Jowita Bydlowska - Guy

She turns back to me. “Listen, in a minute I’m gonna leave. I’m gonna walk all the way to town and walk right into the police station. It’s not a far walk, but it’s far enough and it’s important that I get there looking a little beat. I’m gonna to go in there and tell them that I’ve been sexually assaulted and that you did it. I haven’t taken a shower yet because I figure we’re gonna have to go to the hospital to work up a rape kit and all that. I’m gonna call my daddy and my mommy and tell them what happened, and I’m gonna cry on the phone. They’re gonna tell me it was a bad idea to work at the smoothie shack in this shitty little place, but other than that, they won’t say anything mean because they’ll feel very, very sorry for me. As they should. I may or may not suggest that you were trying to kill me, I haven’t decided yet. I’ll probably have to –”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I squeak again, and I can’t come up with anything better than this. My mind is a field of crows pecking and pecking and cawing, cawing, cawing. I feel nauseous.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve always been a bit unusual, I guess.”

“But why? Is this a game?” I say, and the cawing is so loud now I can’t hear my pathetic squeaking. Everything around me becomes strangely large, towering over me. She’s a monster, a Godzilla with red eyes, and she’s asking me to choke her and my hand is on her throat and her eyes open and then it’s not her –

She says, “Dolores.”

– and so it’s not her, it’s Dolores, Dolores underneath me, and I’m choking Dolores, and she thrashes and her face is a grimace, a death face. I can’t stop choking her and she dies, and her eyes open wide, round, wide sugar eyes, and it’s too much to look at.

Dolores?

“Dolores?” I say.

Bride nods and says, “Yeah, Dolores. My friend Dolores,” and her face softens. She transforms from Godzilla back to a girl, a child. Her face – I don’t know, whatever beatific is, this is it. So young, so sweet, almost glowing from the inside. Holy. Beatific. Not like last year.

Because now I recall her, her other face – her scorn and the long, dark hair when I met her for the first time. Her name is Emily. Em. I try to remember if we talked then, but we didn’t because I would’ve remembered it.

I want to say something, but what could I say?

I just watch her. I watch her and say nothing.

She gets up and walks away. Walks all the way to the police station, I guess. Maybe she crawls there for all I know, to appear even more beat up.

Maybe I should run after her to stop her, stop this craziness, but I don’t.

I feel like throwing up, but nothing comes.

I DON’T REMEMBER STAGGERING HOME, BUT I MUST’VE STAGGERED home. It’s not a far stagger. Once I get there, I fall through the front door and close it and lean on it as if that could actually fortify me against whatever is coming. I should call my lawyer.

I don’t call my lawyer.

I think about getting in the car and driving far away. But I’m no match for the officious, angry cops in every shit town across this state. I picture myself flooring the gas, sweating despite the a/c, crying and cursing her name (her real name), only to get stopped by Officer Fuckstick in Buttfuck, South Carolina, population 1,000. How appalling.

I picture myself falling out of the car, babbling on, unable to control myself like a little bitch. What am I supposed to do when they come? What is the appropriate thing to do if you’re an innocent person accused of a crime? If you’re a person who will never actually get proven innocent because of the victim’s superb acting abilities? And I have to give it to her, she is a wonderful actress, putting on movie monologues just like that, with the right intonation and look – my little Taxi Driver , calling herself a crazy film-related (too!) name, convincingly enough that I keep forgetting to ask for ID, pretending to work in a crap job just to trap me.

I count from a hundred down to one and then from fifty. The nausea doesn’t subside, but at least it feels as if I’m trying to help myself. I have no clue what else I can possibly do, so I decide to cook.

I will make a summer vegetable ragout with curry sauce, which is not a complicated dish, but it requires an array of ingredients.

As I prepare the ragout, I begin to relax, settling into the familiar choreography of opening, pouring, stirring, chopping, mixing.

I mix two tablespoons of oil in the saucepan. I pour in carrot juice and briskly stir the mixture until it achieves uniform consistency. I don’t have some of the vegetables the recipe calls for. I’m missing fresh corn and summer squash. I only have enough for one cup of arugula, slightly past its best-before date.

I could call my delivery guy, but I don’t want him interrupting the police.

At this time, my curry sauce is ready to be turned off and drained. I pour the mixture through a fine strainer over a bowl, squeezing all the solid matter. I season the curry with salt and freshly ground pepper and set it aside.

The phone rings.

I put down the eggplant I’m holding. I like the feeling of its slick, rubbery skin.

I pick up the phone. The police say I should come over.

Clever girl.

The two cops are unfriendly but polite. Just like cops are in the movies. The first cop is short. He has a moustache. (There must be a rule that requires a certain percentage of cops to grow moustaches, one in five or something like that.)

The room I’m sitting in is pale green, almost white. A door with a thick glass window. Like in the movies, there’s a camera in the corner of the room. I think, absurdly, about waving at it.

There’s a metal table. (Probably issued from a cop movie as well.)

“What’s so funny?” asks the younger, taller cop with no moustache.

I shake my head, cough.

He asks me, again, if I know Emily Rose Reese.

“I do,” I say, although that’s not Emily Rose Reese, the girl they’re asking about. Emily Rose Reese is the weird girl I barely remember talking to last year. A blur of annoying quips and thick brown hair, lots and lots of thick brown hair, and glasses. Em .

The moustache says again, “So you do know Emily Rose Reese?”

I don’t know Emily Rose Reese. Em. I think of the yellow scarf, capillaries of red breaking through egg yolk. The red of her eyes as the sun pierced through the irises.

“How did you meet Ms. Reese?”

“There’s a kennel number on the fridge,” I say.

“Pardon me?” says the moustache.

“It’s not for my lawyer. It’s for my dog. Someone should get him,” I say, and it occurs to me for the first time that we are not in the movies. This is really happening.

I imagine her crying and shaking, showing off the bruises and scratches on her neck, wincing theatrically when people come closer to have a look. I imagine someone asking if it’s okay to take a picture, a no-nonsense but friendly female cop squatting beside her, telling her that she’s being very, very brave for doing this. And she’s looking up at the female cop as she says in the tiniest voice, You think so?

I know so , the female cop says, and her face is complicated; it shows admiration (for Emily Rose Reese) and disgust (for me) – kindness and toughness all at the same time, all needed to express the proper kind of support for the victim.

Later on, Emily Rose Reese will open her legs, allowing people in white coats to insert swabs into her and take samples to keep in red bags with black biohazard signs against red squares. I want them to be gentle with her, those people, to scrape and pinch and whatever else they need to do but only as much as necessary. I suppose I should wish her harm, someone ripping open her cervix in some horrible accident (an earthquake could cause a slip of the hand), but I don’t.