21. Alice
21
ALICE
A loud bang wakes me, and I sit straight up. I don’t know if it was a door slamming or if Father Thomas dropped something in the next room, but I’m wide awake and I’ll never get back to sleep. I glance at the nightstand where my phone lies, plugged in. Mario is gone. He told me to rest and he’d come back, but I don’t even know how long he’s been gone. Judging by the light streaming into the windows, not long. It’s barely dawn, almost no sunlight in the room yet.
I start to lie back down and reach for my phone, but someone bursts through the door, launching in my direction faster than I can think. I scream and lash out with my feet, but they’re too fast, too strong.
“No! What are you doing? Who are you?” I thrash and claw as the man, dressed in black with a dark hat pulled down low over his eyes, pulls me out of bed by an arm. Another man rushes into the room to help and take my other hand. “Stop it! Let go of me!” I continue to scream and kick until I get my feet under me and attempt to push backward, fighting them .
“Just pick her up,” the one guy says to the other, but I don’t recognize his voice at all, or his face. I know they’re Paolo’s men, though. No one else would come after me like this. Where is Mario? Why isn’t he stopping them? What about his friend who was watching the block?
The first man spins me around effortlessly and hoists me up to his shoulder where I hang. His thick bicep curls around my bare thighs, and my ass is in the air as I bang on his lower back with my fists. I’m only wearing Mario’s T-shirt and my panties, but they don’t seem to care at all as they march me right through the rectory and out the door. As they pass across the threshold, I see Father Thomas sprawled on the ground outside the home, face down in the dirt.
“My God! Oh, my God!” I whimper and whine, still pounding at the man’s back. It’s useless. He’s not going to let me go for a second, not even when I tear his shirt up and begin digging my fingernails into his skin and drawing blood. All that does is anger him, and he swats my ass so hard it stings. But I don’t give up. I keep clawing at him and screaming. “Let me go! Help! Someone!”
There’s no one around to hear me. It’s just before dawn in a commercial district where nothing is open until eight a.m. I’m wearing my voice out for no reason, making my throat hoarse. I try to calm myself, but my heart is pounding, my mind racing.
Pushing up on the man’s lower back, I raise my head enough to look around. They’re taking me to a white panel van, parked near the curb and still running. There are two more men in the front seat. My God, this is really happening.
“Please, I don’t know where his money is. Please let me go.” I’m begging now, pleading for my life because I’ve seen what these men do to people they don’t believe or like. They didn’t give Tom a chance, and he was the one who actually knew where the money was. What more will they do to me? “Please. I swear I don’t have the money. I don’t know where it is. ”
It seems like the more I fight, the less these men listen. They throw me into the van and climb in after me, and when I scramble for the door, they shove me hard against the wall and I smack my head. I’m dazed, lying on the filthy metal floor as a fifth man climbs in, this one in a suit and tie. It’s Paolo Gatti, and he’s got a gun.
“Nice to finally meet you, Alice. I think we have some talking to do.” He chuckles at me and then uses the butt of his gun to knock me in the head so hard I collapse and everything goes dark.
My head is throbbing, pain shooting down into my right shoulder. I’m cold and shivering, and I’m lying on a concrete floor somewhere—I don’t know where. It’s dim in here, but there’s enough light to see that I’m in a cage of some sort. Chain-link fencing rises on all four sides of me, about a four-foot by four-foot area. There are no blankets, no bedding. Just me in my T-shirt and panties.
Blinking a few times, I try to make my eyes start working better. I look up above me where the same chain-link fencing closes in the top of this cage. Wherever I am in the city, it’s some sort of abandoned building. I see industrial air vents and old lighting fixtures overhead, though most of the lights aren’t working or on.
My whole body hurts, as if I were beaten around and then run over. When I strain to sit up, I realize my head is throbbing too—like, the worst headache I’ve ever had. And I’m dizzy. Maybe I have a concussion from that knock to the head with Paolo’s weapon. I press my eyes closed and wait for the dizziness to pass, and I hear someone whispering.
“Who is she?”
“Fresh meat, that’s all I know.”
“She’s pretty. ”
“They’ll ruin that. Wait and see.”
There are a few voices, and they’re close, but I don’t see them the direction I’m looking. I turn over my shoulder and focus on the dark corner of the room I’m in. It’s a large, open room, like an empty apartment loft or maybe an old sewing factory. The walls are brick, with large, arching windows, but the glass is all painted black or boarded over. It’s maybe thirty yards across, but it’s easily double that in length. In the corner I see movement, but I can’t make out any faces. It’s another chain-link cage.
“Hello?” I call out. “I can hear you. Are you there?”
Sound echoes around here like an amphitheater, bouncing off the walls and coming back to me quickly. It instantly draws hisses and shushing sounds from the people in the dark corner.
“Fuck, lady. You’re going to get us in trouble.”
My heart leaps into my throat, and I freeze, unsure what they mean by that. Get in trouble for talking? With whom? I want to ask them, but now I don’t know if I dare ask them anything. Why are they here, and what debt do they owe Paolo?
I turn around fully so I’m kneeling on the cold, dirty floor facing them. My eyes are slowly focusing now in the dimmer light. I can see there are five women here with me, all dressed in torn, dirty clothing that looks like they haven’t showered in days or even weeks. A few of them have scars on their arms or faces. One looks like she hasn’t eaten in months, so scrawny.
“Where are we?” I ask, but in a whisper so quiet I’m not sure they can even hear me. The response isn’t immediate, but they do respond. Ever so cautiously, the spindly one stands and walks to the edge of their cage and wraps her fingers around the chain links.
“We don’t know where this place is—LA somewhere.” She sighs hard and glances at the others, but she keeps her voice at a whisper the entire time she explains. “We’re his slaves. You know—sex and that shit.” I cringe when she says that, as if I couldn’t just assume that from how we’re boxed up like dolls waiting to be played with. “None of us really owe him anything.”
“And by ‘him’, you mean Paolo Gatti?” I ask, but I already know the answer. Like little treasures stored up for his fantasies or perhaps to make him money on the side, they’re all kept hidden from the outside world and are apparently forbidden to speak out loud for fear someone will hear them. I bet if we make enough noise, it will get someone’s attention. Someone could save us.
“Yeah, he’s the guy.” Her distaste for him goes beyond his name. I can read it in her expression. I wonder if he’s used her as his own personal toy enough times that she's grown a deep-seated hatred for her own life.
“And we can’t talk because…?” I whisper, though my volume is louder than before. I, too, move to the chain link and wrap my hands around it. Part of me thinks if I try hard enough, I may be able to lift this cage right off the ground. Maybe the five of them together could lift their cage. Why don’t they try to escape?
“Because the guards out there will know we’re not sleeping and they will come in here, and well…” Her eyes grow wide, and I see the others cower back into the darkness, in the corner, where I see something on the ground. It looks to me like they at least have a blanket to sleep on. That maybe they all huddle together like a pile of puppies for warmth and emotional comfort.
I see the fear in every action they take, and I understand why they cower. I don’t ever want to be someone’s personal plaything. I can see why they don’t just try to escape. If those guards would come in here to abuse them just for talking, what would happen if they tried to escape? I shudder to think of it.
“What’d you do?” she asks me, and I realize I don’t know her name or who she is. She, like the others, probably has a family out there looking for her. Like me. I have Mario—at least I hope I do. I don’t know how those men got past Mario and his men, but if he’s not dead somewhere, I know he’s looking for me. He’ll come, just like he did at the bus station.
“My, uh… my husband stole money from Paolo.” I find my volume increasing a little as I get emotional thinking about Mario and Tom—one who got me into this, and one who is trying so hard to get me out. Then I press my hand to my stomach and think of my unborn baby, probably only six weeks along at the most. “They murdered him in cold blood in our home.”
It's still hard to talk about it even though I wanted out. Have you ever walked in and found a dead body, let alone a person whom you deeply loved at one point in your life? It’s traumatic. Enough so to paralyze your spirit for months. Fuck, I need a drink, or a Xanax, or something to make me not feel anymore.
“Rough…” She breathes out a sigh, and I look up to see a few more of the women creeping closer to the fence. One of the is quite pretty, very young, too. She’s maybe only twenty-five years old, too young to be caged up and treated as a sex slave. I wonder if her mother and father miss her, and then my heart breaks for these women.
“Tell me your names and where you’re from.” I lick my lips and shiver. It’s cold in here. I want a blanket, but after hearing the way the guards treat these ladies, I don’t dare ask for a blanket. Instead, I try to focus on the hope brewing in my chest and believe that everything happens for a reason.
“What? Why?” The oldest of the group stands defensively, holding out a hand to halt the others.
“Because I know the man who loves me is going to come for me. When he does, I want to know all your names and the places you’re from so I can tell your families that you’re okay. And then we aren’t going to stop until we’ve brought you all home. ”
The spark of hope begins to blossom as one by one, they tell me their names and where they’re from. I make them repeat it over and over, including parents’ names and even street names. I rehearse them in my mind until I can recite them back perfectly, then start from the top and do it again. I don’t want to forget a single detail of this because I want to save them all.
If I make it out of here alive, I want to take them with me. If Mario’s penance for his life of crime was to become a priest, to serve humanity by offering forgiveness and comfort to those who see it, then my penance for killing that man is to remember these women and fight like hell to get them out. I won’t let myself rest or back down until every last syllable is seared into my mind as if by branding iron into my flesh.
After God only knows how long I rehearse the names and facts—both audibly and in my head—the youngest of the group sits by the chain link and leans on it, whispering to me, “Do you really think he’s coming? The man who loves you?”
Of course she needs reassurance about the fact. I need reassurance about it too. I’ve never truly had a man fight for me or choose me. But Mario has done nothing but fight for me and choose me since the instant I confessed to killing one of Paolo’s men. As if his own personal vendetta against his brother was awakened and I was just the straw to break the camel’s back.
“He’s coming,” I answer, and I’m certain of it. He says he loves me, though he can’t specify our future. I’m not sure if that’s because he doesn’t know whether he’ll survive this—whether I’ll survive this. Or maybe he’s just not certain I’ll still want him after I see how dark he really is. Or maybe he hasn’t decided whether he actually wants me. It doesn’t matter. I know he will never let his brother get away with this. I’ve seen the resolve in his eyes every time he speaks of the man.
“I hope you’re right.” The girl crawls away, hiding herself in the shadows with the others, and I turn and lean on the chain link .
If these women are being passed around as sex objects, it’s quite possible that Paolo is going to expect me to use my body to pay off the debt, and that’s something I will never survive, especially not being pregnant. I need to find a way out of here just in case Mario doesn’t come. I don’t like to think this way, but my life may depend on it. I can’t be Paolo’s whore. I’d rather die than do that.
So I have to fight. And I have to win.