by Paula Mabbel
Somewhere behind me, closer than I had liked, I heard a man shout something.
“Yo, mama, c’n I touch your hair?” I could make out from his mostly slurred speech.
The circumstances had become that I couldn’t go back the way I came. The group of drunks were now closing in from that direction, giving me the sewage smelling alley as a means to escape.
“Hey, say somethin’!”
“Yo’, I’d love to taste that chocolate, dude,” they kept laughing behind.
I was getting nervous with the situation so I inhaled a mouthful of stinky air and, holding my breath, I walked into the alley. I could see it opened in another street and my hope was that I could find another way back from there or I might just hail a cab. My main fear was, however, that the drunk men would catch up with me in the alley, so I sped up. One glance back confirmed my theory. With a racing heart, I started running, eager to get into the other street sooner.
“Hey! Whatcha running for?”
“Oh, my God, oh, my God,” I whispered, trying my best not to fall off my uncomfortably high heels.
Finally out of the alley, I looked around, disappointed that it was just another empty street, less lit than I would’ve liked it.
“Yo, girl, what’s the matter?”
I was startled by how close they had gotten so I started running again, automatically going right. In a couple of yards, I crossed the street and went into another alley, in the hope that I would lose the three men following me. I was unfit to run any longer.
Out of air, I leaned on the wall and held my head in my hands. My lungs were burning and I was breathing loudly; too loud for my liking. I held my breath when I heard them in the street, trying to melt into the cold wall behind me. If they saw me here I would be in big trouble, since the alley had a dead end.
The drunk men ran past the entrance, shouting for me as they got away. I waited a couple more minutes, barely able to breathe, until I couldn't hear them anymore, then dared to peek into the street. It seemed empty again, not a soul in sight.
Somewhat calmer, I stepped onto sidewalk and straightened my above-the-knee black dress that had slid up during my run. In the dim light, I caught a glance of myself in a dirty store window and gasped at the sight of my usually beautiful natural hair, now tangled into a curly mess.
“Oh, dear,” I whispered, trying to make myself presentable.
It was almost like I was fighting with Mother Nature herself. My hair would simply not comply. And the humidity in the air didn’t help one bit. Giving up, I let my hands fall to my sides and resigned to walk away. There was nothing I could’ve done by myself to tame the afro mane once it started rebelling like that.
Unsure of where I was going, I kept moving forward until I thought I saw a lit window. I squinted, hating myself for not bringing my glasses. “What do you need glasses for, girl? We’re going to a club. With music and booze. Not a book club,” my friend had argued and I had seen no reason to contradict her.
As I got closer, the window in question became clearer and I almost shed tears of joy when I realized it was a restaurant. An open Italian restaurant!
“Espresso!” was all I could think of, as I pushed the door open and was welcomed by the sound of an old school bell.
It looked like nobody was in, except for a young boy, probably a highschool student, that was wiping the tables. He had his earphones on and I suspect he didn’t notice me until after I sat at a small corner table.
I got rid of my coat and placed it on the back of the chair when he approached me, a determinate look on his face.
“Excuse me, miss…”
“Oh, God, it’s so warm in here!”
We spoke at the same time and I giggled. He seemed to blush at that and his features softened.
“We are closed, miss,” he said, his tone much less determinate.
“Oh?” I couldn’t believe my bad luck.
He must’ve seen my sadness.
“OK. Maybe you can stay a minute. But just that.”
“Oh, thank you so much!”
“Just a minute! OK?”
“Yes, I promise.”
He turned to leave but I stopped him. “Can I have an espresso? I promise I’ll drink it fast. Not more than a minute.”
He frowned. “OK. I’ll make you a single shot,” he finally gave in and went behind the tall bar to prepare my order.
I looked around for a bathroom and saw the sign pointing to a hallway at the back of the restaurant.
“Until you make my coffee, I’ll be just a minute,” I excused myself and hurried across the room.
“What? No, you can’t… Don’t!” I heard him behind.
I turned to assure him I won’t take long, giving him my biggest smile and half ran down the corridor.
I was pleasantly surprised by the cleanliness in the bathroom, so I took advantage of the good lighting to attempt another tactic on my hair. It turned out to be futile. I gave up again and started back to the main room. In the hallway, my footsteps were muffled by the thick carpet, the quiet around me enjoyable.
I was almost back into the restaurant when I thought I heard someone moaning like he was in pain. I stopped to listen, supporting myself on the delightfully orange wall.
Unconsciously, my mind registered the sounds that came at irregular intervals and translated it to me as a situation in which someone needed my help. Soon, my heart was beating so loudly, I could not make out the moans anymore.
My natural instincts told me to run away as fast as I could and forget about my coffee, but my training as a nurse stepped in and pushed me towards the end of the hallway, where the sounds seemed to come from.
That part of the building wasn’t lit as well as the rest so I needed a moment to adjust my eyes to the dark. I could make out the door because it wasn’t completely closed, a slither of light framing it all around. My pulse racing, I approached it slowly, grateful that the carpet muffled the sound of my heels on the floor.
Drawing a deep breath, I pushed the door slightly and peeked in. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion and the shock of what I saw hit me with a delayed reaction.
I couldn’t suppress a small scream at the sight of a man, bloodied and tied to a chair, surrounded by three other men bearing menacing looks on their faces. “Oh, shit!” I thought when one of them looked directly at me.
My brain took a second to catch up with the imminent danger I was in, second I could not afford, before I started running back towards the restaurant. I wanted to scream for help, but my throat was unable to utter any sounds.
In my crazed attempt to get away, I hoped that the bus boy would help me. I was sure of it up until the moment he appeared in my way and caught me. Of course he wouldn’t have helped me. He worked in the same damn restaurant!
I struggled like my life depended on it to escape his hands. After all, my life did depend on it.
He was slightly shorter than me but turned out to be much stronger.
“Ehi, basta!” one of the three men shouted at me.
I knew Italian, I was sure of it, but my mind was focused on saving my life rather than understanding what was said around me. I felt another pair of hands grabbing my arms and pulling them behind until the point I thought my shoulders would snap out of their sockets.
“Come here!”
“You like looking at other people’s business, eh?”
“Let’s get her into the back!”
Their thickly accented voices mingled together and I stopped trying to figure out what they were saying. To be brought in the back meant to go into that room and I had a suspicion they will find a chair for me as well. “Why fight?” I asked myself as they were dragging me through the door.
The man who was holding me pulled up another chair and threw me in it, while the bus boy took out a roll of duct tape and secured my hands to the armrests. Just like the beat-up man beside me.
“Oh, dear,” I whispered, thinking that I had just escaped
a bad situation to get caught in another, worse one.
“What did you say, nigger bitch?”
“Excuse me?” I blurted out automatically, instinctively offended by the racial slur.
The two men planted in front of me laughed, clasping their hands like it was the best joke they’ve heard in a while.
“Did you hear that?” one of them mouthed, barely catching his breath.
The other one nodded and started to say something but another voice, deeper and less accented, interrupted him.
“Enough.”
They became silent almost instantly. I would’ve found that funny if the circumstances were different. I tried to turn my head and see who that man was, hoping to communicate with him since he seemed to be the boss in this room. The stockier of the two mobsters in front grabbed my chin and made me look at him instead. He grinned and I could smell his choice of seafood in his breath.
“What did you think you were doing, uh, chocolate?”
I shook my head free of his hands, annoyed by his attitude. I refused to talk, still afraid for what would happen next.
“Ehi, the man asked you a question,” the other intervened. The boss kept at my back, I assumed watching in silence.
“Listen, chocolate…” the first one started again, but I cut him off.
“Just get it over with! Leave the dialogue for the movies.”
My voice was shaky and I couldn’t figure out where did my courage come from. All I knew was that I couldn’t take their game any longer and I didn’t want to stick around to see what happened next. The waiting must be intolerable, I suspected, eying their other hostage.
The two stooges I was facing remained wide-eyed while their boss chuckled.
“I like her,” he said and I felt a shiver down my spine.
“God, please don’t,” I said, afraid to even imagine what his words could’ve meant.
“Anything but that,” I said to myself, praying that they would just end me sooner.
“Don’t what, bitch? The man just complimented your ass.” The stocky man seemed to be more talkative, now that he had to redeem himself after my remark.
I chose to bit my tongue and kept quiet.
“It’s getting late,” his friend said, glancing at his watch.
“Let’s get rid of them both,” he agreed, stepping closer to me.
I held my breath when he cut the tape around my wrists. Once I was free again, he pulled me up to my feet and threw me in the middle of the room. I stumbled and fell next to their other hostage.
The sudden violence raised my panic again and I cowered down, desperately looking for an escape. The only option was the door we came through and there was no way I could just walk away.
After inspecting the room, I raised my eyes to the three men. Now I could see their boss, who looked surprisingly younger than I would have expected. Tall, wearing a casual gray suit, he was leaning against a bookcase and fiddled carelessly with a long cigarette.
When he returned my gaze I could see how dark his eyes were. They looked like two black holes that could potentially suck in the soul of the poor woman who made the mistake of falling for them and I swallowed hard.
I tried to look away, but I couldn’t. There was something about him that made me trust him. I knew, deep down, that this was crazy, but the urge to lose myself into his eyes was too strong.
He didn’t break eye contact either. Still looking into my eyes, he spoke:
“Get him out of here. The girl stays alive.”
I felt like the air had been sucked out of my lungs and I bit back tears that threatened to make me look like a fool, especially after my earlier fit of bravery. I looked away, squeezing my eyes shut, while the men argued in Italian.
What I could understand was about them insisting I was a liability and that I should share Martin’s fate. I assumed Martin was my fellow hostage. The young boss argued that they did not have the means to deal with two bodies and that he would arrange for me to be surveilled anyway.
“Ma dai, Aldo!” the quiet one said, his tone the representation of disappointment.
Aldo… His name was Aldo.
*****
The mobster who didn’t like talking ended up being my designated driver that night. I had attempted to start a conversation, in the hope that he won’t go rogue and kill me against his boss’s orders, but all I had gotten in response were how groans that told me he wasn’t interested.
He had dropped me off in front of my apartment building and I scurried off inside, eager to find myself in the safety of my home.
I had finally managed to fall asleep in the early hours of the morning, too afraid to close my eyes even for a second all night. The next day, as had my luck always been, I had to get up early for my shift.
I had fought against nature and gotten ready but now it was catching up to me. I could barely keep my eyes open and focused on the paperwork I had to do and it wasn’t even noon!
“What’s up, girl?” I heard the head nurse behind me. The energy she seemed to exude annoyed me. By contrast, I felt like a zombie.
“Didn’t sleep too well last night, that’s all.”
“Ooh! New boyfriend, by any chance?”
I smiled for no reason, and remembered his name. “Aldo.”
“I wish,” I replied, but couldn’t stop grinning.
“Girl, you got yourself a beau, I can see it! Don’t lie to me.”
I laughed. “No, Loreen, I didn’t. I just couldn’t sleep, that’s all.”
“I. Don’t. Believe. You,” she insisted, tapping my arm for every word with the folder she was holding.
I shrugged, more interested in finishing my paperwork. A man carrying a huge bouquet came to our desk and got her off me.
“Phew,” I thought, and went back to concentrating too much on a basic typing job.
It took me longer than usual to fill in all the forms and I felt exhausted by the time I could finally leave for a coffee. I decided to spend my break outside, get some fresh air, so I sat on my favorite bench and had the turkey sandwich I had bought from the cafeteria.
I never liked the coffee they made in the hospital so, when I finished my lunch, I walked to the nearest food truck and ordered my usual.
On my way back to the hospital, I thought I saw a man watching me so I stopped and looked back at him insistently. “What the Hell does he want?” I wondered, then it came to me. “He’s following me! Oh, my God!”
I felt a chill going through my body and I ran. I couldn’t get back to my desk fast enough.
The rest of my shift I spent it looking out for any sign of danger, paying attention to anyone who looked even remotely suspicious. When my boss asked me about my jumpiness, I debate whether to tell her I was being surveilled by the mob, but decided against it, since I was beginning to doubt I had even seen anyone watching me.
Despite questioning my own mental faculties, I did choose to err on the side of caution and took great care not to be alone more than a minute. At the end of my shift, I tagged along a group of coworkers until I could find a cab home, reasoning that keeping away from the subway for the time being, although more expensive, had to be a good investment.
Over the next few days I noticed the same dark sedan with tinted windows following me. I had become so afraid, I turned to sleeping pills to get a few hours of rest on the days I had to work.
On Friday, my first free day of the week, I spent my time watching the black sedan parked across the street from my apartment building. At around 5 P.M., it drove off and didn’t return. I was finally able to breathe easily.
In the evening, my friend called and asked me out. She said she had been invited to another friend’s birthday party and needed a plus one. I tried to decline but ended up giving into her insistence again.
I dressed up, put some makeup on so I would look decent enough and took a deep breath before venturing outside. It felt like I was doing something I shouldn't.
Once on the sidewalk
, I looked both ways to make sure no one was watching me. I didn't see anything suspicious so I turned North and headed towards my meeting place.
I haven't even gotten to the end of the block before I saw the black sedan again. I felt my knees go weak, my limbs growing cold and heavy with fear. At first, I was unable to move but soon I found myself in full sprint back to my apartment building.
I almost sprained my ankle a couple of times, trying to skip several steps at a time in my race to safety. I locked my door and considered blocking the entrance with the couch, to make sure the door couldn't be broken from the outside but decided against it because it turned out to be too heavy. When my friend called to ask about my whereabouts, I had to lie about having gotten some terrible cramps to get out of joining her that night.