Crescent City Connection

she drank it.
    Especially since she was desperate to pee.
    She scratched her face with her finger, just to see if she could get it to work. It was fine. She grabbed a hunk of her T-shirt at the hem, and wadded it up. Feeling or not, her fingers worked.
    She looked around the room and saw something that heartened her—a Jack Daniel’s bottle on the nightstand, about a third empty, and a glass with some amber liquid still in it. He had probably watched television, drinking, until he fell asleep.
    Whew. I must have really been out.
    She hoped he was now. She thought perhaps she had a chance, in fact she was pretty sure she did, if she could just work the tape off gradually, so that it didn’t make a tearing sound.
    She worked on her hands first, with her teeth, but she couldn’t get any purchase and gave it up.
    She turned on her side and got into as tight a fetal position as she could, hands as close to her feet as possible. Almost immediately, she found the end of the ankle tape.
    Painstakingly, she peeled it, despising the very action, with its minute hopeless movements, despising her fear as well.
    Her hatred of it, in fact her total concentration, served to displace the fear and hopelessness that surfaced in flashes now and then. If she just peeled, peeled, peeled, slowly, slowly, slowly, she couldn’t really think of anything else.
    Peel, peel, peel. Try not to let the springs squeak. Don’t rustle the covers.
    Except for cooking, which she adored, Lovelace loathed little delicate hand chores. She hadn’t the patience of a monkey. She had stopped her piano lessons because practicing was tedious, never could learn to knit or sew because the tiny hand movements frustrated her so badly.
    And now she was condemned to a life of peeling mother-fucking duct tape nearly upside down in a Motel Six in … where?
    Right now it really didn’t matter.
    The tape was off.
    Should she try to get it off her hands? No. Massage feet.
    She tried, but couldn’t do it without shaking the bed. The kidnapper stirred a little.
    Okay, then. Go back to getting the wrist bonds off.
    She chewed at them while feeling returned to her feet, but in the end got nowhere. All she had to do, really, was get off the bed, walk quietly to the door, open it, and go to the manager’s office.
    No, she couldn’t do that. Even her bound hands wouldn’t get her out of this.
    Okay. Open the door and run like hell.
    She hoped that, wherever she was, it wasn’t too cold out there.
    Okay, this is it.
    She still lay there.
    In the end she didn’t have the courage just to sit up, swing her legs off the bed, and split.
    Instead she did it inch by inch, slithering to the edge of the bed and then lowering her legs. She had to do it slowly, let them unkink themselves—in the end, slow and steady might win, no matter how much it got on her nerves.
    She slid off the bed, and the mattress did creak, there was nothing she could do about it, but the man moved at the same time, turned over or something, so the sound was masked.
    She hadn’t really planned it this way, but it seemed easier to stay on the floor, simply to crawl to the door.
    Good. This way she could use the door to brace herself as she stood for the first time. That was lucky—she was a bit unsteady on her pins.
    She worked the chain lock out of its mooring.
    Bingo, that was all there was to it. She opened the door and slipped out.
    No way to avoid that telltale click, though. A car was pulling into the parking lot—if she left the door open, the noise might wake him.
    She closed it and started running. Almost immediately, he was out the door, after her.
    Damn!
    She had to play it out. She was in the light now, and held up her hands, so anyone, surely the person in the car, could see her bound hands. She yelled as loud as she could, “Help! He’s going to kill me. Somebody help me.”
    The car, which had found a spot, reversed, turned, and sped out so fast it nearly knocked Lovelace over, and did hit her pursuer, who rolled over the hood and fell on the asphalt.
    The driver leaned back, opened the back door, and said, “Get in. Quick.”
    She did and he peeled out of there.
    He was young and he wasn’t alone. He was very young, in fact younger than she. The girl in the front seat looked about sixteen. Her back was glued to the seat and she stared rigidly ahead. They were on open highway now, burning rubber.
    The boy looked like Woody Woodpecker. He had a shock of red hair, thick and wild,