David Kessler - No Way Out

“But rape isn’t about sex. It’s about power.”

“Oh yes, that old feminist cliche. But sex is always about power, whether it’s the men fighting to get the pick of the females or the power involved in the transaction itself. Why do you think in sex there’s nearly always some one on top, figuratively as well as literally? Why do you think there are so many S amp; M sites on the web?”

“Okay,” she said, struggling to keep pace with his self-serving rationalization, “and what about all those men who go online in search of some leather-clad dominatrix to whop the butts?”

“But don’t you see that just proves my point? It’s the same process with the polarity reversed. Sex is about an exchange of power. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the exercise of power over the other person or giving in to their power. It doesn’t even matter whether it’s real power or just make believe. Either way, it’s not about equality. Never was!”

Gene thought about this for a moment and realized that it was true, even in her own relationship with Andi. All those role-playing games they played. What were they if not ritualized exercises in power and control?

“Okay look… maybe you’re right. Maybe sex is just one big game about power. But it’s a game with rules . Society has rules . We call it the social contract . And people have rights . And we all have a duty to obey those rules and respect the rights of our fellow human beings.”

“Uh-uh! I never signed up for no social contract.” She noticed that as anger got the better of him, his grammar was slipping, like a facade that couldn’t stand up to the inclement weather. “The social contract never did a thing for me. I got jack-shit out of other people’s social contract! So why should I abide by it? This animal lives by the law of the jungle. And I’m proud of it.”

“Then go back to the jungle! Don’t bring your jungle into our cities.”

He looked at her with a wide-eyed smile.

“I prefer to do it this way… to take my jungle with me wherever I go. And that’s not a race thing either. Most kluckers would agree with me on this one.”

He turned to the terrified Martine on the bed and smiled not with delight, but with the vengeful anger that he had carried around with him.

Claymore was desperately looking around as the sun set over the Pacific. But there was no one there to help. On other days, there might have been, even at this time. But not today. Right now those people who weren’t on the road were sitting in front of their TVs glued to the final day of the baseball game.

With an almighty effort of his stomach muscles, he heaved Andi’s lifeless body up to the level of the rail and then rested his elbows on the rail, still clinging on with his hands. It gave him a breather, although her body was still held there only by the pressure of his legs and torso. But now he was able to plant his feet again on the girders of the bridge. This enabled him to free one hand.

Choosing to free his left hand, he leaned back, encircled Andi’s waist with his left arm and heaved her with all his might, so that he could deposit her onto the railing. From there it was a simple matter to turn her over onto her stomach, flopped across the railing and maneuver her down back onto the observation platform.

Climbing back himself was no problem after that. But then he realized that his problems were just beginning. For as he surveyed her crumpled, motionless body he saw that there was no sign of breathing or movement of any kind. And her body had almost turned blue.

He realized in that moment that she wasn’t merely unconscious. She had gone into cardiac arrest!

He scrambled frantically to his jacket, whipped out his cell phone and punched in 911.

“Listen I’m on the Golden Gate Bridge with a woman who-”

“Have you got a potential jumper?”

“No, I’ve pulled her back in. But she’s gone into cardiac arrest. She’s been drinking heavily — and maybe popping pills too. I need an ambulance right away.”

“Is she still breathing?”

“No and there’s no pulse either, I already checked!”

“Okay I’ll send an ambulance right away. Do you know how to do CPR?”

“I’ve seen it on TV, but I’m not really sure. I mean I never learned how to do it properly.”

“Okay, I’m sending an ambulance. In the meantime I’ll explain to you what to do. Lie her down on a flat, hard surface.”

“I did that already.”

“Okay now tilt her head slightly back to clear an air passage.”

“Okay,” he said, noting the instruction, but not yet acting on it.

“No with a pumping wrist action of both hands, do fifteen sharp compressions on the left side of her chest.”

“Fifteen?”

“Yes.”

“And then what?”

“Then you do two ventilations. That means you pinch her nose shut and breathe into her twice, gently. Don’t breathe too hard or it can burst her lungs.”

“OK I’ll try that.”

He put the phone down and crouched down next to Andi, engulfed in sorrow. He knew that he had lost — that he had killed her twenty five years ago. What he had before him now was merely the culmination of his wickedness. But he had to try to save her. He owed her that at least. He had hurt her in every way possible, including driving her to this. But he couldn’t fail her now.

He looked around in blind panic as if hoping to see some one there who could help him. But there was no one. And as misery and fear engulfed him, it finally dawned on him that he was well and truly alone.

It hadn’t merely been idle talk when he said at the trial when he said: “Since I came back to America to serve out my sentence I haven’t been able to touch a woman.”

It had been the truth. But he remembered what Andi had told him at their conference before he testified.

“Sometimes the greatest test of courage is standing up to the enemy within.”

In his case the immediate enemy within was the fear of touching a woman, knowing what he had done to women in the past. But the latent enemy was the knowledge of how little his own life was worth.

Only now it was different. Now he could do something. If he could bring himself to overcome his own self-loathing.

But if he couldn’t overcome this terror in this moment, then he would do more harm by his inaction now than he had ever done by his actions in the past. It would be the ultimate guilt: the guilt of indifference.

One of his fellow revolutionaries had once said: “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” If this applied to problems that affected him, then it must surely also apply to the problems that afflicted others.

So now, he knew, it was time for the hands that had once violated to become the hands that heal… in a final act of redemption.

Alex had phoned the cops and tried to explain the situation, to no avail. The more he explained, the more convoluted it sounded. Up till the point when he got through to Gene and Manning had addressed him directly, he couldn’t really cite any reason why they should even bother to pay a visit to Martine’s room, because all he had was conjecture piled on top of paranoia.

When he finally told them about the phone call to Gene and Manning’s response, they sounded interested. But when he admitted that he couldn’t be sure that it was Manning — and also that he reached Gene on her cell phone rather than the landline in Martine’s room — they seemed to lose interest. The dispatcher even pointed out that Gene could have been anywhere and that “Manning” could have been anyone.