Chapter 21: A Black Horse Come Knockin'


In twenty minutes of steam and bathing, Roxanne never came back, and she never got in the shower. I figured she must have let herself get preoccupied with cleaning, or fixing something, or cooking everything in the house as was usually the case. Her mind wandered when she was doing things around the house, so I wasn't particularly surprised, only bummed.

I got out, dried off and got dressed. I took my time, figuring she was busy anyway, and made the bed, put a few things back in place around the bedroom, and only then moved into the hallway to head downstairs. Music was playing on the radio from the kitchen, Nirvana, but there was no cooking scent in the house, no sound other than fires burning, and no sure sign of her anywhere.

And yet that's when I got a different sign altogether.

From somewhere I heard what sounded like screams of pain, and then eventually, of something else. The screeching was all too familiar, but it didn't make sense, not with what I was positive I was hearing. I followed it though the house, all the way down the long first floor hall, toward the distant parlor. The noise radiated, grew more intense, all the more realistic as I pushed back on the curtained French door and walked inside.

"Harder…I want all of you, please…"

The room was empty save for the sounds that filled it to a thoughtless capacity. It was Roxanne, her voice at least, and it tore through my heart like too many knives all at once. It was her, it was me seconds later; it was us in the middle of something that had already taken place. I stood there with a gaping mouth and twisted brow for what felt like forever, the blood rising from my toes to create the unexpected tightness in my jeans. It was just too much.

And then, from behind me in the softest tone possible, I heard a voice.

"This is the best part."

I was hesitant to move, hesitant to breathe or turn around. But I did all three.

"I don't need to remind you of that though. Do I, Mr. Rainey?"

The face of a woman was hidden beneath the brim of a baseball cap, but the voice, the foreign inflection, the hue and resonation of it, burned straight through me. Her head turned up with a wicked sort of smile, as the sound of Roxanne's climatic screams drenched all of my other senses.

In my mind, I sneered and shouted it. Catalina. But standing there before her, embarrassed, disgusted and in fear for why I could only hear a recording of my wife's voice rather than the real thing, I was silent and breathless.

"I must admit," she came closer and began to circle me, her hand warm and dancing across my back, "I am well beyond the point of mere jealousy after hearing that." In my ear she spoke words I couldn't understand, but easily knew weren't worthy, "Siete un animale selvaggio fra i fogli, non siete? You beast you…"

She walked back around to glance at my solemnly, burning eyes and nipped at me with a teasing bite of her teeth and a low growl. Then she laughed and I felt all too ready to hurt her, the way I insisted to Roxanne I couldn't let myself do before. Now I felt it was as easy a task as any.

"What the fuck are you doing in my house, Catalina? Where's my wife?"

"She's fine, molto bene." She kissed her fingertips with her seductive chestnut eyes. "I didn't hit her that hard."

My eyes widened and I shoved her away from me, running back through the doors of the parlor for the hall, then the living room again, the staircase, calling out for her.

"Roxanne! Roxanne, answer me!"

I was halfway to the kitchen when I heard Catalina whisper just behind me, "You're getting warmer."

My eyes flipped back at her angrily before I stormed through the swinging door of the kitchen and stumbled into what I should have expected to find. There she was, with legs bound to those of a chair, her arms twisted and tied somewhere behind her, a bandana blinding her and tape covering her mouth. I moved toward her but was stopped again, by that same voice.

"Don't. You'll wake the baby," she teased harshly and grabbed my arm before I could stop it. Catalina threw me fast into another chair, and although I tried to get away, I wasn't quite as quick as she was with handcuffs. Why am I not surprised?

"Let me go," I growled at her as she pinched them shut to the back of the seat and then slid down my legs to tie them the same as Roxanne's. "Stop this. What in the hell are doing!?"

She smiled, like I should have known she would, and avoided the thrashing of my legs until she had each of my bare feet tied to the chair too. There was a single moment when she stood again, that she brought her face down to mine, holding my hair with force and breathed on my neck.

"You'll thank me later."

"Like hell," I spit up at her, but she dodged it with a laugh. At that moment, there was a different sound, a muffled sort of cry for help and I tossed my head around Catalina's form to see Roxanne coming to from her otherwise unconscious state.

"Roxanne, honey I'm here."

There was a mumbling of Mort behind duck tape as her head moved around. Catalina walked away from me and towards her chair instead, and I couldn't help but to yell at her, shout against the advance. She was still wearing my clothes, from our private morning escapades which had apparently been compromised by a spy, the same spy that now lifted the bandana from her eyes to reveal the tears and puffiness that lied beneath it.

"Morning, Sunshine," she whispered a tease in Roxanne's ear.

"Roxy, baby, look at me."

"Yes," Catalina agreed, holding her head firmly and twisting it until she faced me, "Do look at him. Your husband. The love of your life. Isn't he wonderful?"

Her eyes shifted, welling with tears as she looked at me, silently forgiving me for something I could see she was blaming herself all over again. Her brow creased with angst, tire, and pain. And I noticed then, the faint stream of blood falling from her top hair line, barely reaching her left ear. Catalina had hit her; which meant I now had every right to hit her back the same. Just as soon as I got loose again.

"Let her go," I begged angrily.

"No."

"Catalina, this is fucking ridiculous. Nothing you can do--"

"Sh." She cut me off with a quiet demand as she came back towards me with the bandana from Roxanne's eyes. "You have a very dirty mouth, Mr. Rainey. I don't remember that from before."

"You were too busy trying to get my pants off."

She twirled the sash around, untying it and stepping behind the chair I was in with her arms draped over my shoulders in persuasion. I did nothing but focus on Roxanne's eyes from across the kitchen, until she eventually saw what I couldn't see Catalina doing, and turned her face away. I felt hot breath on my ear and it sent a shiver down my spine, then right back to my head in a rush of blood and shame.

"It seems you too have forgotten me," she whispered coyly, her tongue just touching the top of my ear as I jerked my head away, "But I am not surprised at all. What, with the many changes I have made. You had no chance of being reminded."

I couldn't understand what she was talking about, and when I tried to voice my confusion, she just tugged the bandana between my teeth and tied it tightly behind my head.

"There," she said, stroking my cheek with her warm fingertips before she came in front of me again, grinning down and leaning on my legs with a seducing squeeze, "You're so much nicer to talk to when you have nothing to say."

I just scowled at her fiercely and watched as she crossed the kitchen for the coffee pot, fixing herself a cup slowly, as if it were nothing at all. After having stirred in her sugar and creamer, she turned back to us, shifting glances from me to Roxanne and then back to me again. I wanted so badly to scream, to break bones in my hands and feet to get loose and run for the handgun I knew was in the bottom drawer in the desk of the office, or for a knife in the rack settled just behind her at the counter in the kitchen. There were so many ways I could have easily taken her, if I hadn't been so ignorant, so hasty to begin with.

Eventually, she spoke again, but something had drastically changed. Her accent.

"I knew neither of you would ever remember me. Why would you? I was a 'nobody', and you both are obviously, somebody's. Still."

An evil sort of grin covered her face and she jumped to sit on the counter, legs crossed and sipping at her coffee. Roxanne continued to refuse looking up from where her head was hung in fear and embarrassment.

"It wasn't even that long ago really. Five years? Your children…" she paused for a moment and reached into the back pocket of her jeans, pulling out my wallet, one she'd obviously snagged from the foyer table on her way in, "…such cute little things. They have their father's eyes. They're five now, aren't they? Or nearly five, I suppose. I highly doubt you conceived them the first night you spent together."

She cackled and stared me down again, "Not even you can be that good."

There was a glowing grin on her face for a moment, and while I was still at a loss for why she seemed so in tune with an American fashion suddenly, Roxanne slowly lifted her head with the speech and they looked each other dead in the eyes as I watched on.

"Where was that anyway Roxanne? At your high rise in Manhattan? Only the best for Roxy Love, right?"

I saw Roxanne's eyes widen slightly.

"Don't look at me like that," Catalina snapped at her, "You should have seen all this coming."

I was thoroughly confused. The most I'd ever been. There was something going on between my wife and the woman who was out to get her. They had an understanding of sorts that I'd missed during my shower. Great, I contemplated; this just gets better and better.

Suddenly though, Catalina glanced over at me again and teasingly said, "Oh. But of course. You don't have a single clue what we're, well," she paused and sniggered at Roxanne, "What I'm talking about, how rude of me."

I just looked dead straight at her from across the kitchen. And when she was tired of having a staring contest, she jumped down from counter in her expensive red heels and instead took a seat at the table, opposite where I sat tied up. Her dark nails tapped on the surface mockingly, and she only began to speak again when she had my complete and undivided attention, without interruptions from my darting concern for Roxanne.

"Your wife and I aren't strangers, Mort. In fact, I know more about her past dirty laundry than I'd think she'd like for you to even be aware of."

Catalina turned her head back to Roxanne for a second, half smiled and then looked at me.

"She was my boss, once upon a time. Actually," she took back her words, biting on a nail, "I think she would have liked to think she was my boss. She treated me like a second secretary most days. I was really just the coffee girl, the fax girl. You know," she grinned, leaning over the table staring more closely at me, "The nerdy, college intern that no one cared about."

I was a little lost, but looking at Catalina now, whether I had a right to admit she was beautiful or not to myself, I had to scoff at the idea that she could have ever been just a nerdy intern. Sex appeal radiated from this girl, like it was a sixth sense of her nature, and God, how I despised her nature for it.

"Oh I was the ugliest duckling," she sighed with a wicked giggle, thinking back on something apparently. "I was completely under the radar at Rolling Stone. Just a worker bee trying to pay for my Brooklyn rent. And there was your wife, not too much earlier than before you knew her, seducing rock stars with the blinds shut in her office and having martini lunch dates with anyone who could get her that much farther to the top."

I glanced over Catalina's shoulder during her telling, and saw that Roxanne was staring blankly down at the floor, her eyes watering and teardrops hitting her bare knees.

"Don't worry though, Mr. Rainey, she always had a special place in her heart for you. It was a place only people really close to her knew about. Or those of us with eyes wide open, I guess."

My eyes, wide open, found their way back to my captor's, angrily but intrigued.

"Roxanne had every one of your books, and she read them all the time, I remember. During lunch, between meetings, in her car outside the office and I'm sure, at home, on nights when she didn't have handsome celebrity company in her bed." Catalina laughed darkly and played with a coffee ring on the table, humming a continued speech. "She was a fan. More than that, she was an admirer, which was why I found myself silently admiring her myself. I thought for sure I was the only girl in the world, or at least New York who had that same sort of healthy obsession with your work. But, I was very wrong. Speaking of which…"

Silence came while Catalina's mind wandered off in deep thought. It gave me the chance to tilt my head back over and catch another glimpse of Roxanne. Her head was held up again now, and surprisingly, she turned her eyes to me. There was a sea green hint of regret in them, a small taste of utter humiliation, and even more than that, surrender. I hated that part the most.

"Would you like to hear the story of how all this started? How you, and me, and Roxanne all came together without even knowing it? It's a wonderful story, I promise."

Catalina was teasing me, as usual, and even more so now under the circumstances. She was doing and saying everything on purpose, and the more I stared her in the eyes, the more I listened to her average, everyday American twang, the more I wondered if that was even her real name at all, Catalina. It didn't matter what I wondered though, because not a second had passed before she set right about to giving me answers.

"Okay," she tapped her hands excitedly, "So it all started on February 20th, 2006…"

"…it was just a regular day in the office, making runs back and forth between Starbuck's and the copy room for everyone. I'd been working at Rolling Stone for almost four months, but of course, I was still a fly on the wall. No one noticed me, and honestly, I was starting to like it better that way.

I had my thick framed glasses and checkered sweater vests and I was the floating nerd. Everyone else had an office and a secretary and scheduled lunch meetings with Justin Timberlake and Meryl Streep, and I just had my corner of space in the workroom.

I remember I had made copies of something or other for Roxanne that day, and I brought them to her office. Her secretary, Lily, was out to lunch and the door to her office was locked. Of course it was locked.

I knocked and only a few seconds later, Jessie, the editor's son, stepped out with a half un-tucked dress shirt and crooked tie. She knew exactly where her climb on the food chain was…"

Catalina stopped talking with a coy grin on her face as she looked between me and Roxanne, thinking I would be bothered by it. I wasn't though. I was no judge of Roxy Love, I never knew her except from taglines and excellent music reviews. She was never that girl to me.

"Don't worry. She didn't moan out his name the same way she did yours earlier."

I rolled my eyes, annoyed, and she jumped back into the tale again.

"Anyway…"

"…Roxanne thanked me for the copies and sent me on my way. Until, she noticed that Lily was still gone to lunch, and that's when she called me right back for another task. The task that would ultimately change everything for me, whether she knew it or not.

I remember her saying anxiously, "I really could use your help. I have this meeting uptown in a half an hour. But there was this book signing I was dying to get to today."

"What book signing is that?"

"Oh, it's for Mort Rainey's new murder mystery, Damaged Goods."

I was immediately hooked. I'd already known she was a fan, and I'd already known you had a book signing in the city that day. But then I knew she was crazy for you, and I knew I had to hide my own obsession as best I could. I couldn't let her know.

"I think I've heard of him."

"Great. Look, it's just a few blocks from here, at Barnes and Noble. I can give you money for a cab and lunch, if you wouldn't mind running down and getting me a signed copy."

"Signed to you, Miss Hayden?"

She just smiled at me, so embarrassed, so coy, "Yes. But if you could have him make it out to just, Roxanne?"

"Of course."

"Thank you so much…" she hesitated because she didn't know my name. What else was new though?

"Cat."

"Cat, right. I'm sorry. I really appreciate it."

And then she handed me fifty bucks, patted me on the back, grabbed her five hundred dollar purse and ran out of the office for her 'oh so special meeting.' Her loss was my gain in that moment. As big a fan as she was, she missed your book signing to have lunch with John Mayer. So, she sent me, and I know you probably don't remember it at all…"

Catalina got up from her chair and walked towards me, moving her hands to cradle my face while I tried to pull away. She brushed her lips over mine, the rag that kept them from forming coherent words, and concluded, "…but it was the best day of my life."

Then she reached behind my head and slowly untied the bandana, allowing for me to crack my jaw and cough, before I stared straight up into her eyes. She smiled with that same seductive smirk and touched my face. I flinched once more and even though I clearly said, "Get away from me," she ignored and slowly lowered herself to straddle my lap.

"Catalina, stop. Get the fuck off me!"

"Oh hush. You're just being modest because you're wife is in the room. I can fix that though."

She slid back down from my knees, rubbing the bulge in my jeans on purpose and took the bandana with her. It ended up right where I knew it would, tied to Roxanne's face a minute later, blinding her to Catalina's advances all over again. She was back on my lap, against my own will, interest or desire, in mere seconds. Her arms were wrapped around my neck, her thighs gripped my hips tight on the chair, and her spilling breasts pressed into my chest as she giggled.

"She can't see anything now. She can only hear us. So be careful what kind of noises you make."

"Get off of me, now."

"Why? You can't tell me you don't want it."

"I don't."

"Right, just like you didn't want me back in Italia either?"

I gulped, sensing what must have been rising in Roxanne's head and heart across the room, and then spat my answer harshly and directly in Catalina's face.

"I've never wanted you. Not once."

"Not once? Ever?"

"No."

She smiled and then got off of me again, returning to her chair but facing in Roxanne's direction.

"You married our true love, Roxanne. But he's such a filthy liar. That must break your heart."

Roxy flinched, masked from everything but sound and taunting words. I couldn't imagine what she was feeling, because I could only feel half of it.

"Leave her alone," I demanded. "Just get away from her and let us fucking go!"

"No, wait." Catalina turned back to me; suddenly involved in her storytelling again, "I haven't even gotten to the good part yet. The part with you and me, Morton."

"She's already well aware of those parts. It's what almost ruined my marriage, okay?!"

She eyed me with a twisted smirk, most likely in the complete know of everything that had happened between us, and I saw Roxanne's blinded face turn off at a distance, probably trying to drown out everything around her. I didn't blame her one bit.

"There is no you and me, Catalina. And there's never going to be."

"But you're so wrong," she bit her nails again, lifting her brown eyes through her veil of dark hair with a devilish grin on her cherry fresh lips, "Because we'll always have the Omaha Barnes and Noble…"