He might’ve just stole it, the man said. It’s not on the road here.
I don’t see why he would have, Justin said stubbornly, hoping the words into truth.
Why didn’t he take the car? Nice car. I like these European cars.
He tried, Justin said, reaching to hold Janna’s quivering shoulder. He couldn’t drive standard.
A momentary silence, then the man burst out in snorty guffaws. Oh, now that’s too good! he said finally. Guy couldn’t drive standard!
I can’t hold it, Janna said. Oh god.
It’s all right, Justin whispered.
Oh god, get me out of here, please!
Go call the cops now, please! Justin yelled.
All right, yeah, I will so. I will now. But I was just wondering something first...
What?
Got nothing but shit for luck these days. Never the luck, the wife says. If you know what I’m saying. Could you give me a little retainer?
A what?
You know, a retainer. It’s legal talk, like on TV. A fee. He paused and then said, firmly, Slip me out some money, whatever you got. I need it. Then I’ll call the cops for you. There’s a pay phone up the street.
I told you, we were just robbed!
Justin, wait.
We don’t have a cent. How the fuck can you ask—
Justin!
Now hang on a minute, chief — I told you, I’m broke, and I’m going to be doing you a favor. I mean, I prefer not to have anything to do with cops if it’s up to myself. This is going out on a limb for me. It’s not like you can’t afford it. Look at this car. This fucking Volvo.
But we—
It’s okay, Janna said, I have something. Some money.
What? Justin said.
Just slip whatever you got through the crack, here by the latch. I can pry, maybe. I got some keys here.
My keys, Justin said. Janna, what are you—
I always keep a twenty separate, she said, in case.
Of course, Justin whispered.
What?
Of course you do, he told her, and now in his mind he saw, not with doting amusement but a stressed rage, Janna opening doors with her hooked pinkie, or with the same fey digit keying in her PIN at the automatic teller. This although, as he’d told her, on any given day a person encountered a dozen infectious agents which, if you were weakened enough, could make you ill or worse. But she was strong — probably all the more so for her years of working with the public at the bistro, where she also did the pinkie thing. Where it must be seen as a stylish or campy affectation, not another symptom of her leery, meticulous nature.
A twenty is good, the man said. Try to slip it through here.
No! Justin said. Put the money away, Janna. He was groping in the dark, flashing the LED, trying to find her hand.
Justin, for God’s sake, I’m going to get us out of here. Someone has to.
Let her give me the money, asshole. The voice was closer now, the man kneeling, it seemed. I think you can slip it out here.
How do we know you’ll even help us, Justin said, if we give you the money?
It’s like you got a choice here? The voice was sneering. Justin inhaled sharply. Then the man added, Duh! — and this, for Justin, was the end. This soft little duh.
Fuck you! You can take our keys and your phone call and your — shove them up your ass, if you know how to find it. And I’m going to find you tomorrow! The cops are going to—
A horrific slamming beat down on them from above, then it seemed to emanate from all directions, a pummeling they felt inside, slower and steadier than their bolting hearts, as the man hammered the trunk with a fist or the flat of his hand. It could have been a street gang smashing the car with tire irons, bats. Justin rushed his hands to his ears and then to Janna’s ears, to protect what was left of her nerves. Stop! he cried. The slamming went on, Janna making a steady high whine of pain or terror. He tried pushing up on the trunk with his fist to absorb the vibrations. He rammed his palm upward once, a feeble counterblow the man nevertheless must have felt, because now he whacked the metal harder and faster. Justin curled on the floor of the trunk, clamping his palms over Janna’s ears, then over his own, back and forth. Though their bodies were jammed together at many points, in this extremity he was fully alone. She must feel the same. He guessed she must feel the same. The beating ended. Heavy footsteps stalked away. The night was quiet again. She was breathing slower — small, sobby catches of breath coming at longer intervals. There was a smell like ammonia and he thought he felt dampness through the right knee of his jeans. He rested a hand on her hip. She seemed to be drifting into a kind of sleep, or a gradual faint, her nervous system, he guessed, no longer able to take the stress.
Now that he didn’t have a conscious Janna to coax along, the full weight of his own fear and anger returned. He sobbed for a moment, no tears, eyelids clamped on dryness. Not for the first time he wondered if they actually could suffocate in here. Maybe that was why she’d lost consciousness. His breathing felt tight, but that could just be fear. The trauma of his head blow. A car passed, then another, and he made no effort to cry out.
After a time, soft footsteps approached.
Hello! Please help us! He tried to shout gently, afraid of ripping Janna from her stupor.
Is someone in there? A soft tone, a sort of eunuch voice — the vocal equivalent of the footsteps. Justin explained things, trying to sound calm, murmuring through the crack through which he felt, just once, a cool breath of air. The man listened with a few faint sounds of encouragement. He seemed to be kneeling close to Justin’s mouth. The man was an orderly, he said, on his way to the hospital to start his shift on the maternity ward. It was almost 5 A.M. He would flag down the first car he saw, he said, and get somebody to phone the police, or he would find a pay phone, or call from the hospital if all else failed. That would be ten minutes from now. He would run. The odd, adenoidal voice trailed off, and soft steps — rubber-soled, Justin guessed — jogged away into the night.
Justin left his head against the cool of the metal, his mouth as near as possible to the crack from which that one clean breath of air had seemed to seep. As another draft reached him, tears surged into his eyes with a wide-angle shot of great vaporless skies and fenceless emerald meadows... like a tourist still of the prairies, although he could smell the fields. There would be air enough, at least. The police would come soon.
Surely, whatever happened, they would live differently now.
A car was nearing slowly. It cruised past — perhaps the police, searching for the Volvo they had been told to look for. But the car didn’t double back. Another passed, then another. The sparse traffic of early dawn. It was 5:12. In the eerie light of his watch, her sleeping face was peaceful except for the abiding crease between her eyes. Now she was nestled hard against him in the cold, his arm tight around her, his hand splayed wide on her back to cover as much of her as he could. Were old married couples ever buried in the same coffin? he wondered. He had never heard of it, but surely it happened. Or was there some law against it? Another half hour passed and the little predawn rush hour seemed to end. Why was he not mystified, or at least puzzled, by this latest lack of help, or by its slowness? He felt just numb. There was never any telling. Now and then other cars came from the west or from the east, but none slowed or stopped. Real help would come eventually, of course — the sidewalks would soon be thronged. Another hour or two. Three at most. What was another hour or two in a lifetime together?
A curious thing he noticed in the years after: in company, he and Janna would often discuss that night, either collaborating to broach the story on some apt conversational cue (which they would both recognize without having to exchange a glance), or readily indulging a request from guests, or hosts, to hear it for the first time, or yet again. And even when passing through a troubled spell in their marriage, they would speak of each other’s actions that night only in proud, approving ways. Janna with her granite will, he would say, had faced a claustrophobic’s worst nightmare and remained the more rational of them throughout. She’d probably have got us out of there hours earlier if I’d just listened. Justin, she would insist, had been competent and forceful the way she had always wanted him to be and had kept her from totally “losing it.” Justin would then profess chagrin at how he himself had lost it, screaming at their potential savior, though in fact he was partial to the memory of that recklessly manly tantrum — and on Janna’s face, as she watched him replay the scene, a suspended half-smile would appear, a look of fond exasperation. But when the story was done and they left to drive home, or their guests did, a silence would slip between them — not a cold or embarrassed silence, but a pensive, accepting one — and they would say nothing more of that night or its latest rendition. When they were alone together, in fact, they never spoke a word of it.