Woke Up Lonely by Fiona Maazel

Author:Fiona Maazel
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9781555976385
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 2013-04-01T07:00:00+00:00

V. In which some women bat their eyes, others sit down and write. Guided by voices. The inconsolable child.

V. In which some women bat their eyes, others sit down and write. Guided by voices. The inconsolable child.

ESME WAS CONCUSSED AND LOCKED IN A HOTEL BATHROOM. There was dusk out the window, bullfrogs in one ear—no, both—and a bellows whumping through her brain at three-second intervals. She’d been passed out the entire afternoon, and, for the girth of the swell atop her skull, she guessed Jim had whacked her hard. The irony of getting knocked in the head while giving head was not lost on her, though it was also not top on her list of ignominies that needed undoing.

Jim had left her bag but no wallet or phone. No one was likely to come up to this room uninvited. The window was too small to get through, and even if she could, it was eight floors up. The lock had been jacked; she would be in this bathroom until Martin got a clue. Tick-tock.

She rinsed her face and showdowned with the loony in the mirror. By now, she knew, the siege was being broadcast worldwide. The thinking: We need to appear as though we’re doing everything in our power to get our people released and to hold accountable the delinquent who sent them there. We. Ha. There was no we. There was just her and her madness and a break from the certainty that had floated her for years: that she would figure this out, hatch a plan, marshal the weaponry at her disposal against the anomie of love. The anomie of love! Who still pines for the same man nine years later?

One of her pupils was bigger than the other, as though to render the distribution of wherewithal that characterized her inner life. Much passion, no hope. Bold moves, no endgame, though the sequence of events that had gotten her here had been nothing if not a great match ranged across the board.

She sat on the floor. The tile was cool under skin. Even if she got to Cincinnati in time, what could she make happen? A guy who detains four federal employees has no intention of coming out alive. So for starters, her job would be to change intent. What she needed was a rhetoric of persuasion. How to spellbind in five minutes, because that was about all the patience the feds had left for this. Frank Spearman, who tried to talk down Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge, wrote out what he was going to say on index cards. So that’s what she would do.

She found a pen in her bag. Checked her watch. She numbered her pages. She wrote:

1. Lo, if I’m reading this out loud, it’s because you still haven’t come out and time is not on your side. But I’m not sure what to say. You think you screwed up? Is that the problem? Let me tell you about screwing up. Maybe it will help.

2. I am an eavesdropper and a snoop.

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