The Woman. Part 14

"Finally had enough, have you?" he says.

"Puh-leese."

She says it a third time. To him. Just him.

"I take well to manners," he tells her.

He goes to the winch and cranks it down. Lets some of that tension out of her arms - so that they're suspended at around shoulder length. He's giving her a gift. A little bit of comfort.

He can see that she appreciates it too, relief apparent on her face.

They're making friends here.

Belle walks down with the first aid kit and towels. Peg's not with her. He decides to let Peggy skate on this one at least for the time being. No point making another scene down here. He'll have a talk with his d.a.m.n daughter later.

"Dry her off," he says.

His wife hesitates.

"Her arms. You loosened her arms?"

"Don't worry."

"Says the man with nine fingers," she says.

Cleek can't help it, he bursts into laughter. The d.a.m.n thing still throbs like a sonovab.i.t.c.h and he's been popping half-Vicodins like they're antacids all day but Belle has actually made a joke joke and it's actually and it's actually funny! funny! The tension in the room bursts and drains away like all that dirty water on the floor. Belle smiles too. A real one this time.

He reaches into the back of his belt and pulls out the .45 and puts it to the woman's head.

"The doctor is in," he says.

"Dry as a bone, now. We don't want her coming down with something," Chris says.

The woman's shivering and Belle can hear those nasty teeth chattering but less so as she goes about her business, starting with her hair which is still matted, which will take a lot more washing and a h.e.l.l of a stiff brush before it will be anywhere near decent but she's struck that it's such thick, healthy hair and wonders how that can be given the life she's led. Or that Belle supposes she's led.

She moves down to her face and neck, drying these quickly because gun or no gun and even with the towel between them she doesn't like the proximity to that G.o.dd.a.m.n mouth of hers. She dries each arm and as she does realizes that her husband's done his job quite well, if brutally. She's pretty clean. Not much grime coming off on the towel at all. But then comes the hard part.

Her torso. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and belly. Her privates.

She doesn't want to touch these. But Chris is expecting her to so she does and as she does as she does, as she runs the towel over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, a curious thing happens. There's a tingling where there shouldn't be. That's not possible, she thinks. That's ridiculous. So she runs the towel roughly over her belly and even more roughly over her a.s.s and the fur between her legs - she thinks of it as fur, not pubic hair. But there it is again. That tingling.

She denies the feeling. She curses the feeling and curses this woman who by all rights shouldn't even be here, who should be out digging up roots and berries or lord knows what and truth be told, curses her husband too. She sweeps the towel down over both legs as quickly as possible.

"There," she says.

And stands away.

The female touching her reminds her of Second Stolen touching her. The wish to touch and yet not to touch, both at the same time, which she has read quite clearly. The Woman taught Second Stolen not to not to wish to touch her the hard way. With a thick branch of birch which she whipped across the girl's thighs until she lay huddled whimpering on the floor of the cave. wish to touch her the hard way. With a thick branch of birch which she whipped across the girl's thighs until she lay huddled whimpering on the floor of the cave.

Second Stolen is gone now. They're all gone.

The Woman is alone with prey and monsters.

Cleek has applied Bacitracin and clean dressings to both the wounds at her side, which are healing remarkably well, and her left ankle. Now he moves to her right ankle and slips the cuff up slightly so that he can get at the swollen red chafing there and swabs the antiseptic over it and wraps it tight.

He stands and sees that she's holding her hands out to him, palms up, so that he can get at her wrists. Almost a gesture of supplication he thinks. And perhaps it is. Her wrists are much worse. Particularly the right one - the one she worked free. The one she tried to throttle him with. It's not only bleeding, it's leaking thin yellow pus.

He attends to the left one first. Cleans away the blood, swabs it, bandages it. Then he turns to Belle.

"Honey? Throw some alcohol onto one of those sterile pads, would you?"

The woman's had no problem with any of this so far. If anything she's seemed grateful. But that could be pure exhaustion. She's clearly exhausted. This next bit could go down a little bit harder. He should probably warn her. He takes the pad from Belle and holds it up for the woman to see.

"This is gonna hurt," he says and makes a face, pulls his lips back, a grimace of pain.

She looks at him questioningly. She doesn't get it.

"Owwwww!" he says and hisses and makes that face again.

She nods.

He applies the pad to the worst of the damage. Her fingers stiffen but she holds the wrist steady and doesn't make a sound. Good girl, he thinks.

"Soak me another, hon," he says. "Make that two."

When he's finished the room smells of alcohol. He lights a smoke and stands back to admire his work. Looks good - clean and fresh and good.

"Let's see that dress."

Belle holds up her project.

"It b.u.t.tons up along the sides," she says. "So you don't have to untie her or anything."

"That's good. Try her on."

Belle's hesitant as ever around the woman but she walks over and lifts the dress. The woman shifts to one side as though trying to escape it. Like it's some living thing. Belle flinches.

"Go on. She's not going to do anything. All this is new to her, that's all."

He's not sure Belle believes him but she lifts the dress and pulls it down over the woman's head and drapes it across her body. He can see her hands are shaking as she fumbles with the b.u.t.tons along one side and then the other. The woman's calm though. Just watching her.

"There," she says and steps away.

It's a very conservative baby blue dress, very Old World he thinks. Very rigid cuts. It looks incongruous as h.e.l.l on her and that makes him smile.

"She looks like one of those polygamist-types, doesn't she?"

"Mennonite. The polygamists are Mormons."

"Right."

"You wanted it st.u.r.dy. That was the point."

"You did good, Belle. Very nice."

"Thank you."

He notices a funny thing. The woman was fine with being stark naked. Didn't seem to think a single thing about it. Now she looks sort of...well, he guesses the word is shamefaced. As though this little bit of domestication has left her absolutely humiliated. Again he has to smile.

"She cleans up pretty nice, doesn't she?"

"Should we feed her?"

"Yeah. We probably should. What've we got in the way of leftovers?"

"Stew. There's leftover stew."

"Fine."

When Belle's gone to heat the stew he goes to the sink and fills an old tin cup with water. The water's rusty but that's what you get down here. Better than nothing. He brings it over.

The woman looks down into the cup and immediately her mouth starts moving. She's thirsty as h.e.l.l. He puts it to her lips and she sucks it down.

"You want more?"

This much she seems to understand. She nods vigorously.

He fills the cup again and she drinks. On an impulse he lifts his other hand into her long hair and is surprised as h.e.l.l when she actually leans into it. Like she's savoring the contact.

d.a.m.n! This woman keeps surprising him.

Belle watches her husband feed the woman with the soup spoon. She's obviously starving, swallowing the stew without chewing, spilling some of it down over her chin. Her husband scoops it off her and feeds it back to her. Like she's a baby.

Belle has never had this kind of treatment from Christopher Cleek. Not even when she was running a temperature of one hundred four degrees down with the flu last spring. It rankles.

It rankles even more when he reaches up to stroke her hair.

She finishes the bowl. He wipes her chin with a sterile pad.

She's hiccupping.

No, wait. She's crying. She's crying.

The b.i.t.c.h is actually crying. Tears rolling down her cheeks.

"Go raibh maith agat," she says. she says.

"Thank you," Chris prompts her.

She doesn't understand. Belle thinks the whole thing's ridiculous. First dressing her up. Now trying to teach her to speak. Trying to teach her anything. anything.

The woman's nothing but a savage.

"Thank you," he prompts again.

She still doesn't understand. Correction. An ignorant ignorant savage. savage.

"Thaaank you," Chris drawls. "Thaaaank you."

"T-aank ooo," she says. As if to belie me. As if to belie me.

It doesn't mean anything. A parrot could do as much. A mynah bird. She remembers seeing one on The Tonight Show The Tonight Show who could imitate a duck or a monkey or even a cat. who could imitate a duck or a monkey or even a cat.

Chris turns to her and smiles.

"See? She's learning," he says.

So is Belle. Learning more about her husband every minute of every day.

She's had time now to go into his study and have a look at his books. The picture isn't good. They owe money on nearly everything. The second mortgage, the Escalade, the office. The interest on their credit cards is ridiculous. And now he's buying the Bluejacket properties. With what? Peg will be going off to college soon. Then Brian. They'll both want cars. He brings in good money from his practice and his investments are paying out good dividends but she wonders how he intends to juggle all this.

How he sleeps nights as well as he does.

And she wonders about this obsession of his.

This thing. This woman.

TWENTY.

Genevieve sat at the end of Vance & Eddie's bar farthest from the door nursing her second Dewars rocks of the evening and listening to Jerry Lee Lewis croon I ONLY WANT A BUDDY NOT A SWEETHEART and rattle that ol' piana against a Dixieland band while the on the TV Giada De Laurentiis constructed some sort of pasta dish with a cream of sweet potato sauce and broiled shrimp. Which looked quite tasty.

The bar was pretty dead tonight. A handful of local businessmen up front and only she and Ginger among the regulars. She didn't really get along with Ginger - a stringy ash blonde whose sole pa.s.sions seemed to be clothes-and-shoe-shopping and local businessmen - the second of which pa.s.sions she was indulging at the moment. Andrew, the bartender, she did get along with and glad of the company when he walked over.

"Care for something to soak that up, Genevieve? Mussels are fine tonight."