“You’re doing fine,” she said. “But if the ocean thing isn’t working, maybe try to think of yourself as one of those hawks who wears a hood to keep calm. And maybe, if it helps, that the falconer is your mom. Or a friend. I dunno.”
She could hear him shifting in his cot, turning on his side. Maybe he was fetal. Maybe he was thinking about how to flirt, too. Equally mindful of the bad timing of it all, the inappropriateness of it all, but willing to go out on that limb just the same.
“Remember our speed date?” he said. “How I told you I’m adopted? Just found out? Remember that part? Mom’s not so high on my list these days.”
“Oh, right,” she said. “Let’s just stick with the ocean. I’m on the floor, too. It’s sort of mushy.”
“Lot of fish, though.”
“Yeah? What kind?”
“I don’t know. But they’re tropical.”
“What are they saying?”
“Not much. I do all the talking.”
She smiled and laughed and then, for laughing, she blushed. Blushed in the dark, which bereaved the color of its biological purpose, which was to wile. So this was wiling the blind.
“Ned, do you think we’re actually in danger?” and she tried to sound in earnest, a little timid but ready to blossom at the first sign of hope. Because the fact was, she didn’t think they were in danger, but then she was not asking for his opinion so much as trying to undo the impression she had given him that she was bossy. After all, for the purpose of shooting up an ordeal with amorous content, wasn’t panic the grail? She should grope for his lapels. Weep into his collar. Fling her arms around his neck and heave with bosom cleaved to his chest.
“Definitely,” he said. “I think we’re going to die here. Unless — do you think we’re going to die?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and she meant it, because if the danger wasn’t mortal, it was spiritual, her spirit in free fall the longer this conversation failed to twin up their fears in lust.
Back and forth. She weighed her options.
At home: a sick mom and the burden of caring for this mom, which would fall to her alone. That, plus an emotional terrain that smoldered as though after a great fire but that could yield up nothing new, and in this the paradox of trauma: the past could live on in you with an energy you could never muster for the life that was happening to you now. And just think: tomorrow, she could be returned to all that. Unharmed, unchanged.
She rolled on her back and arched her spine to accommodate her wrists. She knit her shoulder blades until they hurt. As proportions went, her arms were orangutan vis-à-vis the rest of her body, so she was able to loop them under her ass and set them on her thighs. After that, the pick was easy. Thurlow’s men had frisked her but failed to consider the wire of her push-up bra, or what a girl with skill could do with it.
First thing, she took off her hood. A light shimmied under the door, dim and distant, and so the room was almost as dark when her eyes readjusted. She stood. And looked at Ned. He was on his side, legs drawn up. She tiptoed his way.
There were nice things about this man that seemed nicer for being unseen. His hair, parted down the middle, the kind you can rake through without snag — it had acquired a glow in her memory that struck out against the doom of where they were now. The same went for his hands and face — ruddy and bright, owing to joys wrought in the freeing of Anne-Janet from her darker self.
She sat cross-legged by the side of his cot. She could see the outline of his lips pressed into the burlap. His breath was warm on her face and came steadily, which meant he was asleep. She tilted her head as though they were lying next to each other and tried, just for a second, to imagine herself into the miracles she’d heard about. You wake up in the morning and someone else is there. Maybe this someone is already up and looking at you. And because you are loved, you do not think about the crust in your eyes or the eruptive skin events that have uglied your face overnight, just that this person is pressing his forehead to yours and saying hello and about to peck your lips, and because his own are so pledged in love for you, this contact seems to reprise the first kiss you ever had, because every first kiss, in its fumbling and tender way, promises the world, which means that this person who loves you has just woken you up in elegy and homage for the happiest you have ever been.
She leaned in closer. And thought: So what if he’s wearing a hood? Maybe this is better. Except just then he turned away and got on his back and arced his pelvis, which probably had to do with the cuffs and not because arousal is passed by osmosis. Either way, she did not think, just clamped her two hands over his mouth and straddled his lap.
He bucked, nearly threw her off, but she got in his ear and whispered fast, “Shhh, don’t wake the others,” and he did not buck again.
“What are you doing?” he said. “Get off me.”
“No.”
“You’re out of your handcuffs? Take off my hood.”
“No.”
“Are you crazy? What’s happening?” And when she started to rub up and down his groin, he said, “Okay, stop it. You’re scaring me.”
“What if I did it like this?” and she reached for him with her hand. “Is that better?”
“Please, stop. I don’t want to do this.”
But Anne-Janet was not listening. She unsnapped his coverall and tried to kiss her way down his stomach the way she’d seen. Ned rolled onto his side; she rolled with him. Finally, he got on his stomach and clenched his body so tight there was no way to get at him.
She backed away as though smacked. “Oh my God,” she said, and she started to cry.
“Can you take off my hood now?” he said. “It’s okay. We’re all freaking out.”
“Oh my God,” she said. “I have to get out of here.”
“Wait,” he said. Hissing almost. “Anne-Janet!” He got up and staggered in the direction of her voice.
“I am so sorry,” she said. “I’m a freak.”
“You are not. Just calm down.”
But she was already at the rebar grille, gripping the ribs until they gave, and out she went like the Incredible Hulk or one of those animals with the opposable thumbs escaping the zoo and running for its life.
She had not cried violently in years, but now the tears were coming so fast she could barely see where she was going. The house was much bigger than it had appeared from the outside — the multiple hallways and doors and rooms — and behind each, who knew, a guard in wait for the first hostage to escape. She wiped her face and ran.
The floors were tessellated and smooth underfoot, peel-back linoleum. The walls were bare and the lighting a spine of halogen bulbs recessed into the ceiling. So many ways to go, but when she heard footsteps and voices on her tail, she booked for the nearest door, which was locked. Same for each after that. Finally she just sprinted down the hall, thinking it had to go somewhere, which it did. A giant kitchen.