New Taboos (7 page)

She sat up on the bench and looked at him, surprised at the stab of pity she felt. She could see loneliness, a kind of blurry desperation in his face. But she wasn't going down that road, at all.

“No,” she said.

“Gloria …”

“Faye. Adullah. And
no.
No one is going to touch me. No one at all, Samuel. Get me out of this prison and then we'll talk about you touching me.”

She tried to make it sound believable. But neither of them believed the offer.

“Couldn't do it if I wanted to,” he said. He shook his head and looked at her with his eyes narrowed. “Last chance.”

“No, Samuel. No. You'll lose an eye, at least, I promise you, if you try it.”

He smiled sadly. “Oh no. You'd be out cold. But … I don't want it like that.”

Gull went to the door, and back into the hall, slammed it shut behind him. His shoes squeaked away, and the sound of the slammed door echoed metallically.

In another cell, someone laughed and someone sobbed, maybe the same person.

The boudoir was like a cheesy honeymoon motel complete with a red-velvet heart-shaped headboard on the bed. There was a fake window, an illustration of a window on the lavender wall across from the bed, complete with painted-on curtain, and a view of a moonlit landscape. The painting looked pretty amateurish, probably done by an inmate given a special job. The boudoir had a small, red-tiled bathroom, with a shower.

They'd told Faye to take a shower and leave her jumpsuit outside the door of the bathroom, and she had, because she wanted a shower. When she came out, the guards were gone, so was the prison jumpsuit; instead, translucent purple lingerie was laid out on the bed.

“Fuck that,” she said. She tossed the lingerie in a corner, and pulled the red satin comforter off the bed. She sat down on the mattress, and worked at the comforter with her teeth, gradually ripping holes in it. By the time the man in the ski mask entered, ushered in by the black badgeless guard, she had a serviceable robe, with her head thrust through a rip in the comforter, other parts of it ripped to make a kind of belt.

“Well that's creative, there, missy,” the man said. His voice was gravelly, and very Southwest. Arizona, she judged.

He was a big man wearing a blue and yellow ski mask; a blue silk robe was tied across his bulbous middle; under the robe he wore silky boxers. His legs were pale, short, and slightly bowed. He wore silk slippers. His eyes in the mask holes were small and gray blue.

“Missy? My name is—”

“I don't want to know your name! Mine is Faye Adullah. I'm a reporter. A resident of California. I'm not an inmate. I'm a kidnap victim—”

He raised a hand to stop her. “Everybody has a story. That's yours. They tell me your name is Gloria, so your name is Gloria.” He gestured grandly at the bed. “Now Miss Gloria—here's the plan. You lay down over there on that mattress and I'll unwrap the gift that is you. Otherwise I bring the boys in here and they handcuff you. There's some little rings on the side there under the headboard just for that. And you'll be sorry I did that.”

“You know, you look like a Mexican wrestler in that mask. Why don't you take it off? Maybe I'll like what I see.”

“Not a chance.”

“Your voice sounds kind of familiar.”

He opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, then pointed at the bed.

“I guess I need to face facts,” Faye said, sighing.

He nodded briskly, once. “That's the spirit.”

She sat on the edge of the bed. “Let me see what you've got in those boxers.” He sidled nearer. Not quite near enough.

She reached seductively out, stroked his crotch with her right hand. There was an almost immediate response. His eyes went glassy and he stepped closer yet. She stroked downward, pushing the band of the boxers aside, quickly found his testicles, gripped them with all her strength, and twisted. It was an angry grip, and a very hard twist.

“I've been working out,” she said, as he squawked, arching his back in pain. “I really think I can rip these right off your body. I've got so much motivation built up! So much juice in me. I think I can do it!”

He writhed and swung hard at her face—she was able to block most of the blow with her left hand. “I'm
glad,” she said, loud over his yelling, “that you put talcum powder on this dangly ball sack of yours. That way I can keep a grip despite the sweat and—”

He roared with pain and fury and got a jab through, cracking her hard on her left cheekbone. She didn't care. She was a little amused at how unimportant the pain was; how the possibility of real damage didn't matter. She really didn't care. That was kind of funny.

She clawed at his face with her free hand, trying to tear off the mask. He slapped her hand away.

“Goddamnit,
GUARDS!
” he bellowed.

She tightened her grip till she felt her knuckles cracking. He screamed and hit her again. This time he hit her in the right ear, and she heard a reverberating, a gonging, that seemed to announce the warm rush of pain that followed.

She still didn't care. She didn't care if he cracked her head open. She wasn't letting go.

The door opened. Something rolled in. She knew what it was.

Hurt the fucker before the robot stops you.

She tried to tear the man's balls off. He shrieked. She clawed at his face with her other hand. He hit her again. She got a grip on the mask and pulled upward. She saw his red, puffy, sweating face for a moment, and recognized it from her online research. He'd been one of the first to push for Statewide as “the destiny of Arizona.”A Congressman …

Pursair? That was it. Representative Pursair, from Phoenix.

Then he howled wordlessly at her, trying to dig his thumbs into her eyes.

There was a hissing, a gaseous gushing, a medicinal smell.

Faye was unconscious before she hit the floor.

Men were talking nearby. She didn't recognize their voices.

“Her organs check out? He smacked her pretty good.”

“We're just taking 'em, whatever shape they're in.”

“Seems like a waste of a tester.”

“The guy was pretty mad. He says no experiments. He says she goes right to organ donation.”

“He might need some organs himself. Or anyway glandular donation.”

A chuckle. “I think he'll heal up okay.”

Faye tried to speak. But her mouth was gummy; her lips rubbery. When she tried to open her eyes it was as if she had to force open steel shutters. She got them open only a crack.

She was lying in an operating room. Two men in white masks, blue caps, blue tops, rubber gloves were on either side of her. One of them had a large syringe in his hand.

It would be fast, anyway. They'd kill her and take the organs. She was okay with it.

A door opened behind them, and they turned, surprised. “Warden …”

“New plan,” said the stranger. She couldn't see him. A deep-southern voice, maybe Georgia. She'd heard the warden was from Georgia. “Don't touch her. Let her rest
in recovery, we're leaving some clothes for her. Get her up to speed.”

“Pursair won't like it.”

“He'll be okay with it. There's a push to get her out. So … Just do it. We've got the bases covered.”

She closed her eyes.

Did I imagine all that? Was it a fantasy?

A moment later, the gurney began to roll, whirring on its own power, to some other room … away from the operating theater.

She wanted to throw up but she was afraid she'd choke.

Don't throw up.

But she did. They had to turn her over and clear her throat with a tube. She laughed some of the vomit out.

She was waiting for the gate to open. She tightened her fingers on the steering wheel to keep her hands from shaking.

It was midmorning. The sky was overcast; something that wasn't quite heavy enough to be rain drizzled on the windshield. The car sat there idling, its engine barely audible; Faye just sat there too.

She glanced at the gauges. The car had a full charge. She'd be able to drive all the way to Phoenix without stopping.

She looked at her purse again, doing a reality check. The purse beside her was definitely hers. It was sitting on the brown leatherette passenger seat of the McCrue company car.

She repressed the urge to look in her purse again. Everything was there. Faye Adullah's driver's license, her phone, everything. She had already called Phil and left a message. She'd decided not to call anyone else, not yet. No raging calls to the authorities.

Get out first. Don't rock the boat.

Hortense. Her transgender friend had gotten released and taken the message to Phil and Phil must have started calling …

The gate was rolling open, left to right. Faye took her foot off the brake, pressed the accelerator. The electric car hummed through the opening almost before it was an opening.

She tried to keep from speeding, as she drove the car up to the access road.

This is real.
The sweat on her hands was real. The purse … was still there.

“I'm afraid we no longer have your car,” Warden Holmes had said. Ervin Holmes was a spruce, well-tanned man who looked almost too young for the job. He had a flat-top haircut, an apologetic sigh in his voice. “We'll be making that good. Your car was crushed at a junkyard, actually. But you can use one of our cars and we'll be in touch about a replacement … of course, you'll want to have your lawyer get in touch with us, to work out a settlement … We've already arrested a number of …”

He'd spoken to her quickly, giving her a cocktail in his office, very apologetic, expecting her to rave at him, seeming relieved when she hadn't.

Faye had found she was barely able to speak to him. She could talk—she was recovered. She was fed and
hydrated and dressed in her own clothes and even coddled for a few hours by a female nurse brought in from the outside. She'd asked the Filipino nurse if she knew what was going on here. The nurse had said no, no idea …

AzPrisSystem Road 54.

Faye turned right on Road 54. She had directions printed out, on the seat under her purse. She didn't need them. She'd memorized them.

She accelerated to fifty, sixty, seventy miles per hour …

There was a thumping, close behind her. And then, a muffled voice.

She slowed down, listening. She heard another thump, with a metallic ring to it. Louder. Then an inarticulate yell filtered by upholstery, metal, fiberglass …

Another thump.

Just keep driving.

A harder thump came then, and muffled shouts with an edge of hysteria.

Moaning softly to herself, Faye pulled the car over. She put it in park, touched
Open Trunk.
She heard the trunk pop upward, and a louder shout. A man's voice was clamoring now. A familiar voice.

She opened the door, got out, and walked back to the trunk. Knuckles bloody, Rudy was climbing out clumsily of the trunk, almost falling out.