Russell Andrews - Aphrodite

Washington, D.C. February 23

She knew there were no monsters.

And yet, when the lights were out, she also knew that there were.

It's why she screamed when she heard the footsteps. There was a quick flurry, someone running-no, darting, that's the way it sounded, definitely darting-and then there was a crash, glass being shattered, a piece of pipe, perhaps, swung against the ugly overhanging fluorescent light. Everything turned shadowy; the whole room was suddenly fifty percent darker than it had been. Then, almost before she could register what was happening, there were more footsteps, on the other side of the garage-how did he get over there so fast? It didn't seem possible-and another crash, another light smashed, and then it was dark. Not just darker this time, but completely dark. She couldn't see her hand right in front of her face.

It was absolutely quiet, too. Black and silent.

And suddenly there it was.

The feeling.

Even under normal circumstances, when things were calm, when she was tucked safely in bed, under the down-filled covers with the lights out, Maura Greer was overwhelmed by the dark. Even in her own room there was nothing she could do to stop her imagination from running wild. To stop her heart from beating madly and her throat from drying up and that thing inside her head from saying: Be afraid. Something bad is coming. Something really is there, inside the blackness…

And now something really was there.

Footsteps again.

She could hear someone breathing.

She thought she was going to faint. Her whole body was shaking and, despite the freezing temperature and dankness of the garage, hot, clammy sweat was starting to drip down the back of her neck.

Maura had lived with this fear for so long. Maybe her whole life. As a child she needed a night-light. When she went away to college, got her very first apartment, she used to leave the light on in the hallway outside her bedroom. She told her roommate it was so she could find the bathroom when she woke up in the middle of the night, but that wasn't true at all. It was because the darkness terrified her. Filled her with numbing, paralyzing dread.

That's what she was feeling now. She was stuck in the underground garage of her apartment building with some madman who had shattered all the lights and was, she was positive, going to stalk her and catch her and rape her. So the dread was deep in the pit of her stomach. A physical sensation. A pain. As if she'd been injected with a drug that was quickly taking effect, moving upward from her feet, through her legs, clenching her stomach, wrapping around her throat, choking her. It's not fair, she thought. Not today. Not now. Not when, in less than an hour, her whole life was about to change. And it was going to change. She knew it. Today he was going to tell her he loved her. He was going to tell her they could be together. Finally. And she was going to comfort him and assure him that everything would be all right, and make him understand he'd made the right decision, and…

More footsteps!

To her left. He was all the way to her left, maybe thirty feet away. There was a door there, leading up to her apartment building; it was the way she'd come in. But there was another way out. An easier way. The driveway. That was maybe fifty or sixty feet to her right. The metal door, the one that rolled slowly down from the tracks on the ceiling and guarded the ramp the cars came up, was shut. It shouldn't have been-it was supposed to stay open until 7 p.m. She didn't have the clicker that opened it, either. She would have, normally, but she hadn't brought her purse. He didn't like her to carry any ID when they met. He didn't want them to be seen together in public, and they always took extra-careful precautions, but he didn't want her to have any identifying papers in case anything happened, so she just took to leaving her purse and her wallet at home when she saw him. She could picture her bag sitting on the kitchen counter. And in it was the goddamn clicker. She'd thought about taking it, decided it wasn't important, she wouldn't need it, not before seven. So she left it. Her ticket to freedom sitting on the god-damn kitchen counter…

But there was still another way out, she realized. Another door that led out to the front of the building. All she had to do was beat him to that door by the driveway and she could make it up to the street. There'd be people there. Someone to help her. There'd be light.

But she didn't know if she could make it. She wasn't dressed for running.

She had wanted today to be so perfect. She wore his favorite blouse, a flowery Donna Karan, very flimsy and practically see-through. She had tried on two different pairs of pants in her apartment, then decided that pants weren't right, she really wanted to go sexy, so she wound up with a short black skirt. Straight, no pleats, linen. It came down to the middle of her thighs, and she knew he really liked her thighs; even in public he could barely keep his hands from brushing up against them at dinner, sometimes being as daring as he could be, squeezing them under the table and lingering.

The bra had been easy. It came from the Bra Store, in Manhattan, on Madison in the East Sixties, practically her favorite place on earth. Today's choice was very daring. It was flesh colored and revealed a lot of cleavage. Under the Donna Karan it would look, at first glance, as if she was naked, and she knew he'd really, really like that. Leaving her apartment, she'd thought about how he'd look at her in mock disapproval, shake his head, and say something like "That should be illegal." She'd look concerned and maybe say, "Do you want me to go home and change?" And, of course, he'd grab her then, because he couldn't help himself, and she'd let him hold her, touch her, for a long time, and she'd kiss him, once or twice, slowly lick the inside of his upper lip, he loved that so much, and when he groaned with pleasure, she'd say, "Did you do it? Did you tell her?" And this time she knew the answer would be yes. Because this time she really had something for him. She had some real information. She would show him once and for all that she was not just a piece of fluff or merely the object of his lust. She had a brain. A good brain. And she was important to him. Useful.

Because this time she could give him what he wanted, something besides the sex.

He'd given her a name.

Aphrodite.

And now she knew what it meant.

She could, even in the darkness of the garage, picture his eyes, the way they'd shine when she told him what she'd discovered. And she imagined his voice when she finally heard the words she'd been dying to hear for so many months now.

Yes, I told her. Yes, we can be together.

Yes. I love you.

Yes…

It was going to be exactly how she'd dreamed about it. That's why she'd had to get the shoes just right, too, of course. He liked spike heels, all men did. God, men were fools sometimes. It was still the middle of the afternoon and she didn't want to look like a hooker, but what the hell, she'd decided to go for it. She wouldn't wear them when he took her to the White House-and he was going to take her to the White House, he'd all but promised-but today wasn't for meeting presidents and senators. Today was supposed to be for something altogether different, so she went for the Jimmy Choo eggshell-colored heels. Why not? They showed her ankles off so perfectly and that was the best part of her body, she knew. She might be ten pounds on the plump side-okay, fifteen-but her ankles were perfect. So that was what she was wearing with her tight skirt, and that was why she was not dressed for running.

Her ankles just might get her killed, she thought…