Jonathan Nasaw - Fear itself

Instead, as they took their seats on the shuttle van at the Enterprise lot, he leaned as close to her as the brim of his Panama would allow and whispered into her ear that if she wanted to have a panic attack, that would be fine with him. And if she wanted to pass out, that would also be fine with him: he’d stay close enough at all times to catch her before she hit the ground and broke her nose again, then sling her over his shoulder and carry her onto the plane one-handed, flashing his badge as necessary. Which of his zero remaining good hands he would use to flash the badge, he didn’t say.

He did tell her what wouldn’t be fine with him, though, as the van pulled up in front of the United section of the SFO terminal. Quitting wouldn’t be fine, giving in and giving up wouldn’t be fine. So she didn’t have to waste her psychic energy wondering whether to turn back, as that was no longer an option.

And no, the Pender treatment was not exactly in line with current psychiatric thinking. Desensitization was the modern style. First you talk it through; then you visualize; then you simulate; then one week you drive by the airport-but no closer-and the next week you walk through the terminal; and so on, until lo and behold, one year and Lord knows how many thousands of dollars in therapist fees later, maybe you’d be ready to fly.

But who was Pender to challenge the best minds of the psychiatric profession? Where did he get his degree? Why, at the University of Dorie, he would answer. He might not know dick about desensitization therapy, but he knew people, and he knew Dorie. She didn’t need coddling, she needed flooding, a dare, a challenge. Something to arouse that lion heart.

At seven in the morning, the lines at the counter were still short. They checked their baggage through-Dorie’s painting gear was in a footlocker and her clothes in a full-size suitcase that was never intended as a carry-on-and headed for the gate, with a detour to the same bar Pender and Sid had stopped at six days earlier. A Jim Beam on the rocks for Pender, a screwdriver for Dorie, on the theory that liquor was cheaper and quicker than Xanax, and didn’t give you the shits or diminish your orgasm.

Not that they were planning to join the Mile High Club-even if Dorie had been willing, there was no way to cram two people their size into an airplane lavatory.

The worst part, for Dorie, was sitting in the boarding lounge waiting for the flight to be called. It wasn’t Pender who got her through it, though-instead, it was a little boy, maybe four years old, wearing a devilish red-and-black Darth Maul mask, probably part of his costume for Halloween, and playing peekaboo over, under, and around the rows of molded plastic chairs.

The first time the devil’s face popped up, it gave her a start, no denying that. But a start was all it gave her-she yelped and clutched her hand to her chest, then laughed weakly, same as most adults would have.

As for the tot, it was probably the first time he’d actually managed to scare somebody; he circled around the row and came around again, and again, and again, and each time Dorie laughed a little harder, not at the boy, but at the absurdity of it all.

“You sure you don’t want me to tin the little bastard?” asked Pender as the kid came around for the fourth time.

“Are you kidding?” she replied. “The little bastard is a messenger from God.”

“From God, eh? And what’s the message?”

“The message is, Dorie Bell, you’ve wasted two-thirds of your life being afraid of being afraid. Why not unpucker, and enjoy the ride?”

“Now, there’s an advertising slogan for you,” said Pender. “United Airlines: Unpucker and Enjoy the Ride!”

A hot shower, a shave (but not the scalp: Simon had decided to let the stubble sprout, lest Grandfather Childs be tempted to make another unscheduled appearance), a good breakfast, a handful of crosstops, and a stout joint, and Simon was himself again. He’d been through some rough moments, what with the death of his mother and all, and for a while there he might have been closer to the precipice than he cared to think about, but that was all behind him. This morning’s grandfather sighting was only a flashback, he told himself. Too many drugs lately-or at least too many of the wrong drugs in the wrong combinations. From now on he’d be sticking to crosstops and weed, the former for energy and clarity of purpose, the latter for imagination and creativity-all of which would be required for the game.

As would handcuffs and either a scalpel or a narrow-bladed knife-at any rate, something with a pointed, thrusting edge, as nasty-looking as it was sharp, to go along with the box cutter he’d picked up at Conroy Circle. As he searched the house, it occurred to Simon that if he wanted to hear Pender pleading for Skairdykat and Skairdykat pleading for Pender, then he’d have to leave both their mouths free. Which meant at least part of the game had to take place in the cellar, where, if pleading turned to screaming, the screams would be less likely to be heard down by the canal. Later in the afternoon, he decided, he would bring one of the kitchen chairs down to the cellar-for now, he would continue to search for the handcuffs, and further refine his game plan.

Pain had been no stranger to Linda Abruzzi in recent months, but she’d never known agony like this. Catch the snake first, worry about holding on to it later, was easier said than done.

Linda’s sense of the passage of time was necessarily vague. It felt as if she’d been lying on her side at the foot of the stairs, holding the coral at arm’s length and listening to Childs’s footsteps overhead for days now (whenever it sounded as if he was approaching the kitchen, she would replace her gag and hide both the coral and the parted rope behind her back), but the dim cellar light told her it was still Thursday afternoon.

The living room television came on. From Linda’s current location, she couldn’t make out the program. Sounded as if it might be Rosie or Oprah or Sally Jesse Raphael -at any rate, it was a female voice with an excitable audience, and the footsteps had stopped for a while.

No rest for Linda, though. And as if the pain, the thirst, and the hunger weren’t bad enough, she had to fight the cramps that for the last few hours had been hopscotching unpredictably up and down her arm-now the thumb, now the shoulder, now the wrist, now the elbow. If she could have changed hands, she would have, but she couldn’t trust the benumbed fingers of the left one anymore.

More insidious than the pain and cramping was the almost hallucinatory exhaustion. She’d been awake since yesterday morning. And unlike her pain, she knew, the exhaustion could well prove fatal. The coral was no longer thrashing, but neither had it gone back to sleep. Instead it was waiting, biding its time. And every so often, it tried her-a powerful, quicksilver-smooth shifting of the bands of muscle beneath the scales; she would tighten her grip and it would relax again. Waiting. Biding.

Just a little bit longer, she promised it in her mind. And when it’s all over, I’ll let you go. You can live here under the house forever and I’ll bring you all the fat mice you can eat, and a hamster every Christmas.

The television fell silent; the footsteps began again. By the time Childs actually opened the cellar door and started down the steps, Linda had been visualizing the scenario for so long that it was almost as if it had already happened. He trots down the steps, she plays possum, he bends over her, she thrusts the coral at his eye, his neck, his-

The footsteps came halfway down the stairs, then receded; the cellar door closed again. The disappointment was crushing. Linda hadn’t been willing to admit to herself how whipped she really was until she thought her ordeal was nearly over; now she didn’t know how much longer she’d be able to hang on.