OtherWorld Read online

  “Yeah, well how come a teacher has mob connections?”

  “I didn’t say I did, I said my father did.”

  “If you think it’s such a big deal working for them, why don’t you do it yourself?”

  “They don’t take on many women.”

  “Sex discrimination,” David said, “is illegal.”

  “Not any more,” Marylou said. “Twelve years of Reagan-Bush took care of that. Where’ve you been? In jail?”

  He hesitated, pretending to study his cards. He didn’t want to admit it. It made him feel foolish. But he’d have it on his record for the rest of his life, so he might as well get used to it. “Yeah, but don’t tell. It’d be bad for business.”

  “You can trust me,” Marylou said. “My lips are sealed. What happened? Were you set up?”

  He thought about lying, but that wouldn’t be right. “Oh, I did it, all right. I was just young and stupid. I got caught.”

  Marylou sighed. “Ah, the foibles of youth. All impulse, no cleverness.”

  “That’s about it,” David said.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, if you do, my door’s always open.” She laughed. “Actually, it’s not. But you do have the key.”

  “I already talked about it all,” David said. “With my therapist.”

  “You’ve been in therapy? How very responsible. I think everyone should go into therapy, don’t you?”

  “Everyone would,” David said, “if they had my therapist.”

  “Aha.” Marylou smiled. Her eyes twinkled. “A little unresolved transference?”

  “Mind your own business,” David said sharply, and discarded the four of clubs.

  “Sorry.” Marylou plucked up the card and spread out her hand. “Gin.” She picked up her little notebook and pencil and recorded their scores. “The transference thing is not your responsibility. Your therapist should have straightened it out before he let you go.”

  David thought that over. There was a lot of truth in what she said, but it still made him mad. “How come you know so much?”

  “My mother’s a therapist.” She bit her tongue. Oh-oh. She’d better be careful, or he’d put a positive ID on her.

  He was leaning toward her eagerly. “Really? Your mother’s a therapist?”

  “Didn’t you know that?”

  “No. You have a mother who’s a therapist, and your father works for the Mob?”

  “Everyone needs someone to talk to now and then. Even Wiseguys. And so much better to keep your problems within The Family, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know,” he said gloomily. “I never had much of a family.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. It must be difficult.”

  “Yeah.” He fiddled with one of the Norwegian cookies he’d picked up for her earlier. “My dad split early on, and my mother’s been dead about five years.”

  She patted his hand sympathetically. It made him feel like crying.

  “And so you turned to a life of crime,” she said. “You see how these things happen?”

  “Nah,” he said with a shake of his head. “I was in business before she died.” Then he cheered up. “Anyway, your family’s in crime.”

  “Not the whole family, just my father.”

  “Your mother’s a mob therapist.”

  “Only part time. She has a legitimate practice, too.”

  David frowned. “I wonder why my client didn’t tell me that.”

  “Well,” said Marylou with feigned outrage, “it makes absolutely no sense to me. I mean, if I were to have someone kidnap someone for me, I’d certainly try to trust them a little bit.”

  Now that he thought more about it, he realized that she was right and he was very hurt. It was a conflicted kind of feeling. The kind of feeling that sometimes made him turn mean.

  “So who is it?” Marylou asked.

  “Who’s what?”

  “Your client.”

  “None of your business,” he snapped. Definitely feeling conflicted and turning mean.

  “Excuse me,” Marylou said. “But it seems to me, if a person’s going to be snatched, they have a right to know who’s behind it.”

  “No, you don’t have the right. That’s not the way the game’s played.”

  “Oh, so now there are rules for this snatching business.”

  “Of course there are rules,” David said. “This is a profession, for God’s sake.”

  “Well,” said Marylou huffily, “I am certainly gratified to see that we’re playing this by the rules.”

  “You make me crazy,” David muttered.

  “Look, I’m sorry I’m not up on the latest etiquette… never having been snatched before. You ought to have a handbook or something, Hints for Snatchees.”

  He looked at her, his eyes glittering with a cold and slightly demented light. “I could kill you, you know. So just don’t get smart with me, okay?”

  The silver glint in his eyes scared her. “Okay,” she said softly.

  “And it’s your dern deal.”

  She picked up the cards and shuffled them and dealt their hands. She needed the Jack of Diamonds and the five of hearts to win. She’d be willing to bet all the money she had in the bank and her share of the travel agency that his first discard would be one of those two cards. And that she’d draw the other within the first three draws. She was going to win again. It seemed like a really bad idea. Marylou sighed heavily.

  “Now what?” he asked impatiently.

  “Can’t you at least tell me why this is happening?”

  “I told you, it’s none of your damn business.”

  “It just seems to me, if a person’s going to go to the inconvenience of being snatched—when they came here for a vacation at great personal expense, they should know why they’re being snatched.”

  “Look,” he said, “I could kill you, you know.”

  “I don’t think so. If you kill me, you won’t have me. And obviously I’m wanted for some purpose, nefarious or otherwise.”

  David slammed a discard onto the section of floor they were using as a table. It was the five of hearts.

  Oh, God, Marylou thought. If I take it, I’ll gin in three draws for sure, and he’s already edgy. If I don’t take it, if I let him win and he finds out, his precious little ego will be shattered. And a man with a shattered precious little ego is a dangerous man indeed. This situation definitely calls for Keeping One’s Wits about One.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said.

  “Again?”

  “Women aren’t like men,” Marylou explained in what she hoped was a pleasant and not condescending tone. “We don’t have your capacity.”

  “You had plenty of capacity yesterday.”

  “I did?”

  “I followed you around half the dern day, you know.”

  “Oh,” Marylou said. “You didn’t happen to try the guacamole, did you?”

  “No. I don’t eat when I’m working.”

  “And a wise decision that is. I was only wondering if you’d noticed anything funny about it. I haven’t felt right.”

  “I drugged you. That’s why you don’t feel right.”

  Marylou nodded. “That undoubtedly accounts for it. Unless I’m getting my period, that is.”

  “Jesus!” David exclaimed. “You’re not going to start bleeding, are you?”

  Aha. Like most men, he was terrified of menstrual blood. There should be a way to use that to her advantage. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s close to my time, but I left my date book in my room. And there’s the matter of the stress I’ve been under...”

  “You’ve been under a lot of stress?” he asked, almost kindly.

  “Being snatched and all. It really isn’t terribly restful. I just hope it’s not my month for severe cramps.”

  “You’ve going to have cramps?” God, lady, don’t start bleeding. My mother used to hurt something fierce when she bled.
You could hear her moaning all over the house. The only thing that’d help was rye whiskey, and I don’t know if I can get rye whiskey...

  “I’ll be all right,” Marylou said, pathetically and bravely. “They only last a couple of days.”

  David fiddled with the neck of his shirt. “I thought people like you didn’t have anything to do with men.”

  “Men?”

  “My mother always said women had cramps because of how they were treated by men. So I figure, since you don’t have anything to do with men, you shouldn’t have cramps.”

  “I see.” So his mother was, in her own way, enlightened. It might be the Short Form of enlightenment, but enlightenment nevertheless. This could be very useful. “Your mother was absolutely right,” she said.

  “So how come you have them?”

  “How come I… Oh, you mean because I’m a lesbian.”

  He nodded eagerly.

  Time to bring out a bit of Gwen’s history. If he knew anything, and was having doubts, it wouldn’t hurt to strengthen his convictions. “I used to be married.”

  “You? But I thought...”

  “We don’t always know we’re lesbians,” Marylou explained. “The culture at large doesn’t want to admit we exist, so it conspires to keep us ignorant.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said, looking totally bewildered.

  “It’s a lesbian thing. You don’t have to understand. But I really would like to use the bathroom, if you don’t mind.” She smiled gently, in what she hoped was a beatific way. “Menstrual pressures do make one have to go.”

  He jumped up eagerly. “Okay. Sorry.”

  She smiled again. Blessed him with a smile.

  He unlocked the door and stood back. Almost as if he were afraid to touch her accidentally, without her permission.

  Well, Marylou thought, that’s more like it.

  She swept through the door like royalty.

  * * *

  Mid-afternoon in Earth Station. The crowds had thinned out a little. It was too late in the day to make dinner reservations, and most people had the rest of their EPCOT visit planned and didn’t need Information.

  Stoner watched another load of tourists exit Spaceship Earth. She studied their faces. They looked fairly healthy and not terribly shaken. In fact, they seemed to be enjoying themselves.

  Which didn’t make her feel the least bit better about The Ball. Not the least.

  Edith Kesselbaum was probably right. “You see, Stoner,” she said frequently when Stoner was her client, and regularly since then, “you’re an introvert. That means, what you experience is always going to be more real to you than anything in the outside world. The entire human race can fall down in worship of something, but if you don’t like it you’re not going to like it.”

  Which was comforting, since she always seemed to know what she felt—even if it was confusion or ambivalence—and couldn’t be swayed by cheap and fickle public opinion. But there were times, like now, when it made her feel terribly foolish and awfully alone. Times like now, when she could watch all those happy faces and know they had come close to something frightening and potentially dangerous, and they didn’t even realize it.

  Unless, of course, the frightening potential danger was reserved for her alone.

  Gwen gestured to her from the telephone.

  Stoner went over.

  “She doesn’t sound right,” Gwen said as she covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “See what you think.” She turned back to the phone. “Just a second, Edith. Stoner wants to have a word with you.”

  “What word?” Stoner mouthed as she took the phone.

  Gwen shrugged.

  “Hello, Edith?”

  “Stoner. I was just telling Gwen that things have been quiet here. Very quiet.”

  Yes, she could hear it. A slight tightness and shrillness in Edith’s voice.

  “Nobody’s called? No notes or anything?”

  “Not a thing,” Edith said. “I don’t suppose you’ve come up with anything?”

  “Nothing definite.” She hesitated. “I thought you had meetings or something this afternoon. I thought Aunt Hermione was going to cover the rooms.”

  Edith took a quick in-and-out of breath.

  Hyperventilating, Stoner thought.

  “Oh, it’s no problem. It would be just too dull for Hermione, here alone.”

  Stoner doubted that. Aunt Hermione never minded being alone. And, if she did, she could always call some departed spirit in for a chat. She had once spent an entire evening talking with Ghandi, from which she had emerged to say he was a pleasant enough person, but such passivity made her jumpy.

  She hesitated, then decided to plunge right in. It would be what Edith herself would do in the same circumstances. “Are you freaking out?” she asked.

  Edith gave what sounded like a little squeak. “Not at all.”

  “Yes, you are. I can tell.”

  “I’m perfectly composed, Stoner.”

  “You never were good at covering up, Edith. I knew that even when you were my therapist.”

  “Aha!” Edith exclaimed. “I suspected at the time that you were watching me instead of focussing on yourself.”

  Stoner smiled. “Only once in a while. Don’t try to change the subject.”

  There was a moment of hesitation. “Well, all right. I suppose I’m a little concerned.”

  “More than concerned.”

  “Frightened. Satisfied?”

  “Thank you,” Stoner said.

  “She’s my little girl.”

  Stoner could swear she heard a sniffle. Edith Kesselbaum? Crying? “She’s not a little girl,” she said soothingly. “She’s a grown woman, and very capable...”

  “Oh, she is not capable, and you know it,” Edith said. “She’s a total flake.”

  “She can handle herself. I’ve seen her do it a thousand times. In fact, if I were going to worry about anyone, I’d worry about her kidnappers.”

  “Fine,” Edith said huffily. “I’ll worry about the whole bloody world.” She caught herself. “Forgive me, Stoner. That was very unprofessional. I hope it doesn’t cause you transference problems.”

  Stoner had to smile. “I think we’ve worked through most of the transference problems, Edith.”

  “You must never, ever assume that. If you do, it’ll jump out at you when you least expect it.”

  Edith was back to her old self.

  “The thing is,” Stoner said, “you really should be going about your business as if nothing were wrong. Remember, they think she’s Gwen. If someone’s watching you, knowing your name, and they see you upset… well, they’ll know they got the wrong person.”

  “Yes,” Edith said. “Your point is well taken.”

  She hoped Edith wouldn’t look at her reasoning too closely. If she did, she’d realize it was absurd to think that anyone with a desire to harm them would be watching them at a psychiatric convention. She just wanted Edith to have something to do, so she wouldn’t brood and be anxious. So she’d feel as if she were helping them find her daughter.

  Assuming that’s what they were doing—finding her daughter.

  * * *

  Marylou ran water in the dirty, rust-stained sink and looked around the small lavatory. No windows. No other entrance. And the place looked and smelled as if it hadn’t been used in years. Kind of a dead, still odor. Very un-Disney-like. Her best guess was that this lavatory, and the room he had her in, had been used while EPCOT was under construction, but abandoned once the park opened.

  She hummed the Mickey Mouse Club theme, loudly, and hoped he would take advantage of her absence to look at her gin hand. That was, after all, the point of this little trip, to give him a chance to cheat. Oh, she supposed she could try to escape. But she didn’t know beans about escape and survival techniques, and would probably make a mess of it and confuse everyone. Besides, she knew, beyond the shadow of any doubt, that Stoner would find her sooner or later. She was a little sorry she’d behaved
like such a jerk this morning—no, she reminded herself, that was yesterday morning, she’d been missing for more than twenty-four hours, good grief—but she knew that wouldn’t keep her old friend from finding her. Certainly she hadn’t behaved badly enough to merit being tossed to the wolves.

  Had she?

  Of course not.

  She just hoped Stoner would show up soon. This kidnapping business was beginning to get under her skin.

  “Well?” David asked hesitantly as Marylou emerged from the lavatory.

  Damn. He’d been standing there all the time. Probably didn’t believe in cheating at cards. The situation was turning dicey. “Well?”

  “Do you have it?”

  Marylou looked at him, bewildered. “Have what?”

  “Your...” We waved his hand in a circle. “You know.”

  “My period?”

  David winced.

  “Not yet. Any minute, though. I can tell.”

  He turned a little pale. Or was it green? Hard to tell in this light. It gave her an idea.

  “I’m going to need supplies,” she said.

  He stared at her blankly.

  “Supplies. Tampons.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” he muttered.

  “You’ll have to get them. Tampax. Not scented, not deodorized. Cardboard applicator but not the comfort-fitted kind. They rip the guts out of you.”

  David groaned. “Don’t you have anything with you?”

  “I would have,” Marylou said reasonably, “if I’d known I was going to be snatched. I certainly would have come prepared if I’d had decent prior notice. But since you didn’t see fit to inform me...”

  “All right, all right.”

  “You don’t want me to bleed all over this lovely bed, do you?”

  “I said all right!”

  “I use the Super, not Super Plus.” Marylou patted her pelvic bones. “There’s nothing flaccid about my vagina. I keep the PC muscles in shape with Jane Fonda.”