by Helen Cox
‘Yes, it is.’ There was a sting to Esther’s voice. Both Jack and Ryan noticed it and looked at her face for a clue but she was giving nothing away. I was grateful to her for not blurting out to the whole crowd exactly why I wasn’t in a position to ask her for a favour, but still felt the blush skulking its way up the back of my neck anyway.
‘It’s just until I can busk and get some money together and figure out how I’m gonna – I mean, what to do next.’ I tried to explain.
‘Why’d you leave the casino?’ asked Esther, as the other three watched on, quiet.
‘You know how you always said trouble had a tendency of finding me?’
Esther glanced down at the lino. ‘Yes.’
‘Well, some pretty big trouble found me this time. You’re really better off not knowing the whys and wherefores but I promise I won’t stay a second longer than I need to. It’s just so I can regroup, you know?’ I opened my eyes as wide as I could in the hopes of looking persuasive.
Esther pressed her lips together and gazed into my eyes.
God damn it.
So this was my comeuppance for what I’d done to her. If I’d been on the level the whole time we were in Atlantic City, she wouldn’t think twice about taking me in. But I hadn’t been. I’d broken her trust early on and though I’d tried really hard, I was never sure if I’d rebuilt it before she left for New York.
‘Esther?’ Jack nudged the side of her face with his nose and murmured, only just loud enough for me to hear, ‘You OK? It’s fine if your friend wants to stay at the flat. It may be technically mine but I think of it as ours, if that’s what you’re worried about.’
‘No,’ she said.
‘No?’ I repeated, my insides hollowing out.
‘Esther?’ said Jack. ‘What’s going on here?’
‘Nothing, I just…’ She looked at me out the corner of her eye. It was the same uncertain look she’d given me that rotten night back at the casino when she’d caught me red-handed. Going through her things. Without her permission. ‘I’m sorry, Bonnie, you can’t stay with us.’
‘Esther, please.’ I put a hand on her arm. ‘I’m begging you, I’ve got nowhere else to go, everyone else I know is in Atlantic City and I really just need somewhere to put my head down for a few days and figure out what I’m going to do. Some place safe. You think I’d ask you for a favour unless I was desperate? Haven’t you ever been desperate in your life?’
Esther took in a deep breath. Her eyes filled with tears and she closed them, battling with something in her mind. Probably the easiest way of telling me she couldn’t take me in, no matter how desperate I was. She opened her eyes again, she was about to speak, but a second later her stare moved past me. Her jaw dropped wide and her eyes narrowed. Jack looked in the same direction, and his expression also changed. His brow weighed heavy with a frown.
‘No way,’ said Angela, shaking her head.
‘What, what is it?’ I asked, turning. Jimmy stood just inside the doorway in his sheepskin jacket and a pair of jeans. His right cheek was still a little puffy from where I’d socked him a good one outside the subway station last night and his hair was damp from the snow that had been drifting down for the best part of the day. He unwound a scarf striped green and black from around his neck and began walking towards the counter. I could tell by the look on his face he’d noticed the others gawping at him but he fixed his eyes on me until he reached where I was sitting.
‘Now then, honey, here’s your grilled chee— Uh-oh.’ Mona had reappeared from the kitchen. The air in the room thinned out, making it hard to breathe all of a sudden. Jimmy Boyle wasn’t popular in these parts – I’d known that, but I hadn’t quite expected this reaction. I looked at him, wondering what he’d done to these people and why the hell he’d come back here when Mona had made it pretty clear just yesterday he wasn’t all that welcome.
‘What’s he doing here?’ Jack growled out the question I’d been pondering. I jumped in surprise at the shift in his voice. When he had spoken before, his register had been nothing short of mellow.
‘Long as I’m standing right here you can address any questions to me direct,’ said Jimmy, his voice of equal roughness to Jack’s. ‘I won’t be here long, just came to return this.’ Jimmy held up my brown leather notebook, which I used for writing down my song lyrics.
‘Oh,’ I said, frowning. ‘I’m sorry, I was in such a rush this morning because I overslept. Probably through sheer exhaustion. I must not have picked it up or maybe I dropped it, I don’t know, but thank you so much for bringing it back to me. It…’ I trailed off. Jimmy had a smug look on his face and on seeing it I snatched the book out of his hands. ‘You didn’t… read this, did you?’
The self-satisfied leer on Jimmy’s face melted away and he clenched his jaw.
‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ he said. ‘If that’s the thanks I get for coming out of my way after a long day at the office, next time I won’t bother.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean… It’s just, it’s very private.’ I’d written one or two half-baked lines down this morning about the kiss I’d shared with Jimmy and the thought that he might have read them was mortifying.
‘Hold on a minute, you two know each other?’ Esther asked, looking between me and Jimmy.
That felt like a bit of a complicated question to answer after what’d happened the night before. Just for an instant, I once more felt Jimmy’s arms tight around mine and the force of our lips pressed together.
Pull it together, Bonnie, this is not the time.
‘We met here,’ I said, and then did what I always did when I got nervous. I started to jabber on like a total lamebrain. ‘Late last night I was lookin’ for you but you weren’t here and I had nowhere else to go because I spent my money on the Greyhound from Philly and somehow Jimmy knew I didn’t have no place to go and he let me stay at his for the night so I wouldn’t be shut out in the cold.’
‘Weren’t you on shift last night?’ Esther turned on Mona. Esther’s skin was usually ghostly white but it had reddened and I could see she was working herself up by the way she was breathing, all deep and huffy.
‘Now, honey, come on. You know it’s our job to serve customers, even him.’ Mona put a hand on her hip.
‘Why’d you even come here in the first place Boyle? You know you’re not wanted,’ Esther said, turning back to Jimmy.
‘Well,’ Jimmy said, scratching his left temple. ‘I’d read in Jessie Marble’s showbiz column a week back that Jack Faber and his new girlfriend were spending the holidays in England, so I reckoned it wouldn’t do no harm.’
‘Fact is, buddy, you caused my waitresses a whole lotta grief last summer,’ Bernie chipped in. ‘And when the waitresses suffer, I suffer. It’s inevitable. And I don’t like sufferin’. I’ve never had to outright bar a customer from the Starlight Diner, but if you’re here to make more trouble you can beat it.’
‘Come on,’ said Jimmy. ‘You ain’t trying to say I’m to blame for everything that happened last summer?’ He looked from Esther to Jack, to Angela, to Ryan and rested his eyes on Mona.
‘You didn’t help. Like when you physically assaulted me on our first meeting and then wrote several poisonous articles about me,’ said Esther.
‘Or reunited me with my murderous ex live on TV,’ said Jack.
‘Or phoned me saying you were Esther’s shrink to manipulate me into divulging things I otherwise wouldn’t have divulged,’ Ryan said.
‘You didn’t do anything to me outright. But hurting three of the people I care about is reason enough for me to take against you,’ Angela finished.
I turned to Jimmy and stared at him, shaking my head. He looked from Angela to me and started at the look on my face. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t in a position to judge anybody, but I didn’t walk around like I was either. Jimmy, however, had been nothing short of snide about Jack and Esther. If everything Esther and her friends said was true, why did he feel entitled to be crue
l about them?
‘You didn’t really do all those things, did you, Jimmy?’ I asked, feeling real hot all of a sudden. He opened his mouth to say something, before closing it again. There was an ache in his eyes I couldn’t make sense of, and bit by bit his stare lowered to the floor. I looked over to Esther; she’d crossed her arms and her face was cemented in a frown that matched her lover’s.
‘You know what, that’s just fine,’ Jimmy said. I turned to see him with his arms part raised in surrender. ‘Believe what you want to believe about me, everyone else does.’ He started winding his scarf back around his neck and as I watched him my heart started beating faster. The thought of him leaving on these terms after all he’d done for me the night before was nothing short of sickening. He’d not only taken me in from the cold, he’d soothed me after my nightmare and had even offered to help me, even though he had no idea what he could be getting into. I had to find some way of showing him that, whatever he’d done before we met, I was still grateful for the kindness he’d shown me.
‘I want to believe you’re a good person,’ I said, in the gentlest voice I could, trying to draw out some of the tenderness I’d seen in him the night before. Whatever he’d done to Esther, this guy had a heart. I’d seen it, and was willing him to remember it.
‘Well it looks like you’re the only one,’ he said, looking back up at me. ‘Good luck, Blue.’ Without another word he turned and strode towards the doorway.
‘Jimmy!’ I called after him, but he didn’t even glance back. He pushed out into the snow, while I watched on, helpless to stop him. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Bernie looking at me, his forehead puckered, like he was trying to figure something out. I was trying to figure something out too: why the hell I felt so empty over Jimmy leaving like that. So I’d never see the guy again, so what? I’d kissed him once and had known him for less than twenty-four hours. I needed to get a grip. To say I had bigger problems was putting it mildly.
‘Well,’ said Esther from somewhere behind me. ‘If you resorted to sleeping on Boyle’s sofa last night you must really be desperate.’
I turned back to face her, teary-eyed in spite of myself.
‘I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t need your help,’ I managed to say.
‘Alright. You can stay with us. Until New Year,’ Esther said, her features softening again now that Jimmy was out of the mix.
‘Until New Year,’ I said, a smile flickering at the corners of my mouth as relief flooded through my veins.
Chapter Five
About a half hour later, we bundled through the door of Jack and Esther’s apartment. It was on Ludlow Street, just a few blocks down from the diner, and was a lot more swish than Jimmy’s place, that much I noticed right away. Jack said he’d moved in over the summer but six months later there wasn’t much sign it’d been lived in. The place had laminate floors, a faux fireplace in the centre of the sitting room, and bookshelves, heaving with paperbacks, lined the surrounding walls, which had been painted a shade of off-white. It was bright without feeling too much like a showroom, and the whole place had a warmth to it.
‘There we are.’ Jack laid my guitar and suitcase down on the sheepskin rug, which stretched out just in front of the fireplace. ‘I’ve never used it myself, but I think this settee actually doubles up as a bed.’ He started yanking cushions off the sofa, pulled at the base and unfolded a mattress. ‘Not sure how comfortable it’ll be.’
‘Oh, trust me, it’s a big step up from where I’ve been sleeping the last few nights,’ I said, and smiled. He did a sort of awkward half-smile that told me he understood. He couldn’t, of course. He had no idea what I’d been through. But I got the impression that he was the kind of guy who wanted to understand, even if that was beyond him. Esther was lucky, having a fella like that to take care of her. Not that she showed any outward sign of appreciation in front of other people, though I got the feeling things might be different when the two of them were alone.
‘Jack,’ she called, a touchy note in her voice. She’d scurried straight into the kitchen to make me something to eat, even though I’d just had a grilled cheese at the diner and had told her there was no need. Jack sauntered towards the kitchen and leaned on the inside of the doorway. ‘Why are the cupboards bare?’
‘Because we were going away over Christmas and you said we had to empty the cupboards. Don’t you remember that unforgettable dessert you made the night before the flight? The one that masterfully blended what was left of the breakfast cereal with those satsumas that were about to go off?’
‘Don’t get funny, Faber,’ came Esther’s sharp response. Sitting down on the edge of the sofa bed, I put my hand over my mouth, giggling at their little routine. ‘We’re not at all in a fit state to receive guests. You’ll have to go to the shop,’ Esther added.
‘Alright.’ Though I couldn’t see his expression I could hear a rich amusement flooding through Jack’s voice over the fuss Esther was kicking up. ‘I’ll go to the shop, but I don’t think you’re ever allowed to get at your mother again for her overzealous hospitality.’
‘Jack!’ Esther almost shrieked but her next words were muffled.
He’d moved towards her.
He was kissing her.
From my vantage point in the living room, on account of the fact the kitchen didn’t have a door to it, I saw him stooping over her. Her hands, clenched into fists at first, relaxed and ran up and down the length of his arms. I lowered my eyes and turned away. Peeling off my leather jacket, I pulled my suitcase up onto the bed and rifled through it for the notebook Jimmy had returned to me. Opening it up to the last page I’d written on, I read:
There’s no other thought or sight or sound.
The moment you kiss and you’re lost and you’re found.
I re-read the words and sighed down at them.
Jimmy.
Why couldn’t I get him out of my head? He’d done all those things to Esther and Jack and Ryan. But he’d also helped me even though he didn’t know me at all. Even though he knew I was a friend of Esther’s and she had no time for him.
And, that kiss…
I couldn’t forget the power of it, the desperation not just from me but from him too. I’d never been kissed like that before, that was for sure. I’d dated a few guys over the years, naturally, and pretty much all of them were guys I’d met at the bars and clubs I’d sung in. When you sing like an angel, people think you might be one for real and ask you out to dinner. Things roll along well enough until one day, often quite unexpectedly, they turn around and tell you it’s over. Nothing personal, they always say, it’s just that the relationship has run its course, that’s all. In every case, within eighteen months of me hearing it was ‘nothing personal’ the guy was engaged to some level-headed lawyer type or worse, an over-limber gym instructor who never stopped giggling. Like being happy all the time made you more attractive or something.
In either case, I always got to wondering what the hell they were dating me for if that’s who they were looking to wind up with. I was strong, sure, but I wasn’t going to win any awards for my athleticism, and as for being level-headed… Right, musicians are so well known for that.
‘It seems I’m going to the shop.’ Jack was back in the sitting room now and Esther was standing just behind him in the kitchen doorway with a vague, dreamy smile on her face. ‘I’ve been given a fairly comprehensive list of what to buy…’ Jack trailed off and grinned at Esther, and she used both hands to give him a playful shove. He responded to this by wrapping a big arm around her and pulling her close to him. She didn’t resist. ‘But is there anything in particular you want?’ he finished.
‘I’m good thanks, Esther already picked up the essentials on the walk here,’ I smiled, referring to the pack of Double Stuf Oreos she’d bought for me at a small shop on the corner run by an Armenian family. I was amazed she remembered they were my favourite cookie, but she was always really thoughtful like that. Shame I hadn’t shown her the s
ame courtesy; things could’ve been very different if I had.
‘Right, back in a bit.’ Jack, with a touch of reluctance, unhooked his arm from Esther’s shoulder, pulled on a long navy parka jacket hanging by the front door and set off on his mission into the building blizzard outside.
Esther watched after Jack for a moment and then looked back at me. Still leaning in the doorway of the kitchen, she folded her arms across her chest.
‘So, you didn’t want to say anything in front of the whole diner crowd, I understand that more than most. But don’t I deserve to know what’s going on here?’
I sighed. She was almost as difficult to dodge on this subject as Jimmy had been. But it was for her own good. It was for everybody’s good.
‘You know that if I could tell you, I would. You know better than anyone what a terrible liar I am. But it’s not safe. I’m frightened to tell you. It might put you in danger,’ I said. From my position on the sofa bed, I pulled my knees up into my chest one at a time, rested my chin on them and looked up at her.
‘In that case, isn’t it dangerous even having you here in the house?’ she said, doing that pouty thing with her mouth that meant she wasn’t happy about something.
‘I… Well, to be honest, I guess it might put you in danger. But I don’t think so. If I thought there was a real risk of that, I wouldn’t be here. It’s me they…’ I paused just long enough to think about what they would do to me when they found me, before correcting myself. ‘So long as you don’t know anything, everything will be fine. All I need to do is get my head together and busk for some money and then I’ll figure out where I go from here.’
‘You still not talking to your family then?’ Esther said, pressing her lips hard against one another.
‘Nope.’ I looked down at my knees, wondering if my parents had even called my old apartment back in Atlantic City on Christmas Day. ‘I don’t understand why they can’t just accept what I want to do with my life. Alright, so playing a casino isn’t the most prestigious of jobs but it’s a way of playing music and paying bills.’