Andrew Vachss - Safe House

“It was the women’s movement who got those laws passed,” Crystal Beth said, using her “Let’s-all-be-calm” voice.

“The women’s movement? You mean my sisters? ” the black woman replied, sarcasm clogging her throat. “Pack of stupid bitches, chumped off again. Let me tell you something, baby. This whole ‘battered woman’s syndrome, ’ that’s just another way of saying we crazy, that’s all. Man kills someone trying to kill him, only question is . . . was it gonna go down like that? Understand what I’m saying? Only thing the jury got to believe is that the other guy was gonna do it, just got beat to the draw, right? What we need some fucking syndrome for?”

“So a jury can understand how—”

“Oh just stop it, okay? Your man beats on you enough times, hurts you enough times, you know when he’s gonna do it again. Could be the way he starts talking, could be as soon as he’s had a few beers, could be a phone call from his goddamned mother . . . could be the way he starts breathing, all right? Point is, you know. Only thing is, that ain’t enough. Not for the cops, not for no DA and damn sure not for no jury. Man says: ‘Motherfucker went for his pocket. I know he always packs a piece, so I drilled him before he could get me.’ Now, that sounds righteous. That one will fly. Woman says: ‘Every time he start talking about how dirty the house is, I know, next thing coming, he’s gonna start beating the shit out of me.’ Now, that one’s worth nothing, see? Nothing at all. Your man tries to kill you that first time, you kill him right then, you might be okay. But if you let him do it a few times, then you stuck. You let him beat on you and beaton you and . . . one day, you know you can’t take another one. You know, soon as he wakes up from that drunken sleep, you’re gonna get hurt so bad, you just . . .”

“I underst—”

“You understand shit, girl. You ever sit in on one of those lame-ass groups? You know, like for battered women? I did that, once. Fucking fool stands up and says, like, he used to beat on his woman, but that was ’cause he used to get drunk. So now he ain’t no alcoholic, and he don’t whale on his wife no more. Everybody applauds, okay? Big fucking insight, right? Let me tell you something, Little Miss Liberal, my old man, he used to beat me half to death and then he’d have himself a few drinks to celebrate, see?”

“I still think people would understand,” Crystal Beth said quietly. “We have good lawyers. We could—”

“Only thing you can do for me is what you promised,” the black woman said, her words just for Crystal Beth, talking past me like I was a piece of furniture, same way she had since we’d walked into the empty bar. “A new set of ID and enough cash to get in the wind,” she said, eyes hard and committed. “I done time before. Short stretches. But some of those girls in there were doing the Book. For what I done last night. Sooner or later, they gonna find him. Right where I left his dead ass. You take your fucking syndrome, honey. Me, I’m taking the Greyhound.”

There were more of them. Some staying in Crystal Beth’s safehouse, some stashed in apartments around the city. Others all around the country, she told me. All races, all ages, all social classes.

“Why did you want me to hear all that?” I asked her later, upstairs in her room.

“So you would know. It’s not just battered women. Stalkers are . . . all kinds. It’s not just a matter of hiding out. Or even fighting back. We have to . . . change.”

“Change how?”

“That’s as individual as the victims. But I know it works. It’s worked for me.”

“When did you—?”

“I change all the time,” she said gently. “But when you showed up in my life, that’s when it really started.”

“Inever even met him,” the woman said, striding back and forth before a wall of bookcases, talking like there was a much bigger audience than just me and Crystal Beth, never looking at either of us. Her long pewter-colored skirt was slit to mid-thigh, flesh flashing every time she moved.

I didn’t say anything—I knew the drill by then.

“I wrote a book,” the woman said. “About my life as an actress.”

I knew what kinds of movies she’d made: mid-range Triple-X. Straight-to-video, paid-by-the-day, no-script, fuck-and-suck, basement-studio stuff. But she’d had a following, been a star in that world.

“I appeared on a few talk shows. You know, just to promote the book, right?”

I nodded like all of that made perfect sense.

“First he wrote a fan letter. Not to me—he never had my address—to the publisher. I didn’t even answer it. That happens all the time. They just send autographed pictures back. I never even read the mail.”

She shook her platinum-blond curls. A wig, as top-of-the-line as her dress and shoes. “He kept writing. Angrier and angrier. What did I think, I could just break off with him? I mean, I was never with him. He just got crazier and crazier. Here, take a look. . . .”

The letters were in chronological order, all photocopies. She went from “goddess of perfection” to “filthy fucking cunt” as time went along.

“My shrink said it was ‘erotomania,’ whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

“It means he idealized you,” Crystal Beth said, “and then he constructed a—”

“It doesn’t matter,” the woman said, making it clear this wasn’t going to be about anybody but her. “My lawyer said you had a program. I don’t need a program, I need protection. Is that what he does?” she asked, still not looking at me, just pointing in my direction with a long fingernail as plastic as her chest.

“He’s crazy,” the olive-skinned woman with the prominent nose said, looking up at me from the edge of the bed where she sat. Crystal Beth was next to her, their shoulders touching. The little room in the back of the waterfront restaurant was quiet, the factory-thick walls blocking the noise from up front.

We’d ridden over on Crystal Beth’s motorcycle. “You want to drive?” she’d asked me.

“No way,” I’d told her. I’d ridden bikes as a kid, even had one once, an old Harley 74, but I spent more time on the pavement than the tires had and I’d given it up.

“Come on,” she teased. “It’d be fun for you.”

“I’ll have more fun holding on,” I told her, watching that lovely smile flash in the streetlight’s pitiful attempt at illuminating the murky alley.

But there was no smile on this woman’s face, dread mixed in her voice like water in whiskey. “If he ever finds me . . .”

“Why do you say he’s crazy?” I asked her. Not to know, to hear the rest of the story Crystal Beth wanted me to hear.

“He only wanted a daughter,” she said. “For the son of his best friend.”

“I’m not sure I—”

“His best friend has a son,” the woman said, in that patient tone you use with people who aren’t too bright. “So his daughter was going to be his best friend’s son’s wife.”

“How old was the best friend’s son?”

“Five. Almost five.”

“So this wouldn’t happen until . . .”

“. . . they were grown,” she finished for me, like I’d finally seen the light. “First, he made sure I could get pregnant. I had to have tests. Then he kept me locked in the house for weeks. So nobody could have another shot at me, that’s what he said.

“For months, we didn’t have sex. I mean, not like . . . the way you make babies. Just . . . And when he was sure I wasn’t pregnant, he said we could get started. Then we had sex over and over again. And I got pregnant. He checked the amnio—but it was going to be a boy. He took me for an abortion, and then we had to start over. After he beat me up.”