The Dispatcher

TWO

Ian opens his eyes. He is lying on the couch, head turned to the right. With one eye he is looking at his work shoes on the floor near the wall opposite. The other eye can see only his out-of-focus shirtsleeve, his arm folded up over his head. One of his shoes is on its side. There is a blackened piece of chewing gum sticking to the heel. He sits up. His neck hurts. Sunlight shines through the dirty living-room window. Six empty Guinness bottles stand like bowling pins on the coffee table, the labels peeled from two of them and stuffed inside like messages floated in on the tide. Near the bottles is a saucepan, the bottom blackened by flame, with a fork poking out of it. Ramen noodles and a small slice of overcooked carrot cling to the inside of the pan. On the far corner of the coffee table, a chessboard with several pieces resting on it, revealing a partially played game. He puts his face into his open hands and rubs at it. Beard stubble against his palms like sandpaper.

His watch’s alarm sounds. He looks at his wrist, but his watch is not there. It’s on the kitchen counter. That means he must stand up.

‘Fuck.’

He gets to his feet and walks to the kitchen and thumbs the watch silent. Then he rinses the ramen pan he used last night, puts two eggs inside, puts enough water into the pan to cover the eggs, and sets the pan on the stove. The turn of a knob makes a clicking sound which is followed after a moment by the poof of orange-tipped blue flames. With that going he gets the coffee pot started as well, scooping coffee into a filter and pouring water into a tank. He presses a button. A red light flashes green. Liquid drips into the coffee-stained carafe. The drops sizzle, dancing on the heated surface.

After pouring a cup of black coffee and peeling his soft-boiled eggs he walks back to the couch and sits down. He pushes the empty beer bottles aside and pulls the chessboard toward him. He looks at the game in progress. It seems ancient to him, some relic of an era lost in time, but he refuses to consider it abandoned. He bought the chess set from a junk store. It’s a cheap wooden case, lined inside with plaid fabric, one side of its exterior inlaid with veined marble squares to form a playing surface. The pieces were carved also from cheap marble by an apprentice or an old man with shaky hands, and because of the failing of the pieces the set was especially inexpensive. Both the board and the pieces are covered in dust. Ian hasn’t ever brushed them off for fear of disturbing the game, though he has sat and stared at it so frequently, replaying each move in his head, that if knocked to the four corners of the room he could still gather the pieces and reassemble the game in a matter of minutes.

It’s his move. It has been his move for three years. For over three years. And he’s known what his move would be for just as long. It took him an hour of semi-drunken study to figure it out. Queen to b4. But by the time he did figure it out it was late, even in California where Jeffrey was still living with his mother, Lisa, so he decided he would call the next day. Instead he opened up another twelve pack and drank his way through it, drank till the sun rose and he had to drive to work. Three years ago he was still allowing more than a six pack into his apartment at a time. When he got home from work that day the alcohol was finally wearing off and he was hung-over and did not feel up to calling Jeffrey, so another day passed. And another. Then a week passed. Then six months. And how do you call a son to whom you haven’t spoken in six months and say ‘Queen to b4’?

He picks up his dusty black queen and moves it to the new square and looks at it. He sips his coffee. Problem is if Jeffrey doesn’t know about it the move hasn’t been made. Ian puts the queen back and pushes the board aside. Maybe he’ll call Jeffrey later today.

He salts and peppers a soft-boiled egg and shoves it whole into his mouth. He chews slowly and washes it down with a swig of coffee.

Strange how the longer you wait to do something the harder it is to do it. You push a task forward rather than pick it up, knowing you can take care of it later, always later, but as it rolls it gathers mass, like a snowball, and what you could once have picked up with one hand and put into your pocket now has to it the weight of planets.

Ian burps and salts his second egg.

He steps onto the elevator.

His apartment building was constructed as a hotel in 1924 by Carl Dodd. For some reason known only to him he thought Bulls Mouth was going to grow into the major metropolis between Houston and San Antonio. But it never happened. He died and left the place, as well as Dodd Dairy, to his children Carney and Vicki, who turned around and sold the hotel to a Houston realtor in 1996. The realtor converted the hotel into apartments for college kids who wanted out from under daddy’s thumb, but the conversion consisted of little more than knocking down the old sign and putting up a new one. Certainly a repairman hasn’t so much as glanced at the elevator in twenty years or more. Every day Ian steps into it he’s certain that today will be the day the cables finally snap.

The doors creak shut and Ian presses a button. The elevator shakes violently, as if the mere thought of movement frightens it, and then begins its descent.

The doors open on the ground floor.

Ian glances at his watch. He has twenty minutes to get to work.

Maggie hardly slept all night. Her thoughts kept turning to escape. Even counting did not help. She kept losing track and having to start over. She tossed and turned and found herself tangled in her sheets. She could not get comfortable and her brain could not find peace.

Now morning is here and she is standing beneath the basement’s sole window, on tippy-toe so that she can put her face into a bright beam of morning sunlight. The heat feels good on her skin. She wants to be out there again. She wants once more to feel fallen leaves and soil beneath her feet. To hear birds sing. To hear the still air come to life as a gust of hot summer wind forces itself through the leaves of the trees.

‘He might kill you if you try to escape again.’

She glances to the left.

A horse’s head poking from the dark shadows, flaring nostrils, a single black eye glistening in the small gray light reaching him from the window while the other is hidden in darkness, the toes of a pair of Chuck Taylor basketball shoes. That is all she can see of Borden. The rest of him in darkness.

‘I think he’s killed others.’

His mouth does not move when he speaks. The words seem to simply float from his mind, scatter on the air, and reform in hers.

‘I think so too,’ she says. ‘But I can’t stay.’

‘Don’t you remember what he did yesterday?’

‘I remember.’ She touches the scab bracelets on her wrists.

‘Then how can you think what you’re thinking?’

She does not respond. She looks back toward the window and lets the light fall upon her face once more.

‘It will be worse next time.’

‘I know.’

‘Even if he doesn’t kill you it will be worse.’

She nods silently. And now he has made her picture it in her mind. Hanging from the punishment hook, her hands purple and numb, her wrists bleeding, the rest of her body helpless, defenseless as she swings. She has been there before, at least two dozen times, and it is always terrible.

She can kick. Kicking keeps Henry away, but only temporarily, and when she stops kicking, as she has to eventually, Henry’s punishment is even worse than it would have been. The mere thought of the punishment hook has kept her obedient on many occasions when every part of her down to the last cell cried out for rebellion against the horrors of the Nightmare World.

‘I know,’ she says again.

But with the morning light falling upon her face she does not care. She does care, she is terrified, but even caring and being terrified she believes it will be worth the risk. She cannot stay here any longer. Not after yesterday. It’s worth the risk.

‘Even if he kills you?’

‘Even then.’

‘But what about me?’

‘You can come.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘I can never leave. This is my home.’

‘It doesn’t have to be.’

‘This is where I was born. I can’t live out there.’

‘You can try.’

‘I know better. I can never leave.’

‘Why?’

Only silence in response.

‘Borden?’

More silence. Then: ‘If you try to leave, I’ll tell.’

‘You can’t.’

‘If you leave. .’

‘If I leave, what?’

‘You can’t leave.’

‘You can’t tell.’

‘I can never leave and you can never leave.’

‘You can’t tell!’

He steps back into the shadows.

‘Borden?’

He does not respond. She closes her eyes imagining herself swinging from the punishment hook, imagining blood running down her arms from her bloody wrists, imagining the terrible pain in her shoulders and hands, imagining the blows she will receive.

She opens her eyes and looks to the shadows. They are dense as cloth and she cannot see through them. Anything could be in that darkness.

You can never leave.

Diego Peña hates the sun: it’s mocking him up there above the trees, shining its white light into his eyes and cooking his throbbing brain as he drives east along Flatland Avenue. If he could draw his service weapon and shoot the thing down he thinks he might actually do it. Watch it drop like a dead bird and go out like a candle.

He burps, almost vomits, and swallows it back.

He doesn’t know how many drinks he had last night at Roberta’s but it was at least half a dozen too many. He should just stop going there and make O’Connell’s his regular place. He’s incapable of regulating himself at Roberta’s.

Ever since he answered a domestic disturbance call and took a roll of barbed wire to the face from her ex-husband Jimmy Block, Roberta has given him free drinks. Ever since she got the bar in the divorce settlement six months later and changed the name from Jimmy’s to Roberta’s, anyway, though some few partisans refused to go along with the name change and even now call it Jimmy’s. Diego burps again and swallows back what comes up. He shouldn’t have eaten the leftover rabo de toro for breakfast. But he’d thought his time kneeling before the toilet was finished. He thought a little food might soak up what alcohol was left in him.

If the look on Cordelia’s face this morning was any indication, his wife thinks over four years of free drinks has been enough. Of course he was hunched over the toilet at the time, and when he looked up with spittle on his chin she turned and walked away, so maybe he misread her expression in that brief moment before her back was to him and she was saying, ‘. . hace lo que le sale de los cojones.’

What he needs is a red rooster: light beer, tomato juice, hot sauce, a splash of clam juice, and one raw egg. That would do him well. He glances at his watch. Seven thirty. Roberta’s morning bartender won’t even be in for another two and a half hours. He’ll have to suffer this.

He guesses he’s on duty then.

Kind of.

Pastor Warden came into Roberta’s last night around eight thirty, just as the place was coming to life, and announced he’d pay ten dollars a head for each dachshund returned.

‘Dead or alive?’ Andy Paulson said from his stool at the bar, glancing over his shoulder, grinning through his broken china teeth, beer foam hanging from his ridiculous waxed mustaches.

‘Alive,’ Warden said. ‘Dead’ll get you a six-hour sermon on the sins of intoxication come Sunday morning.’

Then he turned and left. As soon as he was out the door half the bar burst out laughing. But now it’s morning and ten bucks a head doesn’t strike Diego as a bad deal, even if he is feeling under the weather. After the way Cordelia was looking at him this morning he might just need that money to buy her some flowers at Albertsons on his way home.

He makes a right on Main Street and cruises past Flatland Park, looking to see if any dogs are running around there. But he sees nothing, so he continues south, past the Bulls Mouth Nine where Fred Paulson-Andy Paulson’s brother and owner of the U-Haul rental place next to Andy’s feed store over on Wallace-looks to be finishing up a round. He’s cursing and hacking away at a sand trap with a pitching wedge, face pink with rage, mouth shotgunning curses like he bought a batch on sale at Wal-Mart. Finally he slams down his club and picks up the golf ball and throws it up onto the green. He snags up his club and stomps his way up to greet it, not bothering to rake the sand trap into decent condition for the next guy.

A left turn puts Diego on Underhill Avenue. He continues along, looking left to the golf course and right to woods and blackberry bushes with fat overripe berries rotting on the ground beneath them. He’s about halfway to Crockett Street when he sees a dachshund digging furiously in a kidney-shaped sand trap hooking its way around the fourth green.

He pulls his car to the shoulder of the road and swings open his door. Dizziness overwhelms him as he stands and he grabs on to the car for balance and blinks several times as he swallows back bile. Soon enough the blood gets to his head and the gray dizziness retreats and he squints in the sunlight. He looks toward the golf course. The dog is still digging. He runs toward the chain-link fence surrounding the Bulls Mouth Nine-it’s only waist-level-and hurls himself over it. This turns out to be a mistake.

He lands on his feet, manages two steps, then falls to his knees and vomits. It’s mostly liquid, what’s left of last night’s fun, and what breakfast he managed to eat this morning. He spits a couple times and gets to his feet. Then, blocking each nostril with a thumb, he blows his nose into the grass. He wipes at his watery eyes. His stomach is a bit less sour. Maybe that was the last of it and this is the turning point for this hangover. Maybe he’ll start to feel human again. He spits once more and dusts the grass off his knees and looks to where he saw the dachshund.

It’s now squatting in the rough just north of the fourth hole. He runs toward it, then thinks better of that, and walks briskly.

‘Come here, doggy,’ he says.

After putting the dog into the back of the car he slips in behind the wheel. He reaches to the glove box and flips it open. He fumbles around in there, finding and discarding pens and napkins and other shit he’s stored there, till his fingers find what they were feeling for. He pulls out a travel-size mouthwash he keeps for just these occasions, takes a swig, gargles, and spits out the window.

Then he’s on his way. His goal for the day is fifty bucks.

As he drives past College Avenue he sees Ian Hunt’s Mustang stopped at the intersection, waiting for traffic. They wave to one another, and then Diego is past and Ian’s Mustang is making a right onto Crockett behind him, presumably heading toward the police station, though that’s not where Diego is headed himself.

Now that most of the alcohol is out of his system he’s hungry again.

Ian pushes into the police station. Chief Davis is sitting at his desk flipping through paperwork. He looks up as Ian walks in and says, ‘Mornin’.’

‘Yup. What’s Diego working so early for?’

‘He’s not working.’

‘No?’

Chief Davis shakes his head. ‘Someone crashed into Pastor Warden’s fence and all his dogs got out. Came into Roberta’s last night and offered ten bucks a head for their return.’

Ian nods. ‘Any news about Maggie?’

Chief Davis was smiling when talking about the dogs, but the smile’s gone now. ‘No. Old man at the shoe shop didn’t recognize any pictures and the rendering Sizemore’s boys got from him looks like a bald John Goodman. Useless old fucker. We’re still waiting on prints from the phone, though. Hopefully that’ll lead to something. Also, Sizemore’s got Bill Finch and John Nance looking through records of any missing kids in the county, seeing if he can find a connection between them.’

‘Finch?’

Chief Davis shrugs. ‘Wasn’t my call.’

‘I know it.’ Ian turns toward the dispatch office, then turns back. ‘Think you could call Sizemore, see if we can’t get copies of those files they’re looking at? Maybe I can poke through them myself.’

Chief Davis nods. ‘I’ll do that. Maybe send Thompson over to pick them up. By the way, you see this?’ He holds up a copy of the Tonkawa County Democrat. Ian walks over and grabs it. On the first page of the twenty-page broadsheet, above the fold, this:

KIDNAPPED GIRL ONCE THOUGHT DEAD DISCOVERED ALIVE

Ian begins reading the opening paragraph thinking she was discovered alive the same way a man punched in the nose discovers a fist.

He reads about Maggie being kidnapped while her parents were ‘out of the house on a date’, about how she was declared dead, about how there was a funeral ‘despite a body never being discovered’. He reads a description of the kidnapper that could be a description of anybody of a certain age. He throws the paper onto Davis’s desk.

‘Did you call them?’

Chief Davis shakes his head. ‘Sizemore. He made a statement to local news channels too. It got her picture out, and a description of her kidnapper. And it put his number in people’s faces. “If you have any information regarding the whereabouts of Magdalene Hunt or her kidnapper please call the Tonkawa County Sheriff’s Department.” You know the drill. We need it out there. Improves our odds.’

‘Kidnapped while both her parents were out of the house on a date.’ Ian shakes his head. ‘Makes it sound like we just left a seven-year-old alone to fend for herself.’

‘You weren’t there. It’s the truth, ain’t it?’

‘It’s the facts,’ Ian says. ‘It’s not the truth.’

‘It got her picture into the paper, anyway, and on the TV.’

Ian nods, then walks to the dispatch office. At the doorway he says, ‘Don’t forget to call the sheriff for those files, huh?’

‘I won’t.’

Ian walks to the coffee pot and gets it started, then to his desk where he falls into his chair. He exhales a heavy sigh and puts on his headset.

Doing this feels strange. Wrong. He should be out looking for Maggie. He should be out finding her. That’s what he should be doing and it’s what he wants to be doing. But until there are some fingerprint matches with known criminals, or until he gets those files from the sheriff’s office, or until some piece of evidence reveals itself, there’s really nothing to go on. Here, at least, he can accomplish something. It’s a small town and often his days are slow, but in his time in Bulls Mouth he’s helped save more than one life. If he can’t save Maggie’s yet, well, maybe he can save someone else’s. It might help to expend some of this sick energy building in his gut that comes from needing to move forward while being simultaneously locked into place by circumstance. Like trying to fire a live round through a leaded barrel, he’s afraid the whole thing might blow up. If he can feel useful in some way maybe he can relieve a bit of the pressure, making the wait tolerable.

‘Nine-one-one,’ he says. ‘What is your emergency?’

‘I can’t find my car keys.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘I’m late and I can’t find my car keys.’

Ian sighs. ‘What do you want me to do about it, Thompson?’

‘I don’t know, look around.’

‘They’re not here or you couldn’t have driven home.’

‘Well, shit.’

‘Did you check your pocket?’

‘Did I. .’ A startled laugh. ‘Well, I’ll be goddamned.’

Ian pours himself a cup of coffee and drinks it in near silence, the only sound the swamp cooler rattling in the window.

‘Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?’

‘Hello.’ A small girl’s small voice.

‘Hello. Are you playing with the phone?’

‘No.’

‘Who are you calling?’

‘I’m calling emburgancy.’

‘You are?’

‘Uh-huh. Are you emburgancy?’

‘Yes, I’m emergency. What’s your name?’

‘Thalia.’

‘Hi, Thalia, why are you calling emergency?’

‘My mommy.’

‘What’s wrong with your mommy?’

‘She won’t get up.’

‘What happened, Thalia?’

‘Daddy stopped her.’

‘Daddy stopped her?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘What did he stop her doing?’

‘Packing a suitcase.’

‘Was she trying to leave?’

There is silence from the other end of the line.

After a moment: ‘Thalia?’

‘Yes?’

‘Did you just nod your head?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Mommy was trying to leave?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Mommy was packing a suitcase and Daddy stopped her?’

‘Yes.’

‘How did he stop her?’

‘He hitted her.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘He went to gone.’

‘He’s not at home anymore?’

‘No.’

‘Where’s Mommy, Thalia?’

‘She’s tired.’

‘Where is she?’

‘In her bedroom.’

‘Is she asleep?’

‘Daddy hitted her and made her take a nap.’

‘When?’

‘Before he went to gone. She won’t wake up. I’m hungry.’

‘Is Mommy bleeding?’

‘Is it okay to call emburgancy to be hungry?’

‘It’s fine, Thalia. Is Mommy bleeding?’

‘She stopped.’

‘Okay. I’m going to send a policeman over to say hello, okay? I want you to stay on the phone till he arrives.’

‘Police man is the good guys.’

‘Will you stay on the phone with me, Thalia?’

‘Okay.’

Ian is looking through the files that the sheriff’s department photocopied for him when he hears Diego push into the station and mumble a greeting at Chief Davis. Ian takes off his headset, gets to his feet, and walks to the door connecting the dispatch office to the main department.

Diego falls onto the couch which sits against the front wall. An unlit hand-rolled cigarette hangs from his face. He pushes his sunglasses up onto his head, pinning back his wavy hair. He looks very tired and his eyes are red. When he sees Ian standing in the doorway he nods toward him and grunts a greeting.

‘How many you get?’

‘What?’

‘Dogs.’

‘Oh, four. Was going for five, though.’

‘Warden pay up?’

Diego nods, reaches into his front pocket, and pulls out two twenties. He holds them up a moment, then slides them back into his pocket.

‘She press charges?’

‘Who?’

‘Genevieve Paulson.’

‘Oh. No. One of these days Andy’s just gonna up and kill her. Shoulda seen her face.’

‘Bad?’

‘Looked like a plum with eyes.’

‘How was Thalia?’

‘Same as always. Full of smiles and hellos.’

Ian shakes his head. It makes him sick to think of what having a dad like Andy Paulson will end up doing to that beautiful little girl. It will end up ruining her, turning her into just one more trailer-park wife whose husband beats her when the foreman at the warehouse gets on him for not loading the trucks fast enough or for not changing the tank on the forklift when it ran out of propane.

‘Someone should talk to Andy.’

‘I went to the feed store and did just that.’

‘And?’

‘He was all sorrys and it’ll never happen agains.’

‘Same as always.’

Diego nods. ‘Same as always.’

‘Warnings won’t ever fix him.’

‘No, he’s not a man responds to words,’ Diego says.

‘Maybe someone should do more than just talk then,’ Ian says.

Maggie sits cross-legged on the mattress in the basement, her empty lunch plate on the floor near her. The light overhead is out and the sun has already passed over to the other side of the house, shadows now beginning to lay themselves out upon the ground. The light in the basement is thin and gray, and the shadows in the corners are dense. She watches them for movement. Borden has disappeared, as he does sometimes, and she doesn’t want him sneaking up on her. She doesn’t trust him after the things he said this morning. She hasn’t seen him since, though she has said aloud that she is not going to try a second escape. ‘It’s too risky,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll just stay down here.’ She said it as if she were talking to herself, but Borden was, of course, her real audience. She hopes that he was listening. She suspects that he is always listening. Maybe it will prevent him from telling.

Even if it does she now knows he cannot be trusted. She thought he was on her side, but he is not on her side at all. He is on his own side and no one else’s. She’ll have to get out soon and she’ll have to be sneaky about her plans. Even when alone down here she’ll have to be sneaky. Because alone isn’t really.

Tonight will mark the beginning of her escape. She won’t make her move yet. She needs to think things through. But tonight will mark the beginning. She will soon escape the Nightmare World. She doesn’t care if Borden can’t leave. In fact, she hopes it’s true. She never wants to see him again. Soon she will escape and she will stand beneath the light of the sun and she will not be afraid.

‘You’re going to make Beatrice sad.’

She looks left, then right.

He’s across the room, in the farthest corner, next to a stack of cardboard boxes. The boxes are full of Christmas ornaments, old magazines with pictures of naked ladies in them, cowboy novels, old clothes saved to be used as rags. He is mostly hidden in shadows, but some of him is visible. He stands very still.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I know you’re still planning to leave.’

‘I’m. . I’m not.’

‘You could stay.’

‘I am.’

‘Beatrice loves you, you know.’

‘No, she doesn’t.’

‘Of course she does.’

‘She loves someone named Sarah.’

‘You could be Sarah.’

‘But I’m not.’

‘You could be, you’ve been Sarah longer than you were anybody else. You could let Beatrice love you. If you let yourself be loved, you wouldn’t hate it here so much.’

‘But this isn’t where I belong.’

‘It is where you belong. That’s why you can’t escape.’

‘I-’ This is not a discussion she wants to have. ‘I’m not gonna try to escape,’ she says.

‘I can see your thoughts.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘You know I’m not. I can see the darkest corners of your mind. There’s nothing you can hide from me.’

Tears begin to well in her eyes. She knows what he says is true. He has responded to mere unexpressed thought before. Throughout the years he has done this: responded with echoes of her deepest fears, fears she never voiced aloud: your parents got a new daughter and don’t even think of you anymore, Henry’s going to put you on the punishment hook one day and never let you down, you’re going to die here.

She blinks the tears away and wipes at her eyes. She stares across the room and into Borden’s glistening, rolling tar-pit eyes. His nostrils flare. His big square teeth form the shape of a smile. It is an ugly thing.

‘I know everything you’re thinking.’

She wipes her eyes again.

‘Because you’re not real,’ she says. ‘That’s how you can do it. You’re not real.’

‘You can never leave.’

‘You don’t want me to leave because if I leave I won’t need you anymore.’

‘You can never leave.’

‘But I don’t need you anymore now.’

‘You can never leave.’

‘You’re not real.’

‘You can never, ever leave, Sarah.’

She closes her eyes and tries to remember when she first saw Borden. It was before she ever came here. It was before she was kidnapped and brought here. She’s sure of it. It was at the petting zoo. She was seven years old and she had just lost a tooth and she was with Daddy and Jeffrey and the sun was out and the world was bright and beautiful. A ten-year-old boy with Chuck Taylor basketball shoes and cuffed Levis and a red button-up shirt that he kept tucked in was there. The shirt was rolled up to his elbows and his hands were in his pockets. She fed the last of her carrots to a miniature horse and the boy pulled a hand from his pocket and in his palm was a piece of celery and he handed it to her and said his name was Danny Borden and she said thank you and fed it to the horse. Danny Borden: a normal boy with freckles on his cheeks and brown eyes and bangs cut straight. This Borden is only a Nightmare World copy of him.

Not the real thing. Not real at all.

She looks up at him. He flickers a moment, vanishing from the room like an image on a TV that’s losing its signal in a storm, like a light just before it goes out. Then he returns. His eyes roll in their sockets and then lock on her.

‘You can never leave,’ he says.

‘You can’t scare me anymore,’ she says. ‘You’re not real.’

Another flicker.

‘You can never, ever leave. If you try, I’ll tell on you.’

‘You can’t tell on me. You’re just pretend.’

He takes a step toward her, a step out of the shadows. He flickers again and she can see through him. She can see the stack of boxes behind him. Then, once more, he is solid. Except he flickers now and then as he takes another step toward her. He seems to be falling apart. An arm becomes a smear before coming back together. A leg flickers out, then returns.

‘You can never-’

‘You’re not real.’

She grabs the plate from the floor and lifts it over her head and throws it across the room. It arcs through the air wobbling like a poorly thrown Frisbee and if he were real it would strike him in the head, right between his eyes, but he is not real, so it flies through him, hits the cardboard boxes stacked against the wall, falls to the concrete, and shatters.

Borden is gone.

After a few minutes she gets to her feet. The concrete is cold beneath them. She walks to where the pieces of shattered plate lie, spread outward from the point of impact. She walks with great deliberation, being very careful about where she sets each foot. She doesn’t want to cut herself. Once she is standing among the shards she looks down at them. She will probably get into trouble for breaking the plate.

Don’t think about that. Nothing can be done about it, so don’t think about it.

One two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve.

She bends down and picks up the biggest shard of plate. It’s about nine inches long and forms a crescent, made mostly of the outer edge of the plate, and ends in a sharp point. It is lined with painted vines and at the tip a blue flower. If she has to she will plant it in Beatrice. But not tonight. She carries it to the back of the stairs. There is a cavity beneath the bottom step filled only with darkness. She sits on her haunches and reaches the shard toward it, to hide it there, but hesitates as she imagines a large claw emerging from the darkness and grabbing her wrist and pulling her bodily into the shadows. That’s silly, of course, and impossible. There is nothing in the shadows but more shadows. She knows that. Nothing bigger than a cat could even fit beneath that first step. Even so she simply sets the shard of plate on the concrete and pushes it into the shadows, not allowing her fingers to touch the darkness. She will have to reach into it to get the shard back out, but she’ll worry about that then. For now she just wants it hidden and she doesn’t think anybody will find it there. Not unless Borden is watching from the shadows.

He’s not real.

That’s right: Borden is not real and she does not have to worry about him.

She is just getting to her feet when the door at the top of the stairs squeaks open and the light comes on. Feeling sick and guilty, caught, she walks around to the front of the stairs and looks up toward the door.

Beatrice stands silent looking at the shattered plate on the floor. Her hair lies flat and dull on her head, framing a sad round face. Her wide-set eyes droop on the outside, her mouth at both corners. It’s like invisible hands are pressed against her cheeks and pulling down. Her shoulders are round, dresses always hanging from them lifelessly before catching on her heavy lower body and bulging outward with lumps and ripples, making her look to Maggie like a poorly stuffed toy animal.

She turns from the plate and looks at Maggie. Her mouth hangs open for a moment and she breathes heavily from it. Finally she shuts her mouth, swallows, and says, ‘What happened?’

‘I dropped it,’ Maggie says. ‘I’m. . I’m sorry.’

‘By accident?’

Maggie nods.

‘It don’t look dropped.’

‘It was.’

‘Looks like you thrown it.’

‘I didn’t. I promise.’

‘How’d it get way over there?’

‘I’ll clean it up.’

‘You don’t have no shoes. It’s not safe. I’ll clean it up.’

She turns back to the stairs and walks up them, each plank sagging beneath her weight. Her thighs brush together beneath her dress, making a swishing sound with each step. It makes Maggie think of her daddy sanding in the garage. She would help him sometimes. She liked the feel of the fine dust from sandpapered wood on her hands. Beatrice pauses at each step, inhale exhale, and goes one more. She walks through the doorway to the kitchen.

Maggie walks to her mattress, away from what she is hiding, and sits.

When Beatrice returns she is carrying a broom and a dust pan with her, and a small plastic grocery bag crumpled in her fist. She walks down the stairs the same way she walked up, one step at a time, standing on each with both feet and taking a breath, inhale exhale, before moving on to the next. She stops at the bottom of the stairs. She breathes heavily and with great effort. Her face is pale and beads of sweat stand out on her oily skin.

Maggie stares at her with great concentration. Please die please die please die.

She hates that she has those thoughts, she feels like a bad person for having them, but she can’t help it. She doesn’t think she could kill a person-she knows she couldn’t; the very idea makes her sick-but if Beatrice were to just die, that would be different. She knows she would feel guilty for thinking it if it happened, but she feels guilty for thinking it when it doesn’t happen, so it might as well. It would make her life so much easier.

Part of her feels sorry for Beatrice. Part of her feels that in her own way Beatrice is as trapped as she is. But even so if she would just die all Maggie’s problems would be solved. If she died at the right time, anyway, with Henry gone for work and the door unlocked. If he was home and Beatrice died he might take it out on her. He certainly wouldn’t have any reason to keep her alive.

‘Oh, Lord,’ Beatrice says, large chest rising and falling, rising and falling.

‘Are you okay?’

After a while Beatrice nods. ‘Yeah.’

Too bad, Maggie thinks, hating the thought.

Then Beatrice walks to the shattered plate and bends down and sweeps the shards of glass into the dust pan. She dumps the contents of the pan into the plastic bag she brought with her, sweeps the floor once more, dumps the pan once more, ties off the bag, and stands.

She did not notice that a large piece of the plate was missing.

‘You need to be careful about walking barefooted over here.’

‘Maybe I could get some shoes.’

‘What for?’

‘So I don’t cut my foot.’

‘Henry says no shoes.’

‘Okay.’

Beatrice stares at her a blank moment, then frowns. ‘Did he hurt you bad yesterday?’

Maggie rubs at the thin scabs that have wrapped themselves around her wrists. They’re only about the width of a man’s pinky finger, but the wounds are deep, and tender purple bruises surround them. She thinks of the slaps across the face and tongues the split in her lip. She remembers the punch to the gut, the air rushing out of her, the feeling of drowning. And the fear: this time she might really die.

She nods.

‘I’m sorry,’ Beatrice says. ‘I don’t like it when he does that.’

‘He’s never going to stop.’

‘He don’t mean to hurt you. He’s just got a temper.’

‘He might kill me.’

‘He wouldn’t do nothing like that.’ She purses her lips a moment, thinking. ‘Not on purpose.’

‘He might on accident.’

Beatrice exhales through her nostrils but says nothing.

‘You could. . you could let me go.’

‘Sarah, you know we can’t do that.’

‘He couldn’t hurt me if you let me go. I wouldn’t tell anyone what happened. I wouldn’t tell anyone where I’d been.’

‘You don’t understand the world yet. It’s meaner out there than Henry could ever be, I promise you that. I know it.’

‘But I don’t want you to keep me here.’

‘Oh, Sarah. How many times do we have to have this conversation?’

Maggie looks down at her lap, at her hands clasped there, at the brown scabs wrapped around her wrists just below them.

‘Sarah?’

‘Not too many more, I guess,’ she says without looking up.

‘Good. And don’t worry about the plate. I won’t tell Henry you broke it. It’ll be our secret.’

Beatrice makes her way up the stairs and they protest under her weight.

Fall down and die, just fall down and die.

Beatrice reaches the top of the stairs. The overhead light goes out. A moment later the door closes, cutting off the light from the kitchen, and the deadbolt slides home.

After a while Maggie’s eyes adjust to the darkness. She sits doing nothing for some time.

Then she gets to her feet and walks to the back of the stairs and looks into the shadows beneath the bottom step. She wants to hold the shard of plate again. Her stomach feels tight at the thought of reaching into the shadows. She can see one corner of it. She reaches down and quickly puts her hand upon it and slides it out of the shadows. Nothing grabs her wrist or brushes against the back of her hand or nibbles at her fingertips. She picks up the shard of plate. She holds it in her fist and imagines burying it in Beatrice’s arm or leg or neck. It makes her sick to think about. It makes her sick, but she’ll do it. Maybe not in the neck. She knows there are important arteries there and a person can die. She doesn’t want to kill Beatrice. She just wants her hurt bad enough that she can’t chase after her when she runs. If Beatrice were to die on her own Maggie would not shed a tear, but she cannot kill the woman. But stabbing her in the arm or the leg, causing enough pain that she couldn’t chase Maggie up the stairs and out the front door, so she couldn’t get upstairs and call Henry on the telephone, Maggie could do that. If it meant getting away she could do that.

She puts her thumb against the tip of the shard. It is very sharp, as is the inside edge. Too sharp to simply hold and attack with. She would cut her own hand to pieces. And she doesn’t want to have to get too close to use it. She needs to make a handle.

She scans the basement’s dark corners for something to use. There’s her mattress piled with blankets, the cardboard box in which she keeps her few dresses and some books that Donald snuck down here for her (she has read them all at least three times), the sink at which she washes herself, the toilet plunger on the floor beside it for when it gets clogged, the boxes of Christmas ornaments and rags and dirty magazines and cowboy novels. She has read all of the cowboy novels, she likes that the good guy always wins, and flipped through the magazines. The magazines sometimes have good things to read between the dirty pictures.

She walks to the sink and picks up the toilet plunger and tries to pull out the handle. That doesn’t work, it won’t budge, so she tries to unscrew it, first one way, then the other, and that does work. After four counter-clockwise turns the handle is free of the black rubber suction cup. Hopefully the sink doesn’t get clogged between now and her escape. If it does Henry will notice that the handle is missing and know she’s up to something. He’ll suspect it, anyway, and that will be enough. He’ll be mad. He’ll stand looking at her as his face goes red and his hands open and close, open and close, open and close. His nostrils will flare in his diseased nose. He’ll reach into his pocket and pull out a roll of those things he eats and thumb one into his mouth and chew. He’ll ask her what she’s up to and no matter what she says he will call her a liar. Finally, once he’s worked himself up enough, he’ll come after her. She’ll run, but he will catch up. He’ll knock her down and kick her in the gut. All the air will rush out of her. She’ll look up at his red face, and then he’ll kick again. Darkness will come then. When she wakes up she will be hanging from the punishment hook. Her wrists will be bleeding. He will have found her weapon and he will walk toward her with it in his hand. He’ll grin as he walks toward her. There will be no humor in his grin.

One two three four five six seven eight. She used to try counting down, so she could deal with large numbers right away, numbers that filled her head, but counting down made her feel that when she was finished something terrible would happen. Five. . four. . three. . two. .

She opens a box of rags and pulls out a yellowed and torn T-shirt. It smells like Henry, a peculiar combination of garlic and sweat and beer and bleach. Just the stink of him causes her chest to go tight, makes it difficult to draw in breath. Her mouth is dry.

With some effort she manages to tear the shirt into strips. She has to use her teeth to get the strips started, and it hurts her teeth and gums, and the cloth comes away from her mouth pink with blood and saliva, but once she gets the shreds started the fabric rips easily. After she has several strips of fabric ready she uses them to tie the shard of plate to the toilet plunger handle. She has to tie several knots and wrap one of the strips tightly around the handle just beneath the blade, putting an X around its base, to keep it from sliding down, but once she’s done with it the blade is in place securely and hardly wiggles at all. She’s pretty sure the glass would break before it came loose from the handle.

Now: how will she do this?

She closes her eyes and tries to picture it happening. She imagines several scenarios. In all of them there is blood.

After a few minutes she opens her eyes. Tomorrow night after Henry has left for work she will wait under the stairs for Beatrice to bring down her dinner. Henry will have been gone at least an hour by then. There will be a much better chance of things going her way if he is miles and miles away. She will wait under the stairs for Beatrice with the home-made knife in her hand. If Donald comes over to eat as he sometimes does, rather than simply picking up a plate to take back to his mobile home parked behind the house, she will wait till the night after tomorrow. But if things are as they usually are, if she and Beatrice are home alone tomorrow night, she will wait under the stairs with the home-made knife in her hand and when Beatrice walks down them she will thrust the blade between the steps. She will slice Beatrice’s ankles. Beatrice will fall down the stairs. She will scream but the walls are concrete: no one will hear. She will scream and fall down the stairs, and at the bottom of the stairs she will hit her head on the concrete floor. She will be knocked unconscious. Then Maggie will simply run up the stairs and out the front door. She will run through the woods to the street. She will run down the street to the phone. She will call her daddy and her daddy will come and pick her up and take her home. He will let her sleep in his arms. She will be safe.

If Donald is here she will wait till the night after tomorrow-she does not want to have to confront him if she doesn’t have to-but no longer than that. She cannot stand to wait longer than that. She has to get out. She would do it tonight if she could, but can hear Donald upstairs already. She can hear him laughing at something on TV. But that means he’ll almost certainly not come over tomorrow night. It is a rare night when he eats dinner here.

She can do this.

Tomorrow night she will feel her daddy’s arms wrapped around her.

And she will not feel afraid.

Henry pushes his way into the second-floor ladies’ room, leaving the cart in the doorway. He pulls a pair of yellow rubber gloves from the back pocket of his dirty Levis and slips his hands into them. The insides are still wet with sweat from the last time he wore them and slick, so his hands slide right in. He flexes his fingers within them, then pushes into the first toilet stall, its brown-painted metal door swinging open and hitting the inside wall.

Bracketed inside each stall is a stainless steel receptacle for tampons and sanitary napkins. He pulls this one from its bracket and walks it to his cart and turns it upside down over the trash can and shakes. He glances inside. Bloody pads stick to the stainless steel walls. He bangs it against the inside of the trash can. He hates the smell of this part of the job: a musty stink of curdled blood and pussy. He glances inside the receptacle. One blood-streaked pad still sticking to the bottom. He reaches in and pinches it between two gloved fingers, index and middle, and pulls it out and drops it into the trash can.

Then back to the toilet stall and sliding the receptacle into place.

It is strange to him to be doing this. He remembers when this college wasn’t even here. When he was a boy this was just trees and weeds and mustang grapevines and blackberry bushes. He remembers climbing the vines. They grew so thick they weaved themselves into baskets and sagged between the branches of the hickory and oak trees. He would climb in those baskets of vines and lie in them like hammocks.

It is strange how a town can grow up around a person. You’re standing still but all around you the world is moving, and one day you look up from your tiny piece of it and you’re lost: all the landmarks you used to know are gone, replaced by new landmarks that might mean something to someone but mean nothing to you. The woods in which you played as a boy were cut down for cordwood and have been smoke in the wind for decades, replaced by a city college you’re now expected to clean.

And when you look in the mirror you don’t even recognize the face looking back at you. Who is that old man with his fat, fleshy face, with eyes like unpolished wood buttons, with a mouth like an angry scribble? Some stranger, surely. No one you’ve ever met before.

There was a story in the Tonkawa County Democrat this morning about a girl who was kidnapped seven years ago, about a girl who made a single phone call only to vanish once more into the ether, and in that story there was a description of her kidnapper, and that description could easily be of the man you daily see in the mirror. Maybe they’re one and the same. But if they are it can’t possibly be you you see. A small, innocent boy who used to climb in trees pretending he was Tarzan could not possibly grow to be a man who kidnapped a seven-year-old girl from her own bedroom in the dead of night, who did that and worse. So why does that man gaze back at you when you look in the mirror?

Why do his memories hold a place in your mind?

The answer is clear: stop lying to yourself, Henry.

Yes: he is that man. If it weren’t for Beatrice he wouldn’t be. But if it weren’t for Beatrice he wouldn’t be anything. He’d have killed himself long ago. He’d have drowned in his own vomit in the dirt parking lot outside O’Connell’s or the paved one outside Roberta’s. He’d have drunkenly driven himself into a tree. He’d have accidentally shot himself in the face. She is the only person who made him believe he might have something to offer someone. Despite the fact he’s not the sharpest axe in the shed, despite his temper, despite occasional trips to the county jail for public drunkenness or a fight (when drinking or incredibly angry he sometimes forgets his boy-howdy smile and back-patting personality; he forgets to keep what he really is locked in a room in the back of the house). She has stood by him. Unlike his momma who always told him he was just like his daddy, a useless hunk of no good who couldn’t find his ass with both hands free. Probably gonna grow up to be a drunkard whoremonger too.

Beatrice has always stood by him. Always. So how can he be a bad man for standing by her too? He just did what he had to to keep Bee happy.

Newspapers don’t understand those kinds of things. They describe everything as black and white: they have to have a villain. But he just did what any loving husband would do. Newspapers don’t understand that nor mirrors.

Henry sprays the toilet down and then wipes it off with a thick blue paper towel. When he’s done with it he walks to the next stall and gets to work cleaning that one.

Ian does not drive straight home after work. Instead of taking Crouch Avenue down to Crockett, he cuts south at Wallace, drives past the U-Haul rental place, and pulls into the dirt parking lot in front of Paulson’s Feed Store. He could lose his job for doing what he’s about to do, but somehow he doesn’t care. He cannot let Andy continue to hold Genevieve and Thalia hostage in that house. It isn’t right. He has to do something.

He pushes open his car door and walks across the dirt to the front door, and then through it. The feed store is filled with the dusty but not unpleasant smell of feed pellets and hay. Andy is nowhere to be seen. The place seems abandoned. It is silent and still. Then the sound of movement from behind the store.

Ian walks through the place and into the shed area out back.

Andy is there with hooks in his hands, loading three bales of hay into the back of Vicki Dodd’s old Chevy pickup truck. When he is done, he throws the hooks onto a stack of hay bales and slaps the back of the truck two times. ‘See you next week,’ he says.

Vicki’s liver-spotted hand pops out the window, her truck starts, and then she’s gone, leaving Ian and Andy alone.

Andy turns to him and smiles. ‘Ian,’ he says. ‘What can I do you for?’

‘We need to talk.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘It’s about Genevieve.’

‘Aw, hell, Ian, I feel awful sorry about that. I swear it’ll-’

But Ian doesn’t let him finish. He rushes Andy and grabs him by the throat with his left hand, drawing his SIG with his right. He slams Andy against the sheet-metal wall, which sends a noise like thunder through the entire place, and puts the gun to Andy’s temple.

‘You’re goddamn right it’ll never happen again.’

‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘I’m telling you, you dumb son of a bitch, that if you so much as touch a hair on Genevieve’s head again, I’ll kill you. You got me?’

‘She was trying to leave. She was gonna take Thalia. You of all people must understand that. She’s all I got and she was-’

Ian slams the butt of his gun against Andy’s temple. Andy lets out a grunt of pain, and his knees buckle. Ian continues to hold him up by his throat. After a few choking gasps, Andy manages to get his feet back under him.

‘Hurts, doesn’t it?’

‘Listen, Ian-’

‘Shhh. I don’t care. She tries to leave again, you just let her leave. If she stays you’ll ruin that little girl. She’ll end up with some fuck-up like you. You love her, you let her out of your grip. You understand that?’

‘I’m trying not-’

‘There’s no trying here, Andy. I’ll kill you if you touch Genevieve again. I will kill you dead and put you where no one will ever find the body. Do you believe me?’

Andy nods.

‘I want you to say it.’

‘I believe you.’

‘Good.’ And it is good, because though Ian only came here to frighten Andy, he finds that he is telling the truth. He has it in him to do what he is threatening. He could pull the trigger and simply be done with it. But he does not. He reholsters his weapon and takes a step back.

‘See you around,’ he says.

When he gets home, he pulls out the phone book and sets it on his lap, flipping through it till he finds PAULSON, A. amp; G. He dials the number and waits. Genevieve picks up after four rings, and a tentative ‘Hello?’ escapes her mouth.

‘Genevieve,’ he says. ‘It’s Ian Hunt.’

‘Ian. .? Oh, hi, did. . did something happen to Andy?’ Ian might be mistaken, but he believes he hears hope in her voice.

‘No,’ Ian says. ‘But I wanted you to know that if you should decide to leave, he won’t try and stop you. We had us a serious talk, and he knows better now than to do again what he did this morning.’

With a saucepan in hand, he walks to the couch and sits down. He sets the pan on the table and stirs the ramen noodles inside before forking a dripping mass of them into his mouth. Then he grabs the files the sheriff’s department photocopied for him and sets them in his lap. He flips one open. Jamie Donovan was kidnapped from the bedroom of her home in Mencken in 2002. She was eleven. Her body was found in a ditch four days after she went missing. It had been posthumously sodomized and mutilated. There is a picture of her in the file, a color photocopy on a letter-size sheet of paper. Brunette. Sad brown eyes. Something timid in the way she held herself.

His cell phone rings. His first thought is that it’s Jeffrey. He drops the fork into the pan and picks up his phone. He glances at the number. It isn’t Jeffrey.

‘Hello.’

‘Ian.’

‘Deb.’

‘How are you?’

Ian scratches his face. His beard is growing in. It itches. ‘I don’t have any updates on Maggie. I’m sorry.’

‘I know.’

‘You do?’

‘Bill.’

‘Right. I guess he’d know.’

‘Yeah.’

‘So why are you calling?’

Debbie doesn’t answer for a long time, though Ian can hear her breathing.

After a while Ian says, ‘Are you and Bill fighting?’

‘No, it’s not that. Maybe I shouldn’t’ve called.’

‘It’s okay. I’m not busy.’

‘You never stopped believing she was alive, did you?’

‘I never stopped hoping she was alive.’

‘You never doubted?’

‘Of course I did.’

‘But you never gave up hope.’

‘No.’ Ian grabs a bottle of Guinness from the coffee table and takes a swallow.

‘How did you. .’ More silence. Then: ‘I saw the way you looked at me yesterday.’

‘How did I look at you?’

‘Like you wanted to strangle me. Like you hated me.’

‘I didn’t mean-’

‘I guess I deserved it.’

‘You didn’t. You have a life-a new husband, the twins-and you have every right to want to live it. I shouldn’t blame you for that.’

‘But how did you-’

‘Because it’s all I have.’ He looks down at Jamie Donovan’s picture, and then closes the file on it. The image is still in his mind. He takes another swallow of his Guinness. The mental image changes. Maggie. She smiles at him. Then she looks over her shoulder. A man appears behind her. He is out of focus, so Ian cannot identify him. His face a blur, as if smudged out with a wet eraser. Maggie screams and turns back to look at him. ‘Help me,’ she says. ‘Daddy, please.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Debbie says.

‘ “Now I am dead you sing to me.” ’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. What else do I have, Deb?’

‘Are you drunk?’

‘I don’t get drunk anymore.’

‘You quit drinking?’

‘No. I just don’t get drunk.’

Debbie is silent for a long time. Then: ‘Do you think if what happened with Maggie didn’t, hadn’t, do you think we would have made it? You and me, I mean.’

‘No.’

‘Why not? We were good for a long time.’

‘Because something else would have happened. That’s life. One thing happens, then another thing happens, then another thing happens. Only looking back can you try to make sense of it. So something would have happened and we’d still have separated, and we’d still be where we are now, or somewhere like it, wondering what the fuck happened to us. Life happened. It happens to everyone. The lucky ones, anyway.’

Not even breathing from the other end of the line: silence.

‘Deb?’

‘I’m glad she’s alive, you know.’

‘I know. You just wanted an answer and you gave yourself one. The only answer that made any sense, really. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred you would have been right. Seven days later it would have made sense to assume the worst. Seven years later it would have been insane to think anything else.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

She sniffles on the other end of the line. ‘Have you told Jeffrey?’ she says.

‘No.’

‘You should. He feels responsible, you know.’

‘I know, but I don’t know if he wants to hear from me.’

‘I don’t either,’ Debbie says, ‘but he needs to know and you need to tell him.’

‘I still love you, you know.’

‘But life happens.’

‘Right.’

‘Okay, Ian.’

‘Okay,’ he says, then hangs up the phone. He opens the next file.