Confidence is the congealer. Stand straight, keep your hands out of your pockets. Move to a person before they move to you. Convince others you are what you say you are, even when you’re not.
Hattie knows these lessons, learned them from her father and her father’s father, both of whom closed multinational deals with little more than words and poise. They affected economics with their decisions, and handled millions and millions of dollars daily, like it was something natural, common.
People want to believe, will bend backward to believe. Hattie knows firsthand. The Skunks believe Hattie’s the true call. She formed the group, founded it as the antithesis of the societies her father and her father’s father belonged to. But her family also believes Hattie’s a Rockworth, through and through. She’ll run her wild oats and fall lovingly back into the Rockworth fold.
Until now, her conviction held both lives together, like vinegar and oil in the same jar, touching but never mixing. Now she’s shaken. The precinct debacle rattled her confidence, cracked her façade. She feels exposed, a fake. Every action she now questions. Would Hattie Skunk act or speak that way? Would Hattie Rockworth?
A swampy paranoia has taken over. She’s afraid to leave her apartment.
The welts on her back have blossomed into a lovely purple. Multiple baths with Epsom salts and lemon-pine bath bombs did little to help. She’s burned Navaho hand-crafted incense, and sipped thyme tea in hopes of relaxing. Still she’s a mess. She needs to regroup and take inventory of who she is, reassess what she wants.
No more Skunks, she tells herself, pacing her apartment. That life’s dead. Too dangerous, too crazy for her. She could get hurt; she is hurt. It is minor, but the next time…
She contemplates becoming an elementary school teacher, or starting a literary magazine, or following the summer yacht touring circuit. What she needs is a rest, she determines, no demands or distractions.
What she needs is half-and-half, can’t drink her Peruvian Platinum Blend coffee without it. And she desperately needs a cup of coffee, needs it terribly.
For twenty minutes she mounts her confidence to step outside, builds the courage to shrug off the worry that she’ll be recognized. A quick trip to the deli, she repeatedly says to herself, like a mantra. She checks then rechecks her front door’s peephole, checks and rechecks the street below by pulling back the curtains and peeking out.
Sunday. Night’s taken hold, the day’s light collapsed. “The world moves and keeps moving,” Hattie says aloud. “Whether I’m with it or not.”
She slides on a pair of silver Gucci wraparound sunglasses, a Yankees ball cap. “I’m with it,” she says, then repeats, “A quick trip, a quick trip, a quick trip.”
She turns the front door’s bolt, opens the door. The hall smells of rotting apples and burnt fish. It’s clear; no one around. With the stealth of a leopard, she moves down the stairs, fast and quiet.
Out the front door and into the night. Arms folded to chest, head down. Hold close to the buildings. Striding along at a brisk, powerful pace, she looks no one in the face.
Mr. Charlies is out of half-and-half, has only nonfat or buttermilk. She has to walk an extra block, to a bodega with papa rellenas and crusty bottles of Goya Malta, to get her half-and-half. The clerk rings her purchase, gives her change, all without exchanging a word.
Rounding the corner back onto Fifth Street, her half-and-half in hand, she thinks, “Home free.” She has to hold herself back from breaking into a run. She pulls her keys out, readying.
Then she hears him, his voice a flush of boiling bleach through her heart.
“You,” he says.
Looking up, she finds a man in her building’s doorway, held by the shadows. He leans against the front door, blocking her way.
She stands stock still, like she’s been impaled by a pole from behind. The welts on her back flare with pain. Hit him in the face, she thinks. Jab in the eye with her keys. Then run, run, run.
“I was hoping,” the man says, his voice clear and direct. He doesn’t move, makes no effort to get out of her way. Hattie steels herself for the worst, for a fight of all fights.
“I was hoping you could help,” he says.
Chapter 26
The Trouble with Bliss Page 26