Burning Time (31 page)

She shrugged. “Whatever turns you on.” She took the coke out of the pocket of her rainbow-colored shirt and waved it at him. “I got to do something first.”

He looked around coldly. “Hurry up,” he told her. “I’m on a schedule.”

It came every few minutes, a sound like thunder. The roar, like an undertow, pulled Emma back to the place she didn’t want to be. It was a noise she knew. What was it?

She opened her eyes cautiously. It roared again and didn’t seem to be in her head, even though a lot of other things were. Terror all the way through, and a fog so dense she couldn’t figure out what had happened, or how long she’d been there. Her throat was dry, and hurt so much she thought he must have tried to strangle her. She couldn’t stop shivering, just couldn’t stop.

He had left the light on. Now she saw the skylight in the ceiling. It had been covered with garbage bags and carefully taped around the edges so no light could get in. What else could she see? She lifted her head. He wasn’t sitting beside her. He wasn’t pacing around the room with the knife or the gun in his hand. He must really have gone.

His face was empty and hard, like a robot’s. She shuddered. There was nothing remotely familiar about him. She still didn’t know who he was, or if she had ever
known him. North High School was a long time ago. A year in hell with people she had struck from the record of her life, as she had so many times before. Every time they moved to another base, the life they had before was gone. Everyone they knew and saw every day disappeared, and the system was replicated in another setting. Emma grew up believing that people left behind were erased completely, and that she alone had memories of things that happened.

Her heart wouldn’t slow down. He was going to come back. She was so scared she could hardly breathe. All these years she thought she’d been alone, and she’d never been alone. He had been there all along, following her down the dark school hall that night and watching what happened. He was the only one who knew. And he killed Andy.

She believed him. She had never thought for a minute that Andy’s death, a few days before graduation, was an accident. But she thought she was the one who murdered him. She had made a wish on a star, asked some almighty power she hardly believed existed to kill the bastard. End his life before he got to college. She hated him so much that when he died, there was no doubt at all in her mind she alone was responsible.

Her head hurt. Bits of story lines from plays and movies drifted through, along with her own memories, confusing her. She thought of
Equus
, the play about a troubled boy who blinded horses because they’d seen him making love. Was this that? There was a psychiatrist in that, too.

It was horrible being naked, unbearable having him look at her and touch her with the gun and the knife point. She tugged desperately on the ropes around her wrists, had to get away. What had Jason said about people who were really crazy, so crazy they couldn’t be reached at all?

When he was in training, he had a patient who got on all fours and barked at him. For months he got on the floor every day and barked back at her. One day the woman got up and sat in a chair.

“You have to enter their world,” he said, “but you can’t go in there with them.”

“Don’t go in there with them,” she muttered.
I’m in there with him
.

“Oh, God, help me.” She was afraid to scream.

When she was little, her bones were so soft she could get out of any ropes, any wrestling hold. The kids practiced all the time, playing military games. “You’re my prisoner, try to get away.”

“You’re a POW, hung by your wrists with a hundred and twenty rats gnawing at your feet.”

Emma pushed through the pile of images, trying to find the right one. She saw herself sitting on the floor and sobbing as each hostage hit American soil. This wasn’t that.

She didn’t know how he got her there, or when. What did she hear? She heard street noises, the growl of traffic, a truck backfiring. But she also heard the sound of a garage door opening and a car pulling out.

She must be in a house. There it was, the roar again.

She screamed. “Help!”

Screamed again.

“Help me!”

Silence. She had to get out herself, must find a phone.

She turned her head. She could see windows on both sides, but the shades were drawn. There was no clock in the room. The stove in the corner next to the sink was an old one, didn’t have a clock. How much time had passed? The table was bare except for a paring knife. She focused
on the paring knife. She had to get out of here. How long did she have before he got back? Five minutes, ten?

Drip, drip, drip.

She lifted her head. The sound of a dripping faucet reminded her that she needed water. The room spun as if she were drunk, or dying of thirst in a desert. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again she had no idea how much time had passed or what she was doing there. Her throat was very sore. She thought about water, then concentrated on the ropes.

The ropes were loose, loose, loose. So loose she could pull right out of them if she moved the right way. Her wrists were covered with Vaseline; and she saw her hands, small as a baby’s, slipping out of the loops. She saw Billy Budd hanging by the neck on the mast. They all went to the same schools, played together, but officers’ kids sat on reserved benches at the movies. Movies every night, from Kodiak to Norfolk to Barber’s Point, Hawaii. Only officers’ kids were allowed in Officers’ Mess with the silver and starched napkins. “No, don’t die, Billy Budd,” she had screamed at the big screen outside, making everyone laugh.

“Slip out.” Before you choke. It’s easy. She folded her left hand in half, squeezing her thumb into her palm and her little fingers together. Her fingers were long and thin. Her hand pulled out. She swallowed back the terror that he would catch her.

Better to move. The other hand was more difficult. The nylon rope bit into her wrist. Then, after a brief struggle, her right hand was out. She sat up. After all these years, Billy Budd was free.

The tours of duty were eight in the morning to four in the afternoon, or four in the afternoon to eleven at night. Every week they had two days of one and three days of the other. Periodically the days and hours were switched. April yawned into her napkin. There was a reason the Department organized the duties this way, but she didn’t know what it was.

It was nearly one-thirty in the morning. She could see the time on a clock that hung between two lurid posters of bullfighters. She had to be back at work in five and a half hours. Her car was a few blocks away, still in the precinct lot. After she picked it up, she figured it would take her half an hour to get back to Astoria. Tomorrow morning it would take a good forty-five minutes to return over the bridge and make it across town. That left her with four and a quarter hours of sleep only if she didn’t count the time it would take her to shower and dress in the morning.

Still, she didn’t make a move to close her notebook.

“Finished?” Sanchez asked, eyeing her plate. Still uneaten
was a pile of refried beans, some rice, and at least half of a seafood enchilada with guacamole.

April picked up a sprig of cilantro and chewed on it, nodding.

“You liked it?” he asked.

They were in a tiny restaurant in the neighborhood that April had passed a hundred times. It was dark and quiet, looked to her like it was likely to go out of business soon. The front window had a bead curtain in it and some spearlike sticks with ribbons on the end that Sanchez said they used in Mexico to irritate the bulls at the beginning of bullfights.

“I liked it,” April said, not entirely certain that she did. There was a heaviness in her mouth that she had a feeling would not go away for a long time.

In fact her mouth was actually quite sluggish and foul as a result of eating Mexican food. This was probably because of the cream and cheese that the scallops and shrimps were cooked in before being wrapped up in the pancakes. Tortillas. More cheese on top. Humh. Twice-cook pancakes. Every dish in Chinese cooking had a name. April silently named this dish Sluggish Mouth Pancake.

But it wasn’t only the pancake bathed in cheese that was somewhat unpleasant. The raw onions in the mushy green stuff he called guacamole tasted like soft soap with bite-the-tongue bits of sharpness in it. April couldn’t think of any textures in Chinese food that were similar.

Refried beans were smooth but tasteless. The Chinese used fermented or sweetened beans for flavorings, but did not eat them alone. Not even the rice was the same. Chinese rice was put into cold water and not stirred or seasoned until it was done. It came out white, and was for mixing with the tastes and textures of all the other dishes
on the table. Mexican rice was cooked with oil and spices. Interesting, but heavy in the mouth.

She chewed on the cilantro, hoping to purify her mouth. This reminded her a little of the time she tried goat cheese and felt like she was eating vomit. But Sanchez was studying her with such intensity she knew it was a matter of national pride to him that she approve of it. His father did this kind of cooking. His mother must be very fat. April smiled at the thought of a waddling Maria scolding her son the police sergeant on the phone.
“Hola, Miguel, es Mama.”

Both April’s mother and father were very thin, the kind of thin that always looked unnatural to her in light of the number of dishes piled high with food that appeared on the table every day. It almost seemed to her like they were starving in the midst of plenty.

Maybe if she ate more of this kind of food, her bottom would become plump and round in the American style. April realized she was thinking all these things about food because she liked sitting there with Mike, listening to him talk about his family and the cases he’d worked on. And she felt better talking to him about the ten thousand things she had to do in the morning than she would if she had gone home to brood about it on her own.

“You liked it,” he said, “but what did you really think of it?”

April ducked her head, considering how to approach the subject. “Very good combination of tastes,” she said seriously. “I think I liked your fish the best. What’s that green stuff, kind of spicy on the side?”

“Tomatillo. It’s like a green tomato with an onion skin over it. You have to peel it.”

“The fish was very fresh.” She nodded her approval of
the snapper. “And I think avocado tastes better plain. On your dish it was plain.”

There was a brief silence as they thought about avocado. They had talked about it earlier. It was another food the Chinese didn’t have. Like thirty different kinds of chilis and sauces made with chocolate.

“Do you like to cook?” Mike asked.

No one to cook for
. April bit her tongue. Her mother or father did all the cooking. “I know how,” she said. “What about you?”

“I like it. Does that sound weird to you?”

The waiter cleared off the table.

“No. It runs in the family.” April reached for her bag.

“You want me to drive you home?” he asked suddenly. The table was cleared and a check put by his water glass. “They want to close.”

“Yeah, it’s late. Let’s go.” She reached into her bag for her money. “How much is it?”

He shook his head.

“It’s not a date. I have to.” She objected in such a passionate way he had to smile.

“Of course it’s not a date. But—” He cocked his head in the direction of the kitchen. “It’s only a token. If they saw me letting anyone else share it, I would get a bad name.”

April fell silent. She liked the fact that he didn’t make it a man-woman thing. He said anyone else. She wondered if this was where his father was a cook before he died, and that’s why the bill was only a token. She understood about tokens. Everybody save face. She didn’t feel she could ask him right then, though.

“I’d like to drive you home,” he said when they were out on the street.

It was a warm, clear night. April looked up at the crescent moon. Her mother used to torture her with a story
about a girl child whose angry parents sent her to the cold, empty moon as punishment for her disobedience. April grew up thinking the world’s favorite symbol of romance was a prison whose walls closed in to nothing every thirty days. No romance for her. She smiled at fish-in-water Sanchez.

“Thanks, but then I’d have to take the subway back.”

They turned up Columbus, heading for the precinct.

“Not necessarily. I could come and get you. We could talk about the case,” he said.

April shook her head. “That’s a very hard way to get from the Bronx to Eighty-second Street.”

“I get up early,” Mike argued.

“I thought this wasn’t a date,” she said more sharply than she meant to.

“Who said it was a date? We’re working a case together. So I drive you home, what’s the big deal?”

They debated about the bigness of the deal all the way back to the lot. Fine to work with each other. Maybe okay to have Mexican food. Not okay to drive back and forth in red Camaro making everyone in her neighborhood and everyone in the precinct think just what April didn’t want them to think. She drove herself home, stewing about the trouble she was in with this case, and with Mike who wasn’t going to be happy just working together for long, no matter how nice he could be when he wanted to.

She was not surprised to find the light on in her parents’ part of the house when she got back at two o’clock. Nor was she surprised when her mother opened the door loudly demanding, in Chinese, explanations from her thoughtless daughter. How she could stay out so late without letting her worried mother know where she was? Who was she with, and what kind of no-good person would let her come home at this hour all alone?

“Mom, I’m a cop,” April said wearily. “I’m on a case.”

“What kind of case at two o’clock in the morning? I know what kind of case. Humh.
Boo hao
case.”

“I’m a cop,” April protested. “Just doing my job.”