Chapter Thirty Four: Finders, Keepers
Raoul complied, slowly pulling over onto the side of the road before shutting the engine off with a final click. In the silence that followed he turned to her. "It doesn't have to be like this," he said, looking at her fully for the first time. "I can come with you. I want to come with you. I don't want to leave you all alone…"
"We've been through this, Raoul," she said softly but not unkindly. "Now, where's the blanket?"
Sighing, he looked away from her. "Go lie down," he said to the windshield. "I'll get it for you."
Christine nodded silently and opened up the car door, the Texas heat warming her skin. She opened up the back door and stared at the cramped space inside for a long time before finally crawling in, huddling on the floor. Raoul appeared a moment later with several cardboard boxes and assorted trash, an old military blanket draped around one arm.
"Guess we're the only people who'll be trying to sneak into Mexico, huh?" he said, with a forced laugh, before falling somber again. "You ready for this?"
"No," Christine said honestly. "But I guess I don't really have a choice, do I?"
He gave her a long, sad look. "Just tell me if it gets too hot and you can't breathe," he said, before laying the blanket carefully on top of her.
"Raoul." She caught his hand at the last instant and gripped it painfully. "You know I'll never forget what you're doing for me."
"I know," he said, and gave her wistful smile. "I only wish that…"
A siren sounded in the far distance, his head swung around, and the moment was broken. "We should go," he said, shifting nervously on his feet before glancing down at her. "Try to sleep a little if you can. I think you'll need it. We've got a long drive ahead of us."
"I can sleep on the plane," she said, laying her head on the ground and curling into a tighter ball, trying to sound more hopeful than she really was. He nodded and pulled the blanket over her blonde hair until her whole world became muddled, wooly green and the sound of her own heavy breathing. Dimly she heard him place the empty boxes over her, rearranging them several times to make sure that she was properly masked. Then the door slammed; the car rocked a bit under his weight as he got back into the front seat, and soon the comforting purr of the motor rippled through her skin and the car pulled away. If there were any chance that the border patrols were on watch for a young blond couple trying to cross into Mexico, they wouldn't get it, only a lone man with dirty brown hair and week old stubble in a ratty car, years worth of old shit piled in the back.
Huddled under the blanket, Christine thought about how this all began. It was over a year ago that she had found the music at the grave, and nearly a year and a half ago since her fateful performance in Guys and Dolls where he had apparently first noticed her. Was that the night that sealed her fate? Or was it something she had done afterwards, some small way of speaking or moving, some emotion expressed, that had caused it all to whirl so frantically out of control? Did he love her merely for her voice, or simply because she was so broken that he had made it a project to pick up her pieces, rearrange them to his liking, and glue them back together?
'He said we are alike,' Christine thought as the car jostled beneath her, one corner of a cardboard box digging into her hip bone. The heat under the blanket was making her woozy and fuzzy-headed. 'Perhaps we are, in some ways. Maybe that's why I can't hate him, even after everything. Maybe that's why I feel…'
In honesty, Christine didn't know how she felt about him, couldn't categorize her feelings for the man who had so irrevocably changed her life. Huddled hotly on the floor of an old car, she could remember only the gentle moments, quiet grace and civility, calm. The sound of his heavenly voice settling around her head, his strange eyes shining with peace and affection, the quiet nights they spent staring at the stars during the summer. She had even told him about her mother, something which she never spoke about to anyone, and he had calmed the little wound that still bled at the memory. At times she once again questioned if she was doing the right thing, if running would really help her. What good was a life on the run, in danger and scrounging for money, when if she had merely kept her head and accepted things the way they were she could have been on stage, sang to the multitude, been a part of something greater than herself with someone who was truly unique and maybe…
"Don't ever think that you are anything else but mine."
The memory of his voice, so angry and dripping with dark possessiveness, broke through her muddled thoughts and nearly made her gasp aloud. Grappling with the blanket, Christine tugged it a little so that her mouth was free and she hungrily gulped the stale air of the car, clearing her thoughts.
'No,' she thought as she pulled the green wool back over her head, making sure that she hadn't jostled or displaced any of the boxes and assorted trash on top of her. Dimly she heard the sound of a siren in the distance. 'No, I could never have stayed. I want to live too badly to stay.'
Before she met him, before her life had become a power struggle, a frantic beating of wings against a cage, she had not cared if she lived or died. Christine wanted to cry when she remembered the state of listless apathy that had sustained her in the years following her father's death. She had not had much, but she had taken for granted the sweet and unadulterated freedom that was her blessing and her birthright. The apathy that had once shadowed her life had fled as the powerful need to survive set in, starting on the night of her capture when she feared for her life and slowly building up to this moment, hidden in an old car, fearing for something more ethereal and precious: Her freedom.
'Maybe that is why I can't hate him,' she thought, curling her hands into her chest like a child, yellow hair in her mouth and in her eyes. 'For all the damage that he has done to me, he made me want to live again. He wanted to save me. Maybe he has. He changed my life.' She realized suddenly and with a hot, strange feeling of shame, that she would miss him.
Again, the thought came unbidden to her mind: 'Am I doing the right thing?'
Suddenly she realized that the sound of the siren was right on top of her, ringing in her ears under the blanket. Above her she heard Raoul curse.
"Raoul?" she asked softly, her voice muffled. He let out another low curse, but his voice was shaking.
"There's a police car right behind me. I can't…I'm sorry, but I'm gonna have to pull over, Christine," he said in a soft voice. "Maybe….maybe I was speeding and didn't know it or something. Just stay calm and we'll be back on the road in a minute, okay?"
Christine didn't answer, just curled into a smaller ball and tried to breathe as quietly as she could as the car rumbled gently to the side of the road and came to a dead stop.
She could hear the swagger of boots crunching on gravel and the creak of Raoul manually rolling his window down. "Hey," she heard Raoul say, his voice and casual but not without the slight trace of a waver. "I mean, hello officer. Was I…was I speeding back there?"
"License and registration?" The bored Texas drawl asked, and Christine heard the glove compartment open and shut.
"Brian Henderson?" The voice asked, and Christine could almost feel his eyes flicking back and forth between the photo and Raoul's face. "This you?"
There was a hesitation, brief but telling, before Raoul stuttered out, "Of course it's me."
"You sure?"
"Why the hell wouldn't it be?" he snapped angrily.
"And where would you be going this fine day, Mr. Henderson?" The voice asked, accompanied by the sound of gravel shifting under boots. Christine wished that she could see what was going on, gather some hint from the officer's face or body language, but there was only the heavy green wool in her vision.
"Visiting an old aunt of mine," Raoul said sharply. "She's sick."
"Sick, eh? What a good nephew you must be." There was a long pause, and then, "I'm afraid I'm gonna have to ask you to step out of the car."
"What?"
"Sir, if you don't step out of the car right now I'll have to call backup and charge you with resisting an officer."
"I'm not resisting…"
"I won't say it again. Out of the car. Now."
There was a second pause that felt like an eon, and then the sound of the car door opening and the soft rocking as Raoul stepped out.
Christine was holding her breath, too terrified to do anything but stay as still as she could. Maybe they were lucky and this cop was just some jerk on a power trip, out to shake down a young man for a few bucks. Or maybe…
"Turn around and face the car," the bored voice said. Christine felt, rather than heard, Raoul hesitate, and then the whole car shook as he was slammed against it.
"But I didn't do anything," Raoul protested.
"You hear that?" the officer called out to someone else.
"I sure did," came a cracked, grizzled voice; the man's partner? Christine wondered.
"He says he didn't do nothin'," said the first voice, with something like a snicker hidden in the words. She felt Raoul shift against the car, where he apparently was being held.
"But I didn't," he insisted.
"You just feel like tempting fate today, don't you, boy?" The drawling voice came again, mildly amused, and Christine distinctly heard the soft click of handcuffs.
"You're cuffing me?" Raoul asked, aghast. "What for? I was just driving, for God's sake…"
There was a sound like air being yanked from lungs, and then the weight against the car fell away and Raoul was gasping on the ground. Christine bit her knuckles to keep from crying out; she knew he had just been punched. Oh, how she hated this blindness!
"What for? What for? Lying to an officer is a crime, asshole," the voice snapped, and there was the dull whump whump of a boot hitting a stomach. Raoul groaned. "Now, let's just see what exactly you've got in this car, hmmm?"
Terror like cold water ran down Christine's spine as she felt the back door open near her feet. A dull ringing seemed to echo through her ears, cutting off most sound except for the frantic beating of her heart. Dimly she heard Raoul give a gasping "no" as a hand rummaged through the boxes.
"No?" The man asked. "Now why would you have a problem with someone looking through all your old shit unless, aha!"
One meaty hand had prodded the floor and found Christine's ankle.
"What do we have here?" The voice was supremely amused, and a second later the blanket was flung off of her huddled body and cooler air flooded her senses.
For a long moment none of them spoke; Christine looked up through a yellow curtain of sweaty hair at the heavy shape blocking the sun, a hat balanced on his balding head. Then he smiled, slow and full and satisfied. "A stowaway!"
"No!" Raoul screamed uselessly as hands gripped her ankle and shoulder and hauled her bodily out of the car.
"What a pretty thing you are," the officer said as Christine stumbled and sprawled on the ground. She sat up, pushing her hair out her eyes and rubbing the gravel from her shoulder, her gaze flickering warily to Raoul's dirty figure. He was kneeling on the ground, staring at her with a wide-eyed look of pure desperation. When he made a movement toward her, the big man shook one thick finger in his direction, like a headmaster telling off a naughty schoolboy. "Nuh-uh. You stay where you are. Finders, keepers." He turned back to Christine. "What's your name, precious?"
Christine stared at the pair of snakeskin boots in front of her. "Becky…Becky Chagny."
There was a snort. "No, it ain't."
Christine glanced up to see his round face smirking. He was large and broad shouldered, a strong man who had gone to seed, his stomach straining his slightly wrinkled uniform. Behind him his partner was perched on the hood of the police car, a whip-thin, grizzled older man who seemed content to watch the proceedings and chew tobacco.
Christine started to force herself to her feet. "I have my license in my pocket…"
A heavy hand fell on her shoulder. "I think it's best if you stay down, Ms. Danes." The voice was no longer joking, the drawl barely evident. His partner had gone completely still, his rangy wolf-eyes watching intently.
Christine swallowed dryly, her tongue thick in her throat, and from her right she heard Raoul give a soft moan. "What…what did you call me?" Her voice was a hiss; she was barely able to choke enough hot Texas air into her lungs to breathe.
Dimly she felt him leaning over her, his voice quiet in her ear. "Surely you didn't think it would be that easy, did you, little miss?"
The cuffs clinked cold against her wrists before she even realized what he was doing, chaining them behind her back. "So tell me," he continued almost casually, though that quiet, dangerous tone still threaded his tone, "what exactly makes you so special?"
"I'm not," she gasped out, the words like dry fire in her throat. "I swear, I'm not, I'm not special at all."
"Aw hell, sure you are." The joking tone reappeared, somehow more frightening than when he was serious. "For example," he continued, stepping away from her kneeling figure to stroll casually over to Raoul. "I have such strict orders not to lay a finger on you, but him?" Christine watched with sick horror as one heavy boot slammed swiftly into Raoul's stomach, leaving his gasping like a fish out of water, his face to the ground. "There are no such orders for him. The opposite, really."
"Stop it!" she screamed, her voice hoarse, as the officer continued to kick Raoul. One boot cracked into his shoulder and Raoul was swung from his fetal position to lay sprawled on his back, dirt rising in lazy circles around his prone figure. "Please, for the love of God, stop it!"
"God?" he asked, aiming his heel directly at Raoul's clavicle. Raoul groaned weakly, his eyes rolling back into his head. "Sweetie, God ain't got nothing to do with it."
So intent on watching Raoul's pain, Christine didn't even realize that the second man was behind her until his shadow crossed her path and the smell of stale tobacco assaulted her nose. "What the…" she gasped, twisting her head around, hands uselessly cuffed behind her back, but it was too late. He grabbed a fistful of her blonde hair and then something pricked her neck, like the sting of a bee against her skin.
"'night, princess," he whispered in a voice like dead leaves rustling, and stepped away from her.
For a moment everything felt normal. Then the sounds around her – Raoul's ever weaker moans, the dull slams of the boot, the wind over the empty street, the cries of the birds circling overhead- began to stretch and blur and dampen, like a tape slowed down or a pillow pressed over her ears. Her hands in their metal bracelets felt so heavy, as if she had weights attached to them. Her head was spinning.
She fell sideways, her head near the wheel of the car. Through half-lidded eyes she watched the heavyset man give Raoul one last good kick to the stomach before everything roared and expanded and warped and dulled and she could keep them open no longer.
And then there was nothing at all.
