No One Knows Us Here(70)

The moment before I passed out, a sharp pain pierced me from somewhere deep inside. It was a raw, jangled-nerve kind of pain that radiated through my entire body like electricity. Then everything went black. I couldn’t have been out for more than a moment or two, because when I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was Leo blinking down at me, holding something aloft in one hand. A pair of tweezers. And in the tweezers’ grip, a small plastic T, smaller and finer than a rosary cross, slick with a film of poppy-red blood.

I remember what Leo said then. He said it wasn’t supposed to hurt. You were supposed to be able to reach right up there and pull that IUD out by the strings.

For a minute I could only blink at him.

He thought it would be simple. He’d read about it; he knew what he was doing. He thought he’d save me a trip to the doctor. I hated the doctor. He knew that. He still felt bad about that, making me go.

We were getting married, Leo reminded me. We were going to spend the rest of our lives together. We could have a baby now. Once I felt better.

At first I couldn’t focus on his words, what had just happened to me. I just lay there, inert on the bed. His voice sounded warped and distant, as if I were listening from somewhere very far away, dark and underwater.

Sensations began returning, like I was floating upward, ready to break back to the surface. I sat up, gasping, clutching at my throat, trying to breathe. In that moment, all my symptoms from earlier returned. My head pounded. Hot pinpricks of pain erupted from my cheeks. It was my hives, my rash, whatever it was. They were returning. Little fireworks, warped sparks of light, flashed before my eyes. I squeezed them shut. “I want to go home,” I said.



The trip back was a blur. We flew to Seattle first class from Paris, but then we had to take a small commuter plane back to Portland. Leo had said something about a private jet, but I refused that outright. There was no way I would spend even a few hours trapped in a private airplane with him.

The commuter plane was loud and flew close to the mountaintops. In the window seat, Leo faced forward, his eyes closed. The pilot made an announcement: if we looked now, we could see Mount Saint Helens.

I craned over Leo to look. We were flying low to the ground, and I could peer directly into the volcano. A plume of smoke feathered out of it. I could stare straight into its blue basin, a bowl with cracked edges. The whole ancient mountain glowed white, sparkled with snow. It glowed so bright it hurt my eyes, but I kept staring as we flew over it. It felt magical, seeing it like this. Once-in-a-lifetime, even. From the city it was difficult to see. When it became visible, its rounded dome emerging behind the buildings, it was a surprise. Oh, there it is, where it’s always been, where it’s been all this time, obscured by clouds and mist. I watched until it receded from view, and then I sat back in my seat, closing my eyes tightly and gripping the armrests like someone afraid of flying.

And then, that was it—the last moments of our flight as the plane descended into Portland.

Leo appeared to be asleep, so I said his name and he murmured “Hmm?” without opening his eyes.

“I’m ending this,” I told him. “I never want to see you again.”

He acted so contrite after the IUD incident; he must have seen this coming. I’d hoped he would make it easy on me—realize he had gone too far, screwed things up. Best-case scenario, he’d simply admit defeat and let me go.

His eyes opened. He turned to me with an expression I’d never seen on his face before. Surprised confusion. Desperation, maybe. “Why would you do that?” he asked. “If you really loved me?” His hand lifted up to caress my cheek.

At first I could only stare back, my mouth half-open in shock. I reached up and removed his hand from my face. “I don’t,” I said.

His eyebrows came together, as if he were trying to perform a complex mathematical equation in his head. “You lied?”

I studied Leo carefully. He appeared to be sincere. Of course, he could be acting. Or he could actually believe his own words. Or he could be a sociopath. “I was being paid,” I explained, my voice neutral. Kind, even. I would give him the benefit of the doubt. “That’s what you paid me to do, right? It wasn’t lying. It was pretending.”

His pupils seemed to vibrate, opening and closing. A vein on his forehead emerged, and his skin went from tan to pink. I didn’t flinch, but I prepared myself for—I didn’t know what. He wouldn’t slap me, not on a public airplane, not in front of all these people, but he looked like he wanted to. His nostrils flared, and that vein bulged from his skin with such force that I swear I could see his blood pumping through it.

It was a sight to see, Leo’s face. His anger was alive; it had an energy of its own. It was so thick I could feel it; I could smell it, sharp and metallic. I watched in horror, not knowing what Leo would do, what he would say.

Then, as quickly as it had begun, it faded, his anger. His pupils returned to their normal size, beetle-black orbs. His vein sank back into his forehead, as if it had never been there at all. He frowned. This frown was a calculated frown, a performance of a frown. “I wasn’t pretending,” he said, and he didn’t sound hurt or particularly upset by this admission. “Anyway, you can’t leave until November. You signed a contract.”

I exhaled, letting go of the air I’d been holding in for the last terrible minute. I realized my hands were still gripping the armrests. I let them go. When I spoke, I sounded calm. Reasonable. “Both you and I know that contract isn’t legally binding. You can’t make someone be your girlfriend.”