Right to Life

She felt the heavy weight at her collarbones.

The chafe of leather on wrists and ankles.

Then the cold touch of metal just below her right wrist, sudden, seemingly out of nowhere. Felt it travel from wrist to elbow-joint and stop there. Then from elbow-joint to armpit, slowly, a sharp prick at the delicate flesh there of a knife or sharp scissors and then travelling again, exploring the slope of breast to pause and prick once more at her fear-swollen nipple, her body jerking back then and the blade moving down again sliding over her trembling stomach to her navel and stopping to poke her harder this time at the tender fleshy remains of what once had linked her to life and then moving on.

She felt rough fingers graze her shoulder pulling away the strap of her slip and then felt that side go slack against her breast and fingers on the other shoulder and then the slip falling softly away across her thighs. The blade inserted itself thin and cold between her panties and the flesh of her hip on the right and she felt it pull and cut and now she was completely exposed to the room and the knife and the man who was doing the cutting, the fingers were a man’s fingers she thought, felt herself choking inside the box on tears and mucus, then felt the left side go.

She was naked but for the box. But for the insanity of the box.

Naked and against all reason ashamed to be.

She was glad he couldn’t see her face reflect her shame.

And feeling that shame despite the fact that her body had done nothing to cause it, that she had done nothing to cause it, feeling that made her angry. So that the first harsh access of fear began to bleed and blend and fade into stubborn black anger and finally to a strange defiant pride which was the other side of shame.

She hung suspended. Open.

Waiting.

* * *

“Lady’s got guts,” he said.

Kath agreed. Though she said nothing, merely watched him take a bite of the half-eaten tuna sandwich, chew and swallow. And then munch at the potato chips which surrounded it on his plate.

The cat sat in front of them near the X-frame, glancing back at the woman naked on the frame and then nervously at each of them, interested in their sandwiches, wondering who to try to hit up for a bite of tuna, but also clearly interested in this strange new arrival standing here. Stephen was eating while Kath as yet was not. She figured the cat would eventually make her move on Stephen.

It was just The Cat. It had no name. Last summer there’d been moles in the back yard ruining the lawn and they’d noticed the occasional water rat down by the brook. So they’d got the cat from the ASPCA to drive the moles and rats away and the cat was successful at that in an amazingly short time so they decided to let her stay, figuring that if moles tried once they might just try again. The cat was the color of champaign with streaks and spots of white, with one almost-perfect circle of white behind each of her front haunches. Neither of them really cared much for cats but they fed her and paid for her shots and put up with the dead or dying birds or mice she brought home now and then, dropping them on the back porch like some disgusting present.

She watched the cat inch toward Stephen. She’s been right about the cat’s decision. Stephen looked up and saw her and kicked at the air in front of her and she was only a cat but she wasn’t stupid. She backed away. Sat back and seemed to ponder her luck with Kath.

She took a bite of her sandwich and thought that it definitely needed more mayo. She was actually surprised Stephen hadn’t started complaining. But they were out of mayo. She’d forgotten to put it down on the shopping list again.

She was forgetting too much lately. He was always telling her and she thought he was probably right.

Maybe it was stress or something. She didn’t know.

But she agreed with him that this Sara Foster person had nerve. Was probably not going to be all that easy to subdue and subvert. She knew first-hand what the headbox was like and to have calmed down so fast took guts all right.

She wondered if he’d chosen correctly.

Though for some reason he was sure he had. Intuition, he said. The way she walks.

Follow her. Get her name.

“Did you phone in all the stuff to Sandy like I said?”

She nodded.

“What’d he say?”

“He said no problem, give him an hour. The mom and dad’s phone number are probably a New York exchange, he thought maybe somewhere in Westchester or Long Island. The Winthrop School is definitely Manhattan. So he’ll get us the street addresses on those and trace her boyfriend’s plates. He asked was there anything else and I said I guess we’d get back to him.”

“Good. We’ll go through the rest of her address book tonight, see if there’s anything else we can use.”

“Jeez, Stephen. I wanted to watch that movie tonight.”

She took another bite of the sandwich. Wished it had some chopped celery in it. The damn thing was way too dry.

He glared at her.

“Couldn’t we go through her book after the movie?”

“No, we couldn’t go through it after the movie. Can’t you fucking prioritize?”

She wished he wouldn’t use that voice with her. That condescending tone.

She knew better than to argue with him per se. But she wasn’t exactly ready to let it go at that either.

“You were going to get the VCR fixed. I mean, I could’ve taped it.”

“Fuck the VCR! Jesus! What’s more important, Kath? This or your goddamn movie? Do you realize what we’ve done here? Do you remember what’s going on? Do you realize how important this is?”

Important to who? she thought. But she didn’t want to say that to him either. It was an ego thing and she didn’t want to insult him. Stephen prided himself on being a careful hunter and a good profiler of people and a very organized personality. He thought that he had managed this pretty much perfectly so far. He also thought that it was important, that it wasn’t just a matter of his own satisfaction.

She wasn’t so sure about that part.

He saw the look on her face though and relented.

Good. She really did want to see the movie.

“What’s it called?” he said.

“It’s an HBO Original Movie. It’s called COVEN and it’s based on a book I really liked a lot.”

The cat made up its mind and walked over. She picked off a pinch of tuna and held it out to her. She didn’t much like it anyway.

He sighed. “All right,” he said. “After the goddamn movie. But you’ve got to get more serious about this, Kath.”

“Jeez, Stephen. How much more serious can I get? I drove the car, I brought home the pentathol from the hospital, risked my job, risked arrest. I shot her up for you for godsakes! I’m in this up to my neck, y’know what I mean?”

The cat was looking for more tuna. She picked off a chunk and dropped it on the floor. The cat purred and set in.

“I know. But from here on in everything’s got to go by the book. Exactly by the book. And it’s going to be a very long haul. We’ve got to be diligent as hell.”

“Don’t worry. I will be.”

She got up and walked over to his chair and bent over and kissed him. He smelled like tuna and Old Spice aftershave. She glanced at Sara Foster five feet away, still breathing hard but managing to control it, a bead of sweat rolling down off her collarbone from inside the box. She thought that for a woman her age Sara had a damn good body. Her pubic hair was bikini-waxed, unlike her own. She thought she’d like to get that done someday but there was never enough money around for extravagances like a bikini wax. The tan-line from her two-piece was very clear. Forget about the clumsy headbox and she was very attractive. Made her feel sort of dumpy, tell the truth.