The World of the End (39 page)

“What are you talking about?”

“That drug they use to make rape victims forget everything.”

“I know what Rohypnol is!” Ann said.

“So, don’t you think…?”

“Will you just shut up already, you idiot!” Ann barked, waving the knife, amazed at the effect of the words she’d never before spoken.

Marian’s eyes widened. She waited obediently for an explanation.

“I, Marian, am the reason you are where you are. I tied you up. And the knife I’m holding was meant to untie you.”

“Why would you tie me up?” Marian asked, and then, face brightening, she continued in a amazed tone, “Oh, Ann, why didn’t you just tell me straight away? God, what a diversion. You spent half the night driving me crazy with questions about my ex just so you could cover up what you were really after.”

Ann thought she was dreaming. “You’re crazy … totally crazy…”

“It’s okay, Ann, I have no problem with that kind of thing even though you should know that as far as sexual orientation goes I’m as average as most.”

“Oh, do me a favor and stop complimenting yourself. I tied you up for a different reason. Then I changed my mind.”

“So why don’t I see you working on the rope? My entire body aches and I can’t believe I spent the entire night like this.”

“I can’t,” Ann said, looking down.

“What can’t you do?”

“Untie you.”

“But a second ago you said you reconsidered and came here to untie me.”

“I reconsidered again.”

“Look at me when I talk to you!” Marian yelled.

“How dare you yell at me!” Ann yelled back.

Marian burst out in awestruck laughter. “Excuse me?! I don’t think you understand what you’ve gotten yourself into here. I’m not sure what you’re thinking, and it’s starting to seem like you’ve seen
Misery
one time too many, or maybe you’ve been helping yourself too liberally to the hospital medicine cabinet. All I know is that if you don’t let me go this instant I’ll scream so loud the whole world will be at your door and then you’ll really have some reconsidering to do.”

Looking at the woman writhe against her restraints, Ann came to her senses. “Okay, I promise to let you go. Just tell me where he is. That’s all I ask.”

“Who’s he?” Marian asked.

“Jacques.”

Marian shut her eyes. “Holy mother of God, why are you obsessed with that jerk?”

“You want me to let you go, or not?” Ann asked.

“I already told you where he is,” Marian groaned.

“You didn’t give me the Tel Aviv address.”

“There is no Tel Aviv address!” Marian shrieked. “I told you already, you got it all wrong.”

“No, Marian, you’ve got it all wrong if you think I’m going to let you go without giving me a straight answer,” Ann hissed. She left the room and returned a few seconds later. She sat down beside Marian, brought a whiskey-soaked sock to her lips, forced her defiant mouth open, and shoved the bunched sock down her throat, wiping a traitorous tear from her face and shaking all over. “Now you’ve got no choice but to shut up and think about whether you want to keep playing games with me. I’m going to make some breakfast. If you behave, I’ll come back, take the sock out, and feed you some. But I swear to you, Marian, if you don’t tell me where the man in the picture is, I won’t hesitate. And as I’m sure you’ve already gathered, I don’t usually provide advance warning on my threats.”

Before even beating the eggs, she handled the concerned neighbor who thought he might have heard screaming from within the house. She smiled and apologized. “Sometimes you’re so in the movie you totally forget yourself. I’ll be sure to turn the volume down next time.”

“Oh, that’s okay, I just wanted to make sure everyone was alright,” the old man said before leaving.

She locked the door, returned to the kitchen, made some tea, and dropped a pat of butter in the pan. The faraway cough, a constant intrusion, made her crack the eggs over the warm pan rather than in a bowl for an omelet. Upset, she turned on the radio and pretended to listen to a culture and entertainment show hosted by an authoritative, almost militant announcer, who somberly reported the passing of Rafael Kolanski, the noted artist, of a stroke in the wee hours of the morning. Ann nodded. “He should have been the hundredth one.”

While the announcer praised the artist’s extraordinary body of work and acquainted the listeners with his life story, Ann appraised the tray of food, pleased with herself indeed. True, the guest was bound and gagged, but the breakfast she prepared, to the elegiac tune of the grandiloquent announcer, was chock-f of all the necessary food groups and, were the Evil One to complain about the hard knocks she had received, she would certainly not be able to find fault with the hostess’s nutritional pampering.

The phone cracked the tranquility of the moment. She decided to ignore it, wondering who was calling her early on what was supposed to be an obligation-free weekend. She hit the blinking P
LAY
button on her machine and heard the hospital director’s serious voice. “Ann, good morning. I’d appreciate it if you could come in to the hospital as soon as possible. Thanks.”

“What terrible timing,” she muttered, lifting the tray and placing a motherly smile on her face, walking with surprising confidence to the silent bedroom.

The bedroom is silent—the reflection wrinkled her forehead in contagious suspicion.

The bedroom is silent—the walls responded in an ominous echo.

The bedroom is silent—the tray trembled.

*   *   *

“Hope you’re hungry,” Ann said, using her most heartfelt voice. But the position she found Marian in was not the kind one prone to noticing the finer points of hospitality might choose. Ann bent over and laid the tray on the floor, giggling in dread. “Stop, Marian, don’t you know I’m a nurse and that I can spot an impersonator from afar?”

Marian did not respond. She lay frozen, as though Ann had nailed her to the bed, arms and legs sprawled, much as they were before she’d awoken, only her chest did not rise or fall and the front of her shirt was stained with the whiskey that still dripped from the sock stuck deep in her mouth.

“Stop playing games,” Ann said, keeping her smile intact, hoping, childishly, that her loutish grin would somehow breathe life into the still woman, who did not respond even after Ann slapped her face three times, each stroke slightly more vigorous than the last. “I know you’re faking it,” Ann said, circling the bed, keeping an eye on the fraudulent body, waiting for an unintentional sign of life. “Marian, don’t you realize I’m not going to let you go till I figure out what happened to the one and only? The more you fight over him, the more you’ll lose your hold on him, because the two of you are not made for one another. Even in that picture, the two of you are in the midst of falling. Falling, Marian, falling, shuddering, convulsing, perishing. Acknowledge it, just acknowledge it.”

Her gentle fingers rested on the woman’s lively pulse. As she thought, alive, but something about her position was worrying. She could ill afford any unnecessary risks and, if something happened to her, she’d be unable to pry from her mouth the secret she so jealously guarded. She pulled the sock out of Marian’s mouth and raced to the kitchen, looking for the butcher’s knife. There it was, right where she left it, just like the guest, only the latter surprised Ann, and when she came back to the room she was already in the throes of a seizure, rattling her ropes, her hands and feet convulsing in a singular way, the jig of epilepsy. The end of the seizure was as abrupt as its beginning, and the bed lay silent beneath the still patient, who had not revealed her condition nor left the terrified hostess any options. Ann made quick work of the rope and dropped it on the floor, along with the knife, looking at her arms fall beside her taut body and placing a hand on Marian’s face, when a searing pain coursed through her.

Marian’s teeth dug into the hand like a dog clamping down on some appealing prey, and before Ann managed to react, the livid guest opened her eyes and whispered in contempt, “Thank you for the idea.” Ann felt herself go woozy as soon as the pretend patient got both her hands around her neck and squeezed the shocked jugular vein. The murderous look in Marian’s eyes paralyzed Ann; however, the lack of oxygen streamlined her thoughts, and she realized that if she didn’t defend herself and get the wheezing animal who kept yelling “Bitch!” off of her, she’d be done for.

The two struggled, largely in silence, for a long while, intent on choking the life out of one another, the only sound an occasional, smothered moan of exertion, and, in unison, the two of them remembered the weapon by the side of the bed, each keeping their hold fixed with one hand and groping blindly with the other, ten fingers fighting for a single blade, and whenever one seemed to have gotten a hold of it, the other made a quick foiling move, until they lost their balance and tumbled to the floor, falling into a chaotic ball of limbs, scratching, pulling, kicking, slapping, punching. And throughout, it was clear to the two of them that the battle would go on for hours unless one of them managed to land an ingenious blow, ending the exhausting contest once and for all. And when that blow came, in the form of a hardcover book crashing down on Ann’s head, she cursed and looked wide-eyed at Marian, who grabbed an end of the rope and raised it, back arched, eyes seething. But Ann scrambled out of the war room and gained the living room, temporarily free of Marian’s wrath. She came after her, though, deaf to her pleas for a ceasefire, and only when the rope finally thumped flush across her back did Ann, red-eyed and drunk with pain, turn to Marian and look her in the face, as the latter yelled, “You’re insane! I hate you!” and, like an old cowhand, she whipped the hefty, lasso side of the rope straight into Ann’s face, the blow falling with stunning force.

Ann recognized the metallic taste in her mouth and forgot all she had ever known, the hypnotic burn all across the side of her face making clear that she had been right, the meeting between the two of them was truly a matter of life and death. She dropped to her knees and begged Marian to stop. Marian threw the rope to the floor and limped to the door as though their battle were already a thing of the past.

Beaten and afflicted, Ann watched the woman walk away, knowing that if she turned the key in the lock, she would never find the man who had rescued her from her own skin and dispossessed her of her inhibitions. Marian, unprepared for another burst of violence, laid a hand on the doorknob. Fingers on the key, her ears picked up the sound of fitful breathing, and she managed to turn around and see the heavy candlestick arcing toward her head, pulling her yet again back into the maladroit fray. She disarmed Ann with a quick movement and tossed the candlestick away, pushing the small woman, who had yet to finish torturing her, against the opposite wall.

Three minutes had elapsed since Ann writhed out of her grip and pounced on Marian, and two minutes since Marian broke three nails as she raked a hand across Ann’s face, and a minute since Ann blocked her mind and kicked the crouching woman in her loins, and a half minute since Marian managed to shake the pain and forced herself to concentrate on the blood and sweat and animal madness that had come over the hostess, and twenty seconds since the crumpled woman on the floor made it to the low glass table, took the big clay vase and aimed at Ann, and fifteen seconds since she turned her head toward the kitchen, drawn by an undefined curiosity, and ten seconds since Ann had taken advantage of the distraction, snatched the vase from her hand and smashed it down on her head.

The bloodied shards scattered everywhere, lending the puritanical living room the ambiance of an archaeological dig turned rowdy pub. Ann sucked on a finger that had been cut by an errant shard, staring at the wounded woman by her feet, transfixed by the silence that superseded the sense-smothering cacophony of battle. She remained motionless for a long time, soothing the queasiness in her stomach. Marian’s hair and face were colored by the pond of blood, her static body surrounded by an improvised puddle that meandered ever so slowly toward Ann’s shoes, which were cemented in shock; forced from immobility by the advancing blood, she took a step to the next tile over. Too late. In a stunted effort to avoid the slow moving rivulet, her right leg slipped and she fell on her back, fully aware of the blood wetting her shirt, saturating it, till it dripped down to her tailbone.

Sprawled on the floor, she called the name of the woman with the blood tracks drying on her face like desert earth in the naked sun, but got no response. She crawled over to her, intending to feel for her pulse but thinking the better of it. This time there was no doubt. She’s already seen ninety-nine of her kind. The void in her eyes spoke for itself. This world would trouble her no longer. The silence crowning her lips was singular and unique, ruffled only by the soft male voice pouring from the kitchen radio, “I’d rather not say too much about my forthcoming book. Let me just confirm that, as has been reported in various newspapers, it is entitled
Fury.
”

32

Father Tongue–C

Just after boarding the multi to Aliastown ’96, Ben sat down and muttered, “I feel like a complete idiot.”

The Mad Hop sat opposite him, smiling silently. Ben continued, “Samuel, I just want you to know I do not for a second believe that I’m about to meet…”

“Your child,” he said, finishing for him.

“I don’t have, nor have I ever had, a child,” Ben said, eying the last of the stunned parents to arrive.

“I understand you, Ben. A nameless, unidentified entity, previously defined only by its absence, has all of a sudden bloomed into existence. I know it must sound sick. The child never existed for you and now you are on your way to meet him.”

The multi started to move as the Mad Hop continued. “If we all arrive here in death, why shouldn’t a fetus, who died before…?”

“Please, stop!” Ben said. “You don’t really expect me to believe that a miniscule being, that never drew a single breath, now lives somewhere in a city at the end of this line? What exactly am I going to see, Samuel? A pseudo-human mutation in a jar of formaldehyde that’s going to say
da-da
and make me feel like Frankenstein at the peak of his powers?”