Chapter 206: Katrina VII—Soon Enough
Katrina’s chest was hurting as she drove home; she felt the sweat beading underneath her clothing. She knew that it was impossible, but what was it? It had to be some sort of sign, there was something important about what had just happened. It couldn’t be ignored.
The eyes of course were unmistakable. One never saw green eyes like that, outside of her family she knew of no one else who had them. Of course, now that Katrina thought about it, they could have been color contacts. Those were common.
But they weren’t, were they? Katrina could feel it in the pit of her stomach as she fumbled with her keys to get into her apartment. Those were that girl’s eyes, she was real and she was blood. But she wasn’t Chloe.
Cecile? Katrina thought about it, she ran it over in her brain trying to remember her mother mentioning a Cecile, a cousin, a sister, and aunt…. She couldn’t remember anything of the sort. Her mother kept a lot of secrets she knew, and took most of them to her grave, but Katrina knew that things never stayed hidden. It was always a matter of time before something surfaced.
Her eyes burned as she poured herself a tumbler of hard liquor, but she didn’t cry. She blinked her tears back and swallowed the alcohol, cringed from its taste and she flopped onto her couch, flipped on her television. It would be useless to think about it at this point, wouldn’t it? Obviously the girl, Cecile, had also recognized the familiarities in the face but she didn’t seem to know too much about her. If Cecile wasn’t aware of who her family was, then perhaps it was something better left unsaid.
The hockey
game was on TV. Katrina frowned. Mr. Pradera, the
fussy, lithe, snipping, Spanish head massage therapist for the team had told
Katrina to stay home on this roadtrip because he was
testing out three new therapists for the team, one of them who would replace
Markus who was leaving the team’s employ. Katrina had asked if her job was in
jeopardy and she should know about it if it was, but Pradera
had laughed and quelled her fears, saying he was just looking for a replacement
for Markus, never for her.
It was dangerous to lose importance in a man’s life, Katrina glanced up at the high ceiling and lush furnishings of her new apartment, and she was quite comfortable here. She wasn’t particularly in the mood to be on the hunt for a new suitor.
Katrina yawned, felt calmer as she watched the players scraping against each other on the television. Ignorant dogs the most of them. They seemed to be losing too, down by three goals. Katrina grinned, she was willing to bet that more than one of those players, especially a certain titian haired Swede was missing her expertise on loosening groin muscles right now. She yawned again, she closed her eyes…
What about your family? Don’t you care about them?
The sound of her glass falling from her hand and rolling loudly across the floor and then Katrina sat up with wide eyes. HE had threatened her family, she had told him that she had none, but he had seemed confident that she had. She pressed her hand to her breast, felt her pulse race and her breath quicken.
He knows who I am.
He knows who Cecile is.
He knows who my family is.
How much more does he know that I don’t? What does he want?
Katrina rolled over and grabbed the telephone, she held it tightly in her hand as she rooted through her purse and found that scrap of a paper with that number.
“Dammit,” she muttered to herself thinking of the money he had given her for that housekey, “I just needed some rent! He just said he was going to take a few things… steal a few things…. They were so rich they wouldn’t miss…” She found the number, didn’t know exactly what she would say as she dialed it and waited for the ring.
“We’re sorry,” the automated voice droned, “But this number has been disconnected.”
“Dammit!” Katrina snarled and she slammed the phone back onto the cradle. “Who the hell are you?” She growled and pressed her fingers to her forehead, closed her eyes and thought of his face, dark eyes, unimpressive, face, in shape…. She couldn’t recall ever meeting him before but he knew her.
Katrina, he had said as he approached her outside of her apartment building, I know you’re in need of rent…
It was just a little house key but Katrina knew now, as she thought of that girl with her eyes, of those giggling little children, that she had just opened one helluva large door and maybe one she would not be able to close on her own meager weight. The way these things went, it would happen soon enough… perhaps too soon…
“Oh you’re such a sweet girl, yes sir such a sweet girl.”
Katrina didn’t reply as she fixed her skirt around her body and buttoned her blouse back up. She sighed, it was a humid, sweltering, ninety degree day and her activities of just a minute ago had done nothing to help her body temperature. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back into the couch. “Jesus Huxton can’t you get the air conditioning fixed I’m frying!”
She felt his fingers brush the sweat dampened hair from her temple, and then his pleasant scent as he kissed her softly there. “Call me James, or Jim, why do you always call me by my family name, darling?”
Katrina opened her eyes slightly and grinned as she looked at his pretty face, his pretty alabaster skin. “Because I thought us young ones were always supposed to refer to their elders by their family name.”
His eyes rolled shut and he pressed his palms over his face. “Why do you do that? You make me feel like a… a…”
“A perv?” Katrina said nonchalantly, “What’s wrong with that? Isn’t that what you are old man?”
“No!” Huxton exclaimed and he was rather hurried as he began to close his pants, and button his own shirt. “No I’m not like that, I don’t look at other girls and I never have before I told you before… you were just so beautiful…”
Katrina smiled, she loved this flustered side of him, when he blushed and stuttered and was no longer the big mean lawyer, the genteel Sothron Socialite. “I’m just teasing you, Huxton, relax okay?”
He swallowed and his eyes were large and shining, “Oh,” he said quietly. “I can never tell, you’re so serious. You can drill a man through with that stony gaze you get, like the eyes over a dueling pistol.”
“Mmhmm,” Katrina replied and she leaned over to grab her shoes. “Lesson’s over, that’ll be forty bucks.”
She heard him laugh and the rustle of money. “You’re shameless, you know that?” he said.
Katrina raised her eyebrows and snatched the money from his hand. “That’s the pot calling the kettle black, SIR, don’t be absurd.”
Huxton smiled with pretty, perfect teeth and Katrina felt her heart quiver. I’m sixteen now, she thought, but for two years he’s been addicted to me, if I can hold him another two and his marriage does indeed collapse…
“What are you thinking about?” he said in a quiet voice, his finger tapping her chin.
Katrina sighed. “Oh nothing, just about how wonderful we’ll look together twenty years from now. I rather think I’m an investment, I mean you’ll be an old man and I’ll still be..”
“Ravishing,” Huxton interjected.
“Thank you,” Katrina replied, “So how great for you would that be? I bet I’ll be worth quite a few votes because if you think about it, I won’t be some underage chippy bird that’ll turn people away, I’ll be old too, close to forty so I can still uphold some respectability.”
Huxton smiled. “What a wicked little brain you have my dear. You amaze me.”
“I hope I do,” Katrina replied. “I’m just tired of waiting, I wish it could all be now! I mean I wish Sylvia was gone, and I was your wife, and you were in the senate and…”
“Shhh,” Huxton said, pressing his fingers against her lips. “One thing at a time. Soon enough my dear, soon enough.”
The first thing Katrina saw after Huxton had dropped her off on her street corner and she had walked back home were the police cars outside of the house. There was two of em, Katrina half smiled, so Mother had finally called the police? Fat lot of good that would do, Clinton Parfet was six months out of the police force after a permanently crippling injury to his left leg. She was pretty certain that they would be more liable to listen to his side of a story rather than hers.
“Idiot,”
Katrina said and then she recognized the large ambulance, the stretcher, and
her mother on it. She stood still for a moment, not knowing what to do she saw
She felt her blood pounding in her temples as she ran, she ran hard, she screamed, “You son of a BITCH!”
“Katrina,”
“NOOO!” Katrina snarled and she wriggled out of the arms holding her. “Mommy!” She turned and jumped off the porch, ran to the ambulance where they were loading her mother. “Please mister,” she called to the paramedic, “She’s my mommy can I ride? She can’t be alone.”
The paramedic glanced at her quickly, “Get in, and stay out of the way.”
Katrina never felt as helpless as she did in the back of that ambulance watching as the paramedics fussed over her with different tools, talked in jargon to each other, yelled about goddamn wife beaters, screamed into radios.
I’m gonna lose her. Katrina thought. She saw the red circular bruises around her throat, her face was black in some spots with injury, her nose was slanted all the way to one side, there was blood dribbling from every opening on her face.
How could you let this happen? Katrina thought. Why did you want this?
Her mother died that evening, they did what they could and they thought they had fixed her. Katrina had been sitting by her bedside, holding her hand, trying to understand everything when she had opened her good eye.
“Mommy?” Katrina had whispered, feeling her tears dribbling.
“Katrina,” she had whispered.
Katrina leaned over her, listened.
“Find Chloe.”
Katrina shook her head, “Mommy I’m sure she’s at home.”
“He stole her.”
“What?”
“Find her.”
At that point her mother’s eyes had fluttered shut, the machines she was hooked up to began to scream in distress and Katrina pressed her hands over her ears, stood unnoticed in the back corner of that room as they tried to revive her mother, and failed. It was only after the silence of death, of the doctors as they stood quietly realizing that they had failed, when Katrina screamed. She kept screaming, fell to her knees and screamed louder when one of the doctors put his arms around her and pressed her cheek to his chest. She screamed until all she could see was darkness and all she knew is that she would go home and find that her baby sister was gone.
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