Palindrome (38 page)

She is entirely and utterly consumed by desire, by hunger. Every breath she takes is tortured. She wants, she
needs.
She is, in some ways, a pathetic creature, and what I first mistook for the glow of sensuality is perhaps only the emanation of the burning, unbridled lust for the tape that informs her every movement.

And now that she senses it's so close, it's all she can do to contain herself. Her body language is no longer cold and rigid, unaffected, as it was in my apartment; it's tense and coiled, expectant, almost—­if I'm reading her right—­giddy.

“So,” she says, and yes, under her voice is something that's been waiting to burst free for quite some time. “As I said, I can be very reasonable about this. You give it to me, and I return your daughter to you.”

Greta removes a pink stick of gum from some fold of her pants and—­with a gloved hand—­tucks it into her cheek. Smell of cinnamon wafts over to me as she masticates mechanically. Doesn't offer me any.

I take a deep breath. Try to assume control of this situation. Looking past her, out the window at the glowing skyscrapers, I say, “I'll give it back to you once I have my daughter. And if you're thinking about shooting me and taking it, it's not on my person.”

A twinge of rage crosses her face.

“You
lied,
” she says, rearing up slightly in her chair, like a cobra preparing to strike.

“No. I did have it on the phone,” I say. Can't believe I sound apologetic. “I hid it on the way up here. I'll go get it for you as soon as I see my daughter.”

“She's safe,” she says. “I give you my word.”

“I think you'll understand if I don't find your promise to be very reassuring,” I say.

I hear hot air hiss from her nostrils. Glance quickly at her, then back out the window. I change my mind: She has an even better nose than Helen.

Try not to look at her, Frank. Her beauty is a weapon, and she knows it. Remember what she did to you! She took Sadie.

“I've told you”—­a smoldering bitterness in her voice—­“I
keep
my promises.”

She stands and picks up the gun, and I jump back, thinking she's about to empty it into my chest. But she holds it by her side and dashes for the dresser behind me. She rips open a drawer and pulls out a grey duffel bag, throws it to me, and I catch it like it's a bomb.

“Open it,” she says.

“
What is it, a poisonous snake?”

“Open it
!” she shrieks.

I warily, delicately unzip it, steeling myself for something horrible, but am startled when I understand. Cash. I take out a packet of hundreds and ruffle through it like a flip-­book. Best I can tell, totally real.

“Three hundred fifty thousand, Lamb,” she says, her pistol hand shaking at her side. Her teeth are chattering. “I don't break my word.” Her voice is much more terrible when it's soft.

“You said you were Greta Kanter,” I counter. “Your whole life is a lie. I don't even know your real name.”

She glares at me, and I can see the hunger pumping beneath her breasts.

“Hannah,” she says.

I zip the duffel bag back up.

“Last name?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “Give me the tape,” she whispers. “I've waited long enough.”

“I want assurance that my daughter is unharmed.”

She flushes, reaches into the chest of her turtleneck and removes a cell phone, a crappy model I haven't seen in a decade. She pulls up a number, and it starts ringing on speakerphone. It looks like the anticipation is going to rip her apart from the inside.

“Hello?”

It's Sadie's voice. Greta motions to me not to speak.

“Hello dear,” Greta says.

“Oh, hi.”

Tears of relief stream down my face. She sounds okay.

“How are you doing,” Greta says emptily. “How are the cartoons?”

“The cartoons are fine.”

“Please do me a favor. In the bathroom there is a wrapped bar of soap and several small bottles of shampoo. Could you please tell me what's written on their labels?”

“Uh . . . okay. Is my dad still coming to pick me up today?”

“Yes. Just read the soap bar, please.”

I hear static, then Sadie reading, “Um, it says . . . Tower.”

Greta—­Hannah—­hangs up, stares at me. She's close to hitting a breaking point.

“See? She's in another room in this hotel. Unharmed,” she hisses. “Where is
the tape
?”

I nod, rise to my feet, tears running down my cheeks.

“I'll go get it.”

“No, no.” She shakes her head feverishly, pointing her pistol at my chest. “You'll stay right here if you ever want to see her again. Tell me where it is.”

She breathes a throaty breath, and I catch an involuntary sigh escaping her lips. It's like she's losing control of herself.

“I put—­”

“If you're lying to me, Lamb, and you don't have it, it would be in your best interest to tell me now. I might consider killing you quickly.” She licks her flawless lips, her face now cherry red. “If you lead me on any more, only to disappoint me, I will make what I did to Orange look like a day at the park. You will watch me kill your daughter, and then I'll let you live long enough to fully internalize the pain, the loss, before I . . .”

She trails off, unable to form words, breathing heavily, chest heaving.

“Turn left out the door,” I say. “It's between the Coke machine and the wall. There's also a gun there. I'll understand if you just want to leave that or throw it out.”

She looks at me for a moment, then jams her pistol into some fold of her pants, turns and is out the door, letting it clunk closed behind her.

I sigh with relief. Simply not having her in the same room as me makes me feel relatively relaxed. My mind seems to clear up instantly, like her presence was drowning me and I just now am gasping at fresh air.

But wait a second. What if she just walks back in and shoots me in the head?

Suddenly that scenario seems eminently plausible. She gets what she wants, and then I'm the only loose end to tie up. She puts a bullet through my brain and walks out of this hotel carefree.

Fuck. Fuck. I thought I'd handled this well, but I'm about to get played yet again. Of course she shows me the money. Then kills me and takes it back. Am I even sure that girl on the phone was Sadie? I mean, it certainly sounded like her, but I also wanted that to be her more than anything—­

The lock clicks, and the door opens. My heart stops, and I stare, frozen, as Greta enters. Her face is totally blank, unreadable. In her right hand she holds the tape.

She lets the door click closed behind her. I close my eyes, waiting for the bullet, but hear only the clatter as she sets her pistol down on the dresser. Opens the same drawer that held my money and pulls out a clunky grey machine, the likes of which I haven't seen for at least twenty years: a Walkman with a pair of sleek white earbuds wrapped around it. She sits back down across from me. Opens the Walkman and inserts the tape, sticks in the earbuds.

Our eyes are locked as she hits play. My heart seizes as I realize that if it's broken—­from the freezer or something—­she's going to think I tried to fool her. Bite my lip. Try to read her face:
Is it working?

Anguished seconds drip past. She left the gun on top of the dresser, behind me, but it seems like she did it intentionally, as if daring me to make a move for it. Instead I sit glued across from her as inside the Sony Walkman the two little gears revolve, the smaller gear reeling in black film from the larger, like there's a little game of tug-­of-­war that he's winning.

Greta—­Hannah—­suddenly jerks up straight in her chair. Her eyes rivet to some point over my right shoulder, staring fixedly at something that I know isn't there. Her lower jaw opens slightly, and I hear a wisp of breath escape her lips.

Color shoots to her face, her cheeks glow deep orange. Her face—­normally preternaturally stoic—­alights with a kind of infantile wonder. Her breasts pulse beneath her black turtleneck. The tips of her gloved fingers try to dig into the wood tabletop, her hands clenched like claws. Her eyes are aflame with green, her face connoting an ambiguous emotion that is readable only as pure intensity, as if she is on the cusp of a furious orgasm.

My nose picks something up, and for a moment I think I'm imagining it, but then the scent becomes stronger until there's no doubt: I can smell her. The sickeningly sweet scent of arousal. An intoxicating, meaty perfume.

And then what appeared to be an expression of ecstasy shifts. Her eyes darken.

Again I consider whether I could make a move for the pistol. I turn slightly in my chair, readying myself for a dash. I'm about to shoot up from my seat when Greta makes a sound that gives me pause.

She's sort of cowering now, whatever she's listening to clearly unpleasant. She emits a gasp of anguish, then tears out her earbuds and slams the pause button, breathing like she just finished a sprint.

Takes a moment to recover, then looks up at me.

“That's it, right?” I say. “Give her back.”

Greta is visibly transformed. Shaken. Frightened, perhaps. She grabs the Walkman and stands up. Strides over to the window, Walkman still in her right hand, and gazes out on the city, then back to me. I think she seems almost melancholy. I still think I could probably make a run for the gun and grab it before she could react, but I'm thrown off by her indifference to this possibility. It also appears that this whole thing might just end up going smoothly, and I don't want to ruin that.

“Which room is my daughter in?” I say.

Softly to the window, she says, “We're not quite done here, Lamb.”

I watch as her left hand—­the one not holding the Walkman—­moves to her mouth. She bites, then wrenches off the glove with her teeth, lets it fall gently to the ground like an autumn leaf. Then she reaches that hand back to where her turtleneck meets the nape of her neck, and slowly starts tearing. One of her fingernails is cut sharp enough to tear straight from her neck to her tailbone, and then the shirt simply falls off.

I stiffen as she grabs the waist of her pants and effortlessly pushes them to the floor. Steps out of them delicately, as if from a shallow puddle, still shrouded in shadow.

She's wearing nothing now but the glove on her right hand, still holding the Walkman. She keeps staring out the window. Her shapely contours catch a fleeting bar of light from outside, illuminating a slit of her flesh for only a moment.

“What . . .” I ask.

Then she turns to me, finally, and steps into the light of the reading lamp.

My jaw goes limp.

The entire front of her body, from the neck down to her toes, is tattooed. A beautiful, brightly colored mural. Stripes of sun orange, dandelion yellow, earthy red, royal purple, sky blue. The intricacy and craftsmanship are astounding. There appears to be dozens of layers, as if she never stopped adding them, burying old pictures and words beneath newer, fresher ink.

I'm lost in them, absolutely mesmerized. It's so beautiful I could cry. Her body is a perfect work of art painted on a flawlessly maintained canvas. I look up at her face. She's standing over me, her cold green eyes staring down at me, my heart pounding, blood rushing everywhere, her smell . . .

I jerk up from the chair and stumble backwards.

“What are you doing?” I say. “I gave you what you wanted. Tell me where my daughter is.”

“Don't you recall the final condition of our agreement, Lamb?”

She steps toward me, and her naked hips move into the light of the reading lamp. I see that a black snake is tattooed around her waist like a belt, the mouth and tail both terminating in the fold of her groin.

“I don't . . . I just want . . .”

“Of course you want this,” she says. “You've been dreaming about it, haven't you?”

She moves closer, her scent dizzying, and suddenly grabs me by my hair and jerks my ear to her lips. Whispers, “You don't think I need a gun to kill you, do you, Lamb?”

Then with astonishing force, she pushes down on my scalp, forcing me to my knees. She grips either side of my head and pushes my nose into her groin. My face is buried in her, and I'm overwhelmed by the smell, by the smooth skin of her thighs on my cheeks.

“Finish the job, Lamb.” I hear her above me, in vibrato. Her thumbs push on my temples with such force that it's clear she could simply crush my skull. I suddenly remember Linda's story about her husband, Walter, clomping up the steps, climbing into bed and gripping her wrist harder than he ever had before.

She tightens the pressure on my forehead. My teeth mash together.

“Do it!” she screams, then forces my face all the way into her.

Not seeing a choice, I lick whatever is directly in front of my face, and immediately she relaxes her hands and emits a deep, guttural groan that makes my heart flutter. I dig deeper with my tongue and she entrenches her nails in my back, drawing blood. She moans horribly, almost like she's in pain.

And then she pulls my face out, jerks me to my feet by my armpits—­absolutely manhandles me—­and throws me onto the California king bed. My heart's screaming in my throat. In the dim light, she crawls up onto the bed and sits on me, squeezing my hips with her knees.

Some garbled words of protest leave my lips as she cuts down the middle of my shirt with her sharpened index fingernail, then rips my jeans clean off with such force that she tears a hole in one of the knees.

My boxer briefs are torn to shreds in a ravenous flurry, and then her ungloved hand is gripping my flaccid member tightly.

She looks in my eyes.

“Don't resist, Lamb,” she says, her voice throaty like a wolf's, full breasts perked and expectant, as if they're ready to burst. “It's too late for us. We've heard the tape. We know what's coming. We've made mistakes that will be echoed back and forth for eternity. But let's make someone new. Someone perfect.”