Chantaje

Maggie Ramirez stared at the briefcase between them.  It wasn’t open; it didn’t have to be.  He’d told her what was inside and she took him at his word.  It sat there, sleek and dark and sinister.  A life for a lifetime of security.  Her saliva tasted bitter as it pooled around her stubbornly still tongue.

He was patient.  He could afford to be; he was certain that this would fix everything.  He was confident that this would absolve him of further responsibility, excuse him from any further involvement.  To his credit, she thought, at least he appeared solemn.  If he’d come with a smirk, if he’d placed this briefcase down with even the barest hint of smug satisfaction…

But something about his quiet, business-like demeanor wrenched at her heart and prickled at her conscience.  She missed the old Grey Delaney.  Missed his smile.  His wide, pale eyes when they’d transfix her.  Missed his voice when it would get low and intimate and personal.  Missed being pulled in close to his warmth, tucked in safe against his strong body.

Maggie Ramirez missed a thing that wasn’t real.  Had never been real.

She blinked at the briefcase.  And she pulverized her ridiculous longing into cowering subservience.  What they’d had was a lie.  What he’d been was a fraud.  What she’d been was a naïve fool.  And now there were pressing concerns to be dealt with.

“No.”  She said, surprised at how cool and calm she sounded.  Her heart was fluttering and her chest felt tight.  She lifted her eyes from the loathsome case.  She couldn’t look at the insidious temptation a moment longer. 

She watched his lips tighten marginally. 

“No.”  He repeated softly.

“No thank you.”  She corrected automatically.

His brows contracted and those pale green eyes flashed, but otherwise his face remained impassive.  “This is a very large sum—“  He offered, as if they were in a contract negotiation.

“I can count.”  Maggie’s voice was calm, but something in her tone snapped and sizzled.

He blinked a few times, rapidly.  “Would you like me to translate it into pesos for you, Piruja?”  His voice was low, but the words stung like the sudden lash of a whip.

Maggie’s mouth fell open at the slur, and her eyes welled and burned.  His jaw was set and his lips were pursed.

“I shouldn’t have—“  He began tightly.

She snapped her mouth shut and swallowed.  She blinked the welling tears back.  And she let a hot, boiling, self-righteous indignation wash over her from head to toe.  “No.”  She said boldly, crossing her arms across her chest and sitting back against the vinyl of the diner booth.  “You shouldn’t have.”  She affirmed.  He opened his mouth to speak but she kept going.  “You shouldn’t have lied, you shouldn’t have used me, you shouldn’t have called me a whore, and treated me like one, and you shouldn’t have tried to buy my silence.”  She hissed, her cheeks hot, her breath thin and shallow.  “And you certainly shouldn’t have gone without protection, you filthy, you disgusting, you—“

“How much more would it take?”  He interrupted her icily.

Her lips popped apart with a small, dull, snapping sound.  She glanced at the briefcase and in a sudden grip of paranoia wondered if he was recording this conversation.  Her heart began to thud.  Her saliva dried up, and she looked around, wild-eyed and skittish.  Maybe it was because she’d always thought he looked like a moviestar; maybe because the circumstance of their meeting bordered on surreal amid the manufactured nostalgia of the diner’s décor, but suddenly this seemed like a scene out of some lifetime original, and Maggie felt as though a bright white spotlight had just been turned on her.  She glanced around at the would-be Greek chorus, at the other patrons chatting away; listened to the clatter and scrape and sizzle of a busy diner; looked at the bustle of movement seemingly oblivious to her private performance by the window; smelled the bacon, the coffee, the grease, the citrus juice of a Sunday morning in Cedar Falls.

 He seemed to sense her sudden shift in demeanor, and he sat forward in the vinyl booth, moving in for the kill in her moment of hesitation.  He leaned across the linoleum table, and made himself all earnestness and concern.

“I can’t give you what you want, Maggie; but I can give you what you need.”  He urged.  “Let me help you; let me take care of you.”  He sounded so achingly kind and sincere.  He sounded like the man she’d loved.  “There’s enough here for you to go somewhere, start a new life.  You can keep—“ He stopped for a moment, took a breath, shifted his weight just fractionally and pushed on.  “Whatever decision you make with regards to your body, you will be well provided for here.”  He impressed.  “There are options available to you with this.”  He indicated the voiceless black briefcase.

Her stomach felt like lead and time seemed to slow down for a moment.  Slowly, very slowly, she brought her wide brown eyes around to stare into his pale green gaze.  “I won’t be bought-off.”  She said quietly but clearly. 

A muscle twitched near his left eye.  She looked at the face that had been so beautiful to her and she felt a shiver drip down between her shoulder blades at the sight of his barely-controlled frustration, his precariously leashed rage.  She was glad she’d insisted on a public venue.  He’d never given her cause to fear him before, but sitting there in the diner, with the buffer of a briefcase on a bolted-down table, she said a quick but earnest prayer of thanks that she’d insisted upon a public venue. 

She wondered what damage those large hands might have done to her if they’d met in a place secluded and away from the world.  She wondered, and convinced herself of the answer, if she would ever have returned from such a place today.  If he had this kind of money at his disposal, if he could offer her this sum in a briefcase, surely he had enough to make a little problem like her disappear entirely.  Maybe he’d have brought her to that little spot up on Cedar Ridge, that spot that he’d taken her for a romantic evening mere months before, that private spot high above the town and the falls, and she wondered if she might not have met a tragic and accidental demise there, at his beautiful hands.

“You raped me.”  She said, matter-of-fact.  It had to be done.  She had no choice.  He’d left her no choice.

His eyes narrowed sharply.  “You know full fucking well that I did no such thing.”  He growled.

“You drugged me and you took advantage of me without my consent.”  She said blandly.

“Lying fucking Cunt.”  He hissed.

“I told you I loved you but that I wanted to wait for marriage.”  She explained, like a teacher explains a word problem.  “I’m Catholic.”  She added, to support the working theory.

He cursed vehemently and sat back against the tallish vinyl booth, his long arms looking as though they were trying to push her and the table and the briefcase away from himself.

“I’m Catholic, and I wanted to wait for marriage, and you got tired of trying to wear me down the conventional way, and you put something in my drink.”  She said without emotion.  “When I woke up I was confused and betrayed and devastated.”  She rattled off.  “I was ashamed and didn’t know what to do, or if anyone would believe me.”  She continued, despite the murderous gleam in his eye.  “Of course, once you’d had me you were done with me, and I was thinking about becoming a Nun after Christmas when I discovered that I was late.”  She swallowed.  The last bit was true.  It caused a lump to form rapidly in her throat.  She licked her lips and closed her eyes for a moment to muster the will to continue.

When she reopened her eyes it was to find him watching her carefully.

“You can deny this all you like.”  She told him levelly.  “But you and I both know how it will play out.”  She was threatening him.  It felt as alarming and dangerous as it had the first time, in the car, when she’d thrown this insane blackmail at him on impulse, in self-defense.  When he’d thought to take her to an abortion clinic, and she’d thought they were headed to City Hall.

He turned his head to gaze out the large glass window beside them.  Maggie reached for her orange juice—they’d had to order something to keep the waitstaff off their backs as they sat there on a busy Sunday morning—and she sipped gingerly.  She was beginning to feel the now too familiar warning signs of impending nausea.  She wondered how quickly she could end this ‘meeting’ with Grey.

“What are the terms?”  He said, sounding resigned and radiating frustration.

Her lips left the straw as if in slow motion.  She blinked at him.

He nodded out the window, at the parkway.  “I’m guessing that huge Mexican fella is here to make sure I go along with this, hm?”

Maggie blushed furiously.  “My cousin Hugo.”  She mumbled almost apologetically.  “He’s a lawyer—sort of.”

She stared at the scratched linoleum table surface.  Fixed her eyes on the smooth worn spots and imagined how many times this table had been wiped this morning, this week, this month, this year.  She thought about her upcoming shift at her family restaurant with tired resignation.  She needed to be there in an hour, and so did Hugo.  Or her father would start asking questions.  And she wasn’t ready to give answer just yet.

“Well.”  Grey said dispassionately.  “Let’s get El Gigante in here and start talking ‘chantaje’—“  He said, casually gesturing to Maggie’s cousin, who was leaning up against a parking meter in front of the diner, waiting for the sign to enter. “Shall we, my dear?”  Gracefully he slid the briefcase from the table and set it on the tiled floor beneath.  She decided it wasn’t a concealed recording device afterall.

Numbly, she nodded out the window to Hugo; it was time.

Maggie tried to feel victorious, but mostly she felt ill.  She tried to thank the saints for helping her preserve the life of her unborn child, but all she could think in the moment was that Grey knew a lot more Spanish than he’d let on.