“I like this game,” she says.
“And I – feel like we should be something. You and I. I should know you.”
“Me too.”
“What do you know about me other than my name?”
She looked down at the ground. ‘Oh my god!’ I thought. ‘She’s shy! How incredibly cute.’
“I know…” she said still looking at her boots in the snow. “I know you’re,” she looked up at me. “Beautiful too… and I heard you’re a writer…and you’re really warm. And… I think you’re sexy. And I like your mouth. Your eyes kind of sparkle.” She laughed. “They actually sparkle.”
And the snow is falling. And the street lamps are reflecting the snow. And she is looking at me, her cheeks are red from the cold, and she wipes her nose with her blue mitten. And I’m thinking, ‘I’ve never met such a beautiful woman in my life…’
And as I’m about to say that, she says, “You’re really beautiful. I think you have the most soulful blue eyes I’ve ever seen.”
My mouth opens like I’m going to say something but I don’t….I almost can’t. Then I do. “This is crazy…”
“It is…” she says. She laughs.
It’s like we’ve known each other forever. And we’ve just met.
“Do you…” I start. Then stop. “Is this…. I don’t even know you.”
She laughs. “I know.”
I take her hand. My black wool glove holding her blue mitten.
The snow is falling and the lights are twinkling and we can hear the Christmas Carols coming from the bar.
Christopher Street is deserted. A cab goes by crunching in the snow.
In the distance, I can hear the sound of thumping guitar rock. I can’t tell if it’s a car on Christopher or in the distance on 7th Avenue South.
I look at her and see the snow falling on the shoulders of her blue wool coat and in her hair.
Her mouth is beautiful. These lovely lips, red from the cold. A sensual mouth, a crooked smile. It’s sweet and sexy at the same time.
That face. What a beautiful face. And she’s looking at me with that kind of look you get a few times in your life. From someone who adores you. It’s amazing.
I want to touch her mouth. So I do. I take my glove off and I run my hand across her cheek. I let my fingertips linger on her chin. I brush my fingertips over her mouth, which is slightly open. She smiles.
I look into her green eyes. They’re like Christmas green.
“Your eyes are the color of Christmas” I say.
She smiles. “I guess they are.”
And with the snow falling and the street lamps and this quiet New York street made even quieter by the snowfall, it’s the most romantic feeling and the most romantic random moment I’ve ever had in my life. Like something from a book. Or a movie. But if it was in a movie it was always between a guy and a girl.
But this time, it was for me – suddenly the world, the snow, the light, the two days before Christmas feeling. The girl. It wasn’t just for a guy and a girl in a movie. It was for me.
I lean in to kiss her. Our lips meet. Her mouth is warm, it is this warm thing in the cold. Our kiss is tentative at first – no, it is tender. Just tender and sweet. The most romantic kiss I’d ever had. I move closer, put my hand on her waist. Her mouth was so warm and her lips felt so soft and she was such a good kisser.
I pulled away slightly, so my mouth was still on hers.
“I’m Jamie,” I whispered.
She smiled. “Hi, Jamie.”
She kissed me again. There was a sound on the street. Like someone banging into a garbage can. She looked up. “It’s okay,” I said, “It’s just someone down the street.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t…” she says. “Y’know.. here...”
I run my lips gently along her hers “It’s okay,” I whispered.
It’s okay, I whispered.
…I said it was okay.
Jamie pulled the paper out of the typewriter. Her head was throbbing and her throat ached because she wouldn’t let herself cry.
She folded up the page and looked across the bookstore floor to see if she was there - in her jean jacket, with her corduroy skirt. Her pretty green eyes.
She wasn’t there. Maybe she wouldn’t be back.
Jamie looked at Sandra, who was standing behind the counter, flipping through a New Yorker, and pushed back from the desk. She carried the pages she’d just written with her back to the counter, where she slipped them in her bag underneath.
Sandra looked at Jamie. A curiosity swept her face.
Jamie suddenly felt like maybe Sandra could see. Sandra the Oracle could see what she just wrote. She knew what happened that night. What she’d done. It made no sense but neither did any of it.
“Jamie,” Sandra finally said. “I was just thinkin’ watching you….”
Jamie’s heart started pounding.
“Uh huh?”
“Who would ya rathuh marry – Robuht Redfuhd or Pawl Newman?”
Jamie felt relief wash over her. “Robert Redford.”
Sandra nodded. “Me too,” she said. “You write somethin’ good?”
Jamie shrugged. “Not really.”
“You will.”
Jamie prayed that the oracle was right.
37
The phone rang in Receiving and Bridget ignored it. Anyone who called that phone was from upstairs and looking for someone to lift something heavy. And she was alone right now. Leo was at the deli grabbing lunch and the other guys were out smoking.
She had four more hours of work, then it was going to be time to head up to the church on 67th Street to help ladle out some soup.
100 good things.
Bridget shoved the last of the boxes onto the stack and shifted the top ones so everything was symmetrical. Something she did that the guys didn’t do. This place could use a woman’s touch.
She heard quiet footsteps behind her but didn’t bother to turn around. Leo probably back from lunch.
“Hello, Bridget.”
Bridget heard his voice and a chill went through her body.
“Turn around,” he muttered.
Bridget felt all the blood rush from her head and her limbs got heavy like she was going to pass out.
Bridget turned around slowly and there he was. Fuckin’ Tommy Hill. He was standing there in a jean jacket in the 95 degree heat and pointing a small black gun at her face.
“Your landlady thinks I’m a fuckin’ pillock. But the boys from the pub, they never forget where they seen a pretty girl.”
Bridget stared at Tommy Hill. That fuckin’ ginger arsehole. She remembered him that night. The night they set the bomb.
“Somethin’s off here…” she’d said.
“It’s fine, Bridget,” he’d said.
“Tommy the feckin’ timer’s got a wire hangin’ out of it..”
They’d fought in the rainy wet brick alley behind Houlihan’s Department Store as the rain was falling and her teeth were chattering from the cold.
“What if it doesn’t go off right?” she said.
“Worst that happens is the thing fizzles out but they find it here - so we send a message. With love from the Provisional IRA. We were fuckin’ here.”
Bridget had just sort of nodded from the part of her soul that used to be good and now was this. Two months before that rainy cold night outside the department store, some fucker had shot the love of her life dead right in front of her eyes.
“You better not be having second thoughts,” Tommy had said over the sound of the rain. “Now you’re in, the only way out of the fuckin’ Ra is a bullet to the head.”
“Go fuck yerself, Tommy. I’m not having second thoughts.”
“The fuckin’ UDA shot Billy.”
“Ya don’t have to tell me, ya fuckin’ gobshite.”
She had seen the way Tommy Hill looked at her. All those years. She had also seen the way he looked at her at Billy’s funeral. Like when Billy died, now was
gonna be his chance.
His chance would be on the 12th of Never. He was a weasel. With that mean face and those fuckin’ buck teeth gnashers like a horse eating an apple through a letterbox. Tommy Hill was the lowest form of gobshite. Two years earlier he knocked up her friend Marianne McKay who worked at the pub. And then dumped her. Marianne’s parents disowned her when they found out she was pregnant. And Tommy wouldn’t marry her. So she got sent to the nuns at the Magdalene laundry, to have a baby that got torn away from her when it was born. And got given to a good, Catholic family. Last Bridget heard, Marianne was doing drugs and living in Manchester.
And now fuckin’ Tommy Hill was standing on the loading dock inside Receiving staring at her with a fuckin’ grin.
The one that said he got to kill her.
He adjusted his hand on the pistol.
Bridget felt all the blood rush from her face.
“What’d you think would happen, Bridget? You’d get to just walk away? You don’t get to just leave.”
Bridget desperately scanned the loading dock. Everyone was on lunch. Cesar and Anthony were out front smoking. If she yelled, Tommy would shoot her. Leo was at the deli getting a beer and a sandwich like he always did. He wouldn’t be back for at least fifteen minutes.
“They got cameras here, Tommy. People could see us.”
“Let them. I’m back on a plane tonight. They’ll never find me.”
He flicked the dinged up .38 at her. “Say goodbye, Bridget. Ya fuckin’ traitor.”
He steadied the gun with both hands.
Bridget closed her eyes and whispered. “No. God please.”
Not to him. But to God. Jesus. Mary. Anyone who’d have her.
She braced for the end of her life.
She heard fast approaching running footsteps and a thunk! The smack of a bottle smashing with a fizzy splat. She opened her eyes and Tommy was lying on the ground. A smashed brown bottle of Miller Lite next to his head.
And standing in front of her was Leo, who had just saved her fucking life.
Bridget’s heart was pounding so hard she felt sick.
“Oh my god, Leo. Thank Christ”
“Fuckin’ Bridget, you okay?” Leo said.
Bridget’s body started shaking. She looked at Tommy Hill lying on the cement loading dock.
“Oh my Christ… Leo..”
“This guy muggin’ you?”
“Um…no…he -”
Leo tossed his wrapped sandwich on the ground. Walked up to Tommy and kicked him in the face with his high heeled disco boot. Then two more times.
“Where I come from, we take care of guys like this.”
Tommy was coming to. Making moaning sounds. Gurgly now with the blood in his mouth.
Leo called across the loading dock towards the street. “Anthony! Cesar! Get the fuck in here…”
From out on 10th Street, two silhouettes from the light of the outside against the darkness of the Receiving area came running.
Anthony was a wiry, tall black kid with a goofy grin, about 18, lived up in Washington Heights, spoke only Spanish. Cesar, a grandfather of like 10 grandkids, at fifty, Bridget always got the distinct impression was former Puerto Rican gang material.
They jumped up onto the loading dock.
“This fucking piece of shit was about to fucking shoot our Bridget.” Leo said as he picked up the .38 from next to Tommy’s bloodied face. He spun the chamber and emptied the bullets into his palm. Then he slipped the gun into his waistband and pulled his tight, striped v neck t-shirt down over it. There were so many bulges involved in Leo’s pants what was one more, Bridget thought.
Cesar, who was always wearing a white t-shirt, chinos and motorcycle boots like it was forever the ’50’s, walked over and crouched over Tommy Hill.
He grabbed Tommy’s collar and pulled the top of his body up with a beefy rough hand, using the other hand to punch him in the face so many times it was barely a face.
“Fuckin’ hell - Don’t kill him!” Bridget said.
Cesar shoved him back on the ground. Tommy’s head landed with a smack.
Leo looked at Bridget, his brown eyes wide and soulful. “Bridget… Look… you in trouble? Back home?”
Bridget closed her eyes, her heart was still pounding. Her hands were shaking from adrenaline. She nodded.
He put his hand on her arm. Bridget opened her eyes and looked into Leo’s.
“You’re okay,” he said. He let out a little sweet smile. “And yeah - we was wondering - Pretty girls don’t usually work for two bucks an hour unloading boxes.”
Cesar wiped blood off his hands with a bandana from his pocket. He winked at Bridget. “Don’t worry, chica.”
Cesar turned to Anthony and said something in Spanish. Anthony answered in Spanish.
Bridget knew it was plans.
“What are you going to do?”
Leo looked at Cesar, who nodded.
“Take him down to the pier,” Leo said. “Pay a guy. Find a boat to anywhere cross the Atlantic. Shove him on it. Send him home with a warning.”
“But there’s more of them. They’ll find me.”
“Not when they see who arrives back home.”
Bridget wasn’t sure what to say. She said the only thing that made sense in this world where nothing made sense anymore.
“Thanks.”
And in that moment, Bridget knew. This whole thing, it was over.
It was time to go home. There weren’t enough good things she could do to make up for what she’d done.
Not a hundred. Not a million.
It was time for this to be over.
38
Penny Langston held the office phone to her ear and glanced at the yellow notepad on her desk. On it, she had written Connie Pell’s home number.
She tapped the eraser of her yellow HB pencil.
“I’m sorry - who’s this?” the man’s voice on the phone said.
“Penny Langston,” she said, “From Peckham Press - is this Ray?”
She heard him pause, clear his throat. “Is there a problem with the insurance?”
“No, no nothing like that,” she said, “Ray, we’ve met. I’m a friend of Connie’s. I just wanted to say hi, see how she is.”
“Oh, right,” he said. “Penny. Sorry. I’m – I got my hands full. Connie’s not here.”
“How is she?”
There was a pause. “Yeah, she’s okay.”
“Is she still in the hospital?
There was another pause.
“Yeah,” he said. “My mom is here helping with the baby. I’m not sure when Connie’s coming home. They said her treatment is - she needs twenty one days of it, then they’ll reassess.”
“Twenty one days of - ?”
He cleared his throat. “Connie talks about you.”
“Does she?”
“Yeah.” There was another pause. “You are her sunlight at work, she said. Those were the actual words. How about that?” he chuckled.
“Ray,” Penny said. “Twenty one days of?”
“The treatment.”
Pause.
“The electric shock,” he said. “I don’t know if Connie would want me telling people that, but she talked about you a lot, said you were good friends.”
Penny heard it and it hit her so hard in the chest she had to close her eyes.
“Twenty one days of electric shock therapy?” Penny said.
“That’s what the psychiatrist said she would need.”
Penny slowly opened her eyes. She stared at the phone like it had better news.
“Ray, surely there’s another means of helping her.”
“The doctor said it’s their best treatment for women like Connie, you know, with depression and that.”
“Have they started yet?” Penny said. “Is there an alternative? Something else that might—”
She could hear a baby crying in the background.
“Sorry, Penny, now isn’t a great time.”
“Penny – look. I’m sure you mean well, but I got a lot on my plate here.”
“I understand that,” she said. “I’m sorry – I just –care about her. I just want to make sure she’s okay.”
“That’s really nice of you, but I’ll do that.”
Penny stared out the window through the blinds at the office building across the way.
“Right, of course.”
“I should go,”
“Ray… will you at least tell her I called? And maybe let me know when she’s home?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I will. And I’m sorry – I don’t mean to be an asshole, Penny,” he said. “This is just a tough time.”
“I understand.”
“Yeah, thanks for calling. I’ll tell her you called.”
Connie. Her Connie. Sweet, funny, beautiful, intelligent always so alive Connie.
“Thanks,” she said.
She hung up the phone and sat in the silence of her office.
Her intercom buzzed. Cathy’s voice cut through.
“Penny, you have a meeting in the boardroom.”
Penny knew how she was supposed to respond to those words. Press the little black button, speak into the mic. Say, “Thanks, Cathy.”
She couldn’t move.
The phone buzzed again. “Penny, I’m sorry you have a meeting in the boardroom.”
Press the button and talk to Cathy. So easy.
Penny slowly pushed her chair back from her desk and stood up. She slid her summer cardigan sweater off the back of the chair and slipped it on over her shoulders.
The air conditioning was really cranked up in the office today. She made a mental note - mention that to Cathy to see if someone could talk to maintenance. And then there were the galleys she had to go over for the Princeman book. Tonight she’d see if she could have Davis pick up a bottle of gin from Zachy’s liquor store before she got home. Because they usually closed at seven.
She heard her phone buzz again as she made her way around her desk. The only strength she felt in her body was the ability to not answer the intercom if she didn’t want to.
She opened the door to her office and stepped out into the corridor. The quiet of her office giving way to the clatter of distant typewriters and voices.
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