“What did I do to you? What did I ever do to you?” she pleads.
She never did a thing to me. I know it. She knows it. But I tell her to shut up anyway. “Enough.” And when she doesn’t I say it again. “Just shut up.” The third time I scream, “Just shut the fuck up,” the gun flailing about and pointing her way. I swerve off the road and slam on the brakes. I step from the truck and already she’s screaming at me to leave her alone.
I reach in the bed of the truck for a roll of duct tape, tear off a piece with my teeth. There’s a chill in the air, the sound of the occasional semitruck soaring down the road in the middle of the night. “What are you doing?” she asks, her feet kicking at me the minute I open her door. She kicks hard and gets me in the gut. She’s a fighter, I’ll give her that, but the only thing it does is make me pissed. I force my way into the truck, slap the duct tape over her moving lips and say, “I told you to shut up.”
And she does.
I get back in the truck and slam the door, pulling blindly out onto the interstate, the wheels kicking up gravel from the shoulder of the road.
It’s no wonder then that it takes a good hundred or so miles for her to tell me she has to pee, to get the guts to lay a trembling hand on my arm and get my attention.
“What?” I snap, pulling my arm away from her hand. It’s approaching dawn. She’s wiggling in her seat. There’s a sense of urgency in her eyes. I rip off the duct tape and she lets out a moan. It hurt. It hurt like hell.
Good, I think to myself. That’ll teach her to keep her mouth shut when I tell her to.
“I have to use the bathroom,” she mumbles, afraid.
I pull into the gravel parking lot of some run-down truck stop outside Eau Claire. The sun is beginning to rise over a dairy farm to the east. A herd of Holsteins grazes along the road. It’s gonna be a sunny day, but it’s damn cold. October. The trees are changing.
In the parking lot I hesitate. It’s all but empty, only one car, a rusty old station wagon with political bumper stickers plastered across the back, the rear headlight held to the car with packaging tape. My heart races. I stick the gun in the seat of my pants. It’s not like I haven’t been thinking about this since we left. I knew this was something I’d have to do. By now the girl was supposed to be with Dalmar, and I figured I’d be trying hard to forget what I’d done. I didn’t plan for this. But if this is going to work, there are things we need, like money. I have some money on me but not enough for this. I emptied the girl’s wallet before we left. Credit cards are out of the question. I pull a knife from the glove box. Before I cut the girl’s restraints I say, “You stay with me. Don’t try anything stupid.” I tell her she can use the bathroom when I say so, only when I say it’s okay. I cut her rope. Then I cut two feet of spare rope and stuff it in a coat pocket.
The girl looks ridiculous as she steps from the truck in the wrinkled shirt that doesn’t even reach all the way to her wrists. She crosses her arms across herself and ties them into a knot. She shudders from the cold. Her hair falls down into her face. She keeps her head bent, eyes on the gravel. Her forearms are bruised, right across some stupid Chinese tattoo on her inner arm.
There’s only one lady working, not a single customer. Just as I thought. I wrap my arm around the girl and pull her toward me, try to make it seem like we’re close. Her feet hesitate and fall out of sync with mine. She trips but I stop her before she can fall. My eyes threaten her to behave. My hands on her are not a sign of intimacy. They’re a show of force. She knows it, but the lady behind the register does not.
We walk up and down the aisles, make sure as hell we’re the only ones in the place. I grab a box of envelopes. I check the bathroom to make sure it’s empty. I make sure there isn’t a window the girl could jump out of, and then I tell her to pee. The woman at the register gives me a strange look. I roll my eyes and tell her the girl’s had too much to drink. Apparently she buys it. It seems to take forever for the girl to pee and when I peek inside again, she’s standing before the mirror, splashing water on her face. She stares at her reflection for a long time. “Let’s go,” I say after a minute.
And then we head to the register to pay for the envelopes. But we don’t pay for the envelopes. The lady’s distracted, watching old 1970s reruns on a twelve-inch TV. I look around, make sure there’s no cameras in the place.
And then I come up behind her, pull the gun from the seat of my pants and tell her to empty the fucking register.
I don’t know who panics more. The girl freezes, her face filled with fear. Here I am, with the barrel of the gun pressed against some middle-aged lady’s gray hair, and she’s a witness. An accomplice. The girl starts asking what I’m doing. Over and over again. “What are you doing?” she cries.
I tell her to shut up.
The lady is begging for her life. “Please don’t hurt me. Please just let me go.” I shove her forward, tell her again to empty the register. She opens it, and starts jamming stacks of cash into a plastic shopping bag with a big smiley face and the words Have a nice day. I tell the girl to look out the window. Tell me if anyone’s coming. She nods, submissively, like a child. “No,” she chokes between tears. “No one.” And then she asks, “What are you doing?”
I press the gun harder, tell the lady to hurry up.
“Please. Please don’t hurt me.”
“The quarters, too,” I say. There are rolls of them. “You got any stamps?” I ask. Her hands start to move to a drawer and I bark out, “Don’t touch a damn thing. Tell me. You got any stamps?” Because for all I know, there’s a semiautomatic in that drawer.
She whimpers at the sound of my voice. “In the drawer,” she cries. “Please don’t hurt me,” she begs. She tells me about her grandchildren. Two of them, a boy and a girl. The only name I catch is Zelda. What kind of stupid name is Zelda anyway? I reach into the drawer and find a book of stamps and toss them into the shopping bag, which I yank from her hands and give to the girl.
“Hold that,” I say. “Just stand there and hold it.” I let the gun point at her for a split second, just so she knows I’m not screwing around. She lets out a cry and ducks as if maybe—just maybe—I actually shot her.
I tie the lady to a chair with the rope from my pocket. Then I shoot the phone for good measure. Both of the women scream.
I can’t have her calling the cops too soon.
There’s a pile of sweatshirts beside the front door. I grab one and tell the girl to put it on. I’m sick and tired of watching her shiver. She slips it over her head and static takes control of her hair. It’s about the ugliest shirt I’ve ever seen. L’étoile du Nord. Whatever the hell that means.
I grab a couple extra sweatshirts, a few pairs of pants—long johns—and some socks. And a couple stale donuts for the ride.
And then we go.
In the truck, I bind the girl’s hands once again. She’s still crying. I tell her to either figure out a way to shut up or I’ll figure it out for her. Her eyes drop to the roll of duct tape on the dashboard and she goes quiet. She knows I’m not screwing around.
I grab an envelope and fill out the address. I stuff as much money as I can in there and stick a stamp in the corner. I jam the rest of the money in my pocket. We drive around until I find a big blue mailbox and drop the envelope inside. The girl’s watching me, wondering what the hell I’m doing, but she doesn’t ask and I don’t say. When I catch her eye, I say, “Don’t worry about it,” and then I think, It’s none of your fucking business.
It’s not perfect. It’s nowhere perfect. But for now it will have to do.
Eve
After
I’ve gotten used to the sight of police cars stalled outside my home. There are two