She didn’t care that she hadn’t come. She only cared how hard life would be for her from that moment on – not because of what had happened to her body, but to her heart. Marcus would be able to forget all about it: for him, apart from the blood, it had been a fuck like any other.
I’ll never be Francisca, but then that’s not exactly news. I knew that already and chose Marcus all the same.
And so Penny cried, but not from the pain of her particular wound. How would she behave when she saw Marcus tomorrow? What would they talk about when they walked home at night? Would he continue to have sex with other women?
Am I actually no better than that girl behind the club, in fact?
Does every woman seem the same to Marcus, except for Francisca?
And how will I get through the days once he goes away with her?
Following her sleepless night, Penny got up at dawn. She tidied the apartment and made breakfast for her grandma, then showered and changed – not to cleanse herself of Marcus, but to try to shift her melancholy.
She was brushing out Barbie’s long hair when it suddenly came into her head to ask, ‘Do you remember John, Grandma?’
Penny saw Barbie’s smiling face reflected in the round mirror she held in her hand. ‘Of course I remember. How could I ever forget? Great loves are never forgotten.’
‘Was he in love with you?’
‘Of course he was, my darling, otherwise I would never have done what I did.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Something you’re not supposed to. I’m a little ashamed – I’ve never told anyone before.’
Penny stopped her brushing for a moment. ‘What was it? You can tell me.’
Barbie sighed like a lovestruck teenager. ‘He was my first in every sense.’
‘You mean that you . . . ?’
‘Yes, that’s what I mean.’
‘You never told me.’
‘Because you’ve never been in love until now.’
‘But I . . . don’t know if . . . if I am in love.’
‘Yes, you most certainly are, but remember: no kisses without a ring, or he’ll leave and you’ll have to marry someone else because you’re pregnant.’
Penny dropped the brush and bent down to pick it up, her mind in shock, her movements slow, like those of someone underwater. ‘You mean you fell pregnant?’
‘Yes, but I never told anyone. I agreed to marry your grandfather right away, so no one ever knew a thing about it.’
‘You mean my dad . . . wasn’t the son of Grandpa Ernest, but . . . John?’
Barbie turned and looked at her with glistening eyes. ‘Are you mad at me, sweetheart? Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.’
Penny knelt in front of her and took her hands. ‘Don’t worry, Grandma, it’s OK. If you were in love then you did the right thing, and it makes me happy when you confide in me.’
Barbie smiled again and Penny perfumed her hair with her favourite rose talc. Meanwhile, she wondered how much more there was to the story. Probably very little and maybe nothing at all; Barbie often reworked memories in her own way, twisting the past and the present, flavouring them with a good helping of imagination. Maybe this John never existed at all, or maybe he was John Wayne himself, an actor she’d fallen in love with as a girl and had turned into a myth to brighten the story of her past. Barbie had not had an easy life. Penny had lost her parents when she was too small to remember, but her grandma had lost her son while her mind was still fresh and clear. Maybe her gradual mental decline had started right at that point, when she was battling with that unbearable pain, and then her stroke had delivered the final blow. Maybe that was why she now told stories, a thousand stories – always new, always enriched by some little nuance she’d never revealed before.
Anything was possible.
Anything except for this: to keep the promise Penny had just made to her. Because even in the absence of a ring and a pledge of lifelong commitment, she had already given Marcus everything she had to offer.
She saw the letter when she left the apartment to head to the library. It was lying there on the floor, slipped under the door by the mailman perhaps. It just had to be from Francisca.
She took it and stared at the stairs leading up to Marcus’s attic. She could have gone up there and put it under his door, but instead she put the envelope in her bag and set off for work.
All afternoon she felt as if she were sitting on a time bomb that could blow up the library. She also felt guilty, because part of her wanted to burn it and pretend she had never got it in the first place.
She tucked herself away in a secluded corner, the one dedicated to Russian writers that almost nobody read, and pulled out the letter. She sniffed it but could detect no trace of perfume. Francisca’s pen had scored deep grooves into the surface of the envelope. Who knew what she might have written, but above all, who knew what he would write back in reply? Would he tell her about Penny?
You know, I fucked that little girl who came to see you in prison. What do you want – she’s doing us a ton of favours and I had to throw her a bone, but don’t worry, it wasn’t great. She was stiffer than a statue, and can you believe she was still a virgin! The bitch stained my bedding.
No, Marcus wouldn’t say a word, nor did he think of Penny in that way. She was convinced he did love her in his own way. That strange night of hot, wild sex – though certainly not memorable to him, except for the small detail at the end – would remain their secret.
We have a secret.
Sliding the letter back into her bag, she heard a male voice say ‘Hi!’ behind her.
Her first thought was Grant. He’d been gone for weeks now, but that didn’t mean he’d given up. She had only one weapon with which to defend herself: a book. She could hit him with a copy of War and Peace – that would hurt quite a bit. She reached out and grabbed the bulky tome, then spun around.
It was Igor.
She was so stunned that she stared at him for a good thirty seconds, as if he were some bizarre hallucination. It was Igor who snapped her out of it.
‘Well, I can tell you’re surprised to see me,’ he said with a smile, ‘but I’m not sure if you’re pleased or not. Were you planning to clock me on the head with that?’
Penny, frozen like a shot-putter mid-throw, shook her head and then placed the book back on the shelf.
Igor was holding a bag emblazoned with the logo of a famous city bakery. He was wearing jeans and his usual tweed jacket over a T-shirt printed with the Mona Lisa sticking out her tongue.
‘Er . . . yes,’ Penny admitted. ‘I never dreamed I’d be seeing you again.’
‘And why would you think that? I thought I’d told you that . . . well . . .’
‘I didn’t give any weight to last night’s bullshit.’
Igor didn’t comment on the bullshit she was referring to, but instead asked her, ‘So how did it end up with you and Marcus?’
Penny shrugged in a show of indifference. ‘Oh, who cares?’
‘Nothing happened with Rebecca.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because after you left, she came back up from the basement in a total fit. I mean, she didn’t look like she’d had fun, let’s put it that way.’
‘I see.’
‘I’m sorry if I sent you those messages. I was a little worried.’
‘How did you get my number?’
‘Rebecca had it. I took it off her phone when she wasn’t looking.’
‘I’ll have to block her. I don’t want to get invited to any more of those parties.’
‘Don’t worry, if there’s another party she’ll invite you in person, to make it harder for you to say no and to see the ugly, horrified look on your face, when in actual fact she’ll be the horrified one because you’re so beautiful.’
‘I’d rather avoid you commenting on my appearance. I think it’s all bullshit – you know how it is.’
‘Sooner or later you’ll realise that I abs
olutely mean what I say. In any case, I didn’t come just to tell you how beautiful you are. I came to bring you two things.’
‘What two things?’
Igor went over to one of the long, empty reading tables. From his bag he pulled out a decorative round paper carton, along with Penny’s favourite wool coat.
‘Oh, thank you!’ Penny exclaimed, happy to have her coat back. ‘And what’s in there?’
Igor winked and pushed the carton towards her. Penny raised the lid and couldn’t help smiling. Inside sat nine beautiful cupcakes the size of tennis balls, each iced with a different miniature cover of a famous book, nestled on a bed of delicate tissue paper.
‘Can you eat these?’ Penny asked, astonished by their beauty. It seemed criminal even to want to touch them.
‘Yes, and they’re delicious. Which one do you want to start with? Little Women or Harry Potter?’
‘I think I’ll taste The Hound of the Baskervilles. I think that one’s chocolate.’
They sat at the table, very close, and began talking and eating. They didn’t discuss the party or the past. Penny discovered that Igor had majored in art history and now painted sets for a small theatre company.
‘I never would’ve predicted that. I thought you’d become a lawyer.’
‘Like my father? Never! What about you?’
‘Nothing, really. I work here and there, and I try to save some money.’
‘To do what?’
‘Just to have a bit of a cushion.’
‘That’s not true. I can see a spark in your eyes. You have a secret dream you don’t want to tell me about.’
‘I don’t reveal my secret dreams to the first person I meet, you know.’
‘We’ve known each other since we were sixteen!’
‘But we’ve never been friends.’
‘Then let’s become friends, and I’ll ask you to tell me your secret.’
‘Who knows what you’re hiding, Igor.’
‘Nothing, I swear to you. Rebecca didn’t send me, if that’s what you think. I don’t really like her or her cokehead boyfriend, to tell you the truth.’
‘He’s a cokehead? I thought he was a total jerk, but I didn’t see that coming.’
They laughed together, and then Igor pointed to a cupcake with Anna Karenina on it.
‘This seems appropriate, don’t you think?’ he said, pointing to the ‘Russian Literature’ sign above the shelves.
‘True, though it doesn’t have a happy ending. Better in my belly than on the railroad tracks.’
With those words she took a bite of the cupcake, and the soft cream filling gushed out on to her chin. Igor stretched out an arm, pointing to a sticky patch near her mouth, looking amused.
‘You have Anna Karenina on your conscience!’
‘Not me, but that asshole Vronsky.’
Igor pulled a handkerchief from his pocket – an actual pocket handkerchief, made of fabric and not tissue paper.
‘It’s there, right below your mouth. Let me get it.’ With extreme delicacy, he dabbed at the splash of cream.
‘Thank you.’
‘Now for The Divine Comedy.’
‘And then Hansel and Gretel. Are you like the witch who wants to fatten me up?’
‘I like a woman who doesn’t live on air and amphetamines. Though you don’t seem like you eat much either.’
‘We’re coming back to compliments, and I hate compliments.’
‘I agree, and also because I’ll admit I’m pretty scared of Marcus.’
‘Why?’
‘No offence, but he seems dangerous.’
Penny put down the cupcake with Dante’s Inferno written on it and shook her head. ‘No, you’re wrong about him actually. He’s not dangerous at all. He’s the nicest person in the world.’
Igor smiled. ‘When love is blind, everyone else stops hoping.’
‘Who does? Hoping for what?’
‘Nothing, it’s just a quote from the play I’m doing the scenography for. It’s called Thistles Aren’t Flowers. And now let’s share The Wizard of Oz – there’s apricot jam inside.’
‘All right, but let me make a wish first. The cowardly lion wanted courage, the tin man wanted a heart and the scarecrow wanted a brain. There’s something I want too.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘I can’t tell you, otherwise it won’t come true.’
She closed her eyes and made her wish before savouring the exquisite cake.
‘Thanks for the cupcakes and the coat, but I need to go back to work now.’
Igor nodded. He held out his hand to give hers a squeeze. ‘You have my number – call me if you want to. No pressure, but I really hope to hear from you.’
Penny offered the cakes that were left over to Miss Milligan, who accepted them with an innocent enthusiasm. While biting into the hippogriff on the cover of The Prisoner of Azkaban, her elderly boss asked her, ‘What did that boy want with you?’
‘He’s an old classmate of mine who I just met again recently. We had a chat.’
‘I didn’t mean him, my dear – I meant the tall muscular young man in the blue jacket.’
Penny winced and gave her a questioning look. ‘Who . . . who do you mean exactly?’
‘The one who was here when you were chatting with your friend from school. He asked me where you were and I showed him.’
‘I didn’t . . . didn’t see him . . . Did he leave?’
‘I don’t know. I think so.’
With her heart in her throat, Penny began to scour the library in search of Marcus. She couldn’t find him anywhere. She wondered why he had come, and above all why he had left without speaking to her.
Did he want to tell me something important? Was he worried about me?
Her confident smile faded as she remembered the money she still owed him.
Maybe he’d just come to collect his two hundred and fifty dollars.
To imagine for one moment that he might have come simply because he was worried about her or wanted to seek out her company was the best way to set herself up for a major disappointment.
She was standing in front of the closed attic door, already in uniform for her job at the Well Purple. In one hand she held Francisca’s letter, and in the other an envelope full of cash. She had already walked up and down these steps a few times without being able to decide on what was best to do.
To knock or not to knock?
Most of all, she felt embarrassed.
All of a sudden she made up her mind to slide both envelopes under the door, to postpone the awkward post-sex chat.
Just as she was bending down, the door suddenly opened.
Marcus stood there before her, looking more enormous than ever. He was shirtless and must have just finished a workout, because he was sweating and his hands were bandaged.
‘Fuck it, Penny!’ he exclaimed. ‘Could you please avoid making suspicious noises outside my door? I was about to slam you in the face!’
‘I wasn’t making any suspicious noises . . .’
‘Footsteps and breathing where there should be silence count as suspicious noises.’
‘You must have exceptional hearing then. Can I come in?’
He frowned and went back inside, leaving the door open in a clear invitation for Penny to follow.
He ignored her for the first few minutes, instead beating the hell out of the red leather punch bag with his fists and feet, and Penny could hear him gasp in rhythm with his movements as the floor of the attic vibrated with the force of his blows. She couldn’t take her eyes off his muscles as they stretched before unloading monstrous energy, or the sheen of sweat on his back, his contracted face, the tattoos that seemed to dance as he moved.
Eventually, she watched him go into the kitchen and gulp water from a bottle. He ran the back of his hand over his mouth and at last seemed to remember her presence.
He stared at her, and Penny felt a desperate need to lie naked on his bed once again. S
he swallowed, bit her lip and remembered why she had come.
‘I brought you these,’ she said, showing him the envelopes. ‘Francisca wrote to you, and here’s the two hundred and fifty dollars I owe you from yesterday.’ She felt her cheeks flush, thinking of the double meaning of that statement, as if she were paying for his sexual performance. ‘For taking me to the party, I mean,’ she hastened to specify.
Marcus had a hard look on his face, cold as iron. ‘Leave it on the table,’ he ordered.
She nodded and went to put down the letter, but it seemed glued to her fingertips. ‘OK, I’ll go then.’
Penny was on her way to the door when Marcus caught up with her in three long strides. He was sweating, but didn’t smell bad – if anything, he smelled dangerous, and Penny liked it. She liked it a little too much. She turned to find him towering over her, and had to tilt her head back like a flower in the wind just to see his face.
She’d been hoping for something to happen, but as usual Marcus took her by surprise. Somehow Penny needed to get it through her head that Marcus and romance were not brothers or even distant cousins – either that, or he and romance remained total strangers unless he was actually in love. And since he wasn’t in love, he wasn’t going to be wasting any time on words. He was very nearly trapping her against the wall, without even touching her, and then he said, ‘I want to fuck. How about you?’
By rights, she should have said, No. Yesterday was a mistake, so let’s just leave it. Best not to mess with these things. But instead she just breathed, ‘Yeah, okay.’
Marcus’s hand, still wrapped in its bandages, landed on her shoulder and pulled her to him. His tongue searched her mouth like it was a thief’s fingers in a secret drawer. His other hand began to tinker with her underwear, and Penny soon found herself without stockings or panties and her skirt raised up to her navel, revealing her smooth naked belly.
She had no idea how she ended up on the couch, but there she was, perched on the sapphire blue blanket, her legs open wide like the petals of an iris and Marcus’s lips kissing the moist folds between her thighs. Kneeling on the floor with his face buried in her, he seemed like some good and beautiful god, and Penny tenderly stroked his hair.
Trying Not To Love You Page 16