When She Was Bad

CHAPTER EIGHT
1

After struggling against his bonds for hours, the only tangible progress Pender had made was in loosening his gag in order to breathe around it. But that was a not-unimportant achievement: it meant he could allow himself to fall asleep without having to worry about suffocating.

Or not so much fall asleep as doze off for a few minutes before being jolted awake by the apnea that had prevented him from sleeping on his back for the last five years or so. It was an uncomfortable, even frightening feeling, awakening with the sound of your own snort still echoing in your ears, and realizing that the back of your throat had swollen shut, blocking both airways-but then, being awake was no goddamn picnic either.

When he wasn’t thinking about the possibility of never being rescued, of dying here either of thirst or suffocation-which was not all that likely when you considered the situation rationally, he had to keep reminding himself-Pender had time to wrestle with his own shame and grief. He’d come to like Mick MacAlister in those last few hours-his mind-projector kept screening the clip of the two of them sitting on that old automobile seat on the hill behind the barn, harmonizing on a medley of pot songs-“One Toke Over the Line,” “The Joker,” and of course “Puff the Magic Dragon”-before the gnats and mosquitos chased them back inside the car.

But oh what a fiasco (Fucked In All Seven Common Orifices, as the folk etymology had it) the two of them had perpetrated. They couldn’t have blown it any worse if they’d been on Maxwell’s payroll-and Pender didn’t even have the excuse of being stoned. Yes, it had been Mick who’d put the gun down so he could free Mama Rose, but surely Pender should have been watching for Maxwell instead of hurrying to Lily’s side.

Then when the firing began, Pender remembered with deep shame, his response had been to hit the floor. If only he’d done something, anything: charged Maxwell, thrown the flashlight at him, run for the door, dived for the bedroom window. Mick might still be dead, but Pender wouldn’t be tied up here like a Christmas goose-and Maxwell wouldn’t have a six-hour lead. Or twelve, or twenty-four, or however long it took before somebody dropped by the pink ranch house.

Lying next to Pender with eighteen inches or so of space between them, Mama Rose lost the battle with her bladder in the first few hours, which meant that in addition to the dire thirst, the muscle cramps, the headache from rebreathing stale air, and a rapidly worsening case of claustrophobia-a disorder that had never troubled her before-she now had a new problem to worry about. Diaper rash, she told herself, with a harsh mental laugh. Okay, Rosie, what’s next?

But although she had, like Pender, managed to loosen her gag far enough to be able to breathe through her mouth, unlike Pender Mama Rose never stopped struggling with it, worrying at the fabric, until eventually-around two or three in the morning, at a guess-the linen strips had gone damp and slack enough to enable her to shove the gag out of her mouth with her tongue.

“Hey,” she said.

“Mmmf,” replied Pender.

“I got an idea.”

“Mmmf?”

“Can you get any closer?”

Wriggling, writhing, he humped sideways as far as the cuffs securing his hands to the headboard would permit. Mama Rose did the same; they met in the middle of the bed. “Try to turn onto your side,” she told him.

He couldn’t, not without dislocating his shoulders. “Okay, just your head, turn your head toward me.”

He did, and discovered that she had succeeded where he’d failed, and was lying on her side. They looked into each other’s eyes for a few seconds-her eyes were a darker blue than his, puffy and red-rimmed from crying for Carson; she had a tiny white scar on the bridge of her nose. She strained toward him. Her face came closer, closer, her mouth open, her teeth bared, her breath foul. For a few seconds he thought she’d gone bonkers and was going to start kissing or biting him; he flinched away.

“Hold still,” she told him, then seized his gag in her teeth and started chewing.