KILLING SARAI(6)

I need to keep talking to help me stay awake.

“Can’t you just tell me your name?” I try once more. “Look, I know I’m not getting out of this country alive. Or your car for that matter. I know that my attempt to escape was wasted the second I stepped out of that gate. So, the least you can do is talk to me. Think of it as my last meal.”

“I am not good at being the shoulder to cry on, I am afraid.”

“Then what are you good at?” I ask. “Besides killing people, of course.”

I notice his jaw move slightly, but he hasn’t looked at me in the rearview mirror in a while.

“Driving,” he answers.

Okay, this is going nowhere.

I want to cry out of frustration.

Fifteen more minutes of silence passes and I notice that my surroundings are beginning to feel all too familiar. We’re going in circles and have been all this time. For a split second I start to say something about it, but I decide it’s probably better that I don’t let him know I’m onto him.

I lean up a little from the seat and point the gun at him and say, “Turn left up here.” And I do this for the next twenty minutes, forcing him to go my way even though I have no idea where I’m taking us. And he plays along, never breaking a sweat, never giving me the slightest impression that he’s worried or afraid of having a gun at his back. The longer we do this the more I begin to realize that even though I’m the one with the gun, he has this whole situation under more control than I thought I did.

What did I get myself into?

More long minutes pass and I’ve lost track of time. I’m so tired. My lids are getting heavier. I snap my head away from the seat behind me and press my finger against the window button to lower the glass. The warm night air rushes inside the car, tossing my auburn hair about my face. I force my eyes open wide and position myself in a more uncomfortable way to help keep me awake, but it doesn’t take long to notice that nothing is working.

The American watches every move I make from the mirror. I notice him every once in a while.

“What makes you his favorite?” he asks and it stuns me.

I was sure he’d been waiting all this time for me to doze off; if he would’ve waited a few more minutes that’s probably what would’ve happened. Now he’s talking to me? I’m thoroughly confused, but I’ll take it.

“I wasn’t bought,” I answer.

Finally he asks me a direct question which could lead to conversation and maybe his help, but ironically the topic makes it difficult to take advantage of the opportunity. It’s hard to talk about even though I’m the one who initially brought it up.

I wait for a long moment before I go on.

“I was brought here a long time ago…by my mother. Javier saw something in me he didn’t see in the other girls. I call it a sickening obsession, he calls it love.”

“I see,” he says and although his words are few, I can tell they hold more weight than they appear.

“I’m from Tucson,” I say. “All I want is to get back there. I’ll pay you. If you don’t want…me…I’ll find a way to pay you cash. I’m good for my word. I wouldn’t try to hide from you. I would eventually pay my debt.”

“If a drug lord believes he is in love with you,” he says casually, “it would not be me you had to hide from.”

“Then you know that I’m in a lot of danger,” I say.

“Yes, but that still does not make you my problem.”

“Are you human?” I hate him more every time he speaks. “What kind of man would not want to help a defenseless young woman out of a life of bondage and violence, especially when she has escaped her captors and is directly pleading for your help?”

He doesn’t answer. Why doesn’t that surprise me?

I sigh heavily and press my back against the seat again. My trigger finger is cramped from being in the same curled position for so long against the metal. Lowering the gun farther behind the seat so that he can’t see, I switch hands long enough to wriggle my fingers around for a moment and then I place my thumb over the top of each finger individually and press down to ease the stiffness. You don’t realize how heavy a gun is until you hold it non-stop for long periods of time.

“I’m not lying to you,” I say. “About Javier and your money.”

I catch his eyes looking at me in the mirror again.

“I’ve had plenty of time to see how he does business,” I go on as I grip the gun in my right hand again though to the argument of my aching fingers. “He would rather kill you than pay you.”

His eyes are greenish-blue. I can see them more clearly now that we’re riding through a small town with street lights. And small is an understatement because in under a minute we’re engulfed by the darkness of the desolate highway again with nothing in sight except the starlit desert-like landscape.

And then I just start talking; my last ditch attempt to keep myself awake. I don’t care anymore if he adds to the one-sided conversation, I just need to stay conscious.

“I guess if you had a daughter or a sister you might care a little more. I had somewhat of a life before my mother brought me here. It wasn’t much of one, but it was one, nonetheless. We lived in a tiny trailer with cockroaches and walls so thin it felt like sleeping right on the desert floor in the winter. My mother was a slave to heroin. Crack. Meth. You name it she loved it. But not me. I wanted to finish school and get a scholarship to whatever college would have me and make a life for myself. But then I was brought here and all that changed. Javier was sleeping with my mother for a while, but he always had his eyes on me….”