Mean Woman Blues

her. And that it was the only thing she could do. So she breathed, focusing on each breath, trying not to think, just to stay alive.
    And, finally, the car stopped. She heard Earl get out, slam the door, and walk away. Fleetingly, it occurred to her to make throat noises to attract his attention, but she knew it was a bad idea. Better he should think she was still unconscious— or dead.
    Coming out of the breathing-trance was like waking up a second time; only this time she wasn’t panicked. She was furious.
    I’ve got to kill the bastard
, she realized, and wondered why she hadn’t already done it, done it when it would have been easy. In those months when she was supporting him instead, with that stupid job at her little cable station. But, hell, that was hindsight.
    Now she was going to do it. All she had to do was get out of here. She started kicking and felt a large metal object. It dawned on her that it was Todd’s gas can. She was in Todd’s car! It was the gas he kept for his stupid boat. This was good; the car had an escape button, in case you got locked in the trunk. Earl must have realized that. He was a maniac for details. He must have thought she couldn’t get to the button with her wrists bound. And she probably couldn’t. She didn’t even know where it was, needed her fingers to poke around for it. So she’d have to get the tape off. It
was
tape, wasn’t it? It seemed to her that it was; wire or rope wouldn’t be so wide or so tight against her skin. She’d have more wiggle room.
    It was a nice big trunk she was in. They’d gotten the car so Todd could haul stuff. She could maneuver in it, find the jack or something, get to a taillight maybe, break it…
    Wait a minute. She was wearing her watch. Perhaps she could break the crystal, use it to saw through the tape. She slammed her hands against the floor of the trunk.
    No. The angle was wrong. She couldn’t even feel the watch, couldn’t know if she’d cracked the glass.
    She started moving, slowly, her limbs hurting from the confinement. Her feet hit something. Could you die of gas fumes? Or, maybe, with all that heat, could you burn up from spontaneous combustion? Maybe she’d be barbecued in her own little oven. The panic started rising again.
    Again, she breathed, moving her head, trying to straighten out. And she felt something else. But what? She’d have to use the top of her head like fingers, depend on it to tell her what she was feeling.
    She rocked her head back and forth on the object, like a kid playing some stupid game with a pillow, finally easing her neck on top of the object. That was better. Her neck could differentiate textures.
    It felt like some kind of rope, something coiled up. But harder than rope, something with less give. She kept moving until she felt metal— a long finger of metal— finger-long but fist-wide.
    She understood what the object was. It was a set of jumper cables. She tried to remember how they worked. You held them in your hand and opened them and locked them onto screws or something on the battery. And they held. She tried picturing them. Yes! They had teeth.
    Her heartbeat sped up. This could be it. But how to get them in position? Kick them there, maybe. Could she turn her whole body around? She starting working on it.
    Gradually, painfully, she flipped herself, like an embryo in a womb, using her feet for leverage, then for kicking, kicking the cables back behind her, sitting up a little, raising her head till it hit the roof and set off new waves of pain.
    She took a few moments for a few more breaths, but the air was poisonous with gas fumes. She abandoned the effort and just kicked, kicked, kicked some more. She couldn’t gauge how well she was doing; her feet were nearly numb. But she could feel the cables with her feet, feel the length of them inching up her back, feel the grip digging into her.
    She kept at it till she could feel the grip with her elbow; she pushed down on it, and to her surprise, felt it open. She needed to get her wrist into the metal jaws, but she couldn’t do it from this angle. She kept working.
    Finally she had the grip in her fingers. She opened it, tried to work her wrist in, but she couldn’t hold it. She tried again. And again. And a third time.
    Sweat poured off her. Fumes engulfed her. And finally, on the sixth try, she felt the excruciating bite of the grip. She worked it between her wrists, whimpering from the effort. And when she had it in position,