The Sound of Broken Ribs(51)

“What do we do with her now?” His voice trembled. He seemed on the verge of tears.

“She has a phone. We need her phone. Grab her phone.” Belinda knew she sounded manic. She felt manic. Or maybe the correct word was hysterical. She’d not been manic, nor had she been hysterical, before in her life, so the feeling was alien to her. Her adrenaline was pumping, she knew that much. Sweat rolled down the bridge of her nose. She flicked it away with her thumb.

“But what do we do with her?” Carl pointed to the unconscious woman. Jack—if that was her real name—was snoring in that ugly way boxers snore when they’ve been knocked out, like rutting hogs.

“I don’t know. But we need to know what she knows. Find her phone.”

Carl didn’t have to look far. The smart phone was on the nightstand, hidden behind the alarm clock.

“But what happens when she eventually wakes up, Bee?” Carl said as he handed the phone to Belinda. “She’s going to start screaming as soon as she comes around. That arm ain’t gonna heal itself just because she’s taking a nap.”

“I can’t believe you did it.”

“What was I supposed to do? You told me to do it.”

Like a good little Nazi. A black Nazi. Ha! What a concept!

She had drifted over the line from sanity to madness. She couldn’t lie to herself. Couldn’t keep pretending she wasn’t unstable. She’d been nuts since Dan left her and threw her life into turmoil. Crazy since she’d hit the author and dragged her broken body into the woods. If she listened hard enough, she could hear herself breaking. Her brain creaked and whined like an overburdened suspension bridge. Squeaking mice scrabbled through her mind.

Carl yelled, “Bee!”

“What!”

“Where are you? I need you here. With me. I don’t want to go to jail. Do you know what they do to gays in prison? We become yard hos. I don’t wanna be a yard ho, Bee.”

“Right. Sorry. Um… Tie her up?”

“With what?”

“Right. Gag her?”

“Again—with what?”

“A sock? Isn’t that what they use in the movies? Sock in the mouth. Tape over that? Duct tape?”

“Do you have some duct tape I don’t know about?”

“Fuck.”

“Exactly.” Carl glanced around the room.

Just like a man to look without moving anything, Belinda thought.

“Got it!” she shrieked. Carl didn’t so much as flinch at her sudden outburst. He simply swiveled his head back toward her with a questioning look painted on his mug. “We stuff a sock in her mouth and tie a towel around that. And, um, um… We strip the shower curtain and make ties for her hands. All we really need to do is anchor her bad arm to her good arm, though, because, um, because, I just had it… Because she’s not gonna want to move that arm if it moves the other one!”

Carl gazed at her as if she’s sprouted a third tit. “You just thought of all that?”

She thought coming across the information was more illusion than real magic. They’d been there, hidden up her sleeve the entire time, and she’d only had to know where to look. The urgency of the situation was beneficial in that regard.

“Yeah. But only because it’s the only thing we have.”

“Whatever. Sometimes, you scare me, girl.”

And what about you, Mister Enforcer Man. I told you to break the woman’s arm, and you didn’t even hesitate.

Cruelty was easier to dispatch when you knew you weren’t alone in the activity. Such could be seen in pictures of white southerners smiling as they gathered around the base of a tree with a black man or woman dangling from one of its branches by a noose, and photos of Nazi’s preening before barbed wire fences behind which stood living skeletons with empty eyes. The only thing needed for complicity in violence was a willing friend at your side.

Carl disappeared into the bathroom. Belinda heard the rings popping and tinkling as he ripped the shower curtain from its anchors. He came out of the bathroom with the curtain between his teeth. He bit through a section and tore a long strip from the curtain. The outer rim of the plastic sheet was doubled over and sewn together. He couldn’t saw through it with his teeth so he left it and started another strip. He made four five-foot-long strips while Belinda rummaged through the woman’s luggage for socks.

She didn’t find any socks, but she did come across panty hose. Belinda wondered if the thin material would dampen the woman’s voice enough or if she should take her own socks off and use those.

Better safe than sorry.

Belinda shucked off her shoes, did her best impersonation of a flamingo, and rolled off her left sock, and then repeated the process to snatch off the right one. Once she was done, she stood staring at the thin white socks, wondering why she’d taken both of them off. Shrugging, she rolled them together and, on Jack’s next inhale, stuffed them in the woman’s mouth.

Jack’s teeth snapped shut on Belinda’s fingers. Belinda screamed. She tore her fingers from Jack’s jaws and stumbled back against the air conditioning unit.

She looked down at her bloody hand. Jack’s teeth had bit through the flesh of the index and middle fingers. A loose flap of skin still secured to her middle finger by a section of skin no wider than a pencil dangled between her digits. That must’ve happened when she snatched her hand from Jack’s teeth. The bitch’s choppers had whittled her finger like a carving knife through wood.