I looked at him, tears in my eyes, gratefully.
Then I lay back.
Had he been waiting for me to whimper, I wondered. Had he been waiting for me to beg?
I knew I had begged.
I did not know if this had pleased him or not.
But I had begged.
It was an hour later, and night must have fallen. The man snapped on the dome light in the rear of the van.
I lay before him.
He turned away, and, from a box to his left, he drew forth a thermos, and a small sack. I watched him, as he unwrapped a sandwich, and began to eat.
After a bit, he looked at me.
“Are you hungry?” he said.
I struggled to sit up. I nodded, piteously. I was cold, thirsty, famished, and bound.
“We are in the country,” he said. “It would do you no good to scream.”
I nodded.
“On your knees,” he said. “Approach me.”
I managed to kneel, and make my way to him.
“Turn about,” he said.
I struggled about, and he untied the gag, and drew it away.
“Face me,” he said.
I did so.
He poured some fluid from the thermos into the cup of the thermos, and held it to my lips, and I drank.
It was warm tea.
“That is enough,” he said, withdrawing the cup.
“Would you like to eat?” he asked.
Again I nodded, desperately.
He began to finish his sandwich, but before doing so, tore off a portion, and held it to me.
I extended my head to him, to take the bit of sandwich, but he drew it back, a little, so that I must reach farther forward to take it. Then, when I had done so, he permitted me to reach it, and take it.
He had well impressed on me that he was in control of my food.
He finished the sandwich, and I had finished the bit permitted to me.
“You may lick my hand,” he said.
I licked his wrist, and the back of his hand.
In this way, I expressed my gratitude, that I had been given drink, and had been fed.
“May I speak?” I asked.
I had said this naturally, understandably enough, for I was afraid. Yet, almost as soon as I had said the words, I wondered why I had used those particular words, in that particular way. Surely they seemed appropriate; but they also seemed familiar. It was as though I had heard them before, or read them somewhere. Then it occurred to me that I had read them, or something rather like them, in those books which Mrs. Rawlinson had discovered in my room, which she had seized, to my consternation and shame.
“No,” he said.
“Shall I replace the gag?” he asked.
I shook my head, negatively.
He had said we were in the country, and that it would do no good to scream. Certainly that seemed plausible, given the roughness of the road. And I hated the gag. How helpless a woman feels when speech is denied her! Too, he was a powerful man, and I did not doubt that even the suspicion that I might cry out might earn me a blow which might render me unconscious. Too, I saw those large hands, and did not doubt but what they might, if he wished, snap my neck.
I would not cry out.
“Lie on your stomach,” he said.
I lay on my stomach across his jacket.
He checked the bonds on my wrists and ankles. Apparently all was in order. They needed no adjustment.
So I lay on my stomach, under the dome light, bound, as the van sped on through the night.
I became very much aware that he was looking at me, prone and bound, lying across his jacket, under the dome light.
I began to suspect, trembling, what it might be for a man to see a woman so. And I was well aware that I was not unattractive. I knew that I had been accepted as a pledge to the sorority at least in part because of my beauty, as had been the other girls. We were a house of beauties. Certainly we had teased, and taunted, and dismissed, many young men who had sought our company. We were angling for the best on campus, for whom we were willing to compete. So surely I must not simply lie there before him. He was a strong man, and I was helpless. Was I not like a tethered ewe, in the vicinity of a tiger? I feared the teeth, the claws, of such a beast, but, too, I wondered what it would be to feel them on my body. I became much aware of the anklet fastened about my left ankle, the ribbon wound twice and knotted about my neck. I must attempt to distract him.
“I beg to speak!” I said.
Again, I had the sense that these words were somehow familiar. In any event, they expressed how desperately I wished to speak.
“You may speak,” he said.
“Untie me,” I said. “Let me go!”
“No,” he said.
“I am naked,” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked. “What are you going to do with me?”
“You are being taken to a collection point,” he said, “from which point you will be shipped.”
“Then there are others,” I said.
“Several,” he said.
“As I?” I asked, pulling a bit at the bonds.
“Yes,” he said.
How helpless I was!
“Free me,” I said. “I can give you money, much money! I can make it worth your while, very much so!” I recalled that a fellow in the house had said something like ‘forty, perhaps sixty’ in response to another’s question. I could double or triple forty, or better, even sixty, thousand dollars for my freedom, simply from immediately available resources and accounts. “Whatever you, and your fellows, might get for me,” I said, “I can give you more, much more! Let me go!”
“But what of the others?” he asked.
“Surely they are rich, as I!” I said.
“Not at all,” he said. “We take some who have little to commend them but their extraordinary beauty, their high intelligence, and latent, exploitable needs.”
“If they cannot pay,” I said, “then let it be done with them as you will.”
“It will be done with them as we will,” he said.
“What of my sorority sisters?” I said, frightened.
“They are all in hand,” he said.
I thought of Mrs. Rawlinson.
“All of them are rich,” I said.
“No,” he said, “all are penniless, destitute, as you are.”
“I do not understand,” I said.
“If you were to be freed this moment,” he said, “you would soon discover that every economic resource you had has disappeared, vanished, save, I suppose, your body, which might bring you something from time to time on the streets.”
“I do not understand,” I said.
“There are ways, arrangements, documents, transfers,” he said.
“You’re joking,” I said.
“No,” he said.
“You already have everything I could give you?” I said.
“And something more,” he said.
“What?” I said.
“You,” he said.
“You will never get away with this!” I said.
“On your world,” he said, “you guard your goods, your automobiles, yachts, jewels, gold, almost everything, but not your women. We do not make that mistake with our women. Your women are like public fruit, ripe, moist, fresh, and tempting, dangling within easy reach, harvested without difficulty at our pleasure.”
I thought it odd, the expression “on your world.”
“We harvest judiciously,” he said, “with an eye to only the finest stock, wherever found, Japan, England, Germany, France, Denmark, wherever it may be found. We are particular.”
“I am to be flattered?” I said.
“You and your so-called sisters,” he said.
“I see,” I said, bitterly. My body was sore, cold, and tired, even lying on his jacket.
“In your party,” he said, “did you notice the eyes of the boys on you, and your camisked sisters?”
“Eve, and Jane,” I said. “Yes, it was difficult not to be aware of that.”
“Perhaps that was the first time you were ever looked upon that way,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, “but on the beach I was not unaware of the eyes of men on me.”
“That white, one-piece bathing suit,” he said, “was amusing, so putatively modest, and yet so subtly expressive.”