One Way or Another(24)

I got to my feet, went and looked in the spacious closet. It was empty. Wait, though, at the very back a garment swung on a padded satin hanger. I stared at it. The temptation was too much; I had to look, maybe I would find to whom it belonged, to whom this stateroom belonged.

It was a pale blue-green chiffon, draping softly from thin straps, swirling gently at the hem. I held it to me. Looked in the mirror. Saw my naked head, the bold new woman I was, and almost fainted from shock. Then my self-respect, my body awareness, and my selfishness struck me like a blow. There were women around the world who had lost their hair under terrible circumstances, whose bodies were mutilated by cancer, who stood up for themselves, for their integrity, their inner self and the beauty they knew they still owned. I was nothing compared with them. I was not devastated by sickness. What I was, was a victim.

In that moment I knew that if I were about to die, then I was going to do it in this dress. It wasn’t a matter of courage, of defiance, of self-esteem. It was simply that I finally understood who I was. After all these years of being Angie the greeter at the pseudo-posh eatery in Manhattan, if I was to die, I wanted to be someone when I met my maker.

“Put it on,” I heard Mehitabel say.

I swung around, the dress clutched against my nakedness. I had not heard her come in.

“Get dressed, and quickly.”

Her voice snapped at me.

“The underthings are there. Hurry, now. You no longer have ten minutes. You have one.”

I scrambled into the undies, threw the dress over my head, got my arms stuck, struggled with it. She did not come to my aid. Finally, I had it on, smoothed it along my flanks, patted it over my breasts. Automatically, I put up my hands to fix my hair, felt the tears sting as I realized again the truth.

“The helicopter is waiting.”

Mehitabel took my arm, led me out the door along the ship’s deck to the stern. Hers was the long stride of an athlete, a woman who made her body into steel, a weapon to be used against you if necessary.

The helicopter was white, its rotor blades already turning. I could see the pilot at the helm. No one sitting next to him, no one behind him in the passenger area. Mehitabel pushed me up in front of her. There were six seats. She indicated one at the end and I went and sat there, obedient as a child. And as though I were a child, she strapped me in, clicked the seat belt, took the seat opposite me, and before I knew it we were airborne.

The ride must have been forty minutes, an hour maybe. I had no idea of time, it was all simply a sequence of events. I was flying into the dark and did not know where I was going or even where I was. I struggled to find the spirit to care anymore.

Then we were landing, soft as a bird on a grassy meadow, blindingly green under the helicopter’s down-lights. A golf cart with a merrily tasseled striped canopy was waiting as we stepped out. Mehitabel grasped my arm and we took our seats in the cart and were off again.

We drove for several minutes. The lights on the cart were very low, all I could see was what looked like meadowland with here and there the brownish glint of water. And then a house loomed out of the darkness. Large, impressive, and with only a single light over the entrance.

The cart stopped, Mehitabel got out. She came around to my side, took my arm roughly, jerked me out, walked me to the big double wooden doors studded with bronze nail heads. She opened the door then turned and looked at me.

“Go on inside,” she said.

I did not dare to disobey her.

I walked into that house, and once again, into my fate.





18





ANGIE


Mehitabel had gone. I was alone in that great dark house.

A faint light came from a half-open door leading into a room at the very end of the hall. Afraid almost to breathe, I heard the crackle of a fire, smelled the crisp sweet scent of the wood, heard the complete silence of the rest of the house. My pretty blue-green chiffon dress moved slightly in a draft coming from above. Goose bumps rose on my arms and instinctively I clasped them across my chest, a hand on each shoulder as though to warm myself. I turned to look at the door, thinking of escape, but again, to where? The question seemed to hover over my head in bright lights like on a theater awning, only this was no play and I was the victim, not the actress.

Courage. The word flashed through my mind and again I remembered my mother. She would expect me to be courageous, to take whatever was coming at me on the chin, to fight back. But I was broken. I had been raped by Ahmet and molested by that vicious woman. I shuddered, remembering her smile, her scent.… Another memory stirred and I remembered the bottle of Guerlain’s L’Heure Bleue and my need to perfume myself, the foolish need to feel like a normal woman.

Courage. The word still hovered. I wondered how to find what it meant to be courageous, what I should do now, what I could possibly do to help myself.

Then I heard Ahmet say, “Angie, come on in, why don’t you? It’s so much more comfortable in here, warmer too. I have a nice fire going and a very good bottle of red opened long enough for it to breathe.”

I was not shocked that it was Ahmet, I had almost expected it. And it wasn’t a suggestion, it was a command. Again I obeyed. I walked to the door, pushed it wider, saw Ahmet comfortable in a red leather chair, the bottle of wine on a small table beside him, his feet in monogrammed black velvet slippers propped on a dark ottoman.

He rose from his chair and stood in front of the blazing fire, smiling at me. Sparks from the fire flew all around him and I couldn’t help thinking it was as though they were from the flames of hell itself, because he was my fate. Whatever he wanted to do with me he had the power to do it.