standing at the mirror over the sink, she noticed the neckline of her cashmere dress was askew, slanting down so much her left shoulder was bare. Adjusting it, she saw that the shoulder slide was due neither to poor posture nor to a manufacturing flaw. The top of the dress sagged as if instead of a size 2 she had purchased a 4 and just now noticed the difference. But the dress had fit her perfectly when she started this trip. Perhaps, she thought, there was a defect in the cloth or the design; otherwise she was losing weight — fast. Not a problem. No such thing as too thin in her business. She would simply choose clothes more carefully. A scary memory of altered earlobes shook her but she dared not connect it to other alterations to her body.
While collecting the change and deciding on the tip, Bride asked directions to Whiskey.
“Ain’t all that far,” said the bug-eyed, smirking waitress. “A hundred miles, maybe one fifty. You’ll make it before dark.”
Is that what backwoods trash called “not far”? wondered Bride. One hundred and fifty miles? She gassed up, had the tires checked and followed the loop away from the oasis back onto the highway. Contrary to the waitress’s certainty, it was very dark by the time she saw the exit marked not by a number but a name — Whiskey Road.
At least it was paved, narrow and curvy but still paved. Perhaps that was the reason she trusted the high-beam headlights and accelerated. She never saw it coming. The automobile overshot a sharp bend in the road and crashed into what must have been the world’s first and biggest tree, which was circled by bushes hiding its lower trunk. Bride fought the air bag, moving so fast and in such panic she did not notice her foot caught and twisted in the space between the brake pedal and the buckled door, until trying to free it flattened her with pain. She managed to unbuckle the seat belt but nothing else helped. She lay there awkwardly on the driver’s seat, trying to ease her left foot out of the elegant rabbit-furred boot. Her efforts proved both painful and impossible. Stretching and twisting, she managed to get to her cellphone, but its face was blank except for the “no service” message. The likelihood of a passing car was dim in the dark but possible, so she pressed the car’s horn, desperate for the honk, to do more than frighten owls. It frightened nothing because it made no sound. There was nothing she could do but lie there the rest of the night, by turns afraid, angry, in pain, weepy. The moon was a toothless grin and even the stars, seen through the tree limb that had fallen like a throttling arm across the windshield, frightened her. The piece of sky she could glimpse was a dark carpet of gleaming knives pointed at her and aching to be released. She felt world-hurt — an awareness of malign forces changing her from a courageous adventurer into a fugitive.
The sun merely hinted at its rise, an apricot slice teasing the sky with a promise of revealing its whole self. Bride, whipped by body cramp and leg pain, felt a tingle of hope along with the dawn. A helmetless motorcyclist, a truck full of loggers, a serial rapist, a boy on a bike, a bear hunter — was there no one to lend a hand? While imagining who or what might rescue her, a small bone-white face appeared at the passenger’s side window. A girl, very young, carrying a black kitten, stared at her with the greenest eyes Bride had ever seen.
“Help me. Please. Help me.” Bride would have screamed but she didn’t have the strength.
The girl watched her for a long, long time, then turned away and disappeared.
“Oh, God,” Bride whispered. Was she hallucinating? If not, surely the girl had gone for help. Nobody, not the mentally disabled or the genetically violent, would leave her there. Would they? Suddenly, as they hadn’t in the dark, the surrounding trees coming alive in the dawn really scared her, and the silence was terrifying. She decided to turn on the ignition, shift into reverse and blast the Jaguar out of there — foot or no foot. Just as she turned the ignition key to the withering sound of a dead battery a man appeared. Bearded with long blond hair and slit black eyes. Rape? Murder? Bride trembled, watching him squint at her through the window. Then he left. What seemed to Bride like hours were only a few minutes before he returned with a saw and a crowbar. Swallowing and stiff with fear she watched him saw the branch from the hood then, taking a vise from his back pocket, pry and yank the door open. Bride’s scream of pain startled the green-eyed girl standing by who watched the scene with her mouth open. Carefully the man eased Bride’s foot from under the brake pedal and away from the car’s smashed door. His hair hung forward as he lifted her out of the car seat. Silently, asking no questions and offering no verbal comfort, he positioned her in his arms. With the emerald-eyed girl tagging along, he carried Bride half a mile down a sandy path leading to a warehouse-looking structure that might serve a killer as a house. Enclosed in his arms and in unrelenting pain, she said, “Don’t hurt me, please don’t hurt me,” over and over before fainting.