Dreams of Molly Read online

  When the shooting stopped and Buck was subdued, when the dust cleared and the wounded were carted away,. Molly and her two male companions were nowhere to be found.

  My new friends and I exchanged stories and, finding one another sympathetic, we decided to make common cause. Toni and Win (Antonia and Winifred) had gone off on a vacation from stultifying domesticity—this was four years ago to the week—and for a conspiracy of circumstances had reached a point of no return. After running out of money, they kept themselves going by robbing convenience stores, limiting their thefts to basic necessities.

  It was this moral component in their circumstantial life of crime that won me over to their predicament.

  My story was as it had been: I was on a self-determined mission to rescue a former wife from her seemingly companionable kidnappers.

  My part in the exchange of services was to drive the getaway car for an off-hours heist at an island supermarket.

  It was an anxious wait on my part, sitting in the oversized convertible trying not to look conspicuous, but Toni and Win emerged fifteen minutes later empty handed. The supermarket had nothing they were willing to steal. “There’s no point liberating over-the-hill bananas,” Win complained.

  We spent the night together in a motel room I had taken as a single, the women slipping in later under cover of dark.

  So we shared the undersized double bed the room provided, taking turns being the one hugged in the middle. We gave the impression of liking each other to unwholesome excess.

  The next day, we drove around the island looking for signs of Molly, checking out even the most unprepossessing roads. As a precaution, Win stayed in the motel in the morning while Toni made herself scarce in the afternoon. The wanted posters that had been circulating had pictures of them together as if inseparably joined at the hip and we thought this was the best way not to attract notice.

  To wean Toni and Win away from their life of crime I paid for their meals with what I told them was a stolen credit card. They were resolutely opposed to accepting charity from anyone, particularly from a man. Their entire lives, Toni had confided, had been awash in emotional debt.

  On the second afternoon of crisscrossing the island, I noticed, or thought I did, Molly (or a woman who resembled Molly), walking a small white dog of familiar if indeterminate breed.

  Why didn’t I say something to Toni? Why didn’t I ask her to drop me off or to turn down the road and follow the woman with the pet dog? I have no answer to those questions, but the fact is I said nothing. It’s possible that I wanted to stay with Toni and Win one more night, which was the way it played out.

  Toni and Win were planning to leave the island late the next day—they were careful about not staying in the same place too long—after giving the search for Molly one further extended try.

  I was with Win this time when I saw Molly park her bicycle at the central marina and board a sailboat called Lothario. There were two others also on board, but I couldn’t tell if they were the same two I had seen with Molly at the Paradise One Restaurant.

  My plan was to come back after Toni and Win had gone off and wait for Molly where the Lothario had been anchored.

  When we returned to the motel, we said our goodbyes, one hug leading to another, two hugs leading to one last roll in the bed. It was that hard to separate. And I knew I couldn’t go with them, much as I might have wanted to.

  At first I thought the sounds were coming from us, only louder this time and longer lasting, the amplified sighs of exhausted pleasure, but to think so had been a useful self-deception.

  I was in the bathroom when the gunfire started—Win had just stepped outside to load the car. I could almost swear I heard Buck’s voice saying, “On the count of three, let the shit rain.” The shelling of the motel went on for at least five minutes—I later learned there were fifteen expert marksman shooting at us—which was when I lost consciousness, which was when the dream of death flashed before me only to be obliterated by the black hole that followed.

  After the ambush at the hotel, nothing would be the same again, but wasn’t it always that way.

  PART TWO

  (Confessions)

  68th Night

  The doctors lie when they say I have no memory. Look, I remember everything. To tell them they have it wrong is only going to make them angry so I keep this wisdom to myself. It could be that I have already told the doctors they lie and it slipped my mind. It is also possible that the doctors say I have no memory (while knowing it isn’t true) to protect me from the team of interrogators who refuse to believe my answers to their questions.

  Something happened to me a while back from which I haven’t fully recovered. I am strapped to a cot in what appears to be a hospital ward, though that was true yesterday. It may be true again tomorrow. Reality changes in this place from day to day, from hour to hour.

  “What is this place?” I sometimes want to know.

  “We’re the ones that ask the questions, dummy,” the interrogators say.

  I like that they call me dummy. It is something to hang on to, a familiar name. Otherwise, I am no one.

  The interrogators—there are three who interchange—like to get the answer they are looking for, the one they have in mind before they ask the question. I do my best to please, but my best tends to fall short.

  An example: they’ve asked on several different occasions where I met Antonia and Winifred for the first time and when this meeting took place. Each time, they’ve asked, I’ve come up with a different answer, which is always, it seems, the wrong answer.

  It stands to reason if I keep on inventing new answers, eventually I’ll hit on the right one.

  If I get it right, they tell me, if I tell the truth (meaning their truth), the quality of my life while strapped to this cot would improve immeasurably.

  On certain days, I never know in advance which ones, visitors are allowed.

  Today, as a matter of fact (perhaps it is no longer today), my parents, recently dead, come to see me.

  “The authorities informed us of your accident,” my mother says. “Your father and I were most unhappy to hear of it.”

  “What did they say?” I ask, wanting to get the whole picture or at least complete the patchy jig saw puzzle I carry around in my head.

  “Well,” my mother says.

  “We can’t say anything,” my father says. “We’ve been sworn to secrecy.”

  My mother winks as if to say wait until old stick-in-the-mud is out of the room.

  Moments later, as if on cue, my father announces he’s going to the men’s room, having rushed from home without taking time to do his business. My parents embrace and tears fall on both sides before my father actually departs.

  “So?” I say to my mother when we’re alone.

  “What so?” she asks, so I spell it out for her. I need to know what the authorities said about me.

  “Please,” she says. “Are you asking me to betray your father? Is that what you’re asking your mother to do. In a marriage, if one person has a deep dark secret, so has the other. That’s the nature of a marriage.”

  “Not really,” I say.

  “I will never betray your father without his permission,” she says. “What did I always tell you when you were a child?” she says.

  “There was more than one thing,” I say, curious as to what she has in mind.

  “I distinctly remember telling you on several occasions: you can never go wrong, son, by telling the truth people want to hear.”

  I can’t remember her ever saying that to me, but maybe she has.

  “What if you don’t know what the truth is?” I ask her.

  “That’s the kind of question that’s gotten you in trouble before,” she says, “isn’t it? Everyone has a right to make a mistake once if they admit it afterwards.”

  At this point my father returns, drying his hands on the side of his pants. “I can see something’s going on here,” he says. “What has mother said to y
ou behind my back?”

  “Nothing bad,” I say. “Nothing about you.”

  “What did you tell him?” he asks her.

  “The two you,” she says, “you’re so much alike which is why you’re so suspicious of each other.”

  “What did you tell him?” he says as if it were the recording of the first question.

  “I told him,” she says, winking at me, “that your father and I believe that if you tell them the truth, they’ll let you come home to us.”

  “Nah,” my father says. “Don’t listen to your mother. The truth won’t do you any good. You tell them what they want to hear, you hear me. Now we have to go, I’m sorry to say. You’re not our only child.”

  Funny. I thought I was.

  “If dad says so, it must be so,” she says without perceptible irony.

  In a flash, they’re out the door, my mother blowing a kiss, my father saluting.

  Dinner doesn’t arrive at the usual time, but of course the wall clock has stopped and so my only gauge of time is whether I’m hungry or not. Not is the preferred alternative. They haven’t fed me in a dog’s age.

  When there is food, I usually spend the first hour or so trying to identify its source.

  Soon the interrogators will return, sometimes in a group of three (in reverse size place), more often one at a time and I will be urged to confess yet again.

  I work on a confession that could well be appropriate to whatever they might ask.

  67th Night

  “Fuck you,” I answer. It is the voice of outrage speaking.

  “Fuck you is not going to get it done,” the number two interrogator (he’s the Klaus Kinski type with the ripe German accent) says. “You want to get your hands untied, you got to do better than that. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if your arms were coming out of their sockets.”

  “Please untie me,” I say. “I’ll give you what you want.”

  “You got to give us something first,” says the head man.

  “Why don’t you untie him,” says number three, who is a woman and less abrupt in her manner than the others. “If you don’t get what you want, you can always tie him up again. I think he ‘s ready to cooperate.” She puts her hand on my crotch.

  “Yesterday, you told us you knew those girls in high school,” number one says. “The thing is, we know Winifred and Antonia didn’t go to the same high school. So what’s the real story?”

  “Fuck you is the real story,” I say.

  “You’re a terrorist, aren’t you?” two says.

  I’m wondering which answer will get them to untie me. “No,” I say, which induces no response. “Actually, yes.”

  “Were the girls working with you?” the woman asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Yes.”

  “Cut him down,” one says. They look around for a knife, find a pair of scissors in one of the drawers and, after a few agonizing minutes, cut the ropes, permitting me to lower my arms.

  I am prepared to tell them anything not to have my arms strung to the pipe thing again.

  “Did they take orders from you or you from them?” one asks, placing a recorder on the edge of the bed.

  “Sometimes one way, sometimes the other,” I say. “They were driving alone in their open car and when they noticed me on the side of the road with my thumb in the air, they slowed down.”

  “And when was that?” two asks, interrupting my train of thought.

  “Five years ago,” I say.

  “You’ve known them for five years?” the woman asks, seemingly surprised by my answer.

  “Perhaps it was three years ago,” I say.

  They look at their notes, huddle in the far corner of the room.

  Buzz buzz buzz buzz. “In our first interview,” says the woman, “you said you only knew them for a short while. Were you lying then or are you lying now?”

  “In my profession,” I say, “which I have only the vaguest recollection of having practiced, I feel obliged to tell whatever seems the best story at the time.”

  The interrogators leave the room, the woman returning moments later. “When you say ‘in my profession,’” she asks, “what profession exactly are you referring to?”

  The answer comes to mind, then slips away. “Don’t you know?” I say. “Who do you think I am?”

  “It’s an old trick,” she said, “to try to turn the tables on the questioner. Would it be accurate to say that the profession you’re referring to is the commission of seemingly random acts of violence? Please answer if you don’t wish to be tied again with your arms in the air. I think you know that I’m the only friend you have in here.”

  “I appreciate your kindness,” I say, only half aware that I am dissembling. “The profession I was referring to is that of storyteller.”

  “You are saying that you’re a professional liar, is that it?” she says, turning away. “And I was beginning to like you, sweetheart.” She takes a tiny cell phone from her pocket to answer a call or perhaps to make one.

  The word “storyteller” makes itself known from time to time.

  “Look, I am not a professional liar,” I say when I have her attention again, “though I admit there is a connection between liar and teller of stories.”

  I confess that I have violent mood swings and a bad temper and that a former therapist said—I think he meant it in a positive way—that I tend to be self-involved.

  “That isn’t anything I want to know,” she says. “Unless…”

  “Unless?”

  “Unless it was your uncontrollable temper that got you into the situation we’re talking about,” she says.

  “I made every effort to avoid fights because of my temper,” I say. “I knew that once I got started I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. So I avoided all provocations except for this one time.” I have no idea what I am going to say so I pretend I am censoring myself from telling the story while at the same time trying to come up with something vaguely credible.

  “Were you with Toni and Win when this happened, storyteller?” the woman asks.

  “I must have been,” I say. “I mean, your asking me about them must have stirred up this memory. That makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  She turns on the tape recorder, which she holds out in my direction and clicks it on. “I’m listening,” she says, but that isn’t what she means.

  “One of them was dancing with this drunk aggressive guy who was leaning into her. It might have been that I was the guy. I don’t think so. I think it was someone else and that I was sitting across from them. I had the sense that Win was appealing to me to help.”

  “Where was Toni?”

  “I think she was in the bathroom at this time. The drunk—he was a big guy, burly—forced Win to go outside with him. I seemed to be the only one aware of what was going on, which urged a certain responsibility on me, wouldn’t you say. Win had this imploring look on her face.”

  “Did she?” the woman says. “Would you repeat that? You had your head turned. …Questioner is asking prisoner to repeat his remarks.”

  “So I went outside to see what was going on.”

  “Was this man who was in your words forcing Win to leave the establishment in his custody a law enforcement officer”

  “If he was, and I can’t be sure one way or another, he wasn’t wearing a uniform.”

  “Describe what the man was wearing.”

  I’m not very observant so even if my memory was working on all gears, I wouldn’t be able to answer her question. “He had on a plaid shirt,” I say, “and shit-kicking boots.”

  “And as you say, you followed them outside. Is that right? To what purpose?”

  “To protect her if there was no other way.”

  “And why would you think she needed protection? The man, who you say was forcing her, might have been taking her outside in his capacity as a law enforcer. Isn’t that a possibility?”

  “You’re right, of course,” I say. “I’m just describing
what I saw and what I did.”

  “Go on.”

  “I didn’t see them at first but then I heard what sounded like a call for help and I went in the direction it was coming from. I was holding a wrench in my hand, though I’m not sure how I acquired it.”

  “Go on.”

  “The woman, Win, was being shoved into the back of an SUV parked at the side of the road. I could see bruises on her face where she had been punched. When her assailant saw me coming towards them, he pointed a gun at me and said to mind my own business if I knew what was good for me. I don’t know why but I kept moving toward him and then Win bit his hand and the gun came loose. Crying out, her assailant hit her with his fist knocking her head into the back of the car. The other woman, Toni, who I hadn’t seen before, picked the gun up off the ground.”

  “Where did Toni come from? You said she was in the restroom.”

  “Well, maybe it was Win who had picked up the gun and Toni was somewhere behind me coming on to the scene.”

  “He had just knocked Win unconscious, how could she have picked up the gun?”

  “I take your point. It wasn’t likely that Toni would have gotten to the gun before me. So I must have been the one to pick up the fallen gun. I had never fired a hand gun before and my intent was to rescue Molly, although it was Win this time, wasn’t it, by keeping the gun away from her assailant. Win wasn’t moving so I gave the gun to Toni, who had just come up behind me and told her to cover me while I carried Win to safety. Before I could react, Buck, I think that was his name, had Win in a stranglehold and was using her as a shield. And then I noticed that two of his redneck friends had come out of the bar and were calling to him and we had lost whatever limited advantage we had.”

  “I’m losing you,” the interrogator says.

  “When Toni shot Buck in the leg, Win was able to free herself and we got into a pink Cadillac convertible which had been left unattended about a hundred feet away.”

  “So you admit to having stolen the car.”

  “Yes, but we would have returned it if given the chance. The three of them chased us in Buck’s Blazer and we exchanged gunfire and I got lucky and must have blown out a tire because their van went off the road and crashed into a tree.”