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“No reason. I’m sure it’s nothing.”
I check the time on the dash. “I have to go.”
She rests her hip against the car door as though she doesn’t plan on going anywhere anytime soon. “Call and tell them you can’t come in after all. I have plans for us.”
“I just told them I’m on my way.”
“So. Call and say your car won’t start.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Sure you can.” She backs away, slowly at first, before coming at me full force. I can only watch as she leans her skinny little frame through the window and reaches all the way down until her fingertips brush the lever to the hood. Somehow she manages to pull it, and then she is walking around the car and I am following, and she is disconnecting my battery wire.
I should stop her. I should say something. But what? Considering that whatever I might say could land me in the hospital with broken limbs tomorrow or worse, six feet under? It’s not like I’m afraid, anyway. Curious, more than anything. She’s got me where she wants me, hanging by a thread.
“See?” she says, brushing her hands together. “Easy peasy.”
“Ann…I have to go.”
She shrugs. “You can try to start it if you want…”
“Ann.”
“I’ll pay you double what they’re offering.” She orders me to take my phone out. Forces me to hand it over. She dials the school. Hands the phone back to me. Stares me down while I tell them my car in fact won’t start. The words come out easier than I expect with her standing there. It helps, she says, that it isn’t a lie.
“Now,” she says motioning at me once I’ve ended the call. “Now, we get to it.”
All I can do is stare. I’ve never met anyone like her, and it has just occurred to me that I probably never will again. She shakes her head in disbelief. “Are you excited?” she demands. “You don’t look excited.”
“I’m—”
“Whatever. It doesn’t matter. We have a lot of work to do.” She starts down the lane toward her house.
I slam the hood and then follow. “What kind of work?”
Ann doesn’t answer me at first. In fact, I’m pretty sure she picks up pace. “So. Much. Work,” she says. I realize my questions are pointless. I realize what Ann wants, Ann gets.
Ann knows this, so I know this.
ANN LEADS me into her home, into her office, into the belly of her life. She pulls out a chair, motions for me to sit and then she situates another chair so that she’s facing me, our knees nearly touching. “We’ve been intimate,” she says. “And, now, I would like to take things one step further. I think it’s time.”
My eyes widen.
She leans forward slightly. I’m thinking I haven’t yet had enough coffee to make for a satisfying sexual encounter, but I’m willing to give it a shot when Ann says, “I need to know that I can trust you, Sadie. I need to know that you want this too.”
How can I say this? It would be a big, fat lie. I don’t know what I want. My whole life is up in the air. This doesn’t stop me from nodding anyway and telling her she can trust me.
“I’m not going to lie to you,” Ann tells me. “You are not the first woman I have loved.”
My teeth grind together. Whatever it takes to keep a straight face. “But I’m really hoping you can be the last.”
“Me too,” I say and it isn’t a lie. It’s cold-hearted, unfortunate truth. To imagine her saying these words to anyone else, to imagine anyone else getting this close to her makes me feel a little bit sick.
Ann smiles. She leans forward and kisses me hard and rough, and then she pulls away and tells me there’s more where that came from, but first, we have to change lives. She places a phone in my hand. She tells me she needs help on the suicide line.
She gives me instructions on what to do. She says to keep the caller talking. She gives me a list of questions to ask. Name, age, occupation…lifestyle questions. She says not to worry about remembering all of the answers. She says the calls are recorded because it’s important to listen between the lines. We practice on each other, each of us taking turns being the one who wants to end it all. She says I’ll sound more natural if it doesn’t sound like I’m reading from a script. She says it’s what sets her hotline apart from all of the official ones. I don’t ask what she means. There isn’t time. The phone rings. And it rings and it rings.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
