It was as though suddenly all the fight and grit and nerve had just been sucked out of me. I looked away and bit my tongue.
“We all enjoyed that one,” Cesar said.
My mind was a blur of images. Ely in my lifeguard tower at work, laughing in the back of B.J.’s truck.
“Eddie was just warming her up. We all got a chance at her. Zeke was just gonna get his kicks and get her to talk to him, tell us what you two knew about Garrett. But she didn’t scream or nothing, so I took over. Ain’t fun unless they got some fight in ’em. Bitch just kept staring at me.”
Eddie walked over and stood behind Zeke, smiling as he watched the monitor. “This shit’s priceless, man.”
Cesar stood and joined the other men around the video monitor. “The look in her eyes. Look.” Cesar pointed to the screen as the camera zoomed in on her face. His fat fingers clawed at the glass over her eyes. “Fuckin’ terrified. I’m gettin’ hard again just watchin’ her.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, refusing to look.
“Want ’em to fast-forward to the snuff?” His guttural voice made the question hurt more. “This time it’s real, and we got it on tape—tell me that ain’t gonna stiffen a few peckers.”
I heard the sound of the machine speeding up and then a downward whine as it resumed the normal speed.
“There he is,” Zeke said. “Man just kind of lost it, and there we were, cameras rolling. Now Eddie here’s just gonna change the face and . . .”
Cesar grabbed my arm in one hand, my chin in the other and forced my face to within inches of the monitor. I hadn’t wanted to look, but when he’d grabbed me, I couldn’t help it, I’d opened my eyes.
“Man doesn’t know his own strength,” Zeke said.
“Shut up. You talk too much, man,” Eddie said.
I pressed my eyes shut, but not before I saw the close- up on Ely’s face, her eyes bulging out of the tearstained skin, a brown hand wrapped around her throat.
“Fuck you. It’s not like she’s gonna tell anybody.” Cesar laughed. “Lady Captain here just might get her own chance to be a pom star tonight.”
“Hey, asshole, I don’t give a rat’s ass what you do with her” Eddie said. “You morons don’t understand, I got real work to do here. I got to get this shit back up. Boss isn’t making money when the page is down.”
It was as though it wasn’t really happening, like I had left my own body somehow and I was hovering above this scene, seeing it from a distance, and we were all mannequins dancing around a little stage.
“Look at her,” he said, forcing me back to the present, squeezing my face harder, his fingernails digging into my skin. “Your turn’s coming,” the deep voice whispered, spraying my ear with his spit.
I struggled, trying to break free from his grasp, trying to get away from those images on that screen. One arm pulled free, and I squirmed my head out of his grasp. He grabbed my ponytail before I could get out the door and yanked back so hard I fell to the floor.
“You’re a strong bitch. We’re gonna have some fun.”
Eddie spun around in his computer chair. “Would you get the fuck outta here? How the hell am I supposed to work?”
Zeke stood, saying, “Let’s put her away. Chewy’ll keep an eye on her till we’re ready for her. Come on, boy.”
Cesar hauled me to my feet by my hair and then dragged me down past another bedroom, empty, but lit with huge bright lights, to the last door at the end of the hall. He shoved me into the room and opened the door to a walk-in closet. He pulled me close to him and put his face less than an inch from mine. He smelled of Doritos and beer, and when he spoke, I could feel the moist heat of his breath on my skin.
“You’d really get off on it, wouldn’t you, bitch?” He wrapped his free hand around my throat and began to squeeze. “You like this shit, admit it to yourself. I could make you scream good. You just think of every bad thing you ever done—I’ll make you hurt for every one.” His fingers constricted, and all air stopped. Blackness started closing in like when I’d stayed down on a dive too long. “Your friend, she was a bad little piece. She got me in the balls on the beach that night.” He sounded far away when he laughed. “Had to make her pay for that.” His hand released its grip, and I sucked in air.
“That makes you a man, Cesar? Having sex with a child?”
“Shut up, cunt.”
“You’re a freak. You’re nothing but garbage.”
“You think I give a fuck about you or that other piece of pussy, Sunshine, or whatever the hell her name is? There’s always gonna be more where she came from. They want me to fuck ’em.” He grabbed at his crotch. “They want a piece of this.”
I turned my head to the side. My face was contorted in a painful grimace, my lips pressed together my eyes squeezed shut. I wasn’t about to let him see me cry. The bastard.
Suddenly, he pushed me away so hard I fell to the ground and hit my head against something metal on the floor behind the hanging clothes.
“Ugh, you fuckin’ dog. Get the hell offa me,” he said. The door slammed, and I found myself in total darkness, feeling the warm, sticky liquid flowing from the growing bump on my forehead. “Chewy, stay.”
I heard the outer bedroom door close.
XXII
At first, I lay my head on the musty carpet, catching my breath, massaging my throat. Then I sobbed, wetting the fibers with my spit and tears. I felt vomit trying to crawl up my throat, and I swallowed it down, sick with the vision of terror in Ely’s eyes. I wasn’t certain I ever wanted to move again. Who would want to live in a world with men like Crystal, Zeke, Eddie, and Cesar? I saw that hand again, those fingers wringing her life away, and heard their laughter as they watched the video again. My mind eventually went numb as I just sobbed quietly, curled up on the floor.
When the tears stopped, I felt nothing. I slipped into a half-awake, half-asleep state, only vaguely aware of what was going on around me. Every once in a while I heard voices in the distance, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. The crack of light under the door slowly grew dimmer. That was the only way I knew that time was passing. Once the light was completely gone, and no one came to see if I was alive, I began to sense a weird disorientation. What if they were just going to leave me in here to die? No food, no water and with the way my bladder felt, I’d soon be lying in my own waste. After a while, the walls of the closet seemed as though they were closing in, then tilting. In the blackness, I lost the sense of which way was up as the room began to spin.
I forced myself to stand and spread my arms out in front of me, touching the sides of the door. Not all men are like them, I told myself. I thought about B.J., my father, my brother Pit, even Maddy. There were good, decent men out there.
I began to explore the inside of the closet. All the clothes appeared to be men’s clothes—slacks, shirts, jackets, shoes, nothing unusual or distinctive. The jackets smelled of a musky cologne and faintly of cigarette smoke, as though they had been worn only to parties or clubs. Clothes filled only half the closet. The other side was piled high with sealed cardboard boxes. I tried lifting one—it felt very heavy, like it might be filled with paper or books.
There was a safe in there, too, about three feet high. I had bumped my head on the corner and I pulled a shirt off a hanger to wipe the encrusted blood off my head.
The closet’s doorknob was a round ball, the old-fashioned sort of lockset found in the fifties houses in Lauderdale. These old doorknob locks were laughable. In the center was a depression, a hole, and if I had a bobby pin or a screwdriver I could stick it in there and turn the lock. I needed something about an inch long, maybe a little more—assuming this was the only lock on the door. I tried jiggling and rattling the knob. Sometimes in these old houses, things were loose enough you could just jiggle the lock free. It didn’t work this time, though, and from the sound of the throaty growl on the far side of the door I suddenly understood why they weren’t worried about the stupid little lock.