And for most of that time continued purring.
SEVEN
3:30 p.m.
At least she was drinking and eating a little. American cheese on white bread. Hunger kicking in, jarring loose the survival systems. At least she wasn’t going to die on them.
Like the other one.
Stephen had her tied to the chair, just blindfolded this time so she could eat, not inside the headbox. He said it was time Kath made her presence known, time for her to begin. So that was what she was doing.
Light from the single bare 100-watt bulb that dangled from the ceiling made weird ugly shadows in the corners as though things were crouching there, hemming them in. She would never get to like this room. No matter how much time she spent here.
She took the empty plate and patted Sara’s hand.
“Good,” she said. She walked to the back of the room and put the plate on the worktable and sat down in the director’s chair in front of her.
“Who are you?” Sara said. “Why am I here?” The voice wasn’t strong but it wasn’t exactly meek either.
“The Organization wants you here. Same as me.”
“You?”
“That’s right.”
She watched the woman consider it.
“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe in any Organization.”
She laughed and bent over and took her hand in both of hers, a little surprised when she didn’t try to pull away. Maybe this was going to be easier than she’d thought.
It was still too early to tell.
“You’d better believe. Look, I’m not supposed to be saying we know this but I will. Your father’s a retired high school principal. I forget what year he retired. Your mother never worked again after you were born. Strictly a homemaker from then on. She took care of you and your sister Linda who lives in Hanover, New Hampshire. She’s forty-three and single and works as a nurse on the pediatrics ward in the hospital there. You have a good friend named Annie Graham who lives in Harrison, New York, not far from where Greg lives. Greg runs a travel agency in Rye with his wife, Diana. They have a son, Alan I think his name is, who’s ten. We know your teaching schedule at Winthrop and we know all your students’ names and addresses. They’re upstairs on the kitchen table. Want me to go get them?”
She saw that Sara was crying softly, could tell by the way she was breathing. Scared crying.
“I don’t understand,” she said. And now the voice was small.
Kath gently squeezed her hand.
“You will. It’ll take a little while but trust me, you will.”
“He said something about a baby.”
“There’s plenty of time to talk about that. Just remember that the Organization’s been watching you real close and for a very long time. Same thing with us, even though we’re a part of it. They’re watching us too, see, not just you. They want to find out how this goes. It important. Believe me, Sara, I know exactly what you’re feeling. I felt the same way once. I really did. It’ll pass. You just have to give it time.”
“Why do I have to be naked? Why did he beat me?”
She withdrew her hands.
“It’s the way the Organization wants it to be. I already told you. You’ve got to go with whatever they want from you. Really, truly smit. With all your heart and soul. Just like I did. Then nobody else will get hurt. Nobody. Not even you anymore.”
“But I don’t…”
She got up. “We’ll talk again soon, I promise. But right now I’ve got a billion things to do. The place is a goddamn mess. So you just sit there awhile and think about what I said. Think real hard.”
“I don’t… I don’t even know your name.”
She almost laughed. “Don’t worry. There’s time for that too. Think of it as being on a need-to-know basis. Like in the movies, right?” She picked up the plate and flicked the wall switch and left her there in darkness thinking, first step taken. Stephen will be pleased.
It was important to please him.
EIGHT
4:45 p.m.
The headbox seemed to have gotten smaller. That was impossible she knew but the damp darkness seemed more enclosing than before. The musty-carpet smell thicker. She tried to move her head as though movement could clear the air, circulate the air inside but she could only move it slightly, half an inch or so in either direction because the back was latched to the X-frame. She was spread-eagled on the X-frame. Facing outward to whatever, whoever was out there.
She had been here about half an hour now. That was what she guessed. Guessing the time was her one form of recreation. It held no rewards because she never knew if she was right or wrong. But it was better than thinking.
Images kept skittering like night-crabs across a moonless beach.
Rushing to the plane that day, late as was usual in those days after Danny died, so late leaving her parents’ winter home in Sarasota that she almost missed the flight, a packed Freddy Laker flight where you had to seat yourself, leaning over a man in an aisle seat way in the back, breathless, saying to him is this seat taken? and the man who was Greg Glover she learned after two vodka tonics to sooth her nerves, the man then taking off his sunglasses and smiling saying no, it’s all yours.
The frozen ice. The hole in the frozen ice so small she could barely believe he’d slipped through. The surface of the ice for yards and yards around. Searching the pale bright face of it for a hand, a boot, a glimpse of clothing.
She and Annie little girls, kissing each other goodbye at her dad’s car because Annie went to Catholic school and Catholic school started earlier than public school did and it was the end of the summer so Annie had to go back, leave Rockport and Sara who wouldn’t see her now for another whole two weeks. Both of them crying the innocent tears of little girls who are wholly in love with one another and unashamed.
The ice. The face she had never found but had imagined countless times pressed up to the ice from beneath. Cold ice and drifting water.
All these memories. Good and tender. Bad and worse. Leveled somehow onto the same plane now. Each a heavy weight upon her heart as heavy as the headbox on her shoulders. Racing unbidden through her consciousness to torment her.
It was better to guess the time. How long she had been in this or that position. The exact time of day. The hour, the minute, the creeping passage of seconds.
The only game she herself had devised and not them.
She flinched when he touched her.
He smiled and mentally noted it for later. Flinching was grounds for punishment. Of course she didn’t know that yet but she would.
He strapped the leather belt around her waist and buckled it. From the belt depended half a dozen wide silver rings but he wouldn’t be needing them just now. He adjusted the belt so that the second, vertical buckle was in the center of her back and the second leather beltstrap hung directly between her legs in front. He opened the jar
