To start at the beginning go here.
There wasn’t a lot of room in the trunk (‘coffre’) with whatever equipment Alon kept in the back. Laying across his tools and spare tire wasn’t comfortable, either, poking me in my new bruises. This kept me from passing the time in an easy stupor.
I wasn’t exactly conscious either. Closed, the trunk plunged into absolute darkness. Only red blobs moving across the abyss created any contrast on the landscape. Occasionally, I reached out to touch the lid to make sure it was still there and to remind myself where I was. At random intervals I moved, causing the metal lumps of whatever I was lying on to jab me in different spots, providing a tactile foil to the trunk’s empty sky. A part of me thought I could hear the ocean, but that didn’t seem right.
I laid there like that, broken on the rocks of Alon’s auto tools, until I felt something soft press against me, so soft it like lying with a house cat, but then it was full there, a body sharing the space, balled up with me in that tiny trunk. I craned my neck down and felt my chin encounter hair and I took a deep breath. I knew I was in trouble then, the scent of Cheryl coming into my nose. And it wasn’t the bitter, chemical tang of chemotherapy coming out of her pores, the smell of those last, final days. It was just the simple odor of a woman who had never cared too much about perfumes or daily bathing. I hooked an arm around where I thought she might be to pull her close, feeling her breasts and belly and hips press against me, the full shape of a woman and not the wasted bones that she was in the end. I pulled her tighter to hear the tiny exhalation of breath she had always given when I had pressed her just a little too hard. My own breath hitched, and tears of what might have been relief cooled my cheeks and I said quietly into the dark, “I must be dying.”
From somewhere in the night, as her body drained away, with that uncanny exasperation she always used when I was being excessively pessimistic, I heard her say, “You’re not dying, you idiot. But you need to stay awake.”
Then the dark of that dream was replaced with the impenetrable darkness of the trunk. She’s right, I thought, like she was alive and had just stepped away to tend her garden or call a friend. I might be contused.
I shook my head, which resulted in an ache that signaled what a poor idea that was. Instead of repeating that I tried to stay conscious by mentally shuffling through the pieces that I had: Atwell with his American ambitions, Sartre wanting to stay on top, Mitnick hiding so many things behind each tooth of his smile. At least one of those things was a young brunette who might or might not be tied to the Corsican, and another Russian (Ukrainian, right) who he should care about being dead, but was pretending that he didn’t.
I pawed through those thoughts in the numbness of my brain until I heard a voice. I tensed, uncertain at first. I tuned my ears in, trying to collapse the possibility of hallucination by finding a constant signal. I became somewhat certain it was Alon, then heard a voice that was most certainly feminine. There were a few others, followed by the hollow sound of doors opening, the creak of suspension and the engine’s ignition. I moved around, suspending a groan – I didn’t want to give them a reason to stop and ask about the trunk. I didn’t know if Alon had told them I was there. He seemed a cagey figure and might not have mentioned it, and I just wanted to get out.
The basket ride down to hell is probably more comfortable than the drive down the mountains in that trunk. The shifting of the car on the curve’s and descents moved me constantly, putting me into new and interesting stress positions the Israelis would be proud to invent. I hoped I wasn’t bleeding on Alon’s tools.
Eventually the car leveled out and the rhythm of the tires became that of the irregular concrete of the city’s outskirts. I breathed a sigh of relief that we wouldn’t have to cross the cobblestones of Old Town. Everything hurt and moving only caused one muscle to pull on others. I think I gasped for air like a man coming out of the water when the trunk popped open.
To read the previous chapter, go here.
To read the next chapter, go here.
See the author’s published work here.
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