Chapter 31 Clara
CLARA
THE HOTEL SUITE WAS SO quiet that I could hear birds outside.
Speedboat motors. The slam of lids on the metal garbage cans, even the occasional laugh.
I don’t know if that made it easier or more difficult.
People were still laughing, somewhere. He had tapped a single pill onto the dresser.
Looking at the perfect white pearl of it, I wondered if there were more.
If I could take a whole bottle for my grand escape from this place.
Not to California, but slipping out of the world, easy as a piece of silk sliding through someone’s hands.
I was standing in the middle of the room.
Had it been three hours? Four? I hadn’t had anything to drink but had to go to the bathroom anyway.
What had started as a general throb from holding it now ribboned through my torso, a sharp twinge of heat.
I would ask him if I could go, but I wasn’t supposed to speak.
I wasn’t even supposed to think. He told me that I was a terrible person, a bitch, a slut.
That I was lucky all he did before was burn me, that I deserved so much worse.
If I wanted to avoid being punished again, the only thing I could do was ask for forgiveness.
Repent. That word was like a hammer, pounding the inside of my brain.
Repent repent repent. I was sorry that I had been such a fool about my mother.
I was sorry that I believed those visions, that I dragged Lily into it, when maybe the problem was me all along.
I was sorry for all the times I stole from people who didn’t deserve it for a goal that had always been impossible.
He sat in front of me reading a book. I couldn’t tell what it was—something from a library, a bar code along its spine.
Had he stolen a book from the library? What about your sins?
I thought. He looked up at me as though he could sense my doubt beamed his way.
He unpeeled a chocolate poker chip so slowly that I heard every crinkle of the wrapper.
I listened as he ate it, the chocolate gumming his mouth, moving down his throat.
This was part of the deal I had made. Two days of total control.
He told me it would start out simple, easy.
Then we would work our way up to other experiments, other kinds of pain.
No more burns, I told him. Well, I’m paying to be the one who makes all the rules.
Deal or no deal, he said. I pictured the Ten of Swords in my mind.
One more difficult thing, and then I would be free.
First I practiced mouthing the words. May I please use the restroom? No, Sir, may I please use the restroom? He looked up at the sound of my lips moving, closed his book, stood from the chair.
“Didn’t I tell you,” he said. “Now is the time for repenting what you’ve done wrong.
” As he pulled his arm back, in the moment before he brought it forward, his sleeve slipped again.
I saw the burn scars snaking up his wrist, and then the force of his hand knocked me backward.
I staggered, fell, but stood again as quickly as I could.
He went back to his chair. He flicked his cigarette lighter, and as soon as I saw the flame I jumped.
He smiled and closed the lighter, slid it back into his pocket.
This was a game to him, all of the ways he could scare me, make me hurt.
He didn’t look up when he heard the stream of urine hit the carpet.
He only looked up after, when my clothes were wet and relief had flashed through me and the only sensation left was shame.
I thought that must mean it’d be over soon, that it would be like before—the metallic clunk of his belt buckle and the groan as he took himself in his hand.
I stood, my eyes on the carpet, and waited.
But there was only silence. I had been so used to seeing into people, to thinking I understood more than most. My gift couldn’t help me now.
Gift, if I even dared to call it that anymore.
I couldn’t see clearly what had happened already or what would happen next—maybe I never could.
I’d been so convinced that these women needed me, that they were asking for my help.
But maybe none of it was real. Maybe my brain was wired badly, and now it shot off only the wrong kinds of sparks.
I was still standing, feeling woozy, waiting for whatever was going to happen to end, when I had another vision. Or, I didn’t know what to call it now. The tingle surged through my body, and I saw a hand, reaching for a door handle inside of a car.
I blinked, rubbed my temples. I figured it must have been something in my brain, churned up by feeling stuck in that hotel room.
Perhaps the visions were just my own wishes, my own bad dreams. My knees felt like they could buckle.
My legs shook. I didn’t understand the appeal of this—it hardly seemed like he was paying any attention, even—but I didn’t see the appeal in a lot of things men were supposed to like.
I guessed that I should have been grateful for avoiding more cigarette burns, though part of me wondered if this meant that the worst was yet to come.
Another tingle seized me, like shocks in my fingers and toes.
Something silver, a necklace, with a charm in the shape of a cross against a dark background.
When I came back into the room, I felt as though an hour had passed.
Darkness seeped in around the edges of the blinds.
I tried to track how many pages he had made it through in the book, but I was thirsty, dizzy.
I couldn’t trust my eyes to see things for what they were.
I was jolted into a third vision. A hand, a woman’s hand again, but it was somewhere new, somewhere inside. The room had a reddish-yellow glow. I could hear that swish, swish, swish sound that was so familiar from other visions. Flies buzzed in my ears.
My thoughts started to race—Luis, the marsh, the glow of the room, like the neon glow of the signs.
The sunset that lit up, one ray at a time.
The first vision had also held something familiar.
I stood as still as I could and tried to recall everything about it.
The shape of the door handle. The look of the person’s hands.
And then: The bracelet. Lily’s bracelet.
The one I had stolen all those weeks ago, those little pearls, like dredging up a detail from a dream. Lily? Lily was in trouble?
No, I told myself. There would be a reason for those images.
Those thoughts. That was the way I was going to live my life now.
Logically. According to what I knew. Facts.
That way I could hedge against whatever had made my mother’s brain go wrong, poisoned by her talent.
I was thinking of escape, because that’s what I wanted most. A way out of my own life.
There were still scraps of whatever I had seen from Luis lingering in my brain.
I would learn to control those kinds of thoughts, learn to push them away.
But those women. The four—or was it five now? or more?—of them lined up together, arranged. The hungry, relentless buzz of the flies. Their blue-tinged skin.
“I have to go,” I said. “You don’t have to pay me, but I need to leave.”
He raised an eyebrow. “That’s not what the arrangement was. Remember? Total control.”
“My friend needs my help.”
A smile. For a second I saw it through his eyes, how ridiculous I was.
A teenage girl with trembling legs, claiming she needed to run off and save someone.
I stepped toward the door and heard the thunk of his book hitting the floor, the heaviness of his boots on the carpet.
He grabbed my shoulder, pushed me into the wall, shouting insults at me—Stupid slut.
Worthless whore. I curled into a ball, sweating, shaking.
I didn’t know what would be worse: ignoring the visions and the possibility of something terrible happening, or invoking this man’s rage.
When I swallowed, it felt like a blade was lodged in my throat.
I stood in the center of the room again and waited for my chance.
Lily needed my help. He was just one man, after all.
Someone who stole library books, someone who was so afraid he needed to prey on other people’s fear. I would find a way to get out of there.