“You waited for six hours. I died on the table, but they brought me back.” I know these words, this story. It is the only history I have.
“Your head had been badly damaged. Of your many injuries, your cranial injury was the most worrisome, they told me. You might never regain consciousness, they told me. And if you did, you might remember nothing. Or some things but not others. Or everything. Or you might be paralyzed, or have a stroke. With the damage to your brain, there was no way to know until you woke up.”
“And I almost didn’t wake up.”
“I had to leave eventually, but I came back the next day, to check on you.”
“And the next, and the next.” I know all the beats, all the pauses, where to say my lines. I can breathe. I can work my lungs: inflate, deflate; inhale, exhale. Flex my fingers, blink my eyes, focus on curling my toes. Familiar exercises.
“The police found the crime scene where you’d been attacked. It was murder. You had a family, but they’d been murdered. And you’d witnessed it. Seen it all. Barely survived.”
“And he’s still out there.”
“Waiting for you to show your face. Waiting to make sure you can’t ever tell anyone what you know.”
“But I don’t know anything. I can’t remember anything.” This is true. This is a part of the ritual, but it is true.
“I know that, and you know that. But he doesn’t. The murderer is out there, and knows you survived, and knows you saw everything.”
“You’ll protect me.” Another truth.
One of very few. I am protected. Provided for. Kept safe.
Kept.
“I will protect you. You have to trust me, X. I’ll keep you safe, but you have to trust me.”
“I trust you, Caleb.” Those four words, I must bite them out. Sometimes, I do not believe them; other times, I do. Tonight is the former.
It is like eating an orange, trying to separate the seeds from the flesh and spit out the seeds only. There is truth, but also lies. Trust, but something bitter as well, something foul.
“Good.” Fingers in my thick black hair. Smoothing. Petting. “Sleep now.”
Click. Darkness now, a blanket settling over me, the noise machine soothing me with gently crashing waves on an imaginary shore. I let the sound of the waves take me away, like floating away on a tide.
Distantly, I hear the door open, close.
I am alone.
THREE
The light of dawn brings with it shame. I am weak. I was weak. The nightmares, they sap me of my strength. Turn me into this creature, this soft, vulnerable thing, all underbelly and no armor. Starved for oxygen, starved for light, hungry for touch to remind me that the dreams are only fiction, to remind me that I am safe, I turn to the only comfort I can find.
The ritual.
The words.
The history.
But in the light of day—showered and dressed, hair braided and twisted into a knot at the back of my head, makeup carefully applied, feet sheathed in expensive heels—garbed in my armor, I am not that mewling kitten, and I despise her. If I could get my claws into that version of myself, I would shred her without mercy, tear her to bits. Shake her until her teeth clack together, give her a taste of the verbal venom I use to keep errant rich boys in line. Tell her a lady does not show fear. A lady does not cry in front of anyone. A lady does not ever show weakness. Chin up, I’d say. Back straight. Find your dignity, put it on like a suit of armor.
I do those things. Scour myself of emotion. Turn away from the mirror in my walk-in closet, away from the temptation to examine the scars on my belly, my arms, my shoulder, beneath the roots of my hair on the left side of my skull, midway up between the top of my ear and the crown of my head. There are no scars. No reminders of a lost past. No weakness, no nightmares, no need for comfort.
I am X.
It is just past five in the morning. I prepare a breakfast of free-range egg whites, hand-ground wheat toast with a thin scrim of organic butter. Slice open a grapefruit, cover half with plastic wrap and return it to the refrigerator, tap a few granules of Truvia onto each wedge of the grapefruit. Black tea, no sugar or milk. Organic vitamin supplements.
Later, between clients, I will spend an hour on the rowing machine, and then an hour doing yoga. Then there will be lunch: a salad of fresh, organically grown spinach, walnuts, dried cranberries, crumbles of bleu cheese, and a drizzle of vinaigrette, a bowl of fresh fruit sliced and mixed, a bottle of distilled, deionized water. Or, alternatively, a superfoods smoothie, green, bitter, and healthy.
An extra twenty minutes in the gym, I’d been told. Trim down, that meant. The diet and exercise instruction had come with the packet I received every morning, a large manila envelope slipped under the door, containing the dossiers on my clients for the day and the attendant contracts.
Timed correctly, there are always a few extra minutes after breakfast and before my first client of the day. I finish breakfast at 5:45 A.M., and my first client arrives at 6:15 A.M.; the earliest slot is reserved for the most difficult of clients, those most in need of a jarring lesson. If you cannot make the early time, you fail the course, and you are charged the termination and grievance fee.
In the thirty minutes to myself, before William Drake arrives, I stand at the window in the living room, staring down at the bustling streets below. This is my favorite pastime, watching the people scurry here and there, talking on their cell phones, newspapers tucked under business-suit arms, slim pencil dresses slit just so in the back and hugging stockinged legs. I imagine their stories.
That man, there, in the charcoal suit just a little too loose around the middle, shoulder pads a little too thick, slacks a little long at the heel. Balding, a tea-saucer-sized bare spot at the back of his head. Talking on a cell phone, hand gesturing frantically, angrily, forefinger stabbing the air. Red in the face. He’s a struggling businessman, fighting upstream in a cutthroat business. Stocks, maybe. Or law. Corporate law. He’s always behind, just barely not making it. A wife, a young son. He’s older than his wife by several years, and his son is just starting school. He’s old enough that taking care of a child on top of fighting to make it at the firm is a Sisyphean task. His wife married him because she thought their fortunes would improve, a promotion would put them in an easier place, and she needed a green card, maybe. There’s affection, but no real love. He’s too busy for love, too busy clocking sixty or eighty hours per week trying to make the exorbitant New York City rent. They live in the Bronx, maybe, so she can be nearer to her family, because she needs help. She’s probably working a job on the side while her son goes to school, stashing away money unbeknownst to her husband, because she’s losing faith in his ability to take care of them. Enough that she could move out and provide for her son if worse came to worst.
It is a pleasant distraction, focusing on the fictional, normal lives of random people. It allows me to safely wonder what life is like out there, for them. Safely, because to wonder what such a life out there would be like for me? That’s dangerous. A threat to my sanity, which depends on a careful balancing act.
I hear the faint ding of the elevator arriving. I glance at the Venetian-style wall clock: 6:10 A.M.; five minutes early. But a moment or two passes and there is no knock at the door. I move across the room, keeping my heel clicks as silent as possible, and stand by the door, listening.
“Yeah, I’m almost there,” you say, your voice low. “I fucking hate these early-ass appointments. No, my dad makes me go. Some kind of stupid corporate training, basically. Make me a better leader, bullshit like that. Put my ass in line. No, man, it’s not like that. I can’t really get into it. No, for real, I’m not allowed to talk about it. I signed a contract, and if I fuck this up my dad’s going to cut me off totally. After what happened with that slut Yasmin, I’m on real thin ice with him, so I’ve got to toe the fucking line. . . . Or what? Or he’ll basically gut the position of president out of the charter and turn all the power over to the board, which means I won’t inherit dick when he retires. He’s got the documents drawn up. He showed them to me. No, man, I fucking saw them, okay? It was after he got the judge to let me out on bail. He had to pay a shitload of money to keep the whole thing quiet. Paid Yasmin like half a mil to keep her fat mouth shut about what happened. My plan? My plan is to go along with this training program, keep my dad happy, play the game. I’ve got friends on the inside, on the board, certain members who are unhappy with where Dad’s been taking the company. If I can string things along another year or two, I can probably work a little magic behind the scenes, steal the whole shit show from the old fucker, and I mean pull a real-deal coup d’état. And as soon as I’ve got my hands on the company . . . man, I’ll be set. I’ve got plans . . . no, I can’t make it out tonight. I’ve got . . . other plans. . . . No, I let that bitch go, she was a screamer. This is a new one. She’s all wrapped up like a sweet little present. She ain’t wearing a damn thing except the handcuffs, and I didn’t even have to gag her. No, you asshole, you can’t help. Last time I let you help, you took it way too fucking far, and I had to pay the slut to keep her from yapping about what your stupid ass did to her. I’ve told you, there’s an art to it. Listen, dude, I’m gonna be late, I’ve gotta go. The bitch that runs this show doesn’t fuck around, I can tell you that much for free. Anyway, for real, I’ve got to go. And Brady? Stay the fuck away from my place, okay? I’m serious. I’ll kill you for fucking real if you go anywhere near her. All right, bye.”