The Scent of the Blueberry -- 12

But the sun was beginning to come through Evelyn’s window, and the glare from the reflection from the new snow promised a particularly bright day. Today was not a day for training, not a day for self-flagellation – it was show-time. But first Michel had to talk to Evelyn – and he was not looking forward to delivering the message that had been Allen’s to deliver. He would have preferred the self-flagellation.

Evelyn was awake – she turned her head toward him as he walked into the bedroom.

“Ah, I see you’re awake.” A brilliant opening gambit, Michel thought sarcastically. Might as well have said, “Nice day, huh?”

“Michel, we both know that this can’t go on.” Her voice hadn’t recovered yet, Michel noted.

“I’ve been thinking about this, Michel. I mean, I’ve had a lot of time to just lie here, and I’ve been thinking about this a lot.”

“The way I see it – and you can tell me if I’m wrong – well, I don’t know what you had planned, but I’m guessing that, whatever it was, it hasn’t happened. Or, at least, it hasn’t gone the way you had originally planned. I mean, you seem like a reasonably intelligent guy, and it just doesn’t seem too likely that you would do this to me, then just leave me chained to a bed indefinitely. There must have been more to the plan than that – something more than re-carpeting my bedroom,” she said, indicating the rug that still remained at the side of the room. “Here’s my proposition – not just think about it for a second before you answer. No one has been hurt yet, right? I mean, I have been inconvenienced a bit, I know that, you know that, but I’m willing to let bygones be bygones. You release me, just let me go, and none of this ever happened. It was all a dream – gone, kaput. Over.”

“ And, be honest with yourself, now – if any of this had to do with you having any kind of, well, feelings about me, well, we can look at that. You seem like a nice enough guy. You had me in your power, and you didn’t do anything to me – you were kind of like a gentleman. If that has anything to do with it, I’m flattered. Maybe we could get to know each other a bit. Like we did that night at “The Hole”, you know? That’s how people usually do it. I wouldn’t mind that at all. I’d actually kind of like it. But this isn’t the way to do it. You know it, I know it, and I know,” she looked him right in the eye, "I know that you know it. So what do you say?”

It was a nice speech, carefully rehearsed and eloquently presented, Michel thought. Too bad it was total bullshit. And too bad that I don’t have a correspondingly rehearsed and eloquent response. Guess I’d better cut to the chase. Allen would never have done that, but I’m not Allen.

“Evelyn, do you remember yesterday when I told you about your being in danger, and that I was going to protect you?”

Evelyn hesitated for a heartbeat, then swallowed and nodded.

“Well, I’m going to show you what I mean.” Michel walked to the rug and unfurled it. Allen’s bound and lifeless body rolled onto the floor, coming to rest face-up and staring at the ceiling. At least, it would have been staring at the ceiling if the eyeballs had remained in their sockets. The corpse was also missing the nose and both ears, while the pants and underpants had both been lowered to Allen’s bound knees with the apparent intent of facilitating the amputation of the penis and scrotum. Michel’s eyes never left Evelyn’s face.

Evelyn stuffed almost her entire hand into her open mouth and shrank to the opposite side of the bed.

Michel said, “I really didn’t want to show you this – but I had to. I had to show you to convince you that this isn’t a game – that I’m serious when I say that you need my protection. This is Allen – or was Allen, at any rate. He was the one who was supposed to take care of you from here – but they found out where he lived. Do you remember the Jerk in the bar?”

Evelyn nodded wordlessly.

“Well, after he left I noticed that I was missing a small slip of paper from my pocket. Allen’s new address was written on the paper. Now I doubt that he told them anything – Allen was trained to the point where he could resist just about any kind of short-term torture – but, if these people found us, I think that the results would probably be equally unpleasant.”

“Equally unpleasant? The guy is practically. . .” – her voice trailed off into a croak.

Michel leaned forward to close the deal. “Evelyn, I’m going to do exactly what you asked me to do. I’m going to release you. But here’s the thing – these guys can find you. The cops can’t help you on this. I’m the only one who can deal with these people. I can protect you. But you’ve got to trust me. You have to come with me and stick close. Like you say, I haven’t hurt you, and I have no intention of ever hurting you. I promise to explain more of this as we go along – we just don’t have time now – but I will tell you that I have been training for this task. I’ve taken these people on before, and I swear to you that I’ve come out on top. But I need you to trust me. I knew Allen for a very long time, and I don’t want to lose two of you like this.”

Michel studied her eyes and reminded himself to breathe. Whatever else he had said, he knew that he had no intention of releasing her unless she was willing to go with him. Refusal would have meant that Michel would have had to go to Plan B -- and there was no Plan B. He only knew that failure of a Level 5 operation, his Level 5 operation, was totally inconceivable.

Evelyn swallowed and nodded. “What do I have to do?”

“I’ll unlock the manacles. You should just take a few minutes to grab a quick breakfast and put a few clothes and some food into a backpack. It’s likely to be a little cold where we’re headed.” She nodded.

Michel produced a key. “You’ve made the right decision. Just do everything I say, and everything will be fine.”

Forty-five minutes later, Michel was still waiting impatiently while he heard the shower running in the bathroom. He sighed. He was pretty sure that Allen hadn’t talked – hadn’t revealed their location, but was also fully aware of his opponent’s resourcefulness. I mean, it’s not like we’re going to the prom, or something. Let’s go!

Ten minutes later Evelyn came out of the bathroom wearing a white bathrobe and brushing her long hair with a large bath towel. “Okay, I know that we’re in a hurry,” she said. “But I just felt so grimey. I promise not to hold us up on the road. Where did you say we’re going?”

“I didn’t,” Michel said.

“No, I guess you didn’t. Please turn around so I can get dressed.”

But Michel had no reason to trust her yet. “I don’t have to turn around. I saw you for 3 hours that night with your clothes off.”

Evelyn looked surprised. “That was different. Don’t you understand how that was different?” She paused. “Oh well, I suppose it’s better if you don’t understand. How do I explain all of this to my boss at the department store?”

“If we don’t get out of here soon, you won’t have to explain it to them. They’ll see you on the evening news – and you’ll look a lot like Allen.”

Evelyn shuddered. “But what about Allen? What do we do with him?”

“He’ll be okay here for the time being. We really don’t have too much choice – anything that we did with the body right now would slow us down too much. Besides, it’s only his body – his spirit is elsewhere.”

“Hmm, are you religious?”

“You might say so.”

There was something too calm about Evelyn, Michel thought. Like she didn’t really believe that she was in danger, or that Allen’s body was a real body, or that any of this was real. It reminded Michel of certain adventure shows he had seen when he was a kid – when the hero or heroine had been captured by the bad guys but, even though they were in mortal danger, they still were capable of witty repartee with the head bad guy. Either they had ice water in their veins, Michel had thought, or they had already seen the script – and known that it all turned out right in the end. Well, he thought that Evelyn was a perfectly regular human female being – with blood, rather than ice water, in her veins – and was reasonably certain that she hadn’t read the script – since there was no script. One possible explanation was that she had not really bought Michel’s story and would attempt to escape at the first reasonable opportunity. Or it was possible that she was clinically depressed – that the aftermath of the abortion had left her unable to feel or, at any rate, express her feelings in a normal way?

Michel would never have the opportunity to discover whether depression was part of the explanation, but the deception was definitely a factor. Evelyn made her escape attempt when she first set foot outside the door, racing off down the sidewalk and yelling “Help!” as loudly as possible. Michel’s eyes flashed with anger – the stupid idiot might as well send an engraved invitation to his Adversary – but was relieved when she almost immediately slipped on the ice and fell on the sidewalk – cracking her head on the side of a trash receptacle. Momentarily dazed, she didn’t resist as Michel picked her off the sidewalk and carried her off to the car that he had rented for the occasion. As she revived, she wondered sleepily why a new car smell should so closely resemble the scent of blueberries – and fell back into unconsciousness.