The Maid's Diary
Loreth Anne White
HOW IT ENDS
Slowly, she slides between sleep and consciousness. A shard of cognition slices through her—no, not sleep. Not in her bed. Not safe. Panic stirs. Where is she? She tries to swallow, but her mouth is dry. There’s an unfamiliar taste at the back of her throat. A sharper jolt of awareness cracks through her. Blood—it’s the taste of blood. Her breathing quickens. She tries to move her head but can’t. A rough, wet fabric covers her face. She’s trapped, arms strapped tightly to her sides. She becomes aware of pain. Overwhelming pain. In her shoulders. Ribs. Belly. Between her thighs. The pain pounds inside her skull. Adrenaline surges into her veins and her eyes flare open. But she can’t see. Panic licks through her brain. She opens her mouth to scream, but it comes out muffled.
What is this? Where am I?
Focus, focus. Panic kills. You have to think. Try to remember.
But her brain is foggy. She strains for a thread of clarity, struggles to focus on sensations. Cold—her feet are very cold. She wiggles her toes. She feels air. Bare feet? No, just the one. She’s got a shoe on the other. She’s injured. Badly, she thinks. A thick memory seeps into her sluggish brain—fighting people off, being held down. Violently attacked—she has a sense of that, of being overwhelmed, rendered powerless. Then wounded. Now she’s wrapped in something and she’s in motion. Bumping. She can feel vibrations. Is that the noise of an engine? A car? Yes, she’s in a vehicle of some sort. She becomes aware of voices. In the front seat. She’s lying on the back seat. The voices . . . they sound urgent—arguing. Underlying the voices is soft music. A car radio. She’s definitely in a car . . . they’re taking her somewhere.
She hears words. “Dump . . . her fault . . . asked for it. Can’t blame—”
She slides into the blackness again. This time it’s complete.
THE SILENT WITNESSES
October 31, 2019. Thursday.
It’s 11:57 p.m. Halloween night. Dark. A dense fog creeps along the water, and a steady drizzle falls as a silver Mercedes-Maybach with two occupants turns onto a muddy track that leads into an abandoned grain-storage site. Rain glints as the headlights pan over the bases of the old silos. The sedan crosses a railway track and bounces along a potholed road that parallels the edge of the ocean inlet. The Mercedes comes to a stop in deep shadows beneath a bridge that arcs over the inlet, linking the North Shore to the city of Vancouver. The headlights go out. Everything is now black except the glow of the fog-shrouded city across the water.
The occupants feel safe here, hidden, cocooned in the buttery leather and warmth of the luxury sedan. Overhead the bridge traffic is a soft roar, punctuated by rhythmic clunks as vehicles traverse the metal joints.
The man and woman don’t waste time marveling at how the incoming tide swirls like ink past the old silo dockyard. Their lust has reached fever pitch. It started this morning—this little game of theirs—over a breakfast meeting, her stockinged calf pressing against his pant leg beneath a table as they calmly discussed legal strategy with city officials. Desire blossomed through subsequent high-level discussions around a lawsuit, followed by lunch. It peaked with a stolen kiss behind the door in the men’s washroom. Both knew it would end like this—frenzied sex in her car parked in some louche location. It’s the anticipation the couple is addicted to. The danger. The risk. They are both married to other people. He’s a member of the provincial legislative assembly. She is a top city lawyer. They both have children.
They always pick a place like this. Something industrial. Dank. Deserted. Tagged with graffiti, littered with urban detritus. Sordid yet delicious in a disreputable way. It’s their quirk—fornicating against backdrops of squalor. Juxtaposing their glamour and brains and wealth and privilege against these gritty urban canvases—it piques their desire. Makes them feel powerful. It layers their affair with a noir-film graininess that feeds their carnal pleasure.
She kicks off her Saint Laurent pumps while yanking at his red tie, fumbling with his zipper. He pops open the pearly buttons on her silk blouse, bunching up her skirt, ripping her expensive pantyhose in his hunger. She scrambles over the console, straddles him. As she sinks down onto him, he closes his eyes and moans with pleasure. But she suddenly goes still. She sees two sets of headlights appearing in the mist. The beams punch twin tunnels into the fog—one vehicle behind the other. The cars turn in front of the abandoned silos and head toward the rail tracks.
“Someone’s coming,” she whispers.
He doesn’t seem to register. Eyes still closed, he groans and tilts up his pelvis, trying to guide her hips into motion against his groin. But she clamps her hand over his, holding him still. Her heart thumps. “It’s two cars,” she says. “Coming this way.”
He opens his eyes, turns his head, then sits sharply upright. He scrubs a hole with the back of his fist in the steamed-up window. They peer through it in silence as the headlights cross the tracks and approach, paralleling the water.
“Shit,” he says quietly. “This is private land. It’s cordoned off for construction. No one should be here. Especially at this hour.”
“Maybe it’s kids out for some Halloween nonsense, or a drug deal,” she whispers.
The cars come closer. The lead vehicle is smaller than the one following it, but the fog, rain, and darkness make it difficult to discern the cars’ exact colors or models. And both vehicles are also backlit—silhouetted by the eerie glow emanating from the hidden city across the water. The smaller vehicle could be yellow, or cream, the woman thinks. A hatchback. The larger car is a sedan. Maybe dark gray or blue. The two sets of headlights briefly pan the inky water as the vehicles follow a bend in the track. Seawater shimmers in the light like beaten metal.