The Good Kind of Bad

by Rita Brassington

  ‘Your father told me you were staying at the Four Seasons, temporarily, but they directed me here.’ He produced a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket while Evan shot me a poisonous stare.

  ‘Do you want to come in?’ I asked.

  Evan shook his head vehemently and mouthed a silent no, but I shrugged. We didn’t have much choice. However bizarre and dangerous the situation, I couldn’t turn him away. Will had travelled thousands of miles to stand on what he thought was my doorstep, plus calling Evan ‘Joe’ in the exposed corridor was far from ideal.

  Will accepted the invitation with a smile, swiftly entering the apartment with a reluctant grunt from Evan.

  ‘Joe will show you to the lounge while I make us some coffee. Isn’t that right, darling?’

  Evan narrowed his eyes at me. ‘Of course, honey.’

  After Evan reluctantly showed Will to his seat, and before I left to fetch some refreshments, the looks of disdain glared out from them both. You could’ve cut the atmosphere with a flick knife.

  Arriving back with the drinks a few minutes later, I stopped short of the doorway, surprised to hear them in conversation.

  ‘Your last name’s Petrozzi, isn’t it?’ Will asked.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You’re not how I pictured you. You’re handsome, of course, you’d have to be if she married you after three weeks. I waited five years and . . . nevertheless,’ Will said, clearing his throat. ‘Howard described you somewhat differently. I’m not being rude—’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you’re not,’ Evan retaliated, appearing almost offended on Joe’s behalf.

  ‘I just expected you to look Italian, not that I’m typecasting,’ Will commented crudely, indicating Evan’s mess of blond hair.

  ‘Adopted.’

  ‘Right.’

  More silence.

  ‘Here you are.’ With a faux cough, I announced my entrance with the tray of drinks.

  They both shuffled awkwardly over their seats before I handed Will the tea.

  Taking the seat next to Evan, I gave him a sharp nudge in the ribs before nodding at the table. ‘Perhaps you should clear away dinner, Joe?’ If three was a crowd, Evan certainly didn’t get the hint straight away, unwilling to leave me with our unexpected guest. Begrudgingly, he made his excuses and gathered up the plates, probably to then go and eavesdrop from the study.

  ‘Did I interrupt your meal?’ Will asked.

  ‘I wasn’t that hungry anyway.’

  He glanced down into the cup. ‘You still know how to make a great cup of tea. I’ve missed that.’

  ‘Will, what are you doing here?’

  His smile didn’t last the duration, his gaze still on the tea. He’d travelled over an ocean to sit beside me and now couldn’t look me in the eye.

  ‘I asked myself why I wanted to come a thousand times. I know. I know I have to move on and I think I have, but first I had to see.’

  I rested my folded arms on the tops of my knees. ‘See what?’

  ‘See what you chose instead of me? Nice apartment, nice husband, nice life.’

  We’d had a nice apartment back in London. Stucco-fronted row houses, Knightsbridge a stone’s throw away . . . back there, and back together, we’d had so much more, and yet? We’d had nothing at all.

  ‘It wasn’t about choosing, and it wasn’t your fault I left. I couldn’t do it anymore, Will. You must have known. I was suffocating. Your sisters were unbearable, fussing over table flowers and the bloody string quartet, and not to mention your mother . . .’

  ‘It’s all right, you don’t have to say it,’ he added curtly.

  There was a stranger in Will’s place. The face I’d seen a thousand times had been forgotten, one I’d watch mature over the last five years, the boy now the man I’d shared everything with. We’d been hours away from holy matrimony and now could barely sit in the same room together. He was a man I’d once sat next to on a train, a face I’d struggle to pick out of a crowd. He was from before everything else, from a life and a girl I no longer knew.

  ‘I’m sorry, I am. I nearly phoned so many times, but things happened. Life happened. Everything is here with Ev . . . with Joe now. It’s over, Will. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to accept that.’ I straightened my back and glanced towards the door.

  Will set down the cup and saucer and checked his Rolex, the gift I should’ve bought if only I’d known him better. ‘I never should have come. I knew it’d be a mistake.’ He gathered up his bag and moved off the sofa. ‘Thanks for the tea, but it’s best I leave.’

  ‘No, Will . . .’

  ‘I did have a speech planned, about how you left me waiting for you, waiting in that church while I thought you’d had another episode. Even after everything you’ve done, I thought maybe we could forget, move on . . . but it looks like I’ve not crossed your mind once. Looks like I don’t need those words now.’

  It’d changed him. My actions had created a harder Will, toughened and worn down by life. It was something I’d selfishly never considered; now I saw Will Version 2.0 before me, sipping the tea in a stranger’s house. He’d gone through hell, a hell I’d created, but the old Will would’ve never stood up to me, never would have told me how he felt. I knew. He was better, much better off without me.

  I had to put Will first. He thought there was a chance for us, somewhere in the future, but I had to protect him, from me and that daydream, and for his own good. I had to reject him, again, to ensure he never came calling and fully opened himself to other possibilities, other lives. He could meet a nice girl, in London, one whose life wasn’t sullied by violence and murder and hate. He had to forget me, so he was saved. Saved from what could ruin him, like it almost had me.

  ‘Will, you need to move on, like I have. Meet someone else. Get married. Forget me, because I’ve forgotten you.’

  Each word felt like a wasp barb, stinging my tongue and lacing the letters with venom. Will’s face turned grey, his lip dropped and his hands clenched and unclenched, the way they used to when he’d tell me not to argue, that we shouldn’t fight because it wasn’t good for us. So I couldn’t tell him I wanted to leave. There were still glimpses of the old Will, hints around the edges, but after gulping down my attack, his shoulders relaxed and the colour returned. On standing, it was like he’d shed his second skin, and was taller and wiser for it.

  ‘Good luck with your life. I mean it,’ he said.

  Will turned for the door, where Evan stood waiting for him. God knows how long he’d been there.

  ‘Have a nice flight,’ Evan taunted as Will and his man-bag struggled past into the hall.

  As the tears pricked my eyelids, I willed him to turn around, but Will didn’t look back.

  Once Will had gone, Evan turned to me and turned on the charm. ‘What’s going on here?’

  ‘You think I invited him?’

  ‘I don’t know what to think! What was the deal with inviting him in? What was with calling me Joe?’

  I put both palms to my eyes, forcing my tears for Will back inside. ‘No one has Joe’s photo. At least if Will thinks you’re my husband . . . Joe is alive, according to Will.’ It was a stupid plan, but better than no plan at all.

  ‘I don’t even look like Joe! I don’t like it. Who travels halfway across the world to see someone for five minutes?’

  ‘Maybe he was already in the city, I don’t know. He’s obviously finding it hard to let go. I did leave him at the altar. Maybe he needs closure. He’s on his way back to the airport, I’m sure.’ I sniffed. My heart had just broken all over again.

  Evan paced the lounge for at least a minute, shooting me the odd glare.

  ‘Nice touch leaving a forwarding address at the hotel, too. What did I say about my address?’

  ‘I had to leave one.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They asked for one! I was at the Four Seasons for a while. I needed any correspondence sent on. How could I know Will would turn up looking for me?’
>
  ‘Okay, you didn’t know about Will, but did you have to tell your dad where you were? For Christ’s sake, honey.’

  ‘I called him, and he asked about me, like father’s do, about how Joe and I were doing. He asked for my address so I had to tell him about the hotel.’

  ‘And . . . you trust this Will guy? You trust him not to tell?’

  ‘Will doesn’t know anyone in Chicago, and why would he tell anyone your address anyway?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because he’s left it here.’ I collected the crumpled paper from the coffee table. ‘Stop worrying.’

  Evan chewed his lip. He didn’t look like a man with nothing to worry about. ‘It’s still a link from Joe to me.’

  ‘What, and I’m not?’

  ‘No one knows you’re here! Or I thought they didn’t. Now you might as well have phoned Zupansky and given him a map and shovel while you were at it.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Sunday night was movie night.

  It’d been Evan’s idea, a distraction after Will’s Thursday blink-and-you’d-miss-it cameo. After asking if we should be seen together in public, Evan laughed and said, ‘It’s dark in the movies.’ Surely one film couldn’t hurt, one attempt at normality.

  Almost ready, I was crouched on the guest bedroom floor in jeans and a red Balenciaga scoop neck top (a safe enough non-date outfit), stretching under the bed for my elusive cream wedge. Waving my hand between the bedposts, I soon hit something, though rather than my shoe it was smooth and square and made of soft leather. Intrigued, I dragged it out by the handle.

  It was a heavy black briefcase, Italian made, and the catches were open. Sitting on the floor, my fingers travelled the leather before they slipped down to the double locks but I hesitated before lifting the lid, not brave enough to pull it open but not stupid enough to push it away either.

  I could take a peek inside. It wasn’t locked. Checking my back, the door to the bedroom was closed with Evan murdering a tune somewhere down the hall. In one swift movement I opened the lid and peered inside.

  Thousands of dollars stared back at me, crisp green notes in neat little bundles, tied with red elastic. I picked the white scrap of paper from the lid. Across it was an address scrawled in barely legible handwriting:

  THE PRINCIPE, 111 CORNFIELD, LAKE VIEW 60613

  Not only was the whole thing majorly suspicious, it was downright bizarre.

  Clambering to standing, I dropped my eyes to the money, guessing at how much was there. One hundred thousand? Two, three, five? Then there was the briefcase itself. This wasn’t a mob movie. People didn’t stash money like that in real life.

  I was still staring at the case when I heard footsteps in the hall and then a knock on my door. Evan was right outside.

  ‘Honey, did you find your shoe . . .’ he asked, walking in.

  I was half under the bed, half panicked and half panting as I frantically pushed the briefcase back into position.

  ‘What are you doing under the bed?’

  With my back to the floor, I ungracefully slid myself into the light. ‘Oh, here it is!’ I called, holding my cream wedge aloft. Close call didn’t cover it.

  ‘I’ll fetch my jacket and we can go, okay?’ Evan murmured, giving me a curious second glance as he sauntered out the door.

  My life might have bordered on the bizarro for the last month or so, but this was a whole new level of weirdness. Why did Evan have thousands of dollars stashed under my bed? Had he never heard of a bank? And was it even his to begin with? His gold digger of a stepmother had taken his inheritance, or so he’d said.

  I’d see the film, like arranged, to keep up appearances, though at the first opportunity I was turning PI, taking a trip up to Lake View, and The Principe.

  Lo and behold, Evan had agreed to a chick flick. Charlie and Me was a holiday romance kind of film, set in the drug-fuelled, club-crazed Balearics. Assuring him there’d be plenty of scantily clad women in bikinis, he hadn’t taken much convincing after that.

  ‘You think you got enough food?’ I asked, as he returned to his cinema seat, weighed down by most of the refreshment trolley.

  ‘I get hungry with all this sitting still.’

  As he passed me a hotdog, I knew that was a lie. Evan had wriggled over the velour seat like he had ants in his pants long before he’d made a beeline for the food.

  As the romance between Faith and Charlie unfolded to ‘Cafe Del Mar’ on the thirty-foot screen, it was Evan I watched. The popcorn crackled between his molars like he was chewing on ice as his hands repeatedly charted the stubble on his jaw.

  Evan’s nervousness was elevating my own anxiety. I couldn’t stop thinking about the briefcase. As the music thundered, my anxiety took the floor from beneath me, from beneath us all. It was like the centre of my world was about to split open and spew lava over the life I’d built from the ashes of Joe.

  My breaths fell deep as I tried to lose myself in the film. We were here to join another story, to spend ninety delicious minutes in a summer of carefree young love, though it was an escape I no longer needed. That was for lives predictable and mundane, for people who knew the punchline, the lucky people who didn’t even know it.

  Evan’s glazed eyes stared out beyond the screen. I could’ve left my seat and climbed over him into the aisle and he wouldn’t have flinched. He was frozen, a shop dummy, going through the motions as the gallon of coke was gulped into his gut. Suck, swallow. Suck, swallow.

  On the journey home and from the passenger seat of Evan’s Lincoln, I dared myself to mention The Principe, or what the money was for, but there’d hardly been a murmur from Evan since the credits had rolled. It was not cosy chat time, but it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t be long before I figured out what was going on.

  At the apartment door, I slipped off my wedges and headed for the kitchen, Evan locking the door behind us and disappearing off into the lounge. I soon developed a Sybil-shaped shadow, her paws creating little patter noises down the corridor into the kitchen.

  ‘You want more food, Sybil? Is that why you’re always under my feet?’ I asked, almost expecting an answer.

  Sybil’s tail wagged furiously as she expelled a sharp yap.

  ‘You’ll just have to wait.’ As I took another bite of my cookie from the egg-shaped jar, I couldn’t resist her eyes and threw the rest down. How she wasn’t morbidly obese was a mystery. She may have been too fat for the Four Seasons, but her metabolism would suit me fine.

  ‘Hey, Evan, you want a coffee? I’m making one,’ I shouted down the hallway before I heard my phone ring. It was muffled, from somewhere within my house of a handbag on the kitchen table, and it took some serious rooting to grab it before the call diverted to voicemail.

  ‘Hello?’ I answered.

  ‘Where are you? At the hotel?’

  I knew that voice. It was one I’d longed to hear since our argument, and the last person I now expected to be calling. ‘Nina?’

  ‘Wait ‒ before you start into your Queen Bitch routine, I need to tell you something, and now. Can you meet me outside my building?’ Her voice was quiet, like her words had an audience. ‘Promise you’ll come?’

  ‘What’s going on, Nina? I’m not at the hotel. You don’t talk to me for nearly a week, and now . . .’

  ‘You have to listen to me. I know you were on North Michigan tonight. I saw you, outside the movie theatre,’ she panted. ‘Mickey took me to Avenues on North Michigan for my birthday. I have to see you. Please . . . you need to know.’ She breathed her words through desperation, her speech rapid and the words staggered.

  A shiver ran through me. Had she done it? Had she told Mickey or the police about Evan and Joe? Was this her twisted attempt at a confession? ‘Nina, you’re not making any sense.’

  ‘Don’t you get it? I watched you cross the street and climb into that Lincoln. If I saw you leave then I know you weren’t alone: tall, blond, bomber jacket, sound familiar?’

  ‘Yeah,
I’m with Evan. I don’t get what you’re trying to say.’

  ‘You’re with him now?’

  ‘Yeah, at his apartment. I’m staying with him, after that guy in the trench coat . . .’

  ‘Jesus. You need to leave. This was the soonest I could call, ’til I was alone. Please, promise you’ll get out of there?’

  ‘Nina . . . if this is some game . . .’

  ‘You think this is a game? You don’t get it, do you? Tonight isn’t the first time I’ve seen Evan.’

  ‘I know. He came to Faith, about the break in.’

  ‘Yeah, he came to Faith, but I wasn’t there. I was with Mickey at The American Club in Wisconsin. I met Evan when he came to my apartment, warning me to keep my mouth shut . . . when he threatened to kill me. Open your eyes, girl. Can you see it yet? The truth? Your precious Evan is Victor.’

  There was breaking glass before a voice roared and Nina screamed. My heart jumped into my mouth as I frantically called her name, but I was left with only the dial tone.

  I rushed into the hall, half throwing on my jacket and sliding into a pair of grey trainers. I couldn’t have heard it, Nina’s accusation or her scream. ‘I’m going to the Jewel. We haven’t got any coffee. Do you want anything, Evan?’ My voice wavered through the lie. Saying his name felt like a knife slicing at my throat. Evan was Victor. Victor was Evan. All this time, all the stories and threats and violence . . . every little bit of intimidation had been my gracious host, my saviour on the street.

  My excuse for leaving was a lame one, though arriving at the lounge I found it empty. Evan was out on the terrace with his back to me, staring at the city.

  ‘Coffee. Jewel. Right,’ he replied, not fully turning around. ‘Go to the one at the bottom of the street, and come right back.’

  Backing slowly out of the apartment, amazed I’d escaped so easily, I ran the short distance to Nina’s apartment. I was developing quite the physique with all the running around Chicago I’d been doing. Since moving from South Evergreen, I’d never ventured back to Nina’s plush abode, even though the move to the suite and then West Superior meant we were practically neighbours, in the Chicago sense at least, though our relationship had been in decadent decline; the most we’d managed was a muffled greeting in the lift at Faith.