Lemon (24 page)

‘You don't say,' Weech says. ‘Isn't technology great?' He holds the door open for Ramkumar. ‘Limone, if you ever happen to talk to that girl who was raped, encourage her to pursue the charges, will ya?'

23

T
he chair hurts my butt. I start pacing. Periodically some putz slides open the door window and gawps at me. A hostage was on the radio talking about the little room he shared with three other guys in Iraq, all cuffed together. The captors let them out to shit and piss and shower once a month or something. The hostage said the Iraqis weren't mean to him, didn't beat him and always checked to make sure the handcuffs
weren't too tight. At Christmas the Iraqis brought them a cake with a decorated palm tree on it and sang ‘Happy Birthday' to Jesus for them. They even asked the hostages to sing some carols. They said they hadn't intended to keep the hostages for months and months. All they'd wanted was money to buy more weapons to blow up Americans. The freed hostage wasn't angry at his captors, he said he'd like to see them again, find out if they're alright. He kept referring to ‘the war machine,' how all of this terrorist mess is a product of a war machine that costs billions of dollars to run. I thought it was pretty interesting that a guy who'd lived and almost died in Iraq had nothing nasty to say about Muslims. Everybody else is starting to hate them, people who haven't even met any. I figure it's pretty pointless to hate them since there's so many and most of them aren't fanatics. And it's not like they're all in one country we can hate and bomb. It gets pretty tiring hating that many people in that many countries. Anyway, as soon as the oil runs out we won't need to hate them anymore. They'll all be dying of thirst in the desert and we'll be nuking each other for water.

The door window slides open again and a young woman looks in. She enters, camera, clipboard and ruler in hand. She's your regular fat-assed cop. They must make pants in special sizes for these girls.

‘Would you mind removing your trousers please?' she asks.

I drop them fast because I want to get it over with. She measures slowly, like she's being tested. She's pudgy-faced, probably fresh out of cop school. She carefully writes down the numbers on her clipboard. I start to shiver, which freaks her out. ‘Are you okay?' she asks about a thousand times which only slows the procedure even more.

‘I'm fine,' I keep saying but her hands continue to fumble. I don't think she's done this before and I have to admit that the bruises look pretty hideous under the fluorescents. I start to feel sorry for her, this big-thighed girl who's going to have to endure all kinds of macho bullshit to survive on the force. At least they won't want to bang her. It must be hard on the pretty girls.

‘I understand there are more bruises on your torso.'

‘Can I put my pants back on?'

‘Can I just take a quick photo?' She looks embarrassed, fiddling with the camera. Click click.

On go the pants, off goes the shirt. She doesn't gasp or anything but I can see she's having trouble refraining from screaming
ohmygod
! I have this weird sensation that my body doesn't belong to me anymore. It's become a piece of evidence.

It's hard to measure bruises on breasts because they're full of fat and move around. I hold them steady for her. The ruler tickles but I don't laugh. I think about my biological mother, now that I'm down to the wire with nobody else acting even half-normal. You have to wonder if nineteenth-century novelists made their protagonists orphans because parents complicated the story. Much better to start minus all that baggage.

What's really scary about the Jane/Rochester thing is that even after it's proven that he lied to her, she's worried about what he thinks of her. She keeps responding to
his
moods, his outbursts, lets him yammer on about how wronged he was by crazy Bertha and her father. Not once does old Jane say, ‘You made your own bed, now lie in it. And stop calling me Janet!' Charlotte married some old pastor type in the end and served him well until he got her pregnant and she started puking her guts out. Dehydration from morning sickness killed her.

After more Playboy shots the newbie cop says I can get dressed.

‘Can I go?'

‘Umm … let me check with Detective Sergeant Weech.'

The hostages in Baghdad figured out how to jam a nail into their cuffs to open them because they'd seen Nick Cage do it in some movie. But one of them was chained to a pipe and they couldn't free him. They knew that if they escaped, the guy left behind would be tortured. So they stayed, took the cuffs off at night to sleep then snapped them back on in the morning. Men of honour. If you cuffed a few politicians together you can be sure they wouldn't be too fussed about leaving one of their comrades behind to have his balls electrocuted. The cuffs would be off and they'd be scrambling over each other.

Weech comes in with a bagel wrapped in plastic. ‘You hungry?'

‘Negative.'

‘When did you last eat?'

‘Can't remember.'

‘Eat something.' He puts the bagel on the table. I can't imagine getting my mouth around it. Can't imagine doing anything beyond slouching in this tiny room.

‘I have to tell you,' Weech says, ‘your defensive wounds are consistent with sexual assault. I'm starting to doubt these allegations against you.'

‘What about Doyle?'

‘What about Doyle?'

‘I'm only here because of Doyle.'

‘pc Wigglesworth says you work with him at Dairy Dream.'

‘Correct.'

‘Is he your boyfriend?'

‘I never mix business with pleasure.'

‘So why are you so worried about him?'

‘He's my friend. I want the charges dropped.'

‘Too late for that. Once the paperwork gets going there's no stopping it. You should've come in sooner. Shouldn't have made us chase you.'

I stare at a dent in the wall, figure a head made it.

‘This whole thing smells bad, Limone. If these guys sexually assaulted you, we can charge them and they get stuck with a record and the stink stays with them. It's up to you.'

‘I just want to help Doyle.'

‘If you come forward about the rape, and say Doyle was acting in your defence, it'll help him.'

‘I wasn't raped.'

‘Whatever. Let's call it sexual assault.'

It's the victim thing. If I'm a victim, they win. I stare at a table leg. They must bolt things to the floor because people go nuts in here, smash things, themselves.

‘Am I going to be charged?'

Weech leans back in his chair, folds his hands behind his head and gives me a good stare. ‘At this point, as far as I'm concerned there is no basis for a charge against you. If they come up with more evidence, we'll take another look at it. In the meantime if you want to charge
them
, that's another story.'

I just want to fade into the walls.

‘A girl like yourself stands a good chance against five football players.'

He means an ugly girl in baggy clothes versus a Rossi in a push-up bra.

He leans forward again, squinting. ‘Who are you protecting?'

‘Myself. I want to go now.'

I find a tree and climb it, disappear. A homeless guy drags his shopping cart to the bench below and sits quietly, looking around like your regular park-bench occupant. His hair's completely matted, his clothes filthy, but he doesn't seem insane or dangerous. He's probably in his thirties, young enough to start over, train for some pod job to keep the machine going. Maybe he doesn't want to. Maybe homelessness means freedom to him. He starts opening coffee creamers and knocking them back like shots. People with life purpose walk by, ignoring him. People who think it's normal to get five hours of sleep a night and have your supervisor on your tail. People who go to movies and eat dinner out and buy package-deal vacations. Normally I feel removed from these people and it doesn't bother me. But now, in pain, with fingerprints all over me, I want to be one of them. It's too hard on the outside.

After the freed hostage spoke, they had some university prof of Middle Eastern studies commenting on the latest terrorist activities. ‘They believe they are cleansing their country by blowing up cars,' he said. ‘They believe that the decline of their culture began with Western influence. By eradicating Western influence, they believe they can reinstate their faith.' I'd like to know how this is different from Westerners thinking that bombing the shit out of Muslims will convince them that democracy does exist. Amazing how everybody knows what's best for everybody else.

Rossi still won't talk to me. Mrs. Barnfield brews me some instant coffee. I drink the swill because I need an excuse to linger.

‘I don't know what's come over her,' she whispers. ‘She's not eating, won't go out.'

Mrs. Barnfield looks like death. I've read about that in novels but never actually seen it. Her skin's pasty and hangs off her face. She's got purple bags under her eyes and her lips are the colour of her skin. When she comes home from the bank she's got makeup on so you don't notice. But now she's in her bathrobe, scrubbed for bed.

‘Did something happen at the party?' she asks.

‘What do you mean?'

‘With Rossi. Did she get into any kind of trouble? Kids and alcohol don't always mix.'

‘I wasn't with her all that much.'

‘Where were you?'

‘I was mingling.' I really like Mrs. Barnfield and don't want to tell her that her daughter got raped because it might speed her demise.

‘She refuses to go out,' she says.

‘Why?'

‘Says it's too much work.'

‘What is?'

‘Getting ready,' she says. ‘She has to bathe, shave everywhere and exfoliate. Then she showers because she doesn't like to wash her hair in the bath. After that she has to blow-dry and put on makeup. It's very time-consuming. She says it's not worth doing anymore, she'd rather stay in.'

‘She doesn't have to do all that.'

‘Don't I know it.' Mrs. Barnfield starts sorting through her junk mail, trying hard to look like she isn't worried out of her mind. ‘What about school?' I ask.

‘She says she's going to apply to beautician school. You don't need a diploma for that.'

‘She'd have to go out, though.'

‘You'd think.' She rubs her eyes.

‘Could I crash here tonight?' I ask. She stands a little straighter, as though I've lifted a weight off her.

‘Of course, if it's okay with your mom.'

My ‘mom,' what a joke. I phone Drew. She starts her school-principal number. ‘I love you too,' I say and hang up. Mrs. Barnfield and I sit on the couch and watch O
ut of Africa
. It gets embarrassing when Bob lies on top of Meryl and tells her not to move. She tells him she wants to but he says, ‘Don't.' You have to wonder what kind of sick puppy Sydney Pollack was if he thought good sex is about the guy telling the woman not to move. Which gets me thinking about Rossi, what she did or didn't say when those louts were ramming her. Did she start out acting like she was enjoying it so they'd be nicer to her? Invite her to parties? Drive her around in Daddy's car?

‘I wouldn't want to live in Africa,' Mrs. Barnfield says. ‘Besides the heat, there's so much unrest there.'

‘It's going to get like that here. Once the oil runs out and a potato costs five bucks. The poor will storm the compounds of the rich, get out the garrotte.'

‘The what?'

‘Garrotte. It's a Spanish method of execution by strangulation. You fit metal collars around necks and tighten them till they choke. Pretty efficient, portable and low cost. People who can't buy a potato can't afford bullets.' Don't know why I'm telling her this when I'm supposed to be cheering her up.

‘Oh, it'll never get that bad here,' she says, which is pretty bizarre considering she's being bled by the bank, which is owned by a few billionaire garrotte candidates.

‘You're right,' I lie. ‘We're way too civilized.'

When things start to go wrong between Meryl and Bob, Mrs. Barnfield spurts tears. She yanks Kleenexes from a box and blows her nose every five seconds.

‘It wasn't really like that,' I tell her.

‘What wasn't?'

‘Karen Blixen and Dennis. I read the book. He was a dick, nothing like Bob. Not as handsome either. He didn't even show up to tell her he was leaving. They hadn't seen each other for months when he crashed the plane. Hollywood put that schmaltz in.'

‘What schmaltz?'

‘The parting scene, when Meryl's doing longing acting.'

‘I think she's a wonderful actress.'

‘She's got the accents down.'

I help her make up the couch with sheets and blankets. She's trying really hard to act like a mother and not a damaged individual. I want to tell her it's okay, we're all damaged, but I can't. It's like we have to play these roles.

‘Is that everything you need?' she asks. ‘Oh, a nightie. I'll lend you one of mine.'

It's white with little skiers on it. I thank her and wait for her to go to bed so I can sneak into Rossi's room. I lie on the couch, listening to the fridge compressor switch on and off about a thousand times, trying to figure out why Rossi won't talk to me. Is she ashamed? Pissed at me for sucking on pretzels? Does she feel so used and ugly she doesn't want to see anyone? Rape probably does that to you, makes you feel dirty for the rest of your life. Every time you have sex after that it feels like rape, but you have to act like you're enjoying it, otherwise the knob thinks you're frigid because you were raped. You feel guilty because you're not enjoying it so you start fucking even more goons, hoping they'll like fucking you even though you were raped and will feel dirty for the rest of your life.