One Way or Another(56)

Mehitabel tugged my neck harder, jerking me upward ’til I thought my spine must surely break. To my astonishment I realized I was still wearing the ragged silken dress I’d had on when Ahmet beat me. Beat me to the ground. How I’d hated myself for falling like that, allowing him to believe he had won, that I was simply another of his girls; girls I was certain now he’d tortured and murdered. How could I have ever become involved? How could I have ever believed a man like him, a billionaire, a man who had everything, who could have any woman, would want me, the lowly, ordinary hostess with the passable looks and the good legs. Thinking about legs, I realized there was a pain in my left leg, a deeper pain than anything I was feeling elsewhere, which was pretty much all over after the whipping I had endured. This was bone pain; the ankle, I thought, twitching it lightly, snatching back the scream as the extra jolt of pain seared through me. Dear God, could it be broken? And if it were, then how was I ever to escape? To run, you needed two legs.

“Shut up, cunt,” Mehitabel said. She was soaping a sponge with a eucalyptus-scented oil which she proceeded to rub, so tenderly I thought she must have made a mistake, around my neck, over my breasts, softening the soapy sponge under my arms. She could go no further, because the rest of me was underwater, where, I had no doubt, clean though I might be from her ministrations, I would soon drown. I hated the thought of the soapy bubbles in my nose, in my head, in my throat. I would so much have preferred the clear clean azure of that Aegean Sea.

“Lift your left leg,” she commanded.

I obeyed, flinching as she took the injured ankle in her hand and bent closer to inspect it. I thought I felt blood seeping, and she must have seen that because she tut-tutted and shook her head, Medusa curls bouncing as she dropped my leg back into the water, whereupon I yelled in pain.

“Oh, God,” she said, sounding weary. “Will you never shut up?”

I turned my eyes on her, saw an iron-willed, beautiful woman, inflexible in her evil desires, a sadistic torturer, a cold-hearted killer, and yet now she was treating me with the tenderness of a mother with an injured child. Apart from her language, of course.

She twisted out the bath plug and sat back on her heels. We both listened silently to the water gurgling down the drain. When it was gone and I lay there, unable to move in the suddenly chilling empty tub, she got to her feet, came and stood behind me, put her arms under my shoulders and hefted me out so easily I was astounded. Of course I weighed very little by now, but even so I was a dead weight coming out of that tub. This woman had the strength of two men.

Now I remembered the sting of the lash, and every inch of my flesh where the whip had struck shivered with fresh pain. I wanted to cry with it but would not, I simply would not give her the pleasure. I found my courage from somewhere. If I were to die, it would be silently, I swore that, made a promise to myself, and my mom.

She pushed me onto a small padded stool, flung a towel over my emaciated body with a look on her face that told me she could not bear even to look at me, then told me to dry myself. My skin throbbed. Everywhere I patted, everywhere I rubbed, it stung, sometimes like a knife searing through me, and I had not yet even tried to put any weight on my ankle.

I glanced at Mehitabel, who was walking toward me carrying a small red box with a white cross on it and the words “First Aid.” I thought how ridiculous it was, as though I’d fallen in the playground and grazed my knee. I had been flogged, beaten, almost drowned, and here was my sweet little lifesaver with her red first-aid kit.

She knelt in front of me, took my left ankle in both hands, turned it, inspecting it, causing me untold agony. I kept my mouth shut. I knew she enjoyed causing me pain and I was not about to give her further pleasure. Instead I said, “You should have used the rifle on me. It would have been quicker, served the same purpose.”

She glanced up, surprised. Her eyes were glass-green, remarkable, quite beautiful in fact, rimmed with thick, dark lashes.

“But don’t you understand yet, that ‘pleasure’ is to be taken slowly? Killing fast is a momentary thing, felt for a mere instant, before shock comes in. No, no, oh no, my dear beautiful Angie, the pleasure of pain is lengthy, extended, to be taken to the very final degree of time before the end comes. We have not yet reached that place with you.”

She actually smiled at me, then “Later, we will, though,” she said.

With weird bravado I heard myself reply, “Is that a promise?”

She eyed me for a long moment, my ankle clasped between her two hands. “Believe me, Angie, you will want me to keep that promise.” And she gave the ankle a vicious twist that sent pain rocketing, and sweat beaded my bald head.

I was a wreck. I was a “non-woman.” I was “nothing.” With all that was left of me, of my heart, I wished I was dead.

It was not to be. The ankle was bound, something injected into my arm, and I drifted in another world.





39

Lucy was bored, sitting in the kitchen at Marshmallows. Morris was off somewhere in all that murky greenness inspecting the grounds, after which he would drive himself home, alone, while she was to go with Ahmet. She had made a few fruitless phone calls, unable to find the pizza guy, and was worried he’d dumped her, and that perhaps he thought she was a slut because after all she had gone that one step, or rather hand, too far, and that was the truth. Yet other girls did more, worse, and didn’t consider themselves sluts, merely “mortal” with “feelings.” Lucy had to admit she liked the feelings part but was finding it tough dealing with the rejection, which she had no doubt was what was happening to her right now.