You’re very drunk.”
He kisses her and grabs her, and she turns her head away, tries to push his hands away, struggles and tells him no. The motorcycle key clatters to the floor as he kisses her and she resists him and tries to make him listen. He rips open her blouse. She tells him to stop, tries to stop him as he tears at her clothes. She tries to push away his hands, and tells him he’s hurting her, and then she doesn’t struggle with him anymore because he’s somebody else. He isn’t Marino. He’s a stranger attacking her inside her house. She sees the pistol in the back of his jeans as he drops to his knees, hurting her with his hands and mouth.
“Marino? This is what you want? To rape me? Marino?” She sounds so calm and unafraid, her voice seems to come from outside her body. “Marino? Is this what you want? To rape me? I know you don’t want that. I know you don’t.”
He suddenly stops. He releases her, and the air moves and is cool on her skin, wet from his saliva and chafed and raw from his violence and his beard. He covers his face with his hands and hunches forward on his knees and hugs her around her legs and begins to sob like a child. She slides the pistol out of his waistband as he cries.
“Let go.” She tries to move away from him. “Let me go.”
On his knees, he covers his face with his hands. She drops out the pistol’s magazine and pulls back the slide to make sure there isn’t a round in the chamber. She tucks the gun in the drawer of a table by the door and picks up the motorcycle key. She hides it and the magazine inside the umbrella stand. She helps Marino up, helps him back to the guest bedroom off the kitchen. The bed is small, and he seems to fill every inch of it as she makes him lie down. She pulls off his boots and covers him with a quilt.
“I’ll be right back,” she says, leaving the light on.
In the guest bath, she fills a glass with water and shakes four Advil tablets from the bottle. She covers herself with a robe, her wrists aching, her flesh raw and burning, the memory of his hands and mouth and tongue sickening. She bends over the toilet and gags. She leans against the edge of the sink and takes deep breaths and looks at her red face in the mirror and seems as much a stranger to herself as he is. She splashes herself with cold water, washes out her mouth, washes him away from every place he touched. She washes away tears, and it takes a few minutes to get control of herself. She returns to the guest room where he’s snoring.
“Marino. Wake up. Sit up.” She helps him, plumps pillows behind him. “Here, take these and drink the entire glass of water. You need to drink a lot of water. You’re going to feel like hell in the morning, but this will help.”
He drinks the water and takes the Advil, then turns his face to the wall as she brings him another glass. “Turn off the light,” he says to the wall.
“I need you to stay awake.”
He doesn’t answer her.
“You don’t have to look at me. But you must stay awake.”
He doesn’t look at her. He stinks like whisky and cigarettes and sweat, and the smell of him reminds her and she feels her soreness, feels where he has been and is nauseated again.
“Don’t worry,” he says thickly. “I’ll leave and you won’t ever have to see me. I’ll vanish for good.”
“You’re very, very drunk and don’t know what you’re doing,” she says. “But I want you to remember it. You need to stay awake long enough so you’ll remember this tomorrow. So we can get past it.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I almost shot him. I wanted to so bad. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Who did you almost shoot?” she says.
“At the bar,” he says in his drunken gabble. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Tell me what happened at the bar.”
Silence as he stares at the wall, his breathing heavy again.
“Who did you almost shoot?” she asks loudly.
“He said he’d been sent.”
“Sent?”
“Made threats about you. I almost shot him. Then I come over here and acted just like him. I should kill myself.”
“You’re not going to kill yourself.”
“I should.”
“That will be worse than what you just did. Do you understand me?”
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t look at her.
“If you kill yourself, I won’t feel sorry for you and I won’t forgive you,” she says. “Killing yourself is selfish, and none of us will forgive you.”
“I’m not good enough for you. I never will be. Go on and say it and get it over with once and for all.” He talks as if he has rags in his mouth.
The phone on the bedside table rings, and she picks it up.
“It’s me,” Benton says. “You saw what I sent? How are you?”
“Yes, and you?”
“Kay? Are you all right?”
“Yes, and you?”
“Christ. Is someone there?” he says, alarmed.
“Everything’s fine.”
“Kay? Is someone there?”
“We’ll talk tomorrow. I’ve decided to stay home, work in the garden, ask Bull to come over and help.”
“You’re sure? You sure you’re okay with him?”
“I am now,” she says.
Four o’clock in the morning, Hilton Head. Crashing waves spread white foam on the beach as if the heaving sea is frothing at the mouth.
Will Rambo is quiet on the wooden steps, and he walks the length of the boardwalk and climbs over the locked gate. The faux-Italianate villa is stucco with multiple chimneys and archways, and a sharply pitched red barrel-tile roof. In the back are copper lights, and a stone table with a clutter of filthy ashtrays and empty glasses, and not so long ago, her car key. Since then, she has used the spare, although she drives infrequently. Mostly, she goes nowhere, and he is silent as he moves about, and palmetto trees and pines sway in the wind.
