‘I still don’t—’
‘ . . . understand – I know. And now I’ll explain.’
Francisca pulled up a sleeve of her sweater and showed her the scar Penny had noticed in prison. ‘I did this trying to kill myself when I was twelve. My stepfather abused me in ways I don’t want to remember. He was a horrible man, but after my mother’s death he got custody of me. Unfortunately I survived, but I made him pay. I set the house on fire with him inside. He didn’t die, but at least they sent me away from there. The juvenile detention centre was my salvation. Marcus was the only one I ever really talked to about my past. Everyone else thought I was just an ungrateful, rebellious teenager. I thought I’d never be able to have sex with a man, but he . . . You see, he looks like a murderer, he looks like a bull on the mountainside, but he treated my wounds with patience. In exchange for his special love I gave him my special love: a very strong but secret love, never jealous, never declared. Because I knew that if I shouted it at him, if I tried to hold him back, to tell him “I want you just for me”, he would have left. He has this weakness: he remains at your side with all his soul as long as he sees an open door, an escape, the air, the wind, the road. He had other women, I never demanded exclusivity. If I had, maybe he would have listened to me for a while, but then he would have made a run for it. I had to let him be free.’
Though she didn’t understand the full meaning of this long story, Penny couldn’t help but be struck by it in the deepest part of her heart. She saw Francisca was holding back tears. For a second she didn’t see a woman who was exceptional for her appearance as well as her way of being, but a young child at the mercy of a cruel man. A little girl who had tried to kill herself so she would be saved. She imagined Marcus taking care of her. The thought of how much he loved her made Penny feel as insignificant as dirty water from the mop on a cheap tile floor. Mere dirt and water. Francisca and Marcus had loved each other and still loved each other – in their own way, to be sure, but it was a special way and different from a million others. But Penny was still confused as to why Francisca had opened herself up to her like that.
‘I’m sorry for you,’ Penny said in a whisper. ‘I truly am sorry for you. And maybe I should feel sorry for myself too, because I don’t understand what you want, and I’m certainly not very perceptive.’
Francisca, rising to her feet and becoming the tall, triumphant warrior again, said to her, ‘I want you to let him go when he tells you he wants to stay here with you.’
Penny wobbled and had to hold on to a chair to keep from falling. Her cheeks were on fire and her heart was cramping. She looked at Francisca as if she were crazy or drunk, wondering if she was saying this to get revenge on Penny for wanting her man. ‘What is this? Some kind of joke?’
Francisca shook her head; her face darkened, and her black eyes told Penny it was anything but amusing. ‘Not at all. Marcus believes he’s in love with you. Maybe he is and maybe he’s not, I don’t know, but the thing I want to know most is this: Are you in love with him?’
Penny didn’t answer right away. She was too focused on what Francisca had just told her.
Marcus is in love with me?
Maybe she’s drunk?
What is she talking about?
Is Marcus in love with me?
Penny’s hopes started to enter her thoughts before she could stop them. Her heart began to beat at breakneck speed, making her ears ring.
‘Do you love him?’ Francisca asked her again.
‘Yes,’ Penny replied firmly.
Francisca, paradoxically, smiled. ‘Good – so turn him down. If you truly love him, you won’t let him stay in this shithole with a shitty job and a shitty life. If you truly love him, you won’t turn him into a prisoner. His dream is to be free. You want to be the one to kill his dream? He’s burning to get out of here. After four years in prison do you want to land him in one that’s even worse? What would he become here? The good man who listens to his supervisor at some crap job, comes home early in the evening and watches some stupid old man on TV? But even if you were that selfish, you do realise you’d soon be paying for it with interest? Because I know Marcus – sooner or later he’d tear off the shackles and leave you anyway. Marcus needs an open window, an escape route, and what escape would he have in this life? He’d die inside, he’d be like a chained wolf, a tiger in a hamster cage. It’s up to you. You decide to keep him and you risk killing him as well as yourself when he leaves you anyway – or you can decide to let him go now and show him that you really care. And that you’re less stupid than you look.’
With that parting shot, Francisca got up to leave.
Penny called after her in a choked whisper. ‘You’re such a liar,’ she said.
Francisca shook her head. ‘I didn’t lie to you about anything.’
‘Yes, you did. You said you never forced him to stay with you, but isn’t that what you’re doing now? You just don’t want to get your hands dirty.’
Francisca’s eyes filled with rage. For a moment Penny thought she was about to set aside her subtle violence and attack her outright. Instead, Francisca continued to emotionally blackmail her.
‘If you love him like you say you do, you know what to do. I’ll leave it up to you.’ And with that, Francisca walked out of Penny’s home – and her life – forever.
28
MARCUS
I don’t know what my intentions are, I just know I want Penny. I need to find her, I need to talk to her. I try to call but she doesn’t answer. Does she not hear it or is she ignoring me?
I drive in the car to nowhere in particular, like a madman who knows he’s crazy and doesn’t even bother to hide it. I stop for a while at Well Purple and the Maraja, but to no avail.
Penny’s not here and I have no idea where she is. She could be anywhere, along with that asshole who’s wanted her for six years and hopes to have her tonight. If I find him, I’ll rearrange his priorities all right.
And since I’m pissed off and don’t know where to go and don’t want to go home to Francisca, who stared at me like I’m some stranger, and I have to unload all this painful anger that’s making me feel drunker than when I had all those beers and the whiskey, I decide to pass by that woman’s shop, the one who sells trinkets.
I’m lucky – or unlucky, depending on your point of view – but the shop is just closing, and Grant is there, waiting for the woman and pretending to be a gentleman while thinking about how to force himself on her. I see them walk away together towards his car, and I am so furious with those preppy types who show off their wealth to compensate for their small dicks that I follow them.
Grant’s car slows at a hilly area on the outskirts of the city. A kind of park, where couples come to fuck if they can’t do it anywhere else. I immediately remember Penny’s story: I realise it’s the same place he brought her, and my anger becomes a raging fire.
I lose sight of them for a moment. It’s all dark, he’s turned off his headlights and he’s holed up who knows where, and it’s ten minutes before I find them, but then suddenly there they are – didn’t Grant get the memo that he needs a less conspicuous car if he wants to hurt people in it?
I park and get out. I notice some movement inside the car and hear voices. At first it just seems like they’re getting busy, but I know that’s not the whole story. And then I hear the girl scream, and not out of pleasure. I think of Penny, who may have screamed in the same way, and I open the door. The asshole didn’t even lock the door on his side. I am certain, however, that there will be no escape from her side.
I open the door to a predictable scene. The woman is terrified, dishevelled, sweaty: her eyes are huge, and she’s looking confused. The asshole has his cock out, limp as a worm, and the expression of a pervert. OK, now I’m really gonna take care of him.
I grab him by the collar and pull him out of the car with one hand. I don’t think, I don’t reason, don’t calculate the possible consequences: if I kill him, I end up back in pr
ison, and if I beat him to within an inch of his life, I’ll do time for that too, but I don’t give a fuck right now, I just want to make him pay. For Penny. For this woman I don’t even know. For my mother. For all the women forced to accept advances they don’t want.
I slam him against the car and start laying into him. He doesn’t even try to defend himself, at most just kicks a little, terrified, bewildered, and he may even be pissing his pants. The woman gets out of the car, her make-up all smudged by her tears, panic in her eyes. She stares at me in silence, and for a moment I think I see Penny: Penny begging me to stop, like she did at the bar; Penny taking my arm and restraining it.
Then unexpectedly I stop. Anger evaporates from my body like a gas. As soon as I release my grip, Grant falls to the ground like a deflated balloon, reeking of piss and sweat. He no longer looks like some fake prince. He looks like a beat-up piece of shit. I leave him there, like the heap of trash he is, and turn to the woman. ‘D’you want me to take you to the hospital?’
She whispers a weak ‘no’, and then adds, ‘Home, I want to go home.’
She gets into my car voluntarily and without suspicion, and I stifle the urge to lecture her about trusting the wrong people – even one who may have saved her skin. But I don’t say a word because I’d scare her and she’d think I want to hurt her too. I look more the type than Grant. She’s silent the whole way home, pulling at her cheap skirt, her hands on her knees, staring straight ahead at the road. She shows me where to stop, and when she gets out of the car she staggers, like a doll with a broken leg.
‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ I ask her again.
‘Yeah, I’m fine.’
‘Do you have anyone at home to be with you?’
‘My mom.’
‘Go on then. I’ll wait until you get in.’
She nods and starts to walk towards the door. After two steps she stops, returns, and bends to speak to me through the open window. ‘Are you an angel?’ she asks me.
Penny asked me the same question the first time we met, in the darkness of the staircase. No, I’m not an angel. Never have been. There’s nothing angelic about my life – I’m more of a fucking devil. But I don’t say anything, just shoot her a vague smile as she walks off. I leave her with the illusion that I’m some kind of protective spirit, a good one, even if I’m only made of hatred and revenge.
But maybe that’s not all I’m made of. There’s also love – an unexpected, violent love that I hadn’t expected to find. Totally different from what I feel for Francisca. New and dangerous, because it makes me feel vulnerable, like a soldier without weapons or a shield. I finally let the feeling inside of me and into my messy life; I welcome it in and now it’s here to stay.
I sprint up the stairs in our building. I knock on Penny’s door like someone who’s been buried alive and is trying to break through the walls of their coffin. I’m agitated, nervous, pissed off. Then she opens and I see her again and it’s like I haven’t seen her in centuries. She’s still wearing her short dress, she’s barefoot and she’s been weeping – I can see that immediately. And not just a little: her mascara is running, there are trails of salt on her skin and her lips are swollen. I go in and close the door and ask her, ‘What happened?’
She shakes her head and looks at me anxiously. ‘What did you do to your hands?’ she exclaims.
My hands? I look at myself and only now do I realise they’re stained with blood – Grant’s blood, the filthy blood that spattered from his face.
‘It’s nothing serious,’ I whisper, wiping them. I want to understand why she’s been crying, or it’s gonna drive me crazy.
‘It looks serious. You have blood on your jacket too. Can you please tell me what happened?’
‘Grant and I had an exchange of opinions.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t think he’ll ever be quite so beautiful again.’
‘Did you . . . ?’
‘I didn’t kill him. Unfortunately he’s still alive, but it’ll take all of his daddy’s money to fix his face. Now, tell me what happened to you. Did Igor bother you? I’m already covered in blood, so one more . . .’
She shakes her head again, more decisively than before. I approach her and want to touch her, hold her. I want her to tell me that nothing happened with Igor, nothing at all, but the more I move towards her, the more she shrinks back.
What did you do to me? What do you want from me? Why do you hold me in suspense with your weeping eyes? Why do you move away from me like a butterfly escaping a hawk? Fuck it, Penny, I’d never hurt you.
And yet she shrinks back, and suddenly she’s against the wall and can go no further.
‘You have to go now,’ she tells me, standing there like she’s my prisoner. Yet I don’t touch her; she’s afraid of me, even if I don’t know why she’s afraid of me, and I don’t touch her. I only look at her, look and realise that I’m scared too. Damn it, she’s tiny and made of tears, and yet I’m afraid of her. Then, dropping my voice, I say to her, ‘What if I told you . . . if I told you I want to stay here?’
I see her throat move as if she were swallowing a big mouthful of something. Her lips tighten and for a moment I sense that all the pain in the world is passing through her small body. Finally, she whispers, ‘What a load of bullshit,’ and my heart stops. ‘What a load of bullshit,’ she goes on. ‘Why on earth would you stay here?’
I realise I’m clenching my fists as I say, ‘To be with you.’
She opens her eyes, holds her breath, looks down and avoids my gaze. ‘Bullshit, Marcus,’ she repeats.
There’s something like a storm roaring in my chest, fury swirling into desperation. I reach out and almost put my fist in the wall behind her. With one hand I lift her chin. My touch makes her quiver. She scrutinises me with apparent contempt.
‘So when exactly did you decide you wanted to stay? Before or after you fucked Francisca?’
I keep her face up even though she’s trying to look away. My darling, beautiful little Penny. Could six short weeks, a mere blip in time, a snap of the fingers, really change the world I’ve lived in for twenty-five years, so utterly and absolutely?
‘After,’ I reply, and realise how stupid that sounds. But it’s true. I wasn’t sure until after. Before, it was a worm of an idea, a shadow, a paper cut. After, it became a full-blooded truth. ‘But then I realised that it’s you I want – you and only you.’
She’s trembling and I try to hug her, but she walks away from me, struggling out of my arms. Am I hurting her? Bothering her? What, damn it – what’s wrong?
‘Well, I realised the opposite after fucking Igor,’ she says.
My reaction is immediate and instinctive. My knuckles hit the wall, straight as a ram. Straight away, I move away from her, walk away because there’s an earthquake happening inside of me; I walk away because I am the earthquake. I hit a chair and it jumps violently into the air. My arms are burning. The thought of the two of them together is unbearable. For a few minutes I lose all sense of reason, just walk around her apartment like a bear with an arrow in my heart. She says something to me but I don’t hear her. The sounds of my body are deafening: the blood in my veins, the beat of my heart, even the gnashing of my teeth, the flexing of my muscles and the creaking of my bones.
After a while, however, I force myself to think again. It makes no sense to get mad like that. Who am I to preach celibacy? I did it with Francisca only a few hours before, and not just the once. But how can I explain to Penny that I only did it because I’m a man and she jumped on me and I used to love her and had to work things out? Yes, I loved Francisca, but not the way I love Penny. I will love Francisca forever, but not like this, not like this.
Suddenly I realise that the worst thing that just happened is not that Penny slept with Igor. The worst is the other thing she said. That she realised the opposite. The opposite of what?
‘What do you mean, “the opposite”?’ I say.
Penny makes a face I can�
�t interpret – and don’t intend to – and states firmly and clearly, but with an undertone wobbling on the edge of hysteria, ‘I don’t want you.’
I stop in the middle of the room, squinting as if I want the scene to come into focus. I look at her and she looks at me and then she nods and adds, ‘OK, so we fucked, Marcus, and it was nice, but I need someone like Igor. He makes me feel safe. You’re great in bed and you’re undeniably hot, but let’s face it, you’ve been in prison, you have a shit job, you fight with everyone and we have absolutely nothing in common. I’ve known Igor a long time and I’ve known you for all of six weeks – enough time for an exciting adventure, but not for a great love.’
She hasn’t even finished talking and I’m standing over her. I pin her back into the corner. A single word flashes in my head. Bitch. Bitch. Bitch. And then . . . God, I love you, bitch. I hate you and I love you. I squeeze her neck with the fingers of one hand. I feel her throat moving. We’re so close that our breaths mingle.
I’d like to do something, anything – kiss her, fuck her, insult her – but instead I do nothing. I feel like a tree that’s been struck by lightning. I have a fire in my chest and my thoughts are colliding with each other and I can’t understand a thing.
All I know is she doesn’t want me.
Then I explode with laughter – even though I have no desire at all to laugh – I step back, let go of her slender throat and stare at her for an instant that will kill me for the next hundred years. I stare at her and think this is the last time I will ever see her with her fiery hair, peachy lips, eyes full of tenderness and trouble – especially now – and her body which is no longer mine and mine alone. This is the last time I will ever see her and I feel like the world is a deep abyss that I’m gonna fall into in exactly one minute’s time, as soon as I walk out that door. I leave the apartment and slam the door behind me. I will never see her again.
I run up to the attic, holding my breath. Francisca is there, waiting. I look at her and say, ‘Let’s go, right now, this minute.’ Tomorrow, I think, I’ll have time to die.
Trying Not To Love You Page 26