She walked over and stood closer to Jamie.
“That poem... was beautiful.”
“Ah. Right. Forgot that was in there.”
They looked at each other. Not speaking.
Penny knew the words she wanted to say next. Something like Thank you but please don’t love me.
“Anyway,” Jamie said. “You can have that as a parting gift. That night of the blackout. And a poem. To know how someone feels about you. Or felt about you once.”
Penny looked at Jamie. A desire rose up through the center of her body. To be wrong. To be bad. To take what she wanted.
Words came out before she could stop them.
“And how do you feel about me?” Penny said in an almost whisper.
Jamie held her gaze.
“That’s not a good idea.”
“What’s not a good idea?”
“This conversation...” Jamie laughed.
“Right. I apologize.”
Penny looked at this beautiful person. A love to last a lifetime. Jamie Brennan. Her words. Her humor. That night.
“Penny,” Jamie said. “You know I’m in love with you,” she smiled. “So, let’s leave it there.”
Penny let the words land softly in her heart, like film footage of the moon landing.
She spoke quietly. “Jamie, I - ”
“You don’t need to say anything,” Jamie said, a quick smile curling on her lips. “Please don’t.”
Penny looked at Jamie who, unlike her uptight self, appeared easy. Content. Unafraid.
Penny glanced over at her desk. Had she forgotten something? Did she need to do something else before she left for the day? She tried to think thoughts to cancel out feelings.
“Right,” Penny said.
“So,” Jamie said. “Shall we? The Carlyle?”
“Um, sure...”
“We could grab a cab outside,” Jamie said.
Penny closed her eyes and let the world disappear for a moment. She opened her eyes and looked at Jamie.
And everything that made things make sense checked out for the day.
“Jamie,” she whispered. “I want to kiss you.”
“Penny…”
“I know, we shouldn’t.”
“Well, I mean, you shouldn’t. I can…”
“I can’t.”
“I know.”
Penny took two steps to Jamie who was already moving to her. She slipped her hands around Jamie’s waist and pulled her in hard - kissing her, feeling the heat of Jamie’s body through her light summer dress - their bodies suddenly pressed together, their breasts and mouths found each other like they’d been searching for each other forever.
Penny slid her hands up to Jamie’s face, that face that she loved. She felt Jamie’s tongue slip into her mouth and her knees got weak. This kiss was not like their first kiss on the fire escape. This was fucking immediate desire and heat.
Penny could feel the warmth and the weight of Jamie’s body pressing into hers. Her breasts, her hips, her mouth pushing back wet with desire. Jamie’s kiss was so soft and willing and waiting. It was so deep and passionate. Penny felt Jamie’s hands slide up her body and to her face as they kissed.
Suddenly Penny remembered. The rest of her fucking life.
“Wait…woah woah…” Penny said.
She stepped back an inch. “I’m sorry…” she whispered.
They both just stood there. Staring at each other. All the heat in their touch seemed to exist in the space between them. And it’s all Penny wanted. More.
“I’m sorry,” Penny whispered. “I shouldn’t have done that.” Penny glanced around the office for an answer. There wasn’t one. “I’m married, Jamie. I can’t just-”
“Yes, I know.”
“So we can’t do this.”
“Um, you kissed me.”
“Well, I shouldn’t have.”
A silence descended around both of them.
Penny looked for a way out. She picked up her purse, slipped it over her shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she stammered, “We should go. Jamie.”
Outside on 6th Avenue, Jamie could feel her lips still burning from the intensity of the way Penny kissed her.
She stood on the sidewalk and glanced up. The sky was dark with a hint of purple, that last streak of daylight hanging on. Penny walked out of the building behind her.
Jamie knew that as soon as someone spoke, this thing was over. So she reveled in the silence.
Finally, Penny spoke. And she was right.
“I think we should not see each other for a while.”
“Okay…”
“Jamie, I’m married.”
“So you keep saying.”
“I have to go, Jamie. I’m sorry. Are you alright to get home?”
“Of course.”
“Look, I’m sorry about leading you on.”
“You didn’t lead me on.”’
“I fear that I did.”
“By what?” Jamie said. “The fact that you love me too?”
Penny looked into her eyes. She turned towards the street then back to Jamie. She seemed like she wanted to say like five different things. Then finally spoke. “That’s a little presumptuous.”
“Or it’s not.”
“Jamie...”
“Look, Penny, I’m sorry – I can’t do untrue anymore…”
Penny glanced up and spotted Simon Shearing from The Hauer Literary agency walking past on the sidewalk. She waved. Then turned back to Jamie.
“First of all,” Penny said, “Please, let’s not do this here. And secondly,” she lowered her voice. “You want honest? Here it is.”
Penny stared out at the street, then back to Jamie.
“I don’t know how I feel. Because I look at you and you’re everything I’ve ever wanted… In the completely wrong package.” Penny closed her eyes and sighed. “You’re…” she opened her eyes and looked at Jamie. “Breathtaking to me. You’re so beautiful. And kind. And the words you write are poetic and thrilling. And…you’re funny. And sweet, And sexy,” Penny said. “And whether I want you or not, this is not how I saw my life going.”
Penny felt something in her heart empty out and run away that had warmed her and held her ever since she met Jamie Brennan.
“I would love you for a lifetime, Jamie.” Penny felt her throat getting tight, but she wouldn’t let herself cry. “…In another lifetime.”
She hated every word she was about to say. “But I don’t know about this one.”
Jamie felt the words hit her with a thud. They were clear. They were true. And they hurt like hell.
“Jamie, I can’t just leave him,” Penny said. “I’m afraid if I leave him, he’ll fall apart. Or I will. And maybe that sounds stupid. But this is the only life I know.”
Jamie knew as soon as someone said the next word they were going to have to part somehow. And it was going to fucking hurt.
“Look,” Penny said. “Let’s just – let’s just leave everything for a while. We’ll talk in a month or so.”
“Fine.”
“This has to just - we have to calm this down. At the very least we work together.”
“I know.”
Penny looked out onto nighttime Sixth Avenue. She put her hand up for a cab, and a taxi swerved across two lanes to the curb.
“I’ll see you, Jamie.”
Jamie watched as Penny opened the door and slid into the back of the cab. She closed the door with a chunk.
The window was open so she could see Penny in profile. Penny didn’t turn back. She said something to the cab driver and the taxi pulled out heading up Sixth Avenue.
Jamie stood on the sidewalk by herself, gazing out at the firefly lights of cabs streaming in a river up Sixth.
“Well, that was a little much…”
Finally, Jamie turned around. She glanced down a bustling nighttime Sixth Avenue and forced her legs to carry her away from this moment. And Penny. And this very spot w
here love started and ended.
And the people she passed as she walked towards 57th Street - the couple with the two little kids, the businessman with the brown briefcase and his suit jacket over his arm, the two teenage girls laughing and eating Cheez Doodles from a shared bag. For them, it was just another night.
For Jamie, it was the night Penny Langston kissed her again. And started it and ended it. All at once.
A few blocks later, Jamie crossed Sixth Avenue and headed along 52nd street. She walked past Rockefeller Center, looked over at the flagpoles and the outdoor café below and the giant bronze statue of the reclining Prometheus, having stolen fire from the gods to bring to humankind. Thoughtful of him.
A tear fell down Jamie’s face and she wiped it away before anyone could see.
She watched tourists taking pictures. Saving a moment on a Kodak Instamatic. Maybe other people would remember this night too, but for different reasons. At least it was beautiful for someone.
She rounded the flagpoles to the little cut through over to Fifth Avenue, where you could turn and see the glory of the Christmas tree in the winter.
She tried to freeze the moments of tonight that were real, but even they were unable to hold: The orange and purple sky out the window when she walked behind Penny down the corridor when she got there. The bubble of belonging to each other when the whole world went away. The softness of Penny’s kiss, that unleashed some crazy amount of heat between them.
Jamie stopped on the other side of Rockefeller Center and looked back, down to the lit cafe where the skating rink was in the winter.
“And how do you feel?” Penny had whispered to her.
What the hell… Jamie thought now. “You wanted me to love you…”
“Why on earth would you want me to love you when you have no intention of being with me?” She thought now. “So you have something beautiful to fill the empty spaces in your own life?”
“No fucking way,” Jamie whispered.
Maybe this time apart was a good thing.
Jamie glanced up at the night sky settling into black as she rounded the sidewalk onto Fifth and hit her stride towards downtown. She could catch the bus at some point but now she wanted to walk.
“My heart doesn’t exist to fill up the cracks in your life, Penny,” she whispered as she passed 51st Street and glanced over at the spires of St Patrick’s Cathedral. Her body turned and crossed the street towards the church before her brain could protest.
Where she once lit a candle for Paige. Where she would light a candle right now for Bridget. And Penny. And Paige. And her fucking self.
She had a book to write.
And no matter how much she had dreamed of a life with a love like she could have had with Penny. Her feelings would not be used to fill up someone’s lonely life with their husband. No fucking way.
She knew that much.
Penny stared out the cab window as the taxi lurched down Park Avenue towards Grand Central. She could see the Pan Am building ahead.
She stared blankly out the window at the passing median in the center and took a quick inventory of her life.
She didn’t love him anymore. She didn’t feel alive. She felt like she was dying. And for a moment tonight, she felt like she had been kissed back into life. But when she considered a life without Davis, it made everything of these past ten years never true. And it made her feel paralyzed with fear.
All the way home to Scarsdale on the 9:16 p.m. train, Penny looked out the window, which, because it was night, unfortunately mostly passed back her own sad reflection.
And the only words that kept playing in her head were a repeated loop.
“You love her too.”
But she knew. All the more reason for this to be over.
Penny closed her eyes and leaned her head back on the headrest as the train shuffled along. She felt a sudden sorrow for the heroine in her she wasn’t. If there was one thing Penny Langston always thought she was, it was brave. Started a life on her own. Followed her dreams to Radcliffe and then New York. Blazed a trail when not a lot of women did.
And she’d always wanted to be the kind of hero in books who gives up everything to be with the person she loves.
But in this moment she had the sinking realization:
That was books. And this was her.
55
August 10, 1977
“So glad you’re feeling better, sweetie…”
Connie Pell smiled as she handed her husband his wrapped up lunch. “Have a good day, sweetheart.”
He leaned in and kissed her.
They were standing in their kitchen.
“You sure you don’t mind dropping her off at your mom’s, Ray?”
“Happy to, Babe. She’s ten minutes away. You could always go pick her up early if you’re finished your errands.”
“Definitely,” Connie smiled.
He leaned in for one more kiss.
“Love you forever,” he said. He always said that.
“Me too,” she said. She always said that.
Two hours later, morning sunlight streaming into her car, Connie Pell had her window down letting the breeze in and sang along to Elton John and Kiki Dee on WNBC radio as she drove along the Hutchinson River Parkway between Eastchester and Rye and looked for exit 57. The bridge to Yonkers that ran across the parkway and the Hutchinson River.
Connie peered through her windshield. Exit 57, bridge to Yonkers. Korvette’s. Central Avenue. Friendly’s. The Movie Theater where she and Ray saw Rocky.
She cranked the volume on the radio and felt the wind blowing in her hair through the open window. She felt freer than she had in a year.
56
Jamie looked at her watch as she opened the door to the deli up University Place at 12th Street. It was 10:30 a.m., she had half an hour to wolf down a coffee with milk and a raisin bagel shmear and get to work.
She swung the door open and let the smell of bubble gum, beer, cold cuts and air conditioning hit her.
She walked over to the counter, her guy Vinnie was there.
“Hey, Jamie.”
“Hey, Vinnie.”
“Bagel shmear, sweetheart?”
“Yeah, please.”
He pulled a bagel out of the deli counter and sliced it with an oversized knife then slathered just a shmear of cream cheese on, closed it up, sliced it again, wrapped it in white paper, walked over to the cash, flipped open a brown bag with a snap.
He grabbed a to-go cup, plunked some milk in, pulled the lever on the large, silver coffee machine, filling up the cup, smacked a lid on top, tightened it, and shoved the coffee and the bagel in the bag.
The deli phone rang behind him. He lifted the receiver and tucked it into the crook of his neck while he rang up her purchase on the cash register.
“Lou’s Deli,” he said into the phone. “Uh huh… Fuckin kiddin’ me. Isn’t that somethin’? He was what? Fuckin’ kiddin’ me. Thank fuckin’ God, huh? Yeah. Okay, talk to ya later.”
He hung up the phone.
“Sorry hon, that’s two dollars.”
Jamie loved his Queens accent. Two dollars. “Too dallahs.”
She handed him two ones.
He pressed total and the cash register chimed and popped open.
“They got him, Jamie,” he said sliding in the two ones and shutting the drawer.
“What?” Jamie said. “Who?”
“Fuckin’ Son of Sam.”
Jamie felt her stomach get hot. “You’re kidding…”
Vinnie shut the cash drawer. “Fuckin’ got ‘im. All this time, this fuckin’ nightmare, and it was some fuckin’ mailman from Yonkers or somethin’.”
“They arrested him?”
“They fuckin’ arrested him, Jamie. How ‘bout that shit?”
Her past. Her terrible story. It would never be over. But this New York nightmare at long last was. And that was something.
Some stories had no good ending - but some stories did. And in that
moment, Jamie decided, this would be her story.
“It’s over.”
He laughed. He turned around and turned on a small black and white TV above the cigarettes for sale.
He turned back to Jamie and grinned.
“It’s fuckin’ over.” He gave her a wink. “See you tomorrow, sweetheart.”
Jamie walked out of the deli onto University Place. The morning sun starting to peek over May’s Department store on 14th Street. She slipped the coffee out of the bag. She peeled back the lid and had a sip.
They fuckin’ got him.
Suddenly Jamie thought of Penny. The ache of missing her was like a low-grade flu.
She was the one Jamie wanted to call right now. “Penny... they got him!” she’d say. “Hey we should go have a drink tonight and celebrate New York returning to normal!” she’d say.
Today, there was an ending to a terrible unjust story. It wasn’t her ending. But she would make it so.
And the only thing missing from this perfect day was Penny.
57
“Did you hear the news?”
Penny glanced up from the boardroom table. She had just finished a meeting and was still sitting there reviewing the marketing plan for a new book. Annoyed at how they were diminishing the literary quality of the book to make it salacious for sales.
Joan Sussman was standing in front of her with a grave expression on her face.
“Did you hear the news?”
“Sorry, what?”
Penny suddenly remembered.
“Ah!" she said. "Yes. Cathy told me. She heard it on the radio at Kwan’s. They got him. Son of Sam?”
Joan’s eyes squinted in confusion.
"Not that."
She turned around and closed the door of the boardroom. She slid a chair out and sat down next to Penny.
“We got a call from someone in the police department in Westchester," she said. "Yesterday, Connie Pell…”
“No,” Penny whispered.
“ - She jumped off a bridge onto a highway.”
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