But Penny cries for me, and she listens to me, and she holds me by the hand, and she squeezes harder when the story gets worse.
So what does she want from me?
What the fuck does she want from me?
As soon as we arrive at Well Purple I immediately notice that there’s something wrong. One second she’s happy, the next she’s upset. She’s lying when she says there’s nothing wrong – I know she’s lying. So I think back to her description of Grant. Some dude who’s half crazy. I’m sure that’s the guy who’s waiting for her by the entrance. She looks at him like she’s staring into the fiery abyss. Plus he looks familiar to me, and finally I realise: that same asshole was at the Maraja a few weeks ago, pestering Grace, one of our waitresses. Jason threw him out and told him not to come back. This scumbag has a thing for bothering women.
I call in to say that I’m not going to work tonight. If it’s not OK, they can go hang themselves. Meanwhile I follow the asshole inside. I lose sight of him for a moment in the crowd and then see him slipping into the staff area. My blood shoots up to my brain.
I find him nearly on top of her, muttering something into her ear. I slam him against the wall and feel his bones crunch like bar snacks, and now I’m about to take him outside and kill him and burn his body and free the world of another piece of shit.
But then Penny begs me not to with her eyes.
When I first put my hands on the asshole who wanted to hurt Francisca, she egged me on, urged me, ‘Finish him, finish him off, finish him off!’ while giving him a good kicking herself. Penny, on the other hand, is begging me to let him go, and while the asshole’s struggling and then running off, she’s holding me back.
She doesn’t realise that he’ll try again. Guys like that are always out to hurt someone. Guys like that don’t deserve to live.
I stay at the bar, but no one leaves me in peace. It’s just one after the other in a sea of pussy. If it were another night I might be game, but not now I have to keep an eye on Penny. I also have to be careful that asshole doesn’t come back. If something happened to Penny while I was off messing around, I couldn’t forgive myself.
And, to be honest, I don’t want any of them in any case.
Suddenly I even find myself saying, ‘Listen, I’m here with my girlfriend. I’m really not interested.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ this chick says. ‘You trying to play hard to get or something? So who’s the lucky girl?’
I point to Penny, who’s currently serving a cocktail to some jerk who’s staring down her cleavage. My God. I have to force myself to stay where I am. How many cleavages have I stared at in my time? Looking is hardly a crime.
The woman looks over at Penny. ‘What, you mean that one there?’ she asks, stunned.
‘That one right there. You got a problem with that?’
‘No, it’s . . . She just doesn’t look your type.’
‘I know what my type is.’
‘Maybe you can give me your number just in case?’
‘Look, doll, I don’t want you, now or ever, so get out of here.’
The woman goes away, flushed and perplexed, and I’m sure she hates me, but I don’t care. I can finally go back to monitoring the situation. If Grant comes back, he’s a dead man. But he doesn’t come back. Not that this makes me feel any better. I’m afraid he’ll get his way when I’m not here to do anything about it.
I’m distracted on the way home. I’m thinking about what happened when something starts bugging me.
Yes, I’d like to kill Grant, but am I really, truly, any better than he is?
When I’m alone, I try to remember how I behave when Penny and I are together.
Do I force her? Have I ever done anything against her will? I can’t remember, dammit, I can’t remember. The suspicion of having been – if not violent – too persuasive, of having ignored any refusal on her part, like I ignored her pain that very first time, makes me feel so bad that I get out of the shower, dripping, and go down to see her.
I can’t knock on her door because her grandmother would hear, so I head out the window and climb down the fire escape to her room. When she lets me in, surprised and frightened, I can see immediately that she’s been crying again.
For a man, admitting that he’s more of a bastard than his enemy is not easy, but I admit it: I suck more than Grant does. I pretend to deliver justice by wanting to get rid of him, but I’m worse than he is. You don’t have to be arrogant or outright violent to hurt a woman. I have violated Penny in a thousand other ways and I feel like shit.
But she denies it and keeps on defending me. My pride hopes it’s true, but inside I know I’ve done wrong.
Penny . . . I’ve been such a mess since you came into my life. Everything I thought was logical is turned on its head, and I’m left with some impossible puzzle. I feel like I’m walking on a wire suspended over an endless void. I don’t recognise myself and I’m scared to know what’s going on inside my own head. This is why I try not to think about it, just bury my head in the sand and ignore the words screaming in my mind. I don’t want to understand what’s happening. I want everything to go back to the way it was before.
In the meantime I look at her, want to touch her. She’s all mine, for now at least. We don’t need to rush tonight. Let’s take this slow.
We touch each other in silence so her grandmother can’t hear us. We do it in a different way, we’re less hungry about it, even though I’m as horny for her as ever, but the orgasm is the same, the orgasm shakes me from head to toe. When she touches me and looks at me with her sweet smile of near astonishment, my pleasure is amplified in a way I can’t explain, and I come in her white hand, on her virgin bed.
When we’re done, I put my arms around her. I want us to spend the whole night together, and this confuses me. I want to pull the covers up and sleep alongside her, and do it with her all over again as soon as I wake up.
But that would be going too far. OK, I admit that I like her way more than I expected, but I can’t just turn my whole life upside down. I can’t die and be reborn in a day. I can’t bury who or what I am quite so radically. I can’t do that for anyone or for any reason.
So, even if my need to stay is fighting like a storm in my chest, I put on my clothes and go back to where I came from.
21
Penny woke up to the deafening racket of hail on the windows, as if God were pelting sugared almonds on to the earth. Penny shivered, opening her eyes, and thought of Marcus, and how cosy it would be to watch the storm with him.
But it would also be foolish for her to hope that he might. Last night he’d given her something close to love, but Penny knew it was an imitation and not the real thing. She needed to keep her feet on the ground or she’d end up with a broken heart.
You already have a broken heart, baby.
So she sat alone and watched the hail come down.
Suddenly her grandma was at her door, trying to come in and finding it locked. ‘Penny? Are you OK?’
Penny opened the door and gave her a reassuring smile. ‘I’m fine. I was so tired last night I accidentally locked the door.’
Barbie smiled at her, tilting her head to one side like a sparrow. ‘You’re so very much in love with that boy, aren’t you?’
Penny turned red as fast as a cotton swab dipped in cochineal and wondered if her grandma had understood the significance of the locked door – or if she’d even heard them.
She looked at her and replied with a simple, ‘Yes’.
Barbie sucked air in through her lips then changed the subject, as she always did when she was on to a thought, but it then slipped her mind. ‘Come on, I made pancakes for breakfast.’
Penny got ready to pretend to enjoy pancakes with ketchup or – worse – with toothpaste, but instead she found the table carefully set and a stack of delicious-looking pancakes. Even the aromas in the kitchen seemed how they should be.
Reassured, she tentatively took a mouthful and it
was good. It was a real pancake with no surprise ingredients.
‘Wow, these are delicious. Thank you!’ she said to her grandma, embracing her.
‘But we’re out of maple syrup,’ Barbie muttered, a little disappointed.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll go ask Mrs Tavella if we can borrow some.’
Penny put her coat on over her pyjamas and left the apartment. She was happy with recent events, which had been a pleasant surprise: Marcus had shown her a fleeting glimpse of love, and her grandma had finally made something she could actually eat. These things were definitely cause for celebration.
Out on the landing, she gave way to temptation and headed up to the attic. Not to ask Marcus for maple syrup, but to invite him down to have breakfast with them. He’d no doubt be regretting his kindness towards her the previous night and turn down her invitation. There had been that one time he’d invited himself to lunch, but breakfast was different. Breakfast was not a meal to be shared with just anyone.
She smoothed her hair down with her hands and wrapped her coat more tightly around her body.
Like he hasn’t already seen you in your pyjamas, and out of your pyjamas, and all upside down and in every position. Sometimes literally upside down.
She knocked on his door, blushing at the thought of how close they had been only hours before, full of kisses, caresses and stifled moans. Her heart was thumping so hard and threatening to leap from her chest that she was afraid of losing it on the stairs, like ripe fruit that had fallen from the tree.
But no one answered. She knew he couldn’t be sleeping. Could he possibly have gone for a run in the middle of the hailstorm?
Somewhat disappointed, Penny went back down to see Mrs Tavella. Her neighbour, in a patched purple robe, was pleased to see her and willingly lent her a bottle of syrup.
‘So how are you and Marcus?’ she asked, winking at her.
Penny wondered if the strange brood of old women in the building, many of whom seemed almost blind and deaf, were all in fact a little sharper than she realised. Or whether the love oozing from her every pore was so obvious – a kind of marker; some eternal thunderous pulse – that everyone could see and hear and understand. She didn’t answer, but thanked Mrs Tavella for the syrup and dashed home.
In one split second, and just a step away from the door, the whole joy of that morning evaporated as Penny heard a deafening crash from within the apartment, like the sound of a pile of dishes breaking.
She flung open the door to a chilling scene.
Barbie lay on the ground, unconscious or dead. Somehow she’d dragged the tablecloth and everything on it down to the floor as she fell – pancakes, plates, cutlery, even the vase of artificial flowers. Penny screamed and dropped the bottle in her hand, which fell and bounced, syrup splashing everywhere, dripping like golden blood.
The hospital was grey and distressing. Penny, still in her coat and pyjamas, stood pale and very scared, waiting for someone to tell her how her grandma was doing.
She could still hear her own voice screaming, quickly joined by a chorus of neighbours who rushed out of their apartments en masse to see what was going on. She could hear the siren of the ambulance and see Barbie’s cold hand under her own, her colourless cheeks, her closed eyelids.
She didn’t die, she just fainted, but she seemed dead.
At the hospital they took Barbie away somewhere, leaving Penny alone in a corridor with walls as white as ice and a few plastic chairs. She sat and waited. Occasionally a paramedic would pass her by, or confused voices would rise up in the background, all of which Penny ignored. She just sat there, replaying the same tragic scene over and over in her head.
After a while, a doctor appeared – literally materialized – right in front of Penny, who had isolated her mind and ears in a kind of state of hibernation.
‘We’ve established that your grandmother has had a stroke.’
‘Can I see her?’
‘Yes, but she’s still unconscious.’
‘Will she recover?’
‘It wasn’t a very strong one, but considering that she’s experienced this kind of event in the past, we still need to evaluate the precise extent of the damage this time around. She may have a hard time with speech and movement. We’ll need to determine a treatment plan for her. Follow me.’
The doctor led Penny into a dim room, silent except for the sound of machines. Barbie was lying on a bed with her eyes closed. She looked so pale that she appeared dead, though her heart monitor said otherwise.
Penny stayed at the hospital for hours, sitting in an uncomfortable chair, holding the hand of the only person she had left on earth. She was practically frozen in place with the fear of losing her, as if moving even a single millimetre might invite death into the room. Then, little by little, the beeping of the monitor calmed her. Barbie’s heart never once stopped beating. Her grandma was still alive.
After a few hours Penny began to feel cold, and she suddenly remembered she was still in her pyjamas, a light coat and no socks. She looked at the clock on the wall and realised to her surprise that it was already late afternoon. There were no windows in the room, but she was sure that the sun was about to set.
The doctor told her to go home and Penny agreed, but only because she was afraid of getting sick herself. Who would look after her grandma if something happened to her?
Outside, it was hailing again. The falling ice was no longer hypnotic and graceful, as it had seemed in the morning, but intimidating. Worst of all, because of her rush to get to the ambulance in the morning, Penny now didn’t have a single dime on her.
How do I get home? Will I have to ask the doctor for a loan?
Her feet were frozen and she started to cry. At least the tears were hot enough to warm her cheeks.
In the midst of all this ice and desperation, she suddenly felt as if she were losing her balance. For a moment she thought she’d slipped on the wet road and waited to feel the thud of her bones on the sidewalk, but then she realised it was something completely different.
Marcus, as if by magic, was taking her in his arms. It almost gave Penny vertigo. She wasn’t used to flying so high. She wasn’t used to flying at all.
‘Let’s go,’ he said firmly.
‘But you . . . how . . . ?’
He didn’t reply, just continued to carry her through the incessant hail. Finally he approached an old red Chevy Camaro parked next to the sidewalk. He placed Penny carefully back on her feet and opened the door for her. She looked at him strangely.
‘It’s not stolen, if that’s what you think.’
Penny, a bit confused, didn’t have to be told twice. She got into the car, vaguely wondering whose it was, while Marcus got into the driver’s seat and started the engine.
He asked her how her grandmother was.
Then he asked her how she was.
Then, as he drove, he took her hand. ‘Wow, you’re freezing.’
And he didn’t let go of her hand until they were home – not even when he changed gears.
Everyone back at their building wanted to know how Barbie was. Penny passed on the news and got many words of encouragement in return, but as soon as she crossed the threshold of her apartment and saw the mountain of pancakes and crockery and the maple syrup all over the floor, it was like reliving the same trauma and the same pain all over again, and she had to stifle a cry with her hand.
Marcus had come in with her, and he closed the apartment door. Penny felt his looming bulk behind her, then heard his voice.
‘Go get yourself a hot shower,’ he said – or rather, ordered.
She nodded limply and shut herself in the bathroom. She stayed under the jet until the hot water ran out, her muscles finally loosening so she could at last bend her fingers and toes. Then she dried her hair with a towel and pulled on a pair of heavy socks, old sweatpants and a yellow sweatshirt with a crocodile on it.
Back in the kitchen, she gasped in surprise. Marcus had scooped everything off t
he floor, thrown away all the broken bits and cleaned up the rest. Now he was standing in front of the stove, cooking something.
She looked at him as if there must have been some mistake. ‘What . . . ?’
He sensed her presence and turned around. ‘Sit down. I’m no great shakes as a chef, just so you know. I hope you like your omelette with everything in it.’
Penny plonked herself down on a chair, still unable to process what was happening, and Marcus served her a large portion of omelette.
Penny realised that, despite what had happened, she was famished, and she ate greedily. Marcus poured her a glass of chocolate milk, and she drank it down to the last drop. All the while he stood watching her, his back against the stove and his arms crossed over his chest.
After she had eaten every morsel, she asked him, ‘Did you get the car today?’
‘Yeah, I went to that dealer Malkovich suggested.’
‘It’s cute.’
‘More than anything else, it’s useful.’
‘Thanks for all this.’
‘Quit that. I can’t stand it when you thank me.’
‘OK, so how about this? You asshole, you didn’t have to come and get me at the hospital, clean up and cook for me.’
Marcus smiled. ‘That’s better.’
‘How did you know where I was?’
‘I came back and the whole building let me know.’
‘They’re dear and lovely people.’
‘And how are you feeling now?’
‘Better. I’m really worried about my grandma, but I am feeling better.’
‘She’ll recover.’
‘I hope so.’
‘Meanwhile, if you don’t want to get sicker than she is, curl up on the couch under a blanket.’
‘Yeah, I need to rest. Especially since I have to work in a few hours.’
Marcus followed her to the couch, sitting next to her. He occupied the space almost entirely and one of his knees was pressed firmly against hers, as if in recognition of the indisputable trust that now existed between them and he no longer feared contact. ‘You’re not going back to work in that shitty place.’
Trying Not To Love You Page 21