House of the Rising Sun: A Novel (49 page)

“I do mind.”

“Sorry, ma’am, it’s what Mr. Beckman says. You have a right nice place here.”

Then they were inside, one of them pushing the door shut, their eyes roaming the walls and framed pictures and paintings and bookcases and mantel and furniture, everything that was hers, that told her who she was.

“Want us to take off our shoes?”

She didn’t answer. She stared at them, her thoughts concealed.
Don’t fight or argue with them. Don’t play on their terms.

“Do you like working for Arnold?” she asked.

“Mr. Beckman? It’s all right.”

“Are you afraid of him?”

“He don’t hire men that’s afraid.”

“That’s what I thought,” she said. “Do you want a drink?”

“We’re not supposed to do it on the job. But in this kind of weather?”

“That’s a good attitude. Sit down at the kitchen table.”

“We won’t argue,” the second man said. Unlike his friend, he had the upper body of a hod carrier and walked with a slouch, the way recidivist convicts did, and smelled of earth and damp wool. His work boots were smeared with bluish-green clay. “I better take them off.”

“The cleaning lady is coming tomorrow,” she said.

“I could tell you was looking at them.”

“She’s a thinker,” his friend said. “Right, Miss Maggie? That’s what Mr. Beckman says. You’re always thinking.”

That’s right, imbecile. That’s why getting even is so much fun. A little planning, a little application of superior intelligence, and people like me turn people like you into weapons and do damage that gets worse by the day. I hope you enjoy the ride, you stupid shit.

“Would you like wine or bourbon?” she said.

“How about both?” the man in work boots said. “That’s what winos call ‘wine spodiotti.’”

“Maybe I can freshen up and join you,” she said.

“There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m Jim,” the first man said. “This here is Jack. You got to watch Jack. He’s bit randy. Just kidding.”

“I think I can handle you fellows.”

“Ma’am?” Jim said. He had removed his hat when he entered the house, revealing a pointy bald pate combed over with hair that resembled mop string.

“You think I’ll be up to it?” she said. “Come on, tell me. I’m not shy.”

The two men were looking across the table at each other. “Who are we to comment on a lady such as yourself?” Jim said.

“I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”

“You can count on it,” said Jack, wiping his nose on his wrist.

She went into her bedroom and closed and locked the door, easing the bolt into place as softly as possible. She undressed and shook out her hair and put on a pair of eggplant-colored high heels, decorated with a steel-cut bronze-bead design, and turned sideways in the mirror, running her fingers along the flatness of her stomach, letting them trail off her appendix scar.

Want to play, boys? Want to see what it’s like to stick your pathetic penises in the light socket?

She took a nickel-plated .32-caliber revolver from her dresser, then walked naked to the door and unlocked it, snapping the bolt loudly. She raised her left arm against the jamb and leaned on it, her right hand holding the revolver behind her hip. “See anything you like?”

They stared, openmouthed, obviously unable to assimilate what they were seeing.

“You’re not bothered by the scar on my tummy, are you?” she said.

“No, ma’am,” Jim said.

“Are you boys hungry?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jim said.

“How about you, Jack?”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

“You don’t sound very enthusiastic,” she said.

“Long as it’s me first,” Jack said.

Jim looked at him. “Where you get off with that?”

“I got my standards,” Jack said.

“Will y’all tell Arnold?”

Jim made a cross over his heart. “You got our word.”

“I thought you might say that.”

She placed her left hand behind her neck and rotated her head. “I get such a crick back there. Can you take it out for me?”

“In ways you wouldn’t believe, lady,” Jack said.

“You say you have your standards?” she said, her gaze not meeting his.

“I don’t take sloppy seconds.”

“Stand up for me,” she said. “Both of you.”

“That may not be easy to do at the moment,” Jim said, grinning.

“I have my standards, too. Let’s have a look at you.”

“What’s the joke?” Jim asked.

“I just want to see if your expectations are rising. It’s a vanity of mine. You’re sure you’re not going to tell Arnold about this?”

“You got our word,” Jim said.

“Come on, big boy. Stand up.”

They rose from their chairs, hunched slightly forward, waiting, their fingers touching the tabletop. She brought the revolver from behind her hip and pointed it at them.

“Now get your worthless asses out of here,” she said.

Both men averted their eyes from the muzzle.

“You’re gonna regret this,” Jim said, breathing heavily.

Maggie lowered the pistol barrel slightly. “Say one more word and I’ll shoot your dick off.”

They edged through the living room, their hands in front of them, as though pushing back the air. Then they skittered sideways like crabs out the door and ran for their motorcar. She locked the door after them and went back into the bedroom and called Arnold Beckman’s office, still in the nude. She heard the motorcar drive away.

Beckman picked up the telephone. “Beatrice?”

“No, it’s Maggie, you bastard. You’re dealing with Beatrice DeMolay?”

“She’s putting together a big shipment of Mausers for some friends in South America.”

“I give a fuck about your business deals after you sent these two animals to rape me?”

“Sent
whom
to rape you?”

“Jim and Jack. They didn’t give their last names. They were too busy tearing off my clothes.”

“Are you crazy?”

“I just chased them out the door at gunpoint. If I hadn’t gotten to my pistol, I would have been raped. Why would you do such a thing to me, Arnold? I can’t believe you’d do that.” She began to cry into the receiver.

“I don’t know what’s going on here. They wouldn’t dare. They know I’d have them ripped apart. With machines and chains, joint and seam.”

“You think I made it up. They were going to sodomize me. They were describing what they were going to do to me. In detail.”

“Stop crying. I know you, Maggie. You could lie the paint off a battleship.”

“Why would I lie? The thought of them touching me makes me sick to my stomach.”

“You’re up to something.”

“You cheap motherfucker. I hate you. I know we’ve both done loathsome things in our lives, but I didn’t believe you were capable of this.”

“I’ll talk to them.”

“You’ll
talk
to them? I have their scratches all over me. I can feel their breath on my skin. The one named Jack put his tongue on my appendix scar. Ask him, you son of a bitch, and see what he says.”

Then she hung up and began drawing her nails down her breasts and arms and shoulders and thighs, her eyes closed, her chin lifted, as though she were at prayer or offering up a sacrifice on an altar dedicated solely to her.

I
SHMAEL LAY ON
his side on the cot, his eyes still taped, the cool, damp, moldy odor of stone surrounding him, comforting and restorative in its way, a touch of a netherworld that contained no pain. Another blessing had come to him, one he had not anticipated. Either through fear or stress or physical exhaustion, or maybe surrender to his fate, his body seemed purged of the withdrawal symptoms that were the plague of every intravenous addict. The nausea and night sweats were gone, and so were the flashes of light behind the eyes, the heart palpitations, the shortness of breath, the vertigo, the ache in the joints and the fire in the connective tissue, the premonitions of doom, the conviction that a fissure was opening under one’s feet.

Maybe all these things would return. But at the moment, they were gone, and he breathed the smell of the stone that reminded him of the cave across the river from his father’s ranch and a time in his life when spring was eternal and bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush covered the riverside. Something else had occurred that he could not explain, a dream or a moment on the edge of sleep that he associated with hope and a belief that he was not alone, no matter the degree of adversity imposed upon him.

During the rainstorm, he had drifted off, and inside the darkness, he saw himself as a little boy standing in front of a hill that was struck by lightning. But the lightning did not disappear with the strike. It gathered into a churning ball and rolled up a grassy slope and exploded on a tree that was cruciform in shape, setting it afire. The radiance it gave off was as bright as liquid gold and so intense it made his eyes water. Then he saw his father walk into the light and kneel in the grass and gather his son in his arms.

When Ishmael woke, he didn’t know where he was. “Big Bud?” he said to the darkness.

“Who?” Jeff replied.

“Didn’t mean to bother you,” Ishmael replied.

“Bother
me
? You’re the one with the problem, kid.”

That was no longer the case. The man named Jessie had gone away, then had returned to the basement, hardly able to speak, making gargling sounds and spitting into a tin bucket.

“What the hell happened to you?” Jeff said.

“She rammed a fucking hat pin down my throat, that’s what.”

“Who did?”

“That crazy Dansen bitch.”

“Why did you let her do that?”

“
Let
her? You think I
let
her? I swallowed a pint of blood. I’m lucky she didn’t put out my eyes.”

“You let her get away?”

“What’s with you? Are you listening? Have you ever got stabbed through the mouth? She tried to pack a hat pin down my throat. It had a knob on it big as a walnut.”

“You don’t look so bad. Quit whining.”

“
Whining
? You said
whining
?”

“She saw your face?”

Jessie gargled and spat again. Ishmael could smell whiskey and hear it slosh in the bottle.

“It was dark in the room,” Jessie said. “She couldn’t see my face. I’m sure of it. I knocked her on her ass, too.”

“What’s Mr. Beckman say?”

“Nothing. He didn’t say nothing.”

“Sounds like you messed up proper. Been good knowing you, Jess.”

Jessie gargled and spat again, his throat choking up. “You backstabbing son of a bitch.”

Ishmael closed his eyes behind the cotton pads, the animus of the two men no longer his concern, the image of his father embracing him amid the green softness of the hillside as real as the cool air he breathed into his lungs.

D
URING HIS CAPTIVITY,
he had invented games to occupy his mind, speculating on the great mysteries that had no solutions, speaking to dead comrades-in-arms, revisiting his lifelong fascination with anthropology and history. By listening to the footfalls and voices of his captors, and the shutting and opening of doors, he knew the basement room he occupied was at the end of a corridor, one that had a stone or brick floor. No, it wasn’t a corridor. It was a tunnel with a trapdoor at the far end, one made out of perhaps oak and steel that fell heavily from a ceiling with enough force to jar the floor. The tunnel smelled of lichen and water seepage. It smelled of the tomb, or a cave deep inside the mists of Avalon, the kind to which mankind continually returned in one way or another. The fascination with the netherworld, the spirits that groaned inside the trunks of trees, the sword frozen in the rock, the hunters chasing the stag across the heavens, all of these things were less about magic than testimony to the glory of creation. It was not coincidence that the walls of the great catacombs of Europe were stacked with row upon row of grinning skulls, as though they had come home and joined a party in progress that no one else saw.

Shortly after Jessie’s falling-out with Jeff, the sound of the trapdoor striking the floor reverberated down the tunnel, followed by footsteps hammering down steps or a ladder, then the voice of Arnold Beckman shouting, “Get down there, you pair of jackasses, and clean the toilet and the grease trap and mop the floors, and stay there until I get to the bottom of this!”

“Sir, that woman is lying. She come out of the bedroom in the nude,” another voice said.

“I understand perfectly. You’re such a debonair and handsome pair that an educated woman can’t keep her clothes on while she’s around you?”

“No, sir. What I mean is she showed us the scar on her stomach. That’s how come we knew about it. We thought maybe this was something she does to people, like a nymphomaniac carrying on, and you was fixing to tell us not to worry about it, maybe you was just playing a big joke or something. Jesus Christ, Mr. Beckman.”

“A joke? She says you licked her scar,” Beckman said.

“Whores lie,” said Jack. He didn’t fit with the others. He was more aggressive, surly, the kind of man who enjoyed fighting with his fists and breaking things.

“
You
don’t get to call her a whore,” Beckman said.