A Brief Lunacy by Cynthia Thayer

upset if she sees this.”
    â€œSees what? Me doing the right thing?”
    â€œWhat do you want?”
    Jessie opens the inside door and there we are. Me with my feet tied together with duct tape, and Jonah brandishing a revolver.
    â€œYou finish,” he says. “Tape his arms to the chair because I have something to say.”
    â€œCarl? What’s going on?”
    â€œDo what he says.”
    â€œBut that’s your gun. It’s never loaded.”
    â€œOh, really?” Jonah aims through the kitchen window, at the osprey swooping over the clam flats, and fires. Jessie claps her hands over her ears. I follow the direction of the barrel. The bullet bored through the window without shattering it. Just a hole surrounded by small spokes like sun-rays set in the glass. The osprey flies upward toward the clouds. Ducks flap on the opposite shore because of the noise. There are houses there. Someone will hear the shot. The gun is loaded. Could Hans and Marte hear the noise from their house? Someone will hear it and come to investigate. And then I remember that it’s almost hunting season. Just about everyone around here is taking practice potshots at trees and tin cans and Frisbees.
    I bought that gun for downed deer and mangled bears. Not for people. Not for human beings. I thought I should have one. You never know. There are five more possibilities in the cylinder. I sit down.
    Jessie could have escaped through the door when Jonah fired the gun but she stands in the entryway like a school-child in a Christmas pageant. She makes no move to tape my arms to the chair nor to escape. She brings her braid to the front, strokes the end, allows herself to weep in silence in front of Jonah.
    â€œWhy didn’t you listen to me?” Jonah asks.
    â€œI . . . I should have,” she says.
    She needs me. That day years ago in the library atHarvard, I picked her up from the floor, gathered her books, examined her bleeding elbow, pronounced her fit, and invited her for coffee. She wiped her eyes with the hem of that red print skirt, exposing her knees. Pretty knees with dimples, surprising for someone so slender,
n’est-ce pas?
I was into knees and I noticed things like that.
    Today she wears blue jeans from yesterday; small spatters of paint dot her thighs. Her chin quivers. I know she tried not to cry. And if I weaken, she’ll feel helpless. Jonah is only a few feet away. If I lurch toward him and grab the gun, we will be safe. But if I miss, Jessie may be hurt. Can I do it? Not with my ankles taped like this. I ache to kiss her eyes, make her tea, but I mouth words about escaping when he turns his back to confront her. She doesn’t see me. She’s gazing at Jonah now through tears. I work my feet back and forth, trying to free myself from the tape. If I bend to unfasten it, I know he’ll hear the ripping of the tape. I mouth, “Ask him for the gun,” over and over. Perhaps he’ll give it to her, a mother, a woman.
    â€œMay I have it?” she asks. I can hardly hear her, and her arms don’t stretch out to receive it. “The gun.”
    Jonah lowers his head as if he is considering her suggestion. Jessie pays no attention to my charades about escape. She walks slowly toward him, her hand now extended. He taps on the floor with his sneaker. I rise again from my chair without making a sound but he hears me. I think it’s because Jessie glanced in my direction.
    â€œSit down,” Jonah says. Jonah brings in a kitchen chair and sits down as if the command was to himself, but whenI don’t move to sit, he waves the gun at me again. “Please. I am here to pave the way. You do exactly what I tell you to do. I have God behind me.” From his pocket he takes something—another pill, I think—which he shoves into his mouth and swallows without water. “Now. Lady. Please tape Carl’s arms to the chair.”
    â€œI’ll listen to