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“What awful girl?”

“That little rat-faced girl you’ve been fucking.”

“What! What have you done to Ruby?”

“Well, nothing. I just got someone to take her somewhere. I wasn’t going to have him hurt her or anything…”

“Ava! What the fuck have you done?”

I’m shaking her by the shoulders now and she starts crying.

“Don’t shake me, Attila,” she protests weakly. I can already tell she wants nothing more than to confess. She mutes her sobs and begins spilling the story. She evidently convinced a dim-witted groom that I was out to hurt horses and that the only way to get me to stop was to kidnap me, and failing that, kidnap my girlfriend. I feel my blood pumping through my head. I am dizzy and furious.

“So you tried to have me drowned, Ava? And you had Layla killed? What are you fucking nuts?” I’m screaming at her and feel very close to killing her. She’s sobbing and protesting that no, she doesn’t know anything about anyone being killed or my nearly being drowned or any of it and I keep shaking her by the shoulders as she sobs. After many long minutes of this, something shifts and I sense that her protestations are genuine, that my wife is indeed insane but she did not try to have me killed nor was she involved in Layla’s murder.

“Who the fuck is after me then?” I ask rhetorically.

She doesn’t answer me, she just stares ahead. She’s not sobbing anymore but tears are still sliding down her cheeks.

I pace.

“And so this guy has Ruby in a cabin up in the boondocks somewhere and won’t let her go?”

Ava nods.

“Is he going to hurt her?”

She shrugs.

“Ava, this is very serious, we have to call the police.”

“And say what? I had someone kidnapped but now I want to call it off and the guy’s wacko and won’t back off?”

“You should have thought of that sooner, Ava.”

“I couldn’t think. I needed you,” she says, and in that moment I feel a great confusion. I feel the entire history of me and Ava passing through me, the repulsion and attraction linked so closely they nearly choke each other, just as we have nearly choked each other with passion and sickness.

“We have to go get her then,” I say. I start putting my clothes on. My wife continues to sit on the bed. She is naked. Her small breasts look sad against her unearthly pale skin. Her face is still wet with tears, her blond hair is tangled.

“Get dressed, Ava. Now.”

She gets up and walks slowly to the closet. I watch her methodically put on simple cotton underwear, jeans, and a white sweater.

A few minutes later, as I frantically pace the length of the living room, Ava gets on the phone and makes arrangements for Janet, the beady-eyed woman who takes care of Grace, to pick our daughter up at school. Ava is being quite rude to Janet, but I’ve noticed that Janet seems to take some sort of pleasure in being barked at by my wife.

I say nothing to Ava as we go out to the Gremlin. Ava makes little cooing sounds over the funny-looking little car and I ignore her. She has the damnedest way of acting completely normal and nonchalant under the direst of circumstances.

We get in the car and pull out into traffic. It becomes evident that Ava doesn’t really know how to get up to this cabin in Ulster County.

“Haven’t you been there before?” I ask her, frustrated.

“Of course I have. It’s my friend’s cabin,” she says, a bit mysteriously, probably trying to provoke me into asking what friend.

“But you don’t remember how to get there?”

“I took the bus.”

“Ah,” I say.

We stop at a gas station where I buy a road atlas and where Ava takes an extraordinarily long time in the bathroom, emerging very sullen looking. I know she wants me to ask what’s wrong, to have me coax an improved mood from her, but this isn’t a time for games. I feel my insides churning over the harm I’ve brought to Ruby.

The Gremlin sputters forward on the thruway and I pray that it will make it up there. I don’t really care what happens once we’ve gotten there and rescued Ruby from Ava’s lunatic kidnapper. But we must make it there.

We are both silent for a long spell. I am turning things over in my