The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets (12 page)

The SUV continued out of sight. Kidney checked his watch again. Oren had said an hour. Ten minutes to go.

A couple walked into the coffee shop. She was blond and skinny. He wore a fedora. They were both in sunglasses. They were somebody, weren't they? Other people turned to look. He took out his phone to take a picture, then turned away and stared out the window again. What would movie stars be doing in a dump like this?

First he tied her hands behind her back, but then she couldn't sit in the car comfortably, so he untied them and retied her wrists together in front. He started to put her in the passenger seat, then changed his mind and made her sit in back, then changed his mind again, made her get out and get in front. All the while he muttered and cursed under his breath, “Shit” and “Why the fuck is this happening to me?”

“Why the fuck do you think this is happening?” Winnie finally said. “Are you an idiot?”

He slapped her, not as hard as any other time, but she decided to stay quiet. She sat still in the front seat while he tied her ankles together. He wore a ridiculous orange baseball cap with a pet store logo; she couldn't see his face but his hands were shaking and he seemed nervous. Something was not going right for him and she was glad.

It was a relief to be out in the cool air. He had let her put her jacket back on. He had given her a brush to straighten her hair. She felt better. She was out of his horrible house. She could get away from him now that she had fresh air to breathe and room to think.

She couldn't help asking, “Where are we going?”

“That's for me to know and you to find out.”

Without thinking, she sneered, “What are you, ten?”

She cringed away from the smack she was sure was coming,
but he just slammed her door shut and went around to his side of the car. She watched through the window as he took an envelope out of the pocket of his leather jacket. He opened it and she could see money inside. A lot of money. If he had money, what was he doing with her?

“What's your bank?” he said as he slid behind the driver's seat.

“What?”

“Which bank do you go to?”

“Citibank.”

“I want you to get me some money.”

“More money? Looks to me like you have plenty.”

“Yes. Mom. I need more money.”

“Okay. Okay.”

At the bank she would be able to communicate with someone. She would show someone the cuts on her stomach, the marks the ropes were making on her wrists. A teller would know what was going on. They were trained to know.

He closed his door. He put the key in the ignition, but then he just sat there, without moving. It was as if he had stalled. He stared at the garage door without blinking. Finally, he laid his head back and closed his eyes.

Winnie landed on the horn with both hands.

He punched her hard. She flew across the seat and her head hit the window. She crumpled against the door. She couldn't hear, she was underwater and the sounds undulated and throbbed. She began to cry.

“Fuck!” He banged the steering wheel. He reached above the visor and hit the remote.

Winnie pressed her tied hands against one ear as the door lifted and the neighborhood appeared. Empty. No one on the street. No one had heard the horn. Not a dog or a bird. Life had
evaporated.

“Stop crying. Stop it. Or I'll give you something to cry about.”

How many times had his mother said that to him?

Winnie had been hit by another guy, a boyfriend, long, long ago in Manhattan. She'd thrown a full beer can at him and only just missed hitting him in the head. He had grabbed her throwing arm and slapped her face. What she mostly remembered was how anticlimactic it had been to slam the door of his apartment behind her and then have to wait for the elevator. She stood in the hallway with his handprint on her cheek and her smeared lipstick and red, snot filled nose. She prayed he would not open the door and see her tapping her foot. The elevator finally came; the doors opened agonizingly slowly and revealed a small man inside with his very small dog. He politely said nothing as the tears dripped off her chin. The white, fluffy dog licked her shoe and then her bare ankle. She remembered the rough dryness of its tongue. She had been seventeen. One year older than Lacy. At seventeen she had already slept with three guys, one of them old enough to be her father. Maybe he was her father. He was a lawyer. Her father was a lawyer and Winnie couldn't remember what he looked like.

“Mom,” Winnie said when she got home.

“I hope you hit him back.” Daisy was reading a script at the kitchen table.

“I threw a can of beer at him.”

“Get him?”

“It hit the wall and exploded.” The stain had looked like fireworks.

“They're all the same,” Daisy replied. “Shits, all of them. Except this new one of mine. He is—amazing.”

“I think I'm bleeding.”

“Where?”

“Inside my mouth.”

“No scar, no worries. And if it's hard to eat, you'll lose weight.”

She must have been joking, but Winnie could not remember. Daisy came over to give her a rare hug, but Winnie waved her away. “I just need a shower.”

She hated her mother's touch. Daisy's hands were always cold, her fingers like frosty twigs. She was so brittle, one squeeze and she might shatter. She cultivated her Ice Queen image, never getting a tan, always wearing her white blond hair in a straight, chilly flow down her back. People used to ask if Winnie was adopted. Now they asked Winnie if Lacy was. Both of them, Daisy and Lacy, had such pale skin, platinum hair and big eyes the color of sky reflected in snow. Standing between them Winnie felt like a clump of dirt bookended by glaciers.

What would Daisy do? That was the question teenaged Winnie always asked herself. How would Daisy handle this? Even now, curled against the door of a crazy man's car, she could not stop her brain from asking what her mother would do. Daisy would never let a kidnapper kill her. Daisy would charm her way out of it. Winnie had never been very charming. She would end up dead. The thought of her mother's final and eternal disappointment made her cry harder.

“I said, stop it,” he growled. “I mean it.”

He was turning out of the neighborhood onto a street with shops. She saw the post office and a grocery store. She sucked in her snot, wiped her eyes with her tied hands and sat up straight. She saw people walking in and out of these buildings, going about their day as if everything was just the same as always. She stared at a woman, about her age, in jeans and a striped sweater, talking on a cell phone in front of Starbucks. That woman could
help her.

“Don't,” he said.

“I wasn't—”

He took the gun from his pocket. She had forgotten about the gun. How could she have forgotten about it?

“If I'm going down,” he said, “you're going with me.”

“Did you hear that on a television show?”

He jabbed one finger deep into her thigh. She grunted, opened her mouth to scream.

“Don't. Just don't,” he said.

She saw a branch of her bank up ahead. It was small, with a single walk up ATM out front, but there it was. The rotating sign was like a hand waving her in. Security guards, tellers with buttons under the counter. She almost giggled, giddy suddenly with the promise of rescue. But he was driving past.

“That's my bank,” she said.

“Shhhhh.” He shook his head. “Just shush.”

“I thought you wanted money.”

“Not there.”

He drove on. A different bank appeared. He turned in to the drive through entrance.

“This isn't my bank,” she said.

“You think I'm going to let you get out of this car and talk to a teller? You really are stupid.”

Winnie's despair blocked her throat. The tears came again. Of course he would pass her bank to go to one where they could stay in the car. Of course.

He reached in the back and got her purse from where he had thrown it earlier. He fiddled inside until he found her wallet. “Get your card. C'mon.”

Her only hope was to take a long time and let someone pull up behind them and get annoyed, but it was the middle of a
weekday, not many people banking.

“C'mon, c'mon.” He looked at his watch. Tapped the gun against his thigh.

“They have cameras,” she said. “These machines have cameras.”

“Why do you think I'm wearing a hat?”

It was true. The cap's brim would hide his face from the small camera positioned at the top of the ATM. He grabbed her wallet out of her hands and dumped it in her lap. He picked out her Citibank card and stuck it in the slot.

“What's your number?”

She thought briefly about giving him the wrong number. Three or four times and then the bank kept the card, but what good would that do? “1422.” She slumped back against the seat. One daughter, born April 22. Her throat was closing, she had to concentrate to swallow.

“What's your limit?”

“I don't know.”

“Five hundred? A thousand?”

“I have no idea. Really. Why should I care?”

“You rich bitches are all alike.”

He punched in a thousand. The machine grumbled and a message appeared. He read aloud, “‘The amount requested exceeds available funds.' Fuck!” He gritted his teeth as he read on, “‘Would you like to use overdraft protection?'”

“The fee is so high,” Winnie complained without thinking. “I get paid tomorrow.” Stupid! she berated herself. As if he could wait, as if she wanted to still be here tomorrow.

“How much money do you have?” He seemed confused.

“I think about six hundred dollars.”

She could tell he didn't believe her. Behind him the machine waited for his response. Was anyone watching this transaction?

Wouldn't it seem odd it was taking so long?

“I'm not lying,” she defended herself. “I don't know why you think I'm rich. I'm not. My ex is rich. I am not.”

“No savings account? Other banks?”

“I have a savings account,” she said. “But it's not connected. I'd have to go in to my bank. It's for Lacy. My daughter.”

She was sorry she had said her name. She didn't want to give him any bit of her. He shook his head as if to clear it. He chewed on a fingernail. Then he sighed and pressed “yes.” The machine churned and another message came up.

“Fuck!” he hit the steering wheel.

“What?”

“Transaction is too big for overdraft protection.”

“Check the balance and take what I have. Go on. Just take it. All of it. Who cares.”

“I'll be short,” he sounded like a child. “I won't have enough.”

There was nothing she could say.

He pressed the appropriate buttons. “I left you seven dollars.”

“Such a gentleman.”

The machine whirred and spit out the money. He put the cash and her card in his left pocket along with the gun. He pulled forward, but had to stop. “Oh, c'mon.”

An old man crossed slowly in front of them. He wore brown pants and a brown sweater and he walked a short-legged fat brown dog. The wind blew and the man pulled his sweater closed. The little dog bent his head against the gust. Winnie shivered. No place was colder than right there, right that minute. Not Alaska or Siberia or the Arctic Circle. His hot house had sucked the warmth from the world. The old man turned his face out of the wind and glanced at them. Should she try the horn again? Should she scream? Roll down the window and scream?
She looked at the button, took a deep breath.

“Listen,” her kidnapper said.

He knew what she had planned. She'd been too obvious.

“Listen,” he said again. “If you try anything, I will go get your daughter. I know where she is. I will drive from here right to her school and I will get Lacy.”

How did he know? “She's not in school,” Winnie was frantic. “She lives far away with her father. She's grown up.”

“I hate lying. I told you I hate lying.”

“Leave her out of this.”

“She hates you.”

“You keep saying that.”

“You're a bad mom.”

“No, I'm not.” She wasn't.

In the middle of the night, Winnie had woken to Lacy crying in the bathroom.

“Lacy? What is it? Sweetpea?”

Lacy had opened the door in her underpants with her tank top pulled up. She had her hands cupped over her bare stomach.

“It hurts, Mommy. It hurts so badly.”

“What?” Appendicitis, drugs, the morning after pill all whistled through Winnie's mind.

Lacy moved her hands. A gold ring pierced her belly button. The incision was oozing watery pus, the skin around it swollen and red.

“Oh, Sweetie.” Winnie could not be angry. Lacy was too miserable. “It's infected. It looks so painful.”

“It's just… just… I sleep on my stomach and…” Lacy sobbed. “I thought it would be so beautiful.”

Winnie kept her opinion to herself. She found the rubbing alcohol and the antibiotic cream. She cleaned the two red, ugly
holes and the hideous tiny ring and kissed her daughter's perfect flat stomach and together they fashioned a very strange bandage using the cap from a water bottle to keep everything and anything from touching her navel. They were laughing by the time they finished. Lacy hugged her goodnight and said, “Thank you,” and “I love you, Mom.”

But in the morning they fought. Winnie shouted, “Why don't you just put a bone through your nose?”

“Maybe I will.”

“Do you want to look like a tramp?

“Yes!”

Winnie knew it; she knew that Lacy thought dressing like a slut would make her popular. It broke her heart that her daughter wanted so desperately to be cool. Lacy had been friends with the kids in orchestra, but now she avoided them. She continued to practice her flute and play in the orchestra twice a week, but she would not go out for pizza after rehearsals or to the first violinist's birthday party. As if being a nerd was contagious. So she had no one. The phone never rang. She did not go anywhere on the weekends except to her dad's house. She talked a lot about some girl named Marissa, what she was wearing, what she said, but Marissa had never called or come over. Winnie was positive Lacy was still a virgin, but doing her best not to look like one.