Bad to the Bones(53)
“Good work, Rafael. Listen, when are you going back over the border?”
They made plans to hook up at a truck stop along Highway 17 so Knoxie could take possession of the vials. Maddy could test them.
In the upstairs hallway, Knoxie grabbed Bellamy as she was leaving her cubicle. He’d left things unfinished, just running out like that. But the last thing he wanted to explain was why his nipple pin had been yanked out and he had teeth marks on his pec. Let the damned thing heal and the incident would be forgotten. Until he could take his revenge.
“Babe.” He pushed Bellamy back into the bright, sunny room. He liked how she had cut some guys from magazines to adorn her walls. It meant she was coming around to the real world again. She had probably not seen a gossip magazine in years. He made a mental note of an advertisement she’d taped up. The earrings the model wore must’ve been chocolate diamonds. He’d seen those advertised in the magazines left around his ink shop.
He sat her on the windowsill. “Sorry about running out. When I feel dirty nothing gets in my way. Something about being an ink slinger, always cleaning skin.”
Bellamy gathered handfuls of his T-shirt in her little fists. “It’s okay. I get it. That was amazing, Knoxie. I still feel like I’m glowing or something. Like all my feel-good hormones came rushing through me, giving me a natural high.”
“Good.” Knoxie touched the tip of his nose to hers but didn’t kiss her. They’d never kissed. It wasn’t that type of relationship, according to Bellamy. “I want you to know it’s not all about penetration or pseudo-therapy. Sometimes sex can just be pleasurable.”
“Oh, you mean opening up chakras? Because I sure feel like all my chakras just left their gates wide open.”
“Sure, chakras, if that’s what you want to call it. Listen, you were dominated, told what to do. Well, what do you want me to do? You tell me. What would give you pleasure?”
She looked flustered. Batting her eyelashes, she said, “I don’t know. It’s never been a subject I questioned before. Knoxie! You’re throwing me all sorts of curve balls.”
He chuckled. She was right. One mind-blowing orgasm was enough for one day. “Listen, I was thinking. Your dad? You’ve been realizing he’s not the devil your mother made him out to be, right?”
“Right. She kind of brainwashed me into thinking I’d been abandoned, but really, he had to move to LA for a new job. He never stopped paying child support. He wasn’t a deadbeat dad.”
“Why don’t you call him? I’m assuming you haven’t had many, or any, conversations with him since you moved to Bihari. Now you can, now that you’re free of that brainwashing.”
Bellamy tilted her head. “I’ve thought about that. I think I might try it. I know he married again but why should that stop me? I’m really trying to wrap my head around how he didn’t reject me like everyone has always told me. He just had to go live his own life. I’m an adult now, living mine. We can have a good relationship from here on in, you know?”
“Yeah. Just maybe don’t talk too much about Virginia to him. I saw her up there, she looks good, but we’re waiting to make a firm plan on how to extract her. Meantime, listen. If we’re going to continue banging each other, you need to be protected. Don’t want you to wind up in Virginia’s predicament.”
He was surprised when she stared at him with her doe-like eyes, then pulled away. She walked halfway across the cubicle with her back to him. “We—there’s really no need—no reason to fear that.” Sighing heavily, she turned to face him. Her features were back to the old, expressionless, heartless Bellamy, the one who was unaware there was any problem in her life, other than her dad’s alleged abandonment. “Bodhi and the other doctors up there made sure of that. There’s nothing to fear.”
“What?” Knoxie didn’t understand what she was getting at. Doctors? Did they give her a Teflon IUD or something? A lifetime supply of Trojans? “Wait—how did doctors ensure you don’t become pregnant?” It hit Knoxie just as he said that aloud. No shit. They sterilized her.
Bellamy confirmed the creepy old timey science fiction nature of his suspicion. She spoke like a robot, her eyes glazed over. “They had a building, a structure, called the bath house. This was where they ‘cleaned out’ women. I got pregnant almost right away after arriving there when I was seventeen. They sent me to the bath house.”
Knoxie picked up where Bellamy had trailed off. “How to abort unwanted fetuses. Great, just great! Do you f*cking know how great that is, Bellamy? What’d they do—tie your tubes?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“And it doesn’t piss you off? You had no say in it, I presume?”
Her eyes were perfectly round and innocent. “No, I suppose I had no say in it. They just took me there, explained I’d be cleaned up inside out, and knocked me out.”
His arms tightly folded, Knoxie sputtered. “Yeah. I’m sure they did knock you out. With granola, no doubt—with Haldol. I doubt they had the most cutting edge technology available to run around ‘cleaning out’ young women. That’s bullshit, Bellamy, do you know that?”
She shrugged. “I suppose. At the time I didn’t question it.”
“I’m surprised no one’s died on the f*cking operating table, f*cking Mickey Mouse surgical procedures like that,” Knoxie raved. “Forced sterilization? Where do we live, Muslim Africa? This is bullshit, Bellamy. Why don’t you seem very pissed off about it?”