A Man of His Word
Chapter Seven: Fear of the Known Vs Fear of the Unknown
"So the reason why you felt this sort of...attraction...for him was because he killed a man in your name?" Doc asked curiously as she pressed the 'stop' button on the tape recorder.
"To be truthful, Doc, I was as confused about what I felt as you are now," I conceded, lying on the bed.
"It sounds like he had some feelings toward you."
"It's up for debate," I shrugged.
"Is it, though?" Doc smiled. "The moment he heard that something was wrong, he immediately reacted, pulled Gruff out of your room. He was going to kill him no matter what. Do you think that the reason why he asked you to decide his fate was because he wanted the death penalty to be your decision, to fall on your conscience so he wouldn't be held accountable for the death a man?"
"That particular man was a thug," I said with disgust. "If Gruff wouldn't have come after me, the odds of other women being victimized by that rapist were very high."
"So what makes you think that he intervened on the other victims' behalf except yours?"
"I'd like to think that he did."
"But what if he didn't, and you were the first person whom he had ever saved from being sexually assaulted?"
"It doesn't matter," I said with a shake of my head. "Boss had killed before. He wouldn't have felt any other way about Gruff if he alone had chosen to kill him. Just another body guard."
Doc rose to her feet from the wooden chair, pinching the bridge of her nose as she continued to seek answers about this thickening conundrum. I chose not to intrude on her thought process. Doc already believed that I had Stockholm Syndrome; although I understood where she was coming from in deciphering this particular diagnosis, I still didn't believe that I was under that spell. My time spent with Boss, true enough, had began out of a dire instinct to survive; but love was a mysterious thing. It was an unbiased virtue. Sometimes, it came without plot or planning.
It just happened.
"He was seducing you," said Doc after a few minutes of silence.
"Perhaps," I shrugged.
"He made physical touch when he asked you what you wanted," Doc referred to her notes. "He put you in control of the situation for a change; he made it your decision whether or not to swing the ax. He killed a man, whom had posed an imminent threat on your life, just because you asked him to."
"Like I said, Doc: it was always my choice."
"When he killed him, how did it make you feel?"
"I thought that I was pretty clear about that."
"You said that you were aroused."
I nodded. Doc was digging. Well, if we were going further into the story, things would become a bit more messy. So it was best to start mulling through the dirty details now.
"Tell me," said Doc, "why you felt that way."
I really couldn't figure it out.
"I don't know," I said pleasantly with a smile, just as dumbfounded as Doc. "I was locked away in a cabin far from civilization where the only true comfort was Boss being there. He interrupted possibly one of the worst things that might have happened to me. Don't you think that if someone did that for you, you'd feel a certain way?"
"I would," Doc said. "Do you know what that would be?"
I shrugged.
"Gratitude. Not sexual arousal."
I frowned.
"Costlee, have you considered the fact that a man being murdered right in front of you combined with feelings of arousal could mean that you're...Well, a person of moral ambiguity would feel these things, is what I mean."
"You mean a psychopath." I corrected her.
"A person who plays video games too much goes out and steals a car and kills a prostitute shouldn't blame the video game, Costlee. A person who knows right from wrong doesn't do that; the murderer has already been desensitized to the idea that it would be all right to go out in the public and re-enact the same thing that they saw happen in Grand Theft Auto."
"I'm not crazy," I muttered.
"A person must have already been a violent person in order to commit a violent act that he saw in a video game." Doc said quietly.
"So what are you saying about me?"
Doc made a few notes in her pen pad. Her diagnosis was lost on me. She'd make it more clear in the future, I hoped. But whatever she was implying made me feel angry. I wasn't crazy. I had morals. What, did she think that Boss had corrupted a fragile soul the moment that he blew Chuck's brains out in the vault? How ridiculous.
"How about we hear what happened after he killed Gruff?" suggested Doc.
"You gonna press 'play' on that recorder?"
"Sure. How about dinner?" Doc suggested lightheartedly.
I acquiesced that request, then continued on with my 'corrupted' fairy tale, since it was so hard to understand that a person could feel a type of way during these dire situations...
Blue grunted, panting heavily, as he dragged the legs of Gruff's corpse through the living room. Even as I gazed upon the catatonic look of fear in Gruff's eyes, I didn't feel any remorse about the fact that I had ordered Boss to kill him. A mess of blood around the mouth and eyes made Blue turn his head away as he dragged him along the wooden floor. The only guard left here in the cabin didn't look at me as he made his way out onto the porch. I heard the heavy contact of Gruff's body hitting the stairs.
He deserved it.
Boss had made his way into the kitchen, swaying side to side as he moved to the melody of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 which played so heavenly from the small ham radio in the living room. I wasn't sure what he wanted me to do, so I leaned against the back of the couch, watching him as he moved to the freezer above the fridge, taking out a proportion of meat and frozen vegetables.
The symphony made dulcet tones, a strangely pleasant accompaniment of a grizzly aftermath. I was entranced by such a nonchalant reaction to murder. I wondered how many men he had murdered just like he had done Gruff and went on about his business.
What if this was his business? It made me all the more curious as to why he had kidnapped me in first place. I was not the brains of the outfit at the bank; that had been my boss, Evan Y, who had orchestrated the dirty scheme to protect ourselves from the mob's firm hand. The criminal activities that I had committed on the job, at most, was accounting fraud; even then if I were convicted, it would have been five years—less than that if I could afford a good lawyer who could vouch that my hands were tied. If it was blood that Boss was after, in order to gain influence to become the new King of Gotham, I was a very tiny wheel in his very large machine.
Money. I could understand my role if he was after money. Still, though, why kidnap me at all? I remembered every single lock box—even the mob's. He could have just asked me, and I'd given it to them. I was a book keeper, so I remembered every single lie that I had written down—"Lockbox #151962, unchanged".
But Boss didn't strike me as the kind of guy who wanted money, so my role just made very little sense the more that I thought of it.
I heard the sound of metal smacking against hard soil. I peeked through the closed window to witness Blue taking a shovel to the yard; he was digging a grave with a somber expression on his face.
"Awfully quiet over there, kitten." Boss said aloud, his back turned to me as he made effort to get dinner ready. "Come to Daddy, tell papa what you're thinking."
"Never met a man who wanted to know what I was thinking," I said, surprisingly casual.
Was I as hollow about Gruff's sudden resignation as he was?
"What kind of people do you hang around, Costlee?" said Boss in amusement. "Sound like horrible friends. No one checks on the archivist in the vault, hm? I wonder if anyone has noticed that you've gone missing."
"I'd think they would; it's been about a week, hasn't it?"
"Obviously, your co-workers have noticed that you went missing. You dropped your name tag in the vault before we left."
"Well, you also carried me out the door," I added, "so there's that."
"That's beside the point. My point," he pressed on, "is not about the people you work with; I'm talking about important people in your life. Loved ones...family."
"No family." I tried to evade the fact that the word itself made me uncomfortable.
"Hard to believe that a cute, quiet girl like yourself doesn't have any supportive people in her life. How about a father?"
"Dead," I said.
"Dead-dead, or dead to you?"
"Does it matter?" I didn't enjoy this sort of conversation; I would have preferred if he had decided to kill Blue instead. Hell, I would have probably volunteered to do it if it meant that Boss wouldn't intrude on my personal life.
"How about a mother?"
"Overbearing. Stopped talking to her a long time ago."
"Sister?"
"Passed away."
"Oh. Accident?"
"Military," I answered.
"Brother?"
"Don't have one."
"Uncles?"
"No."
"So you have no one...who would miss you if you were gone, hm?" It was this statement from him that had been said so casually that made me apprehensive. He had turned around on a swivel as if he had reached the conclusion of this very strange and personal conversation.
Had I perhaps overstayed my welcome at this luxurious log cabin in the country side? Was Boss finally bored of me. Was Blue outside not just digging up a grave for Gruff, but about to start in on a second hole for me?
I chose not to answer Boss, in case my answer heavily influenced my fate. If he was going to get rid of me like that, let it be his choice, and his choice alone. Boss turned back around and turned on the stove.
"You live in the Narrows." Boss continued, "Awfully dangerous place for someone like you."
"Someone like me." I repeated.
"Yeah, someone like you. You're so anxious all the time, I imagine that feels a lot like wanting to crawl out of your skin." He clicked his tongue. "Blood...pumping hard through your veins as if to make the body ready to bolt at any sign of danger lurking around the corner. Then," he added as he began to place a pot of water on the right burner on the stove top, "when the adrenaline gets too much, you freeze. You want to act, to take charge; but while your body tells you to run, your brain starts firing off these signals, to stay put and think it through. All the while, the catastrophe that you imagined would happen never happens. And you're left with this feeling...calm before the storm."
If that doesn't explain every waking moment in the Narrows, I don't know what will.
He seemed to know a lot about it, and I wondered briefly if he, too, was an anxious person. He turned around to look at me shrewdly, as if he knew a secret that I did not. Boss turned the heat dial on the stove; I saw the pilot light from underneath the pot burn brightly.
"Anxiety happens when you think that you have to figure out everything all at once," Boss told me. "You've been wondering for a whole week why, instead of just taking the money from the vault, I took you instead."
I waited with bated breath: Was he finally going to tell me?
"Everything you have ever wanted is sitting on the other side of fear." Boss said quietly.
I didn't know what the conclusion would be; but I knew that it was going to be uncomfortable. And a part of me understood vaguely that it was probably going to be painful—How painful, I didn't know.
"So..." I tried to surmise the point he was trying to make, carefully wading through the pool without lighting a fire in the sadistic part of his brain. "You aren't afraid that the GCPD will find you, catch you, after you broke into a bank and stole some keys?"
"I stole you away too," he pointed at me as if I were the real treasure.
"Yes, yes, you did." I nodded.
"No, Costlee"—It was beginning to sound strange for him to use my government name with how often he called me 'kitten'—"I'm not afraid that Gotham's finest will catch me. I'm not afraid at all. Do you know why?"
Tread oh-so carefully, Costlee.
"I don't." I told him.
Boss moved so quickly, I startled—Oh, my god, he moves so fast—but all he did was sit in the chair opposite of mine.
"I'm about to clue you in," he said.
Ah, the secret of success. More like the secret to insanity, but okay, let's hear it.
"All...right..." It wasn't easy to hide my anxiety, as clearly it was sketched into my face. I felt like I had a constant expression of fear.
"Here is the reality of fear, kitten," said Boss. "You're not scared of the dark; you're scared of what's in it. You're not scared of heights; you're scared of falling. You're not afraid of the people around you—"
"—Well, actually—"
"Hey." Boss wagged a finger at me. "I'm talking. Just wait for the punchline."
"Am I the punchline?" I couldn't help but to ask.
Boss burst into laughter. "You're catching on."
But...But, wait, what? Was that a yes or a no?
"See!" He tapped me on the nose with a gloved finger. "Look, look at your face! That. That is fear. Fear of the unknown. Why do you always need to know everything all at once? You would find the world to a better place if you would think like me."
"Think like you, Boss?" I asked curiously. "If I could switch off the anxiety, I would. I can't control—"
"That's right. You are not in control. I am," he gave a shrug to his shoulders. "That's the beauty of the situation that I have so graciously placed you in. I've taken the pressure off you; given you choices. See, the beauty about it is that no matter what decision you make, you know that the outcome is still under my control."
"And that's supposed to help me...relax?"
I supposed that in a sort of demented, diminished way, yeah. He did take a lot of decision-making out of my life when he plopped me in the log cabin. Hardly any guesswork. My choices were my choices, my options; but Boss clearly had controlled the outcome no matter what. Although Gruff had disrupted that equation...
"He," I pointed outside, "wasn't part of your outcome."
"Well, I'm not God. He's the real Joker," he chuckled.
I stared at him. Was he incredibly intelligent or just madly eccentric? Or perhaps, because he did make some sense, was I losing grip of reality, just a tad?
"So." He clapped a hand onto the table. Smack. "Let's put my little theory to the test. Stand up."
I rose to my feet, feeling that familiar heartbeat in my ears as my pulse quickened.
Fear of the unknown.
"Now, you must be very nervous," said Boss as he led me to the stove.
"Well, now that you mention it..."
"Hold your hand over the pot."
Oh, come on...
I bit the inside of my cheek uncertainly.
"Come on, kitten."
I sighed dejectedly. Even as I raised my arm, I could feel my hand begin to vibrate, a tremor running through my fingers as I hovered my hand over the pot of water on the burner; it was boiling rapidly.
"Feel that?" he whispered. "Feel the heat coming off that?"
"...Yep..." I barely heard my own voice come out of my mouth, pushing through my throat.
"Now what scares you more: the fact that your hand is over a very, very hot pot; or the unknown, which includes the possibility of me asking you to stick your hand in it?"
I stayed quiet.
"I'm sorry," he held his hand to his own ear. "I didn't catch that."
"It's a bit of both," I admitted breathlessly.
"Look at me."
I looked up from the pot (although I still wanted to keep my eyes on it), and met his gaze.
"Most people talk about the fear of the unknown; but if there is anything to fear," Boss said, suddenly softly, gently even, "It is the known."
Boss took my hand in his, and then to my surprise, he kissed the top of my knuckles. "You know," he said, "that if you don't do as I say, there are consequences. Not everything I tell you to do has negative consequences. So when I say 'Hold you hand over this pot of scalding hot water', you know that it's best to do as you're told, rather than fear the unknown; which is 'What is the reason why I asked you to hold your hand over the pot of scalding hot water'."
I mean, that made sense to me.
"So," I concluded from this very enlightening lesson, "perhaps I should stop wondering why you took me from the vault."
"Thatta' girl." He patted my hand with his own. "Now, how do you like your steak?"