“I can't thank you enough,” she managed to get out.
“I was only too happy to help.” He smiled. His teeth were blinding and perfect, obviously enhanced, but Gretchen could overlook that.
“They...They tried to...violate me.” Her voice broke.
Alarm and a deeper concern played on his face, on his handsome face. Gretchen waved a trembling hand.
“No, it's fine. I'll survive. They didn't...get to do too much to me. Thanks to you. I just had to...tell someone. Get it out. I'm so, so grateful to you.”
“Anybody would've done the same.”
He glanced at his watch. It was an understated Seiko. A man's watch. Not the watch of a boy in a man's body, like the asshole wannabe poet. She felt secure with him. With this stranger.
“Well, I hate to leave you like this, but I was on my way to work. I can't be late. So...”
“Go,” she said, though it was the last thing she wanted. “Really, I'll be fine. My roommate is upstairs, so she will...help me.”
“If you need anything, if you change your mind about the hospital or want me to be a witness or something,” he reached into his the pants of his scrubs and took out a card, “here's my info. I've got no Facebook, I'm afraid. Yeah, strange, right? But I hate it. And I've got no Twitter or Instagram either. But we can connect the old-fashioned way. You've got my email there, and also my number. I can text, if you want.” He smiled that wonderful smile again.
She tore the card out of his hand. She pressed it tightly into her palm.
“Thanks so much again. I'll be in touch. Really. I owe you.”
“Don't worry about it.” He turned, stepped over the pool of milk, swooped down and scooped up the gun. “And I'll take this.”
Was that a normal thing to do? She didn't know, and then the door opened, creaked shut, and he and the gun were gone.
Gretchen, alone now at the crime scene, shuddered, and strained to put the key in the tiny slot of the lock with fingers that barely functioned, so shaky were they. Once inside the building, she inspected his card. She couldn't believe what she saw there, but her brain was too full of other things to give it much thought. She hauled her infirm limbs up the three flights of stairs to safety and Roz.
For once, her roommate, the lease holder, would be a comfort.
Roz Bianca was a woman of many hairflips, though she had it cut short like a boy's. It was dyed a somewhat age inappropriate dark blue with green streaks. She wore oversized cat-eye spectacles with thick black frames, had a tiny ring between her nostrils, and favored lipstick in the darkest shades of brown and orange. She had lips so full it looked like she had had them 'done.' Indeed, one night when Gretchen was out with her, a rare occasion, the girl ahead of them in the line for the bathroom had asked Roz if she'd had work on her lips. When Roz said, “No, but thank you,” the girl had barked, “Liar!” into her face, then slammed the door on it.
But the most startling thing about Roz was her size: Amazonian. She was always the grandest presence in any room, and she wore heels anyway. She was a conquest many men wanted to conquer. Sadly, as far as Gretchen was concerned, Roz's pastures were conquered far too often. How many times had Roz swaggered out of her bedroom into the common living area like a queen arriving victorious from a battle. A battle won with the sweat and groaning of anonymous men. From her bedroom across the length of the apartment, Gretchen couldn't count the amount of times, head buried in her pillow, she sang to herself and tried to drown out the the squawks, the bawdy laughter, the occasional clink of handcuffs.
Actually, Roz reminded Gretchen of her cousin Dymphna Flood. (It was pronounced Dimf-Nah). Just like Roz, Dymphna was always up for a laugh and three shots of tequila. She had a great heart, but she was a...a...well, a slut. Dymphna was now 23 and in Derry with three children under the age of three from God alone knew how many different fathers (and maybe even the Lord was struggling a bit with the answer to that one). Since the fracture in the family because of the lottery win, Gretchen knew she shouldn't contact her cousins if she wanted to be loyal to her parents. So she hadn't. But throughout the years, she had heard tidbits of information, gossip, 'bars,' from second cousins of great aunts. They had kept Gretchen abreast of all the goings-on of her mother's crazy side of the family, the Floods, and of each successive pregnancy of Dymphna's.
Roz would probably be in the same state of mindboggling motherhood as Dymphna if it weren't for her location. There were almost as many varieties of condoms on sale at the bodega downstairs as soda, whereas in Ireland, Northern or not, it was a struggle to locate the morally condemned 'skins of Satan,' and one entered a planned parenthood office at their own risk. Anyone seen entering such a den of vulgarity would be greeted with outcries of disgust and shame from the neighbors, and an occasional rock thrown by a wee boy or girl in a hoodie on a mountain bike.
Roz, and probably Dymphna as well, had watched too many episodes of Sex and the City, read too many pages of 50 Shades of Grey, and seemed determined to make these fictions her fact. Gretchen had never read 50 Shades, but she had watched a few episodes of Sex, and had always felt there was something disingenuous about the sexual escapades of the main characters. She didn't know exactly who had created the series, but to her, she long suspected it had been created, and then written, by a homosexual male, who merely recounted, every time a script was required, what he and his three promiscuous friends had all been up to the previous weekend. She had to give credit to the sexual revolution of the 60s for giving women power, certainly, but most times, she thought, and maybe it was her Catholic upbringing, a slut was just a slut, not 'sexually empowered.” Had shame, had a sense of decorum, disappeared from modern life?
Gretchen longed to sit her womenfolk down, or Roz and Dymphna at the very least, and tell them, “Forget the 60s! Have dignity, pride and restraint in yourselves! Please!” She didn't want to think about Miley Cyrus and the men involved in putting her naked and licking tools on that wrecking ball.
While Dymphna, the last Gretchen had heard, was selling fish and chips out of a van on the street in the city center, her three children shoved into one stroller, Roz had it made. Roz sold her handmade jewelry at her own store, Gems of Buddha.
Even with all her roommate's faults, Gretchen was now grateful for Roz. She reached their apartment door and wrenched open the door, ready to burst into tears before her, feel the comfort of a fellow female's arms around her, bathing her in coos and shushes and looks and nods of understanding. No man could do that.
Gretchen stepped into the tiny living room. It had enough space for a love seat, a TV, but not really enough for the coffee table, though it had been shoehorned in there anyway, an obstacle to be tackled no matter what direction one might wish to head within the apartment's painfully small 75 square feet. And the lack of windows in the living room made it seem that much smaller.
“Oh, Roz, Roz!” Gretchen's voice climbed to a hysterical pitch as tears burst from eyes. “I'm—”
“No! No, Gretchen! Not now!”
Gretchen heard the voice—sobbing and even more hysterical than her own, if that were possible—right in front of her, but could see nobody. She sniffled. She threaded her way around the partition that separated the living room from the kitchenette. She looked down.
“It was horrible!” Roz wailed. “Awful! The worst thing has happened, Gretchen! Oh, the positively, absolutely worst!”
Roz, her hair a shambles, was furiously scrubbing the kitchen floor with a scouring pad, a bucket to her right, bottles and shakers of cleaning products and disinfectants of all types in a jumbled semi-circle to her left. She was wearing pink rubber gloves. Her eyes were swollen and red. Her face was stretched with anguish.
“I—”
“No, you do not understand!” Roz wailed. Gretchen stood over her as the scrubbing continued with vicious, brutal strokes. As if Roz had discovered Satan himself living in their tiles. “My life's such a horrible mess! It's spiraling downwards into hell. I'm a slu
t! I'm a failure! I'm so ashamed!”
Tears plopped onto the tiles and joined the pool of disinfectants that were making Gretchen's own eyes water. This is what Gretchen thought she had been waiting for, this realization of the cold, stark truth, the epiphany in Roz of her behavior. But now it was happening after everything had changed. She, Gretchen, had changed. Things that had seemed so important, so necessary before that innocent trip to the organic deli half an hour earlier, now paled. Gretchen's world had shifted.
Gretchen lowered her eyes, bowed her head and said softly, “I'm sorry, Roz. Please continue. Tell me what's wrong. What—what are you doing down there?”
“I'll never be able to get over this! I need to join some group! Sexaholics Anonymous!” Roz wrung out the scouring pad into the bucket, grabbed a bottle, squirted something else toxic on the pad, then continued scrubbing.
“What is wrong?”
“Ohhhhhhh!” Roz lamented, as if she were at the Wailing Wall and not on the kitchen floor. “Or maybe it's my drinking? Do I need rehab?”
“You're starting to scare me now,” Gretchen said dully. “Please tell me what happened.”
Roz heaved a sigh, stopped scrubbing and looked up imploringly at Gretchen. “I'm so embarrassed. Promise me you won't tell anyone.”
“I won't tell anyone. Just tell me.”
“Well...I went to Goose Goose last night.” Gretchen nodded; this was the hipster bar two blocks away. “You know they have two for one margaritas on a Wednesday night? And those free mini fish tacos?”
Gretchen bobbed her head mechanically.
“And I met this guy. This really, really hot guy. I had never seen him around before. Well, we chatted a while and, well, well...oh, Gretchen! He seemed so normal!”
“Did he hurt you? Because just now downstairs—”
“No! He was fine in bed. A little slow to get started, I guess, but that must've been the two for one. And he kissed me so passionately. Like he really loved me. And once he got started, there was no stopping him and—” Roz seemed shocked her face had just blossomed with delight. “Ohhh!! I don't believe myself!” she wailed. “Anyway, we passed out after hours of action. I'm surprised you didn't hear us.”
“No.”
“And then, when I woke up a few moments ago, well, half an hour ago now, it must be, he was gone. No note, nothing. I never got his information. I don't even remember his name. Or if he told me. And then...then...” Her lower lip trembled and tears threatened to flow anew. “I came out here to make myself some coffee and...oh, Gretchen! He...he...oh! I can't bring myself to say it! Well, maybe I can. Maybe I must. He...had taken a dump on our kitchen floor!” She said it like someone had punched her in the throat. “Right here!” She pointed, repulsed, at the spot before her.
“A...?”
Gretchen squealed like a forest animal caught in a trap.“Ewww! Disgusting!” She jumped off the tiles and scurried around the partition, the soles of her shoes safe on the carpet in the living room.
“Roz! That's just...that's...!” Imagining she could suddenly smell the stench, she began to dry heave. “Hurgh! Hurgh!” She wiped tears from her eyes and heaved deep breaths, the nausea dissolving. When she was finally capable of speech, she said, “That's so gross! Horrible! Who in the name of God would do something repulsive like that?”
“Three huge piles!” Roz explained. It was a detail Gretchen could have lived without. “And, like, a lake of piss! Then he...he must've just left. I've cleaned it up, don't worry. How he wiped himself, though, I-I...” She glanced around in sudden apprehension at all the paper- and cloth-like items in the small kitchen, but there was, thankfully, no sign.
“Men!” Gretchen said, her body still wracked by ripples of repulsion. Then, her outraged mind suddenly remembering the ages of her attackers, “Males! Is there no limit to the depths of depravity they will stoop?”
“Squat, I'd say! More to the point, though, what does it mean? What was he trying to tell me?”
“That he's a lunatic?” Gretchen ventured. “Maybe he just couldn't find our bath—”
“No! It was a message to me! ME! I will never, ever go to Goose Goose again. Or any bar. I will never sleep with a stranger again. Never, ever. I swear, Gretchen. You are my witness.”
Gretchen grinned thinly down at her. Roz sniffed the tiles, seemed satisfied, then stood up.
“But,” she said, whipping off her gloves and tossing them in the garbage can, “did you want to tell me something? You seemed a bit upset yourself.”
“Oh, Roz, yes!” Gretchen said, grateful. She reached out and grabbed Roz's wrist, ready to spill out her terrifying ordeal. She saw Roz's still-rheumy eyes balloon in surprise as Gretchen wrapped her arms around her and began sobbing on her shoulder. “I was just—”
“Wait!” Roz barked, thrusting Gretchen from her. “I've got it!”
Slumped against the oven, Gretchen stared in shock and not a little anger as Roz disappeared into her bedroom, just off the kitchen. Gretchen's lips disappeared and she shook her head. She had to think about this. But if she had really changed, maybe she didn't need to think about it. About the vileness of Roz's selfishness. It was all in the past. Now.
Roz skipped out of her bedroom, holding her cell phone triumphantly. “Woo hee!!!” she wailed with delight. “How I remembered it, as sloshed as I was, I don't know. But I knew it existed! I took a selfie of us while he was passed out next to me!”
Her bloodshot eyes sparkled as she shoved the phone into Gretchen's stony face. Gretchen flinched as the photo was forced upon her eyes. On the pillow, Roz looked alive with glee. The guy looked dead. Gretchen didn't recognize him.
“I know just what to do!” Roz enthused. “Posters! With his photo blown up as big as it can be blown up. I'll crop myself out, of course. 'BEWARE, LADIES OF WILLIAMSBURG' it will say. 'THIS LOSER TOOK A DUMP ON MY KITCHEN FLOOR AND SPLIT.'” She squealed and clapped her hands and jumped up and down with glee. The floor hadn't even dried, and she was a woman transformed. “Yes, Gretchen! What a plan! It's fantastic! I'll get a hundred, no, a thousand, no, maybe ten thousand printed! And post them everywhere! In every bar, in the supermarket, on every subway train! Oh, ha ha ha!! Gretchen! You gotta help me put them up! I'll even pay you to do it! Are you off tomorrow? When's your next flight? Ohhhh, revenge will be mine!”
“No! You can't do that!” Gretchen was horrified.
“And just why not, may I ask? The humiliation I felt with each scrub of that damn scouring pad. He deserves to be just as humiliated. Asshole!”
“Well, yes, it's clear he had one. That much is certain.”
Gretchen was amazed that in their states of distress they couldn't help but squawk with laughter.
“Seriously, though, Roz, think carefully about what you want to do. I've actually just been mugged and almost violated at gunpoint by two fifteen year olds in the vestibule downstairs, and—”
“What?! Did you let them into the building?!” She wrapped her robe around herself and glared accusingly. “Are they still down there?! Why didn't you tell me?!”
“I tried to tell you but...anyway, no, they're gone. And what I want to say is, I-I see life differently now. Everything has changed.” She nodded, with a surprise delayed dry heave, at the now sparkling kitchen floor: “That action was horrible. Horrid. Vile, yes. And the person who did it was disgusting, bordering on psychopathic, whoever it was. But there might be, later, now, some...regret. There are worse things the lunatic could have done to you. As I well know. Let it go.”
Roz didn't seem to be listening. It looked like she was designing the posters in her mind, choosing the fonts and their sizes. But Gretchen was mistaken.
“These muggers of yours?” Roz asked with unnatural lightness. “What ethnicity were they?”
Gretchen sighed. At Nickel and Dime, when somebody came in with a story they had been mugged the night before or some variant of it, this was always the first question people asked, even before “Were you h
urt?” She wasn't going to perpetuate the stereotype. She kept her mouth shut.
Roz went the three steps to the refrigerator and opened it.
“Gretchen!” she shrieked, as if the man had left something worse in the egg tray. “You drank all my almond milk?” She turned, her eyes glistening with accusation. “What the hell am I supposed to drink my coffee with now? Jism?!”
Roz was not, in fact, a woman transformed. Suddenly Gretchen didn't feel so bad.
CHAPTER FIVE ONE AND A HALF YEARS AGO
THERE WERE NO WARNINGS before it happened, no flashing lights or alarms. The plane had just climbed to 30,000 feet and, bar the occasional lurch, had been cruising smoothly.
Gretchen was in the small-as-an-elevator galley, glaring at Dennis' back inches away from her at the coffee machine. Steel cabinets, analogue dials and buttons, the seventies, poked out and surrounded them from all sides. She was at the convection oven, waiting for passenger 12C's meal to finish heating. Most people thought airplanes had microwaves, but even for Nickel and Dime Airlines, this was not true.
Yes, there was a vending machine at the rear of the cabin, but the rare passenger did splurge for a heated meal, and Nickel and Dime management, knowing full well the profitability of add-ons, did everything in their power to ensure the cabin crew hustled in the aisles. Not only did Nickel and Dime have an onboard 'no outside food' policy, they also arranged for the vending machines to be poorly stocked. And the crew was given an extra incentive, a ten percent commission, which, considering their slave wage, had them trolling the aisles, jostling their co-workers, fighting for custom under the overhead bins, practically shoving the menus down the passengers' throats and cooing about how delicious the 'piping hot celery and parsley sandwiches' and 'rice porridge' and 'breakfast soup' were. Though experience had shown that there were shrieks of horror in the rows when the foil was pulled back for any of these treats.
Emergency Exit (The Irish Lottery Series Book 6) Page 5