“Sure you are, honey,” he tells me as we pull onto the freeway. “Sure you are.”
WHEN WE FIRSTmet, Henry gave me his four names and I gave him my one.
“I’m Piers,” I said, sizing him up—the silk tie and gold cuff links, those little round, tortoiseshell frames he was so proud of.Expensive nerdwasn’t exactly my taste in men, but my taste in men had gotten me nowhere. I was lonely. My mother had died only weeks before, taking too much with her to the grave—any hope I had of a reconciliation, the memory of that day when I was five, answers about what happened. Grief would sneak up on me in the most unexpected ways—in the middle of a movie, on the toilet, in line at the deli. I suddenly ached for her quiet hostility as dearly as one might a favored stuffed animal, that haze of fear passing over her when she looked at me. Instead, I found myself abruptly alone in the world.
At least he would impress my clients. They were all I had left.
I remember his smile went lopsided and his eyes creased. At the time, I thought he was just confused. Later, I would come to know that look. It meant he was displeased but not in a position to express it. It was a look that meant I had it coming.
“Pierswhat?” he asked.
“Piers Corbin,” I said. “No middle name.”
He rubbed his chin. “Is that short for something?”
I’d grown used to the reactions to my name over the years. It seemed all wrong for me growing up. Boyish, British, jutting into the air like the sharp end of a knife. I never understood why my mother chose it. In my work, it had fostered a baseless impression of rarefied heritage, one I did little to refute, that lured my clients like honeydew. The murky void of my past as enticing as a rare textile, a silk brocade of their imagining, the emperor’s new clothes. But I didn’t want it to have the same effect on him. It would be nice, I had thought, to have one person truly know me.
“Not at all. My mother always wanted a boy,” I told him. “It seems I disappointed her from the very beginning.”
His smile broadened. “A condition I am most familiar with,” he said amiably. Leaning in, he added, “My mother always wanted a duke.”
YOUCAN LEARNa lot about a person in six hours.
I have learned that Don is fifty-seven years old. That he’s a political consultant of some kind, married to a woman named Darla who has been fighting ovarian cancer, with three grown children, all boys. One is a dentist. One just got married. One joined the navy and is stationed in San Diego. That they have always owned Labrador retrievers. Their latest model is named Silky. She’s a parvo survivor.
I’ve also learned that Don needs to stop approximately every hour and a half to pee. That he keeps a thermos full of bourbon under the seat. That he is lactose intolerant and eats red meat at least once a day. That he and Darla have been sleeping in separate rooms for three years. That he hasn’t had a captive audience like this in at least a decade. That he pays for everything with an American Express Platinum Card, except gas, which he puts on a Shell card. That his passcode at the pump is 0909—his birthday.
Somewhere between his litany of complaints on the health care system and a recitation of his wife’s latest demands, I fall asleep. I must be out for two hours or more. When I wake up, we’re no longer on I-95.
“Where are we?” I ask Don, who has removed his tie and unbuttoned his collar. I notice his thermos is empty.
“Don’t you worry about that,” he says, patting my thigh with a thick, brutish hand, bloated fingers. He’s a large man, big in frame. His bald head nearly brushes the ceiling. Beneath the suit of fat encasing his body, there are muscles twice the size of mine. Sweat beads on my temples, dosed with epinephrine.
I move my leg over and his hand falls away. “I don’t recognize this road.”
“Taking a little detour,” he tells me, grinning ghoulishly. “The scenic route.”
“I’m in kind of a hurry,” I tell him. “Scenery doesn’t matter.”
Don’s yellowing eyes slide over me. There is a flash of rumpled sheets in my mind, dewy skin, a bruised knee tucked against her body as a man faces the hotel window, dragging his dress shirt over sweaty arms.You have the room till morning,I hear Don’s voice say.Enjoy it.When he leaves, she starts weeping.
“Watch the road,” I tell him, snapping back to the present.
“I think you know where we’re going,” he says. “We have a connection, you and I.”
I wonder if he also had a connection with the underage girl in the hotel. If I saw what I think I saw. “I needed a ride,” I say. “You’re just a way between two points.”
He grins, undeterred. “Come on. Don’t you want to have a little fun before we get into the city? Something to remember me by?”
My palms start to itch. I’d thought once we cleared Raleigh that I could relax. That he was a sad, disgruntled man in a sour marriage who needed a good listener. “Pull over.”
“What?Now?” He looks confused, then his face lights up. “I was going to get us a room, but if you can’t wait.”
“I feel sick,” I tell him. “Just pull over.” It’s not a total lie.
The county road we’re on has a narrow shoulder bordering farmland. He slows down and rolls his car onto the grass. “Acacia,” he says, turning to me. “That’s pretty.”
I tug at the door handle, but it’s locked, and he’s pushed the childproof button. “Let me out,” I demand.
