“The whining, man. Joe came back. I need time to think.” He kicks me in the balls again. “I said, You’re outta your mind. He’s a loser, can’t even commit to CrossFit.” Oh God, he thinks he’s my trainer and he kicks me in the leg and my shin is in the game too now. Ping. Pong. Pain Pong. “I’ve been working that girl for years, and unlike you, I never ran away. Never.”
That’s a kick to my other shin and the Pain Pong is now a tournament, a death match and signs, signs, everywhere signs and I missed every fucking one of them. You called him a saint, truly and the first time you ever told me about him, you were defending his honor. He cleaned your gutters, an animal marking his fucking territory the same way he marks his body with that Cooley Hardware logo, so that you see his last name and think maybe you could be Mrs. Fucking Cooley.
He spits in my face. “No job. No muscles. No nothing. That’s what you are.”
You were wrong about him but you were dead-on about me and I am bad at reading people and how did I not realize that his hardware store is a jealousy trap? He refers to those women in his shop as girls to make you feel old. Endangered. And the reddest flag of all: He gave your daughter a job in his fucking store. No wonder she quit. He probably bugged her ten times a day—So, how’s your mom, Nomi? Tell her Uncle Seamus said hi.
My life doesn’t flash through my eyes, but I remember things I didn’t know that I remember, like Melanda’s notepad in her phone, how she griped about Mary Kay and Seamus: MK’s attachment to Seamus is so weird. I know she was only seventeen when they hooked up and I know it was only five minutes but eeeew. I should have known then, same way I should have known when he blasted Kid Rock at the gym—the remake song about the teenage summer fuckfest by the lake. He’s been carrying a torch for you since you were seventeen years old.
He growls. Close. “Look at how soft you got. What did you even do for the past few weeks, pansy? Cuz I can tell you weren’t working out.”
There is no conversation subject more boring than exercise and this is why it’s dangerous for women to be “nice” to men, Mary Kay.
He swats the side of my head. Ping Pain. Pain Pong. “You split town. You come back outta nowhere and she’s ready to jump your bones. But Saint Seamus is here to make things right.” He got Roman on the Succession quiz, Mary Kay. He’s evil. Pure evil. “Are you listening to me, Jewberg? You’re done with her. It’s over.”
He hits me and he kicks me and it’s March Madness in my head and it’s the World Series of Pain in my balls and if I get out of this, those Big Pharma fuckwits will be getting a strongly worded letter from me. Their little pain pills don’t do shit and he punches me in the face.
“She’s mine, you piece of pussy-ass Hebe shit.” I’m only half Jewish and I whole hate him and you would too if you could hear him right now. “And she’s gonna be mine forever and you know why, Hebe?”
I haven’t heard that word since I was ten years old and he is close now. Breathing at me. On me.
“Because I’m a man, you bookworm little bitch. And in the real world…” Oh, Shortus, Bainbridge Island is not the real world and in the real world, people in situations like this die. RIP Beck died. She kept a knockin’ but she couldn’t get out and am I next? I flex and I push but I can’t get out and he’s too quiet. I remember that first touch in the library. Your hand in mine. Don’t tell the others. I didn’t, Mary Kay. You did. You told the others. You threw us up on Instagram. You are a fox and you wanted to show off, you wanted to kiss me in the window at Eleven Winery and you wanted everyone to know we were living together. You wanted your Friends to approve and it’s not the pain, it’s not the possibility of death, it’s the fact that we really could have had our family if you had just thrown your arms around me a few hours ago, when I was in the kind of pain that can be healed with a hug. Now you’re going to lose me and I don’t want that for you. You’ve already lost so much.
Shortus yanks me by the neck and my body hits the floor and the Pain Pong tournament is a melee, hockey pucks hurling on every playing field in my body. “I’m not gonna kill you,” he says. “You think it’s so ‘safe’ up here and it is. Our people are good people. But we got animals, Jewboy. We got lots of animals and one of them is going to get you.”
45
My back is up against bark—he strapped me to a tree—and I still can’t see because of the bag on my head. Birds chirp and I can’t call for help. I’m still gagged and Shortus has a rifle. It’s too soon. Love only pulled a gun on me a couple of weeks ago—look how that worked out, she’s dead—and you called this man the Giving Tree and he calls me a tree hugger and I can’t fucking talk. He is close again, close as in armed and for fuck’s sake, America, GET RID OF YOUR GODDAMN GUNS. “Today’s the day you become a fucking man.”
The good thing about a bad childhood is that it prepares you for hell in the adult world and Seamus didn’t cut off my limbs—positive thinking—but he has a bucket of blood—whose blood?—and he’s splashing it on me like holy water and this isn’t a cold and broken hallefuckinglujah. This is grim. The ropes are tight—naval knots and he wasn’t in the fucking Navy but he did go to camp—and a lot of people would lose their shit but unlike the coddled Peach Salingers of this world, I don’t need help when it comes to self-soothing. I know how to survive and I will survive because he said it himself—you have it bad for me—and you want to be with me. You are here for me now, in the blackness of my panic. In my mind I see you on our love seat and you see me and you want me to be okay—you love me—and I don’t want you to worry so I try to make you laugh. I sing because you like it when I sing and you know the tune. How will I know if he’s gonna kill me? I say a prayer but I’m tied to this tree. Shortus breaks my song with a gunshot—pop—and he shoots an animal and I bet it was a rabbit because he spits and grunts, “Sorry, Thumper.”
He picks up his bucket of blood again and splashes it on my back, on my skin. “We need some real critters,” he says. “These bunnies are bullshit,”
I can’t believe it either, Mary Kay. Your Friend is pouring blood on me to lure innocent woodland creatures and so far it’s just tiny ones, rabbits and squirrels, but he lets them get close. I am sniffed and I’ve been nipped and then he kills these living things and I am safe but I am not fucking safe. What if a bear comes? There are bears, if I’m to believe him, and Dying for love is so bittersweet, I’m asking you how the fuck you didn’t see through this psychopath? You fade. I can’t see your face. He kicks the back of my knee. “You pissed yourself like a little bitch.”
I hear his Timberlands pounding, he’s walking away again and the bucket is in play, more blood on my body and he’s howling for coyotes and if they come in a pack—and they do move in packs; they’re like Friends—we are dead. Both of us. He hoots and he makes catcalls—Come on, cougars, I know you’re out there—and he is a fourth-grade boy picking out his favorite wild animal for no good reason.