Mind Prey

heard another rattle. A chain. She hadn’t heard that before, hadn’t seen that when she was outside: he had two locks, so they couldn’t rush the door.
    “Don’t move,” he said. He was wearing jeans and an olive-colored shirt with a collar, the first time they’d seen him in anything but a T-shirt. He had two microwave meals on plastic plates, with plastic spoons. He left them on the floor and backed away.
    “Where’s Genevieve?” Andi asked, pushing herself up. She gripped her blouse button-line with her left hand. She did it unthinkingly and only noticed when she saw Mail pick it up.
    “Dropped her at the Hudson Mall,” Mail said. “Told her to find a cop.”
    “I don’t believe you,” Andi said.
    “Well, I did,” Mail said, but his eyes shifted and a black dread grew in Andi’s heart. Then: “They’ve got Davenport looking for us.”
    “Davenport?”
    “He’s a big cop in Minneapolis,” Mail said. He seemed impressed. “He writes games.”
    “Games?” She was confused.
    “Yeah, you know. War games and role-playing games, and some computer games. He’s like this rich dude now. And he’s a cop.”
    “Oh.” She put her fingertips to her lips. “I have heard of him…Do you know him?”
    “I called him,” Mail said. “I talked to him.”
    “You mean…today?”
    “About two hours ago.” He was proud of himself.
    “Did you tell him about Genevieve?”
    Again he looked away: “Nah. I called him from this Wal-Mart right after I dropped her off. He probably didn’t know about her yet.”
    Andi hadn’t fully recovered from the attack and felt less than completely sharp, but she pushed herself to understand the man, what he was saying. And she thought she saw fear or, possibly, uncertainty.
    “This Davenport…are you afraid of him?”
    “Fuck no. I’ll kick his ass,” Mail said. “He’s not gonna find us.”
    “Isn’t he supposed to be mean? Wasn’t he fired for brutality or something? Beating up a suspect?”
    “Pimp,” Mail said. “He beat up a pimp because the guy cut one of his stoolies.”
    “Doesn’t sound like somebody you’d want to challenge,” Andi suggested. “I wouldn’t think you’d want to play with him—if that’s what you’re doing.”
    “That’s sorta what I’m doing,” Mail said. He laughed, seemed lifted by the thought. Then, “I’ll see you later. Eat the food, it’s good.”
    And he was gone.
    After a moment, Grace crawled over to one of the plates, poked the food, tasted it. “It’s not very warm.”
    Andi said, “But we need it. We’ll eat it all.”
    “What if he poisoned it?”
    “He doesn’t have to poison it,” Andi said, coolly.
    Grace looked at her, then nodded. They carried the plates back to the mattress, and in a second, they were gobbling it down. Grace stopped long enough to get two cans of strawberry soda, passed one to her mother, glanced at the Porta-Potti. “God, I’m gonna hate…going.”
    Andi stopped eating, looked at the pot, then at her daughter. A daughter of privilege: she’d had a private bathroom since she was old enough to sleep in her own room. “Grace,” she said, “we are in a desperately bad situation. We’re trying to stay alive until the police find us. So we eat his food and we aren’t embarrassed by each other. We just try to hang on the best we can.”
    “Right,” Grace said. “But I wish Genevieve was here…”
    Andi choked, forced herself to hold it down. Genevieve, she thought, might be dead. But Grace couldn’t be told that. She had to protect Grace: “Listen, honey…”
    “She could be dead,” Grace said, her eyes wide, like an owl’s. “God, I hope she’s not…” She put down her spoon and began to cry and Andi started to comfort her, but then dropped her plate and she began to cry as well. A few seconds later, Grace crawled next to her and they huddled together, weeping; and Andi’s mind flashed back to the night when they’d all sprawled on the upstairs rug, laughing, after Genevieve’s “ God, that guy was really hung …”
    Much later, Grace said, “He didn’t say anything about being a sex pervert…”
    “He’s not listening,” Andi said. “He hadn’t heard it.”
    “So what are we going to do?”
    “We have to judge him,” Andi said. “If we think he’s going to kill us, we have to attack him. We have to think about the best ways to do that.”
    “He’s too strong.”
    “But we have to try…and maybe…I don’t know. Listen: