White Horse (3 page)

Normally, I feel a small flash of anger in my chest when she calls to match make. But today …

I wish my mom were here. Because that jar isn’t mine.

Someone has been in my space.

DATE: NOW

The human body is a
wondrous thing. It’s an acid manufacturing plant capable of transforming simple food into a hot burning mess.

I vomit a lot now. I’m great at it. I can lean forward just right and miss my boots completely. If the world wasn’t gone, I could go to the Olympics.

As soon as breakfast comes up, I poke down an apple. It takes.

“Do you have to go?” Lisa asks. She’s chewing her bottom lip, working the delicate skin into a pulpy mass.

“I have to get to Brindisi.”

We’re standing in the farmhouse’s yard, encapsulated in a constant damp mist. Plush moss springs from pale stones that make up the house’s exterior walls. My bicycle is leaning against a long-abandoned water pump. Somewhere along the way, the owners had resources enough to reroute the plumbing and enter the twentieth century, but they left the pump for charm or lack of caring. The bicycle is blue and not originally mine. No money changed hands. It was purchased for the paltry sum of a kiss outside Aeroporto Leonardo da Vinci di Fiumicino. No tongue. Just the surprising taste of tenderness from a Norwegian man who didn’t want to die without one last embrace.

“Please,” Lisa says. “Stay.”

“I can’t.” There’s a tightness in my chest from the mountains of regret heaped upon it. I like her. I really do. She’s a sweet kid who once dreamed of nice things. Now the best she can hope for is survival. Thriving is not an option and it may never be.

“Please. It’s nice having another woman here. It’s better.”

Then it strikes me, the note of desperation in her voice. She does
not want to be left here alone with these men. They should be bound to protect family, and they do. But shared blood isn’t the only reason: I suddenly realize they see her as a possession. A way to while away the hours until humanity draws its last ragged breath. I should have sensed it sooner, but I was so bound to my own agenda that I failed to look beyond my borders.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know. I should have, but I didn’t.”

A pale pink flush creeps over her fair skin: I’ve guessed her secret. Although she can’t see me, I glance away to give her a moment to recoup. My cheeks buzz with shame.

The silence lasts long enough for the precipitation to congeal into raindrops.

“You can’t stay any more than I can. Come with me.”

I should regret the words, but I don’t. If she agrees, it will add who knows how many days to my journey. Time is a luxury when you can’t see what’s left in the hourglass. But with humanity limping along as it is, kindness is rare. I have to hold on to what makes me human.

“Really? You’d let me go with you?”

“I insist.”

Her neck pops as she jerks her chin over one shoulder, back at the house.

“They won’t let me go. They’ll never allow it.”

What did they do to you, baby girl?
I want to ask. Whatever she says, it won’t affect my decision anyway: she’s coming with me.

“Go up to your room and get your things. Make sure you’ve got something comfortable and warm to wear.”

“But—” I can see she’s still worried about the men.

“I’ll take care of it.”

We go inside together, and in the abrupt shelter we luxuriate for a moment. It feels good not to be rained on. Then we nod and she inches up the stairs while I make for the kitchen.

As far as kitchens go—and I’ve known few—this one is lean. Not an efficient leanness, but the too-thinness of a woman who fights to maintain an unnatural weight. The room has sag; I can see where things should go if one had the inclination to decorate or a love for cooking. It yearns to be filled with a family.

Only one man is present: Lisa’s uncle. His skin is filled to capacity and oozes over the chair’s borders. It’s a sturdy piece of furniture probably many generations old. The wood is dark from time, and the seat is some kind of thick wicker with a honeyed sheen. The chair has seven empty siblings.

The big guy glances up, scans me for weaknesses he can exploit. My breath catches as I pull my shoulders back and push my chin forward, trying to look as strong as my body will allow. He finds nothing he can take without considerable effort and goes back to chewing on the bread I made two days ago after I picked the weevils from the pantry’s ample flour supply. Crumbs fly from his mouth, spraying the table with damp flecks that will harden and stick if they’re not wiped down soon. Neither Lisa nor I will be here to do it. These men will be wallowing in their own filth in no time.

“Lisa’s coming with me.”

He grunts, swallows, fixes his beady eyes on me. Raisins pressed deep into dough.

“She stays.”

“It wasn’t a question.”

His bulk gathers like an impending storm as he heaves himself from the chair.

“We’re her family.”

This can’t go anyplace good. A cold spot the size of a quarter forms on the back of my neck and spreads until I’m chilled all over. What was I thinking? He’s bigger than me. Morbidly obese and slow, true, but large enough that if he gets me on the ground, I’m screwed.

We stare each other down. If we were dogs, someone would be betting on him, impressed by his sheer size.

A sharp shriek tears the artificial calm. Upstairs. Lisa. For a second I tune out, my attention latching onto the strange silence that always follows a scream.

The fat man lunges for me. Lisa is in trouble, but right now I am, too.

I feint left, dive right. He’s like a crash test vehicle hitting the wall, plaster dust forming a white halo around his body. It takes him a moment to recover. He shakes his head to clear the pain fog, then comes at me again.

Again I manage to dodge him. Now we’re staring each other down across the width of the table. Just a few feet between us. No weapons in sight. Lisa is a tidy housekeeper, and though this isn’t her home, just one they stumbled across the same way I did, everything is in its place.

Another scream. This one drifts like dandelion fluff.

Inside my chest, my heart hurls itself at its bone prison. It knows her father is up there with her and it knows what’s happening.

“I’m going to her,” I say. “And if you try and stop me, you’re a dead man.”

He laughs. His jowls wobble and shudder.

“When he’s done fucking her, we’re going to take turns fucking you, bitch.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t try sooner.”

He holds up both palms. “What can I say, love? We like lamb, not mutton.”

It’s my turn to laugh, only mine is bitter and dry.

“What, bitch? What’s so fucking funny? Share the joke.”

I inch down the table toward the open doorway. On the other side of this wall there’s an umbrella stand. What’s in there is useless for keeping a body dry, but the pointed end could still easily put out an eye.

“Did I ever tell you what I did for a living before all this?”

He grunts. Follows me down the table until we’re both at the blunted edge.

“Some kind of lab rat.”

I nod. Something like that. “I’ve done a lot of lifting, so I’m pretty strong for a skinny woman. What have you done besides shift gears in your truck and swing a glass of Guinness?” There’s less strength in my body now than there was before the world ended, but my survival instincts have brought me this far. I make a break for it but I miscalculate: his reach is longer than mine. His arm snaps out. Fat grasping fingers coil themselves around my ponytail. He jerks me backwards and pulls me against him until his gut is a stuffed IHOP pancake bulging against my back. A triangle forms around my neck and tightens. Chest, humerus, ulna.

Usually when I long for the past, I dream of meals in chain restaurants where they serve the exact same dish every time. I dream of how
it feels to be dry, or how my skin tingled when I stood too long in a too-hot shower. But now? High heels. Stilettos. With a four-inch metal rod keeping the heels straight and true. Because my captor has socked feet and it would take nothing to drive my fashionable weapon right between his metatarsals.

I’m wearing boots with a thick sole made for walking, but he’s six-foot-something and I have to exaggerate to see five-five, which means my heels aren’t going to do much besides grind his toes. It’s not enough.

“I win,” he says.

Maybe he’s right, but the game isn’t over yet. There’s more than just me at stake.

“When was the last time you saw your own dick?” My voice thickens as the arm tightens at my throat. He’s pulling me closer and higher. My heels are rising off the ground. There’s a whisper of rubber against tile as my feet flail to seek stability. “Can you hold it to piss or do you sit like a woman?”

“Fuck you.”

“Please. Fat guys like you can’t get a hard-on.”

Dark spots obscure my vision. It’s morning but my daylight is fading fast. Lisa is sobbing now between the screams.

There’s more strength in him than first appears. Adipose overlays significant muscle mass; the perfect camouflage. My toes leave the ground.

Everything that follows happens in an instant.

My chin drops and I sink my teeth into his forearm. The enamel slices through the tissue and scrapes bone. I draw my knees up so when he drops me and lets out a roar that comes all the way from his scrotum, my weight falls like the sparkly ball on New Year’s Eve and my boots crush his feet. A gasp shoots from my throat as I fall forward onto my knees. Impact pains set my shins on fire. My opponent recovers long enough to deliver a swift kick to my backside with his damaged foot. Warm copper with a hint of iron floods my mouth. I scramble to my feet, dart sideways, arm held protectively over my stomach.

Without a thought in my head besides survival, I reach for a chair. It’s lighter than its mellowed wood would suggest. Or maybe not. In times of need, the human body can conduct amazing feats. I know this
because
That’s Incredible!
told me. And Cathy Lee Crosby had a face an eight-year-old could trust.

White bone gleams through the skin as I lock my hands into place on the chair’s back. He’s English, which means he understands little about my national sport. This chair is my bat and his face is the ball. Baseball on steroids.

He comes for me and I swing. There’s a sharp crack as his face shatters. Wet droplets of blood splatter my shirt and face: a mosquito’s wet dream. Broken teeth crumble from his sagging mouth, and he falls. He is a mountain of flesh conquered by a woman holding a chair. The wood slips from my hands as I stagger into the hall and mount the stairs.

DATE: THEN

I get his name from
a friend of a friend’s sister.

“Oh my God, you have to call him. He’s the best,” my friend says with the exaggerated enthusiasm of one passing on thirdhand news.

Nick Rose. He sounds like a carpenter, not someone who listens to problems for a crippling fee. A woodworker. Someone average. I can do that. I can talk to someone regular. Because normally when I think about a therapist I imagine an austere Sigmund Freud looking for links between my quirks and my feelings about my mother. My relationship with my mother is just fine, although I haven’t yet returned her call or contacted my sister like she asked.

What would Freud make of that? What would Dr. Nick Rose?

I make the call out on the street from my cell phone. The city is in full tilt. Horns are the spice sprinkled over relentless traffic. Bodies form an organic conveyor belt constantly grinding along the sidewalks. Out here my words will be lost, but that’s what I want. I’m a rational woman but the jar’s arrival has me questioning my grip on reality. And deep down inside me, in the vault where I keep my fears carefully separated and wrapped in positive thoughts, I get the crazy notion that the jar will know.

So I stand outside on a corner, cup my hand over the phone’s mouthpiece, and dial.

A man answers. I expected a female assistant and I tell him so and
immediately feel a jab of guilt for stereotyping my own sex. Some feminist I am.

He laughs. “It’s just me. I like to talk to potential clients. It gives both of us a feel for each other.”

Clients. Not patients. My shoulders slump and I realize how taut my body has been holding itself. Dr. Nick Rose’s voice is warm and bold like good coffee. He laughs like someone who is well practiced in the art.

I want to hear it again, so I say, “Just so we’re clear, I don’t secretly want to have sex with either of my parents.”

Another laugh is my reward. Despite my reservations, I smile into the phone.

“Me either,” Dr. Rose tells me. “I worked through that in college just to make sure. It was touch and go for a while, especially when my father kept asking me if he looked pretty.”

We laugh some more. My tension is rendered butter melting away from my psyche. And at the end he tells me that Friday afternoons are all mine if I’ll have him.

When we hang up, I am light-footed. The mere act of procuring a therapist has done wonders for me already. Friday. It’s Tuesday now. That gives me three days to fabricate a story about the jar. A dream, maybe. Psychologists love dreams. Because I can’t tell him the truth and I can’t explain why because I don’t know. The answer isn’t there yet. I don’t want him to think I’m crazy, because I’m not. Desperate is what I am. Quietly desperate and insatiably curious.

I follow the routine: unlock, unlock, open, close, lock, lock, chain, security code. The blinking light on the panel glows green, just like it’s supposed to.

The jar is waiting.

DATE: NOW

Lisa’s whimpers come from her
bedroom. I say
her bedroom
; but who knows who it really belongs to. Whoever was here before shook all their personal belongings into suitcases, or maybe boxes, and fled. So I call it Lisa’s room, although it won’t be for much longer. Not if I can help it.