Take Me Capo, page 4
The trick to this job isn’t to look at any one screen, but to see all of them until one changes, then observe how that change affects the spaces around it. Sometimes the change is a break in the motion, a reduced tempo, or a quirk in the way one person travels from corner to corner.
But it’s late, and the activity on most of the screens is tranquil.
She’s not like the rest of them.
Only one has my attention. Only one distracts me from the overall rhythm. That screen is the reason I dismissed the two men in here.
Sarah’s separated two layers of her skirt, placing one between her torso and the cold floor and the other under her legs. Her head rests on her wrists, which are covered by white gloves.
She’s not broken.
The greenhouse was meant to be uncomfortable for Peter Colonia’s daughter.
He ruined our lives. He destroyed our mother with a flick of his wrist.
He did it for his own comfort because the Colonia gave him the power to do it.
The only limits to what I’d do to cause him pain are the boundaries of my own anger and intelligence. Just killing him would be a failure of imagination.
We plan to destroy the one thing he loves—the Colonia—through the one person he groomed to sustain it.
She’s not broken. Yet.
I press a button on the console, and the greenhouse screen flips to thermal imaging. Everything is blue and cold except for a bright rainbow where she lies—centered with a bright red bean ringed in orange, then yellow following the curve of her sleeping body.
I’ve only seen her from afar. She’s closer to me than she’s ever been, but so much further away.
She’s fine for now. The hot core of her soul is keeping her alive.
I reach out and touch that rainbow as if I’m touching her heart.
How did you make me care so quickly, Sarah Colonia?
Will I break you, or have you already broken me?
Chapter 7
Sarah
The second time I wake up in the greenhouse, it’s dark. My legs are cold, and at some point in my unconscious state, I must have taken off my gloves because my hands are free. My joints ache, and my entire head hurts. I’m hours past hunger pangs. A mass of glue and sand has lodged itself in my throat.
The minutes crawl into hours while my vision gets used to the light. I spot one of my gloves resting by my shoe, and it’s not until I reach for it that I realize my skirt’s hitched over my knees.
Did he…?
No. He didn’t.
He isn’t interested in raping me. He’s interested in watching me starve.
Leaning forward for the glove, I check the camera. The red light glows steadily.
Dario hadn’t been speaking lightly when he threatened my survival, but it wasn’t pure sadism. Torturing me is a sideshow. He’s after something bigger. I’m just a nail holding up a bigger plan.
The only way to keep him from getting what he wants is to take myself out of the negotiations. Just then, my eyes adjust to the shapes on the tile. He removed my laces to keep me from killing myself, but he left the shards.
Well, that was his mistake.
After grabbing the glove, I gather my skirts, slyly picking up a triangle of pottery to tuck into the base of my palm. To mask what I’m doing from the camera, I put the glove back on while—under the fabric—I tuck the pointy side of the shard into my wrist. Once I cut it open, all I have to do is curl up and bleed out. They won’t notice until I’m already dead. They can’t stop me, and they’ll lose. We’ll survive.
My starving brain decides it’s a good plan—until the edge of the ceramic is pressed to my skin.
What if suicide helps his plan? If I don’t know his intentions, I could fall right into his trap.
Pressing the shard into my glove, flat side against my skin, I decide not to use it until I can be sure it’s the best way to hurt him.
So, I find the warmest part of the greenhouse, over a hot-air vent, and watch the sun come up over the Atlantic.
My thoughts degrade into colors weaving together. Fear is green and yellow. Thirst is brown and burgundy. They become a whirring, spinning loom that clatters as it twists them together. I sleep tangled in them.
Hovering between sleep and consciousness, I dream of life when this is over.
First, eat like a pig for a year. This dress won’t fit around the pasta and soft cheese.
Every day I’ll drink a pot of espresso and eat a plate of pastries. Tricolore and sfogliatella and the cookies with the nuts on top. And sausages. Miles of them.
Food is all I’ve ever known of the old country, and now it’s all I can think about. Rich sauces with cloves and braised meats. Bowls of olives in shades of brown and green and red, with enough salty brine to sting puckered lips.
And water.
Gallons and gallons of water.
When I can’t think of water another moment, I spend my energy on hope. I have not been ruined. Not even touched. Daddy will believe me. He’ll convince Sergio and the Agosti family to continue with the marriage. I cling to that fantasy as the endless hours unfold.
But every time I try to reassure myself with this thought, another set of memories comes rushing in: half-remembered snatches of gossip, tales of women who had ruined themselves, as if that treasure was theirs to spend.
I find another pot to pee in, but nothing’s gone in, so little comes out.
The sun slips below the horizon, and in the night’s darkness, I try to sleep. Rest is fitful, uneven, and my dreams are all nightmares of Grandma’s disappointment. She tells me it’s all right, blinking out when I try to touch her, only to reappear far away. Just before dawn breaks, I’m trapped in a feverish delusion of being stuck in a tunnel, punishing darkness enclosing me, surrounded by the skittering sounds of rats and madmen.
I’m half mad myself by the time the moon crawls over New Jersey, shimmering down brilliantly at me from a night sky the color of a just-erased blackboard.
How can I still be here? I clutch the sharp piece of pottery under my glove. It’s a safety blanket. A choice I can make in a situation where my decisions are meaningless.
Hovering in half consciousness, my eyes are closed when the door bangs open again and Dario enters, carrying a tall glass of water. He sets it on a dirty counter in front of me, then leans against the table, crossing one long leg over the other.
I get to my feet and approach the glass, wary but unable to stay away from it. I’ve never been this thirsty in my life; my eyeballs burn, and my tongue’s cracked into layers of plaster.
Dario watches me silently, but as I reach out to take the glass, he slaps my hand away. I’m already weak and dizzy, and the force of the blow makes me stumble and spin.
“Please!” I cry. I realize I’m on my knees. I had intended to be strong, to refuse to let him see me suffer any more, but I am so, so thirsty.
“Take that stupid dress off.”
I shake my head. I’m past caring about modesty. I care about the dress. It’s ruined, but it’s mine. I worked on it for months, my fingers numb from stitching, my eyes and back aching as I labored into the night. It may be the only piece of home left to me besides my own body, and I will not take it off.
He shrugs and picks up the glass of water.
I remain defiant.
He turns to go.
And when I feel the triangle of clay inside the wrist of my glove, I think, with blinding clarity, I cannot die here.
“Okay,” I say.
He stops, turns around, but does not put down the glass.
I slip the dress off slowly, regretfully, because as awful as it looks, the fabric is still fine, soft and sweet, a reminder of who I was and what I expected so few sunrises ago. The gloves stay and so do the undergarments I wore to please Sergio because Dario just said to take off the dress and I’m weak but not dead. I’m not giving him anything he doesn’t ask for.
He places the glass back on the table. Then he sweeps a hand through the dust and dirt on its surface and sprinkles them into the water. I watch helplessly as it clouds over in the moonlight.
“Down to the skin,” he says. “Show me every inch.”
The suggestion in his command floods my dry veins with resistance.
“You said the dress.” I hold out my left hand—the one without the distorting piece of pottery under the glove. “Give it to me.”
This time, he takes a discarded nursery container and pinches out white-flecked potting soil. He drops it in the water like a chef seasoning too heavily.
“It’s going to be mud soon,” he says. “If you aren’t naked.”
“Where’s my father?” I squeak without spit. “Did he give you what you want?”
“Haven’t spoken to him since the car.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“We tried. He won’t negotiate with outsiders… so… take off all your fucking clothes.”
I do everything I can not to keep from crying as I lower my white lace underpants and slip out of my matching bra, hands shaking the entire time. I leave the gloves and garter, hoping they’re beside the point.
“I know what you’re hiding in your glove. You’re not going to kill me with a broken flowerpot.”
“It wasn’t for you.”
He nods with understanding but not compassion, as if knowing suicide is on the table adds to a data point and no more, then flicks his finger at me. I peel off the gloves. The shard clatters to the floor. I am now naked except for one thing.
“The garter.”
“Not that.” I ball my hands into fists and look at the floor. “Please.”
He says nothing. I can’t see him, so I let myself hope that he’s considering letting me keep this one strip of fabric and elastic that’s tying me to this earth, to my identity, to the one person who loved me like no other. Maybe he’ll find it arousing.
I’ll risk it, even embrace it, for that glass of cloudy water.
The sound of a plop and a splash catches my attention, and I look up to see him slowly pouring a thin line of water onto the tile.
With a gasp, thoughts of my mother are gone, and I rip off the garter before I lose another precious drop, throwing it at his feet.
“There,” I say, finally bare before him, exposed as I have never been before a man.
My breath skips, and I finally cry, but I don’t have enough water in my body to make tears or snot over this destroyed moment—the first time a man’s eyes see my skin, my nipples, my utter vulnerability.
The moment I took that dress off was supposed to be one of the most beautiful of my life. Instead, it is a violation.
He isn’t satisfied yet though.
“Stay still,” he commands.
He walks behind me, hovering for a moment before grabbing my hair and yanking it back so that I’m gazing up into the camera’s merciless eye.
“Can you imagine how good it will feel,” he murmurs, his breath hot against my neck, “when I let you drink?” He lays his other hand under my chin and slides it down as he speaks. “That cold, sweet water sliding down your throat?”
I nod helplessly, gulping what feels like a lump of garden pebbles.
“Even with a little dirt, a little dust, you’ll take it all down, won’t you? You’re just about ready to beg for it.”
“I’ll beg,” I agree with a voice I don’t recognize. “I’ll do it.”
“You need it,” he says, and I can feel the cruelty of the smile in his voice.
“Please,” I whisper. “Please… please…”
“Say it for the camera.”
Who’s on the other side? His boss? My family? The entire world?
“Please give it to me.”
“Let me swallow it,” he whispers thickly. “Beg.”
“Let… let me swallow it all. Please.”
“I know what your body needs. And what you’ll do to get it.”
And then, just as abruptly as he’d grabbed me, he spins me around so that I’m facing him and he pushes me to my knees.
“This will go much easier for you if you play along,” he murmurs.
I’m so weak and dizzy I almost tip over before he pulls me up by the hair on top of my head.
“Steady, principessa.” With his free hand, he opens the fly of his pants, exposing the thick bulge beneath cotton underwear.
He’s going to take it out and force me to taste his cock. Take it down my throat. Swallow his come.
I’ve spent my life waiting for this, and I don’t want it this way… but I want it. My body aches to just give up, taste whatever he puts on my tongue. I look up at him, offering whatever he’s willing to take as long as he gives me something to drink.
But he does not release his erection.
Instead, he pulls my head into his crotch. The fabric is damp on my lips, heavy and musty on my nose as he grinds into my face. And he’s hard. So hard. He forces the shape of his shaft along the opening between my lips, and I taste no more than an essence of him… but it’s enough. My clit fills and drops, weighted by a constant, brutal pulse of arousal that’s timed to the way he pushes into my face, holding my head still.
My hands steady me against his thighs, then pull him closer.
I want it.
I surrender.
I’ll suck him for water or a glass of sand.
Why is he keeping it behind his clothes?
“Yes,” he growls, putting both hands behind my head and pushing me into his crotch so hard his erection feels like stone on my chin.
I put out my tongue, licking the damp fabric. He stops for a moment. His growl turns into a gasp, and the clothed organ against me pulses. A warm wetness gathers at my cheek.
Then he lets me go, and I fall back on my hands, gasping as I notice the thick wet stain where he came as I licked him.
“Okay,” he says, zipping up. He’s bored again, casual as he hands the glass to me by the top. “You can drink now.”
I do. I am shameless and desperate. I hold it with both hands and savor every drop, dirt and all.
He leaves before I finish, apparently not interested in watching me debase myself further.
I lie naked where he left me, legs in the letter K, bare skin on cold tile, the empty glass a few inches from my hand, watching the clouds form in the grid above me.
The door clicks and whooshes open. The room spins when I bolt to a sitting position. A tray of food, accompanied by a whole pitcher of water, is pushed across the threshold.
The door claps shut again, and the deadbolt is smacked home.
I glance at the camera. He’s watching. He has to be.
I should stand up and walk like a human, but by the time I finish making that decision, I’m already crawling on my hands and knees like an animal.
The tray contains a plastic clamshell with a sandwich inside—pink meat spills from a circle of bread split into a pocket. Hushing the raging hunger for a moment, I peek into the pocket and find cheese and the familiarity of mayonnaise. A pink container of yogurt proudly proclaims—next to a bulbous strawberry—that it has REAL FRUIT inside.
I rip it open, ready to suck it down, but I stop.
I stand carefully, my head still swimming not just from my hunger and thirst and poor night’s sleep, but from what just happened. I walk over to my discarded pile of garments and put them on again: the underwear and bra, the ruined dress, my shoes—one close by and one under the camera. I slide the garter up my leg.
I leave the gloves and shard.
Then I put the tray on the counter, right a white plastic chair that matches the one on the roof, and—dressed in silk garments that were once a hopeful symbol of my purity but are now nothing more than a painful, ridiculous reminder of everything I have lost—I hydrate and nourish myself, dreaming of the day I escape the man named Dario with shadow eyes and an empty heart.
Chapter 8
Sarah
The crippling fear that had gripped me gives way to a constant, numbing unease, a prickling that won’t quite leave my skin. I wonder how long it will take to make my isolation unremarkable.
I sleep deeply that night, too exhausted for anything else, but I wake with the sunrise and spend the day pacing circles around the greenhouse, looking for something—anything, really. A clue. An escape hatch. A needle and thread so I can turn this ridiculous gown into something practical. I read the instructions on the back of the bag of potting soil, hoping that whoever’s on the other side of the camera will take the hint and deliver a book, but they don’t.
Mostly though, I watch the human specks on the slices of street I can see. The klatches of smokers on balconies. The cars crawling along the rivulet avenues. Airplanes. A light on the twenty-third floor of a building on 38th Street flicking off. The ferries crossing the Hudson like loose teeth in a watery mouth.
The rest of the world is so close—and completely untouchable.
People. Outsiders. Doing things. Going places. Worrying. Dreaming. Thinking thoughts. All while I watch from above, wondering what their lives are like.
And wonder.
And wonder as if for the first time, but it’s not. From my sheltered life, I’ve always wondered, and now I’m in a glass tower, ignorant but still harboring curiosities that will never be satisfied.
Inside the walls that kept the city’s chaos at bay, I was happy. I knew who I was and what I was intended for, even if I was curious about the things I saw in store windows or snatches of conversation I overheard. Now I’m stranger to the world, imagining a life outside a box that’s landed on a planet I’ve only seen through a telescope.
The cloud-cloaked sun sits at the top of the sky when there’s a knock at the door. The noise doesn’t startle me as much as the courtesy. Would Dario knock before raping or killing me?
I hear murmurs behind the door. Two men. I creep up to listen.
“She’s not gonna be, like, ‘Come on in, guys.’”
“What am I supposed to do? Bust in? What if she’s on the pot or something”
Neither one is Dario.
