Эд Горман - Stranglehold

“Gee, that’s a good approach,” Kristin laughed. “Be sure to mention you haven’t had sex for a couple of years.”

“See the kind of bullshit I have to put up with?”

Kristin smiled at me.

“Well, I guess I’d have to agree with Kristin on that one. I wouldn’t mention that you haven’t been with a woman until you’re at least on your fourth drink.”

“Or sixth,” Kristin said. “You know, when she can barely hear anything anyway.”

I stayed around to go over some fresh internal polling. Ben was disappointed we’d only gained back 1.5 percent of the previous internal dealing with blue-collar voters in the northernmost edge of our voting district. Kristin thought we were trending up and should be happy. Then Ben wanted to talk about bringing a senator into the district to campaign with Susan. He was hoping for a man I respected but who was given to saying the wrong thing at key moments. You had to exorcise him before you put him up on the platform or the demons would take him over. We decided to ask a safer if slightly dull choice who had a good relationship with unions. He had never been known to make a joke about his opponent’s rather large nose.

When I got to the door, I said, “I may see you tonight. Right now I need to do a couple of things.”

I spent ten minutes up front with the volunteers, getting their read on the day. Everybody was still high-fiving. And hugging. And beaming. Susan had done very well indeed. I did a bit of acting, slapping hands and backs with a few of them I knew. And then I was outside in the melancholy autumn dusk that was a perfect match for my mood.

I pulled up in my former spot at the Family Inn. A couple was unloading an SUV. A baby sat in her car seat crying. The couple took turns trying to calm her down as they trekked back and forth to their room. The door I wanted was four slots away. I knocked, waited. The lights of tall buildings and towers pierced the gray haze covering the half-moon. The McDonald’s across the way was crowded. The drive-through had two long lines going. The baby continued to wail. I knocked again.

The door opened about an inch. She had to jerk it open because of the swollen frame. “Who is it?” A female voice, young.

“My name is Dev Conrad. I’d like to talk to you if I could.”

“I’m not supposed to talk to anybody. Please just go away.” Her fear made her sound even younger.

The door started to close. I risked shoving my hand between it and the frame. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t slam it on my fingers.

“Maybe I can help you.”

“Please. Don’t get me in trouble. We don’t need any more trouble.”

“I was in this room earlier. I saw the blood.”

From inside I heard the sound of a TV newscast turned low. At the far end of the lot a pickup truck blaring country music pulled in. “Are you alone in there?”

After a pause: “Yes.”

“You’d feel better if you had somebody to talk to.”

“I don’t know who you are.”

“Somebody who wants to help you. And maybe you can help me.”

“I’m not sure—” Then: “Oh, God.”

She rushed off making sounds that I remembered from early in my marriage. My wife was sick a lot during her pregnancy with our daughter. We used to joke that she should just take up residence in the bathroom. I couldn’t be sure that this woman was going through the same thing, but that was my first impression.

She hadn’t bothered to close the door. I gave the door a shove and walked in. I flipped on the light switch. The bulb was dim, the light itself dirty yellow.

The cheap suitcase was still on the same bed. The other bed was messy from sleep. The first thing I did was go over to the desk. The cleaning had been crude but had gotten rid of most of the blood if you didn’t look closely. There was a residue of cleaning solution on the desktop now. Amateur job. The cleaning woman would have had a more formidable solvent and she wouldn’t have left traces of her work.

The vomiting started behind the closed bathroom door. I went over and sat down on the desk chair. On the screen starving children in Africa looked out at me in confusion and despair. When I took over the world I was going to kick a lot of ass. A whole lot.

Water ran in the sink. An electric toothbrush clicked on. When the nagging motor of the toothbrush clicked off she started to gargle.

When she emerged from the bathroom she looked no older than fourteen or fifteen, one of those waifs who is often painted with butterflies and rainbows all around them, out of a Victorian children’s story. She was lovely in a pale anxious way. It was the kind of sorrowful appeal that brought out the protectiveness in men. Doubly so in her case because in addition to her jeans she wore a light-blue maternity smock.

“That’s the only part of it I really hate. Barfing all the time. It makes me feel guilty, though. I shouldn’t complain about it. We’re actually going to have a baby this time. The last one — we lost it at four months.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes, so were we.” Then: “You really shouldn’t be here. You’d better leave.”

“Who cleaned up the blood?”

“I did. But I didn’t do a very good job, did I? I was really sick the last few hours.”

“Whose blood was it?”

She walked over to the mussed bed and sat on the front edge of it. She put tiny frail hands together and placed them in her lap. She had a pink barrette in her long golden hair. It only emphasized the impression of her being very young. But now that I saw her more closely I saw a spent quality to her mouth and eyes that suggested she was probably in her early twenties. She looked at me and said, “I would really appreciate it if you’d leave. Bobby has everything under control now, so there’s nothing you need to know anyway.”

“That easy, huh? Bobby taking care of it?”

“Don’t make fun of Bobby. I love him. He’s a good husband.”

“I’m not making fun of him, but if he’s taken care of it, why are you so upset?”

She raised her head, taking the dusty air of the room deep into her lungs. When she fixed on me again she said, “This man came and—” She stopped talking and pressed her splayed fingers across her belly. “That’s how I lost the first baby. I’m sure it is. All the stress we were going through. I don’t want to lose this one.”

“I want to help you. I don’t like to see you like this.”

“People are always saying bad things about Bobby. They don’t understand that he’s a good person.”

She started to cry. Put one of those fragile hands to her face and wept. She kept the other hand on her belly, as if to reassure the infant inside.

I went over and sat next to her on the bed and put my arm around her. She didn’t resist. I’d done this a few times with my own daughter, especially in her teen years. She leaned against me. “It’s just so hard sometimes. And sometimes I think it’ll never be any easier.”

“You have to tell me what you’re talking about.”

“But if I do, he’ll think I’m betraying him. He always says that about people. And he’s right. But I don’t have anybody else to talk to about it. I’m just cooped up here all the time.”

“You can talk to me.”

“I don’t even know you.”

“You said you need to talk to somebody. I’m trying to be your friend.”

She dragged the palms of her hands down her gleaming face and snuffled up her tears. “Oh, God. You really should leave.”

I waited a minute before I spoke. She had put her hands on the horizon of her belly and was staring at the wall.

“You’re in trouble. Maybe I can help you.”

The sigh was ragged. “It’s just everything he tries — it never comes out right.”