Макс Коллинз - Spree

He let her bathe, once a day. He let her wash out her clothes, her underwear, and the father had provided some Jordache jeans and a frilly blouse (was there a girl in this god-awful family?) for her to wear while her clothes dried. So at least she didn’t have to feel scuzzy. At least she could be clean, relatively, at least her hair wouldn’t be a greasy mess; it was a clean mess, but that was better than greasy. It helped her keep her spirits up, just enough to be thinking of ways out of this.

She went to the bathroom as often as she could get away with it. It was necessary, because she went through the countless cans of Diet Coke Lyle thoughtfully fetched for her upon command. And she was working on a project: the window.

The bathroom window, which looked out upon snowy ground and evergreens mingling with gray skeletal trees, was painted shut. She was working it loose. Paint chips fell, which she dutifully gathered and flushed down the toilet. She didn’t work on it long or hard at any given time, except during her bath, while the water ran, covering the noise of her upward thrusts at the stuck window.

Wednesday morning, as her bath was drawing itself, she broke it loose. She slid it open, carefully, but the wood against wood made an awful screech.

And Lyle was right there, on the other side of the unlocked door: “Are you okay in there?”

Cold air was rushing in on her; goose pimples took control.

“I’m fine,” she said, trying to keep her voice light, squeezing the words past her heart, which was in her throat, in her fucking throat.

He was saying, “What was that noise?”

“The water pipes, I guess. Cold today.”

“Well. Hurry up in there.”

She waited a few beats; the water was still running, so she couldn’t hear whether his footsteps made their way across the room, back to the bed and TV. Maybe he was still on the other side of that door, 38 in his belt. Maybe he was watching Jeopardy! while Billy Idol sang. Who the fuck knew.

She put the stool down, and stood on it, and crawled over and out of the window and dropped to the snow, on her knees and hands, in the borrowed jeans and frilly blouse, and she began to run, at first toward the trees — then looking around, she saw down the slope, the top of a building; she curved and ran toward there, her feet crunching in snow-covered leaves, and it was a motel, a small one, just a handful of rooms, and down the hill, goddamn! Highway. Beyond that, the river, the Mississippi.

She knew where she was, vaguely; this was the Illinois side. Probably near Andalusia. She tumbled, ankle giving. Damn! Fuck!

She got on her feet again, quickly, front of her wet from snow. Her ankle was okay — she’d twisted it a little, it would slow her down some, but it wasn’t bad, certainly nothing broken, and she heard him behind her. Christ!

She could hear his footsteps, as he strode through the snow, could hear him puffing, gulping in air, and she tried to pick up speed and then he was on her, tackling her, bringing her down. She looked up, saw the goal line, the highway, down the hill. No touchdown today.

He yanked her up, holding her by her upper arm, dragging her like a disobedient child back up the hill.

“That was bad,” he said. “You shouldn’ta done that.”

“Don’t tell your father.”

“I have to.”

“Why?”

“I just have to.”

He was amazing; he was goddamn fucking amazing. “Do you really think it was wrong of me to try to save myself? To try to get away?”

“You’re supposed to stay with me.”

They made her keep the door open when she went to the bathroom, from then on. They let her keep bathing, but with the door open. Lyle had nailed the window shut. He nailed the other windows in the place shut as well, after that.

Wednesday night, late, so late it was Thursday morning, Lyle left for a meeting with his father and Nolan and some other people. By now she had caught the drift of it, hearing Lyle’s half of frequent phone conversations with his “pa.” Unless she was badly mistaken, they were planning to rob some of the stores at Brady Eighty. Maybe a lot of the stores. They were using Nolan’s inside knowledge about the mall in particular, and his expertise at such robberies in general, to pull this heist. But the bottom line still seemed to be revenge. She could smell Nolan’s death in this. And her own.

They left her with the owner of the frilly blouse and jeans, a cute, slutty teenage girl named Cindy Lou, perky boobs poking at a RATT T-shirt; sitting in a chair on the other side of the other bed and reading Hit Parader magazine and listening to her own tapes on her brother’s Walkman. She seemed nervous and embarrassed and avoided talking to Sherry.

Sherry tried to get the girl’s attention, to no avail, but finally the girl put her magazine down and took the earphones off and came and sat on the bed.

“What’s this about?” she asked. It had taken her a long time, lost in her magazine and music, to allow some thoughts, some doubts, to push through. But they apparently had.

“Don’t you know?” Sherry asked.

“I don’t pay much attention to what Lyle and Daddy do. I figure what I don’t know won’t hurt me.”

“Well, it can hurt me . They kidnaped me, your daddy and Lyle. Lyle’s your brother?”

She nodded; she had big blue eyes and was faintly freckled. She looked innocent and worldly at once.

“They’re getting you involved in it, kidnaping, leaving you here with me.”

She swallowed, looked away. “I know,” she said glumly.

“I didn’t do anything to them. I live with a man they’re forcing to do some things, by holding me captive. I think they’re going to kill both of us, when this is over.”

The girl shook her head no. “Daddy wouldn’t do that. Lyle wouldn’t do that.”

“I think they would.”

“Anybody rape you or anything?”

“No.”

“Not Lyle? Not Daddy?”

“No.”

She shrugged. “See,” she said, offering that as proof of her family’s good intentions.

“You weren’t sure when you asked me, though, were you? You thought maybe I might have been raped.”

She shrugged again. But said nothing.

“Help me.”

“How?”

“They left you the key to these cuffs, didn’t they?”

“Not rilly, no. They said if you had to pee, to tell you to hold it.”

“Maybe we can find something to bust this rung, and I can slip my cuff off...”

“No. I can’t help you. I’d like to, lady, but no.”

“Will you take a message to someone for me?”

“No. I’m sorry. Now, I don’t want to talk to you, anymore.”

“Please!”

But the girl was already back in her chair, putting the headphones on, turning up the heavy-metal music.

Thursday night, finally, Sherry got her hands on that bed stand telephone. But it was Lyle’s doing: she had been cuffed to a nearer rung so that she could talk to Nolan, tell him she was alive and well.

Hearing his voice was wonderful and so very sad.

“They’re using me,” she said, “to make you help them, aren’t they?”

“You know about the mall heist?”

That confirmed her suspicions; it was a large- scale robbery.

“I picked up on it,” she admitted. She told him he could lose everything because of this, but he reassured her, said he wouldn’t lose her, said he’d planned the job smoothly; but she could hear it in his voice, try as he might to hide it: they were both under a sentence of death.

Now she felt compelled to reassure him: “They haven’t hurt me. They keep saying once you’ve cooperated, I’ll be released.”

He told her they’d be together in a few hours, and then he said something amazing: when she said she loved him, he said he loved her, too. He’d never said that before. It was nice to hear. Too bad this was what it took...