Chapter Twenty-One

Colleen

 

“So what do you like to do, eh, sweetheart?”

 

I keep looking over to Alma and Father, as though they’re going to rescue me. Alma must see that he’s put his hand on my ass several times, must see me removing it, but apparently she doesn’t care. Once, she even glares at me when I remove it, as though I should just allow him to go ahead. They’re too busy laughing and joking in their little circle of the party to pay much attention. Samuel has me backed up against the wall now, sniffing almost nonstop; white powder clings to the skin of his nose. He’s coked-up, as well as incredibly drunk. When he talks, it’s like he’s disconnected from what he’s saying.

 

“Huh?” he says, when I just stare at him.

 

“I like to read,” I reply, forcing the words out. “I like to—I don’t know, I like to watch television. I like to watch nature shows sometimes.”

 

“Like polar bears and that shit?” He sniffs.

 

“Sure, yes.”

 

“Wow. You must be one smart Irishwoman, eh?”

 

“I’m not sure.”

 

He leans even closer to me, putting one hand on the wall right next to my head, truly blocking me in now. I want to knee him in the balls but I don’t know what would happen after that. Alma would probably go crazy; maybe the whole room would go crazy. I wish Gabriel was here to tear this man away from me. He reeks of whisky and tobacco, but most of all of sweat; he’s drenched, big stains under his armpits. Even his goatee is plastered to his face with it.

 

“You’re not sure?” he snaps, getting angry now for seemingly no reason. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re a smart lady, and you’re a fuckable lady at that. Aren’t you? Aren’t you a fuckable Irish lady? Eh? Eh?”

 

I bite down and look down at the floor, refusing to answer him. He laughs as though he enjoys making me nervous.

 

“You’re real shy for a girl who bent over for the biggest loser in the whole Family,” he whispers, his reeking breath washing over my face. I cringe away as more bile rises in my throat. I swallow it with an effort. “Isn’t that right? Didn’t you bend over for Gabriel Moretti?”

 

“I …” I shake my head. I don’t know what to say. This is really crazy. My parents are just across the room and here this man is behaving in a way that would make Alma sick, and they don’t care.

 

“How easy are you, then? Don’t you know how to answer a question, sweetheart? When a man like me asks you a question, you don’t just stand there like a deer in the fucking headlights. How easy are you?”

 

“I’m not at all easy, sir,” I mutter.

 

“Sir?” He coughs out a laugh. “Is that where we are, then? Is that it?” He looks around, then turns back to me. And takes a pocket knife from the front of his trousers. When I make to scream, he flips it open and presses it against my belly, shielding it from view with his body. “I could slit you open right now,” he says, horrifyingly calm now. “I want you to turn around, quickly. Right now.” He prods me with the blade.

 

Fear compels my movements, the sort of primal fear that can only come from having a knife an inch away from opening your stomach. I do as he says, turn around, and then walk on unsteady steps as he leads me toward the bathrooms. I look at people as we pass, willing them silently to realize what’s going on, but nobody does.

 

“If you shout or anything like that, I don’t trust myself to hold this blade steady. So if I were you, I’d be a really good girl. I don’t want to cripple you, girl. That’s what’d happen, you know. I’d slit right through your spinal cord and if you didn’t die, you’d be crippled for life. Is that what you want?”

 

“N—no,” I whisper. I swallow, try to swallow. There’s a golf ball in my throat, blocking my breathing. I try to breathe through my nose instead, but even that is blocked: two small pebbles jammed up there. I try to remember the girl who shot the driver down near the warehouses. I have to be her; right now, I have to summon up whatever it was that allowed me to do that. But she feels very far away.

 

Before I can react in any meaningful way, Samuel has bundled me into the disabled toilets. He shoves me roughly across the room. I stumble, almost fall into the toilet, and catch myself on the assistance bars. When I stand up and turn around, Samuel is pacing up and down in front of the door, tossing the knife casually from hand to hand. It’s the easy way he handles it that stabs terror into me most of all. He has no fear of cutting himself; he’s an expert.

 

“You deserve this,” he growls. He’s talking to himself. He takes out a small pouch of white powder and brings it to his nose, sniffing up half of it. Then he lets the pouch drop and the powder falls like disturbed dust, floating in the air. “Yeah!” he snaps. “Woo! You’ve earned this! Fucking Gabriel! Who the fuck is Gabriel anyway? Look at this fine thing. She fucking wants it. Don’t you, sweetheart?” He jumps across the room with deadly speed, bringing the knife to my throat. His hands are shaking, the metal scraping against my neck, making it even more difficult to breathe. “You want it, eh? Don’t you? Don’t you want it?”

 

“No,” I wheeze. “No, I don’t!”

 

“Fucking bitch.” He sighs. “Fucking whore. I could’ve made this easy on you. Make one move and I’ll bleed you like the fucking Irish slut you are.”

 

“P—p—please!” I cry as he brings his hand to my belly, dragging it slowly up to my breasts.

 

“Please.” He laughs bitterly. “Fucking bitch. We all know you’re a slut. You’ll fuck anybody. Everybody knows it.”

 

“That’s not true,” I whisper, his hand almost touching my breast now.

 

“Yeah, right.” He laughs. “Of course not, sweetheart. I wish I could get you outta that dress. They really trussed you up, didn’t they?” He pauses at the shouting from the ballroom. There must be some sort of commotion—maybe a fight—but my hearing is too fogged with panic to make out any of the specifics. “I don’t get that, shoving you into some fancy-pants dress. Why not just treat you like the whore you are and put you in a leather skirt or some shit? Shame. All right.” He takes a step back, giving me room to breathe. “Take off the dress.”

 

I want to say no, but he’s flipping that knife around like he could just hurl it at my head. But stepping away gives me some time to summon whatever courage I might have. My mind races. I can’t just keep telling him no, because then he’ll just take what he wants. I have to somehow get that knife away from him, and then … I don’t know what happens after that. All I know is that getting the knife away from him is better than him holding it.

 

Once again, I swallow puke. Then I flutter my eyelashes in the most seductive way I can, which isn’t very seductive, I bet, since it feels so unnatural. Luckily, he’s so coked up it might not matter.

 

“Okay, okay.” I smile at him. “I’ll do it … baby.” The word is acid. “You don’t have to force me. You’re right. I am pretty easy. I just like to, eh, I just like to play hard to get.”

 

“I fucking knew it.” He grins widely. “I fucking knew it.”

 

I pretend to try and unzip my dress from the back and then throw my hands up. “Could you help me?” I whisper.

 

“Of course!” he says, grinning now. “Turn around, baby.”

 

I hide my cringe and turn around, hating when his hand presses against my back again. When he tugs at the zip, I shift in small movements, making it difficult for him. He doesn’t realize what I’m doing and—I see in the mirror—narrows his eyes and leans closer. He’s in that drug trance Alma always warned me about. “Men go crazy, girl,” she would say. “They stare at the wall for hours, counting every little mark in the wallpaper.”

 

“Damn thing,” he grunts. He puts the knife into his mouth, bites down on the blade, and brings both hands to the zip.

 

This is my chance. I will myself to act. For what feels like a long time, I’m frozen, but as soon as I hear the zzz of the zip, something in me breaks; the same thing that broke when I killed the man at the warehouse. Suddenly I am not nervous or scared. I am not anything. I am just a woman who does not want to be raped.

 

I throw my elbow into his face, letting out a scream as I do it. My elbow thumps with pain but, despite throwing wildly, I crunch the knife; it slices into the corner of his lip, blood spewing everywhere as he leaps back, opening his mouth, the knife clattering to the floor. I spin, dive on him, no longer thinking, just lashing at him with my hands, lashing at anything. He falls; I fall on top of him. I grab the knife and stab, stab, stab, not even sure where the stabs land, vaguely aware that this is far easier than I ever would’ve imagined. The knife just slides in, over and over, my hands and my forearms already slick with blood.

 

I jump to my feet and make for the door, stretching my arms out … and then stumble when Samuel’s hand darts out and wraps around my ankle like a vise. I kick at him, but he pulls harder. Suddenly everything spins over and the floor rises up to slam me in the chest, stealing the air from my lungs. I gasp, but it does no good; the air has been sucked completely out of me.

 

“This is it now,” he whispers, his voice slowly turning into a gargle. “This is …” He looks dreadful, blood seeping from several wounds in his neck, his mouth turned into a lopsided smile. “This is …” But he still has life in him; he picks up the knife and lunges at me—

 

The door crashes open, flying off three hinges, and a hallucination runs in. Gabriel dives on Samuel, easily wrenches the knife from his grip, and then efficiently slits his throat. He picks him up like a bag of potatoes and lobs him into the corner of the room, and then immediately dives back to his feet and grabs the broken door, lifting it and jamming it back into the doorframe.

 

“Gabriel?” I whisper, hardly able to believe my eyes. “Is it really? Really?”

 

“Yeah,” he says tightly, smiling at me. He’s wearing a waiter’s outfit that is now flecked with spots of red.

 

“Why are you holding the door like that?” I ask, numbly climbing to my feet.

 

“Gabriel fucking Moretti just ran into the fucking toilet! Boys! Fucking hell! Gabriel fucking Moretti is in the toilet!”

 

Gabriel inclines his head. “There you have it.”

 

I go to him, place my hands on his face, not caring if both of us are covered with blood. I don’t care about anything right now except that he’s here; he came for me. Just like I anticipated, it all makes much more sense with his face in my hands, the pressure of his clenched jaw against my palms.

 

“What happens now?” I ask, as dozens of footsteps pound toward us.

 

“I don’t know,” he admits, and then kisses me quickly on the forehead.