Leslie Glass - Burning Time

“You don’t say ‘No’ to me.” He stood, taking the switchblade with him. “Are you stupid or something?” He started walking back and forth, furiously flicking the blade open and closed. She twisted her head so she could see him. “I could cut your nipple off. You want that?”

“Uh.” Emma grunted in terror.

“Now say no.”

“Nnn.” She tried to get her lips around the word. Sound came out of her stomach and not her mouth.

“NO!” He stopped pacing and shouted the word. “I could rape you. I could stick this knife right up your cunt.”

“Nuh.” The sound wouldn’t come out.

“Say it,” he screamed.

“Nn, no.”

“Okay.” He backed off, his hand in his pants. “Don’t give me problems. Don’t wire me. I got a schedule. I’m making it right, see. I did that for you before. You should have been better. You shouldn’t have messed me up.”

He raved, one hand in his pocket and the other clutching the knife. She got it in one tremendous, horrifying piece: He was turned on. It felt like a wave the size of Hawaii crashing over her. He wasn’t an actor acting. He took her clothes away. He tied her hands and feet. She couldn’t get up and walk out of the frame he was making with his hands. He wasn’t in a movie. He was a lunatic. And she was his prisoner.

Sounds of pure terror came out of her mouth. She didn’t recognize them as hers. She had to push them back the way she did when her mother told her not to show a thing. Don’t cry, Emma. Don’t let them know they can get to you . Never. Never, never, never. Just do the job and don’t ask questions.

He kicked the sofa. It jerked backward. “You messed me up.”

She had to gulp it back and listen now. Push it way back in her brain before it could take control of her. Fear had a shape of its own. It could fill her mouth and throat, fill the whole cavity of her body. She knew all about fear. It was something she was trained to master a long time ago. Strength comes from fear was her motto from the day she started school. Only this time it wasn’t about being shunned or humiliated. This time, if she didn’t concentrate and find a way out, fear would kill her.

She could see him rubbing the bulge in his pants with the handle of the knife. She could see it clearly. Her terror turned him on.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled thickly, her eyes closing again. “I’m sick. I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember Andy?”

“Andy?” She didn’t move, but the eyes in her brain shot open. Andy. How did he know about Andy?

“Yeah, Andy the Animal. The Football Star, Big Man on Campus?”

Emma chewed her lips to keep from crying.

“Yeah, you remember Andy the Animal.” He paced back and forth. “Maybe you don’t know enough about me. I take care of things. I took care of that for you.”

There’s never a good reason to lose your self-control, Emma Jane . She could hear her mother’s voice from a long way away.

Sometimes when someone got too close to her on the street, coming from behind, she could still feel Andy’s breath on her neck. Smell the beer. All these years later. And the panic bubbled up all over again. Big guy, drunk at a party. She didn’t even know him.

Her eyes squeezed tight, pushing it away, but she saw it anyway. The blood suddenly coming out of her at a dance; running to the girls’ room. Realizing that the machine was empty. Coming out of the girls’ room and running upstairs to her locker, where the long hall was dark. Hurry, hurry so no one would see her with blood on her dress. She didn’t hear a thing until he was on her, breathing on her, his hands all over her. On her breasts, up her skirt. Big guy, sweaty and drunk, dragging her into the dark classroom, mumbling how great he was, how lucky she was he wanted her. Stop it, get off, get away. No way he would stop. He was on top of her, all his weight trying to shove it in her around her bloody panties.

“No, no,” she whimpered, telling him to stop even now.

“Yeah, you remember.”

And suddenly the fire alarm was ringing and all the lights were on. People everywhere. Blood all over her and her dress torn. Asking what happened to her. So humiliated about her period. So ashamed that someone would do that to her. Don’t tell, captain of the football team. No one will believe you.

“My head hurts,” Emma moaned.

“I took care of him,” he said impatiently, “and you never thanked me.”

“Wha?” She had to think.

“I saw it. I could have let him nail you. So what?”

Emma moved her wrists in the ropes, just a little. “Hurts,” she cried.

“So what? I took care of him.”

“My hands. My head. I’m so dizzy.”

“Listen to me. I took care of him. I’m your best friend, see.”

“If you’re my best friend,” she muttered, “get me some aspirin.”

“Forget the fucking aspirin.”

“If you’re my friend, untie me.” She didn’t dare look at him.

“Oh, Christ.”

He checked the ropes around her wrists. Her hands were white, but they weren’t blue. There was no color in her face at all, but she was a little blue around the lips. Like the flake in California. It worried him. She was so out of it and confused he was afraid she might die.

“Ah, shit. You better not die on me.” He played with the knots, loosening them just a fraction.

A little scream escaped her at his touch. He touched her breast with his finger, then with the tip of his switchblade.

“Shut up,” he cried.

“No circulation, I can’t breathe.”

He started pacing again, his hand in his pants. “Look at what you’re doing. I got a schedule. Don’t mess me up.”

Her heart was hammering so hard she thought it had lost its rhythm and was out of control. She could feel herself dying of fear. She let go. If fakirs could stop their hearts, so could she.

“I’m getting tired of this. Look at me, you stupid bitch. It wasn’t an accident. I offed the guy. It was easy. A little gasoline in a condom. The condom in a toilet paper roll. Fits right in the pocket. You don’t even have to get under the car. Just reach down in the parking lot and put it in the exhaust manifold. Know what kind of heat is generated a few minutes after a car is turned on? Burns the toilet paper tube and starts a nice big fire. Bye-bye, Andy.”

Emma’s mouth fell open; her head lolled to one side.

“Say thank you.” He slapped her face. Nothing happened. She was out of it, again. He didn’t want to do her like the flake who slept through the whole thing. He kicked the sofa again.

“Shit. I got a schedule,” he muttered.

He paced back and forth in front of her, framing her with his hands and mumbling. When she showed no signs of reviving, he grabbed a few things and slammed out the door.

48

There were a few vital inconsistencies in the information Detective Woo, calling him from New York, was giving him. Jason sat in the chair by the bed, looking out at the lights on the navy ships in San Diego Harbor.

“Dr. Frank, from the appearance of your apartment, there is no indication that anything untoward happened to your wife,” she began.

He sensed another message behind her words. “What do you mean by that?” he asked.

“Ah, there are no signs of anything being disturbed,” she said.

There was some crackling in the background. The connection was not a good one. If nothing was wrong, why hadn’t she waited until morning to return his call? Jason looked at his watch. It was way past midnight her time. He had asked Detective Woo to check his apartment, but he more than half expected her not to do it until the next day.

He had pegged her as a bureaucrat from the moment he saw her, from her very first words. There was a lot of tension around her mouth and eyes, a rigidity in the way she held her slender body. Her precisely layered haircut was extremely controlled, and the navy blue blazer and red-and-white blouse she wore buttoned all the way to the neck took no chances. Everything about her indicated a person who walked a straight line in the middle of the path, afraid of risk-taking, or of veering from the rules in the slightest detail. Jason had known a lot of bureaucrats, still did. Bureaucrats were the people who had accidents in hospitals, who let little things by them that resulted in very big consequences. There were times people died because bureaucrats were just doing their jobs. That’s why Jason didn’t trust them.