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I peeled back the cheesy old linoleum and opened up the trapdoor. She was staring up at me with a face that had been pale before I threw her down there. Three days in a dungeon had not given her a tan. She didn’t look desperate or scared or anything like that. More like, resigned. Like, okay, fine, if this is how it is, if this is what I got to do—fine.
“I figured out who you are,” she said.
“How?”
She shrugged. “A job I had a while ago,” she said.
“That doesn’t get you out of the hole,” I said. Corny, I know, but I was feeling it.
“You let me outa here if I talk?” she asked me.
“Depends what you say,” I told her. “I mean, I haven’t had coffee yet, so it’d have to be pretty good.”
She nodded. “It is,” she said. “Better than good.”
I looked at her. She looked back.
“All right,” I said. “Talk.”
She did. And she was right. It was better than good.
* * *
—
After half an hour, with a short pause to get my coffee, she had just about talked her fill. I told her I needed to think about it and sealed her back in again. She didn’t whine or complain, just took it. That told me a lot right there. Like, she probably was the pro she said she was. Anyway, it was a pro’s attitude.
I got more coffee and took it out on the porch. I sipped and I thought. That helped get my brain back online. One of the first things I thought was that everything she said added up. I believed her.
The second thing I thought was that the cut on my finger still hurt. I looked at it. I’d forgotten to bandage it, but at least the bleeding had stopped. I went in and got out my first aid kit. I put a bandage on my finger and went to throw away the wrapper. On top of the trash was the milk carton and the stupid fucking plastic thing that had cut me. I decided I hated plastic forever.
I went back out and sat on my porch, looked out at the lake. It didn’t look back. Didn’t do much at all. Just sat there being all wet and lakey. That was no help. Nothing was. I was stuck like I’d never been stuck before. Too many odd angles and moving parts, and no way to get them all to line up and go to work.
And now this woman I had in my basement. One more moving part, and I didn’t know what to do with any of them, let alone something like her that knew who I was and what I looked like and all that terrible stuff. And I didn’t even want to think about it, because I couldn’t see any way she could help me steal a wall.
I had thought of plenty of ways to steal a wall. I could dig out around the base and blast, then haul it away with a big helicopter. Or I could load it onto a big flatbed truck. Shit, I could just put wheels on the whole damn wall and push it all the way up the peninsula, over the Alps, and on to Marseilles. Stealing a wall was not the real problem. It could be done, lots of ways. None of the ways I could think of would work if you wanted to steal a wall without anybody noticing.
And having a dumpy woman with too many fake tattoos in my basement didn’t help. Worse than that, it was embarrassing. What’s that in your basement, Riley? Oh, that? Just a woman that, you know. I felt like keeping for a while? Oh, okay—um, why?
Good question. I still wasn’t sure why. And on top of everything else, I couldn’t help thinking—What would Mom say?
* * *
—
Somethin’ eatin’ at you, J.R.?”
I jumped. I didn’t see or hear Mom coming. And I’d been sitting on the crappy, rotting top step of our double-wide, just staring at my shoes, because yeah, something was eating at me.
Mom laughed. She had a truly great laugh, not all kittenish or shy or cover-your-mouth-and-go-tee-hee. When Mom laughed, she really let go, a big, loud, half-wild sound that made you want to laugh along with her. “Oh, my,” she said, when she stopped laughing to take a breath. “I guess I gave you a start, J.R. The way you jumped—!” And she was off again, until I almost joined in.
Except I was really in no mood to laugh. And because I was sixteen, the fact that I felt a little bit like doing it anyway pissed me off. “Cut it out,” I said. “And don’t call me that—I’m Riley now. You know that.”
She stopped laughing, but she kept a smile on her face. “Yes, I do know that, son,” she said. “But you’re always going to be J.R. to me.” She held up a hand to cut off the snarky remark I was about to make. “I know, it’s Riley. I’m not going to call you J.R. where anybody can hear me.” She put a hand on me and just smiled for a moment. “And now, I believe there was an open question on the floor? Somethin’ eatin’ at you . . . Riley?”
She gave my name an unnatural emphasis, just so I’d know she was still playing with me, but I let it go. “Yeah,” I said. And then I didn’t say anything because, like I said, I was sixteen.
Mom waited for me to speak. When I didn’t, she finally said, “Well, you want to tell me? Maybe I can help?”
