The beams of the cabin floor stood high above me. Light seeped between the thin cracks of the slats. Two army surplus cots lined the stone walls of the pit. A tin bucket, a roll of toilet paper and a jug of water, the only sign that someone cared for our needs. The place smelled like human waste, and wet juniper from some grove beyond the cabin. Scratchy army blankets draped the cots with small pillows that could be mailed in an manilla envelope.
I laid on my bunk in perpetual rigor. I believed that If I just laid still death would pass me by. Sheila hunched over her bunk. She gently wept. She'd been at that for a long time. A radio played above us, a half static, half garbled sports announcer jabbered intermittently. I guessed the men were listening to a football game. There were two of them. I could be certain of that. Their chairs scraped the boards and each creak and shift in those wooden legs was like a nerve ending that ran straight into my cerebral cortex sending alarms that could not be silenced.
I didn't dare speak. I only shifted my head to take in what I could in the splintered light. I wanted to ask Sheila about Joe about who he had up there with him, but I couldn't figure how he'd done it. The last thing I could remember was Terrence. The Buick that he'd said he couldn't drive. The booze on his breath. He'd held the car door open for me. His denim jeans and black boots splattered with mud; I couldn't understand that. What was this valet doing in such dirty clothes?
He didn't start the car right away. He lit a cigarette, looked over the depot. The street had a couple solitary stragglers, but they scurried into the shadows like cockroaches. He studied me. His hair rumpled like I'd woken him up. "Who knows you are out looking for Sheila?"
"Just my landlady."
"The one that reported you to the police?"
"Yeah."
"And did you tell her about me or Lord Elester?" The way he said it was off. Like it was a sarcastic joke.
"No, she doesn't care for us going out with men. So, we try not to tell her about any of that."
"That's good, that's good."
He reached down under the seat and pulled out a dirty white rag. He took a bottle and twisted off the cork, poured the liquid onto the rag. I took it for some kind of alcohol. I thought he was going to use it to try and get the stains off his pants. My brain reeled I couldn't make sense of him. His manner took on a new shade, a kind of weary nonchalance, and then he lunged, forced the rag into my face. I slammed the side of my head into the glass. It must have cracked. He was just trying to wipe my face. I overreacted. That's what I tried to tell myself as the cab got dark and somehow Terrence's face disappeared and morphed into Joe's and slipped back into Terrence's.
I ended up in a bunker. All my hopes and dreams amounting to absolutely nothing.
A trap door opened, and a shaft of light flooded in and became permanent like a heavenly pillar. A wooden ladder eked its way down. The bottom legs landed uneven on the stone. The ladder shifted and rose until it found a good safe angle for the big booted man to trust.
The tall sturdy thing crept down with deliberate care both hands on every rung. I felt a bit of relief, a slow thawing of my frozen muscles. Lord Elester Avery stood in the shaft of light at the bottom of the ladder, a guardian angel. It took me a few moments to put it all together. He did not have a divine message of peace. He brought nothing but pain. Me and Sheila didn't get to be damsels in distress. We were just two girls afraid of being violated. No prince in fine clothing appeared to whisk us away; we got a poor shiftless miner in denim who didn't want to pay for a whore.
Terrence negotiated his way down the wooden rungs and stood beside his partner. They passed a flask back and forth. Not saying anything just watching us.
"You girls got yourself into some trouble here, didn't you?" Elester said.
I felt sweat on my neck, a fever chill on my arms. "You made a mistake. If you take us back, we won't tell anyone."
"You know I did that once. I was fifteen, took a girl off into the woods and had my way with her. She said she wouldn't tell. I didn't want to kill her, so I let her go. She didn't say anything for about three days. I thought I was free and clear until the Sheriff pulled me out of class and tossed me into juvy. That was my first. You two are 31 and 32."
Terrence shifted back and forth. Elester cocked his thumb. "He's still a little green. This is his sixth and seventh, but I find it's better to have a partner. It makes it so you can sleep and not have to worry about there being complications. Also, Terrence likes to read. He's a real smart fellow. He's the one that saw the picture of this Lord Elester, my spitting image."
"Why are you telling me all this?"
"I'm being honest. That's my job. I'm the eater. You are the meat. Your job is to be chewed up. You can buy yourself some time by being compliant. There is no way out. We are 20 miles south of Gardnerville a dirty little hick town that's 40 miles south of Reno. No one cares about you. No one knows where you are. Your last days are going to be spent trying to please me. That needs to be your only concern."
"You can go to hell."
"That's what they all say at first. Terrence said you and your friend are creative. So far Sheila hasn't been very inventive. I'm hoping you will do better." He rolled up his sleeves.
Two loud knocks reverberated up above. Elester looked at Terrence. "I'm telling these broads that there is no one around and someone starts knocking. That must be Sam. Go up there and move him along."
"If you girls scream Sam is going to want to come down and get a piece and if you think we are rough. You've got no idea. Sam doesn't care much for people, especially for two dumb women who managed to wind up in a place like this."
