J. Wachowski - In Plain View

My breathing made a surf-roar in my ears. “Hello?”

No answer. I made myself quiet-hiding quiet-and entered.

The room was shoebox small, only a dozen chairs, and a solid table with glass votives at the front. The walls were bare, the wood trim spare and nothing but a pair of dim uplights shining on the curtained wall behind the altar table. I smelled hospital cleaner and the burning sweetness of beeswax candles.

I circled the room. It was empty and then some, as non-denominational as a place of worship could be. In the Amish world, simplicity came from sameness. Funny how in our world, it was diversity that bred simplicity.

Could anyone sink low enough to hide behind an altar table? I looked and realized there was a door behind the curtained wall.

Cold rushed through my blood. Calm took effort.

Ready-I opened the door as carefully, quietly, as possible. It swung inward.

Absolute dark. I slipped my hand past the door jamb, feeling for a light switch.

Click!

The overhead blinked on. Room empty. It was a walk-in closet- cum -sacristy. A rack of vestments hung on the back wall, a small bookcase to one side. Nothing but a room.

I slipped all the way inside-

Boom!

The light snapped off as the door slammed, the sound mixing with what happened next. My face hit the wall, cheekbone first. The sudden reversal of light blinded me. My hand covered the switch, but his larger hand-sweaty and strong-pressed my palm into the toggle, biting into my skin.

Caught.

“Don’t move.”

There was nothing to move. I couldn’t even twist my head. His jaw and neck locked the threat of his body right beneath my ear. His chin dug into the top of my scalp. We were both panting, strangely synchronized with each movement of chest, and that was the most coldly frightening thing of all.

“You,” he whispered. “You smell like her.”

“Who? Pat, what the hell-?”

“Shut up.” He crushed his body against me. I stopped inhaling. “Questions don’t help. Knowing won’t help. It only makes things worse. Don’t you get that?”

“No. I don’t believe that.”

“What’s it take to teach you? They both died! Leave it alone.”

“Both?” I said.

“Tom and Gina.”

“Gina?” You smell like her. Confusion was all that kept me calm. Once again, my lizard brain jumped ahead to a place where logic feared to go. “Angelina? Do you mean my sister?” My internal temperature dropped twenty degrees. It’s a miracle my next breath didn’t fog the air.

“You are making everything worse,” he said. “You have to stop.”

Resistance bubbled up, hot and sharp. I bucked and twisted. “Get off me.”

He was as mad as I was, but a whole lot bigger. He slammed himself against me again, smashing us into the wall. All the body parts you never see, never think about, suddenly appeared on my mental map, tracing a line of vulnerability from the top of my spine, down the slope of my back, to the curve of my ass.

Nobody moved for a heavy second.

He seemed to lose track of the moment, anger suspended by a surge of hormones, or confusion, or something else. His body took over. He inhaled deeply, chest swelling, and I felt the barest suggestion of motion forward and back with his pelvis, a reaching out. His cock was big enough to make an impression. I kept very still.

“Stop,” he repeated. “Just stop.”

Too slowly, he withdrew contact with his lower body. The pressure of his hand over mine increased. It hurt.

Before I realized what he meant to do, he grabbed the back of my collar and bent my arm behind my back. With a twist, he shoved me hard from the center of my back toward the middle of the room.

I flew forward and face-planted, hands too slow to catch myself. My head re-bounded off the industrial carpet.

Pat was already out the door.

Over the sound of my ears ringing, I heard the bad news, loud and clear.

He’d jammed a chair against the outside of the door. I was locked in.

“What took you so long? Where’d you go this time?” Tonya said, in the usual way. Then she took a good look at me. “Oh Lord, what now?”

I stood in the doorway of Jenny’s hospital room, not completely in my body, or my right mind. The urge to scream, hit something, throw something, had stiffened every muscle.

Jenny sat right up in the center of the bed with the rolling table pulled across her lap. There was a bunch of balloons tied to the water pitcher and a curly haired teddy bear leaning on her pillow. A “Get Well” card from some of the hospital people her mother had known was on the bedside table.

“Did you bring us food?” Jenny asked. She was concentrating hard, trying to bridge-shuffle a deck of playing cards.

“No food.”

“Darn.”

“What’s wrong?” Tonya leaned toward me, her body alert. She’d pulled her braids behind her back and tied them with a piece of silver curling ribbon cut from the balloon streamers. Jenny wore a head band of the same ribbon. It looked like they were having a little party.

“I got lost. And I stopped to talk to someone. Remember Dr. Graham? The one I interviewed the other day. She said she’ll come down and talk to Jenny later.”

“She a social worker?” Tonya asked.

“No. The other kind.”

Psychologist. Psychiatrist. Headshrinker. Whatever. At least I knew her somewhat. She seemed normal, given her profession and all. I’d certainly trust Jenny with her, better than a stranger.

“No wonder you look a little worse for the wear,” Tonya said.

It hadn’t taken long to attract someone’s attention and break out of the chapel lockup. It took longer to convince the guy we didn’t need to call security. Afterward, I’d wandered the halls in a daze of muddy thinking.

When I recognized Dr. Graham’s offices it seemed like fate. Here was a problem I could solve. I sat in her waiting area and gathered my thoughts until she was free. “How would you like to study the effect of small families on self-actualization?” I bantered as my lead. She waited for me to come clean with the real story. It wasn’t easy. She turned those shrewd eyes on me and saw the things I didn’t headline, like admitting I’d only been on the job with Jenny four months and I’d already crashed and burned.

Everywhere I turned, I was tanking on my own ignorance.

Pat-the-paramedic knew my sister. From the hospital maybe?

You smell like her.

More than just the hospital.

Part of me wanted to call Curzon and get the asshole arrested immediately. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t get me what I wanted even more. Information.

They both died?

Turn Pat in and the sheriff would lock him up where I couldn’t talk to him. End of story.

“Your boy called,” T said. “He’s going to stop in to see Jenny in a few minutes.” She did a slide of the eyes over the shuffling cards. “You giving that boy a hard time?”

College interviewed Pat yesterday at the firehouse. I couldn’t help salivating at the thought. What the hell did he say to my boy? I needed to see that interview.

Too bad I’d quit.

“Me?”

“I’m hungry,” Jenny said again. She bounced as she waited for Tonya to finish passing out the cards. “Really hungry.”

“How many people you planning on putting in the hospital today, Ms. Maddy?” Tonya asked. She turned over her first card and cackled.

“Keep it up. I’m sure they got room for one more,” I answered. The second bed looked good. I stretched out flat and could feel the ghost of Pat’s body behind me. Pressing. “Have I mentioned that I’m tired, really tired?”

Jenny’s tongue poked out in concentration. She took another card from the deck and discarded slowly.