When he was twenty years old, he had an affair with the next-door neighbor. She was fifteen years older than him. He thought he loved her. One day her husband came home with a shotgun and put a hole in her before putting one in himself. Nobody saw it coming. Cooper was never sure whether the husband knew his wife had been cheating, and he suspected that if he had known and who with, there would have been a shotgun shell reserved for him too. The husband was the cliché, the quiet man who didn’t speak much to people, and Cooper couldn’t figure out how he hadn’t seen it coming. It fascinated him. People were different, they ticked differently, and he wanted to understand them. He felt the loss of losing his lover, but he felt no guilt, and that interested him too.
Right now, he needs to understand Adrian and, if he can get this woman to wake up, get her to understand what’s going on.
“Hey,” he says, loud enough to be heard but not loud enough to be heard by her. He bangs against the door and gets the same result. Adrian said he’d be half an hour. The clock is ticking. He’ll aim for twenty minutes to be on the safe side. Cooper bangs against the window. He needs the girl to wake up, and to wake up now.
And she does.
Slowly.
Her eyes stay closed and her hands creep up to her face and start probing. She looks like she’s coming out of a very deep sleep, probably a nightmare. Her skin is red and patchy and her face is flushed, except for the dark gray smudges beneath her eyes. Her hands explore the straw sticking out from her mouth. She pulls on it gently but it doesn’t budge. For the first time he realizes her lips are glued shut. He calls to her again but she doesn’t respond. In fact she looks like she’s passed back out. Her fingers have stopped moving and her hands have collapsed onto the floor. It takes what feels like an hour but is only two minutes before there’s any further movement. She rubs at her eyes slowly and then they open. He can see her looking around but she can’t focus on anything. He taps on the glass and she looks in his direction but doesn’t register his presence.
He has eighteen minutes left.
“Miss, hey, miss, wake up, wake up. Please, you have to wake up.”
He watches her jaw move as she tries to speak. Then he sees it all coming back to her, her memories flooding with emotions. Her face tightens and her eyes grow wider and her hands probe faster at her face, especially at her lips, and she starts to cry. She sits up and looks around the room before holding the edges of the dress up to stare at it for a few seconds. Finally she locks her gaze on him. Her jaw moves again and he thinks she’s trying to scream. She turns away from him and her head pauses in the direction of the bookcase, the lamp casting her shadow over the books and trophies, and he’s sure if she could another scream would be coming.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he says, holding up his hands even though she can’t see them. “You’re going to be okay. I’m going to help you.”
She puts her palms on the ground and pushes herself further away from him. Looking through the cell window, and with her lips glued shut, it’s like watching a show on mute.
“Please, please, I’m not here to hurt you,” he says. “I’m a friend. I’m in the same situation as you.”
Sixteen minutes. Maybe more.
She gets to her knees. Both of them are scuffed and become even more scuffed as she tries to get to her feet. She loses balance and falls forward and he can hear something in her wrist crack. He winces at the sound. She starts to cry again. Another minute is lost. “Please, can you open the door?” he asks. “Is there a latch there? Or a lock?”
She doesn’t look at him. She cradles her arm and curls up into a fetal position. She’s wasting time and he can feel himself becoming increasingly frustrated. Even angry. He wants to get out of the cell and shake her. She’s going to blow their chance and she’s going to die and he’s going to die and if she just focused, if she could just get hold of herself. . Christ, if only he could slap her!
“We’re going to die down here if you don’t start helping me,” he says, only she isn’t listening. Out of a desperate need to do something, out of instinct, he turns and looks around his cell for something to help, but of course there’s nothing, only a ratty old mattress and a spring bed and a bucket a quarter full of his own piss and vomit that smells worse today than yesterday. He looks back at the window. She hasn’t moved.
Stay calm. Baby steps.
He takes a deep breath. “My name is Cooper,” he says, clenching his fists down low where she can’t see them. He tries to smile at her but ends up grimacing. He has to return to the basics, he has to return to psychology 101. “I bet your family is worried about you,” he says. “My family is worried about me. Help me help you see them again. Can you open the door? Please, please, take a look at the door.”
She looks up at him. She seems to figure out if she’s a prisoner here and he’s a prisoner here then they’re on the same side. She tightens her jaw and her eyes clear and for the first time since waking up she seems fully aware of herself.
Twelve minutes left.
“We need to be quick,” he says, “before the man who took us comes back. You have to help me, then I can help you. I promise we’re going to get out of here,” he says. She looks around the room, and it seems to Cooper that she’s seeing it for the first time. She turns in a circle and stops when she’s looking directly at him.
“The door,” he says. “Can you unlock it?”
She nods, but doesn’t move.
“We have to hurry,” he says, “and we have to stay quiet.”
She takes a step toward him, and then another, and finally she’s directly on the other side of the glass. He keeps waiting for her to back away and curl into a ball again but she doesn’t. She looks through the window at him and tries to see beyond, and he steps aside slightly so she can get a better look, only the lamplight doesn’t hit much of it. Up close, her face is sunken in and she looks tired and underfed and there are small blisters growing around the edges of her mouth. At least he thinks they’re blisters.
“I can find something to remove the glue,” he says, keeping his voice low and calm, no traces of panic, no hint that he desperately wants her to hurry the fuck up. “It won’t be hard, I promise.”
She nods again, and then she looks down at the door. She continues to cradle her injured wrist under her opposite armpit as she works at something with her free hand. There is squeaking as metal is hinged up and down, a dead bolt he assumes. It’s tight, and she has to work it a few times and then bang as it slides open and hits into place. The door opens a crack. He puts his hand on it and pushes, thinking this is too easy, then thinking it ought to be easy when the person holding you captive has the mind of a child.
Ten minutes left.
The door swings open. He steps into the basement. The air is just as cool on this side of the door. She flinches when he wraps his arms around her and holds her tight. “Thank God,” he whispers, and he has the urge to sob into the side of her neck. He pulls back. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he says, holding her shoulders, but she doesn’t seem to believe him.
“We need to find something to use as a weapon,” he says, and he moves over to the bookcase. He couldn’t get a good look from his cell window, but there is plenty of history on these shelves, including a couple of knives that have come from his house. He picks up the largest one, it’s a dull blade that forty years ago belonged to a man who stabbed his parents, a dull blade that he bought in an auction for just under two hundred dollars. Right now the blade feels priceless. It makes him feel as powerful as the previous owner must have felt. His briefcase is on the floor. He kneels down and pops the catch that does work and opens the lid. Everything inside is messed around. He rakes his fingers through the contents.