The Trouble with Bliss
Page 19
Hattie runs and runs, her face lashed with tears. She’d failed her fellow Skunks, failed herself. When the time came, she collapsed instead of standing, turned tail instead of fighting. She was defeated. It’s the first time she’s not won out, gotten what she wanted. The shame stings worse than the paintball bruises.
Certain she’s not been followed, that she shaken all the Skunks, she circles around at Avenue B and heads back toward the precinct. She needs time alone, time to think. Cutting down Sixth Street past First Avenue, she enters an Indian restaurant. The waiter offers her a table. She quickly walks past, through the dining area and into the kitchen. She’s out the back door and sprinting across the yard before the cooks and waiters can say anything. One fence, a second, she manages, zinging through the shabby gardens.
She stops at the back of Morris’s building, gains her breath between sobs. The police precinct is ahead. It’s over for her and the Skunks; the Skunks are no more. She can’t face them, not after the brutal rout.
She scampers up the fire escape ladder of Morris’s building and pops open an unlocked second-floor window. Pushing past the unsecured, wrought-iron security guard, she enters the cool, dark apartment. A sense of relief floods her. She closes the window, the guard, then wipes the tears from her face. She’s safe. She’s home. She’s alone.
The apartment’s hers, one of three she keeps in the city. Her family’s business, the Rockworth Real Estate Corporation, owns the building. Morris’s rent goes to them.
Laying out two trash bags, Hattie strips her paint-stained clothing.
Her hair is matted, her fingernails dirty, and her back’s sore from the paintballs’ impact. She runs a hot bath in her Jacuzzi tub, drops in a bath bomb of tea tree oil and lemon peel, then, with a bottle of wine and glass, slowly slips into the warm, fragrant waters, letting the grime and stench and soreness soak from her skin. Letting the remnants of Hattie Skunk wash away.
An hour later, Hattie Rockworth emerges from the tub.
Hattie Rockworth’s returned.
Chapter 19