"But-I want this," she said. "I mean, my whole life…"
"Do you want it enough to kill me?" I said. "Because that's what you're doing."
She looked at me and then looked away again quickly. "No," she said. "But…"
"Yes, but," I said. "But if I don't get past the guys who feed you, I am going to be dead, and you know that."
"I can't just give this up," she said.
"You don't have to," I told her, and she looked at me attentively. "All you have to do is let me escape, and you can stay here."
She chewed on her lower lip for a few seconds. "I don't know," she said. "I mean, how can I trust you not to, you know. Call the cops and come storming back here to get me?"
"By the time I could get back here with the cops," I said, "they will have moved you someplace else."
"Yeah," she said, nodding slowly. "But how do I know you won't, like, drag me out of here and, you know. Save me from myself?"
I went down on one knee in front of her. It was melodramatic, I know, but she was a teenager, and I thought she would probably buy it. "Samantha," I said. "All you have to do is just let me try. Do nothing, and I won't try to get you out of here against your will. You have my solemn word of honor." There was no crash of thunder, not even the sound of distant laughter, and in spite of my recent epidemic of unpleasant emotions, I felt no shame. And I believe I did it very convincingly. In fact, I think it was the performance of a lifetime-I didn't mean a word of it, of course, but under the circumstances I would gladly have promised her a ride on my flying saucer if it would get me out of here.
And Samantha began to look more than half-convinced. "So-I don't know. I mean, what. I just sit here and like don't say anything? That's all?"
"That's all," I said. I took her hand and looked deep into her eyes. "Please, Samantha," I said. "For Lily Anne." Totally shameless, I know, but to my surprise, I found I actually meant it-and even worse, I felt moisture collecting in the corners of my eyes. Perhaps it was just a Method actor moment, but it interfered with my vision and was extremely disconcerting.
And, apparently, extremely effective. "All right," she said, and she actually squeezed my hand. "I won't say anything."
I squeezed back. "Thank you," I said. "Lily Anne thanks you." Again, maybe a bit over-the-top, but there were so few guidelines for this situation. I stood and picked up my tire iron. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing. I went to the door and tried to wedge myself in beside the frame, where I would be invisible if they looked through the small window first. I chose the side closest to the handle; the door opened outward, and it would be much easier for them to see into the other corner. I had to hope that they would not notice anything and, after glancing in and seeing Samantha in her place on the cot, they would simply walk in unsuspecting. Then with any luck at all it would be one-two, snicker-snak, and Dexter would go galumphing back.
I had been scrunched into my place for about five minutes when I heard voices coming faintly through the thick door. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and tried to make myself even smaller in my corner. I looked at Samantha, and she licked her lips, but nodded at me. I nodded back, and then I heard someone pulling on the door's handle and the big door swung open.
"Sooo-wee, piggy," somebody said, with a very mean-sounding chuckle. "Oink, oink."
A man stepped through carrying a red nylon insulated bag. I brought the tire iron down on his head, hard, and he pitched forward without another sound. Like greased lightning, I stepped around his body and into the doorway, holding my tire iron up, ready for anything -except for the huge arm that was already swinging at my face and sweeping me back against the wall, and I had time for only one quick glimpse of the massive bouncer with the shaved head, as he pinned me with a forearm across my throat, and Bobby Acosta standing behind him yelling, "Kill the fucker!"
And then the bouncer swung a fist the size of a grand piano at my chin and I was gone into darkness.
TWENTY-NINE
I was far away in a place where tiny sparks of light flittered through a great sea of darkness and Dexter swam through it with legs made of lead and arms that did not move at all with a very unpleasant buoyancy that seemed to float up from a queasiness in my center and there was no other thought or feeling of any kind except for mere being for a very long time until finally, from far away, an urgent sound came in to me and carried on its back a very strong idea that tumbled into focus in one crystal-clear syllable: Ow! And I became aware that "ow" was not a mystic word for use in meditation, nor a lost land of the Bible, but, in fact, the only way I could succinctly sum up the State of Dexter, from shoulders upward. Ow…
"Come on, wake up, Dexter," a soft female voice said, and I felt a cool hand on my forehead. I had no idea whose hand, nor whose voice, and in truth it really did not seem nearly as important as the fact that my head was an endless ocean of pain and I could not move my neck.
"Dexter, please," the voice insisted, and the cool hand patted my cheek a great deal harder than seemed to be polite, strictly speaking, and each little pat-pat sent an echoing wave of ow rolling through my head, and at last I found the controls for my arms and moved one up to brush away the hammering hand.
"Ow," I said out loud, and it sounded like the distant cry of a large and weary bird.
"You're alive," the voice said, and then that damned hand came back and patted my cheek again. "I was really worried." I thought I might have heard that voice before, but I couldn't say where, and it wasn't a high priority at the moment, considering that my head was filled with flaming oatmeal.
"Owww," I said again, with a little more force. It was really all I could think of to say, but that didn't matter, since it summed things up so nicely.
"Come on now," the voice said. "Open up your eyes, Dexter. Come on."
I thought about that word: "eyes." I was pretty sure I knew that one. Something to do with, um-seeing? Located somewhere in or near the face? That sounded right, and I felt a dull and dim glow of pleasure; I got one right. Good boy.
"Dexter, please," the female voice said again. "Open up, come on." I felt her hand move again, as if to pat my cheek, and the sheer annoyance of that idea sparked a memory-I could open my eyes like this. I tried it. The right one popped open while the left fluttered a few times before finally coming open to a blurry world. I blinked them both several times and the picture settled into focus, but it did not make any sense.
I was looking straight up at a face only a little more than a foot away from my own. It was not a bad face, and I was pretty sure I had seen it before. It was young, female, and creased with concern at the moment, but as I blinked at it and tried to remember where I had seen it, it broke into a smile. "Hey, there you are," she said. "You had me so totally worried." I blinked again; it was an awful lot of work, and it was just about all I could manage. Trying to think at the same time was just too hard, so I stopped blinking.
"Samantha," I croaked, and I was very pleased with myself. That was the name that went with that face. And her face was so close to mine because my head was resting in her lap.
"The one and only," she said. "Nice to have you back with us."
Things were slowly filtering into my throbbing brain: Samantha, cannibals, refrigerator, giant fist… It took some work, but I began to connect the separate thoughts and the picture came slowly together into a memory of what had happened-and it was far more painful than my head and I closed my eyes again. "Owww…" I said.
"Yeah, you said that already," Samantha said. "I don't have any aspirin or anything, but this might help-here." I felt her turn a bit under me and I opened my eyes. She held a large plastic water bottle up and twisted the top off. "Take a sip," she said. "Slow. Not too much, you might hurl."