Last to Know: A Novel(70)

Oh, Jesus, oh Jesus … there was a rope around his neck. Somebody was dragging him, jerking that rope cruelly until it bit into his skin, dragging him forward into a blackness that seemed tangible because his eyes no longer functioned. His only senses were hearing and touch. He hurtled blindly on with his executioner. He was a boy on his way to the scaffold. Only he wasn’t. He was pushed into another, smaller blackness, his hands unbound, his shorts unzipped, pushed again.

Diz sank thankfully onto the bucket. Urine gushed out of him loud as Niagara Falls. The relief was so intense he wondered why he wasn’t more concerned about being stabbed or bludgeoned to death, then realized if that was about to happen they would not have bothered about his need to pee. Urinate.

So. What next. Finished, he was hauled to his feet. Zipped. Dragged again. Back into the cell from which he had hoped he was to be freed.

He leaned his spine against the wall. He thought about blind people, about how sad it was not to see, not to know about color, about the way sunshine looked as well as felt, about the river’s silvery-brown sparkle as well as its rushing and gurgling; about enjoying the green of the leaves on his fig tree along the branch from where he spied. The blind could not spy. Diz wanted to cry.

In fact, now he was crying. He stopped though, when he felt something against his leg. He thought about rats. He held his breath. But this was no rat; it was not furry, it made no sound, it simply oozed along his bare calf, slowly, rhythmically. It couldn’t be a snake, snakes lived above the earth, hiding in leaves and rustling grasses, creatures of light and shade. He was underground. This could only be a worm.

Nerves throbbing, he monitored its progress up his calf. Every inch of his being longed to sweep it off him. He could not. He had to accept it. He thought about his mother, how she might have laughed at him wanting to sweep a worm off his leg. Worms were good for the environment, she had told him that. But he was not a part of the environment, he was just a scared kid who wanted to get out of here and live. Be alive again. With no worms creeping up his leg.

Think of a story, his mother would have told him. Amuse yourself. Okay, so the worm was called Petronella. He would write, in his mind of course, the story of Petronella the worm, who was sharing the warmth of his leg, to keep away the overpowering chill of always being a worm. He began to cry again. Small tears. No sound. The very air around him was silent.

Oh God, he was being left here, abandoned, to die alone. No one would ever find him. Him and Petronella, who might be only the first of the worms coming to take advantage of his bare leg. Oh God, oh God, he so wanted to scream, the terror wanted to yell out of his throat, to proclaim to someone, anyone, out there, that he was here. Alone.

The darkness seemed so thick he could touch it, taste it even, like earth on his tongue. How long had he been in here? He had no way of knowing, no sense of time … he had no way of measuring it. Time had morphed into more of a cloudy texture, a feeling not a look, because after all he could see nothing. Then how did he know it was a cloudy darkness?

He must try to remember everything so he could tell them when they came to get him. Rescue him. Roman, his big brother, would be there. And of course, his mother would be first. And his dad. Logically, though, it would be the detective. Harry Jordan. His idol. Wait, though, now he remembered, Jordan had gone to Paris.

Diz knew for sure then, he was a dead kid.

But who would want to kill him? He meant nothing, except to his family and friends. By “nothing” Diz meant he didn’t count enough in this world for anyone to need to kill him.

He sat, thinking about it, remembering the touch on his arm, the hand at his neck, the tug of the rope.

Just as with Petronella the worm, every fiber of his being remembered; every raised hair, every bead of his sweat, every sense in his thin young body had listened, heard, reacted. Suddenly he knew it was a female. The hairs on his arms bristled like a hedgehog.

“I know who you are,” he yelled into the darkness, suddenly finding his voice. “I know it’s you, Bea.”





54


The sharp little f*cker had just signed his own death warrant, calling my name, recognizing me the way an animal would sense a predator. Signed, sealed, and delivered, he was mine. I had meant to be the one that “found” him, rescued him, gave him back to Rose, then I’d become the darling of the Osborne family, move into their lives and take over. I would be the “Rose.” I would become “the mother.” Rose would be my devoted slave and I would own her entire world.

Sounds crazy now, huh? Trust me, it would have worked, such is the human psychology, the makeup of “decent” people. By “finding” the lost boy, Diz, I would have become a celebrity, famous, a heroine. Thereafter I could do no wrong. Now, it would have to be different, or I would be the one to die.

I was always an outsider. All my life, I never counted. I never even had a friend. What about school, you are no doubt asking? Well, what about it? Surely I must have made friends there? Hah. My mother would never have allowed me to ask anyone back to our apartment in one of the lower-end, riskier areas of Miami, where, with my blond hair and pale skin, I stood out, a freak among the golden Cubans with their big families, whole generations of them living so happily together it never ceased to amaze me. I hated my white skin that never turned sweet-girl gold like theirs. I hated their mothers who always met them at school and covered their happy faces with warm kisses. I hated the girls because I was not like them and they felt it and were afraid of me. I was, you might say, an unknown quantity, though I knew from an early age perfectly well of what I was capable.