Chapter 12 Maria
Iwoke up with a start, the nightmare still fresh in my mind’s eye.
In it, Dresden Harrow was slicing open a lamb in front of me, but the lamb wasn’t a lamb.
It was Elio, all cut up, bleeding and dead, his still gaze upon me, the last moments of pure torture and terror frozen on his face.
I was strapped to a chair, the ropes tight, not letting me breathe.
When I woke up, I was covered in sweat, even though the central cooling was working overtime and I was in my bra.
It was nighttime outside, the neon lights of the city bleeding through the curtains, making it look like some kind of cyberpunk dreamscape.
I hated all things cyberpunk. What was the use of romanticizing dystopia in the first place?
Now solarpunk, that was something. That was good.
That was a utopia. I wondered if we’d ever have a utopia.
I’d read somewhere that in India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, because of insufficient electricity generation, hundreds of thousands of people had started installing solar panels on their own homes to make their own power.
I read that China, Saudi Arabia, and Africa had all planted acres of solar panels in their deserts to generate electricity.
There was this new mayor, Mr. Mathew. He was a breath of fresh air, someone who was really excited and driven about the green initiatives. He was trying to set up solar panels all over New York, a bill that had made him quite infamous with the opposing party.
Why was I thinking about solar power and solar panels on the same day as when I was kidnapped?
“Maria?” Elio shifted in his sleep, lying beside me, also naked save for his boxers. We’d both decided it was the right thing to do, sleeping without our clothes. Nothing sexual. Just the heat. July in New York was strange like that. By the time it was evening, the apartment was sweltering.
What I was surprised about was how easy sleep came to him in my bed. He’d never slept here before. Or had he?
“I’m just…” I said, not knowing what to say. What did one say in a situation like this? Hey, Elio, the nightmares are getting to me, and I can’t feel safe, not with you here, not without you here, not when I’m trying to sleep in the same apartment as where I was kidnapped. I’m beginning to lose it.
“Come lie down,” Elio said. “I know what you’re going through. Don’t worry about it. We took care of it, didn’t we?”
“Yes, but…”
“I know. It’s going to be okay. Come, come to bed. Let me tell you a story.”
“What am I, six?” I chuckled dryly.
“A story always helps, no matter how old you are,” Elio said, touching my back, running his palm along my skin, making me feel somewhat calmer. “Come on.”
So I did. I found it easy to do what he asked of me. I lay next to him, his arm around me, my head tucked next to his chest. I put my leg on his leg and really stretched myself. This was my bed after all. Ha!
“Once there was a boy,” Elio said. “A boy who was always afraid that bad men would come through his door and beat the living shit out of him. One day, his mother heard him crying. She came into his room and lay next to him, telling him sweet nothings. When she realized that her consoling was having no effect on the boy, she told him something that has helped him fall asleep every night since then.”
“What did she say?” I asked, feeling weary, feeling sleepy once more. I yawned, covering my face so he wouldn’t think that I was yawning because of his story. The story meant a lot to him, I could tell from the way he was telling it.
“She said, ‘When it’s your time, it’s your time.
No host of angels nor God Himself can postpone it.
So sleep knowing that before your time, no one can take you, and no one can save you for even a second more when it’s your time.
’ Naturally, the boy was scared shitless and started weeping even more, but then she said, ‘Elio. It’s not going to be your time for a long time.
You’ll live long and do so much. You have a touch of destiny about you.
’ That’s what my mother said to me, and this is the same thing I’ll say to you, Maria.
You have a touch of destiny about you. You’re not going anywhere for a long time.
Not until you’re white-haired and old and have grandchildren who flock around you and your entire life’s in the rearview mirror.
A beautiful life. Know this. Believe it. ”
I kissed him on the cheek and hugged him tight. “You’re sweet.”
“But…”
“But I’m still scared shitless.”
Elio leaned over his side of the bed and produced a pistol.
I gasped.
“No, no, it’s not what you think it is.”
“Really?” I asked, sitting up, my heart racing fast. “Because that’s a gun. You brought a gun into my apartment.”
“Would it help if I told you I had a license for these?”
“Here’s something you need to know about me, Elio,” I said, tying my hair in a knot so it wouldn’t keep getting in my face.
The fan overhead was doing me no favors other than blowing hot air in my face and blowing my hair all over the place.
“I’m anti-gun. I’ll always be. I don’t believe in them. I never have. They kill people.”
“I get that, but if someone were to walk through your apartment door, this gun’s the only thing that’s going to stop them,” he said, offering me the gun.
I cringed as I took it in my hands. “I don’t know the first thing about guns! What are you doing?”
“Would you like me to teach you? It’s perhaps one of the best therapies to exist in the world.”
“For a man, maybe. I’m not that kind of girl.”
“Believe me, no one’s that kind of anything until they give it a shot. Come on. You need your mojo back. You need to feel powerful. I’ll take you to a gun range.”
“Gun ranges in New York?”
“Second Amendment,” Elio said, taking the gun and placing it on the bedside table. “There’s a couple dozen of them here. Do you want to?”
“Can we just play Call of Duty instead? I got a spare PlayStation,” I said.
“You have two PlayStations?” Elio asked, looking around.
“Well, you need one for the living room, and then you need one for the bedroom. What am I going to do? Move the PlayStation from one room to the other like an idiot?”
“Maria Thurman, you are spoiled,” Elio grinned. “Two PlayStations. My, my.”
“Shut up,” I said, slapping his shoulder, grinning. “You can keep the gun in the apartment, but don’t expect me to use it. It’s what I’ve got you for.”
“Glad to be your bodyguard,” he said, getting out of bed. “I’m going to order us some pizza.”
“Get an anchovy one for me. Anchovies and pineapples,” I said, getting out of bed and putting my t-shirt on.
“You know that’s like the biggest insult to every Italian on earth,” he said, looking at me dumbfoundedly. “Anchovies and pineapples?”
“You ain’t ever had that pizza before?”
“I could barf.”
“Suit yourself, bro. It’s my favorite thing in the world. Make sure you order it from Teddy’s Pizzeria.”
“What even is that?”
“You’re in my world now,” I said, giving his cheek a pat. “Better get comfortable. Teddy’s is the pizzeria across the street. His restaurant got closed seven times because of permit and zoning issues, and once because there was a food poisoning outbreak.”
“Two PlayStations, a questionable pizza place, and central air conditioning that’s dubious at best. I think I like your world,” he said, ordering us pizza from his phone.
“Give it a few days,” I said, picking up a remote.
He picked up his.
It didn’t solve my PTSD overnight, playing Call of Duty with him, but it was a good enough distraction.
When our pizzas came, that was another distraction, and soon enough, after spending all night playing games and eating pizza that had gone cold after the first hour, I wasn’t feeling as afraid anymore.
We decided that the next morning, we’d take him apartment hunting. He needed a place of his own to stay. Somewhere he could unwind and not be a constant liability. His words, not mine.
But for now, we played games till the sun came up, and then we sat there weary and sleepless. He was a solid player. Nowhere as good as me, but still, solid enough that I’d gone head-to-head with him a few dozen times.
“You never did tell me about you,” he said once we’d shut off the PlayStation.
“Give it time, Romano,” I said. “Give it time. Let me get to it in my own time. I’m still trying to absorb everything that happened yesterday.”
“Let me take you away,” he said, holding my hand. “For a few days. Let’s put some space between us and this, some time.”
“I do have a job, you know. One that I’m really passionate about. I can’t just leave.”
“Don’t you have sick days or accrued leaves?”
“Of course I do, but it’s not like I’m going to blow them all up in one go.”
Elio looked at me, the dawn’s sun catching his face through the rifts in the curtains.
“You’re not the kind of person to take sick days or use their leaves.
I know that about you. You didn’t have to tell me this.
I inferred it. It’s in the way you arrange your videogames and books on your shelves, how everything’s all arranged in your bathroom. Tell me if I’m lying.”
He had me dead to rights. I’d never used my free days, true to my workaholic form.
Even right now, I had fourteen days that I’d accrued over the course of the year.
There was a week I got from my promotion, and then a customary week that everyone gets.
Now that I was thinking about it, perhaps the reason they were giving me so many days off was that they knew I’d never cash them in in the first place.
“Knowing patterns doesn’t mean you know a person,” I said. “There’s things about me that I’m not ready to tell you just yet.”
“All right, give me one. Give me one thing at least.”
I sighed. When God made this man, he forgot to put the quit, it seemed.
“All right, how about this for size? Where have you heard the name Thurman before?”