It was polite and appropriate that they were both ignoring his sizable erection. One could be consecrated in the heart, if not the body, and obviously that is what she meant.
It was a gutsy suggestion for her and one likely to get turned down. On the other hand, he supposed he could reconsider his decision to hold inside himself the pain and perhaps fear-yes, it was also fear-of the missing memory.
'Think about where I am in life, Sam,' she added.
It was an odd remark, but he understood it. There was a lot of self-awareness in Haley.
Emotionally she had been through the fire. She'd been stripped of her reputation and struggled with what was left of her dignity. The pain of her mother's humiliation lived inside her. If that weren't enough, everything she valued had been taken from her, except Ben- and now even Ben was threatened. And then there was the summer of '94, Sam's abrupt departure, and the long silence that followed. Probably years. He couldn't remember exactly how many. Haley would not have wanted to be angry when he came back, but Sam knew anger was a common escape from sorrow because anger wasn't as painful. Interestingly, she seemed to understand this about herself. It had happened with Sanker as well. If he honored Haley by telling her what had happened to him, maybe he helped her a little. Maybe he helped himself. If only he knew all of it. But he didn't know the most important part.
Sam had never told anyone, not even his mother, what had happened to Anna and him.
He pondered for a few seconds and felt the stress of indecision. It was not a familiar mental state. Normally, he made his decisions crisply and without hesitation, a habit that had kept him alive. But this was not that kind of decision. It was too big and too personal an issue to resolve in the middle of this emergency.
'Relationships come out of good times and bad times. We're having the bad times. Let's get this over with and have some good. Then we can talk.'
The disappointment in her eyes pained him.
'We can't stay more than just a few minutes,' he added as if to explain. 'We should look at the papers I took from Ben's, just in case there is more than one relevant section.'
In the end neither her pain nor frustration made him change his mind. In part he decided to tell her because putting it out in front of another human being was a moral challenge.
Partly it was because they had just faced death together, and still did face it.
'I was married to Anna Wade-'
'So the stories were true.'
'The actress,' he finished.
'She was murdered in a robbery.'
'It wasn't a robbery. We hushed the torture part for her family. It's been part of my job in life to deceive the press, and we did that. We even deceived the police because they allowed themselves, on an official level, to be deceived. There was no one to prosecute.
The assailants died. That's why you can't tell anyone.'
'The magazines said it happened at home,' Haley said.
'It didn't. We were caught by some very bad people. They wanted revenge and information. They were torturing her while I was required to watch. In the process of torturing her they began on me. It was much worse than if they were just torturing me.
'They were cutting their way up my legs. It was a woman who did the cutting; the man with the grudge watched. I remember Anna being tortured, but I can't remember the end.
I do remember that when they were ready to castrate me, they made a mistake. They wanted me to participate in some manner that was… not important. They thought they had broken me and that I would do what they wanted. They said I could save my eyesight and they would let Anna live if she could, if I cooperated in their sick game. I didn't believe them. They were just crazy enough to take that chance with me.
'There were four of them, in all. Three men and a woman. Two of the men who were torturing Anna left the room. Anna was screaming, begging to die. The man and woman loosened one of my hands; they were going to make me participate. I know I surprised them, got my fingers into the woman's eyes. That's all I can remember. They found me wandering, semiconscious, I guess. Everyone was dead, with bullets in them, including Anna.'
Sam sank a little deeper into the tub water.
'I must have gotten one of their guns and shot them. I tell myself now that I was saving us from the men, but I had to know it was a small, concrete room. Didn't I know Anna might get hit? Maybe I was willing to risk killing her to end her pain. She was pretty far gone already. Or maybe one of them shot her.'
Haley had tears in her eyes, and so did Sam.
'Every night I tell myself that I wasn't trying to hit her,' he said, 'and every night I end the matter not knowing.'
Haley put her hand on his.
'How did you escape?' she finally asked.
'We figured that it took me almost twenty-four hours to get my upper body free of the chains. Then I was able to reach one of the captors to find a key to the leg irons. I have a vivid memory re-created in my dreams of the bodies and the blood. I don't remember seeing Anna, although certainly I did see her body.'
'Who were these people?'
'A man named Trotsky. He had been the right hand of a terrorist who killed people for money. I killed Trotsky. Gaudet, his boss the terrorist, is still in prison in France, where he can't be executed because they don't do the death penalty. He's really messed up physically after what some inmates did to him. There are some badass Muslim terrorists in that jail and he has a problem with them about some money he lost. Trotsky had a brother, who was a killer, and a crazy sister, who was even more vengeful than he was.
Together they worked on getting me. I suspect Trotsky's brother took money from some others to kill me as well. The torture was for free.'
'I am so sorry,' Haley said. 'I never could have imagined. I didn't mean to…'
Sam managed a smile. 'It's okay.'
'It's such a horrible story. Especially for your wife.'
'It was much worse living it.'
Sam felt a little relief, maybe not as much as he'd hoped. He knew that things now made more sense for Haley. It still did not explain the summer of '94 and the following months. He wasn't sure there was an explanation. There was only an excuse.
'Now you've got to get to work on those papers,' he said.
While she began carefully sorting through the soggy papers, Sam let the heat soak into him; other than the immense pain of thawing out all the damaged muscle tissue, it felt good to get warm at last.
It had even felt good to tell someone.
'I'm tired of waiting to hear what the fountain of youth will do for me. And how it will do it and what it will cost me,' Sam said. 'Imagine the lines.'
She looked up for just a moment and smiled, obviously getting his dry humor. Then she went back to her reading. He saw the reflection of her in the water. She seemed completely engrossed, observing everything and saying nothing for fear that she might miss some subtlety in the sopping wet papers.
A moment before he had been sure that he was the object of her interest. Now it was the papers. It was tough losing out like that, he thought, laughing inwardly at his whimsy.
'I'm really interested in this mitochondria stuff.'
'You really don't have time to figure it out.'
'I'm a scientist. I read this stuff faster.'
'Tell me what you see.'
'You know the mitochondria are these tiny little things in your cell, like metabolic furnaces, that burn the oxygen you breathe. Each cell has about five hundred of them and it's how you get your energy. All this health- supplement pap that you read about- antioxidants in the pills, in the wine, in the dark chocolate, in the whatever-is supposed to counter what these little bad boys do when they get old. These furnaces get rusty, to borrow a not inappropriate metaphor, and then they produce the escaped oxygen molecules called free radicals that oxidize your body, in particular your DNA. As you age, your DNA doesn't copy itself quite right because of the oxidation. Hence, everybody wants an antioxidant to stop the deterioration of the DNA.'
'I got that.'
