The Escape Diaries (9 page)

           
Leave
now, you moron!
This was my brain.

           
Feed
me:
stomach.

           
Not
one step farther:
feet.

Feet won. My legs
Jell-O-ed out from under me and abruptly I was sprawled atop a heap of loose
hay. I explained to my brain that I was just resting and would move on in a
minute. My sweat dried, leaving me clammy and shivering. I untied the hoodie
from around my waist, intending to pull it on, but that required too much
effort. I let it drift over my chest like a blanket.

I’d changed my
outfit nine times the day Kip took me to meet his mother. I was trying to
strike exactly the right note between too casual (jeans and T-shirt) and trying
too hard (heels and little black dress).

           
“What
should I wear?” I asked the Sunday afternoon Kip was presenting me to the
queen.

           
“Nothing,”
he whispered, reaching for my bra hooks. “I’ll phone her and say we’re going to
be late—something has come up.” He pressed himself against my back,
demonstrating exactly what it was that had come up.

           
Which
explained why we were an hour late when we arrived at Kip’s mother’s place.
Vanessa Vonnerjohn extended her hand and greeted me politely, but her cold pale
eyes skimmed over me like a strip search, taking in the J. C. Penney skirt, the
Younkers shoes, the Target belt. She didn’t miss the bagged-around-the-ankles
pantyhose, the hastily brushed hair, the post-sex eyes.

Vanessa’s mouth
clamped in a rictus of a smile, but there was no mistaking her silent message:
slut
!
The whole thing sailed right over
Kip’s clueless male senses; this was a woman-to-woman thing, as primitive as
two female wolves bristling their ruffs, sniffing each other’s butts, and baring
their teeth.

Kip’s mother had
never held a job. This was a waste of talent because—aside from the fact
that she was totally fucked-up-bonkers-fruit-loops—she had a shrewd
instinct for money management and formidable executive abilities. If she’d aimed
her cutthroat capabilities at bond trading or negotiating hostile takeovers,
she would probably have ended up as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board
instead of a cookie-baking nut job.

           
As
soon as Kip was old enough to date she’d begun tossing eligible females at
him—girls from good families, who’d gone to the right schools, who knew
how to dress, who had their own trust funds. Kip had escorted eleven different
debutantes to their coming-out cotillions one year, a duty he’d agreed to only
because Vanessa threatened to cut up his credit cards.

           
In
college Kip threw off his mother’s yoke and went wild. He drank, he partied, he
was the life of his fraternity. Handsome and well-connected, he exuded the air
of glamour that clings to college guys who have an unending supply of booze,
dope, and dough for spring breaks to the Keys.

           
Kip’s
bacchanal continued even after he graduated and started working for his
mother’s family, the Brenners, who owned one of the largest breweries in the
Midwest. He moved back to Milwaukee, bought a share in a downtown condo, and
began a life devoted to good times, his job a minor inconvenience that rarely
interfered with his sports or skirt-chasing. This continued for about ten
years, Kip happily mired in perpetual adolescence, his indulgent mother picking
up his credit card bills when he overspent. A couple of times Kip got so close
to the altar he almost felt the brush of bridal tulle around his neck, but he
managed to weasel out in time.

           
Then
he met me—naïve, wet-behind-the-ears Mazie Maguire—so starry-eyed I
foolishly believed that
forsaking all others
meant that Kip and I would
be faithful to each other until death did us part. Whereas Kip’s take on the
concept was more like:
I won’t have sex with another woman in your actual presence.
But that was the future, still unbaked, and during our engagement period, which
lasted a mere two months, there’s at least a one-in-ten chance that Kip was
monogamous.

           
Vanessa’s
plans for her son had not included his wedding a nobody, a girl who didn’t even
have the decency to bring a stock portfolio to the marriage. But she was
outwardly cordial that first day we met. We sat around her sunroom, sipping tea
and nibbling at a plate of thin, buttery wafers Vanessa told me she’d baked
herself. Kip snagged all the cookies—sex always made him
ravenous—and slumped down in his chair, looking completely bored, but I
kept alert, on my guard.
 

           
“So,
Millie,” Vanessa said.

           
“Mazie.”
I resisted the urge to fidget.

           
“Mazie.”
She practically tasted the name, like a foreign food you try, then discreetly
spit into your napkin. “That’s . . . different. And you’re from—where was
it again?”

           
“Quail
Hollow. Over in the southwestern corner of the state, near the Mississippi?”

           
“Oh,
yes. Kip tells me your people owned land there?”

           
“Just
a dairy farm.”

           
“A
farm! That’s so very all-American.”

           
I
didn’t know until later that Vanessa’s fact-finding foray was phony; she’d
already found out everything about me, having hired a private detective firm to
track down every last detail about my life, including the boys I’d dated in
college.

           
But
Vanessa would no more have admitted to invading my privacy than she would have
admitted to using a less than fifteen hundred thread count for her sheets. No,
we had to go through this bizarre catechism, Vanessa peppering me with
questions designed to point out the fact that I had no right to breathe the
same rarified air as herself and her son.

“So tell me about
your parents,” Vanessa said. “Kip said your father is . . . umm . . .
debilitated?”

I aimed a
reproachful look at Kip. I’d wanted to personally explain my dad’s medical
condition. Later, when I grew to know Vanessa, I discovered exactly how
difficult it was to keep anything from her. She was like a skilled
interrogator, one who used velvet-lined thumbscrews and psychological torture.

“My dad was
injured in a farm accident,” I explained, choosing my words carefully. “He
suffered brain damage. He recovered, but still has short-term memory loss.”

Vanessa muttered
something meant to be sympathetic, but I picked up the subtext:
mentally
defective parent.

           
The
interrogation went on. Vanessa grew larger and taller. She was looming over me,
demanding to know why I hadn’t eaten her cookies. “I was up all night baking
them,” she boomed. “And you
will
eat them!”

           
Cramming
a fistful of cookies into my mouth, she ground them against my clenched teeth.
The cookies were sprinkled with cockroaches writhing in their death throes
because the cookie dough was poisoned. Then the poison reached my system, because
I felt a sudden stabbing pain in my ribs.

           
“Get
up!” Vanessa snarled. “Get up and take your medicine!”

Escape tip #8:

Offer your captor something he wants . . .

 
more than
kinky bondage sex.

           
“Get
up!”

           
I
opened my eyes. The tines of a pitchfork jabbed against my ribs.

           
Oh,
shit!
   

           
The
pitchfork was gripped in the baseball mitt hands of the man standing over me.
He wore baggy bib overalls over a bare torso, a Jung Seeds
cap, and
clodhopper work boots caked with manure. He had a farmer tan: hands, forearms,
and neck deep copper, everything else fish belly white.

           
“You’re
that escaped lady convict,” the farmer said. He had a voice like boiling
gravel. “That Mazie Maguire. You’re all over TV. Big reward out for you.” He
grinned, his bright blue eyes glittering in a firecracker-red face. “Kee-rist,
I can’t believe my luck—that reward is gonna buy me a brand-new manure
spreader.”

           
I
rubbed the bleary out of my eyes, hoping this was still part of my nightmare.

           
“Move,
dammit!” Snatching me by my hair, he jerked me painfully upright. He tossed
aside the pitchfork, twisted my left arm behind my back, and marched me out of
the shed, using my arm as a steering lever. My attempts to wriggle out of his
grip only made him crank my arm to a higher level of pain. Dimly I took note of
my surroundings: sheds, corncribs, some reeking pens, and a mound of barnyard
manure the size of a ski hill. He marched me across a stretch of weed-choked
dirt and finally shoved me into a concrete block shed built onto a barn.

           
“This’ll
keep you nice and cool till the police come,” he said.

           
I
rubbed my aching arm, where his fingers had dug purple marks. “You’re making a
mistake,” I choked out. “I was camping with my family, I got lost—”

           
“Bullcrap.”
Digging in his overalls, he retrieved a coil of baling wire. He forced my arms
together and wound the wire around my wrists, circulation-stopping tight. Then
he looped the wire around a narrow pipe that ran along the shed’s ceiling. He
heaved on the wire’s loose end, jerking me off my feet like a side of beef, my
arms nearly yanking out of their sockets; my toes barely touching the floor,
and my shoulders wrenched as though they’d been run through a wringer washer.

           
“Please,”
I whimpered, starting to cry. Snot oozed from my nose and I couldn’t wipe it
away. Why hadn’t I given myself up when I’d had the chance? Now I was totally
screwed, at the mercy of this heinous hayseed.

           
He
pulled a cellphone out of another pocket and jabbed the buttons with thick,
calloused fingers. Someone answered and he spoke, his voice vibrating with
excitement. “Yeah, hey, this is Norbert Lautenbacher. Out on County Trunk M,
Fire number seventy-eight. I got the escaped convict! I got Mazie Maguire!”

He listened for a
moment, scowled. “No this is not a friggin’ joke. I got her right here, tied up
in my milk house. You going to send someone out to get her or not? Half a hour?
Okay—she ain’t going nowhere. Bring that reward check along.”

           
When
Hollywood does Wisconsin, they have the locals talk with Midwestern twangs.
Wrong, wrong, wrong! Wisconsin natives sound more Brooklyn than Kansas. We have
trouble with our
th
’s. We say
dem Packers, dose
Brewers.
We
shoot
tirdy-point bucks
, we drive
up nort,
we drink from
bubblers,
we say
aina
for
isn’t that right.
Manure spreader comes out
’
ner
spriddur.

           
Norbert
Lautenbacher had a Wisconsin accent thick enough to snowmobile on. He jammed
his phone back in his pocket and moved so close to me I could smell his breath.
Slim Jims and Pabst, breakfast of champions. Something reptilian crept into his
small, crafty eyes. He set a meaty hand on my thigh. “Be awhile before the cops
get here. Meanwhiles you and me could have a little fun, girl. Bet it’s been a
long time since you had some
man-
loving.” He slid off his bib top,
exposing a sweaty mat of grayish curls.

My stomach
lurched. I was going to throw up. I was going to choke on my own vomit.
  

“Always wondered
what you jail-birdies did, laying around locked up together all day. You got a
girlfriend, back in the can, Mazie?”

I shook my head.

“Sure you do.
Come on, spill. Are you the boy-girl or the girl-girl?”

His hand crept
higher. “I bet you give each other massages with those fancy-smelling oils. I
seen this movie called
Reform School Girls
where the bitches tore the
clothes off each other and had naked-ass pillow fights.”

Norbert’s porn
fantasy bore not the slightest relationship to reality. We weren’t even issued
pillows in Taycheedah.

He put a big red
paw on my breast.

I gave a loud
shriek, trying to fling myself away from him, but my own momentum swung me
right back into his hands.

“Touch me and I’m
telling your wife!” I spat.

“Up and left a
year ago, the ugly old bat. Good riddance.”

I’d always
thought the notion of rape being a fate worse than death was ridiculous. How
could a physical assault be worse than dying? But now, with this pervert poking
his pecker against my belly, I knew I’d rather die than let him have his way
with me. Who knew where his disgusting worm had been? Probably ol’ Bossy starts
to look pretty good when you’re stuck out in the boonies without a wife. The
creep might have bovine herpes or sheep crabs. And how exactly did you catch
swine flu?

Get your game
on, Maguire! You spent all that time in the can and didn’t learn how to run a simple
scam?
I had to distract this creep with something he wanted more than kinky
bondage sex. Maybe an X-rated fantasy featuring sex-starved reform school
nymphets?