Donor Page 5

  “When I came to meet you on Tuesday, I brought three hundred dollars cash to buy those records. Is that still my money?”

  Richard chuckled. “Are you still interested in buying my collection?”

  “No—I mean for Xanax.”

  “Umm sure that’s still your money, but I can’t just waltz into a pharmacy and pick up a bunch of those pills for you without a prescription—“

  "The bottle on my purse has three refills. Oh, and there are two more prescriptions in the front pocket…" She stopped herself. This was not helping her case.

  “No good. You’re dead, remember? I have ways of covering you guys up, but I’m not trying to make things harder on myself with a paper trail. Besides, let‘s say that we got you some pills—what happens when your money runs out?”

  “Get me the pills this one time and I’ll wean myself off. I swear. Just get me as far as my money goes.”

  “Oh Christ, you’re a mess. At least Angela was CLEAN. This was a mistake. I’m going to have to find someone else.”

  “No! Never mind about the medicine. I’ll get through this on my own.”

  “You’ve already TRIED that and now you’re having seizures. I have neither the time nor the desire to coddle you through another five of these until you’re back on your feet. I was completely fine with whatever your medical issue was beforehand—even though you refused to tell me about it—and I would have gotten you something from over the counter, but this is ridiculous.”

  “I’ll stay out of your hair. Please don’t find someone else. Please.” Lenore paused for fear of crying. “Please don’t take me to that room in the back,” she whispered.

  Richard sighed and looked at the purse on the floor. Saying nothing, he fished out the wallet and extracted the wad of cash inside. Shaking the bills in front of her, he said, “I’m not a thief. This is your money. You get to making a list of everything you need and I’ll talk to Paul. He'll probably know someone who can get you those pills. You figure out how to get yourself off that shit for good, though, because there won’t be any refills, understand?”

  “That’s fair. Thank you!” Lenore felt sick for thanking her kidnapper.

  “Uh huh. Just so we have an understanding, if this type of thing happens again I WILL find someone else. And I’m not cleaning up after you. You get yourself cleaned up and then you go clean up the kitchen.”

  She looked at her clothes. “Where’s the laundry?” she asked.

  Richard grinned. “It’s that room you don’t want me to take you to. Put your clothes outside the door and I’ll take care of the rest.”

  “Did Angela go in there?”

  His grin widened. “You might say she never left.”

  “I mean to do laundry.”

  “Oh. No. It gets pretty messy in there. See that hamper?” He pointed to an overturned plastic bin on the floor. “Fill it up, leave it outside the door, and when I get around to it, I’ll give it back to you with the clothes washed and dried. This isn’t the dry-cleaners, though; if it doesn’t look dirty to me I’ll tell you to wear it again. You aren’t here to impress anybody.”

  “Can I get clothes with the money?” Lenore needed some jeans that fit.

  Richard rolled his eyes. "Look, I don't care what you spend it on. Work out a budget and I'll see what I can do." Then he gestured to Lenore's shirt and asked wryly, "What? Are wacky catchphrases out this season?"

  “They’re very last fall.”

  Richard nodded and turned to the door. "I'm heading out for a bit. When I get back, I expect the kitchen to be cleaned up and you to have a list together of everything you need. Food is on me, by the way, so if you're budgeting out the 300 don't worry about the cost of food. And you know what? I just got an idea. You pack up all of Angela's shit you don't want. I'll have someone take it over to Goodwill and trade it in for some new clothes. That should help your money go further, what do you think?"

  “That works for me.”

  “There’s a desk with some paper and a pencil in the library. You can make your list there and don’t forget to clean the kitchen. No mess.” With that, he was gone.

  Lenore watched Richard shut the door with a feeling of helplessness. What if she had another seizure in his absence? Perhaps it was better that way; another seizure in his presence and he was likely to kill her. She exhaled, noting that the taste in her mouth had not improved. Where was the bottle of Gatorade that she refused earlier? She found it on the nightstand and consumed the entire container before stepping into the bathroom.

  After taking a quick shower, Lenore threw her (urine?) stained clothes into the hamper and then went to the dresser to find another outfit. The venture resulted in another disappointing look through Angela's tee shirt drawer. Lenore eventually selected a red shirt with the words SHE DEVIL inscribed on the front. The ‘L' in 'Devil' was cleverly depicted as a tail.

  She looked around her new bedroom and decided to pick up some of the mess. Lenore started by placing all of the books back on their shelves and then affixing the television back atop the entertainment center. She turned the television on for white noise and was peeved to discover that it only received four stations; six, if you weren’t picky about reception, and seven if you counted the home shopping network.

  A game show roared in the background as she set to work sifting through a pile of clothes by the dresser. The apparel presented a logistical quandary. She did not want it, and therefore it did not belong back in the drawers; but it didn’t belong on the floor, either. Lenore decided to abandon the endeavor until Richard returned, at which time she might ask for storage containers.

  Lenore walked to the library to work on her list of necessities, which ended up being shorter than she had imagined. The invoice consisted mainly of toiletries, Xanax (not to exceed 275 dollars), and nicotine replacement therapies (not to exceed 25 dollars). Clothing could come entirely from Goodwill, she reasoned, listing that her waist was 26 inches; shirts could be oversized for all she cared. Food was dry cereal, Doritos, and Toaster Pastries, leaving her present diet unchanged.

  When Lenore glanced over her completed list, she thought it might as well have said I surrender. The act of making the list in itself suggested she had given up on escape. When had she lost her nerve? Richard was out of the apartment—why wasn’t she tugging at the front door? Why wasn’t she exploring those rooms he told her not to enter? Because he would kill her. No, that wasn’t it. Because this was starting to feel normal. And there was the real danger.

  Was there some possibility of escape in the list itself? Weren’t there certain household products, that when combined, could form explosives or deadly poisons? MacGyver would be out of there by now. She picked up the pencil and doodled a door at the bottom of the page, then erased it in frustration. There was a way out of this predicament, but she needed to stay alive long enough for the opportunity to present itself.

  Sensing that Richard might return at any moment, Lenore turned her attention to the original task he requested of her, which was cleaning up the mess in the kitchen. She dreaded what she might find, still ambivalent about whether the liquid on her pants was indeed urine or perhaps, she hoped, some spilled Gatorade. As she entered the room, she concluded with disgust that it was probably a mixture of both. Taking a deep breath, she grabbed some paper towels from the counter and set them on the floor to absorb the grotesque puddle underneath the table. Then, using sanitary wipes from the sink cabinet, she mopped up the remainder of the mess. She hoped that Richard would find this satisfactory.

  Lenore grabbed another bottle of Gatorade from Richard’s pantry before heading back to her room to watch TV. She surfed through the stations, hoping that one of them might reveal what day it was, although she was not quite sure why it mattered. After about five minutes or so, she landed on a network news program that claimed the time was 11 pm on Friday night. Lenore grew depressed when she realized she had been there since Tuesday, and that no one was coming to save her.


  The nightly news had passed into the late show by the time Lenore heard voices coming from down the hall. Richard called out, “Hey, Lenore. Could you come down here? AND TURN OFF THE GODDAMN TV”.

  Lenore clicked off the television and followed the sound of voices into the parlor, where she saw two men replacing the rug that had been removed after the Lance incident. Richard stood leaning against the pool table, watching with his arms folded and occasionally making helpful comments such as "Don‘t bang that shit into the wall" and "Make sure to keep it centered".

  One of the men unrolling the new rug had a familiar face, and Lenore recognized him as Richard's friend, Paul, from the other night. The other man, who was probably six inches taller than his counterpart, wore a black trench coat, black pants, and black boots; all of which matched a ponytail of jet black hair. When he turned to face Lenore, she saw that his eyebrows, nose, and lips were decorated with several piercings. Was he wearing eyeliner?

  He looked up at her and smiled. “Well, if it isn’t the new party favor,” he said.

  Lenore was immediately vexed. Why would he refer to her that way?

  Paul sensed her irritation and tried to lighten the mood by saying, “Charles, this is Lenore. Call her by her name. Lenore, this is Charles. You two kids play nice.”

  From Lenore’s vantage point, it was readily apparent that Charles did not move the same way that Paul and Richard moved, and that he was human, just like her. She thought back to her first encounter with Richard at the coffee shop and wondered how she had not instantly known that he was unlike other people. It all seemed so obvious now.

  She watched in silence as the two men finished laying the rug. Once the room had been appointed to Richard’s liking, Paul celebrated his accomplishment by plopping down on the sofa and resting his feet on the coffee table, which, at Richard’s behest, had been repositioned four separate times until it was in the exact right spot.

  Charles roamed the floor looking at this watch. “Relax,” Paul said to him. “It’s only 11:45.” Paul turned his attention to Richard. “Are we all set here?”

  Richard nodded, rolling one of the balls around on the pool table. "Yeah, I think so. Lenore, did you make that list of what you'll need?"

  Lenore pulled the list from her pocket.

  Paul looked up from where he sat. "Hey, you can just hand that over to Charles. He's the one who's going to pick everything up for you."

  She brought the sheet of paper to Charles, who grabbed it from her without deigning to turn his head.

  Paul watched him look it over for a minute before asking, “Are any of those things going to be a problem?”

  Charles pursed his lips. “Just the fucking Xanax, man. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to get for 275. I think I can take care of it, though, and she’ll just have to make do with whatever I can get.”

  Lenore spoke up. “Whatever you can get will be fine. I appreciate it.”

  Charles did not acknowledge her and addressed Richard instead. “I don’t know why you’re bothering with her, though. This is a lot of bullshit to go through. I could bring someone else in here for you by tomorrow night.”

  “Oh, really?” Richard rolled his eyes a little as he said this, but Charles did not seem to notice.

  “I got someone in mind. Don’t waste your time with this chick.”

  "I might take you up on that, but I won't be hungry for a couple more days, so it won't matter until then. In the meantime, she can spend her money." Richard disinterestedly spun the eight-ball as if it were a top.

  Lenore looked down at the floor. Perhaps she was not going to make it after all. Perhaps Richard was just killing time until the next feeding. A silent panic was descending.

  Charles was not ready to abandon his argument. “Rich, this is bullshit. Just kill her and take the money. She don’t want to be here. And I got better things to do than waste my time getting shit for someone who’s gonna be dead in a few days. Lemme get one of my friends in here instead.”

  Richard slammed the ball to a stop. “GODDAMNIT, CHARLES. You get her the medicine because I fucking tell you to get her the medicine. However long I choose to keep her around is none of your Goddamn business.”

  Charles went back to silently pacing the floor.

  Paul grinned at Lenore from the sofa. “You guys are such asses. She’s right here. Hey Lenore, I’m sorry Charles and Richard are being dicks. Just ignore them. How are you feeling? I heard you had a little episode.”

  "I'm much better, thanks." She could hear fear and agitation in her voice and hoped it was not recognized as such by the other parties in the room.

  Richard looked at Paul excitedly. “Paul, you would not believe this shit. She was sitting in the kitchen and then all of a sudden started going all like this.” Richard started blinking and twitching furiously to act out the event, much to his friend’s amusement. “I’ve never seen anything like it. You’d had to have been there.”

  “I’m glad you enjoyed it so much,” Lenore said tersely. She walked to the wet bar and grabbed a glass of water to ease the taste in her mouth. Her hands shook terribly.

  Paul chuckled. "Oooh, you've pissed her off now. No more seizures for you."

  “Hah. Not if I can help it. You should have seen the mess she made. There was crap all over the floor.” Richard gestured to his friend as though regaling him with the size of a particularly large fish.

  “I’m telling you—just kill her,” Charles said, shaking his head. “There could be someone new in here tomorrow no problems.”

  Richard turned to him with thinly masked irritation. “I heard you the first time, asshole.”

  Paul winked at Lenore. “I think Miss Lenore is going to work out just fine. No need to replace her. Hey Charlie boy, when do you think you’d be able to have her meds?”

  "Prolly later tonight or tomorrow? There's someone I need to hook up with at the Rose." Lenore would later learn that he was referring to a vampire club. "I'm pretty sure it won't be a problem."

  “Excellent.” Paul rose from the sofa and started walking with Charles to the door. “Hey Lenore, I’m glad you’re feeling better. Try not to have any seizures until we get back. Rich, are you sure you don’t want to come with us?”

  Richard smiled, throwing his hands in the air. “Golly. I would, but I’m all out of eyeliner.” This was clearly meant to be a dig at Charles, who muttered something to himself and kept walking.

  Richard, who could not help himself, smiled and waved at Charles as he left. Lenore then heard the two men walk out the front door and lock it behind them. Paul must also have keys to the apartment.

  Richard shrugged and looked at her. “So I think you‘re good to go.”

  “Yeah. Sounds good, I guess. I started going through Angela‘s things while you were gone. Do you think I could get some storage containers to put them in?”

  "Oh, I totally forgot about that. I said we'd give that stuff to charity, right? I'll tell Paul's creepy manservant to bring some boxes the next time he comes by."

  Lenore disliked the thought of dealing with Charles again, and must have made a face because Richard looked at her and asked, “What’s that expression for?”

  “Nothing. That’s fine. I’ll pack up her stuff when he comes back.”

  Lenore walked back to her room and planned not to leave until more Xanax arrived; any seizures in the interval were best endured in private. She grabbed The Lady or the Tiger and took it with her to the bathroom, where she lay in the empty tub (she did not want to soil the bed in the event of another episode) and attempted to settle in for the rest of the evening.

  She must have dozed off.

  ✽✽✽

  Lenore awoke to see Richard standing over her, his face a mask of total amusement. “What are you doing?” he asked. Lenore looked around and realized that she was still in the tub. Thankfully, her pants were dry.

  “I didn’t want to wet the bed if I had another seizure,” she said drowsily.

&
nbsp; “Hmm.” He nodded. “I guess that makes sense. Paul and Charles are back with your things. I tried knocking on the door but you didn’t respond. I didn’t mean to barge in on you.” He offered Lenore a hand to help her out of the tub, which she gratefully accepted.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “5 am Saturday. We need to hurry this up because I’m going to turn in soon.”

  Stiff and sore from lying in the tub, Lenore stretched in an attempt to straighten herself out. “So you’re nocturnal?”

  “Yeah, I guess. C’mon.”

  Paul and Charles stood in the foyer with two grocery bags at their feet. Both men appeared exhausted and eager to leave. Richard, despite being tired himself, forced Charles to go over each of the items on the receipt before reimbursing him for the purchase.

  “Hey were you able to get the Xanax?” he asked.

  Charles reached into his back pocket and pulled out a little plastic bag filled with white pills. “Here’s all I got. I was able to get sixty. It’s normally five bucks a pill.”

  He handed the bag to Lenore, who sat on the floor to count the pills for herself. She noted that there were indeed sixty there, and more importantly, they were 1 milligram a piece; her standard dosage.

  "This is awesome, thank you!" She popped four pills into her mouth and did something she hadn't done in years: she chewed them. The bitter taste in her mouth felt a lot like ecstasy. Everything was going to be alright from now on. It was Lenore and Xanax against the world.

  Paul started moving toward the door and said to Richard, “I think we’re out of here. I guess I’ll bring Charlie by tomorrow night with those boxes to pack up Angie’s room.” Then, looking at Lenore, he said, “Try not to take all those pills at once, kiddo. So long.”

  Richard closed and locked the door behind them. He turned to Lenore, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “I’m going to bed. When I wake up, I want everything in those bags put away and the empty bags in the trash. No mess.” She nodded and watched as he walked down the hall.