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evil, i've come to tell you that (s)he's evil, most definitely
evil, ornery, scandalous and evil, most definitely
the tension, it's getting hotter
i'd like to hold her head underwater
He’s grown a beard in prison.
It doesn’t look bad. In fact, it lends him some undeserved gravitas. Almost like he’s grown up, though she knows that’s not very likely. His built is heavier too, more factory-worker, less blue-blood. Like he spends a lot of free time lifting weights. The thought makes her uncomfortable, but what is there to do in prison, anyway?
He watches her take a seat on the other side of the glass. He’s got a guarded, miserly smile at the corner of his mouth. His eyes are cold and calculating and familiar. If there was any warmth there, she’d be worried.
She hides the small intake of breath before she picks up the phone.
A beat later, Ransom picks it up too, like a cat swatting a fly.
She waits for him to speak first, but he just stares at her with the same half-smile, receiver dangling from his hand.
She gives in. “Hello, Ransom.”
“Hello, Marta.”
“How are you?” she asks, but she hopes that her tone carries the implication that she is only making small talk. She doesn’t actually care. It’s too bad that she still sounds caring. As Detective Benoit keeps reminding her, her kindness is as irrepressible as her gag reflex.
But she has examined her feelings on this. She may feel bad for some of the Thrombey family members, but Ransom certainly deserves no pity. She knows he would actually detest it. Perhaps, in some perverse way, pitying him would be more in tune with punishing him.
“I’m as dandy as can be,” he drawls, leaning back. “Made a lot of new friends. Or I should say, friends . I don’t think I’ve ever had any.”
Marta looks beyond him at the grizzly inmates walking in and out of the stalls. She can’t imagine Ransom’s preening ways winning him any favors. Then again, he’s surprisingly self-sufficient when he wants to be. Charming and manipulative too. She fell for it once, didn’t she?
“I’m glad,” she says, because it’s true; she’s glad he’s with his own kind.
Ransom clicks his jaw. “Why do you still dress like a poor person?”
Marta blinks. She fights the temptation to look down at herself. She thought she was being careful: beige sweater, worn pair of jeans, new, comfortable sneakers.
“Live a little,” he adds. “Put something shiny around that pretty neck, for a change.”
She doesn’t lift her hand to her neck. She usually wears her grandmother's old crucifix, but she didn’t put it on today. She didn’t think prison was the place for it. She thinks of those old vampire movies where crosses melt at the sight of evil. Her lips twitch. Ransom catches the movement.
“Let me guess; you bought your mother pearls, but you didn’t treat yourself because you’re already experiencing rich person guilt.”
The accuracy of his remark hits her like a fist. She licks her lips. “Actually, I’m wearing an ankle bracelet.”
She doesn’t know what possessed her to tell him. Maybe she wants him to be wrong, wants to catch him off-guard. She doesn’t know why she wants that.
Ransom snorts. “What?”
Marta tucks a lock of hair behind her ear self-consciously. It sounds terribly childish, but she keeps talking. “It’s silver with turquoise seahorses.”
Ransom’s smile wavers. “Can I see it?”
Marta bites her lip. She looks left and right. The two guards posted in the visiting room are glued to their phones.
She quickly rises and lifts her knee until her foot is level with his face beyond the glass. Ransom stares at the bare flesh visible between jeans and sneakers. The seahorses glimmer like a row of baby teeth against her skin.
Marta quickly sits down when the guard looks up.
Ransom gives her a strange, half-lidded look. If she weren’t sure of his true nature, she’d call that look fond.
“That’s your big expense?” he drawls.
Marta shrugs. “I like it.”
He nods. “It’s pretty. And sweet. Just like you.” They don’t sound like compliments, the way he delivers them.
Ransom cocks his head. “Why did you come today?”
Marta shrugs again. “You wrote to me.”
Five letters, in total, so far. She had them stacked on her desk in her study.
“Yes, but I never asked you to come.”
It’s true. Most of the letters were simply Ransom’s ramblings about growing up with a silver spoon in his mouth and a tennis court in the backyard, and how mommy was controlling and daddy was helpless against her ambition. Basic stuff like that. He pointedly didn’t ask to see her.
“Why did you come, then? Did you feel bad for me?” he teases.
“No.” Her stomach doesn’t broil. That’s good. “In fact, I came to tell you to stop writing to me about your childhood. It’s not as fascinating as you think it is.”
Ransom chuckles. “I’m giving you ammo for your future book. I want you to get my character right. Unless you’ve already sold the rights to your life story.”
Marta gives him a look.
“ Fiiine . I’ll write you about something else. My sexual exploits in boarding school should do the trick.”
She’s proud of herself for not reacting. “You don’t have to be gross all the time.”
Ransom lifts a finger and lets it slide against the glass. “I think you like it. When I’m gross. Or rather, because I’m gross.”
Marta rolls her eyes. “You’re crazy -”
Ransom grins. “But you do, don’t you? You like me . You shouldn’t. You definitely shouldn’t. I’ve done a lot of fucked up things, including almost killing you, but you still like me.”
She could say something abrupt like “I don’t have to listen to this”, drop the receiver and walk away.
She clutches the receiver, intending to do just that.
But she doesn’t. She thinks that would give him satisfaction too.
“Tell me you don’t like me,” he taunts. “I’d like to see you throw up your lunch, for old times’ sake.”
Marta feels a strange ticklish sensation in her belly.
She lifts her chin. “Maybe you like me .”
It’s one way of avoiding having to say it.
Ransom doesn’t miss a beat. He takes her in, like free dessert in the cafeteria. “ Of course I like you. It doesn’t take a detective to figure that one out.”
Marta looks down at her half-bitten nails. Her mother used to call her “sonrosada ”, little rosy cheeks. They get red so quickly. They're always a little red. The truth is, she’s always wanted to be loved for something particular, like half-bitten nails and rosy cheeks. Something irrepressibly her.
“I thought you hated me,” she says, not looking at him.
Ransom shifts in his chair. “I mean, I hate everyone. Even you, a little bit. Maybe ten percent. But the rest of that ninety percent is me trying to figure out how the hell you’re even real. I don’t know, I think your brain can’t process evil. You’re a weirdo . I don’t think you’d forgive me, per se, but you’d probably make me chicken soup if I came down with a cold.”
Marta feels insulted. And flattered. And shamefully seen.
“I see. You think I’m a goody-two-shoes. Once the help, always the help.”
Ransom shakes his head, almost disappointed.
“Nah. Lots of people are doormats. You’re weird , Cabrera. You do things, like showing me your ankle bracelet, just cuz you like it and it’s pretty. It’s like you’re a newborn every single day. No matter how shitty life has been to you, you’re so goddamn excited about it. It’s like you’ve still got all your baby teeth. That’s kinda special.”
Marta knows her cheeks are rosy, there’s no point even thinking about it. She mulls over his words instead. She’ll have to leave soon. Her time is almost up.
“Let me guess,” she says, “you want to return to that kind of innocence. Is that why you write about your childhood?”
Ransom gives her a devastating smile. “Oh, Marta. I was never innocent.”
Safe behind locked doors and fortressed by her pillows and bed covers, she tries to read her book. His words have a way of mingling with the words on the page. Marta shakes her head, almost like telling her own mind off. There’s no reason to dwell on it. It’s not like she’s going back there.
She falls asleep, thinking about baby teeth.
In the middle of the night, she feels a hand around her ankle.
Dragging her down.
Marta opens her mouth, but no scream comes out.
Dreams don’t need you to speak.
She looks down at the leonine figure at the end of her bed. There's always been menace in those golden boy features. Ransom isn't just a name. It can be a verb too.
His thumb fiddles with a blue seahorse.
His eyes watch her.
“Let’s get this off, shall we?” he says, like this is one of his exploits in boarding school, and lowers his mouth to her ankle. His breath is hot, teeth snag against the bracelet, catch it, pull on the silver, teeth drag against skin, saliva speckles the flute of her foot, fingers lock down, keeping her still, a rabbit caught in a trap. She pulls away, but always seems to slide back into his mouth. Until it seems like he’s everywhere. His beard scratches parts of her body she can't reach.
Marta lowers her head on the pillow. The bracelet snaps. Little pieces everywhere. Her body arches, feet sliding off the bed.
When she wakes up, she doesn’t open her eyes.
She doesn’t want to face herself like this.
She’s read about it in one of Harlan’s books. Synchronicity. A strange symmetry that occurs at the level of the collective unconscious. Minds communicating across long distances, stumbling upon the same thing.
His next letter thanks her for coming to see him. He hopes she’ll come again.
But he adds,
Funny dream I had the other day. I was taking off your bracelet with my teeth. You weren’t too upset about it. But you never are, are you, Marta?
The last inky smudge is a winky face.
Marta crumples the paper in her hand.
You never are, are you, Marta?
She feeds it to the fire.
She walks to the French windows, opens them wide, lets the fresh air wipe her cheeks clean of roses.
He’s locked away and won’t be coming out for a long time.
It’s not forever, though, and that’s bad, but also good.
And she can’t explain the good.
She just knows he’s right. She is excited about life, the world, and him.
She steps into the garden, seahorses clinking against her ankle.