I bow my head lower and pray for the first time in my life.Not to God.To Netflix.Please let the scene end.Please let the scene end.
The prayer lasts four minutes.The orgasm scene lasts three.The longest four minutes of my life, and I once sat through a seven-hour contract negotiation with a man who didn’t believe in bathroom breaks.
“Amen,” Patricia says.
“Amen,” I say.Meaning it more than she knows.
Mrs.Mather squeezes my hand.“We’re here for you.Whenever you’re ready for us to meet him.”
Never.“Soon.When he’s stronger.”
They leave.I watch them walk down the driveway—Mrs.Mather whispering, Patricia nodding, two women assembling a version of my life that has nothing to do with reality and everything to do with a story I told in the bread aisle at Foster’s and just expanded to include a photosensitive brain tumor patient living in a basement.
I close the door.Lock it.Lean against it.
I go downstairs.Charles is exactly where I left him—gagged, chained, laptop still playing.The movie has moved on to a New Year’s Eve scene.I remove the gag.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard a woman orgasm at that volume, come to think of it.”
“It was that or let them hear you.”
“I wasn’t going to make noise.”
“You were absolutely going to make noise.”
He considers this.“Probably.”
I grab the laptop and sit on the floor next to him.Press play.We watch the rest of the movie in silence.When it ends, he turns to me.
“Same time tomorrow?”
I check the cuffs.Check the slack.Make sure the potty chair is within reach.
“Same time tomorrow.”
He smiles.The kind smile.The one I still can’t read.
I close the basement door.Stand at the top of the stairs.
From across the road, I watch as Mrs.Mather sweeps her porch.
She’ll be back.They’ll all be back.Patricia will feelcalledagain.Someone will bring flowers.Someone will organize a meal train.The cage I built in the bread aisle is doing its job, but cages don’t just keep people out.They draw people in.Every lie I told is a thread connecting this house to the town and the threads are tightening.
And kind Charles, sitting in that basement with his real smile or his fake one, is the only person in this house who seems perfectly calm about all of it.
That should comfort me.
It doesn’t.
49
Luke
Icome out of the bathroom because I can’t stay in there forever.
The Lexus is at the pump.Silver.Same one.I know the plate number by heart, which is a fact I’ve never said out loud and never will.He’s on the other side of the pump, looking at his phone, the way people do when they’re avoiding the world three feet in front of them.
Then he looks up.
