I went over to the triple-sized shower stall and turned on the dual jets. Okay, I admit it-this was the real reason we'd bought this house. The architect apparently had a water fetish.
Not only was the shower huge, it had a built-in bench and enough hoses and gadgets to fulfill any fantasies our vivid imaginations could think up. And the shower wasn't the only thing the designer had added. The master bath also had a 6 by 6 foot Jacuzzi and a sauna. The first time Joe had seen these toys, his eyes had lit up and I'd known that it didn't matter if the kitchen tiles were turquoise and the taps gold. We had found our home.
I stepped into the shower for the second time that morning. The hot water beat down on my shoulders and I sighed from the feeling as clouds of steam rose up to envelope me in a blanket of warmth. I reached for the shampoo as Joe stepped into the enclosure. He took the shampoo out of my hand and poured a big dollop of it into his palm.
"I thought you were all done?" I said, eying him suspiciously.
He grinned. "Yeah, but you had to take two, so I thought fair was fair."
Joe pushed me gently until my head was under the jets. I waited while the water did its job, then stepped back. He reached up and massaged the shampoo into my scalp.
"Mmmm, that feels good," I murmured as his strong hands worked their magic.
If Joe had any kind of fetish, this was it: he loved to shampoo my hair. Well... actually anybody's hair, if I was honest about it. But now, I was the lucky one who reaped the benefits of his little hobby.
It was Betsy who'd turned him on to the pleasure. That long, curly hair of hers had been gorgeous, but those tresses were a time-consuming, royal pain in the ass. Joe'd told me that he'd spent so much time waiting for her to get out of the bathroom, that he finally decided it was a "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" situation, and he'd started to help her with the chore. It wasn't long before this shampoo ritual was one of the high points of their relationship. After they broke up, he'd continued the tradition with all his girlfriends... and eventually with me.
Joe had been nervous, almost embarrassed, when he'd first admitted this to me, but I told him it didn't matter. It was the truth. I didn't mind that I wasn't the first lover he'd played this game with-as long as I stayed the last.
"Do you remember the first time I did this?" Joe could still read my mind.
"With Betsy?" I asked, my eyes still closed.
"No," he said, still gently massaging my scalp. "With you."
Okay, so he wasn't perfect at it. Still, it was close.
"Yeah," I chuckled softly. "I'll never forget it. Jesus, I was so scared."
"You were scared?" He massaged harder and I bit back a groan of contentment. "Think of me! I didn't know what the fuck was happening."
I opened my eyes, then looked over my shoulder at him and raised my eyebrows.
He grinned back sheepishly. "Okay, I knew, I just wasn't ready to admit it." He kissed me lightly on the mouth, his hands still tangled in my soapy hair. "But I'm real glad you..."
"...and Betsy." I couldn't help it; I had to add that.
"...and Betsy," Joe sighed and agreed, "pointed out the error of my ways."
So was I, I thought, though at the time, I wasn't sure at all...
February 15, 1989
I never heard the details about exactly what happened on that Saturday morning. Lucy, Beau, Kevin and some of the others who were involved told me bits and pieces, but the only one who knew the whole story was Joe, and to this day, he refuses to talk about it. All he's ever said was that the minute he walked into my apartment, he felt there was something terribly wrong.
In the end, though, it was Kevin who finally put all the pieces together and figured out where I was. Joe called him first, after he'd gotten to my empty apartment around 2AM. He didn't know Cam's number and he was hoping Kevin had it.
Kevin - being no fool - could tell from the tone in Joe's voice that it wouldn't be a good idea at all to let him talk to Cam. Even if I was there and fine, Kevin had this feeling things could get ugly. Like I said, Kevin was smart, and he'd already noticed things about Joe's behavior that I'd completely missed. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Kevin told Joe that he'd call Cam and get back to him. He had a little bit of trouble convincing him to go for this, but he finally managed by suggesting that Joe check with Lucy and see if she knew anything. They could kill two birds with one stone. Joe reluctantly agreed, and Kevin hung up and called Cam.
He wasn't exactly worried at that point. Kevin figured I'd maybe overslept or something. But when Cam answered and curtly told him he didn't know and didn't care where I was, alarm bells went off.
He figured there was no way he should pass that message on to Joe. Cam hadn't been exactly forthcoming on the phone, but Kevin thought he might be able to do better if he saw him in person. Of all my friends, Kevin got along with Cam best. Cam respected his work at the center, and had even volunteered some time down there to help with the legal problems that always follow runaways. Kevin was grateful to him and they'd struck up a cordial, if not close, acquaintance. So if anybody was going to get Cam to come clean about the last night's events, it was Kevin.
He showed up at Cam's door ten minutes later. Cam was a little belligerent, but he didn't refuse to talk to Kevin. He did, however, make it clear that he thought the whole thing was an utter waste of time.
So Cam told him what he knew, but that seemed to lead nowhere. When Kevin insisted, Cam had dug around until he found Randall's phone number, who in turn gave them Elliot's. But Elliot wasn't home when they tried him, and the boy, Andrew, had vanished.
Apparently, Cam hadn't taken advantage of his part of the boyfriend exchange. Once he'd gotten Andrew in the car, he'd told him it was nothing personal, but he wasn't in the mood. He asked him if he wanted Cam to take him home, but Andrew had said no and asked to be dropped off at a friend's.
Cam didn't know the friend's name, and the apartment complex he lived in was huge. Cam wasn't sure which building Andrew had gone into, since they all looked alike to him. Kevin tried to pin him down, but the only thing he could remember was the building faced a clubhouse and one of the windows had a block "M" blanket in it instead of a curtain. Not exactly a great clue; half the students at the U of M used school memorabilia like that as decorations.
Kevin thanked Cam anyway and asked to use his phone. He knew that Joe was probably chomping at the bit by now and only hoped that Lucy had been able to keep him from going completely crazy. The phone was picked up on the first ring. Joe answered and Kevin explained briefly that Cam and I had parted ways fairly early the night before. Then, he told him about Andrew and Elliot, going into as little detail as possible.
Joe exploded. In between threats about what he was going to do to Cam if he ever saw him again, he told Kevin he was going to go look for Andrew. Kev tried to explain how impossible that would be, but Joe insisted. Kevin agreed to meet Joe at the complex. He couldn't let him do it alone, no matter how hopeless he personally thought it would be.
They started knocking on doors. Eventually, even Joe realized how long this would take. It didn't mean he was ready to give up though. He called Beau and Abdul and Kevin did the same with some other friends, and eventually they collected a posse to help.
Now it was both Joe and Kevin who were being labeled as alarmists, but as the hours evaporated and there was still no sign of me, everybody caught the panic bug. Betsy had a friend at the hospital check admissions and Kevin got a hold of a police detective he knew from his work at the kid's center. The cop was sympathetic and said he'd put out some feelers, but there was nothing he could do officially because I hadn't been missing long enough for the police to become involved.
It was Beau who finally knocked on the right door in the apartment complex. A young man named Charles opened it and reluctantly admitted that Andrew had spent the night with him. Beau called down the hall to Abdul to find Joe and then he stepped inside the apartment.
At first, Andrew didn't want to talk to him. As the room filled up with my friends, he grew increasingly frightened and hostile. Kevin showed up and ordered everybody else out. Then he took Andrew into the bedroom and started to plead with him. Fifteen minutes later he walked out of the apartment with a white face and a slip of paper with an address on it.
Joe would have gone himself by then, but Kevin convinced him to wait until he could get his cop buddy to meet him. It was decided that Beau and Abdul would also go along. Size and numbers might be necessary. The rest of the group said they'd wait to hear from the other four. They said their goodbyes, leaving Joe and the rest of the group to wait in the apartment complex's parking lot for Kevin's pet detective, Bob Hoyle.
As I said though, I didn't know any of this at the time. To be truthful, there wasn't much I was aware of by then, including what was being done to my body. The pain had become too great to distinguish individual sources. Elliot had been very efficient in dealing it out. Even so, he hadn't succeeded in breaking me.
Hey, don't get the idea I was Rambo. I cried, I screamed, and I tried to reason with him. But I never pretended I liked it, never begged him for more, nor would I admit that he had bested me, even though somewhere in my head I knew that would've probably make it easier.
Because that was what he wanted. It wasn't enough for him to just do what he did to me; he needed me to approve of it, too. And that I couldn't do. I'm afraid this only made him more determined, and he used all his resources to make me change my mind. Strangely, in the end, it wasn't me who lost control, but Elliot.
Through swollen lids, I'd watched the man I'd labeled as mild, turn into a monster. I'd unleashed his demons by my refusal to give in to him. Maybe if I'd been smarter about it, I would have pretended for a while, and maybe I'd have been able to get away with a beating and a little rough sex. Now, I had the feeling that we'd traveled too far down this road. He could never release me. Not only was I an example of his failure, but I was dangerous. I knew what he was capable of, and I couldn't be trusted to keep my mouth shut.
He turned his back on me and I saw his shoulders were shaking. He was grappling with a decision. I thought dully that I knew what it was going to be. I was almost out of time. Elliot turned around again and I glimpsed what was in his hands. It was blurry, but even through my dulled vision, I could see a sharp metallic edge that glinted as it came towards me.
"Oh, Jesus, Joe," I thought or even may have said out loud, "you have to come now."
He did. They all did. There was the splinter of wood and the crash of breaking glass. Shouts sounded in the house and there was another bang as the door of the dungeon imploded under Abdul's weight. I sagged against the chains that held me and waited.
