Part 26 (1/2)
”n.o.body ever called me ma'am before.”
”The dirt has started to glow. Aren't you scared?”
”Leave me alone.”
”We have to do something.”
”What do you mean we, white man?”
He whispers, so she will pay attention. ”Ticktickticktick. Time is running out. Together, we might make it.”
”Stop that.” Walleyed glare. ”I'm working up to four hundred.”
At her signal, he adds two ten-pound weights. ”Come on, Roxy. You can't play like nothing's happening.”
”How do you know my name?”
Diamond nose stud. Likes jewelry. Noted. ”Roxy, Roxy. We need each other.”
She is testing the weights. ”Why would I do anything for you?
”Because you're in my power?”
”Not so's you'd notice.” Rings, too. Note: Really likes jewelry.
She is focused on the lift to come. Great veins bulge. ”Spot me?”
”Now?”
”Now.”
”Fine,” he says helpfully. Trevor pretends to spot her when what he is really spotting is the right vein. He drives the needle in. It's a wonderful drug. It paralyzes the mind but keeps the body mobile. How else would he get a woman this size out of the gym and into the back of the van he rented to take his gorilla in? She went from granite to pliant in seconds; he got past the desk by putting a gym bag over her head. Whispers, ”What do you have to go home to anyway?
The world is ending.” He feels only a little guilty.
It's scary out, but he isn't going to have to face it alone. Just having her in the back of the truck makes him feel better.That the sky is a bizarre new shade of violet is only slightly unnerving. Red fingers creep over the skyline-lava, surging out of the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel? Naw, Trevor thinks, and drives on even though he hears a sizzle, as of fish frying in the drained harbor. In the back of the van his new gorilla alternately thrashes and dozes. Listen, it's not as if she has a life out there.
The house Trevor has fixed up for the captive gorilla looks just like all the others in that block: a brick Baltimore row house in a depressed neighborhood-white shutters, depressingly white front stoop with urban litter was.h.i.+ng up against it like trash in a flood. It's just what he wanted. A neighborhood where people like him don't come. End house, which means ingress from the alley, cellar door, which he needs to unload, no neighbors. He has backed the truck up to the cellar. He rolls her down the steps and into the lion cage he salvaged from a ruined circus. For a long time, she doesn't stir. Then she does. Howling, she hurls herself at the bars; her anger shakes the house. ”What. What? What!”
Trevor hands her a c.o.ke. ”Drink this. You'll feel better.” At a safe distance, he extends tongs with his offering.
”Where are we?” She eyes the tongs. The object dangling from them glitters. ”What are those?”
”Place I fixed for you. These are my mother's diamonds.”
”You can't keep me locked up like this.” She stops thras.h.i.+ng and says matter-of-factly, ”Look at you, five seven. You can't keep me at all.”
Couldn't keep Jane or the kids. He gulps. ”I got you here.”
”So what am I supposed to do, f.u.c.k you? Beat up on people?”
Then the weight of all the years that have been and the years that may never come staggers Trevor, and he cries, ”You're supposed to help me.”
”Help you what? Get women? Money? Food? If I kill whoever for you, will you let me go?”
Kill Jane? Never. Cult leader Adam? Maybe. Jake? He'd like that, but right now this is a holding action because he has no idea what is coming. ”You never know what you need until you need it,” Trevor says. The marvel is that he's come this far on instinct, and the rest? Wing it. ”Too soon to tell what I need.”
”This isn't the old Adam and Eve thing, I hope.”
Hair in greased coils. That ma.s.sive skull, the corded body. Think Hercules carved in lard, but a woman. ”I don't think so.”
Roxy gauges her situation: the room, the cage-no bending those bars even if you do press four hundred. She settles on her pumped haunches. ”I'll need equipment.”
He thrusts the tongs into the cage, proffering. It's his late mother's diamond choker.
”Everything you need is on order.”
Scowling, she fastens it around her bicep. ”I've seen better.” It is an uneasy accommodation, but it is an accommodation. From here on out it won't matter that Jane is gone or that the corporation has collapsed and the fabric of civilization is shredding. Just let them try to break in and take his money, food, vandalize his secret thoughts or steal the silver. n.o.body gets past Roxy. I have a gorilla, OK?”I miss you,” Jane writes. ”Adam is seeing somebody new.” What do I care? I have a gorilla.
They get through the days, however. Nights are harder. In times like these television is interrupted, so there's no telling whether it's ten or eleven or closer to two A.M. The numbers on all your digital products are clicking backwards. Everything demagnetized while you weren't looking. You're on your own, the wind says. Alone, fust the way you were at the beginning. Not Trevor. He has his gorilla. Perhaps because of the riots and ma.s.s murders outside, she's quit trying to kill him. She gets into the captivity thing. Sits with him for public access TV but slouches downstairs to sleep in the cage. For protection, she says. Protection against him? Has he kidnapped a three-hundred-pound virgin? Hard to know. Athena has nothing on Roxy. Step aside, Amazon queen. Take a backseat, Wonder Woman. Now that she has his mother's opera-length pearls twined around her neck and now that his grandmother's diamond earrings hang like dollhouse chandeliers from her wide nostrils, she's in his power, right? He buys her clothes. He cooks wonderful meals for her out of the supermarket stockpile in the subcellar. Keeps her happy until he needs her.
Jane writes, Who needs you, anyway?
One day Roxy smiles. ”Meat loaf. Again. My favorite.”
In times like these, the silliest things make you feel better.
Still, there is the look he catches when Roxy doesn't know he's watching; the whites of her eyes gleam in the half light from the TV, and Trevor can't know. Is his gorilla fixing to die for him, or does she want to kill him?
How did it get so important to make her like him?
That's one motive for taking her outside. Trial run. Make her happy because in times like these, even a gorilla starts looking good to you.
The other? It's time to show her to the people. Trevor feels safer with Roxy thudding behind, regardless of her motives. Hard to know if it's a good or a bad thing that the streets are deserted. Every player wants an audience. Not clear if that's blood running in the gutters or the product of his hyped imagination. Roxy pads on, sniffing the air. ”Talk about creepy. Hold up.”
She spins him around.
”Stop that! Ow! Where are we going?”
”The gym,” she says, dragging him. ”They need me at the gym.”
It is in ruins. Leached skeletons lie upturned in the ashes like the. rib cages of cattle in Death Valley. So much for Roxy's colleagues, those humongous guys.
”Too late.” She grieves. ”I came too late.”
There is no talking about what happened. ”It's OK,” he tells her. ”It is. n.o.body could have helped them.” He isn't feeling too good himself. It's unnerving, watching your gorilla cry.
A sob rips her throat. ”I shoulda been here for them.”
He grips her hand. Mental note: Aunt Patricia's garnets, as soon as we get home. He is running out of jewelry. ”You hadda be here for me. It's how we are now. Everything we care about is gone.”