Hostages

My grateful thanks go to TessSoerensen, who edited the story, to Kenjisato, who did the final clean-up, and to consultant Qetesh.

The woman at the door looked vaguely familiar to Helen.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, but my husband is a hostage, and I’m trying to get him home.”

It was a good line to keep the door open. Helen wondered what she really wanted money for. She wasn’t in any rush. Let the woman talk.

“I’m sorry to hear about your husband; but why did you ring my doorbell?”

Helen already knew the answer answer to that question. Her house was in an expensive area but still accessible to door-to-door salespeople. She and her neighbors were well-to-do, but chose not to live behind guards and gates.

When Helen first saw the woman on her security camera, there seemed to be something sweet and innocent about her face. The woman looked around her age, but unprofessional. She had a pug nose and bright eyes. Her brightly colored dress wasn’t expensive and didn’t show much of her slim body. The whole package was too cute to be true, and it made Helen curious to find out what the woman’s scam was.

“My husband has become a pawn. He’s useful to our government where he is. I want to put more pressure on the President and Congress to get him released. I don’t want him to become one those hostages everybody forgets until they get cancer and are released in time to come home and die. I don’t have enough money to pay for the lawyers, lobbyists and public relations people that I need, so I’m –.”

“Oh my god!” Helen interrupted. “You’re Debbie Willis!”

The woman was surprised for a second.

“That’s right. So you’ve heard about Chuck?”

“This is amazing! My husband is a hostage in the same country. I know some people from there who now live here, and we were just talking about you and your husband last week. We’re all interested in your situation.”

Debbie stared at Helen. She furrowed her eyebrows for a moment before she spoke.

“Is your husband a foreigner? I thought Chuck was the only American being held.”

“No, Arthur is American, but his situation is different from your husband’s, and not many people know about him.

“Listen. I know you don’t have any children. Are you on a schedule? Do you have a certain number of doorbells you have today? I’m asking because I’d love for you to come in and have a cup of coffee with me.”

“I don’t drink coffee.”

“Yes, I forgot. You’re LDS.”

“Are you LDS?”

“No, but a very close friend in my hostage support group is. I’ve got lots of different drinks. You can tell me more about your campaign, and we can compare notes on how we cope without our husbands. What do you say?”

“Are you sure it’s not a bother?”

“Are you kidding? Debbie Willis! In my living room! It’s an honor. Please come in and follow me.”

Debbie admired the entryway and what she saw of the décor as she walked behind Helen. She hoped that her host’s enthusiasm might result in a check rather than the small amounts of cash she had been collecting in the neighborhood the last few days.

Helen got Debbie settled on a couch in the living room and went to the kitchen, where she looked around. Herb tea without caffeine? Soda? Juice? She opened her refrigerator and saw a bottle she had put there yesterday. It was for the support group meeting Friday night. She stared at it and thought for a minute. She took it out and walked back to the living room with it behind her back.

“I’m sorry I took so long, Debbie. I have a question for you that’s a little bit personal. Don’t answer it if you feel I’m out of line. Have you ever drunk anything alcoholic?”

Debbie looked away from her and directed her gaze to the carpet.

“Yes, I have.”

“Was it after Chuck was taken hostage?”

“Yes. I –.”

“Don’t say anything more. My LDS friend in the hostage support group told us that she became a heavy drinker because of her husband until she found us. When we initiate a new member, we end with a champagne toast. After she joined us, she never took another drink except for champagne toasts when we initiated new members.”

Helen brought out her bottle of champagne from behind her back and showed it to Debbie.

“Have you ever had champagne?”

“No. Just strong whiskey.”

“Champagne isn’t as strong, but it has bubbles that make you happy without as much alcohol. That’s why it’s used for celebrations. I feel like celebrating today. I think it was fate that brought you to my door. Would you share a toast with me?”

Debbie looked at the bottle and then up at Helen’s face.

“I won’t be insulted if you say no,” Helen said.

“I shouldn’t,” Debbie said, “but I want to. I will!”

“Wonderful! I’ll go get the flutes.”

When Helen lifted her flute in the air, Debbie copied her.

“To the hostages!” Helen said.

“To the hostages!” Debbie repeated.

After the toast, Helen took small sips while making sure Debbie’s glass stayed full. Soon Debbie was relaxed and smiling, and she occasionally hiccupped and giggled during their conversation. Helen ate up every word, facial expression and movement she made. The champagne made Helen want to declare to Debbie that she was the most adorable woman in the world, but she managed to keep from embarrassing herself.

As Debbie’s hiccups and giggles increased, Helen asked her if she drove to the neighborhood.

“No. I took an Uber.”

“Great! If I’m in no shape to drive you home, I’ll call you a car.”

Helen listened to Debbie’s story. Except for a few details, she knew it already, so she focused on Debbie’s voice, face and body and on trying to keep from smiling while Debbie talked about her serious problem.

After Debbie finished, the conversation got lighter. The champagne helped. They spoke about wanting children while they were still in their twenties. They spoke about workouts and their efforts to stay fit for their husbands even though they weren’t around to appreciate their bodies. That led to sexual yearning and frustration.

There was a lull, and Helen giggled and reached her hand out to Debbie’s head and stroked her hair.

“What are you doing?” Debbie said. She sounded surprised rather than upset.

Helen laughed.

“I shouldn’t tell you what I’m thinking. You might be insulted.”

“Tell me,” Debbie said, and then she hiccupped and giggled.

“All right, but don’t be angry. I was thinking that your blond hair is too perfect to be real. I was wondering what I’d look like as a blonde and if you’d give me the name of your hair stylist.”

“Thank you for the compliment, but I don’t have it colored. It’s real.”

Helen laughed.

“All the blondes I know say the same thing, and I believe them all, so I believe you.”

“But I’m telling you the truth.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway.”

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

“I just thought of something,” Helen lied. She had been thinking about it for over an hour and working on it in her mind. She got up.

“Wait here. I’m going to get something.”

She came back in less than a minute and sat down closer to Debbie.

“What do I have in my right hand and what do I have in my left?” she asked.

“It looks like a checkbook and a pen,” Debbie answered.

“Correct! Now watch what I do with them.”

She wrote out a check and handed it to Debbie. Debbie gasped.

“That’s my contribution to help you get your husband home,” Helen said, but don’t put it in your purse yet.”

“Are you playing a game with me? You can’t be serious about the check. It’s almost as much as all the donations I’ve received.”

“Don’t worry. I can afford it, and you deserve it; but I don’t want you to take it.”

As she spoke, she wrote another check and then handed it to Debbie.

“I want you to take this one instead.”

“Why this is double the amount!”

“You were right. I’m playing a game with you. I’m not being nice. I might make you cry in a few minutes.”

Debbie giggled nervously.

“You won’t do that.”

“Let’s see,” Helen said. “It’s all about your husband. You’ve told me how badly you want him back. You’ve been on the phone talking until you’re hoarse. You’ve been walking from door to door until you’re exhausted. There’s no question that you would do almost anything to have him in your arms again. Do I have that right?”

“Yes. You’re absolutely right.”

“Think for a moment. I said ‘almost anything.’ That covers a lot of territory. Have you ever thought about things you wouldn’t do? You’ll exhaust yourself for Chuck, but what if there was something that wasn’t hard but repugnant. What if it was degrading? What if it went against your morals? It’s the old question. Does the end justify the means?

“How low would you go to help bring him home? Notice I said ‘help.’ We both know nothing can guarantee his return. All you would know is that doing this horrible thing would help your campaign.”

Debbie frowned as she listened to Helen ramble. What was this woman leading up to?

“I’m guessing that for you, it’s not black and white,” Helen continued. “You’d do some disgusting things if you had to; but there are things you wouldn’t do. For example, what if I gave you hard evidence that the government holding your husband would release him at once if you killed a dissident from there who escaped and has been given asylum in America?

“Don’t answer. I know you would never do something that evil. So there are limits for you. I wonder what your limits are. All right. Now that you’ve had a chance to think about them, we’ll finish the game.

“If you want the first check, you can put it in your purse now, and I’ll take you home. If you want the second check, you have to tear up the first check. I’ll put the second check on the coffee table. Before you can put it in your purse, you have to prove to me that you are a real blonde.”

Debbie stared at her.

“I just thought of something. My husband likes me smooth. Maybe yours is the same. If you shave when he’s not home, you can’t prove anything, so there is no game. You get the first check.”

Helen looked at Debbie for a reaction. There was none. As Helen had guessed, she didn’t shave.

Debbie was not looking at Helen anymore. Her mouth was open and her eyes weren’t focused on anything in the room. She hiccupped, but this time there was no giggle.

Helen didn’t move, but eventually Debbie stood up slowly, holding onto the arm of the couch for support. She bent over and began pulling up her colorful dress. Beneath it, she wore a modest white slip.

Helen stood up.

“Stop!”

She took Debbie’s left hand in her right and began walking.

“Wait! What are you doing? Where are we going?”

“To the bedroom. You didn’t really think for that much money, all you’d have to do is show it to me.”

**************

All the pillows on the bed were pushed back against the headboard, and Helen and Debbie, naked and sweaty, were draped over them. The exhausted Debbie was snuggled against Helen, who had her left arm around her, with her left hand reaching across Debbie’s chest to cup Debbie’s right breast. Helen’s fingers fluttered around Debbie’s nipple. Meanwhile, Helen’s right hand was on Debbie’s head, and her fingers were gently stroking Debbie’s hair. She spoke softly in a soothing voice close to Debbie’s ear. Every once in a while, she would stop speaking to gently kiss Debbie’s temple.

“My first time with a woman was at my initiation, and at first I was embarrassed because the others were watching. But I was so starved for sex that once we started, I forgot the others.

“Brighten — she’s the LDS member — was supposed to be the experienced one, but my desperate need blew her away. You were like I was. Masturbation is all right for relief, but nothing can take the place of two bodies uniting in lust.

“Your body is attuned to exquisite sex, just like mine. Watching you giving in to ecstasy and feeling you tremble each time you came brought me tremendous joy. But you’re different from me. You didn’t soak up every sensation selfishly without a thought to anything else. I had to learn, but you already understand the highest pleasure of all is giving. You were relentless in finding ways to make me come. You are inexperienced and wise in lovemaking at the same time. I am in total awe of you.

“I feel your fingers, Debbie. Grawwwwww! That’s what my dog says when I do the same thing to him. I push my fingers deep into his pelt and gently scratch him. But you’re not just soothing me are you? You’re looking for something. You found it. It’s wet and hot, because of you. You made it that way, you wanton wench. Uh-uh-oooooo. No, not again. I can’t take anymore. You’re driving me out of my mind. No! No! Don’t stop now! Don’t stop now!”

**************

After they both spent time in the bathroom freshening up, they dressed silently without looking at each other. Helen took Debbie back to the living room and brought a pitcher of water and two glasses. They were so dehydrated that they drank the first glass without taking a breath. As they sipped on the second glass, Helen spoke.

“If I get run over by a truck tomorrow, I’ll die happy because of the last two hours. I don’t expect you to say anything to me, but there are some things I have to tell you before we leave.

“The first thing is that you might already be feeling a little guilty, or it could hit you later. Let me remind you that despite how much you enjoyed what we did, you did it under duress. You may feel like you were a whore, selling yourself for money. But the truth is I blackmailed you. You chose to sacrifice your body to save your husband. There’s no guilt in that.

“I confess I’ve never before done what I did to you. I consider myself a decent, moral person. It’s true you tempted me from the moment you stepped into the house and my desire grew as we spoke. But I was controlling it until I found out that your husband was lying to you. When I heard that, it allowed me to justify what I was dying to do. The idea of the checks came to me a moment later.”

“What did you just say?”

“Let me get to it my way,” Helen said. “Arthur’s living not far from Chuck, in a similar luxury hotel. Did you know your husband is staying in a beautiful suite similar to Arthur’s, except Arthur doesn’t have two guards outside his door?

“Arthur isn’t a hostage to the regime like Chuck. I first thought he was a hostage to his company, which is doing a tremendous business with one of the wealthiest sheiks in the country. After a while, I realized it wasn’t Arthur’s company who controlled his life. He was the one who chose to leave me alone for months on end for his huge salary. He was a hostage to his vision of success.

“In the beginning, I bought into his belief that he was doing it for us. He was sacrificing so we could have financial freedom by the time we had our first child. My life consisted of being there to support him in every way I could, welcoming him back into my arms whenever he came home and waiting for the day when we could start our family.

“One of the things I did for him was entertain the sheiks he worked with when they visited him here. I talked to them and took an interest in everything going on in their country.

“I began to notice people who spoke English with the same accent as the sheiks. There are many immigrants from there living in this area. I run across them at stores, restaurants and theaters. When I heard them talk, I began striking up conversations, because I was interested in anything they could tell me about their homeland. Some of them invited me to social events, and when Arthur was abroad, I often joined them.

“It got so I was the honorary Yank at their gatherings. They were wonderful, kind people, and the stories they told about what they had endured and how they had escaped were heartrending.

“Many of them still have family and friends in the old country, and they told me Arthur was well known. I was relieved to find out he was in no danger because of his usefulness to the regime.

“One night at a small house party, one of my closest friends in the group seemed to be avoiding me. I confronted her, and she wouldn’t look me in the eye. She finally burst into tears and ran away. I saw her talking to another of my friends before she left in a huff.

“I asked the woman she had talked to what the matter was, and she said Daria told her she had heard something upsetting from a relative in the old country that day. It bothered her so much that she wasn’t herself. She left because she didn’t want to talk to anyone about it.

“I forgot about it until Daria called me a week later and invited me to lunch. When I met her, I saw that she had been crying. I told her if she wanted to unburden herself, I would be a good listener. She began sobbing.

“After a couple of cocktails, she calmed down and told me what was on her mind. A relative had heard something and confirmed it with other sources. Arthur had a reputation as a big consumer of contracted sex.

“Not only did he have at least a dozen hot-looking call girls at his disposal, but he did everything imaginable with them, sometimes with two or three at a time. As much as those working with him admired him as a businessman, his sexual depravity repulsed them. She assured me that I was in no danger of contracting STDs because the women servicing him were strictly controlled by the regime, tested constantly and only available to important foreigners who had also been tested.

“Daria said that if the situation was reversed, she would want to know, but she had been scared to tell me because she thought the knowledge might cause a nervous breakdown or drive me to suicide.

“I was surprisingly calm when I heard her story. Nothing Arthur had ever done or said sounded like the man she described. Maybe someone had confused him with another businessman. I thanked Daria and told her I hoped she wouldn’t be insulted, but unless there was proof, I chose not to believe what her relative told her. But I would check into it.

“I found an expensive agency that did a lot of international work. It took them three months and a lot of money for bribes, but I got the truth. It’s on DVDs and flash drives. They are in a bank I found where I didn’t have to open an account and could pay cash to rent a safe deposit box for twenty years.

“Watching the videos, I could barely believe the sickening things that this stranger, who looked and talked like my husband, was doing with his whores.

“If the only unusual things I had seen were anal and coming in the escorts’ mouths, I might have been less upset, because I had turned him down on both of those. But most of the stuff was way more extreme. I thought we confided in each other about sex, but he never mentioned any of those desires to me, probably because he knew nobody but a sex worker would ever do them.

“I brooded for a long time. I’m usually decisive, like today; but I couldn’t make up my mind what to do, especially after I began keeping a closer eye on him. He was a true Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

“When he was home, he was the perfect husband. He spent as much time as he could with me and went out of his way to do things that made me happy. Sex was great, and the PI confirmed that he didn’t have anything on the side at home, even when he traveled on business domestically.

“Only when he was across the ocean did he turn into a vile sex fiend.

“It wasn’t until I met Felicia that I realized the one thing he did to me that was truly cruel, painful and unfair.

“Felicia was one of the two founders of our support group. She and Mona came up with the hostage concept.

“They had met each other through their husbands. Like all the hostages our group supports, their husbands were high-powered business people who great amounts of time away from home.

“I won’t go into all of the details, but each woman found out her husband was having sex with multiple women while away from home. They cried together and supported each other.