Far above her he regarded her. Her hands tried to reach him but could not. Her fingers were weak, her wrists broken. Still he was inside her, she was impaled upon him as upon a hook that pierced her lower body. Now his hands moved onto her torso, her breasts, as if he were a blind man, curious to see her in this way, in the way of touching, sculpting with his fingers. He ran his hands over her, he gripped her breasts as if to test the resiliency of her flesh. Her breasts ached with sensation, the nipples felt raw, as if she’d been nursing, hungry mouths had been feeding from her, tearing at her. She was writhing, darkness opening at the back of her skull. She understood then why she had no name for him, why he had not once spoken her name. When she’d begun to speak his name, at the start of their lovemaking, he’d covered her mouth with the heel of his hand, lightly yet in warning: No.
Beyond the tall windows whose drapes had been pulled back the sky was shot with a vivid chemical light. Below was the river, invisible from where they lay, so chopped by wind you could not have said in which direction it flowed. Her eyeballs shifted upward, a death had come over her brain. She saw only a portion of her lover’s face, the glisten of oily sweat on his forehead. Only a portion of the ceiling where shimmering water reflected, live-seeming as microorganisms. How ragged her breath was, short and frayed like cloth that has been ripped! As if she’d been drowning, the man had saved her. No one had brought her to such a place before. He had brought her there as if by chance, negligently. The knowledge was crushing to her.
She heard moans, whimpers. She heard a woman’s choked sobs. He laughed at her, there was little tenderness in him.
Still he observed her, curiously. As a pilot might observe the ground far below, at a distance at which everything is in miniature, inconsequential. At such a distance there are no individuals. No cries can be heard. She could not bear it, this distance. She reached for him, he gripped her wrists and brought her arms down, spread outright beside her head, so she was helpless. He moved into her, she began to shout, guttural cries that scraped like gravel against her throat. She was a sinewy snake, every inch of her flesh quivering, her skin a damp scaly glisten. He’d pulled a pillow free of the tangle of bedclothes, it must have been caprice, he must have miscalculated, he lowered the pillow over her sweaty face, her anguished eyes and opened mouth, he was pumping hard between her spread thighs as if there was a fascination in him, what he might do to her, the woman, what was emerging between them in this place. Desperately she pulled at his hands, his wrists that were too thick for her fingers to close about, there were hairs on the backs of his hands, wiry hairs on his wrists, she was blinded by the pillow, she was frantic to breathe. Now her body, in which her soul was mute, dazed, swollen tight against her skin like a balloon blown nearly to bursting, began to struggle for its life. The man held her fixed, she was impaled upon him, a great sinewy snake helpless beneath him, the heavy pillow seemed to enclose her head, she was being suffocated. Tendons stood out in her neck, her arteries swelled. She lost consciousness, in a moment she was gone.
Like companions they lay side by side. Like companions who are strangers, thrown together in the same wreck. For a long time she could not move. Her eyelids fluttered weakly, she could not see. Sensation had obliterated her, in the aftermath of sensation there was nothing. Her heartbeat, that had madly accelerated, was slowed now, almost imperceptible. A match had flared into flame, the flame had touched her, exploded inside her, now the flame was extinguished, her body was numbed, she could barely lift her head. The soles of her bare feet seemed to burn as if she’d been walking on hot sand. She spoke to the man, she was helpless not to speak, hearing with a kind of pitying astonishment the hopeless words in a voice barely audible I love you. It was something of a plea, an argument, yet there was no one with whom to argue, the man seemed not to hear as if sparing her.
She lay as if beneath the surface of shallow water. Sun played upon the water, that was warm, unthreatening. She could not drown in this water, it would protect her. She was drifting into a stuporous sleep. Mommy? Mom-my? the little girl was looking for her, though Mommy stood before her, squatted before her, the little girl stared through her, the little boy, the boy whose name she’d forgotten for the moment, he was looking for her, anxious, Mommy where are you? — she’d become a wraith, they could not see her. Someone touched her as if accidentally, in his abrupt way the man was rising from the bed, walking away. He was barefoot, he moved with a negligent ease, no more self-conscious than if he were alone in the hotel room. Weakly she spoke to him, he did not seem to hear. She heard faucets, a toilet flushing. At last she forced herself to move. Her limbs that were paralyzed, broken. Something warmly sticky as blood between her thighs, on her belly.
He went away from her, he wanted her gone. While she was in the bathroom running water, the hottest water she could bear, staring at her dilated eyes in the steamy mirror, she heard him on a telephone. His easy laugh, the murmur of his voice. A man among men he seemed to her, unknowable.
She left him. He wanted her gone, she understood and so she left him. Hey: He gripped her chin, kissed her mouth as you might kiss the forehead of a plain child. At the elevator she turned back, the door to 2133 had shut. In the rapidly descending glass cubicle she wiped at her eyes, angry fists in her eyes. She had restored the damage to her mascara, her eye makeup, now it was damaged again, a teary ruin. Her body wept for him, a seepage between her legs. She thought, I am soiled, fouled. I am a woman who deserves harm.
She left the hotel quickly, the revolving door seemed to sweep her out. She imagined faint muffled laughter in her wake but heard only a doorman invisible to her calling after her in a voice of scornful familiarity “Good evening, ma’am!”
Evening! She wouldn’t be home until nearly seven o’clock.
On the expressway, wind buffeted the station wagon. Other vehicles veered in their lanes. She was too distracted to be frightened. Fumbling to call Ismelda on her cell phone but the battery had run low. She was thinking, If the children have been hurt! It was not a rational thought yet she was thinking if The Babysitter had taken them, this was punishment she deserved.
The Babysitter was an abductor and killer of children in the suburbs north of the city, he’d never been identified, arrested. He had taken nine children in all but he had not taken a child in several years, it was believed that he’d moved away, or was in prison, or had died. He was called The Babysitter for his methodical way of bathing the bodies of his small victims after raping and strangling them, positioning them in secluded places like parks, a golf course, a churchyard, he’d taken time to launder and even iron their clothing which he folded neatly and left beside them. Always their arms were crossed over their narrow pale chests, their eyes were shut, in such peaceful positions they resembled mannequins and not children who had died terrible deaths, it was said you could not see the ligature marks on their throats until you knelt beside them. The Babysitter had not abducted a child from the suburb in which she lived for at least a decade and yet she was thinking almost calmly If he has taken them, I will have to accept it.
The house was made of fieldstone, mortar, brick that had been painted a thin weathered white. Most of the house had been built in the mid nineteenth century, on a large tract of land which was now reduced to three acres, the minimum for property owners in the township. She was relieved to see the warmly lit windows through the trees, of course nothing had happened, they were waiting for her to return and that was all. Her husband had a dinner engagement, he wouldn’t be back until the children were in bed. Yet relief flooded her, seeing her husband’s car wasn’t in the garage. She’d had her revenge, then! She would love her husband less desperately now, she knew herself equal to him.