Trying Not To Love You

by Amabile Giusti

  Penny was suddenly afraid of having exaggerated. To imagine Marcus smiling at the elderly inhabitants of the building – the same Marcus who went around with a constant sneer on his lips – seemed too absurd to believe. And to imagine him being polite to Penny, when he probably gave her less consideration than he would a microbe, was even more far-fetched; but the man, who was either stupid or a little too innocent, seemed to fall for it anyway.

  ‘Great,’ he said for the umpteenth time, with another satisfied smile. ‘And you, son, I beg you, keep surrounding yourself with decent people. Above all, forget that other girl. She brings out the worst in you and just causes trouble. She’s not right for you. I don’t like knowing that you requested to visit her in prison. Penny, on the other hand, seems like exactly the right kind of person. If I can be sure you’re doing well, you’ll see less of me, but if they tell me you went to see Miss Lopez or I find out you’ve made another bad move, I’ll have to report it to the director. You’re on parole. If you mess this up, they’ll make you serve another two years. That’s not a threat, son, it’s the law; I only hope you pay attention and act in your own best interests.’

  Marcus nodded, but Penny sensed a pent-up anger in him. He was saying yes, but he wanted to break something. Penny saw him clench a fist so hard that his knuckles grew waxy and the veins on his wrist burned bright blue. If Penny, who barely knew Marcus, had noticed, how come this other man – who must be his parole officer – had not? He certainly knew Marcus better than Penny did, yet he didn’t seem to have any idea. He scribbled another note in his little book, shook hands with both of them and finally left, after loosening his tie again with a tired gesture and wearily stretching his neck.

  Penny started to follow the parole officer out, but Marcus held her by the arm. ‘Could you just wait until he’s gone? I’m sure he’ll stop and ask your grandmother something else on the way down. If you follow him right away, he’ll catch on – unless you regret this whole little charade and want him to.’

  She didn’t quite understand why she was helping him like this, but Penny shook her head. ‘So you were in prison?’ she asked immediately, without a hint of accusation or even excessive curiosity. She didn’t want to know why or for how long. She was sure he had killed someone, and preferred not to know the details.

  ‘Yes, and you don’t seem too surprised.’

  ‘It’s more that I don’t really care.’

  ‘So why did you lie to him then?’

  ‘Because it’s fun to play pretend sometimes. Don’t worry, I didn’t put that idea of you and me being together in my grandma’s head. She doesn’t get things right and she lives in a world of her own. I wouldn’t want to be with you even if you were the last man on the planet. And, hey, I’m not even going to beg you to fuck me silly.’

  Marcus suddenly smiled, and for the first time Penny glimpsed a spark of genuine amusement beyond his usual mask of aggression. She watched the play of his lips, enchanted like a little girl watching a rainbow. With that smile tugging at his mouth, at least three days of beard, and the monumental body that towered over her in the small room, it was an all-too-pleasant sight. Penny shook herself and bit her tongue, pressing a nail into the palm of her hand, doing her best to appear detached, as if the sudden sensations – hot, humid and fluttering – halfway between her stomach and her knees were nothing out of the ordinary.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll run a background check on you two, in case the innocent-looking kid and the sweet old lady turn out to be the top dealers in the neighbourhood,’ Marcus said wryly. He went in search of the cigarette he’d been lighting earlier on his way into the building. He found it in a pocket of his jacket and put it to his lips.

  ‘My grandma only deals in cookies, and often she puts salt in them instead of sugar. I don’t deal anything, and neither of us has been to prison,’ Penny said with a shrug. ‘Once, my grandma stole a pair of tights in a store, but she didn’t do it on purpose. She doesn’t always realise what she’s doing and thought she’d paid for them. That’s the only crime she’s ever committed and no one even noticed.’

  ‘And what about you?’ asked Marcus, lighting his cigarette, and from behind the sudden cloud of smoke he stared at her so attentively that Penny felt her internal organs scramble like ingredients in a cocktail shaker.

  ‘I’m an epic bore. Your probation officer will be very satisfied with what he finds out about me.’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll be back.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll tell my grandma to bake more cookies.’

  ‘Why are you doing this for me?’

  ‘I’m not doing it for you, I’m doing it for me. It’s fun, that’s all.’

  ‘And what do you want in return?’

  Penny smiled, tipping her head to one side. ‘You’re not used to people doing something for nothing, are you? It must be hard living in a world where you’re only worth what you give. Don’t worry, we can keep on ignoring each other. I won’t ask you any funny questions, and you don’t need to pretend to be in love with me just to please my grandma, or even sacrifice yourself by giving your body to me.’

  Marcus let out a puff of smoke with a sarcastic look on his face. ‘It might not be that much of a sacrifice after all.’

  It felt like there was a tuning fork twanging away between her ribs, but Penny replied bitterly, as though she’d never thought of it herself: ‘Well, let’s hope we never find out. I’m leaving now. I think the guy must be gone.’

  With that, she waved airily and headed back downstairs. Only then did she realise she was trembling with nerves. She’d managed to quell the urge to ask who this Miss Lopez was that the probation officer had mentioned. Somehow she had the strongest feeling that, in comparison with herself and her own humdrum life, Miss Lopez was anything but dead boring.

  4

  MARCUS

  Living in a building full of old people simply has to be the worst possible way to fly under the radar. I hadn’t considered this particular complication. Every time I see someone on the stairs, they ask me who I am, what I do, what I’m aiming for in life, if I’m married, if I have pets . . . It’s such a drag having to stop and be nice to everyone all the time.

  I’m just carrying my new punch bag up the stairs when I meet the girl from last night. She still has that ridiculous pink hat on with the pink bit of hair sticking out. She looks at me with her wide eyes, and I can read her like a book. The usual story. Another bitch with a college-girl face who’s gonna give me nothing but trouble. I have no problem with women who know what they want – we meet, we fuck, we say goodbye – but these girls straight out of bible school are the worst: they rip off your pants and then want you to marry them. I’ve always stayed away from that kind and I don’t plan on changing any time soon.

  I need to start avoiding her. If I give her an inch she’ll take a mile. She’s a loser who still lives with her elderly grandmother . . . I can already imagine the consequences of a throwaway fuck in that direction. They’d probably send round the parish priest to exorcise me.

  I see Malkovich and straight away a machine-gun fire of obscenities rattles through my mind. I thought he’d at least give me a minute to catch my breath before tracking me down for the usual interrogation. He always hated Francisca. He blames what happened on her, and does it with that faux-paternal air that pisses me off even more. I’d break his neck if I could, but I can’t. I don’t want to go back to prison, but anyone who says Francisca would have stopped me from killing that guy if she really loved me doesn’t know the first thing about the two of us. Francisca and I are the same, cut from the same cloth. We totally get each other, we think the same, we have the same needs. I’d have killed that guy no matter what.

  Not only does it bother me that Malkovich is here early, but also that he’s talking to that idiot girl who lives below me. What the hell is she telling him? It’s clearly nothing that serious though. I can tell by the way Malkovich is looking at me: kinda satisfied, without that horrib
le eyebrow he raises during his usual sermons full of my boy, my son, and don’t ruin your life now.

  The old woman could have kept her mouth shut. Does she really think I’d date her granddaughter? How on earth did she come up with that? It’s too much of a can of worms to even go there. Malkovich is happy, whatever – and I can’t tell him the truth if I don’t want to risk going back inside for another two years.

  I have to admit that, once he’s gone, the girl surprises me. I’d imagined her as the typical chick who plays hard to get and then puts her hand down my pants, but there’s more to her than I thought. She’s a bitch all right, to hear her talk – the kind who’d give me a serious kick in the balls if I got too close – but now she has me paying her more attention than I’d expected. OK, she’s pretty weird, with her pandas, that pink hair and the purple eyelashes to boot, but she has beautiful chocolate-coloured eyes, a sensual mouth and gorgeous legs. Her skirt today isn’t as short as the one she had on the other night, but it’s enough for any man with a discerning eye to notice that her thighs are worth a second look. I’m guessing she also has a nice ass. If I weren’t in the mess I was in, I’d do her for sure. If she’s this feisty in bed, we’d probably have a great time.

  There’s just one thing that’s bothering me: I can’t see Francisca. She’ll be out before long though, and it’s best not to piss off Malkovich. If we want to be left in peace, we need to start acting less with our guts and more with our heads.

  5

  The bar was crowded and noisy. The waitresses usually served food and drink at the tables, but on nights like this the thirsty patrons resembled a horde of zombies around a carcass, so Penny with her singular flair for mixing cocktails was stationed alongside Carlos, the regular bartender.

  Five minutes earlier, Grant had come up to the bar and mockingly ordered something from Penny. At the sight of him, she had frozen for a moment, the shaker in her hands and a snake of icy sweat running down her spine. Then she had whispered something into Carlos’s ear and dashed to take refuge in the small staff area where they stored their shoes and coats.

  Penny’s colleague Debbie came in just at that moment to look for aspirin in her bag, to swallow dry in the hopes that her damn headache would go away, and found Penny there, holed up like a cat in a box.

  ‘What are you doing in here?’ she asked. ‘It’s madness out there – now is no time to take a break.’

  ‘I’m coming,’ Penny muttered, thinking back to the sinister way Grant had looked at her a few moments earlier.

  ‘Did something happen?’

  ‘No, everything’s fine.’

  ‘Then hurry up, yeah? The place is heaving.’

  Penny nodded, getting to her feet. In any case, it was useless to try to escape. Prey always flees; but Penny did not intend on being Grant’s prey, nor did she plan on showing her fear, though in actual fact she could feel the fear flowing right through her, warm and salty, a fear that made her legs leaden and her arms go limp.

  She left the staff area and went back to the bar. Grant was still there; he hadn’t budged an inch, even though he was besieged on all sides by a crowd. His Bloody Mary was still untouched. Penny watched in horror as he licked his yellow straw in the most vilely suggestive manner before running his tongue over his lips. She looked away, sickened.

  For a couple of hours she tried to ignore his presence. Grant moved away from the bar, but he remained in the room, sitting at a table ordering things that she was sure he wouldn’t eat, simply to justify his presence. He was alone but people noticed him because he was handsome, well dressed, and unlike the other guys he didn’t look rotten as a wormy apple. He chatted up a few of the girls, but Penny knew he was there for her. He stayed until last call, and the place began to empty out. Suddenly the crowd melted away and Debbie, who was in charge of the floor because she was sleeping with the owner, ordered Penny to bring the cheques to her various customers.

  ‘Could you go instead, please?’ Penny ventured to ask.

  ‘Listen, missy, I’ve been working the floor for six hours with a killer headache while you’ve been standing behind that bar. Now move your ass and take those people their cheque.’

  ‘That one man has been bothering me . . .’

  ‘Bullshit. I can tell a troublemaker when I see one. No one bothered you. You’re just being paranoid.’

  And how was Penny supposed to respond? That a beautiful guy had stared at her all night with a smile on his face? What crime had he committed? She knew – she knew that his smile was equivalent to a sick promise, a silent way of telling her, As soon as you leave here, I’m going to hurt you as much as I can get away with. But that was hard for Penny to explain to anyone else.

  So, in spite of herself, she took the check over to the bastard. Grant continued to smile at her with his barefaced-lying sweetness.

  ‘Here you are at last, babe,’ he said. ‘I spent a fortune just to be near you, did you notice?’

  ‘Just pay and leave, please,’ Penny replied coldly.

  ‘I’ll pay, I’ll leave, but I’m waiting for you outside. It’s late, it’s going to rain and I have the car. I’ll take you home, so you’ll be perfectly safe. And since I love you, I’ll leave you a nice tip too, see?’ He pulled a fifty-dollar bill from his wallet and left it on top of what he owed. Then, dropping his voice so that only she could hear him, he whispered, ‘It’s an advance. If you turn out to be worth more, I’ll pay up later.’

  Penny took the money but left the fifty dollars. She walked away feeling soiled, as though someone had poured a stinking, sticky liquid all over her. She was definitely in trouble.

  She had no friends, there was no one she could call for a ride, and she couldn’t exactly call a cab just to go two blocks down the street. She had to find a solution, some way to avoid being alone and at the mercy of Grant’s not-so-mysterious intentions.

  In the staff area, Penny changed her shoes and put on her coat, then she asked Carlos a question and he replied, ‘Aren’t you tired yet?’

  And that’s how she found her way to the rear exit. It was a blind alley, a dead end, and a high wall separated it from the next street over.

  She needed all her strength to get out of there, climbing on to a garbage can and then scrambling over the barbed wire that ran along the top of the wall. She wasn’t exactly what you would call agile, but fear and need triggered a sudden burst of athleticism in her. Just as she was climbing over the barbed wire, she tore her pantyhose. Crap, she thought. She’d have to buy a new pair. Just focus on getting home safely – your pantyhose is no big deal.

  She made it over the wall, tearing the other leg of her tights on the way, then pulled her coat more tightly around her, cursing Grant and his whole family.

  Reaching the safety of the alleyway down the side of the building, she suddenly spotted him standing in front of the bar, waiting for her. She couldn’t go out that way or he’d follow her with that outwardly angelic air of his, no one any the wiser that his real intentions were full of violence and sex.

  So her only safe option was impossible after all. She quickly turned left and left again, and then began to run, wondering how far she could get before he came after her. There was no cab to jump into for those terrifying ten minutes to home, not even a stupid bus.

  Sometimes she’d turn to see if he was following, but unless he was hiding, there was no sign of him.

  After a while she saw the colourful sign of the Maraja nightclub ahead of her, and there was Marcus, smoking a cigarette with a girl in skintight jeans, boots with sky-high heels and a green fake-fur coat, whose laugh sounded like she’d been a nervous sheep in a previous life.

  Penny ran faster, desperate to reach them. Marcus had his back to her – that damn gorgeous back that looked like it had been sculpted by Michelangelo himself. Peering around the side of Marcus, the girl caught sight of her and gave her a curious look. Only then did Penny realise the state she was in: the torn pantyhose and a gash on one knee, blood
dripping all the way down to her shoes. To complete the picture, she was pouring with sweat and wheezing.

  Marcus turned, and for a moment his eyes, like liquid mercury, stared at her without recognition. Finally, from behind his usual veil of smoke, he asked, ‘So what do you want?’

  He punctuated his question with a searing look, and Penny first raised her eyes to the heavens, as if seeking forgiveness for having abandoned her senses in choosing to turn to this caveman for help. And then she dropped them in an attempt to apologise to her nether regions, because, despite all reason and logic, they were clearly not indifferent at all to that primitive call. There was nothing she could do about it: she just found this man wildly attractive. One glimpse of him and her DNA, hormones, molecules and atoms danced the samba.

  ‘What actually happened to you?’ Marcus asked again, looking at her legs and the blood.

  ‘Oh, nothing. I got into a fight with a dumpster. Can I tell you something? Without an audience?’ Penny said, pointing to the girl in the heels and the fur, who took another drag on her cigarette, thoroughly enjoying the spectacle of this wounded bag lady. Marcus turned to the woman and, without him needing to say a word, she shrugged her shoulders and flicked her cigarette on to the ground, crushing it with the pointed toe of her boot before marching back inside.

  Once they were alone on the unusually deserted sidewalk, Penny went on the attack. ‘I changed my mind,’ she said with a determined air.

  ‘Are you drunk? Because I don’t understand you,’ Marcus objected, chucking his cigarette and kicking it down the street.

  Penny thought back to Grant and his secret threats, and let out a deep sigh. ‘I told you I didn’t want anything in return for that favour with your parole officer.’

  Marcus’s lip curled in that way people’s do when they find out they’re right after all. ‘So you’ve changed your mind? Well, what a surprise, though I’d rather die than go to bed with you.’