A hammering blow to her gut. Her breath froze in her chest as her diaphragm compressed like a vise. The airless seconds passed. The moment her lungs finally expanded, he hit her again.
Alicia was having a little trouble focusing. Focusing and breathing and thinking. She braced herself for another blow, but none arrived; she became aware that the man had opened the door. Three figures stepped through. They were carrying a kind of bench, waist-high, with a broad frame at its base.
“I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine. This is Sod. You’ve actually already met.”
Alicia’s vision gradually sharpened. Something was wrong with the man’s face. Or, rather, one side of his face, which looked like a slab of inconsistently cooked meat, raw at the center and blackened at the edges. Half the man’s hair had burned away, as had most of his nose. His left eye looked melted, vulcanized to a runny jelly.
“Yuck,” Alicia managed to reply.
“Sod here was in the holding area when you decided to shoot a tank full of liquid propane. He’s not so happy about it.”
“All in a day’s work. Nice to meet you, Sod. That’s quite a name, ‘Sod.’ ”
“Sod is a man of special enthusiasms. You could say the name is well earned. He has a bit of a bone to pick with you.” The man in the suit addressed the other two: “Tie her down. On second thought, wait a second.”
The blows fell and fell. The face. The body. By the time the man had exhausted himself, Alicia was barely feeling any of it. Pain had become something else—distant, vague. A rattle of chains and a release of pressure on her wrists. She was facing the floor, her waist straddling the bench and her feet bound to its frame, spread wide. Her trousers were yanked from her body.
“A little privacy for our friend here,” the first man said, and Alicia heard the door closing, and then the sound, ominous and final, of tumblers turning in the lock.
51
Every night, as Amy and Greer journeyed northward, she dreamed of Wolgast. Sometimes they were on the carousel. Sometimes they were driving in a car, the little towns and the green spring countryside flowing past, mountains looming in the distance, their faces shining with ice. Tonight they were in Oregon, at the camp. They were in the main room of the lodge, sitting across from each other on the floor, their legs folded Indian-style, and on the floor between them was the Monopoly board with its squares of faded color and money in ordered piles and Amy’s little hat and Wolgast’s little automobile and Wolgast tossing the dice from a cup and moving his piece forward to St. Charles Place, site of one of Amy’s six (six!) hotels. The room was warm from the stove, and outside the windows a dry snow was falling through the velvety darkness and the deep winter cold.
“For Pete’s sake,” he groaned.
He doled out the bills. His exasperation was false; he wanted to lose. He told her she was lucky, making it so with his words. You’re lucky, Amy.
Round and round their pieces traveled. More money changed hands. Park Place, Illinois Avenue, Marvin Gardens, the hilariously named “B. & O.” Amy’s stack of money grew as Wolgast’s shrank toward zero. She bought railroads and utilities, she had built her houses and hotels everywhere, a gauntlet of ownership that enabled her to erect more, blanketing the board. Understanding this accelerating mathematics was the key to the game.
“I think I need a loan,” Wolgast confessed.
“Try the bank.” She was grinning with victory. Once he borrowed money, the end would fall swiftly; he would toss up his arms in surrender. Then they would assume their customary places on the sofa, a blanket drawn up to their chests, and take turns reading to each other. Tonight’s book: H. G. Wells,
He spilled the dice onto the board. A three and a four. He moved his car ahead and landed on “Luxury Tax,” with its little diamond ring.
“Not again.” He rolled his eyes and paid up. “It’s so wonderful to be here with you.” He lifted his eyes past her, to the window. “It sure is snowing out there. How long has it been snowing?”
“I think it’s been snowing a long time.”
“I’ve always loved it. It makes me remember being a kid. It always feels like Christmas when it snows.”
The wood in the stove crackled. All through the dense forest the snow fell and fell. Morning would break with a soft white light and silence, though in the place they were, morning would not come.
“Every year my parents took me to see
“Some things do.”
“What kind of things?”
“The things we like to remember. The love we’ve felt for people.”
“The way I love you,” said Wolgast.
Amy nodded.
“Because I do, you know,” he said. “Did I ever tell you that?”
“You didn’t need to say it. I always knew. I knew it from the start.”
“No, I should have said it.” His tone was regretful. “It’s better when it’s said.”
A silence descended, deep as the forest, deep as the snow that fell upon it.
“Something is different about you, Amy.” He was studying her face. “Something’s changed.”
“I think that it has, yes.”
A soft darkness was moving in from the edges. It always happened this way, like lights going down on a stage until all that remained was the two of them.
“Well, whatever it is,” he said, and grinned, “I like it.” A moment passed, then: “Did you tell Carter how sorry I was?”
“He knows.”
Wolgast was gazing past her. “That’s something I can never forgive myself for. I knew it just to look at him. He loved that woman with his whole heart.” He dropped his eyes to the Monopoly board. “Looks like we’re done here. I don’t know how you do it. I’ll get you next time.”
“Would you like to read?”
They took their place on the couch beneath the woolen blanket. Mugs of hot cocoa sat on the table, having arrived, like everything else, of their own accord. Wolgast lifted the book and riffled the pages until he found the right one.
“
“I love you, too,” said Amy, nestling against him.
And in this manner they passed an infinity of hours, the barest blink of an eye, until the darkness, a blanket in its own right, settled down upon them.
52
They followed the eastern supply line north to Texarkana, taking food and fuel and sleeping in the hardboxes. Their vehicle was one of Tifty’s, a small cargo truck retrofitted as a portable, which they would soon need: north of Little Rock they’d be sheltering in the open. Fuel was a problem they didn’t have, Tifty explained. The truck could carry an extra two hundred gallons in reserve, and on his trip north with Greer and Crukshank, fifteen years ago,
