‘It’s as if there is opaque heavy glass between me and those images of me scrabbling around the floor like a spider, hissing, furious, … helpless. I stopped eating. All I really remember is outside it rained and rained and my rage was like a dully burning metal inside me. The agony was so total, time stopped rushing forward. There was no future. For months I never went outside. If not for my pills and Lenny, I would not have survived. Can you believe I bathed only when Lenny marched me to the shower and turned on the tap?’
She looks at me beseechingly.
‘He was patient with me for months. I was like a mad woman. I slept all day with the curtains drawn. Everything terrified me. I couldn’t even walk down to the corner shop. He saw me through it all without ever giving up on me. The first time I felt human again was in spring when I was walking on the pavement and I saw an earthworm writhing on the concrete.’
She smiles mistily.
‘I crouched down and Citra’s face came into my mind. “When you see a worm on a pavement, remember that it is having a bad day. Pick it up and put it on some grass or soil.” So I carefully picked it up and carried it in my cupped hands all the way to the park. I left it on the grass, and the simple act of how it had burrowed into the cool earth still made sense when the rest of the world did not. I felt then that there was order in the world. I was having a bad day, but I would find grass and earth again. One day.’
‘He should have taken you to a proper doctor and had you examined and treated. Instead he caged you, manipulated you and used you.’
‘It’s not like that, Shane. It was not his decision. I didn’t want to see anyone. Not even a doctor. I was too ashamed. I didn’t want another person seeing or touching me. He brought me medicine.’
‘I am almost certain that what he gave you is not proper medicine. The bottle doesn’t even have a pharmacy label on it. Knowing him it’s bound to be something that helped to make you even more dependant on him. And then he locked you away in an apartment and did not allow any other man to touch you, while he availed himself to any number of whores he wanted. How did you ever think he was helping you?’
Twenty-six
LENNY
Come on. The lift doors opened, and this exotic, raven-haired, green-eyed beauty literarily crawled up to my feet and gave herself to me. I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t arrange for her to be kidnapped and raped and thrown to grovel at my feet.
I mean, what would you have done?
Taken her to the police and walked away?
No fucking way. I’m no Good Samaritan.
Besides, I didn’t want the police crawling all over my hotel, minding my business for me. The way I saw it, she was like a gift from heaven. Yeah, of course she was covered in bruises. Jesus, the bastards sure worked her good. Six, she told me later. But even with her entire body covered in bruises she was a raving beauty.
So I took her back. I patched her up. You have to understand she was no walk in the park. She was bloody, fucking hard work. Those first few months were no joke. She wandered around mute and half-crazy. She used to try to scrub herself clean, scratching her skin like an animal until it was raw and bleeding. And then there were the nightmares, the waking up in the middle of the night screaming in agony as if she had a wound in her body and her soul was pouring out, the shaking, the crying, the catatonic trances.
But the funny thing is, I never thought to throw in the towel. She had been given to me. And in this shitty life it’s not often that you are given anything that special. You have to fucking fight for every last inch, let alone a jewel like her.
My father used to say, you give a donkey a page from a fine book and it will eat it, you give a child the same page and it will scribble all over it, you give a learned man that page and he will read it. I always knew she was a page. The donkeys had tried to eat her. I knew I could never read her. But I could scribble on her for a while.
It took time before I could scribble on her. Months.
But the day came when I could part those white thighs and enter her. Fucking her was different than with any other woman. I can’t explain it. When I fucked her it was like fucking a child or a dumb animal. Not that I have ever fucked either. Just what I imagine it could be like. She never responds because she doesn’t enjoy sex. She never climaxes and I never try to make her enjoy it. You see, I kind of like that she gets no pleasure from it. It’s kinda virginal and pure. Like in the olden days, when they grinned and bore it. That kind of woman doesn’t exist anymore.
Now every fucking bitch is shoving a ten-inch vibrator up her wet cunt every chance she gets. No class at all. And I’m all about class. It’s perverse, yet it excites me to think she doesn’t want me in her body, but she allows me to because she’s grateful. Because she belongs to me. The way your pet belongs to you. You can do anything because you’re the master.