One Cold Night

her name?
    They were standing so close now, just a foot of country air between them. He wasn’t much taller than her, and she saw specks of aqua hiding in his blue eyes. She got the strong feeling that he wanted her to like him, ludicrous as that was. He was looking into her eyes like he actually felt something for her. Maybe, if she had met him in other circumstances — if he had been a teacher, or one of Susan’s employees boxing fancy chocolates and ringing up the cash register — she wouldn’t have found him so hideous. But how could she see him otherwise? When she looked at him, she saw a monster.
    “Lisa, are you saved?”
    “Saved?”
    His face relaxed with what back-home church folk might have called a “beatific smile.” It was how they imagined Jesus on the cross. Like he’d be smiling. Lisa didn’t know how to answer. Lie, she heard Glory whispering in her ear. Just tell the freak what he wants to hear. But saved?
    She shrugged her shoulders and her eyes slipped away from his. Immediately, she felt a heat come off him, frustration or anger or some bitter alchemy of both. If she were an escape artist, she quickly thought, what would be the exact right move for now?
    She jerked her arm up suddenly, then twisted it backward, trying to throw him off balance. But he was stronger than he looked and didn’t let go. He spun her around with such force that she thought her arm would snap in half. She understood in that moment that strength and hazard and intent were not things you could recognize in a person’s face. This pale man with flecked blue eyes, happy for the camaraderie of their allergies, this man who seemed genuinely interested in whether or not she liked his house and liked him and was saved, was dangerous. Dangerous to her, specifically. As she went down she saw his shoe: a brand-new work boot edged with yellow.
    She must have fainted, because the next thing she knew she was lying on a bed, on top of the covers, with all her clothes on. When she noticed this it surprised her, and she realized what she expected, and then it deepened: the worm of fear. As her mind awakened to the present she became aware that she couldn’t move. Her wrists and ankles were tied to the four bedposts with rope, and she was splayed open. Why hadn’t he undressed her, then? She had never felt so grateful for her clothes, but she wished she were wearing something that covered her better. Between her low-rise jeans and the bottom of her shirt, her belly was exposed. Naked. She didn’t like it now. The little diamond stud in her belly button looked pathetic, begging for attention she didn’t want.
    “You shouldn’t have done that before, Lisa.”
    She turned her head. He was standing in the doorway, kind of smiling, kind of not.
    “I just want to know you,” he said, stepping into the room.
    Her wrists and ankles burned, he had her tied down so tightly. He stepped around to the foot of the bed and crouched down, with his knees on the floor and his elbows on the mattress. He pulled off her right sock, then the left. Her bare feet felt cold in the chilly air.
    She squeezed shut her eyes and pretended he wasn’t doing what he was doing to her feet. Counting her toes, one through ten. Then counting backward, ticking off the numbers toward zero. She wondered how many other girls he had tied to this same bed, or if she was the first.
    “I never got to count your toes,” he said.
    Well, I never got to count yours, either. She hated him. “Hate is a strong word,” her mother Carole once told her. “Let’s try ‘don’t care for.’” Her other mother Susan — still a girl herself — stood in the background of Lisa’s memory, rolling her eyes.
    “I want to get to know every part of you.”
    Lisa had always figured that when her birth mother gave her away, she had paid all her life’s dues at once and nothing bad would ever happen to her again. It had seemed only right and fair. Now she wondered if something had folded over in the universe of fairness last night when Susan had told her the truth, and this was the scale righting itself, trading one injustice for another.
    But no, that couldn’t be true either; getting kidnapped by some lunatic couldn’t possibly count on anyone’s scale of justice. This was just wrong and bad. Her mind vaulted back and forth, trying to findsomeplace safe to land; and as he touched her toes in careful order, she flew backward in time to last night, to a raw edge of