They moved to the back together. Fortunately, the Bentley was huge, a dance floor on wheels, so the back seat was practically the size of a bed. Until right this minute, Penny had always cursed the darkness, but now she thanked it, or he would have seen her blushing.
When Marcus took off his jacket, the rustling of the wool seemed amplified in the silence of the car.
‘Put it on, because you’re practically naked,’ he said.
He didn’t have to ask twice. Thin tights and cold leather boots certainly weren’t enough to keep Penny warm. Even Marcus’s jacket wasn’t enough, to be honest, even if it did reach down to her knees.
‘OK, let’s do this,’ he continued. ‘I’ll lie down and you lie next to me.’
‘Huh?’
‘You want to freeze?’
No, but I don’t want to die of a broken heart either.
‘Of course not.’
‘Then lie down with me.’
‘OK, but keep your hands to yourself.’
Please don’t keep your hands to yourself!
‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ he snapped.
Pretty quickly, they found themselves hugging each other on the back seat of the old Bentley. Marcus’s legs were too long so he had to bend them, but Penny found a strangely comfortable position in a gap between his body and the back of the seat. Touching him, clinging to his chest, she felt a sort of intoxication, as if she’d drunk one of those strong cocktails she mixed up every night but never got to taste. Just like she’d imagined, his chest looked as though it was carved out of granite – solid, broad and yet so very warm.
She tried to fall asleep but it wasn’t easy. In fact, it was almost impossible. How on earth could she end up in the arms of sleep when she lay huddled in Marcus’s arms? How could she think of sleep when her heart beat so wildly in her ears, hysterical as a madman’s cry? She feared he might hear it and make fun of her, of her excitement, of her cheeks flushed with desire. She was about to say something to him, anything to silence that rumble from her chest that seemed more deafening to her than a bass drum, when suddenly Marcus asked her, ‘Just why are you so afraid of the dark?’ His voice sounded close to her ear and a shiver ran down her spine, making her hair stand up on the back of her neck.
‘Maybe because of the accident.’
‘What accident?’
‘The one my parents died in.’
‘I didn’t know about that . . .’
‘Why would you? It was a long time ago. I was five, and we used to travel around in a caravan. One day, we got into a hit-and-run. My parents died on impact and I was buried in the wreckage for hours until they found me. I don’t even remember it, but I’m still really afraid of the dark.’
‘Shit.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Are you cold?’
‘No, not now.’
I’m way too hot.
‘Thanks, Marcus.’
‘Thanks for what?’ he snapped.
‘I don’t know. Everything, I think.’
‘I don’t know what that means. You’re so weird, Penny.’
‘When you leave, will you come say goodbye to me?’
‘I don’t think so. One day you just won’t see me anymore and that’ll be bye-bye.’
‘And what will I do without you?’
‘Find yourself a decent man, fuck him good and you’ll forget about me.’
Penny thought about it for a moment. ‘Well, I guess I will.’
‘Good.’
‘Aren’t you going to sleep?’
‘In the middle of the woods?’
‘You afraid of an ambush by the local raccoons or something?’
‘No, I’m afraid of an ambush by the local assholes. I’m sure nothing will happen, but it’s better to be careful.’
‘You always seem to be at war with something or someone.’
‘I am always at war.’
‘I could tell that from your tattoos. I like them a lot.’
‘I know.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Everyone likes them. And the women give me a blowjob after they’re done looking at them.’
‘You do it on purpose, don’t you? You want to embarrass me or punish me for something. I don’t understand you.’
‘It’s the simple truth. I’ve had the best blowjobs in my life from girls who admired my tattoos right before they did it.’
‘This is not one of those times, you do realise that?’
‘So stop talking about my tattoos or my reflexes might kick in.’
‘You’re sick.’
‘I’m a man with a half-naked girl on him. Your breast is pressing on my shoulder and my hand is on your ass. You don’t have to be some rare breed of pussy to get me thinking naughty thoughts, OK? It happens to the body even when the head doesn’t care.’
‘In other words, you only think with—’
‘I wouldn’t say only. If I only thought with that we wouldn’t be talking right now. You’d be lying under me, stripped naked, but instead I’m putting up with your bullshit, so I’d say I’m using my head all right.’
Penny fell silent. The discovery of not being altogether invisible to him wasn’t particularly flattering. What was more upsetting to her was that Marcus’s head didn’t care – that his mind and body clearly travelled on two separate paths. Yes, Marcus would have sex with her, but purely on a physical basis, without his own heart being pierced. She was just like the others, that was all, and she’d have done well to realise that before getting seriously involved. Besides, she’d seen Francisca now, hadn’t she? How could she ever hope to compete with her? She had to find some way out of this mess.
It seemed nothing short of a miracle, but the car started with no problem at all the following morning. It was almost as if it had broken down on purpose, the old pimp. At dawn, they sprung apart and climbed stiffly out of the car, slithering down the slope to cup their hands and drink from the stream, and then they left. The air was cold, the colours still dull, but as the sun came up with its rosy light, the glistening leaves once again resembled drops of congealed blood.
Neither Penny nor Marcus spoke the whole way home, as if divided by something better left unsaid. Each kept to themselves, and when they arrived at their destination Marcus said goodbye to her on the stairs without even looking at her.
‘No need to get sentimental now!’ Penny shouted at his receding back. He didn’t turn around, but raised an arm and gave her the finger before disappearing from view.
10
MARCUS
I can’t tell if Penny is naive or just stupid. As soon as I see her all dressed up like that, it makes me want to turn the air blue with my curses. I hold back because there are old people around and because I swore to myself to pay her as little notice as possible. Having discovered that my private parts would gladly bump into hers, despite what I claimed, I’ve barely said a word to her. The less she speaks, the less I stress. When she talks, it makes me want to look at her mouth, and from there a whole flood of obscene thoughts rushes through me. I keep repeating to myself: I don’t want to fuck Penny, I don’t want to fuck Penny. When actually I want to fuck her so much.
This is totally weird for me, because generally I don’t think like this – when I like a woman, I either do it or I don’t, and then bye-bye.
This time, I think about what I’d like to do to her and with her, but I don’t do it. And I have no idea why not. What the hell is the matter with me? I’ve seen quite a few naked women, many of them way more beautiful than her, so why have I been in this constant state of excitement ever since watching her get dressed, while she was completely unaware I was spying on her?
What does it all mean? Why do my pants swell with a throbbing erection every time I remember her back and that slender spine?
If I had any time to waste, I’d go see a doctor in case I have some mysterious illness, but I’m too busy for that, so instead I’ll just try to resist her.
You k
now, I’d really like to strangle her because of what she’s wearing today. Not only because of the effect it has on me, but because of what I think it’ll do to other guys. I realise that, in a sense, she’s my responsibility today, and if someone steps out of line I have to intervene, but I’d like to avoid that. The little idiot doesn’t realise that if you’re made of meat and have two legs then you’re not going to go unnoticed, especially if you put them on display in a dress that barely covers your ass. I repeat: Is she naive, stupid or just a provocative bitch?
So this guy who peeks at her through the car window with his zipper down – half high, half drunk, and who knows what else – I really wanna give him a good kicking, but I manage to hold back. I need to stay calm. I need to stay calm. I have to think of Francisca and how she’ll be out soon. Like I always say, everything else is shit.
She comes out of the prison as pale as a corpse and staggers around, looking like a little girl in her mother’s high heels. I have to hold back the absurd impulse to steady her.
She tells me about her meeting with Francisca in a weak and toneless voice, and then she falls silent, like all her batteries have run out. I ought to be happy, but no – I’d love to know what she’s thinking, but she won’t answer me. She turns her back, treats me like a stranger. OK, so I am a stranger, but I think I have a bit of a right to know if Francisca actually went for her. I need to know everything that’s going on with Francisca and I have the distinct feeling that Penny’s hiding something from me.
I smoke like a demon and then ask if she’s hungry. We eat, we drink, we don’t talk much. And then the car decides to die and everything goes to shit.
We’re forced to sleep in the car. The darkness is so thick you could cut it. I can tell she’s terrified, because her breathing is heavy like the first time I met her on the stairs. I don’t know why I still feel responsible for her. I try to comfort her in my own way. If you look at the stars, I say, you can’t be afraid.
The worst is when we lie in the back. Maybe we should have stayed in our separate seats, but it’s way too cold for that. The problem is that when she’s close to me, she smells so good and my body declares war on what my brain says, so to cover it up I come out with the heavy, mocking words of a complete asshole.
The truth is I’d like to comfort her in a whole other way. As soon as I get back I need to find a woman to fuck; I can’t behave myself when I’m exploding like this. I’m sure if I just get this out of my system the madness will pass, but meanwhile I need to get through the night. I have to order my body not to do what it wants. I have to order my mind to stop imagining Penny, sweet and wild, utterly naked except for her high-heeled boots, those magnificent thighs spread and waiting for me, lying back on this very seat.
I can’t wait for dawn so we can try to get this shit car working and get home. Then I can write to Francisca, wait for her reply, and go back to life as I know it.
I leave Penny on the stairs without even thanking her. After all, she offered to do this thing – I didn’t ask. At home I take off my clothes and take a shower. Despite the cold water and my good intentions, I am desperately excited. With one arm resting on the tiled wall, I jerk off under the stream of water. It’s the last time I’ll ever do such a thing, the last time I’ll think of that little girl in that way, imagining her under this same water, her lips parted in a low moan. Starting tomorrow – no, tonight – I’m gonna start fucking whoever I find. If this thing with Penny is the result of moderation, I prefer to go overboard. I’m sure Francisca would prefer that.
11
Ever since the day Grant showed up at the library, Penny had been wary. If she had to go put a book back on a shelf in some distant corner, she did it with her heart in her throat, for fear that her worst nightmare would suddenly come true. One afternoon, when she had just climbed to the top step of the ladder, she heard a voice calling from below and nearly fell.
She descended slowly, carrying a heavy volume and ready to hurl it in his face if necessary, but then realised it wasn’t Grant, or even some other man. A girl was smiling up at her, and Penny tried hard to remember where she had seen her before. She was tall and very slim, with an edgy haircut and veneers on her teeth. They were too white and perfect to be real.
‘Penny Miller, don’t you remember me?’ the girl asked, shaking her hand.
Penny’s brain flashed through moments from her past: sweet sixteen, high school days, her fury at her grandmother for insisting on moving her to a school way out of their neighbourhood – an expensive school that had drained Barbie’s savings, terrific in educational terms but full of racist assholes.
Then, ‘Rebecca Day?’ she exclaimed, very nearly tempted to ask her where she had left the other half of herself, since she barely weighed a hundred pounds. Penny was no giant, but her former schoolmate looked like she hadn’t eaten in months. Penny’s first thought was that she was sick, but that smile, those clothes that must have cost at least six times her own salary, and her air of triumph told her that Rebecca was yet another of those underfed aspiring-model types. Penny couldn’t understand what she was doing here, so far out of the way for her, given that she was from uptown.
‘Yes, it really is me! We were looking for you.’
‘You and who else were looking for me? And why?’
A new figure now emerged from behind a shelf. This person Penny recognised immediately. It was Igor, another classmate – her first crush. He was still very cute, with blond curls and moss-green eyes. Not that there had ever been anything between them; she had merely dreamed endlessly about him and composed gushing fantasies, mostly involving the remote possibility that they would one day get married. All this had been scribbled down in a ridiculous diary with a cover that was as rose-tinted as her romantic hopes. They had not got married, of course; in fact, they had barely exchanged two words with each other at school, and after they graduated they had completely lost sight of each other. So what on earth were her old classmates doing here now?
‘We went to your apartment and your grandmother said you worked here,’ Rebecca explained, tucking her hair behind her ear in a studied gesture. She had a perfect manicure, each nail with a different colour glitter on it. The skin on her hands was typical of someone who had never worked a day in her whole life, other than putting on costly scented creams.
For a moment, Penny felt herself sucked back in time by some cruel and unseen force. She was a little girl again – alone, humiliated, angry like Stephen King’s Carrie, but without the supernatural powers she needed to fight back against a bunch of assholes. She had defended herself in any case, but not in the way she’d have liked. Not by burning it all to the ground.
That powerful impulse didn’t last long, however, and almost immediately the new Penny came back in force, the one who didn’t care, the one who said what she thought and didn’t let herself get steamrollered.
‘Are you looking for a particular book?’ she asked, looking down at them, just as they had looked at her back then and were trying to do again now. Only, they were at a disadvantage on several levels, and couldn’t hurt her anymore. Igor was looked more like his high school self than Rebecca: he was tall, although Penny’s concept of height had changed somewhat since meeting Marcus. She used to think six foot was very tall, but now it barely seemed to hit the mark. He was dressed in a style similar to that of his schooldays, a blend of quirky and traditional: a tweed jacket and jeans, with a slight beard and a small earring in one ear.
‘We need you,’ Igor said, speaking for the first time.
Penny could see they were losing patience.
‘Want to tell me what this is about, or should we play a guessing game?’
Rebecca smiled again, and Penny could practically hear her cheeks squeaking like rusty knobs, forced to simulate a friendliness she didn’t feel.
‘We’re organising a reunion,’ Rebecca informed her. ‘We’re trying to contact everyone in our class. It’ll be a whole lot of fun! We can all see
how we’ve changed – share our successes . . .’ she added, with the obvious intention of revealing all of her successes and laughing about the failures of others. ‘I’m getting married!’ she continued. ‘My fiancé is an entrepreneur.’
She stretched out a hand in the typical gesture of a future bride showing the world a very respectable ring, hoping to arouse envy and even a few stomach cramps. Penny saw the flash of a diamond the size of a hazelnut, surrounded by a ring of smaller diamonds. It stood out grotesquely, like a cyst, on her bony ring finger.
‘Congratulations,’ she said indifferently.
Then she noticed that, behind Rebecca’s back, Igor was winking at her and gesturing down his throat with two fingers like he wanted to vomit. Penny smiled at him instinctively, and Rebecca thought she was smiling at her.
‘So, are you coming?’ she asked.
‘Er . . . when is this?’
‘Saturday, at my boyfriend’s house. He’s letting us use his mansion!’
So we can all see for ourselves just how rich he is.
‘Well . . . I’ll need to check. I work on Saturdays.’
‘Let me know – here’s my number. Feel free to bring a plus one.’
‘A plus one? Who do you have in mind exactly?’
Igor snorted, puffing out his cheeks. ‘She wants to know if you’ve been hung out to dry like a stocking with a run in it, or if you have a boyfriend.’
‘Oh, come on!’ Rebecca replied in a shrill little voice. ‘Not everyone has to go and get engaged! But then again, as far as I can remember, the boys never really liked you, Penny. You never dated anyone at school. Don’t worry. If you come on your own, that’s fine too.’ Her casual tone seemed to express her full compassion and understanding, but she could barely disguise the triumph and gloating that loomed beneath.
‘Well, I’m not on my own,’ Penny said, before even thinking about the whole backstory to this lie.
‘You’re not? You’ve got a boyfriend?’
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