The City Under the Skin

33. HUMAN

The city streets seemed abandoned. Marilyn Driscoll started to walk away from Zak, through the Arts and Crafts Zone, through the unraveling weft and warp of the city. She felt exposed but lightened. Zak would have found out sooner or later, why not now?

She was less than halfway home when she heard a car behind her, and she wasn’t in the least surprised when she turned her head just a little, just enough to see that it was a battered metallic-blue Cadillac. Well, of course. It drove slowly past her and stopped a short way ahead. She kept walking until she’d caught up with the car, and then she stopped and looked in through the open passenger window to see Billy Moore at the wheel, miserable, shame-faced. Before he could say or do anything, she opened the door and got in beside him, like a grateful hitchhiker.

“I’ve been expecting you, Billy,” Marilyn said. “What kept you so long?”

He had no answer, and neither of them said anything on the journey to Wrobleski’s compound. He didn’t even turn on the radio. As they were crossing the threshold, entering the courtyard through the metal gate, Billy Moore turned to Marilyn.

“I’m sorry. I’m really lost,” he said.

* * *

Wrobleski was waiting for her in the courtyard. She had endlessly played and edited the scene in her mind, through all its possible fluffs, retakes, and alternate endings. And of course Wrobleski had always been the ogre in this scenario, the fiend. Now that she finally saw him, he appeared so much less monstrous than she expected, than she wanted him to be. Sure, he looked like a heavy, and was no doubt capable of any amount of malevolence, but he appeared, nevertheless, all too human. She found herself horribly disappointed. He gazed at her without much interest, then he turned, moved away, gestured to Akim that she was now his responsibility. She was having none of that.

“Wrobleski,” she called, “talk to me. You owe me an explanation.”

He gazed at her vacantly.

“You think?”

He said it quietly, with weariness but not with any great concern.

“Yes, I do.”

“I really don’t care what you think.”

“No,” Marilyn insisted. “That’s not right, that’s not good enough.”

He stared at her as though she were a laboratory experiment that had gone awry and produced unexpected though not especially fascinating results.

“It’ll have to do,” said Wrobleski. “You want your big drama, your big scene. But I’m not playing.”

She flew at him. He hardly moved, and did he really snap his fingers? In any case, before she was on him, Akim was standing between the two of them, and he was now thoroughly taking care of things. She felt a blow on the head, and then a jab from a needle. Akim’s hands were on her, in all kinds of places they didn’t need to be. And was she imagining it or did he say quietly in her ear, “Don’t worry, it’ll soon be over.”

Then there was a new reworking of a familiar nightmare. For a while she could still scream and struggle, but then ropes were tightened around her, two thick layers of duct tape were stickered across her mouth, and then she couldn’t see, though at least this time it wasn’t because of a leather hood. She was dragged away, across the courtyard, deep into the compound, down a set of stairs, into a new basement room, the size and extent of which she couldn’t fathom. It was hot and it smelled of weary bodies, and she thought she could hear voices, though it might only have been a TV. She would spend the rest of the short night on her back, on a mattress, bound, sightless, motionless, inert, and without feeling, but absolutely ready for whatever was coming next.