The Scent of the Blueberry -- 9

Slowly, Evelyn came out of her reverie but, as she did, she began to realize that something was wrong. Her leg, yes, her right leg, seemed heavy and cold. Not like “pins and needles” – not like you feel when you’ve been lying on your arm and can’t move it anymore. She could move it – but it was somehow heavy. But she wasn’t prepared for what she saw when she opened her eyes.

There was a thick metal ring or bracelet of some sort, almost like a single handcuff, around her right ankle. She could indeed move the leg freely but, judging from the length of chain that seemed to attach it to the bed, she didn’t have more than a foot or two of slack to play with.

Mentally, she ran a quick check of herself. She was in her own bedroom – a usually safe place. And she didn’t seem to be restrained in any additional way. She was wearing the clothes she had worn earlier that evening – she had no sense of having been molested or hurt. But she was chained to her own bed. Huh?

Michel. What about Michel? He had been making the phone call, there was the tea and the smell of blueberries. Where was Michel? Was he OK? She really didn’t know much about him – with all the scars, had he been somehow involved with some people who had put her out of the way so they could do something to him? Or. . . was he the cause? Was he just another guy like the jerk – or the bastard. Did he want to rob her? Of what – a TV? She didn’t have much else. . . blueberry tea. . . or did he have some kind of weird, sick ideas in mind? She remembered the scars again, and shuddered. Who the hell was Allen, anyway?

And then she realized that her room had acquired a new piece of furniture. Over in the far corner, Evelyn squinted to see it, yes – it was definitely a portable toilet. Evelyn knew that she had accumulated a certain amount of junk, but she knew damn well that she did not own a portable toilet. Correction, she thought – she did now. And she wondered whether its presence implied an extended stay. Maybe it meant that no one was going to hurt her. But it also seemed to suggest that this whole chain of events had been planned – and Evelyn definitely didn’t like that idea at all.

In any event, Evelyn had to decide whether to play the one card that she thought she might have. Unless her captor had a hidden camcorder somewhere in the room, he (or maybe she?) didn’t know that Evelyn was awake yet. With her foot firmly attached to the bed, she wasn’t sure how she could convert that advantage in information into something more concrete. The question was: Should she call out in the hope of being heard – maybe even rescued? Or would that make the invisible captor(s) angry? And wasn’t that kind of obvious – what kind of stupid captor would go to this much trouble, and totally overlook the possibility of her screaming? But, then again, how else was she going to get any answers to her questions about her predicament? Maybe it wasn’t so bad. They hadn’t hurt her – maybe she could talk to them, assuming that no one heard her scream and rescued her. Certainly no one could blame her for trying.

So Evelyn opened her mouth and screamed – loudly. Unfortunately, the sound that came out of her mouth was not nearly as loud as she had intended. Actually, it sounded more like a croak. So that’s why they’re not worried about a rescue, she concluded. However, it did attract someone else’s attention.

Michel – yes, Michel walked though the door, carrying a tray of sandwiches and water. He didn’t seem injured, or in captivity – he seemed perfectly fine. “Are you feeling OK? Hungry?”

Evelyn censored the obvious response, “Just peachy-keen, you shithead! Get this fucking bracelet off my ankle before I get really pissed!” No, that didn’t seem like a good idea. What had that cop said on TV that time? “You have to connect with him. He sees you as an object. Get him to see you as another human being. Empathy.” (On the other hand, it could’ve been a quote from “Silence of the Lambs.”) Anyway, it sounded like a plan. Maybe she’d even recover her voice in the meantime.

Evelyn cleared her throat and croaked, “Michel. We have to talk – please have a seat. . . not there”, she said as he went to sit on the bed with her. “Over there, on the chair, please.”

“I realize that you must have a million questions, and I wanted to assure you that my intentions are totally honorable,” Michel said, as he sat on the indicated chair.

Did he actually say, “totally honorable”? But Evelyn let it pass – she had an agenda.

“Look at me – please Michel. Now I realize that you’ve met me 2 times in the past. The first time I was naked in front of a group of people and the second time I was half drunk in a bar. Now I realize that first impressions do count for a lot, but I just wanted to tell you that, well, I’m not just that.” Her voice remained steady even though still a croak. “What I mean is, I know I’m not perfect but, you see that picture on the dresser over there?” Michel glanced in the indicated direction, looked back at her, and nodded.

“Well, that’s a picture of my sister, Karen and my mother. Karen is the person who wrote the letter to me – the one I retrieved from the mailbox.” Michel nodded.

So far, so good. No outbursts, no violence. Evelyn took a deep breath and continued.

“Michel, these people love me. They don’t see me as something that people draw, or as something that absorbs alcohol. They see me as a person, a real person – just like you. And Michel, I love them. A lot. They mean everything to me. And he’s not in the picture, but there’s a dog, too. A lab, a black lab named Rex. Kind of a common name for a dog, I know, but he loves me, too.”

“And Michel, I have hopes – hopes and dreams of my own. I know that I probably didn’t sound like I had much going for me in the bar but, even though you know that things didn’t work out the first time, someday I want to meet the right guy and have a family. And a career, too – maybe not the President of the United States, but I think that I can do some good in this world. For somebody. Deep down inside, is that so different from what everyone wants? Is that so different from what you want? Michel, are we really that different?”

Michel exhaled, looked at her, and in a quite voice said, “Evelyn. You have no idea how different we are from each other.”

“Look,” he continued, as her heart sank. “I’m sure that a million things are going through your head right now. I realize that you have absolutely no reason to believe me about anything. About the only thing that I can assure you of right now is that I have no desire, and absolutely no intention, of hurting you. Not going to happen. But, you see, if I had just come to you out of the blue and told you that you were in danger, that you had to trust me, that I had to keep you out of sight for a while, you would have thought that I was totally crazy. Dangerously crazy. Right?”

Exactly what I think now, she thought.

“Probably exactly what you think now,” Michel said. “But my job is to protect you. That’s all I want to do."

“Protect me? From myself? Michel, who’s going to protect me from you?! You’ve got me chained to the bed! Do you realize how many years in prison that would buy you?” Evelyn regretted those words the moment she’s blurted them out. “Look, nobody’s been hurt, right? Just let me go, and we can write all of this off as a bad dream. Believe me, I’ve had more than my share of bad dreams lately. What’s one more?”

“Sorry, no can do. Look, I've got to go out for a while. I’ve given you a portable toilet – I’ll move it over by your bed. You have food and water on the bureau. There’s nobody else around, so you’ll have plenty of privacy. And don’t worry about your voice. As you’ve probably already figured out, it’s related to the blueberry scent – it should be back to normal in about 12 hours.”

“Michel, please. Anything that’s in the apartment. Take it – it’s yours.”

“You weren’t listening. It’s about protecting you – think of it as a kind of protective custody. Anybody who wants to hurt you is going to have to come through me.”

“You said you’re going out? ‘Through you’, but you won’t even be here. What if there’s a fire? You say you want to protect me but, if there’s a fire, I’d never get out of here alive.”

Michel paused. “That’s true, but, I hate to alarm you, but the possibility of fire is the least of your concerns. Trust me. The least of your concerns.”

“Michel, this isn’t about the abortion, is it? This isn’t about, somehow, trying to punish me for doing that, is it?” But she didn’t say that – she didn’t want to know the answer.

And then he was gone. Dammit. She hadn’t even had a chance to ask him how she was supposed to get to her job at the store in the morning. She supposed, though, that that really was the least of her concerns.

She wasn’t giving birth to a baby – the doctor was pulling it out of her. He almost had it out – but the baby had grabbed on to her and was holding on by his fingertips. He looked down and the baby looked back at her – old and bearded, with rotting teeth. He opened his mouth to scream, but only formed a soundless word with his lips as he stared at her. “Why?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”