The Winter Girl (17 page)

She took my hand again and led me toward the washer. A plastic bucket was filled with freshly washed clothes.

“Still works,” she said, drumming her nails on the top of the washer. “Just cold water though. Anything you need washed?”

“I'm good right now,” I said as she unzipped her sweatshirt. The fluorescent light above us was faintly buzzing.

I watched her open the washer door and throw it in. Then she unsnapped her jeans and stepped out of them, her eyes locked on me the whole time. She tossed those in the washer too, then her socks, and a pink T-shirt. Staring at me without a hint of self-consciousness, she reached behind her back and unsnapped her bra, throwing it into the basin too. That left me fully dressed next to a woman I still barely knew, wearing only a faded pair of blue panties. She cranked up the dial of the washing machine as if she were setting a timer and folded her arms over her small breasts. The ever-present chill in the house pinpricking her light brown skin with goose pimples again.

I heard a creaking noise upstairs and froze.

“Don't worry so much. It's only the wind. The house does what it wants,” she said, quickly touching my neck and then letting her hands fall to my waist. She pulled me closer so that we were leaning on the washing machine. But when she tried to kiss me I pulled away. I couldn't stop picturing Elise. What if she was standing right above us? What if she was just feet away from the open basement door?

“The door's open,” I said.

“So close it,” she said, unscrewing the top of a bottle of detergent and pouring a thin stream of the blue liquid on top of her crumpled clothes. I left her there for a moment and climbed back up to the top of the basement stairs. And then I said goodbye, I'll see you soon, I've got to get back to Victor's house, to my wife, to my marriage.

I really did say all those things in my head, as I stood on the second-to-last step and stared into the kitchen and beyond at the flashing light on the bay. There were some fishing boats clustered near the inlet, so far off they could have been a gathering of gnats, suspended in the cold white. Then I closed the door, softly, I might add, and walked back down the basement steps.

Carmelita's hands were on the drier and her legs were spread outward. More muscular than I thought they'd be for a squatter who sat in a chilly living room all day. She turned her head playfully to me as I walked down the last steps.

“I want you to stop right there,” she said, arching her spine a little. “And think what's it going to be like to grab my ass.”

“I'm thinking,” I said, taking another step.

“Don't move,” she said, suddenly angry. “I hate when people can't stick to the rules. When you stick to the rules you can do anything.”

It felt like she'd learned that from someone. It sounded like Victor, one hundred percent.

“All right,” I said, closing my eyes for a moment, imagining my fingers digging deep into her ass, pulling her buttocks apart to get a better look. When I opened my eyes I could see that she was enjoying my frozen state. Underneath the thin strip of her blue panties, I could see that her pussy was glistening.

“Take my panties off,” she said.

“In my head?” I said uncertainly, not wanting to screw this up. “Or for real?”

“For real, you clown.”

I only grazed the small of her back at first with my fingers, and she moaned very softly, more like a vibration I could feel all the way down her spine. I began to peel back her panties and pulled them down her legs. I was kneeling as she quickly stepped out of them. I stood up again, lifted up the lid of the washer, and the water, already coursing into the basin, stopped. I dropped the panties and closed it again.

“Hurry up and fuck me,” she said, “before I get cold.”

I wanted to get it over with as fast as possible. I'll say that for myself. As if it were some kind of rule of infidelity—if I kept it short, my marriage stayed alive. But just allowing myself to touch her narrow waist for a few seconds turned into just allowing myself to enter her for a few seconds, and then fucking her harder than I'd ever fucked Elise. Who, by the way, was screaming my name, asking where the hell I was. I could hear her muffled voice through the casement window.

“Wait,” she said, sliding off my cock before I came. She squatted before me and pushed her small breasts together, the black bite marks still visible, outlined with a vile line of purplish red, as if the puncture would never heal. In the flat white fluorescent light, I could see other places where Victor had gnawed at her. Two raised and still reddened
C
's near her leg, like two smiles facing each other. And then I pictured him opening his mouth that wide, as wide in my mind as a snake dislocating its jaw to feed on some small animal. His saliva streaking her skin.

I felt my breath get shorter and shorter as I tugged away.

“I want you to do terrible things to me,” she said. “Worse than he ever did. Promise me.”

I nodded, but that wasn't enough.

“Say it,” she shouted at me. “Tell me you want to keep me trapped here like an animal. Torture me.”

“I promise,” I said, watching her pinch her dark nipples and tug them upward, the dark scar tissue under her breasts gleaming in the sunlight.

“Tell me I'm a cunt and you're going to fuck me up,” she said.

“I'm going to fuck you up, cunt. You're not going to look the same after I'm done with you. I'll tie you up and break your bones right in front of you.”

“That's better,” she said. “Maybe one day when you're ready I'll give you the key.”

She looked up at me, unblinking, as my sperm began to land on her breasts and neck and lips.

“I'm going to fucking flay you,” I said.

“You promise?” she said. “You can do better than a sick old man.”

She seemed to gleefully ignore the increasingly panicked sound of my wife yelling my name.

“You're taking pictures in your mind,” Carmelita said. “I can see it in your eyes.”

“Y
ou're not in love anymore,” Carmelita said, wiping my come off her chest with a paper towel. “Is there any on my neck?”

She lifted up her chin playfully and I nodded gravely. I'd become her human shame mirror.

“Yeah,” I said, looking back down at the concrete floor as I tugged my pants back on. I was listening to the wet slosh of the washing machine. In the cold air, my sweat had dried instantly.

I told her I had to go and squinted up at the light at the top of the basement stairs. For the first time, I noticed the moisture seeping through the walls, the threadlike legs of a daddy longlegs paused on the pockmarked Sheetrock behind us.

“Sometimes things change so fast you don't even feel it,” she said. She finished wiping my come off her chest and then crumpled up the paper towel and tossed it in the lint bucket. “By the time your brain catches up, it's too late.”

I was thinking about evidence now. How much I was always leaving behind in the house. Fingerprints, footprints, and now a soiled paper towel sitting in a galvanized lint bucket.

Elise was calling my name again, but her tone had changed. It was accusing now. She wasn't excited to tell me that everything was okay with the bank; she was homing in on me. Glancing out of the casement window, I could see her legs moving toward the edge of Victor's property.

“I'll give you some money,” I said. “But you have to leave us alone.”

“Five hundred and six dollars?” Carmelita said, tucking a few strands of hair behind my ear and then gently tracing a long vein on the side of my neck with her finger. “Maybe six hundred and eleven?”

“It'll all be nice even numbers from now on,” I said, trying to head off her sarcasm. “Bigger amounts.”

“Scott!” Elise screamed. She must have been on the pool deck now, because I could hear her voice echoing off the wood. The tone of her voice had changed one more time. There was more worry in it now, as if something bad might have happened to me. Or maybe something even worse: that I was conspiring with this girl against her.

As my wife continued to make her way toward me, Carmelita leaned over and pulled a fresh blue T-shirt from the plastic bucket and pulled it on, then a new pair of striped panties. Finally, a fresh pair of jeans that were a size too big for her.

“I wear anything I find around here,” she said, for the first time a little self-conscious. Anything that touched on money or material almost made her look like her soul was caving in. There was another sweatshirt in the bin, an old gray Champion that Dick Swain must have once worn. She pulled that on too and then she asked me if I liked secrets.

“I know something about your wife that you don't,” Carmelita said.

“Let's not get too mystical here,” I said, turning away from her and watching the daddy longlegs scurry back up to a crevice near the ceiling, where the sorry thing was still completely visible.

“She's a born thief.”

“How would you know?” I said, angry now.

“Because Victor told me. He says it used to be a real problem. She'd take anything she thought she could get her hands on. It took a while for her friends to catch on, but pretty soon no one wanted to invite her over anymore.”

I thought my wife must be standing right outside the sliding glass door now, cupping her hands and peering through the plastic covering the shattered glass. Why didn't I hear the muffled sound of her calling my name again?

“So what?”

“It's not a big deal. But just one of a hundred things I could tell you about her.”

“Victor's a born liar,” I said. “He was manipulating you, Carmelita.”

Walking to the door, I could hear the pathetic sound of Elise lightly tapping her knuckles against the intact glass.

“What's another thing?” I said, wishing I hadn't asked that question about my wife as soon as it came out of my mouth. Carmelita seemed to relish my moment of insecurity. She moved closer to me and tried to kiss me on the mouth, but I turned away.

“How about I tell you one secret a day?” Carmelita said, running two slender fingers down my chest. “That'll make you too scared to even go home.”

“I'm not as gullible as I look,” I said, but the truth was I was starting to believe everything.

“She used to have a half sister,” Carmelita said. “Two years younger than her. The girl followed her around like a puppy.”

Elise was calling my name again, but it was farther away. I imagined she must be exploring the weedy edges of Swain's property now, or carefully treading down the ruined stairs that led to the pier.

“What happened to the half sister?” I said, impatient now. I didn't want to just stand there facing her, looking confused. Elise and I had major problems, but we still weren't finished. I reminded myself I was listening to a squatter who had allowed herself to be tortured by Victor for a few hundred dollars. Maybe this was just another way of getting paid.

“I don't know,” Carmelita says. “Victor says she just disappeared. But then out of nowhere, one day, she calls him again.”

“I'll double-check that with my wife.”

“I don't know if you should double-check anything with her. Victor told me Elise was the one I should fear the most. He told me that after he was through with his biting once. I was crying. Maybe I looked like I'd call the police.”

“I'm going to tell her you're gone,” I said, walking toward the stairs. “I'll bring you the money later tonight, and then it's over.”

“Scott,” Carmelita said, pinching her nose and wincing, as if she were trying to recall something.

“What is it?”

“I want to show you something.”

“My wife's ten feet away. She's looking for me.”

But she wasn't anymore. There was no more shouting of my name. Maybe she was scrambling down the gully now, or the stairs; maybe she was shading her eyes at the end of the dock, wondering if I'd drowned myself.

Carmelita confidently took my hand and led me to the other side of the stairs. The brass key I'd given her was sitting in the keyhole of a closet door.

“Open it,” she said.

The contraption was a very narrow
L
-shaped wooden chair nailed to the floor. It was this closet that the brass key unlocked. There was a circular band of black nylon that was attached to the back of the chair and two more bands around the armrests.

“What is it?” I said.

“Sit in it,” Carmelita said.

“Are you crazy?”

“Then I will.”

She squeezed past me and sat in the small chair.

“He fastened the Velcro straps,” she said. “I know it's only Velcro, but you can't move an inch.”

“Then what?”

“He locked the door. See the lightbulb? It's on a timer, like all the rest of the lights, but it only stays on for half an hour. That's how you know one day has gone by, or two, or three.”

“He kept you here for three days?”

“Six days once. I was so weak afterward he had to carry me out in his arms like a child. He liked that the most. He used to tell me it's the sweetest part of being a father. The helplessness of the child.”

“Well,” I said, my anger an acidic burn in my throat. “Why don't we try for seven days? How about fourteen?”

“Listen, Scott,” she said softly. “You can't just invade a woman's life and leave her worse off. It's not good for anybody.”

I heard Elise's voice again, closer now. But she wasn't calling my name, she was urgently talking to someone on her cell phone. I made out only a few phrases, but I distinctly heard
You're going to have to get your ass down here.
Elise must not have been satisfied with the response she got on the other end, because whoever it was she was talking to had hung up. So she called back again.
Answer your phone,
she hissed.