Trying Not To Love You

by Amabile Giusti

  ‘I’ll get it. You get in the car.’

  Penny sat in the driver’s seat and watched as Marcus went inside. There was a bit of a crowd, especially truck drivers and hangers-on.

  While she was waiting, someone tapped on the window. Penny winced, noticing a man in his thirties with bleached blond hair and the look of a biker from the Seventies. She didn’t even have time to understand what he wanted before she saw Marcus come up behind him. He had a bottle of water in one hand, and with the other he gripped the back of the man’s neck and pulled him backwards.

  ‘Get the fuck out of here,’ he said, in a calm voice that would have made Dracula tremble. Then he let him go and the man, who had looked as though he was gearing up for a fight before he saw Marcus staring at him with eyes that looked like the very fires of hell, stammered a few words of apology and disappeared.

  Marcus climbed back into the car and literally threw the bottle between the seats.

  ‘He didn’t do anything wrong,’ Penny protested. ‘Maybe he just wanted to know what time it was.’

  ‘Listen, little princess,’ he yelled at her in a fury, ‘I wanna get to the prison, OK? We’re late. From now on, no more stops, even if you have to hold it. And he didn’t want to know what time it was. His pants were unzipped and he was flying free.’

  Penny blushed, murmuring, ‘I don’t . . . I didn’t . . . I didn’t realise . . .’

  ‘Look, if a woman wants to go around with her pussy in the wind, she has the right to do it without anyone touching her. This, however, only holds true in a perfect world. In this shitty world, you’ll end up with your legs open against a guardrail within ten seconds. I don’t care how you dress, but I’d like to avoid getting into trouble just because you want to prove you have nice thighs.’

  Penny nodded, dazed. Of everything Marcus had said, the thing that struck her most was his implicit compliment about her thighs.

  She was searched, just as Marcus had said she’d be. A female guard patted her down, making her take off her jacket, which was in turn inspected. She had to leave her ID, and explain which detainee she intended to meet and the reason for the visit.

  She’d imagined being led into an impersonal booth, the kind where two people communicate with each other through a glass wall using an intercom, but instead found herself in a room full of scattered tables where many other visitors were sitting. No doubt most of them were husbands, mothers, sisters – somebody’s young children, even. A narrow window let in natural light. On the tables stood bottles of water and plastic cups.

  She sat down to wait. She was scared. She was dying to meet Francisca and at the same time she desperately wanted to get up and leave, but she’d made a solemn promise, and though it cost her she wanted to stand by her word.

  As the first inmates arrived, she saw hugs and smiles and a small crying child with his arms flung around his mother’s legs. A buzz began to spread through the room, like in school during break time.

  She’d expected a more hostile, gloomy atmosphere, but instead everyone was chatting to each other in a normal way. They were laughing even, or sharing tales of their kids’ successes at school, or stories about a nosy neighbour, as if none of the prisoners were wearing orange jumpsuits with the words ‘Property of the State of Connecticut’ on them, as if they’d never committed any crime more serious than kicking a tin can down the road.

  Penny looked at her watch, and then out the window, then back at her watch. Finally, she glanced up at the door and spotted her.

  Francisca.

  She understood at once why Marcus was so enthralled by her, by her energy. She was an immediate sensation, an instant emotion.

  Somehow Francisca was hypnotising even in the way she looked at other people, the way she walked and in the resolute gesture with which she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. She wasn’t just straightforwardly beautiful, but commandingly so, wild and impetuous in her looks to anyone with eyes to see. She was a purebred horse; a fierce siren. She was Marcus in female form: tall, strong and well-muscled like he was, but also overwhelmingly feminine – a superior femme fatale. One of those rare beauties who can drive a man to kill.

  Her hair was shorter than in the photo, but not by much; it fell over her shoulders in soft, shiny black waves that no prison could manage to tarnish. She was caramel-skinned with large eyes, two clear black almonds studded with gold specks in the irises. Under the sleeves of the orange uniform, Penny could well imagine tribal tattoos like the ones on Marcus.

  Penny looked the woman up and down, and felt her heart slipping to the floor and drowning in a lake of tears.

  Francisca looked at her and sat in the chair opposite. ‘Do we know each other?’ she asked, seeming uninterested and speaking with a vaguely Latina accent.

  ‘We don’t, but . . . I’m a friend of Marcus,’ Penny replied. She felt as vulnerable as a bird stripped of its wings and feathers.

  Francisca raised an eyebrow. ‘Marcus doesn’t generally have friends,’ she said, now looking Penny up and down with more interest.

  ‘Well, he does now.’ At the back of the room a woman blew out a birthday candle on a cake. Someone applauded her, inviting her to open packages with big yellow bows. Someone else let out a shrill laugh. A man said something to his wife in a heartfelt tone.

  Penny forced herself to put up with Francisca’s fierce gaze. She explained that she lived in the same building as Marcus, that they had become friends and that she was there to deliver a message from him. She did not tell Francisca that she feared she was in love with him, that she dreamed of him every night, that when she touched him, by accident or mistake or by pretending it was by accident or mistake, she felt the fires burning strong in her chest. She didn’t tell her that being there, pretending to be a go-between, was punishment for her soul.

  Francisca remained silent for a few moments. She didn’t smile or even seem to breathe as she looked out the window, towards the end of the sunlit courtyard.

  Finally, staring back at her, she said something that Penny was definitely not expecting. ‘I’m sorry for you, chica.’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘I’m sorry for two reasons. If you fall in love with him and he doesn’t like you back, I’m sorry because it’ll be like someone breaking your legs. And if he does like you, then as soon as I get out, I’ll break your legs.’

  ‘He doesn’t like me, you can be sure of that,’ Penny murmured, and for a moment she felt a chill. Of the two alternatives, the most realistic was the first.

  ‘Are you fucking him?’ Francisca fired back at her.

  ‘No!’

  ‘If you’re just fucking, I don’t care. Have fun while I’m in here, but once I’m out you can forget it.’ As she said that, she reached out in Penny’s direction and squeezed her hand. Penny’s fingers squirmed in the tight grip. At the same time, she noticed something on Francisca’s wrist. Just below her palm was a jagged scar a few inches long. An old wound; the unmistakable trace of a cut. It was pink now, and shiny like mother-of-pearl. To be that light in colour, the scar must have been old, though Francisca couldn’t be any more than twenty-five. The mere thought that a child might want to attempt suicide made Penny’s blood run cold.

  Francisca noticed Penny’s look and pulled her hand down into her lap. That gesture, that modesty, from a tattooed convict who was clearly threatening her, evoked an unexpected feeling of tenderness in Penny.

  ‘Marcus thinks about you all the time,’ she told Francisca in all sincerity.

  ‘And how would you know? You his confessor or something?’

  ‘No, it’s just that sometimes we talk . . .’

  ‘Talk?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘I don’t have a list of our exact conversation topics. I just came to let you know that he can’t write to you because of his parole officer, but he can’t wait for you to get out so you can go off together.’

  ‘And he’s said all this to you?�
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  ‘Why does that seem so strange?’

  ‘He and I, we trust no one.’

  ‘You’re trusting me right now.’

  ‘I don’t even know who you are.’

  Penny smiled and introduced herself in a mock-formal manner. ‘Hi, my name is Penny. I’m twenty-two years old, I like reading and I’m afraid of the dark. Marcus and I met by chance. We happen to talk but we don’t fuck. If you want to write, I’ll can give him your letters, and I’ll send you his letters from my address. Here’s my address. Trust me if you want to, but I can’t force you if you don’t.’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’

  ‘You and Marcus are so alike. He also asks me why I do this or that. There is no reason. Can a person not be kind without having a secret motive?’

  ‘No. If someone’s nice they want to fuck you over.’

  ‘Not me.’

  ‘You’re the type who could really fuck someone over.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘You have the face of a fucking angel.’

  ‘I’m no angel.’

  ‘I bet you’re even a virgin.’

  ‘One, that’s my business, and two, that wouldn’t make me an angel. You want me to tell him anything?’

  ‘Tell him that when I get out, I’ll suck him off until the last drop.’

  Penny blushed and shifted a little uncomfortably in her chair. Just then, a guard entered the room and informed everyone that visiting hours had ended. Francisca gave her a look that was ironic and mad at the same time.

  ‘Don’t even think about trying to take my man from me,’ she told Penny just before she got up. And thus she made her exit, as beautiful and bitchy as when she came in.

  Marcus was waiting for Penny in the prison parking lot, leaning against the Bentley, which looked like a big blue bathtub. Fidgety as a kid, he had smoked something like a billion cigarettes, all of them dropped at his feet in a mosaic of spent butts. As soon as he saw her returning, he questioned her with his eyes, full of a piercing passion. Penny told him almost everything she and Francisca had said. She didn’t include the part about the sucking off.

  Soon after, they fell into a dead silence. Penny was plunged into misery, the kind that comes suddenly and grips your heart in a vice. She was jealous of Francisca. Francisca was probably also jealous of her, but not because she seriously feared she could be replaced; no sane man would ever prefer sweet little Penny, with her short hair like a doll and her stupid love stories, to a woman like this. Francisca was only annoyed because Marcus had confided in Penny about his own life, and consequently their life together – that he had allowed Penny the smallest glimpse into their world, even though it was shortly to be closed off from her forever. Like a dog marking its territory, Francisca had wanted to make Penny understand that Marcus was all hers.

  And he really was. Whatever had drawn those two together in the first place remained sealed in an inextricable bond.

  Penny and Marcus set off quickly, and as the afternoon advanced they found themselves driving along country roads. The leaves of the trees were the colour of blood, and Penny found herself wondering if Francisca had a tattoo the same as Marcus’s, the one with a pierced heart. She was certain she did. She imagined them getting the tattoos together, like kids carving declarations of love into the bark of trees.

  Suddenly, Marcus put a hand on her arm, making her jump.

  ‘Can I ask what’s wrong with you?’ he asked, between two breathfuls of smoke.

  ‘If I talk too much you tell me to shut up. If I’m quiet, you ask me why. You’re never satisfied,’ she replied, annoyed.

  ‘Did Francisca upset you with a few choice comments? That would be just like her.’

  ‘No – what makes you think that?’

  ‘She likes bugging people,’ he observed, as if proud of it.

  ‘To tell you the truth, I was minding my own business. I’m really not thinking about you and your incredible beauty all the time.’

  ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘It’s four o’clock. Are you hungry?’ Marcus repeated.

  ‘A little, but we’re in the middle of nowhere and I’m not up for hunting.’

  ‘Let’s get a sandwich.’

  ‘I don’t want to end up at another gas station with flashers, thanks – assuming we find another one. We passed the last one a while back.’

  ‘While you were inside I took a look in the trunk. Your grandmother filled it with food. How long did she think we’d be gone?’

  ‘I wouldn’t trust it. Grandma is a treasure, but it’s probably not edible.’

  ‘Let’s risk it. I’m hungry, and when I’m hungry, I can’t think.’

  Do you want to eat me?

  ‘OK, let’s see what she made.’

  They stopped in an open area covered with drifting leaves. The views of the Connecticut countryside would have been wonderful for anyone willing to admire them, but Penny, who normally loved to get lost in nature and became intoxicated at the beauty of everything not created by humankind, found she had little interest, and couldn’t even bring herself to enjoy the hillside dotted with trees leading down to the banks of a small river.

  There actually was a bag full of food in the trunk of the car. The cookies smelled of soap and were immediately discarded. She was afraid to taste the mess of who-knows-what or the cake. Fortunately, the bread was bread, and the cheese didn’t look like soap. The apples were undoubtedly edible too.

  ‘Well, at least we won’t die of hunger, except now I need a pee.’

  ‘You’re like a leaking faucet. You make me laugh.’

  ‘When you get old and have prostate problems, I’ll laugh at you.’

  ‘I’m never going to get old.’

  ‘Will you be forever young?’

  ‘I’ll die first.’

  Penny bit her lip, thinking that yes, it was quite possible that neither he nor Francisca would live to see thirty.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said.

  ‘What a gentleman you are, but no, I don’t need protection from the raccoons. That is, I’m assuming your intentions towards me aren’t sexual.’

  She walked away to pee. Afterwards, as if suddenly all her senses had grown sharper, she heard the river flowing a few feet away. She scrambled down the slope and stopped a short distance from the sparkling, hypnotic water. A little further down, the river grew broader, the two banks connected by an attractive iron bridge, painted red like Marcus’s tattooed heart. She sank down on a carpet of crisp leaves, thinking how much she would like to live in such a place, in the middle of nature, surrounded by animals. Waking in the morning, before the sun got going for the day. Harvesting the produce from her own vegetable garden. Keeping livestock in her own pastures. Chopping wood and watching it flame up in a stone fireplace. Hiking for hours in the open without meeting a soul. Tasting newly fallen snowflakes on her tongue. Brushing Barbie’s long hair while her grandma sat stroking an orange cat on her lap. Loving someone under the warm covers, while the wind outside banged the shutters. Beautiful dreams, large and small.

  ‘Penny!’ Marcus’s voice brought her back to reality. He had come down the slope and was staring at her strangely. ‘What are you doing, disappearing like that?’

  ‘I haven’t disappeared, I’m right here.’

  ‘I was worried when you didn’t come back.’

  ‘You were worried about me?’

  Marcus frowned for a moment, and then said teasingly, ‘Well, if something happens to you, who gets to pay me my fifty dollars every week?’

  ‘And, above all, who will receive Francisca’s letters?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘It’s nice to be important to someone. Let’s go eat – come on.’

  He helped her to her feet, and they climbed back up to the car where they devoured the sandwiches and fruit, washed down with fresh water from the stream. Marcus also took a pee but didn’t bother going behind a tree, just turned
his back on Penny and went right in front of her.

  Just as the sun was about to set, they got into the car to leave, but the engine was dead. The key turned in the ignition, but no engine fired up to break the woodland peace.

  Penny and Marcus gazed at each other for a long moment before the light faded and darkness swallowed everything up.

  For once, he hadn’t brought his flashlight with him. The road wasn’t lit; the car looked like a dead dinosaur. Their phones had no signal, and even if they had, who could they call? In daytime they would have walked towards the last gas station they had seen, some ten miles away, but at night this would be dangerous, if not downright suicidal.

  ‘So what are we going to do now?’ asked Penny, in a tone that didn’t quite fit with her resolve to always be brave.

  Marcus’s voice answered from the darkness. ‘Nothing. We’ll sleep here.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Well, we don’t have much choice.’

  ‘But it’s cold, and who knows what kind of people hang around here!’

  ‘Didn’t you say there are only raccoons?’

  ‘I have a problem with the dark, Marcus,’ she said in a small voice, close to the edge of panic. ‘Especially when it’s so . . . dark.’

  Unexpectedly, he took her hand. In the darkness, Penny felt the sudden, rough and enveloping heat, and her heart jumped like that of a tightrope walker.

  ‘It’s not totally dark. Look up there.’

  Penny lifted her face and looked up at the sky. There was no moon, but the stars were suddenly shining like tiny, distant pricks of light, as if someone had lit a million birthday candles. She stopped being so afraid, her breathing calmed and her anxiety fell away.

  ‘Let’s get in the back,’ Marcus told her. ‘There’s more space there.’

  Now she’d dealt with her fear of the dark, another fear suddenly began to creep into Penny’s thoughts. Would they end up having to sleep together on the back seat of the car? The same seat where generations of young people had made love, and probably even Mr Donaldson years before? That knowledge tugged at her guts, and the fever she’d been running for the past two weeks, ever since meeting Marcus, burned in a secret and intimate corner of her.