The Red Room

28

Thinking is not an option. Grace reacts because she’s been trained to react by the PLA’s intelligence force. There’s a communal laundry wire strung between this building and the next, barely ten feet away, open windows on both sides. A vinyl basket tied to the wire holds clothespins. Handicapped by her bound wrists, Grace dumps the clothespins inside, unties the basket with her teeth and places it over the woven wire, holding the basket by its opposing handles. The basket collapses under her weight but serves as protective strap to guide her across the wire. She tests it against her weight, throws her ankles up onto the wire, contracting her knees to pull her along. She does not look down, but can’t ignore the basket’s vinyl is being slowly sawed into by the wire. She says a few prayers, grateful it’s ten feet across, not twenty, and speeds up her efforts. The basket about to break, Grace switches to her bare hands for the last few feet. The wire cuts through the flesh of her fingers.

Once she reaches the far building, it takes her three precarious tries to get her feet through the opposing window, and she’s losing strength by the time she manages.

An older woman in a hijab sees Grace’s bloody fingers and wrists and silently withdraws back into her apartment, shutting her door.

Grace hurries downstairs, before realizing she should have asked the woman to cut the ties.

No one follows. She would like to attribute her continuing freedom to her evasive skills, but Grace knows better. It’s not as if she incapacitated both her captors, so where are they? She pushes into a busy bodega, self-conscious at the stares caused by her lack of a head scarf, her bound wrists and the sweat cascading down her face.

A pair of scissors is chained to the counter alongside a beat-up calculator.

“Please,” she says, extending her wrists to a man in a soiled turban.

The clerk looks at her wrists and then meets eyes with Grace.

“My husband,” Grace says, appealing to a matronly woman behind her. “My husband. He beats me. Please!” She raises her voice. “He did this to me. He’s coming for me.”

“It is God’s will,” the clerk says. His eyes are dark brown, dead.

“Step aside!”

The woman who comes to Grace’s aid is college-aged and dressed unconventionally in a zippered jacket and blue jeans. She wears a head scarf, but fashionably. All eyes are on her as she shoves past the solemn matrons in line.

The clerk places his hairy hand over the shears, pinning them to the counter.

“It is inhumane,” the young woman says. “Only a coward must bind his wife’s hands like a prisoner.”

The sound of approaching sirens carry down the street outside, giving everyone pause.

The young woman doubts herself. “What have you done?”

Grace pleads, “Please! There isn’t much time!” The sirens form a chorus. “Whose side will they take?”

The young woman isn’t going to touch the man’s hand. She snags a butane lighter from a basket and lights its blue flame. She looks down at the curls of black hair on the back of the man’s hand.

Minding the flame, he takes his hand off the scissors, but the young woman and Grace are of like mind. Grace has angled her wrists and the girl is melting the plastic tie that binds them. It catches fire, emitting dark black smoke, and then pops as Grace applies outward pressure.

The matrons jump away as the burning plastic whistles to the floor.

Grace utters a Muslim blessing to the girl, who returns it.

“There is a door through the back.” The girl speaks English, her all-knowing look holding Grace. “Do not worry.” Again, English. “I say nothing.”

Grace rushes toward the rear of the shop.

The streets are narrow and as thick with people as the air, which hangs heavy with the smell of spiced food and human sweat. Smog cloaks the tops of the low buildings like morning fog over a river. She hears coughing and the scratch of grit beneath shoes, the roar of car engines, children’s voices and a barking confined dog. Despite its uncanny similarity to Shanghai’s claustrophobic neighborhoods, it is foreign to her. She is a stranger here, in looks, height, dress. She has no money. Her phone is worthless. She has no idea where she is in relation to the Bosphorus or any other city landmarks. Senses she is a target, that they are coming after her.

She swipes a head scarf from a woman’s shopping bag as she passes; pulls it on and cinches it beneath her chin. Wishes for a pair of dark glasses. Needs some sense of bearings. More minarets than chimneys in Dickensian London. More people than a parade route. The buildings are too crowded, the street too winding for her to get a glimpse of the landscape. And all the while, there is the inescapable tension of the Pamplona bulls coming up behind her.

Head down. Long strides. She uses car mirrors to check the street. Cuts in front of taller vehicles, using them as screens. Looks for a bicycle, anything to move her faster. A part of her cannot believe anyone could find her given the crush, but she knows better. Rutherford Risk is in business because of the suffocating hold kidnappers maintain on hostages — even escaped hostages. Informal networks of payoffs. Corrupt cops. Gangs. The underground world is five times the size of the legitimate one. It runs on a currency of favor and fear, is a place where debts are final and betrayal is met with punishment that extends across generations.

Her phone vibrates in her pocket, stunning her. She fishes it out. The carrier is written in Arabic. Glancing back all the while in search of anyone following, she stops several people, asking in Turkish: “Please!” and holding out her phone. Finally, a woman stops.

“My phone,” Grace says, speaking Turkish. “What does this mean?”

The woman tries English. “This says, problem. How you say, problem? Difficulty?”

“Emergency!”

“Just so. Emergency. Yes. Like hospital.”

“I can dial an emergency number?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

“What do I dial for police?”

“This number is the one, the five, the five.”

“One, five, five. Thank you.”

“May I help, please?”

Grace fights back a surge of emotion. Her eyes glass over. The Turks are such warm people.

“You have. Thank you so much. Indebted.”

She spots a man a half block back, recognizes him as one of her captors.

Her newfound girlfriend picks up on the sudden fear coursing through Grace. Looks back and forth between the two with troubled eyes. “This man make trouble you?”

Perhaps she has seen the red, raw rings on Grace’s wrists or the dried sweat and smeared makeup. But no. It’s Grace’s feet: she is shoeless, wearing only ankle socks.

Even with its chip pulled, the phone can dial emergency calls.

“One-five-five. Thank you!” Grace speaks even as she runs from the man approaching.