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Trudging back to the subway station at 2nd Avenue in my green Doc Martin boots, tears threatened again. God damn it. I had to pull myself together if I was going to get through this. Alright, so the last four days had been among the worst of my life. So I had nobody and nowhere to turn to. Fine. But I got out of Atlantic City alive. What else mattered?
Tonight would be lonely.
Tonight would be cold.
But the next day Esther would be back and things would be better. I’d make her laugh, like I used to, on those gin-fuelled nights backstage at the Crystal Coast Casino. That’d be enough to win back the heart of a one-time friend. It just had to be.
I’d almost reached the mouth of the subway entrance and was debating whether to pay to ride a train or just leap over the turnstile so I might hold on to my last five bucks when I felt it. A heavy hand on my left shoulder, gripping me tight from behind.
Oh God no… They’d found me
I sucked in a deep breath and held onto it.
My eyes widened.
My jaw stiffened.
But that’s all there was time for. Taking more than a second to react might mean I wouldn’t see New Year.
Before fear or doubt could paralyse me completely, I dropped my luggage. Cringing at the imagined dent in my Fender Jazzmaster guitar, I clenched my fist and swung around as hard as I could, punching my assailant across the cheek and letting out a bass grunt as my fist knocked hard against flesh and bone.
‘Jeeesus!’ The guy cried out and put a hand to his face while I was wringing my hand and gasping at the sting. I’d forgotten how much it hurt to sock a person, but I had my other fist raised ready to strike again when a vaguely familiar voice asked, ‘What you do that for?’
‘Shhhooot.’
It was Jimmy Boyle.
I’d just punched Jimmy Boyle in the face.
He wasn’t bleeding, but there’d probably be a pretty big bruise there in the morning.
‘Damn it, what the hell did you creep up on me for?’ I yelled, anger rising over the shock he’d given me. ‘You can’t just sneak up on a woman in New York at midnight. Saying that, I’m surprised I didn’t smell your cologne first. You must be downwind.’
‘Wait a minute, wait a minute. Just let me get this straight. First you punch me in the face’ he said, giving his cheek a gentle prod where I’d hit him. ‘Now, you’re telling me I smell bad?’
Those were two God-awful things to do to a person, especially one right after the other. But probably out of relief that Frankie’s guys hadn’t in fact caught up with me – out of relief I wasn’t going to die, at least not right that second – the urge to laugh bubbled up inside. I clamped both hands over my mouth to contain it, but still, a small chuckle escaped.
‘Oh, I see, this is funny, is it? You think this is funny?’ Jimmy ranted, but his annoyance only made me want to laugh harder and eventually the edges of his mouth gave in to the infectiousness of it and slanted upward. Just enough for the expression to be classified as a smile.
‘Here, let me see,’ I said, choking back another giggle. I put a quivering hand up to his chin and turned his head to the left, so it was illuminated by the yellow beam of a nearby street light. He already looked a little dark along the cheekbone. I cringed, bit my lower lip and moved my eyes from the brewing bruise to the brown of his eyes. They were so intense, like they saw more than most. Or maybe, had seen more than most.
‘You’re shivering,’ he said. His breathing was deep and erratic, as well it might be after being socked in the face without warning.
‘It’s cold, genius,’ I said, telling myself again it was the weather that was making me shake, not the fact I thought my number was up just minutes ago, or that the air between me and the reporter seemed suddenly charged with something unspoken.
Though they had more reason to now than before, Jimmy’s eyes didn’t look angry like they had back at the restaurant. He stood stock-still, staring at me, while I ran my fingertip along his cheek, as if that could magic away the pain I’d caused him. ‘I’m so sorry for hitting you, but you scared the hell outta me. You gonna be OK?’
‘I’ll live. Won’t be the first time I go into the office with my face all beat up.’
‘You make a habit outta gettin’ punched in the face?’ I said, shuffling my hand back into the warmth of my pocket.
‘Let’s just say I’m no stranger to the ice pack.’ Jimmy almost growled these words.
‘Bit of a weird way to get your boss’s attention. Don’t most people impress their boss by inviting them to a summer barbeque or something?’
‘Well, I guess I ain’t most people,’ he said, opening and shutting his jaw a couple of times, flinching as he did so. ‘Where’d you learn to punch like that?’
‘I grew up on the outskirts of Detroit. Where do you think I learned to punch like that?’
Jimmy summoned a smile, though it was clear from the crinkling of the skin near his eyes that it hurt when he did.
‘My dad paid for a few self-defence classes after I came home from school one day with a broken nose. I wasn’t a popular kid. The rest I learned sorta ad hoc on the walks to and from the schoolyard.’
‘Wish I’d known all that before I approached you from behind, in the dark,’ Jimmy said, looking down at me in such a way that his blond waves fell into his face.
‘Well, I’ll consider wearing some kind of sign around my neck.’ I gave him a goofy grin and the smile returned to his lips.
Snowflakes swirled around us, catching in Jimmy’s hair and no doubt mine. ‘Look, I’m real sorry about your face,’ I said, peering up into the sky. ‘But I really gotta get inside. It’s freezing out here.’
Jimmy stared at me for a moment and I leaned my head in the direction of the subway entrance. The gesture was to make it clear we were parting ways here but, it seemed, Jimmy had other ideas.
‘Right. I’ll walk you down.’
‘But… oh.’
Before I had time to argue, he’d picked up my guitar case and suitcase and hurried down into the relative warmth of the subway station. Looking around, still conscious that someone might be on my tail, I sighed and followed after him, the scent of stale nicotine growing stronger with every step downward.
‘So where’s this swish hotel of yours?’ Jimmy asked when I reached the bottom of the stairs.
God damn it.
What with the fright I’d had and punching a complete stranger in the face, I’d forgotten about that. This is why I didn’t tell lies. The effort required to keep a lie going was incredible. Nothing’s worth that much effort. Nothing.
‘Uh, I need to check the subway map actually,’ I said, walking over to the wall to take a look at one that was framed behind some glass. Jimmy followed, placed my luggage on the floor and looked on, massaging his cheek now and then to take the sting out of the blow I’d dealt him.
Staring at the multi-coloured lines leading to Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, I felt that blush creeping up my neck again just as it had back in the diner. With my hair cut just below my jaw, it was more visible than it used to be, and boy did I ever feel it right then. The vulnerability of my bare neck on display. Turning crimson with the knowledge that this was all pretend. After a minute of false calculations and running my finger along various sections of the map, Jimmy put his hand flat against the glass in front of my eyes. I looked at it and then along the sleeve of his brown, sheepskin coat until I reached his face, or more specifically his eyes, which searched mine for answers I didn’t want to give.
‘There is no hotel, is there?’ he said. His voice gentle. His expression level. I looked to the ground and scratched just above my right eyebrow, debating which lie I should tell next. But something, I still don’t know what, stopped me. I looked at him, swallowed hard and shook my head.
‘How’d you know?’ Though concealed beneath my blue hair, the heat from my blush burned around my ears.
‘As a reporter you get to read people pretty well. But in your case, you’re just a lousy liar.’ He shook his head at me. ‘You got anywhere to stay? Anywhere at all?’
‘I was just gonna ride the subway till daybreak.’ I shrugged. Pretending it was no big deal. Like I wasn’t terrified of being mugged and beaten by a stranger – or worse, by someone who knew exactly who I was. By someone who was looking for me.
‘Blue…’ He half laughed. ‘You can’t do that.’
‘My name’s Bonnie, alright? Didn’t anybody ever warn you not to name a stray? Once you name a stray, you want to keep it.’ I said. A lame attempt to get off the subject but the cold seemed to have spread to my brain so it was the best I could do.
‘Yeah well, you stay out in the cold all night and Blue’s gonna be a more appropriate nickname for you than you’d like. News just this mornin’ was about some guy who died of hypothermia. Froze to death on his own driveway, shovelling snow.’
‘For real?’ I looked at Jimmy sidelong. ‘Wait, how old was this guy?’
‘Well, you know, not young – but the point is it’s cold out. Too cold to be riding around on the subway all night. I mean what are you? Twenty-five? Young girl, out on her own all night. That ain’t right,’ he said.
Actually, I was twenty-seven, but Mama always told me not to correct men when they thought you were younger than you were.
Jimmy sighed and scratched the side of his jaw. ‘You got no money at all?’
‘Sorta spent the last of it on the Greyhound to New York. I thought Esther’d be here. Thought I’d stay with her.’
‘Maybe you shoulda called first.’ Jimmy’s mean leer reared its head again.
‘You’re right. That was dumb,’ I said, leaning one shoulder against the framed subway map.
Except I couldn’t call first. I couldn’t risk Esther suggesting I go back home to my folks or finding some other friend to bail me out. You could put the phone down on a person real easy but turning them away face to face was a lot more difficult. At least, that’s what I’d been counting on when I came to New York to find Esther.
‘No family in the area? No second cousin living out in Williamsburg?’
‘No. No family. I’m kind of a loner,’ I said, and at this Jimmy’s leer dissolved.
It was quite a journey back to Grosse Point and I wagered I was pretty much the last person my old man wanted to see right then. His biggest disappointment. That’s what he’d called me last New Year’s Eve. The last time we spoke to one another.
That fight had been a long time coming. I’d got sick of the sly digs over the dinner table and my Dad handing me the employment section of the local newspaper, before he even said hello to me, whenever I came to visit. Not once did anyone in that family ask about my job or how it was going. Probably because they were still sore about the fact I was making a decent living at it. That I didn’t come crawling back home with my tail between my legs after a couple of weeks of trying to make it in the music business. Explaining that their Princeton-educated daughter played at a scuzzy Atlantic City casino every night was more embarrassment than the folks could handle during holiday get-togethers with the neighbours. So why go ruining the 1990 Brooks family Christmas when they didn’t give a damn about me anyway? Though I’ll admit to listening to ‘So Doggone Lonesome’ on my Johnny Cash cassette more in the last year than I ever had before, I was better off without them. They didn’t understand me or my dream. Never had.
Jimmy rubbed his chin with the flat of his left hand, thinking.
‘Look, I can’t just go home tonight, knowing you have nowhere to go. There’s a sofa at mine that’s perfectly comfortable. You should just stay there tonight.’ He said that last part quick, perhaps in the hope I wouldn’t notice how bold a suggestion it was.
‘I can’t do that. I can’t.’ I looked up into his eyes. It was my own stupid fault I couldn’t accept what was unto itself a kind invitation. If I hadn’t teased him back at the diner about the outfit I used to wear in the Sexties, I probably could’ve just said yes to him and not had to worry. But no. I had to have my fun, and now this guy was probably expecting me to do more than just sing for my supper if I followed him home. I’d sunk pretty low already but prostitution was not on my agenda. No sir.
‘Well, I know it’s a little weird but these are desperate times here,’ said Jimmy.
‘I can’t.’
‘Alright. I’ve known you about two minutes and even I can see you want to accept but something’s buggin’ you about it. Why? Why can’t you just accept the offer?’
A mind reader was about the last thing I needed in my life right now and, again, I thought about feeding him a lie but there was no dodging around this guy. Besides, he was being kind to me, when he really had no reason to be. Lying to him wouldn’t have been right.
‘I can’t accept because… I can’t go home with a guy I don’t know. You can understand that, can’t you? I don’t know you. Or what…’ I looked from his eyes down to the grey, concrete floor of the subway station. It was littered with cigarette ends and sticky, empty Coke cans, pushed along by the biting breeze drifting down from street level.
‘Or what?’ Jimmy asked with a frown.
‘Or, what you want from me.’
Jimmy snorted, at last understanding my reluctance.
‘Relax, Blue, I prefer brunettes.’
‘I am a brunette,’ I said. ‘Usually.’
‘Well, I prefer full-time brunettes then, if we’re going to get all technical about it. Look, we can stand here arguing about it till daybreak but we both know you don’t want to spend the night riding the subway, and I don’t wanna spend the night thinkin’ about you riding the subway when I got a sofa just sitting there. So, for God’s sakes, accept the offer. So we can go home and go to sleep. I’ve got a dog to feed and an early start in the morning.’
‘So, you’re helping me out the goodness of your heart? Just like that?’ I said, wondering how long it’d been since anyone had done that. Esther was probably the last person, and I hadn’t seen her in ten months.
‘Let’s just say, I’ve got a little bit of experience in this area.’ Jimmy’s eyes darted downwards. ‘Of spending the night out in the city with no place to go. And trust me when I say you don’t wanna do that.’
I looked at him and thought about the cold weather that awaited above. Easily six inches of snow and more was falling this very minute. I’d already had more than my fill of the cold while hunting for the diner. Must’ve taken me damn near two hours to find the place from Penn Station. I spent the whole time shaking in my black leather jacket, glancing behind me at every street corner to be sure nobody was tracking me, hovering over the grills where warmth wafted up from the subway tunnels and, whenever I could handle it, pulling my hands, raw with the chill, out of my pockets to read the street map. The idea of facing that again in the early hours of the morning, alone, on no sleep, wasn’t a tempting proposition.
And then something else hit me. There was little point deliberating over these pretty insignificant decisions. Not right now. The horrible truth was, I probably wasn’t gonna last much longer anyway. If I really thought about it, if I was really honest with myself, it was only a matter of time before one of Frankie’s guys caught up with me, and when they did, that’d be that. Sure, I could fight off Jimmy if I had to – I probably outweighed him by at least ten pounds – but when it came to Frankie’s guys, well, they’d be experts. They’d be big and strong and the one or two moves I still remembered from the self-defence classes my old man paid for before I left Grosse Point for the East Coast wouldn’t be enough.
Though Jimmy was pretty much a total stranger, I was probably safer at his place than out on the streets.
At long last, I let out a meek ‘Alright, thank you.’ I didn’t really know what else to say to a guy who’d known me less than an hour of my life and in that time had shown me more kindness than my own family had in the last year.
Jimmy didn’t say any more either. He just nodded, picked up my luggage again, walked over to the turnstile and threw a couple of subway tokens into the machine for us.
I followed after him, trotting down the steps to the platform. Waiting for him to show me the way.
Chapter Three (#u3d26b82c-36a6-5d84-b087-1ce74250a737)
A woman was screaming.
No. Strike that.
I was screaming, and somebody had hold of my arms. Gripping tight. Shaking me.
‘Bonnie!’ a voice said, over and over. ‘Bonnie. Bonnie. Bonnie.’ I started to struggle against the grip of whoever held me. My eyes jolted open, looking first into a set of brown eyes before darting around the unfamiliar room.
To the right was a bulky TV set, standing in front of a long window hung with drapes in a sort of muted orange colour. To the left, a tall silver lamp stood in the corner, the bulb weak, leaving most of the room in shadow. On the wall up in front was a large framed map of New York State. Somewhere, far away, sirens sounded out, and a faint scent of damp hung in the air.
It was then I noticed a little grey terrier that was panting, whining and nudging to get closer and see what all the fuss was about. Its fur hung heavy around the eyebrows and snout, giving him the look of an old man with a big bushy moustache.
That was Jimmy’s dog, Louie.
Jimmy was the man I was struggling against.
Pushing out a long, slow breath, I steadied myself. My eyes flitted down to the strip of brown hair on his bare chest and back up again. He was only half-dressed, wearing a pair of Levis he’d no doubt yanked on after hearing me holler out in the middle of the night.
I’d been having a dream. Well, a nightmare.
Even in my sleep I wasn’t safe from those vacant eyes, the colour of copper. Once again, they had stared at me out of the darkness, all the memories and hopes sieved out of them. Drained out of the bullet hole punched through his right temple.
I whimpered and my body slackened in Jimmy’s grasp. My heart was still hammering at the thought of what I’d just relived.
What I’d witnessed four nights ago.
Even now, the gunshot still echoed in my ears.
