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THREE

The Cherries

“Her sweet lips tasted like an entire basket of fresh cherries, and her supple body was soft and pliant in his strong arms. ‘Oh, Jed,’ she gasped. ‘Your embrace is a dream I never want to wake up from!’”

—Sidney Rush,
Hearts Colliding in Applebarnville

According to my alarm clock, I slept for seventeen hours. When I woke up, it was Saturday afternoon, I was tucked in bed, wearing my Mortal Wombat nightshirt, and I could smell my own breath. Rubbing my eyes, I looked around before getting up on unsteady legs.

March . . . Where was March?

Had he even been real? There was no trace of the man, and my room didn’t look like it had been searched. It looked . . . Well, it looked like some cleaning had taken place, but I had no idea when. I sure as hell never put my clothes in the laundry basket, and I was pretty certain those books were supposed to cover the floor rather than stand neatly aligned on my bookshelf. I couldn’t hear Joy. Perhaps she would help me clarify the fudge of incoherent memories filling my head. She had been part of my dream, after all.

As I wobbled my way to the living room and inspected my surroundings, my eyes narrowed to slits. Something was
wrong
in there. Raising my right foot to look at its sole, my heart skipped a beat—it was clean. There was no dust, nothing on the floor. I checked the furniture with trembling fingertips. Where had all our dust gone?

All around me, countless subtle changes betrayed the horrifying truth. Someone had cleaned our apartment. Someone with issues. A trickle of sweat ran down my back at the sight of the perfectly arranged cushions on the couch. My gaze stopped on the sideboard, and I opened all its drawers frantically, searching for my tax returns.

They were sorted in chronological order.

Holy Macanoli!

I barged into the kitchen to finish my inspection, only to bite back a scream at the sight of our sparkling clean, dish-free sink. Spotting a note stuck to the fridge, I read its contents, my gaze still somewhat unfocused. Joy had left me a message:

In Southampton with Holly for the weekend.

BTW, no man ever did that to me . . .

Marry him.

XOJ.

Yeah well, no man had ever tied me up either before March, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to marry one who’d be into that sort of stuff—I made a mental note to ask upfront, next time I went on a date.

Once in the bathroom, I took what was possibly the quickest shower of my life before hunting for the first clothes I could get my hands on. My knees buckled when I opened my underwear drawer—neatly folded and sorted by fricking color.
March.
I made damn sure I messed my stuff back into complete chaos while I fished for a bra and a pair of panties. This was a question of honor.

The rest of my room would have to wait since I had more urgent matters to attend to. I jumped into a pair of jeans and an old gray hoodie, slipped on a pair of ballet flats, and barged back into the living room to take my tote bag. It was still sitting in the exact same place March had left it the previous night, near the couch. The guy was definitively not a burglar: My phone was back in the front pocket, the only tidbits missing were my SIM and SD cards. Nothing crucial, really.
Asshole
. I tucked my bag over my shoulder with a grunt. There was no time to waste: I needed to go to the precinct as soon as possible. Now that the evening’s fog had dissipated, I was starting to realize how lucky I was that this malevolent fruitcake had somehow left—maybe gangsters had their shifts too. Still, he could come back anytime, perhaps with some friends . . .

I flew down the stairs and across the lobby, running all the way to Broadway, only to freeze when I reached the avenue. Around me, the trees were turning a coppery hue as autumn progressed, my favorite bookstore had received an entire box of Aquaman comics that they were selling by the weight; all shops looked the same as usual . . . Yet I suddenly felt lost. There, standing in the pale afternoon light, surrounded by the hum of the city, I got scared. Of cars, of passersby, of everything. My heart started racing, my head spinning; long story short, I was freaking out in front of Staples.

I took a series of deep breaths to calm myself. All I needed to do was take the 1 line to Columbus Circle, and I’d be at the Midtown North Precinct in less than fifteen minutes.

I was shaken out of my stupor by a strong smell of industrial cherry, and the feeling of a hand on my shoulder. I jerked and turned to see a red-haired girl with tired, puffy eyes, a little too much makeup, and a shabby beige fur coat. My eyes focused on her thin pink lips; she seemed to be chewing something—candy, no doubt.

She swallowed before speaking. “Hey, you okay?”

“Uhm. I think so. Thank you.”

“You were like . . . freaking out . . . and you look like shit.” She grinned, revealing oddly decayed, almost translucent teeth.

I returned her smile nervously. She was nice to have noticed that I was having some sort of panic attack, but right now, the only help I wanted was that of a cop. I glanced at the subway station’s entrance, a little farther down the avenue. I realized I couldn’t do it. The idea of being alone among all these people, any of whom could be March, the noise, the crowd . . . I couldn’t.

She seemed to read my mind. “Wanna get a cab?”

I nodded and gazed at the traffic on Broadway; a couple of cabs seemed available. I stretched my right arm to hail one, but my newly appointed guardian angel acted before I could.

Damn, that girl had a strong whistle. My ears rang from the shrill echo, and a yellow Ford instantly stopped a few feet away from us, tires screeching on the asphalt. Inside the vehicle a young black guy with a shaven skull and a short beard greeted me with a smile. I opened the passenger door and stepped in.

I smelled the cherry before I fully figured what was going on, and discovered that the girl had climbed inside the cab with me. She flashed me that odd, ravaged smile again. I sighed. “You want a ride, right?” No wonder she had been so nice.

Her eyes darted to the cab driver. She took a quivering breath. Any other day I would have laughed at myself for ending up stuck in a cab with a potential junkie, but I wasn’t exactly feeling peachy, and her weird, invasive manners were now creeping me out. Fighting the slight buzz under my temples, I fumbled in my bag until my fingers met the leather of my wallet. “Look, I’ll give you some money for a cab, but I need to be alone, I—”

I saw her arm move from the corner of my eye, and yelped when the pain registered in my thigh. The buzzing in my ears became louder; I looked down where she had just stabbed me with some sort of needle. I think it took me a couple of seconds to start screaming and shield
myself while my legs kicked at her in a fit of panic. I have vague memories of her exiting the car with equally panicked shrieks and crying to someone that she just wanted her money. My vision was becoming blurry, my body felt heavy, and to be honest, I think the memory I have of reaching for the cab’s door to try to open it is fabricated. I’m pretty sure I was in fact sprawled on the backseat, hallucinating and seeing myself escaping in the street, but my body wouldn’t move. In the front seat, the driver had remained perfectly calm, his head turned to better watch me sink.

My thoughts melted in a confused treacle in which swirled safety instructions regarding used needles, and a few verses from a song Joy loved.

I’m paralyzed and you are still alive.

FOUR

The Woods

“Ramirez laughed evilly. ‘Ha, ha! Rica, your luscious body will surrender to my sensual torture; no one will ever come to rescue you!’”

—Kerry-Lee Storm,
The Cost of Rica

When I regained consciousness, the first thing I felt was something cold against my right cheek. I cracked an eye open. Glass. I was in a sitting position, and my face was squished against a window. My tongue felt strange. Dry, aching. Scratch that: my entire face felt like that. Brownish-green, ocher, red. Trees were flying past me, trees everywhere. I was in a car speeding through unidentified woods, in gray weather. I gathered it had to be an SUV since I felt high up on the road. A few minutes passed before I was fully awake, but as soon as my senses had cleared, a surge of panic rushed through me.

I tried to swallow the drool pooling at the corners of my mouth, only to connect the cramps in my jaw and the dryness of my tongue with a gag, made of some dubious rag. A series of high-pitched pants rose from my throat, spasms shaking my rib cage with each intake of air. My eyes darted around frantically. I recognized the driver first. Shaven
skull. Black beard. I jerked my shoulders, which made me aware of the fact that I couldn’t move my arms. I looked down at my hands resting on my lap; handcuffs circled my wrists and angry red marks were already forming on my skin where the steel had rubbed against it.

Fighting a rising pain in my skull, I breathed through my nose and tried to focus. Those few hours spent with March had taught me a valuable lesson about not thrashing or screaming in the face of danger because, really, it only made things worse. Summoning every single bit of self-control I possessed, I tried to calmly assess the extent of my predicament.

There were three men with me in the vehicle, including the driver.

Sitting to my left, and watching me, was a big guy with unsavory black hair slicked back in a short ponytail, and which looked suspiciously like it had been dyed. Examining the roots, I came to the conclusion that it indeed had. His nose had been broken at least once, and that detail made me cringe. My eyes met his for a second; I looked away, frightened by the unspoken threat in those murky brown depths.

Occupying the passenger seat was a much older guy, wearing an elegant dark coat and an old-fashioned black homburg hat. I got the impression that he smelled of something medical, like a dentist’s office.

None of them seemed to be interested in talking to me for the time being, so I swallowed through the rag and just kept as still as I could. One thing worried me more than those guys’ looks, though: I wasn’t blindfolded. So either they didn’t care that I might identify them, the car, or even the place we were headed to, or they were confident this would be a one-way trip for me. Noticing the outline of what seemed to be a gun in the half-open leather jacket of the giant sitting beside me, I prayed it wasn’t the latter.

I couldn’t tell how long the ride through the woods lasted; all I know is that with the pungent smell of grease and cigarettes emanating from the big guy’s leather jacket, it felt like forever. The car eventually stopped in a large glade, on an alley that led to what looked like an old farm. A
wooden barn stood nearby, and overall, it seemed whoever owned the place sucked even worse than Joy and I did at housekeeping.

The one I had now forever dubbed as “Greasy-jacket” nodded, grabbed my shoulder, and hauled me out of the car. Once in the open, cold air greeted me, along with the earthy scent of woods and wet grass. I heard the double beeps of the car locking. The driver had exited as well, joined by the creepy older man with the hat. “Creepy-hat” walked up to me, his angular features contorting in a warm smile. I noticed for the first time a long, pale scar on his left cheek, which started underneath his eye and went all the way down to his mouth. He spoke in a soft, fatherly voice. “Follow us, my dear.”

Like I had a choice.

Perhaps I should mention that there was another important thing I had learned from my encounter with March: the toxicity factor of a gangster is a real number that can be expressed as: (
^w
⁄
_f
) - g, where
f
would be how gentle he sounds on a scale of one to ten,
w
the number of wrinkles on his shirt, and
g
the number of black leather gloves. The lower the score, the higher the toxicity factor, -1.9 being the worst possible scenario. A quick mental calculation told me that while March had scored a remarkable -1.25, Creepy-hat was dangerously close to . . .
-1.86
.

I was making tremendous efforts to rationalize the situation and stay cool as a cucumber in order not to displease my captors any further—Greasy-jacket seemed pretty pissed already. My cucumber-act didn’t last long: When the guy tugged at my hand with a growl, everything became more real. My fear, which I had kept at bay until now, became more real. Sounds were sharper, the browning woods seemed darker, the air colder. I was choking on the gag again, and my feet wouldn’t carry me into that barn.

From the corner of my eye I saw Creepy-hat wave impatiently at Greasy-jacket, who tugged harder, making me trip forward. His huge frame hovered above me, and he was bending down: I realized that if I didn’t walk, that gorilla was going to pick me up caveman-style the
same way March had. I managed a step, and another, until I was sauntering behind him on wobbly legs, struggling to keep up with his long strides. Twenty feet away from the barn’s doors, Greasy-jacket and the driver stopped, allowing Creepy-hat to enter the building alone while the three of us waited outside.