Girl Who Wasn’t There

by Vincent Zandri

  “Pen,” I say, sitting up. “You really think we can steal a minute alone?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” she presses. “Chloe has a new friend. She’s eleven now, Doc. It’s okay to leave her alone with a friend for a few minutes.” Drinking some of her beer, setting the bottle back down gently onto the table onto its own condensate ring. “If we go now, our beers won’t even have the chance to lose their cool.”

  Together we focus on Chloe.

  “I’m game if you’re game,” I say.

  “Let me go tell Chloe we’re going to the room to grab my other pair of sunglasses and that you need to use the bathroom.”

  “Sounds like a plan, Stan.”

  Penny stands, begins heading down the beach in the direction of the water. Maybe feeling a little self-conscious about playing in the sand like a girl half her age, Chloe smiles shyly when she notices her mother making her way toward her. She stands up straight, wipes the excess sand from her tummy and her yellow polka-dotted back end.

  I try to listen to what’s being said between mother and daughter, but it’s impossible to hear from this distance. It makes me wonder about all the many conversations they’ve shared together that I’ve missed out on over the years. The many moments I’ve not been included in. The many events and holidays that eluded me. The Thanksgivings, the Christmases, the New Years, the Easters.

  That’s the real tragedy of incarceration.

  Not iron bars or concrete walls, but separation from your loved ones. The missing out, the alienation, the way your imagination plays tricks on you. Human nature takes over. You develop a finely tuned imagination. You picture things in full high-def color. Like your wife lying in the arms of another man for example. It’s what eats away at you, eats you alive. It’s what poisons any semblance of hope you have left, like a metastasized cancer that ravages your brain, your heart, and your soul.

  Penny starts back up the beach, looking lovely and sexy in her bikini, her dark hair blowing in the breeze. I stand. She takes me by the hand.

  She says, “Let’s make this quick, cowboy.”

  “What I have planned won’t take but a minute, fair maiden,” I say.

  CHAPTER 2

  WHEN PENNY AND I enter into the bedroom through the ground level sliding glass doors, closing the wall-length curtain behind us, we feel like teenagers who’ve snuck out of their respective houses to meet up on the sly. Two youngsters on a first date. At least, that’s the way I feel.

  But this isn’t a first date. We aren’t young anymore and Penny is already my wife, even if we haven’t shared the same bed in years.

  “So what’s up that sleeve of yours, Doc?” she asks, standing tall and gorgeous in the room by the newly made bed.

  I go to my suitcase, dig inside through the clothes until I feel the plain paper bag. I pull the bag out. Reaching into it, I pull out a metal ring I constructed inside the prison machine shop. It’s made from a cheap metal and there’s no diamond or stone embedded in it, but it means the world to me. I made it for Penny after she told me she had no choice but to sell her engagement diamond to help pay the bills. My legal bills included. That makes this ring priceless.

  I lower myself onto one knee, take her hand in mine, slide the ring onto her marriage finger. Thank God it fits.

  “Penny Fanucci,” I declare. “Will you marry me again?”

  She’s smiling, but tears are falling down her smooth cheeks. Gentle tears. Happy tears? Maybe.

  “Yes, Doc,” she answers with a sniffle. “I … am … yours.”

  I stand, take her in my arms, kiss her gently on the mouth, hold her like I’m never letting go. Rather, like I don’t want her to let go. Because if I let go, a big bad wind will come and blow me straight back to prison.

  When we do finally separate, we find ourselves gazing at one another. It’s like we’re caught up in a trance. I find myself wanting to ravage Penny. But in truth, I’m not entirely sure how to go about touching her. In prison, if an inmate wants you, and he has enough size and strength, he can pull you into a dark corner and have you bent over in the time it takes you to spit out, Help me!

  Me … I was one of the lucky ones.

  I kept my head down, avoided unnecessary eye contact, and by sheer luck, never became the victim. But I’d seen plenty of poor souls who were. Believe me when I say they weren’t the same man afterwards. Their souls were ripped out of them at the precise moment the rapist entered into them. It wasn’t a pretty sight—the soft tissue lacerations alone can cause significant bleeding, not to mention the emotional scars.

  The rapists and the gangbangers left me alone, but I’m not sure it had everything to do with luck. I was known as a killer, after all. It was a reputation I allowed to ferment inside the iron house. Not because I was proud of what I’d done to that family up in Albany—Christ, I was just the driver after all—but because it helped me survive.

  Being known as a ruthless killer wasn’t something I was honored with. But let me tell you something. It gave me hope.

  “Come on, Doc,” Penny whispers, as she reaches behind her back with both hands, unclasps the top on her bathing suit, allows it to drop to the carpeted floor. “Get in bed while we have a quiet moment alone.”

  For the record, I’m not so sure this is a good idea. Leaving Chloe alone like that, even if she has made a new friend, the parents of whom are watching over them.

  But then I see Penny’s pale, naked breasts, her erect nipples, and it’s all I can do to catch a breath. I pull the bed cover back exposing fresh white sheets, and I sit myself down, my bathing trunks still on. Shifting myself so that I’m sitting upright in the bed, I watch Penny as she slowly removes her bottoms, allowing them to slip down her smooth legs.

  “It’s not going to work, Doc, if you keep your suit on,” she says.

  I don’t know why it’s happening. The hesitation. Physically speaking, I’m more excited than I’ve been in my entire life. Hyper hormonal teenage years included. In terms of Penny, it’s mission accomplished. Seeing her undress has sent significant chemical messaging to the blood vessels in my penis. The blood’s been allowed in and it ain’t getting out until the corpora cavernosa flushes it back out. What it wants, in other words, is to get laid.

  But I’m hesitating.

  I’m afraid and I don’t know why. That’s not entirely right. I know why. As I tentatively pull off my trunks, the questions once more plague me. What if I can’t perform? What if I go too quickly? What if I go too slow? What if I don’t satisfy her? What if she’s been with someone far better than me? What if she doesn’t really love me anymore?

  Okay, I’m sporting an erection that just won’t quit. For now, anyway. But it doesn’t help that we’re strapped for time. The pressure is not something I expected to wrestle with during our first time back in the saddle.

  Penny comes to me, on all fours, like a sleek lioness. She buries her face into the nape of my neck. It’s all I can do to restrain myself from tossing her onto her back violently and consuming her entirely. This isn’t prison, I remind myself. This is heaven. A little slice of heaven in the form of a mid-range-priced hotel room located lakeside in the six-million-acre Adirondack Park.

  She kisses me.

  I shift my head slowly so that my lips meet hers. Our tongues play, our teeth gently biting our lips. I roll her over onto her back and stare into her wide eyes. I feel myself close to entering her even before I intend the physical act to begin. It is the strangest sensation to have lived alone for so many years and now giving one’s self over entirely to this woman. It is a matter of trust. Of letting go of the wheel, of flying blind, but somehow feeling entirely safe at the same time.

  Using her hand, she guides me, and when I am finally inside her, I feel reduced to tears. My entire body moves with hers. The cheap bed is banging against the wall, and if this were many years ago, we would both have a quick laugh over it. But for now, we ignore everything that is happening all around
us. There is no world outside our combined skin and flesh. There is only our world. There is only our love. And when the time comes for me to release, she once more presses her face into my neck, whispers, “Let it go … Let it go, Sidney. Let it all out.” I’m not sure where it comes from, but I shout while releasing a profound breath. Then, I roll over onto my back, and I begin to cry.

  She steals a quiet moment to catch her breath before rolling onto her side. She wipes the tears from my eyes with her fingers.

  “It’s okay,” she consoles. “It’s okay, I’m here.”

  The tears stream down my face. I taste the salt on my lips and tongue. I am filled with battling emotions. Embarrassment and relief. Or, technically speaking, it’s a rush of oxytocin inside the brain. But should I be crying in front of the one woman who wants me to be strong for her? For Chloe?

  Or maybe she doesn’t mind the tears. Maybe by revealing weakness, I am also proving my humanity. The fact that prison didn’t rob me entirely of my humanness.

  … He sneaks up on me from behind. Not directly behind me but off to the side, so that I catch him out the corner of my eye. That’s his fatal mistake. I’ve got both hands loaded up with dirty laundry, which I’m stuffing into the machine. He’s got something in his hands. More than likely, a plastic shiv made from a sharpened toothbrush.

  “Rabuffo appreciates your silence,” he spits, as he goes to thrust the shiv into my side.

  But I drop the laundry, spin around, catch his wrist at the last possible second before blade meets flesh. Spinning him around, I twist his wrist in a way God never intended and plant the shiv into his liver.

  He drops like a stone.

  I then cover him with a pile of laundry.

  Slowly, unassumingly, I start making my way around the long row of metal washing machines toward the laundry facility exit. But before making my way completely around, I turn, steal one last glance at the dark blood soaking into the cairn constructed of white linens. Continuing on around the machines and across the facility floor, I nod politely to the bored-out-of-his-skull screw manning the exit.

  “Have a nice day,” I say, before pushing the doors open.

  The faucet of tears is turned off as fast as it was turned on.

  Get ahold of yourself, Sid. Buck up …

  “Sorry about that, Pen. It’s just been … well, it’s been a long time, you know.”

  “Hey, Doc,” she says, not without a giggle. “It’s usually me who enjoys a good cry after sex. Hormones.”

  Me, once more picturing her in the arms of another. Don’t go there, I tell myself. Do not go there. I bite my bottom lip, hard, every time I want to pose the question. Pretty soon I’ll be drawing blood.

  “Well, maybe you should be crying,” I say. “Took me what? Less than a minute? I can only assume you aren’t entirely … how shall I put this … satisfied.”

  “Hey, we’ve got lots of time to get back into the swing.” She gives me a love tap with her bare knuckles. “Whoa nelly, where’d you get them muscles, Arnold?”

  “Lots of time to lift weights on the yard,” I point out. “That and read. That’s pretty much how I spent my days. Lifting, reading, working, thinking about you two. Dreaming that …”

  “Dreaming what, Doc?”

  “Dreaming I’d get you both back one day.”

  I glance down at her fingers touching my bicep. It’s peaked even though I’m not flexing. There’s a heart tattooed to the bicep. The heart is not red since there was no red ink to be found on the inside. But instead, black, from the black ink you find in a common Bic pen. Even that had to be smuggled in since a pen makes one hell of a weapon. The heart is crying tears. Two tears, one for each of the loves I was forever missing.

  “And this heart,” Penny goes on. “I’m still trying to get used to it, Doc. It’s very well done, but it’s also … what’s the word I’m looking for here?”

  I’m saying the word for her in my head even before she utters it.

  “Sad,” she whispers. Then, her fingers still strumming the tight skin that covers my muscle. “The tears. What do they mean?” She exhales. “I once heard that tears represent the men you’ve killed inside prison walls. One for each man. Is that true, Doc?”

  I shake my head, bring my lips to the top of her head. I can tell she’s worried. That she’s been worried since I got home and first took off my shirt, revealing the crying heart tattoo. She waited to ask the question. I’ll give her credit for that. She didn’t want to go on the attack right away.

  “The tears are you and Chloe,” I explain. It’s not entirely a lie.

  She looks into my eyes.

  “But why?” she asks. “We’re still here. We’re alive.”

  “It broke my heart that I could not be with you. I was preparing myself for a life behind concrete walls and iron bars. Without you. Without Chloe.”

  “But it didn’t turn out that way, did it?”

  “No. Thank God.”

  She falls into a sea of thought.

  “Can I ask you a frank question, Doc?” she says. “A hard question. And can you promise not to get mad at me for asking it?”

  Pulse speeds up a little.

  “Ask away,” I say. Because what choice do I have?

  “Did you kill anyone in prison, Doc?”

  In my head, the shiv sliding into his liver … how easily it slipped inside. Not two months after that, another man, a heavy Chinese goon, cornering me in the shower. The shiv he’d constructed out of a piece of wood chair back and a disposable razor cut his neck almost to the bone after I’d snatched it out of his hand. His dark arterial blood was circling the drain as I dried off, and slipped back into gen pop, no one the wiser.

  One week later, I had a crying heart tattoo planted on my arm with two teardrops falling from it …

  “No, babe,” I say, hoping to God she can’t see through the lie. “I kept my head down. Did as I was told. Stayed out of the way. Stayed alive.”

  Outside the sliding glass doors, I can make out the sound of people enjoying themselves. Vacationers. People taking it easy. Kids and adults, mucking it up on the beach. I see Chloe in her polka-dot bikini. See her in my head.

  “It must have been so hard,” Penny says. “I don’t know how you did it. Especially knowing you might never get out. How did you stay sane, Doc?”

  “I thought of you. You and Chloe, all the time. You were both in my head when I went to sleep at night and when I woke up in the mornings.”

  “We visited. We were true.”

  “I would have died if you hadn’t. You were my Penny from heaven, especially when I was locked up in hell.”

  She falls quiet one more time, and I know there is another question coming.

  “Doc,” she says, “tell me something. How did you get out so early? What changed?”

  Pulse picks up more speed.

  “You know what happened, Pen. Joel kept demanding new appeals. Eventually, we won out. We owe it all to him. And to you. To the letters you got people to write for me on my behalf.”

  The Joel I’m referring to is Joel Harwood. My lawyer. The guy who fought for me when I had no fight left in my system.

  “So you didn’t tell on anyone,” she says, like a question.

  “What are you trying to say?” I ask.

  “You didn’t, you know, mention anyone by name. Anyone in particular who might be responsible for the Chen family killings. Other than those two guys who did the actual shooting.”

  “You mean, did I call my boss out by name?” I say, feeling a burning sensation that starts in my toes and runs up and down my spine.

  “That’s not what I said, honey.”

  “But it’s what you mean.”

  I feel the skin around my bicep grow tighter, tauter. All my muscles go tight. Ten years of frustration feels like it’s culminating right here, right now, in this bed. And there’s not a goddamned thing I can do about it.

  “Listen, Doc,” she says, slipping out of t
he bed and putting her bathing suit back on. “You got screwed. You took the rap for those two abhorrent assholes who shot that poor family to death. When they died from their wounds, there was no one else to blame but you, the driver. Joel fought for you, and even though it took a while, he made the court realize their errors, and they released you. That’s all that counts now.”

  “I guess you’re right, Pen. That’s all that counts.”

  But I know she’s not right. Some truths, however, are better left unspoken.

  “You know, Doc,” she goes on, “you never would utter the name of your boss after they arrested you. The man who you owed so much to. The man you felt so indebted to that you were willing to break the law for him. But, of course, I always knew his identity. How could I not know?”

  … Rabuffo … Of course, she knew …

  “It’s better that we didn’t mention his name while I was in prison. It was safer that way. So let’s not talk about it anymore.”

  “You always say that,” she says. “You’ve been saying the same thing for ten years.”

  “It was the smart play.”

  “The smart play?”

  “It’s how I stayed a step ahead of my enemies for ten years. And that’s the way it’s going to stay now.”

  She puts her top back on, smiles for me. But I can’t help sensing something in her voice and in her tone that is untrusting or, at the very least, guarded. Maybe that’s because I’m not telling her the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and she knows it.

  “Oh my God, look at what time it is,” she says, staring at the clock set on the bedside table. “Chloe will think we abandoned her.” She heads into the bathroom.

  “I agree. We need to go, Pen.”

  Now that Penny is out of the room, I grab hold of the television remote, flick the TV on. After ten years of incarceration, I can see that television is a still a mind suck—I never watched much of our limited channel selection in gen pop—even though there’s more channel choices than ever before. There’s a cooking show taking place at a roadside diner. The host has crazy blond hair. I switch to a bowling tournament on a sports channel. I catch an infomercial for a special pillow that conforms to your head when you rest your skull on it. Something I definitely could have used in prison.