“Shut up.” Jessie began to pump her arms up and down faster. The chains jingled; the cuffs rattled. “Shut up, you’re horrible.”
He planned it, Jessie. Don’t you understand? It wasn’t just some spur-of-the-moment thing, a sex-starved father copping a quick feel; he planned it.
“You lie,” Jessie snarled. Sweat rolled down from her temples in large clear droplets.
Do I? Well, ask yourself this-whose idea was it for you to wear the sundress? The one that was both too small and too tight? Who knew you’d be listening-and admiring-while he maneuvered around your mother? Who had his hands on your tits the night before, and who was wearing gym-shorts and nothing else on the day of?
Suddenly she imagined Bryant Gumbel in the room with her, natty in a three-piece suit and gold wrist-chain, standing here by the bed while a guy with a Mini-cam stood beside him, panning slowly up her almost naked body before focusing on her sweaty, blotchy face. Bryant Gumbel doing a live remote with The Incredible Handcuffed Woman, leaning forward with a microphone to ask her, When did you first realize your father might have had the hots for you, Jessie?
Jessie stopped pumping her arms and closed her eyes. There was a closed, stubborn look on her face. No more, she thought. I guess I can live with the voices of Ruth and the Goodwife if I have to… even with the assorted UFOs who chip in their two cents” worth every once in awhile… but I draw the line at doing a live interview with Bryant Gumbel while dressed in nothing but a pair of pee-stained panties. Even in my imagination I draw the line at that.
Just tell me one thing, Jessie, another voice said. No UFO here; it was the voice of Nora Callighan. One thing and we’ll consider the subject closed, at least for now and probably forever, Okay?
Jessie was silent, waiting, wary.
When you finally lost your temper yesterday afternoon-when you finally kicked out-who were you kicking at? Was it Gerald?
“Of course it was Ger-” she began, and then broke off as a single image, perfectly clear, filled her mind. It was the white string of drool which had been hanging from Gerald’s chin, She saw it elongate, saw it fall to her midriff just above the navel. Only a little spit, that was all, no big deal after all the years and all the passionate kisses with their mouths open and their tongues duelling; she and Gerald had swapped a fair amount of lubrication, and the only price they’d ever paid was a few shared colds.
No big deal, that was, until yesterday, when he’d refused to let her go when she wanted, needed, to be let go. No big deal until she’d smelled that flat sad mineral smell, the one she associated with the well-water at Dark Score, and with the lake itself on hot summer days… days like July 20th, 1963, for instance.
She had seen spit; she had thought spunk.
No, that’s not true, she thought, but she didn’t need to summon Ruth to play devil’s advocate this time; she knew it was true. It’s his goddam spunk-that had been her exact thought, and after that she had ceased thinking altogether, at least for awhile. Instead of thinking she bad launched that reflexive countering movement, driving one foot into his stomach and the other into his balls. Not spit but spunk; not some new revulsion at Gerard’s game but that old stinking horror suddenly surfacing like a seamonster.
Jessie glanced at the huddled, mutilated body of her husband. Tears pricked her eyes for a moment, and then the sensation passed. She had an idea that the Survival Department had decided tears were a luxury she could not afford, at least for the time being. Still, she was sorry-sorry Gerald was dead, yes, of course, but even sorrier she was here, in this situation.
Her eyes shifted to thin air a little above Gerald, and Jessie produced a shabby, pained smile.
“I guess that’s all I’ve got to say right now, Bryant. Give my best to Willard and Katie, and by the way-would you mind unlocking these handcuffs before you go? I’d really appreciate it.”
Bryant didn’t answer. Jessie wasn’t all that surprised.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
If you’re going to live through this experience, Jess, I suggest you stop rehashing the past and start deciding what you’re going to do with the future… starting with the next ten minutes or so. I don’t think that dying of thirst on this bed would he very pleasant, do you?
No, not very pleasant… and she thought that thirst would be far from the worst of it. Crucifixion had been in the back of her mind almost since she’d awakened, floating up and down like some nasty drowned thing which is just a little too waterlogged to come all the way to the surface. She had read an article about this charming old method of torture and execution for a college history class, and had been surprised to learn that the old nails-through-the-hands-and-feet trick was only the beginning. Like magazine subscriptions and pocket calculators, crucifixion was the gift that kept on giving.
The real hardships began with cramps and muscle-spasms. Jessie reluctantly recognized that the pains she had suffered so far, even the paralyzing Charley horse which had put an end to her first panic-attack, were only tweaks compared to the ones which were waiting. They would rack her arms, diaphragm, and abdomen, growing steadily worse, more frequent, and more widespread as the day passed. Numbness would eventually begin to creep into her extremities no matter how hard she worked to keep the blood flowing, but numbness would bring no relief; by then she would almost certainly have begun suffering excruciating chest and stomach cramps. There were no nails in her hands and feet and she was lying down instead of hanging from a cross at the side of the road like one of the defeated gladiators in Spartacus, but those variations might only draw out her agony.
So what are you going to do right now, while you’re still pretty much free of pain and able to think?
“Whatever I can,” she croaked, “so why don’t you just shut up and let me think about it for a minute?”
Go ahead-be my guest.
She would start with the most obvious solution and work her way down from there… if she had to. And what was the most obvious solution? The keys, of course. They were still lying on top of the bureau, where he had left them. Two keys, but both exactly the same. Gerald, who could be almost endearingly corny, had often referred to them as the Primary and the Backup (Jessie had clearly heard those capital letters in her husband’s voice).
Suppose, just for the sake of argument, she could somehow slide the bed across the room to the bureau. Would she be able to actually get hold of one of those keys and put it to use? Jessie reluctantly realized that there were two questions there, not one. She supposed she might be able to pick up one of the keys in her teeth, but then what? She still wouldn’t be able to get it into the lock; her experience with the water-glass suggested there was going to be a gap no matter how much she stretched.
Okay; scratch the keys. Descend to the next rung on the ladder of probability. What might that be?
She thought about it for almost five minutes without success, turning it around and around in her mind like the sides of Rubik’s Cube, pumping her arms up and down as she did so. At some point during her ruminations, her eyes wandered to the phone sitting on the low table by the east window. She had dismissed it earlier as being in another universe, but perhaps she had been too hasty. The table, after all, was closer than the bureau, and the phone was a lot bigger than a handcuff key.
If she could move the bed over to the telephone table, might she not be able to lift the receiver off the cradle with her foot? And if she could do that, maybe she could use her big toe to push the Operator button at the bottom, between the keys marked * and #. It sounded like some crazy sort of vaudeville act, but-