by Harper Riley
They just have to lead me to the dance floor, press themselves into me, sway us into one dance that was like the other dance. Gavin, the colored lights, me.
I freeze.
The swordfish takes my face in his hands, and I need another drink.
“Torrie,” James the bartender says once I get there.
“James,” I say, sitting down and giving him a “free Sex on the Beach wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world” smile.
I could always ask the swordfish, but right now I can’t stand him. A few more drinks’ll solve it.
“Some guy was here asking about you,” James says with a smirk, “That guy from a few weeks ago. The albino.”
I stare at him.
“Want me to give him your number?” he asks, just as the swordfish returns.
He’s all hand on my ass, but he doesn’t understand.
That my stomach is swirling, not from too much alcohol, but from the last man who touched my ass.
I jerk upright, away from him.
He smiles like he understands, slings his arm around me, moves me along except I don’t. Can’t. I can’t go with him.
I look out onto the dance floor, full of all the other nobodies. The men who are notable only in that they are not him. And, in that, that they are useless to me.
I rip myself out of the swordfish’s grasp, stride out the door without a word.
Outside, I tear off my heels so I can run the rest of the way home as fast as I can. So I can jolt the dawning realization away, so I can focus on the fatigue instead of the feeling.
And yet, I can’t escape him, can I? The whole reason for all of this. The man there is no escaping: Gavin Pierson.
What would he say if he saw me now? Running down the street, barefoot, high-heels in hand, tears rolling down my face, trying not to think of him? Trapped?
There’s no tears this time, only a shocked horrible flop into my bed, a dry-heaving over the toilet, a staring in the unforgiving mirror, into the reflection who’s as dismayed as I am, who doesn’t know any more than I do: What am I going to do now?
Chapter 23 - Gavin
I’ve had better mornings.
I wake up to the usual: eggs benedict and well-crisped bacon, brought by Teresa, my maid, and a text from Tony, my I-don’t-know-what.
Let’s cool it for a bit was all her text said, but we both know that’s just the start of it.
I respond the only way a reasonable man would: Okay, how about tomorrow?
She doesn’t respond, but expecting her to in 10 minutes probably isn’t very realistic, especially for someone who... oh right, I don’t even know what she does.
As soon as I’m on my last bite, Jaws calls me.
“Just had it confirmed that Hannah was seen round the Piccolo house, and that Papa Piccolo is in the process of croaking.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be in the hospital?” I ask.
When I visited him in the hospital yesterday, the cast gave him a Michelin Man upper leg. There’s no way he’s ready to be out.
“Still here, man. I’m teleworking,” Jaws says in a superior voice.
“Tinsley’s here too, wearing the shorts, feeding me ice cream. Damn, I gotta get myself shot more often.”
The muffled giggle of a female voice, then Jaws says, “Uh, so Boss, we’re sticking to the funeral plan, right?”
“Right,” I say, “get all the guys down to the club basement tomorrow. Get Pip to do his computer wizardry; I’ve sent him a file with what we’re gonna do.”
“Oh, and Boss?”
“No,” I say.
“You didn’t even give me time to-”
“Nope.”
“C’mon Boss, you don’t even know what-”
“No way.”
Jaws sighs.
“But why can’t I help? The leg is inconvenient I’ll admit, but workable.”
The sounds of a scuffle, then Tinsley’s haughty soprano, “Hell to the no, Gavin. All the doctor people said he could leave in a week, but he can’t do any physical activity or anything for a month. Not even yoga. I asked.”
“Great Tinsley,” I say, “Glad we’re on the same page. Jaws stays out of this one.”
Jaws sighs.
“C’mon Boss, please?”
“No.”
“Come on... just have a look at me and-”
“Goodbye Jaws,” I say and hang up.
This fight has already cost me enough. I can’t lose Jaws too.
I get out of bed, stretching and viewing my muscles in the mirror with satisfaction. The falcon on my left pec looks as frustrated as I feel.
How can Tony say no to this?
I’ve never had a woman been this difficult before. Then again, I’ve never had a woman like her.
I bike to Rebel Saints, checking my phone at every light. Still, Tony hasn’t responded.
Inside the club, Icing is here early, practicing her splits on center stage.
I stay back, out of sight.
Usually I like that the club is open to the girls in the daytime, for them to stretch, practice, whatever. It’s practical for them, not to mention a nice distraction for the boys and me. But right now, I’m not in the mood. I just want to get to my office.
I pass by her without a word.
“Gav?” she says.
I stop. I don’t turn around.
“Yeah?”
“Can you rub some of this glitter on me? I can never get it on my back.”
I turn around.
Icing is waiting. Her legs are fully spread, her black-lidded gaze is locked on me.
God, it would be so easy... The glitter, her bare back, her silver-thonged ass, her....
I turn back around.
“Later. We still have another hour to get that glitter on you.”
I head to my office and sit down on my recliner.
My heart falls when my eyes take in the still-empty phone.
Things with Tony can’t end like this. Maybe I’m only buying time as it is, but it can’t end like this. Not now.
I text her: How long do you want?
A second later, she texts back: Were you asking about me at the bar?
I stare at the text, trying to decide how to respond. The truth is usually the easier to go for, gets you in the least trouble, but this time it may just cost me the most extraordinary woman I’ve ever been with.
Still, I can’t bear lying to her.
Yes. I want to know more about you.
You can’t. This isn’t working. You keep trying to break the rules.
You’re right; I’m sorry. Give me another chance. Let’s meet and talk about it.
After waiting a minute, I go over to my mini-fridge and take out a water bottle, take a long swig. Check my phone.
Take another, longer swig. Crunch the empty water bottle in my fist.
This can’t be it. I just need one more time to see her. Just one more time and then whatever happens can happen. This can’t be it.
It seems agonizing years before she responds: Okay.
I text: In an hour. The same bar.
This time the Okay comes faster, and I lean back in my recliner, finally able to breathe.
Chapter 24 - Torrie
This isn’t good.
I sit in my armchair in the den, patting Jane absently, staring at the wall.
I’ve flung my phone into the corner of the room, won’t look at it now.
This isn’t good. It hasn’t been for some time and I know it.
There’s no escaping Gavin now, no escaping how I feel. What happened at the bar there... I shouldn’t go meet him tonight and yet, I don’t have any choice.
Papa’s words echo in my head, “Don’t make the same mistake I did.”
I go over, pick up my phone, turn on some music.
Bob Dylan, “Like a Rolling Stone.”
Jane cocks her head at me, as if she too is thinking: Why pick a song that so accurately describes how horrible I feel
? Like a helpless stone rolling down a hill, picking up speed as I go, barreling toward my doom?
“Why do you listen to this crap anyway?” Carlos asks from the stairs.
I glare at him, hoping he’ll take the hint and go away.
But instead he stands there obliviously, his head swiveling ‘round the room.
“Usually I forget this place exists.”
I swallow back my: Which is why I like it so much.
“What do you want Carlos?” I ask.
After all, for the past few months that’s all our conversations have consisted of: necessities: Have you seen Papa? My phone isn’t in the kitchen, is it? When’s the next meeting?
Carlos directs his own glare at me, but then it sags.
He slumps down on the bottom stair, trying to look at me and yet, not quite able to.
His arms are folded in front of him, his good one supporting the bandaged one.
“It’s Papa,” he says, his voice suddenly a hoarse whisper, “He’s dying.”
I leap up, but he only shakes his head sadly.
“He won’t see anyone. Maria Fernanda’s up there, and he won’t see anyone.”
I sink back into the armchair, feeling like I’m going to sink into the floor, through it.
By now, I know there’s no defying Papa when he’s got his mind set on something.
Carlos and I stare at each other miserably.
There are no words now, nothing but this smothering blanket of pain there’s no escaping.
God, this is it. What I’ve been dreading, avoiding, denying for months now. Now, the day is finally here and I can’t quite believe it. All I feel is a lightheadedness, as if I’m on the pause before the roller coaster plunges down, knowing what’s coming, yet unable to quite believe it.
“Remember when he bought us those candy apples?” Carlos says suddenly, a glint in his merry eyes.
I nod.
How could I forget? On the primary school field trip, Carlos and I were the envy of every other kid there.
I see the images as Carlos recounts the events, “Remember how he bartered like mad with the street vendor?” The little bald man’s furious, eager face as he shook his fist, twisted his head, turned away, then, finally, with an averted fit of coughing, agreed to Papa’s drastically lower price.
“Then fought with our teachers to give them to us?” Miss Sternburg’s grey-bunned head erect and implacable as her thin lips repeated the “No” in terse tones.
“How he laughed in their faces, the way his mouth stretched so big and jovial? Like he wasn’t laughing just at them, but at everything, at the whole preposterousness of life itself?” Papa, his black mustache trembling with it, with the laughter that overtook all of us, Carlos and me in his arms, part of the scene yet reveling in it, not caring a whit about any of it, liking it, welcoming it, wanting it – even grateful for it, it and this father who wasn’t afraid of anything, who could overcome anything.
Anything but death.
I nod again, tears spilling down my cheeks now, hating and loving Carlos for reminding me of it, the bittersweet memory of my childhood, of my Papa. Who I’m losing this very second.
Carlos still won’t look at me, his forehead against the wall, he addresses the floor, “Well, when I saw him this morning, that’s what he looked like. I swear Torrie, that’s exactly what he looked like: laughing. He’s ready.”
He exhales, wipes away a tear of his own.
“We’re not ready, but he is.”
I nod again, more tears streaming down to join the others, more memories streaming down with them.
Images flash through my mind: Papa lifting me by the waist hopping me up and down the stairs, “A jumping Torrie, a jumping Torrie, a jumping Torrie” while I shrieked laughter; Papa laid out on his back, which I listened to his heart with a little pink stethoscope; Papa embracing me in his satin apple-sheeted bed a little over a month ago, whispering, “You’ll do a good job in charge. I love you more than you can know.”
Sorrow paralyzes me in my seat. Makes me unable to speak, move; Jane nudges my hand for more petting in vain.
I can’t tell if Carlos is still here. I’ve closed my eyes. All there is is Papa: Papa in my memories, Papa upstairs, Papa who I’m going to lose forever.
Papa, who I’ll never see again.
Suddenly, I know what I have to do.
I leap up, race past Carlos who grabs at me from the stairs. His hand slips off in my momentum, my running.
I run.
I run for Papa, for myself, for one last time, to be there as he goes. To tell him I love him once more.
I pass Maria Fernanda on the staircase, and she’s saying some things, and Carlos is behind me, and he’s yelling some others – but it doesn’t matter. None of it matters, these words, their words, their words that are just more hands, snatching at me, trying to keep me from my father, my Papa – who I have to see one last time.
I rip open the door – and stop.
I look upon death and the reaper, and scream.
Ms. Laurenz aims her squinty eyes at me in something of a sneer. The squint has no tears.
And behind her, half upright half sunk down, like a shoved-up scarecrow, is Papa.
Dead.
I’m too late.
“Torrie,” Carlos says.
He’s in the doorway behind me.
I’m shaking, can barely get the words out, as the realization twists through my body, “This. This is why you came down.”
I wrench around to say the words to his disgusting, lying face, “Why you told me Papa didn’t want to see anyone.”
Carlos opens his mouth, closes it. Swallows his latest lies, comes up with another:
“He did say that...”
I shake my head, and he shuts up.
After all, his lie has worked his magic: got his vile snake of a mother with Papa in his last moments. Ruined Papa’s last moments so Laurenz could carry out whatever conniving plan she has on the go this time.
Ms. Laurenz throws her scarf over her shoulder, the green flashing mockery.
“Your father and I discussed—”
“Get out,” I say.
I step back. Point to the door.
She doesn’t move, continues twisting her lips.
“You should know that-”
“Get out, you despicable bitch,” I say.
I draw my gun, point it at Laurenz.
“Or I’ll make you get out.”
We stand there, eyes boring into each other. Now that I’m speaking her language she can’t stand it.
She really does look like a snake: low diamond eyes with the pinprick pupils, hollowed-out cheeks, fangs carefully tucked away until they’re needed.
The snake’s sneer grows until her eyes are so narrowed into a glare that they almost look closed, while her lips are contorted so much, it almost looks like she doesn’t have any at all.
“Torrie,” Carlos says, and I turn my gun on him.
“Neither of you belong in the same room as him. Get out.”
He doesn’t move, and I cock the pistol.
He stares at me evenly. There’s no fear in his face, but there should be. Even I don’t know what I’m capable of right now.
I shift the gun to the side, shoot the stuffed cobra. It topples to the ground.
I step back. Shift the gun back to Laurenz.
“I won’t ask again.”
With one last furious look at the shot down cobra, Laurenz slithers away, her green scarf flickering behind her, taking her disgusting son in hand.
Once they’re gone, in the doorway, Maria Fernanda shakes her head, closes the door behind them.
Now it’s just me and Papa. Me and the man I failed at the last.
I stare at him, trying to get my mind to accept that it’s really my father, that he’s really gone.
But his skin is a parchment of ashy lines, his chin has patches of hair that don’t belong – this creature doesn’t even look lik
e him. His eyes are half-open, as if he’s only deep in thought, might come to any minute.
I look at my dead father, the man I never really knew, and I collapse onto the bed at his feet, sobbing.
Time passes as waking and remembering, as a drifting in and out of consciousness and pain to unconsciousness and pain.
I dream that Papa’s alive, cursing me for leaving him with Laurenz for his final hours. I dream his corpse shakes at me an admonishing finger that turns into ash as it moves.
I dream that “Don’t make the same mistake I did” flies out of his frozen lips, that his whole body flops with the effort of the words, and yet, that his lips, his crackled lines of lips still won’t move.
I dream that Maria Fernanda comes, moves me to the chair. I dream the cobra twines around my legs, its head morphing from Ms. Laurenz to Carlos to Clarence and, when it bites me, I see it was Gav all along.
I wake up shivering. Maria Fernanda is stroking my hair.
“My poor girl. My poor, poor girl.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think you were home. The Laurenz woman threatened me, made me take her to your father. Spreading mischief at the end, I’m sure.”
I throw my arms around her in a hug, our faces pressed together, our tears mingling.
And then I slump into it, the pain, and, although I am awake, I might as well not be. I can lift my head no more.
Chapter 25 - Gavin
I wait until my first whiskey is a memory and the second is a possibility.
It’s been over an hour since Tony was supposed to show up, though I knew after 15 minutes. That she’s not coming.
I can almost hear Hannah as I stride back up to the bar for the next whiskey, the second that I’m not supposed to have, “Don’t, Gav.”
But I check my phone and there’s nothing from her and there’s still nothing from Tony, and my sister doesn’t understand. She’s not here. That I can’t take it without her. That I think I’m in love and that I’m doomed.
“Another Jack Daniel’s,” I tell the bartender, Jake, who’s now on a first name basis with me.
Last time he wasn’t much help, but this time, maybe a 20 can persuade him.