Marcus carried the huge box into the house. Sherrie’s home was small and pleasant, painted in bright tones of orange, red and Persian blue, with decor and furnishings inspired by the Seventies, just like in the diner. On a multicoloured striped sofa sat a golden cat, the spitting image of the one on the windows of the Gold Cat, which looked at them absentmindedly and then began to languidly lick its paws.
When they left the house and before they reached the car, Penny took Marcus by the wrist and asked in a pleading tone, ‘Can we please take a walk?’
He watched her as he had done since his arrival at the diner, with an intense and brooding look. ‘OK,’ he said. In natural light, his face looked even more tired.
They walked in silence along the wet sand by the furious ocean, which bellowed against the rocks on the shore. Penny pulled her hood up as her hair snaked around her face, and her emerald lock ended up in her mouth. She clung to Marcus’s arm as they walked, his hands tucked into his pockets, his eyes downcast, staring at his shoes which sank into the sand with every step.
Without realising it, she began to talk to him. If she had dwelled on her own life, on her sick grandma, on Marcus’s imminent departure, on what might remain for her after two amazing months in each other’s company, she would have started crying, really crying, and not just tears and sobs but something more – something far, far worse. Maybe she would indeed have collapsed on to that fine sand and begged him to stay, saying, ‘I love you! Don’t leave me! How will I live without the man I love?’
So to avoid precisely this scenario, she rambled on about other things, commenting on the beauty of the ocean, the sky, the little harbour just visible in the distance, the fishing boats, the seagulls, and the shells which she imagined had been abandoned on the shore by mermaids.
Suddenly, in the midst of her idle chatter, just as it was starting to rain again, Marcus halted abruptly. Penny winced, fearing that she’d said something to upset him, even though she had spoken only nonsense. She found herself standing in front of him, and he was so tall and massive that he shielded her from the force of the wind. With his hands still in his pockets, he stared at her as if he wanted and had to tell her something important.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked, more and more worried by those dark circles, by that beard now long enough to be not the product of calculation but of neglect, by those tight lips.
For a while he said nothing and didn’t move a muscle, just continued to gaze at her, and Penny saw the stormy ocean reflected in his silver eyes. Suddenly Marcus drew his hands out of his pockets and hugged her so tightly that she seemed almost a part of himself, then kissed her on the mouth.
Penny abandoned herself, bound to his tongue and his soul, as close to him now as if he were inside of her, as if they were naked and one.
Then he held her tightly against his chest, one hand on the back of her neck, and Penny could no longer stifle her concern.
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know,’ was the only answer she got.
‘You seem strange to me today. Did something happen?’
‘My mind is on fire, Penny.’
‘Do you want to tell me about it?’
‘No. I have to try and get rid of it or I’ll suffocate.’
‘Did I do something wrong?’
‘I’m the one who was wrong.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘To ever come to this city in the first place. To that damn building. To let you fuck with my mind.’
Penny stared at him as if he’d just slapped her. ‘What are you saying?’
Marcus interrupted her, placing a finger on her mouth. His expression was far from romantic, despite the kiss he’d just given her. He looked furious and unhappy. Without allowing her to speak, he said, ‘Let’s just go, before the devil makes me say things I’ll regret for the rest of my life.’
He refused to talk in the car, and as soon as they got home Marcus took refuge in his attic as if he were running away from her. Penny couldn’t stop thinking about it, not even when she was at work in the library. What had he meant by all that?
She was just placing a copy of Jane Eyre back on the shelf when Edward Rochester came into her mind and stirred up a crazy idea. She thought back to the character’s brusque ways with Jane and his faked interest in the beautiful Blanche. She thought of his torment and his secret pain, his jealousy over St. John.
A warm and dangerous emotion began to swell in her heart.
Could he be in love with me?
Maybe Marcus is in love with me!
She worked the rest of that afternoon with her head in the clouds, excited, agitated, hopeful. Her heart was pounding like a jackhammer. She had a ton of work to get through, but was so happy that it didn’t weigh her down. Her grandma was getting better and would be home soon. And maybe Marcus actually loved her.
Marcus, Marcus, Marcus.
She arrived back home around dinnertime with a smile on her face, a smile so huge and unchanging that it could have been tattooed into place. On her return, she went straight to the attic, bounding up the steps of the spiral staircase with all the excitement of a teenager.
She knocked on the door, full of energy.
As soon as he opens it, I’m going to kiss him and tell him I love him!
And there on that landing, in front of that door, her happiness unravelled like a braid in the wind. Because it wasn’t Marcus who opened the door.
It was Francisca.
She was back. Beautiful, dark, and pissed as hell.
She was wearing Marcus’s T-shirt, the same one he’d worn under his shirt that morning on the beach, and nothing else. She had a lit cigarette between her fingers, and the smoke filtered slowly through her naturally scarlet lips.
On the floor behind her lay a long trail of clothes. Jeans, sweaters, socks, shoes. Underwear was strewn everywhere, scattered randomly on every surface.
Beyond her in the room, sitting on the edge of the bed, totally undone like someone who has just made love for the first time in almost four years, was Marcus. Naked, apart from his tattoos and the long bandages wrapped around the knuckles he used to punch the bag.
Francisca shot her a look that did not even try to hide her silent triumph. Weak and embarrassed now, Penny stumbled on words to explain her sudden arrival.
‘I . . . uh . . . Sorry . . . I didn’t . . . want . . . to . . . disturb . . . Wel— er . . . welcome back,’ she stammered.
For a moment, it seemed as if Marcus was peering straight into her soul. It was as if he had slipped his hand between her ribs and pulled out her beating heart. She imagined him crushing it in his bandaged hands and then hurling it down the stairs.
Mute and defeated, she turned and trudged down the steps, her mind a painting where all the colours had turned to black. All she could do was repeat to herself, ‘Be careful not to fall, be careful not to fall,’ but as soon as she made it inside her apartment she collapsed to the floor like a loose-stringed marionette.
24
MARCUS
I can’t sleep. I’m tired and stressed. I’m feeling things I’ve never felt before and I don’t want to, damn it, I don’t want to. I can’t stand being dominated by an emotion I can’t control. Love for Francisca never turned me into prey like this, never made me feel like I was about to break or choke. We were stronger together. With the pasts we have, we saw ourselves in each other.
But I don’t need Penny to survive. I don’t need her, and she doesn’t give me anything I can’t find anywhere else. She’s not like me, we don’t share a past, nothing unites us. We speak different languages and we’re different in every way. We’ve known each other for two months – not even – which is nothing.
Yet I miss her. I have to see her again, I have to touch her, I have to hear her voice, I have to take her.
It’s not good, not like this. I want to be free to eat, drink, smoke, sleep, get laid. Leave for any corner of the world whenever I want. Stop thinkin
g about things that will destroy me. Things like, What if I stayed?
Stay where? Here? No way, José!
No way. Not even. If. They. Hang. Me.
Even if I were dead, I’d still want to get away from this place and never come back. Soon I’ll be out of here, come hell or high water.
Meanwhile, I look for her everywhere. At home, the hospital, the library. I call her on the phone, but she doesn’t answer me. Eventually I go to Sherrie’s diner, by chance, and I see her there.
She’s sitting at a table talking on the phone. I just know she’s talking to that asshole Igor. So she ignores my calls and answers his, huh? A monstrous rage mounts inside of me, and this is another of those inexplicable emotions that floor me. Could I be jealous? It doesn’t make sense. I have never once been jealous of Francisca, and yet just looking at her takes people’s breath away and the way she walks turns all the men into loaded guns. But I’m jealous over Penny? She’s just your average girl: short, slender as a nail, with ridiculous hair and big orphan eyes.
This is definitely not good. I want to kill Igor with my bare hands.
I agree to walk on the beach. I listen to her as she speaks and smiles and points to the water and the shells. A furious urge to kiss her comes over me. I’d like to throw her down on the wet sand, rip off her pants and be inside of her body. But I have to stop. I can’t go on like this. Things have already gone way too far. I have to find a way – any way – to get her out of my system and return to myself, because otherwise I’ll risk losing my mind.
The punch bag never fails me. Exercise calms me a little, distracts me, shifts the course of my thoughts. Suddenly there’s a knock at the door. It can only be Penny. I’ll tell her not to come up anymore, I’ll tell her I’m leaving tomorrow, and as I think this, I realise I just want to get to the door, let her in, push her in the corner and kiss her to kingdom come.
I open the door.
But it’s not Penny.
It’s Francisca.
I look at her for a few seconds as if she were an apparition. She looks at me and smiles, tilts her head to one side and then throws her canvas bag to the ground. She’s devastatingly beautiful. Those black, tyrannical eyes, the quivering nostrils, the fire-red lips, a body like a wild mare’s. She leaps on to me, wrapping her thighs around my hips. She says nothing, asks for nothing, just kisses me like she’s been thirsty for a century. I’d forgotten the taste of her tongue, the frenzy of her mouth, how her nails scratch my back.
We end up on the floor, and take off our shirts, jeans, shoes, and then she’s naked above me, and she licks me and swallows me. Then she takes me and moves like only she can, in her same bold dance.
In the end she stares at me, sweating and wild, more beautiful than I even remembered.
‘Did you miss me?’ she asks.
‘Did they let you out early?’ I ask her in turn.
She frowns and assumes that pugnacious expression that I know all too well, that frown like she’s about to shoot someone.
‘I asked you a question first, mi amor,’ she says, with those splendid killer eyes on my face. ‘Did you miss me?’
‘I did miss you,’ I reply, but as soon I do so, I realise this is the first time I’ve ever lied to her. To tell the truth, in the last few weeks I have done nothing but think of someone else, but seeing her now and suddenly remembering everything that unites us, I realise that this is my woman, and her alone. We have a hundred universes in common. She’s my salvation, the cure for the evil that devastated me. The cure for Penny. ‘I am you and you are me,’ I add, stroking her side. We used to say it all the time – it was our special way of saying ‘I love you’. I say it and I think I’m free, that for me there is only Francisca, here and now, and that at last I am sure.
Francisca smiles and gets to her feet. She moves around the room naked – supple, muscular, solid, exciting. She takes one of my cigarettes from the pack on the table, brings it to her lips, lights it and takes a puff.
‘You’re a sight, mi amor,’ she says finally, looking at me. ‘Yes, they let me out early, so I decided to surprise you, and luckily you didn’t surprise me back. I thought I’d find that little chica here in your underwear.’
I laugh, and as I laugh, I seem to be struggling, as if my cheek muscles aren’t cooperating.
‘Did you fuck her?’ she asks, watching me carefully, her cigarette between two fingers, blowing smoke from the corner of her mouth.
Then I take a cigarette from the same pack and light it by touching the tip to hers. I sit on the edge of the bed and hear myself say, ‘I just kept my cock warm for you, but why don’t you stop the interrogation now? I feel like I’m back in prison.’
Francisca’s tickled and just starting to laugh when there’s a knock at the door.
I don’t have time to think as she throws on my T-shirt and opens the door with almost-violent urgency.
Behind the door is Penny with a radiant smile on her lips, a smile that immediately dies. She looks at Francisca, looks at me, then at Francisca again. She understands in three seconds that everything is finished. Assuming there was anything to finish, of course. She stutters then leaves, apologising.
And as she goes, I hear my mind scream, Penny! I clench my fist, fight the instinctive urge to chase after her, to stop her on the stairs. It wouldn’t make sense. I don’t owe her any explanation. My woman is Francisca, this long-legged warrior, not the small fragile thing that just left. We were just having fun – it was quite clear from the beginning. I owe her nothing, let alone explanations. I will never see her again. That game is over forever.
25
She stayed where she was, leaning against the front door, curled into herself, for what seemed like forever. It seemed to her that for this whole time she had been unable to think of anything – and maybe she hadn’t even breathed. Her mind was obscured by pain and panic. It was over, all over. She would never see him again, never kiss him again, never touch him again. Marcus and Francisca would be leaving very soon. They were a perfect couple. A damn perfect couple.
And Penny was a real idiot. Only an idiot could have believed – albeit for a handful of dazzling hours – that a man like Marcus could be something more to her than a fling. What had fooled her? The secret torments of Edward Rochester? What a complete idiot she was.
After that infinite time, during which every little creak made her jump because she secretly harboured the hope that Marcus would come downstairs and tell her he loved her, loved her, loved her, in spite of Francisca, against Francisca, against the entire fucking world – she got up and shut herself in the bathroom.
She stayed in the shower until the water ran cold, then dried herself with slow, mechanical movements, and finally slipped into her grandma’s bed. She didn’t want to stay in her own room – there were too many memories imprisoned between those walls and the fire escape.
Holed up under the covers in Barbie’s bed, Penny cried all the tears ever created by God. She thought about all the time they’d spent together: the way they had first met, their first standoffs, their first kiss, their first time.
Though it hurt her, she wondered what Marcus and Francisca were doing. Were they making love again? Were they sleeping in each other’s arms? Were they eating dinner together and laughing and catching up on their four years apart? When would they be leaving?
Will Marcus ever think of me?
Will I ever stop crying?
In the morning, she left home early to go to the hospital. She had barely slept an hour, made up of minutes-long stretches when she’d managed to drift off, only to start awake again.
She spent the morning with Barbie, ate nothing and drank a disproportionate amount of coffee from the hospital vending machine. Her grandma alternated stretches of sleep with moments of confused chatter, and when she was awake, she began to cry desperately, wailing that her son was dead, as if it had happened only an instant before and not almost twenty years ago. Penny hugged her and cried with her.<
br />
Upon returning home, she felt as weak as a child with a high fever who’d been up all night vomiting. She walked slowly up the stairs, fearing she’d run into Marcus, hoping she’d run into Marcus. When she reached her own landing, however, instead of entering the apartment and closing herself in and shutting out the world, she let herself be led away by a delirious temptation.
She climbed the spiral staircase in silence, and put an ear to the attic door. What she heard was the absolute end of even her faintest hopes. Marcus and Francisca were having sex – those sounds were unmistakable. She didn’t doubt that they’d been doing it for hours, doing their best to make up for so many years of forced separation.
She put a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. She wanted to shout his name, even if she didn’t know why – maybe because saying it would mean he still existed for her and wasn’t part of a past she had to bury.
But she remained silent. She went back downstairs, trembling, and vomited her coffee along with a sea of acid. Then she looked at herself in the mirror: her eyes were red, swollen and devastated with sadness. Her lips too were swollen, and bleeding. Her nose looked like a purple plum. Her emerald-green lock of hair was beginning to fade, turning now to a blue-grey – more grey than blue. And she realised she didn’t deserve this much pain all at the same time.
So she did something she wouldn’t normally do.
She called Igor. They agreed to meet each other that evening. He seemed really happy with the call, recognising it as the miracle it was.
In the hours beforehand, Penny got ready carefully – she even put on make-up – and put on the only provocative dress she owned. The one Marcus had criticised, the green velvet sheath she’d worn to visit Francisca in prison. She liked it. It was snug and short enough to suggest her precise intention: she would sleep with Igor – out of desperation and vengeance, and for her own oblivion – and she wouldn’t look back.
Igor arrived on time with an exultant smile on his lips. He got out of the car and held out his arm for her, opening the passenger door like a true gentleman. He wore a trench coat over his jeans, and a trilby.
Trying Not To Love You Page 24