The Good Girl. Mary Kubica

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      Colin

       Before

      We’re on the Kennedy before I ever bother to turn on the heat. Somewhere into Wisconsin I turn on the radio. Static blares out of the rear speakers. The girl is watching out the side window. She doesn’t say a thing. I’m certain a pair of headlights has followed us the entire length of Interstate 90, but they disappear just outside of Janesville, Wisconsin.

      I exit the interstate. The road is dark and deserted and seems to lead to nowhere. I pull into a gas station. There isn’t an attendant on duty. I kill the engine and get out to fill up the tank, bringing the gun with me.

      I’ve got my eyes on her the entire time, when I see a glow from inside the truck, the light from a cell phone that’s come to life. How could I be so stupid? I thrust open the door, scare the shit out of her. She jumps, tries to hide the phone under her shirt.

      “Give me your phone,” I snap, ticked I forgot to ditch her phone before we left.

      The light from the gas station fills the truck. She’s a damn mess, makeup down her face, her hair a catastrophe. “Why?” she asks. I know she’s not this dumb.

      “Just give it to me.”

      “Why?”

      “Just give it to me.”

      “I don’t have it,” she lies.

      “Give me the fucking phone,” I yell as I reach over and yank it from beneath her shirt. She tells me to get my hands off her. I check the phone. She got as far as finding the contact list but that’s all. As I go to fill up the tank, I make sure it’s off, then dump it into the trash. Even if the cops trace the signal, we’ll be nowhere around when they do.

      I scavenge the back of the truck for something—rope, an extension cord, a piece of fucking string. I bind her hands together, tight enough that she cries out in pain. “Try that again,” I say when I get back in the truck, “and I’ll kill you.” I slam the door and start the engine.

      There’s only one thing that’s certain: when I didn’t show up with the girl, Dalmar sent everyone he knows after us. By now they’ve torn apart my apartment. There’s a hit out on both our heads. There isn’t a chance in hell I’m going back. If this girl is dumb enough to try, she’ll be dead. But I won’t let that happen. She’ll tell them where I am before they kill her, but I’ll kill her first. I’ve already done enough good deeds.

      We drive through the night. She closes her eyes, only for a couple of seconds, then jerks them open again and searches the truck to realize that it isn’t a nightmare. It’s all real: me, the dirty truck, its vinyl seats torn, cotton falling out, the static on the radio, the endless fields and the dark night sky. The gun sits on my lap—I know she doesn’t have the guts to reach for it—and my hands clutch the steering wheel, as I drive slower now that I know we’re not being followed.

      She asks once why I’m doing this, her voice shaking as she speaks. “Why are you doing this to me?” she asks. It’s somewhere around Madison. She’d gone all this time in silence, listening to some Catholic priest ramble on and on about original sin, his voice cutting out every third or fourth word. And then all of a sudden, Why are you doing this to me, and it’s the to me part that really rubs me the wrong way. She thinks it’s all about her. It doesn’t have a thing to do with her. She’s a pawn, a puppet, a sacrificial lamb.

      “Don’t worry about it,” I say.

      She doesn’t like this answer. “You don’t even know me,” she accuses in a patronizing way.

      “I know you,” I say with a fleeting look her way. It’s dark in the car. I can’t see more than an outline, obscured by the blackness outside the window.

      “What did I do to you? What did I ever do to you?” she pleads.

      She never did a thing to me. I know it. She knows it. But I tell her to shut up anyway. “Enough.” And when she doesn’t I say it again. “Just shut up.” The third time I scream, “Just shut the fuck up,” the gun flailing about and pointing her way. I swerve off the road and slam on the brakes. I step from the truck and already she’s screaming at me to leave her alone.

      I reach in the bed of the truck for a roll of duct tape, tear off a piece with my teeth. There’s a chill in the air, the sound of the occasional semitruck soaring down the road in the middle of the night. “What are you doing?” she asks, her feet kicking at me the minute I open her door. She kicks hard and gets me in the gut. She’s a fighter, I’ll give her that, but the only thing it does is make me pissed. I force my way into the truck, slap the duct tape over her moving lips and say, “I told you to shut up.”

      And she does.

      I get back in the truck and slam the door, pulling blindly out onto the interstate, the wheels kicking up gravel from the shoulder of the road.

      It’s no wonder then that it takes a good hundred or so miles for her to tell me she has to pee, to get the guts to lay a trembling hand on my arm and get my attention.

      “What?” I snap, pulling my arm away from her hand. It’s approaching dawn. She’s wiggling in her seat. There’s a sense of urgency in her eyes. I rip off the duct tape and she lets out a moan. It hurt. It hurt like hell.

      Good, I think to myself. That’ll teach her to keep her mouth shut when I tell her to.

      “I have to use the bathroom,” she mumbles, afraid.

      I pull into the gravel parking lot of some run-down truck stop outside Eau Claire. The sun is beginning to rise over a dairy farm to the east. A herd of Holsteins grazes along the road. It’s gonna be a sunny day, but it’s damn cold. October. The trees are changing.

      In the parking lot I hesitate. It’s all but empty, only one car, a rusty old station wagon with political bumper stickers plastered across the back, the rear headlight held to the car with packaging tape. My heart races. I stick the gun in the seat of my pants. It’s not like I haven’t been thinking about this since we left. I knew this was something I’d have to do. By now the girl was supposed to be with Dalmar, and I figured I’d be trying hard to forget what I’d done. I didn’t plan for this. But if this is going to work, there are things we need, like money. I have some money on me but not enough for this. I emptied the girl’s wallet before we left. Credit cards are out of the question. I pull a knife from the glove box. Before I cut the girl’s restraints I say, “You stay with me. Don’t try anything stupid.” I tell her she can use the bathroom when I say so, only when I say it’s okay. I cut her rope. Then I cut two feet of spare rope and stuff it in a coat pocket.

      The girl looks ridiculous as she steps from the truck in the wrinkled shirt that doesn’t even reach all the way to her wrists. She crosses her arms across herself and ties them into a knot. She shudders from the cold. Her hair falls down into her face. She keeps her head bent, eyes on the gravel. Her forearms are bruised, right across some stupid Chinese tattoo on her inner arm.

      There’s only one lady working, not a single customer. Just as I thought. I wrap my arm around the girl and pull her toward me, try to make it seem like we’re close. Her feet hesitate and fall out of sync with mine. She trips but I stop her before she can fall. My eyes threaten her to behave. СКАЧАТЬ