“Maybe I’ll see you again?” he said.
She wrote her number on the back of a store receipt and handed it to him.
“Sure, I’d like that. I didn’t get your name?”
“My name is Edward.”
“Thank you, Edward.”
Once she was safely inside, the cab pulled away from the curb. She closed the door, leaned against it, and at last allowed herself to cry.
The guy’s name was Otis Barger. Moloch read it out loud from his driver’s license. Otis was from Anniston, Alabama.
“You’re a long way from home, Otis.”
Barger didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer. His hands and feet were bound with wire taken from the trunk of Moloch’s car, and there was tape over his mouth. One eye was swollen shut, and there was blood on his cheek. His right foot was curled inward at an unnatural angle, broken by the heel of Moloch’s boot to ensure that he didn’t try to crawl away while Moloch took the woman back to her apartment. He was lying on the garbage bags where, only twenty minutes earlier, Marianne had lain as he prepared to rape her.
Moloch drew a photograph from Barger’s wallet. It showed a dark-haired woman-not pretty, not ugly-and a smiling, dark-haired boy.
“Your wife and child?”
Barger nodded.
“You still together?”
Again, Barger nodded.
“She deserves better. I’ve never met her, but that woman would have to be hell’s own whore to deserve you. You think she’ll miss you when you’re gone?”
This time Barger didn’t nod, but his eyes grew wide.
Moloch kicked at the wounded ankle and Barger screamed behind his gag.
“I asked you a question. You think she’ll miss you?”
Barger nodded for the third time. Moloch raised the leg of his pants and drew the pistol from the ankle holster. He looked around, kicking at the garbage until he found a discarded chair cushion. He walked to where Barger lay, then squatted down beside him.
“I don’t believe you,” he said. “What was it you called that lady you tried to rape? Bitch? That was what you called her, wasn’t it?”
He slapped Barger hard across the head.
“Wasn’t it?”
Barger nodded for the fourth, and final, time.
“Well,” said Moloch. “She’s my bitch now.”
Then he placed the cushion against Barger’s head, pushed the muzzle of the gun into the fabric, and pulled the trigger.
Marianne knew nothing of this, although, as the years went by, she thought often of that night and wondered what had become of the man in the alley. Moloch would say only that he had beaten him and told him to get out of town. Since he was never seen in Biloxi again, she assumed that was the truth.
Except-
Except that during their years together, most of them spent in a little house in Danville, Virginia, she had grown increasingly fearful of this man: of his mood swings, of his intelligence, of his capacity for cruelty to her. He knew where to hit her so that it hurt most and bruised least. He knew places on her body where the mere pressure of his fingers was enough to make her scream. There was money, for he always had money, but he gave her only enough to feed their little family of three, for a son had been born to them during that terrible second year. She was required to produce receipts for everything, and every penny had to be accounted for, just as every moment of her day had to be described and justified.
It had begun almost as soon as they were married. It seemed to her that the marriage license was all that he wanted. He had wooed her, made promises to her, provided them with a house to live in. She had given up the job in Biloxi two weeks before the wedding, and he had told her not to take on anything else for a time, that they would travel, try to see a little of this great country. They had a short honeymoon in Mexico, blighted by bad weather and Moloch’s moods, but the proposed road trip never materialized. She quickly learned not to mention it, for at best he would mutter and tell her that he was too busy, while at other times he would hold her face, beginning with a caress but gradually increasing his grip until his thumb and forefinger forced her mouth open, and just when the pain began to bring tears to her eyes he would kiss her and release her.
“Another time,” he would say. “Another time.” And she did not know if he was referring to the trip, or to some promised treat for himself.
The first time he hurt her badly was when he came home from a “business meeting” in Tennessee, less than a year into their marriage. She told him that she had found a job for herself in a bookstore. It was only two afternoons each week, and all day Saturday, but it would get her out of the house. You see-
“I don’t want you working,” he said.
“But I need to work,” she replied. “I’m kind of bored.”
“With me?”
The lines in his face deepened, so that she almost expected to glimpse his teeth working through the holes in his cheeks.
“No, not with you. That’s not what I meant.”
“So what did you mean? You say you’re bored, a man’s going to take that to mean something. I don’t do it for you anymore? You want somebody else? Maybe you’ve found somebody else already, is why you want a job, so you’ll have an excuse to leave the house.”
“No, it’s not that. It’s not that at all.”
He was talking as if he was jealous, but there was no real hurt in his words. He was playing a role, and even in her fear she could see that, but it made it harder for her to argue with him when she didn’t understand why he was so annoyed. She reached for him and said, “Come on, honey, it’s not like that. You’re being-”
She didn’t even see him move. One moment they were talking and she was extending her hand toward him, the next her face was pressed against the wall and her arm was being wrenched behind her back. She felt his breath close to her ear.
“I’m being what? Tell me. You think you know me? You don’t. Maybe I should teach you a little about me.”
His left hand and the weight of his body held her in place while his right hand slipped beneath her sweater and found her skin. His fingers began moving on her, exploring.
And then the pain began: in her stomach, in her kidneys, in her groin. Her mouth opened in a silent cry, the agony increasing, turning from yellow to red to black, and the last words she heard were: “Are you learning now?”
She regained consciousness with him moving on top of her as she lay on the kitchen floor. One month later, she found out she was pregnant. Even now, years later, it still hurt her to think that Danny, her wonderful, beautiful Danny, could have resulted from that night. Perhaps it was the price she had to pay to be given him. If so, then she had continued to pay the price for a long time after, and sometimes, when their infant son cried just a little too much, she would see the light appear in Moloch’s eyes and she would run to the boy and quiet him, nearly suffocating him against her.
The child had been a mistake. Moloch wanted no children, and had talked of an abortion, but in the end he had relented. She felt that he did so because he believed it would tie her more closely to him, even as he told her that they were now a family, and would always be a family.
He did not hate her. He loved her. He would tell her that, even as he was hurting her.
I love you.
But if you ever try to leave me, I’ll kill you.
His mistake was to underestimate her. Men had always underestimated her: her father, her uncle (drunk at Thanksgiving, stealing kisses from his niece in the quiet of the kitchen, his mouth open, his hands reaching and touching while she maneuvered herself away, trying to placate him without offending him so that she would not put her family’s tenuous status in his house at risk), the men for whom she worked or with whom she slept. It suited her. Where she grew up, men feared and hated women whom they suspected were smarter or stronger than they were. It was better to keep your head down, to smile dumbly. It gave you more room to move, when you needed it.