CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Layla
I finish typing the last few sentences of Giancarlo’s economics paper, then email it to him and shut my computer. It’s not a great paper, written in the last twenty-four hours. I had to skip one of my classes today to finish it, but it’s the best I could do with such short notice.
I blink, trying to kick out Quinn’s disapproving looks, Shama and Jamie’s pitiful faces last Friday. I’ve barely seen any of them since I walked out, sneaking in during hours I knew they wouldn’t be there to grab some stuff to bring up here. But the commute back to campus from here isn’t easy every day of the week. And staying with Giancarlo all the time isn’t easy either. Sometimes he’s sweet, other times unbearably terse. I never know which version of him I’m going to get.
“Please,” he begged as he curled up on the bed last night and pressed his face into my shoulder. “Amor, I need your help.”
It wasn’t until he told me he would lose his student visa if he failed his class that I finally gave in. What was I supposed to say to that? Tell him he had to leave the country because I wasn’t willing to type a five-page paper?
I yawn, repressing the urge to collapse across the desk. I need some coffee, but Giancarlo’s out, and my bank account is down to its last few pennies. I need to call my mother and figure out this summer. Try to convince her to let me stay here, although every mention of that makes Giancarlo get that crazy look in his eye. He wants me to come with him to Buenos Aires. That’s a discussion for when we’re both getting a decent night’s sleep, I guess.
I look out the window, where the sun peeks between the buildings, gleaming through the fire escape. From here, the iron bars look a lot like a jail. I try not to think about how this place is starting to feel like one too.
When he said “you and me,” I didn’t realize it would mean demanding to know where I was every second of every day. I didn’t realize it would mean sporadically checking my cell phone messages to make sure I wasn’t cheating on him or talking to anyone else. But every time I start arguing with what he says or does, he reminds me of one fact, one truth that digs so deeply. Only me, he says over and over again. I’m the only one here for you.
It hurts. It all hurts. And even though sometimes he hurts too, Giancarlo is the only one who’s here. The only one who stays.
With a sigh, I flip open my history textbook, finally ready to finish my last paper. I haven’t done very well in this class, so I need to do well on this to pull my grade out of the B-minus range. There’s a lot to do.
The front door opens and shuts with a slam, and a few minutes later Giancarlo walks in, chattering on the phone.
“Hello,” he says curtly after he hangs up, but he stops and waits until I look up from the desk.
I try to give a bright smile. “Bueno. Estoy tratando de escribir mi papel.”
Giancarlo frowns at my clunky Spanish while he takes off his glasses and polishes them. Even though he knows I’m taking accelerated Spanish classes, he doesn’t like to speak it with me. My poor accent, which sounds more Brazilian than any kind of Hispanic, is frustrating, apparently. “Like talking to a toddler,” he said just last week. “Waste of my time.”
He flops down on the unmade bed, an old mattress balanced on a squeaky metal frame, and it’s then I notice that his eyes look a little glassy. Sometimes they look that way when he gets back from his job, doing whatever it is the club has him doing at all hours of the night and day. He’s a promoter, or so he told me once. Apparently that means he does everything, including buying televisions and selling his girlfriend’s watch to do it, though I’d never say anything about it now.
He flips on the television to a rerun of some crime show, which is all he ever likes to watch. It’s the kind my dad likes, but which bores me to death.
I look up irritably. “Do you have to do that? I have a final exam tomorrow and a paper due.”
Giancarlo frowns. “I had to work all day today. I need some time to relax. This is my apartment.”
I blink between him and the screen, trying to figure out if he’s for real. “Um, okay. Well, I guess I can go downtown to work at the library. They’re open all night.”
I stand up and start gathering my things together, but in a minute, I’m surrounded by Giancarlo’s arms, pulled tight against his tall form.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs into my ear. “Forgive me. Stay. This is your home too.”
Home? I’m not sure how I feel about that.
He keeps me trapped against his body, and I can feel something starting to grow against the small of my back. He’s most attracted when I’m trapped.
“Giancarlo,” I say, gently unwrapping his arms from around me. “I need to study. Please?”
He pumps his growing erection lightly against my hip, then releases me with a reluctant groan. “Fine,” he says, like a child, and then flops back on the bed, but turns off the TV. “You are so lucky to have me, you know that? How many men would be this patient with their woman?”
Wise enough not to answer that question, I turn back to the desk and try to keep writing, even though it’s that much harder to focus with a restless, long-limbed Argentinian flopping around on the bed behind me.
Eventually, I’m able to focus more, and I write and study for a few more hours, taking notes and doing the best I can to learn the history of Spanish migration patterns that I should have learned a month ago. As I scratch out some notes about the recent timeline of travel patterns from Cuba through Venezuela, something catches my eye.
“Holy shit,” I breathe.
“What?” Giancarlo asks irritably from the bed, where he’s lying. “What are you gasping about?”
I read over the words, unsure if I understand them correctly.
In 1999, the Clinton Administration passed a series of laws opening up travel to Cuba for educational purposes. While in 2003, the Bush Administration restricted these measures, family visitations were actually expanded beyond humanitarian relief. Currently, any close relative of a Cuban national can visit the country. Critics of this law have said it was too lax because visitors are not required to bring any documentation of their family’s presence in Cuba to visit.
2003. I flip the page back and forth, looking for more information, but there’s nothing. Barely a mention of the new laws, but immediately, I jump to the computer and start searching for more information, although I soon realize I don’t have the expertise to parse the legal jargon online. I need to talk to a lawyer.
Correction: Nico’s family needs to talk to a lawyer.
But one thing is clear. Not required to bring any documentation. Maybe I’m reading this wrong, but it looks like under the auspices of tightening regulations, the travel laws to Cuba for family have actually been relaxed in some ways. All Nico or one of his siblings has to do is say they are visiting a relative there, and they could potentially get a license to go. Get Carmen’s birth certificate. Set her on the path toward citizenship.
I skim the article again while my heart picks up a few beats. The whole story isn’t here––it doesn’t say what to do, or whom to talk to about getting the license needed to travel. But this small paragraph is everything. This could change Carmen’s life. It could change her whole family’s life.
I stand up suddenly, clapping the book under one arm.
Giancarlo looks up from the TV and glares at me. “What are you doing?”
I glance around for my jacket, barely noticing him in my flurry of thoughts. “I need to go out for a bit.”
“What? Where?”
My skin prickles. Finally I locate my jacket under a pile of Giancarlo’s laundry and shove my arms through it. I look like crap in leggings and an old t-shirt, my hair tossed up into a bun after I pulled an all-nighter last night writing papers for two. Carmen and her kids are going to think I look crazy. But it doesn’t matter. They need to know this right freaking now.
“Um, some friends down the street. I just found some information that will help them.” For some reason, I don’t want to tell Giancarlo what’s going on. I mean, he might understand. After all, he’s here on a visa too. But the way he’s looking at me tells me he’s in one of those moods where he won’t even want to let me out of the room, much less on a five-block walk.
Suddenly I’m in a hurry. Like if I wait around this apartment, I’ll be talked out of it. Convinced this is nothing, that I have nothing to tell them, nothing to offer anyone else but him, in this strange, dingy little cocoon he’s constructed here.
“Do you remember Gabe?” I say, hoping the memory will soothe him a little. “My friend from down the street? His mother, she, um, well, anyway, I just read something in here that could help them. It has to do with her status, you know? I just really want to show them.”
Giancarlo pushes up from the bed and walks over in his socked feet. His normally glossy hair looks dull, flattened on one side from lying down for so long, and his five-o’clock shadow is patchy. He still hasn’t lost that glazed look in his eyes.
“I can tell him tomorrow in our class. You don’t need to leave.”
He reaches a hand out for the book and waits. I stare at it. Suddenly I feel like the book symbolizes something I’ll never get back if I give it up.
“Um, no thanks,” I say. I hug the book to my chest and step toward the bedroom door. “I don’t want it to get lost in translation.” I open it before he can reply, slipping on my sneakers as I hop out. “It’s fine. They only live a few blocks away. I’ll be back in an hour, maybe less.”
“Layla!”
I skip to the front door and let it slam over my name, and without thinking, I’m scurrying down the stairs to the lobby, like a mouse escaping a bloodthirsty cat.
This is silly. What am I running from? This is Giancarlo, my boyfriend, not some terrible monster. We are practically living together now––he always wants me with him, and even though sometimes his attention chafes, I know it’s just because he cares. Because he wants me.
He wouldn’t hurt me. He wouldn’t.
Wouldn’t he? A voice echoes, one that isn’t Quinn or Nico or my other friends and family, but maybe a little bit of all of them. Maybe a little myself too. My wrist throbs. So when I hear a door open and footsteps sound in the building, I rush out the front door into the night.
It doesn’t take long to walk-run the five or so blocks to Nico’s old apartment, skipping around the groups of people arriving home from work and leaving classes at this time of night. It’s twilight, and the last glow of the sun has set over the river, which glimmers down the hill through the tall buildings, alight with a purple hue, the color of a fresh bruise.
I stop in front of the arched entrance to the familiar gray stone building, smiling politely at an older couple who walk by.
“Buenas noches,” I say, aware that I probably sound like a textbook, not someone familiar with the local lingo, but they smile like they would to a child and nod politely.
Then I turn back to the building. My fingers hover over the call buttons to buzz the apartment. For a second I’m not sure if I should press them. Gabe might not even be there, although I’d bet my foot that Carmen is. I could just call Nico, weird as it might be after not taking any of his calls or texts for months. But maybe he should tell his mother, not me––they could do with the information what they liked. Maybe this isn’t my business.
No, I decide. This doesn’t need a translator, and it doesn’t have to be yet another thing on Nico’s shoulders. And Carmen deserves to see the words herself––hear it straight from the source that someone in her family can go and get her the documents she needs to be here legally.
But just as I’m about to press the button, a hand closes over my wrist, and I’m yanked around with a force that nearly pulls my arm out of its socket.
“Come!” Giancarlo shouts as he fairly drags me back toward Broadway.
“Hey!” I wrench my arm out of his grasp, then clasp my wrist to my chest. “What are you doing?”
“What am I doing?” he demands. “I’m coming after my woman, who just leaves in the middle of the night for no reason! What the fuck do you think I should be doing?”
He makes another grab at my wrist, and to avoid the curious looks of another woman walking down the street, I let him tow me back to his apartment, trotting next to him the entire way. Inside, Giancarlo drags me down the hall, practically flings me into his bedroom, and slams the door.
“Where. The fuck. Did you go?”
I take a step back. His eyes are less glassy, but still dilated. Yeah, he definitely took something when he was out. But it’s the look of complete blackness on his face right now that really terrifies me. It’s a look devoid of any love or compassion or tenderness. Only contempt. Rage.
“What-what do you mean?” I stutter. “I told you where I was going.”
I take a step backward again, and my heel hits the bottom of the bedframe. Giancarlo approaches, forcing me to look up. He’s so much taller than me; I have to crane my neck to look him in the eye.
He snags my wrist again to hold me in place. “You were going to him, weren’t you?”
I frown. “Who?”
“Whoever you’re fucking behind my back. That boy, maybe. The one that walked you here.”
Shit. Not this again. I swallow. “P-please. Listen to yourself. You sound crazy right now. I don’t know what you did at work or if maybe you took something––I...I won’t judge you, I promise. But I really don’t think you’re yourself right now––”
“I’m fine.” Giancarlo bites out the words, and I shake slightly. “You are mine,” he spits. “We talked about this.”
“No, you talked about this,” I say, struggling unsuccessfully to get back my wrist. “I’ve never said anything like that, ever!”
“So now you lie to me too, eh?” he asks, his accent suddenly a thick syrup over his words. “You lie to me about where you go, you lie about why––you lie about all of it, don’t you? Don’t you?”
His words shake, and his voice rises slightly with a mild hysteria. I take a deep breath, willing my racing heart to calm down. Every cell in my body is screaming to get out. I’m overreacting. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt me. He...wouldn’t.
“Were you going to play his little whore? Suck his cock, do all the dirty things you never want to do for me? Eh? Is that where you were running to? Hmm?”
My entire face screws up. “Are you fucking serious right now? I t-told you where I was going! You’re acting nuts!”
His hands land on my shoulders like dead weights, and he starts pushing me down to the carpet. “You say you’re my woman? Prove it. On your knees.”
I struggle against his force. “What? No? I’m not doing anything like that to you right now!”
“Yes, you are!” he roars, pushing me down hard enough that my knees land on the floor with a crack. Suddenly I’m shoved against the back of the bed, pinned there by his legs while he struggles to unbutton his pants.
“Stop!” I cry out, pushing against his iron thighs. “What are you doing?!”
But my struggles only get me yanked under my arms and tossed onto the bed. Giancarlo straddles me, his half-erect penis hanging out of his pants while he pins my arms above my head. Pain lances through the shoulder he wrenched on the street.
I shriek: “Get off me!”
“Stay DOWN!” Giancarlo shouts. “You’re my woman! Mine!”
“I am NOT!” I scream, and in a reflex that’s purely rooted in fight-or-flight mode, my hands fly out with curled fingers, flailing wildly to beat off his much larger form. “LET ME FUCKING GO!”
And suddenly I’m off the bed like a doll and tossed backward with a loud thud as my head whips against the plaster over the bed. Then Giancarlo’s on top of me again, and his hands close around my neck, holding me against the pillow while he straddles my body all over again. I fight to suck in air, but none comes as his hands tighten around my windpipe.
“Giancarlo!” I wheeze, but the word barely makes it through his grip. I try to pound my chest, let him know I can’t breathe, but his steel-like grip remains.
“Are you going to calm down?” he says, over and over again. “Are you? Are you going to calm the fuck down?”
The world starts to feel brighter, but also fades a little––out of fear or lack of oxygen, I can’t say. Either way, I’ve never been more terrified, and my body freezes. I couldn’t have moved if I wanted to. All I want is to run. But instinct takes over––before I can run, he has to let me go.
“Are you going to calm down?” he asks for the last time. He stares at me, his black eyes shining through smudged glasses.
Somehow, with my last remnants of oxygen, I nod, a tiny shake of my head that quivers under his grip. Please, is all I can think, a prayer to someone out there. God. Jesus. A saint. The universe. Please don’t let him kill me. I don’t want to die.
His eyes clear suddenly, like a fog has lifted. As if he realizes where we are, what he’s doing, Giancarlo’s hands let go, and he lifts off me suddenly. I remain frozen for a half-second while I inhale a massive breath. And then, as the oxygen goes to my brain, my heart, my soul, my body erupts into sudden action.
Giancarlo watches dumbfounded with a big hand thrust into his thick black hair, as I jump off the bed, grab my purse off a chair. I don’t even think about what I’m doing as I grab a few books, my computer, shove them into a bag.
“Wait,” Giancarlo says as he finds his voice. He stumbles toward me, reaching out. “Amor, please, stop. I didn’t mean to––”
His hand finds my elbow, and I spring out of reach, a textbook under one arm. My jacket is on the other side of the room, but that can stay. I’m a whirlwind, I just need to get out.
“No!” I shout, as I sprint toward the door.
“Layla!” Giancarlo shouts, still stumbling, tripping in his faze over the thick carpet and falling to the floor.
It gives me the extra few seconds I need to make my escape. This time, I don’t scurry. I fucking run.
I sprint down the stairs, two at a time, run out the building and ignore the shouts of my name echoing down the block from two stories up. I dash down two blocks on Broadway, ignoring the concerned looks on people’s faces as I wipe away tears and struggle for breath after breath. I still feel like I can’t breathe. I need...I need something.
I feel around in my pocket, but realize too late that I’ve left my phone there in my hurry to leave. I need to call someone. Let them know I’m coming. Figure out what the fuck I’m going to do next.
If I had been thinking clearly at the time, I probably wouldn’t have stopped on my way to the subway that night. I wouldn’t have spied a pay phone across the street, dodged oncoming traffic flying down Broadway in order to get to it. I wouldn’t have fished the dollar out of my purse I needed to make long distance phone calls. I would have just kept going.
But at that moment, I needed to hear his voice more than I needed to be safe. To me, they were the same thing.
“Hello?”
The deep, melodic tone is instant balm to my soul, but also opens up wounds even further. The chaos of the last twenty minutes breaks over me like a waterfall, and the tears immediately turn to choked sobs.
“N-Nico?”
It’s loud. There’s static on the other end of the line, like he’s outside, maybe driving somewhere. And for a second, I’m not sure if he can hear me. Or if he even wants to at all.
“Layla?” he calls. “Is that you?”
“I-I want you to k-kill him,” I stutter automatically into the phone, my words caught on the sobs. I barely even know what I’m saying as all the pain and frustration of the last few weeks, months, shit, the entire year, pours out of me. “I want you to come with your-your boys. Flaco. K.C. Who––I don’t know––who-whoever you would bring to help you. And I-I want you to beat the sh-shit out of him, j-just like you would have, w-way back w-when...you know...w-when you were younger.”
I don’t really know what he was like back then. He’s told me a little about it, and I’ve seen for myself that he’s no one to mess with. I’ve seen him wrangle unruly men at bars like they were nothing, seen his fists curl with the urge to fight. I know at the very least that when he told me to call him, threatening to take care of anyone who hurt me, he meant it.
My fear has suddenly been replaced with anger, an anger I’ve never known before. It’s a rage that burns white, like a glowing iron that’s so hot the red has all but disappeared. More than anything else, I’m angry that I don’t have the power to fight back the way I want to. That I’d never be able to.
But maybe Nico could. Maybe he would. For me.
The buzz behind the phone dies down, but his voice still crackles, like he’s getting out of range.
“Nico?” I ask again. “Are you there?”
At first there’s no answer. Then he’s back: “Where are you?”
“I’m-I’m at a pay phone,” I manage. “T-two blocks from h-his place. H-he...I c-can’t...” The words choke in my mouth. How can I tell him this? I don’t even know how to explain it to myself.
The line breaks up again, but occasionally there’s some swearing. “Motherfucker” breaks through a few times, but I can’t tell anything else.
This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have called. And as I look through the window of the phone booth to see Giancarlo jogging erratically down the other side of the street, I realize just how stupid my mistake really was.
“I have to go,” I say quickly. “I’m sorry. He’s coming toward me, and I don’t know what he’s going to do. I need to get help, okay? I need to go!”
I don’t wait to hear Nico’s response, just drop the phone as Giancarlo spots me and start sprinting down the street.
“Layla!” he shouts.
My feet trip on the pavement, but I manage to keep my footing. Several cars honk as I run into oncoming traffic, but the gamble means I reach the subway entrance a full block earlier than Giancarlo. I jog down the stairs, praying for a train, not considering what I’ll do if he corners me in the station while I wait.
The attendant in the booth watches curiously as I hurriedly swipe my MetroCard. I exhale with relief as a train pulls up almost immediately
“Layla!” Giancarlo shouts from the other side of the turnstiles, blocked by a flush of people exiting the platform. “Come back now!”
But I just stare, deadened, crying, terrified, as the scratched glass subway doors close between us, cutting off his voice. His black stare pins me to the hard, plastic seats as the train leaves, and we dive underground into blackness.
I ride it all the way down to the last stop, and then back up to Union Square. And then I wait a solid ten minutes behind a statue, waiting for Giancarlo to appear on my street. When he doesn’t, I dodge across the street like a shadow and into my building. And it’s only with a nod at the security guard that at last I feel safe.
~