Just as I’d expected, it was İpekten.
There she stood, grinning ear to ear, enormous eyes filled with curiosity.
“Here I am to the rescue!”
A toss of her Wonder Woman mane of hair was enough to restore calm. The girls all imagine themselves to be up on the latest fashions. Some of them model themselves on my idol, Audrey; others are still stuck in their seventies Bearded Barbie phase. But İpekten is something else. She slavishly follows Harper’s Bazaar’s picks of the month, from hairstyle and color, skirt length and matching accessories, right through to scent, makeup, and length of nails and shade of polish. Even the shampoo and soap in her bathroom gets a monthly update!
I summarized things for her as we went inside.
“I’ll shit in their mouths! Break in, did they? And in the middle of the night, no less. And you still nursing a broken heart. Well, I never!”
“What’s that got to do with it?…” I began.
“Maybe it’s irrelevant, maybe it’s not! That’s not the point. The point is, they’re clearly deranged. It’s a wound in the social fabric, it is. Completely sociological. Did I say logical? Well, there’s not a trace of that, honey! That’s the problem. I’ll knock some sense into them. They’re all mine now. Dr. Mengele has nothing on me.”
“Sweetie,” I pleaded, “please don’t ramble on. I’m just not up to it. I don’t think I can take it.”
“Well, alright then, hubby… You’re in a deep depression, after all. You think you’re over it, but you’re not, of course. Who can snap out of something like that in just a couple of days? Don’t you agree? I mean, look what happened to Virginia Woolf. You’ve seen The Hours. And there are other films, too… This is serious stuff. No one pulls through just like that. No, it always leaves a scar. Deep down…”
“Ipekten!”
“Alright, alright!” she pouted. “If you invited me over just to shut me up…”
I handed her one of the guns.
“Do you know how to use this?” I asked.
“Ayol, I did my military service, same as everyone else. And I never miss. Don’t worry, hubby.”
I let her know that the body on the floor was a mute.
“I’ll have him singing like a pressure cooker,” she trilled. “That tongue’ll be wagging in no time!… ”
Purple Cheek had come out of the bathroom, trousers down around his ankles, and taken penguin steps as far as the door to the bedroom.
“I’m afraid I couldn’t flush it,” he apologized sardonically.
İpekten turned her head to look at the newcomer.
“Ah! Sarp? What are you doing here?”
For several moments, three pair of eyes traveled from face to face. There was deadly silence.
“Who on earth is Sarp?” I finally asked, surprised and a bit panicked.
İpekten eyes’s shifted from me, to Sarp, down to his limp manhood, and then back to me again.
“You see…”
“You slept with him?” I interrupted.
“You could say that…”
Either they had or they hadn’t.
“So you did…” I said, pointing the gun at the floor. It suddenly seemed heavy.
“Uh-huh…” she said, feigning embarrassment. The shameless hussy.
Now we all avoided each other’s eyes. What an unpleasant development. The person I’d called for help turned out to be my assailant’s lover.
We both turned to look at Sarp, who was speaking.
“Would one of you mind pulling up my underwear?”
İpekten sprang to his side, seizing the opportunity to plant a small kiss just where his waistband snapped into place.
“İpekten! Really!”
“Oh, come on, he’s a good kid, actually.”
She was standing right next to him, one of the guns in her hand. It was like one of those scenes where the heroine switches sides, goes over to the forces of evil.
“But he broke into my house. Assault and battery with a deadly weapon,” I protested, getting a firmer grip on my gun and waving it about a bit. “And he won’t even tell me who put him up to it.”
İpekten took two steps in my direction, glancing now and again at me, then back at Sarp. Nothing’s worse than doubting an old friend. But once you’ve got a man in the picture, friendship goes out the window. She made up her mind.
“Who hired you? You’ll tell us, won’t you?” she said to him.
“Don’t be stupid!” Sarp muttered out of the corner of his mouth.
“What kind of an answer is that?” asked İpekten, running her fingers through his hair. It wasn’t a good sign, but it was still too early to take action. “Talking like that to me of all people. And in front of my best friend, no less… Well, I won’t stand for it!”
“You just don’t get it!” shouted Sarp. “You’re a couple of clueless shitheads!”
“Look, lion boy, watch who you’re calling ‘shithead.’ When I blow my top, I blow it big time. I’ll shit in your mouth, I will. I’ll wipe that sneer right off your face. That tackle you’re so proud of won’t do you any good when I get through with it. Do I make myself clear?”
She dug the gun into Sarp’s crotch and opened the safety with a click chillingly audible to us all.
This was getting interesting.
Sarp had no intention of talking. Even worse, he was insolent about it. A crooked smile on his face, he even threatened us with a long list of likely retributions.
We had no choice but to wrap more tape around his ankles and turn our attention to the mute.
“If you don’t talk, we’ll torture you,” said İpekten.
She was serious. Even I believed her.
Eyes wide with fright, the mute stared at us.
Of course, meddlesome Sarp did all he could to discourage him.
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“None of your business. It’s not like you’re going to get married.”
Sarp seemed to think that a formal introduction inevitably leads to nuptials. It was the second time tonight he’d said that. Either he had an extremely limited vocabulary and utter lack of imagination, or he was obsessed with the wedding ceremony.
“Sorry, İpekten,” I said, giving Sarp a good kick to the ribs. He’d begun to irritate me.
“Look, shake your head if you have something to say!”
İpekten was kneeling next to the mute.
“If you write a single word, you’re dead. No one’ll be able to save your ass. You can count on it!”
Clearly, Sarp hadn’t been satisfied with a single kick. And İpekten wasn’t helping me reprimand him.
Then she motioned with her head for me to follow her. The two of us went off to the kitchen, shutting the door behind us.
“I’ve got a plan,” she whispered.
It was simple. First, we put them in separate rooms. We also had to muzzle Sarp. He was quite the chatty Cathy. And he’d gone as far as calling us “a couple of stupid fags.” I have zero tolerance for the word “stupid.”
We filled a hypodermic needle with the saline solution I use to clean the colored lenses I sometimes wear.
Brandishing the needle, İpekten went up to Sarp.
“It’s truth serum, honey. Rohypnol. Once we inject you with this, you’ll be singing like there’s no tomorrow. We’ll find out even more than we’d care to,” she said, holding the needle in front of his nose.
The lens solution would, of course, have no physiological effect of any kind, but as a placebo we might get results. Anyway, it wasn’t entirely unscientific and certainly worth a try. We’d try it out on both Sarp and the mute. It would be enough that they believed us.
“Where should we stick it in?” I asked.
“Where would it hurt most?”
“Down there, I suppose…” I fairly cackled.
Sarp was trembling. The cords in his neck had come out and his eyes had grown into dinner plates. I stifled a giggle.
“Pull down his pants. I’ll do it,” said İpekten.
Sarp struggled to move, but failed. We’d made a tidy little package out of him, nicely gagged and bound. I managed to get his trousers and underwear down and grabbed his hips so he couldn’t move.
“Look here,” said İpekten, “if you shake like that the tip of the needle will break off in your dick. So lie still, darling. Or talk…”
He was a big, strong boy, our Sarp. A regular commando. But when the needle pricked his privates he was out cold. I could have roused him with cold water but decided a good slap would work just as well.
“Open your eyes, you big lug!” I shouted. “We haven’t even done it yet! You’ll miss the show!”
I could only guess at the curses and threats building up inside him, but his mouth was taped shut. Those liquid eyes were petrified, glassy. It seemed we were finally getting through.
“I’m asking you for the last time,” said İpekten, giving his pee-pee a poke with the needle. “Are you ready to talk?”
Sarp nodded.
I took great delight in tearing the tape off his mouth, once again uprooting mustache and beard hair in the process. His eyes flashed fire.
Gritting his teeth, he gave us our name.
“Nimet Hanım.”
And he passed out again.