it. Rubbing the fabric across his rough bristles. “Do you know what happens with dolls I no longer want to play with?” He laughed again, a warning, as though I was about to find out.
But there couldn’t be anything worse than what I’d already gone through.
I couldn’t be hungrier than I was now.
I couldn’t be more battered and bruised.
He took my clothes off the floor and carried them up the stairs, watching me the entire time until he disappeared at the top.
The latch clicked, and one, two, three padlocks followed.
And then the single light that hung in the ceiling turned off.
Filling the room with pitch darkness.
I shivered, running my hands over my arms, feeling the dampness from the blood.
The lack of light made the room feel even colder than normal.
The only things down here to warm me were the cot and Beverly.
With no glow, I couldn’t see her, but I knew she wasn’t far.
I pushed myself down the wall, the grit and sand scratching the skin on my butt. I moved slowly, reaching into the blackness, feeling for her cotton or yarn, clasping the second I touched one.
“Beverly,” I cried. “Hold me.” I set her arms on my shoulders, squeezing her against my chest.
She wasn’t hugging me with the strength I needed.
She wasn’t telling me it was going to be okay.
My shoulder was aching; my thigh was throbbing.
“Oh God, Beverly.” I held the back of her head. “Tell me I’m going to be all right.”
Tears were wetting her hair, my sobs sending tremors through her body.
“Beverly!”
I just needed her voice. I needed her to talk to me. I needed something other than nothing.
I pulled her off me and shook her in the air, trying to wake her up. “Bev—” I started, but a sound cut me off.
A voice.
One that was familiar.
Because I’d heard it once before.
I’d thought it was Beverly’s, but there was no way it could have been hers; it had come from the other side of the wall.
I pressed my ear against the cement.
I listened.
And I heard, “I’m here,” followed by, “Don’t worry, Kerry. He’ll forgive you.”
Forty-Three
Before
Pearl
As my eyes opened, my back slowly lifting off the floor, I could feel the audience staring at me. I could almost hear their long intake of breath, holding the air in their lungs, waiting to see if this final act was a retelling of Romeo and Juliet or if this was our own spin—an ending that wasn’t going to result in my death.
It was a fair question.
Our director had certainly modernized the tale from the set design to the clothing. He’d made changes to the original script to keep the audience guessing.
I’d rehearsed this part hundreds of times onstage and in our apartment, even when I was at Ashe’s.
The setting was Romeo’s home, the floor of his bedroom, a bed behind me that we’d endlessly made love in. As I leaned up from the carpet, he was next to me, our arms still stretched toward each other, our fingers almost touching. From my position, the lack of movement in his chest told me he wasn’t breathing. I pulled myself closer, placing my cheek there, listening.
No sound.
No rise and fall.
When my ear went to his nose and then his mouth, there was no intake of breath.
“No!” Tears streamed down my face, and I tasted them on my lips when I shouted, “Nooo,” again. I pounded his chest with my fists, begging air to move through his lungs. Sobs came out in bursts, each quiver causing more gasps. “Please.” I lifted his head, holding his face in my arms, kissing each part of it. “Please.” I swallowed, the spit becoming too thick for my words to sound clear. “I need you.”
I’d practiced ways to make the lines sound authentic, to make the emotion appear real. But all I had to do was think of Ashe, the way it would feel if he were taken from me, and the tears naturally fell, the idea of him suddenly being gone from my life causing tremors to shake my entire body.
I curled into the crook of his arm, resting my face on the spot where I always cuddled Ashe—the home I had built on my boyfriend’s chest—and gripped his shirt in my palm. “No, Romeo!” I wailed. The sobs made my voice convulse, pain etched deep in my face. “I-I can’t l-live without y-you.”
I lifted his arm that was dead weight and draped it over my body. I needed the feel of him. The warmth. The