CHAPTER 11

“What are we gonna do now?”, Shane asks, and she looks tensed, but unbelievably calm. I guess this matter kind of remind her the somehow dangerous life she used to live… before her hairdressing thing, before Tina, Bette, Alice, Dana… before me.

I am sure she never found herself into something so dangerous and deathly cruel, but there are so many things that I don’t know about her. Things that I don’t remember anymore, and things that she never told me about herself.

So I am guessing. I am staring at my wife, the platinum ring slightly shining around her finger, her fingers clasped together, her elbows resting on her knees.

She looks up at Dante, who’s still motionless in the middle of the room, cell in hand, and her green eyes are clouded with something I’ve never seen.

When I entered that shed, one year ago, she looked desperate. Her determination had already gone to hell. She was falling. I didn’t see that look of pure obstinacy, of lethal seriousness. I didn’t have the chance.

“Shane”, I called her, slowly shaking my head.
“Please honey… Don’t do that. Don’t do that”.
I was begging her and I was scared and I was worried and I felt weak.
And that look on her face, saying: Oh honey, I didn’t want you to see me like this.
Shane blinked repeatedly, looking at me like I wasn’t really there.
“Carmen?”, she murmured with an interrogative tone.
“I’m here darling. Just… let go”, I told her.
“I don’t know what’s right anymore”, she replied desperately.
“Not this”, I muttered, trying to smile.
Feebly.
“Just let go”.
“I don’t know, Carmen, I don’t really know…”, Shane said, shaking her head.
“This is not what we want for us. I need you by my side”.
A single tear rolled down my cheek and she seemed about to yell.
Don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry.
It’s not your fault what’s happened.
“Let the guys call an ambulance. Everything’s gonna be fine”, I added.
“Shane, listen to her” Bette said firmly, looking at Shane like she was her mother.
“Come here, Shane” I sobbed, “Come to me”.
And I tried to open my arms.

Now I see what John James Sanders must have seen in her. The danger. The obstinacy, the need of taking something from him, the perseverance of her hunting, the glorious – and at the same time painful – satisfaction of getting her prey cornered.