Helpless by Barbara Gowdy Page A

asks.
    “Where’s my daughter?” she says. Everything pulses: the room, the men.
    “I’ M NOT going to hurt you,” Ron tells her. “I’m taking you somewhere where nobody will ever hurt you again.”
    She’s on the floor. He didn’t put her there…she slid off the seat. It crossed his mind that he should put her in the trunk but he was afraid she’d suffocate. Anyway, without streetlights, you can’t really see into other people’s vehicles.
    “How are you doing?” he asks. He glances over. Her face is turned away. He can make out only the tender curve of her neck and the earlobe with its pearl stud, like a drop of saliva. “Is the air conditioning too cold for you there?” He adjusts the direction of the vents.
    She’s able to breathe, he knows that. He was careful not to tape her nostrils. It was like taping a doll. He had her mouth covered before she even began to put up a struggle. Which was pathetically easy to contain. He quickly bound her hands and feet and that was the end of it.
    He has seen the same thing happen on nature programs: animals giving up once they accept they’ve been overpowered. He tries to explain the phenomenon to her: “You’re in a state of shock. It keeps you from feeling pain or getting too excited. It’s like being injected with a tranquilizing dart. Have you seen those TV shows, you know— Discovery and National Geographic , where the scientists shoot tranquilizing darts at the animals so they can give them medicine or take their measurements?”
    He wonders if he’s speaking too technically. That he can speak at all astounds him. His heart is going like a pump drill. His hands, from touching her, feel irradiated. Not since he was a child himself has he touched a child. This time he only did what was necessary to get her into the car and subdued.
    The trip isn’t a long one: fifteen minutes. He turns into the delivery lane and parks next to his garage, switching on his high beams. All the neighbouring businesses are closed for the day. Still, when he’s out of the car he waits, listening, before going around to her door. “Ups-a-daisy,” he whispers. He drapes her over his shoulder. She’s as weightless as a garment bag.
    His high beams, though he stays out of them, guide him across the lawn to the back entrance and straight through the house to the shop. Here, it is completely dark. With his free hand he feels along the counter to the basement door. “Good girl,” he says, descending the stairs. At the bottom he puts her down while he goes to get flashlights from the furnace room and to move the car around to the front. When he returns, she’s twisting and making choking noises.
    “Hold on,” he says, alarmed. His hands shake. He has trouble inserting the key. “Bingo,” he says, finally jamming it in. He enters the apartment and sets the flashlights on their ends, then comes back for her. She has gone still and quiet. He carries her to the bed and makes a place for her among the stuffed animals. For the first time he notices how fast she’s breathing, the rapid throbbing of her chest.
    “Okay, let’s get that tape off,” he says.
    His hands won’t stop shaking but he finds a corner of the tape and gently pulls. Her lovely mouth, revealed, unsteadieshim. He staggers to one side. “I’m a little nervous about all this,” he confesses. He has a harder time unwinding the twisted tape from her wrists and ankles. He picks up one of the flashlights and leaves the room to get a knife.
    “This should do the trick,” he says when he comes back. She hasn’t budged. He positions one of the flashlights to shine on her wrists and starts sawing. If he cuts her…He doesn’t. He gets the tape off, then moves the light again and does her ankles. Her bare feet squirm under the duvet.
    “Are you cold?” he asks.
    She curls onto her side and begins to whimper—a pathetic animal sound, like a dog left to die.
    What should he do? What he wants to do is sit on the