Chapter 3 – Penny

I’m still trembling two hours later.

My best friend, Robbie – Roberta, really, but she’s a tomboy and she’d kick my ass if she heard me call her that – slides into the diner booth next to me. I’m gripping a milkshake in both hands: chocolate, and hard. Hard in the sense that I dumped three shots of whiskey into it from a pint I bought in a run-down grocery store across the street from my apartment. Condensation rolls down my fingers.

“Get dumped?” Robbie giggles. She throws her hat and gloves down messily on the table.

I look up at her. She’s colored her hair again: blue, this time. “You’ve got to stop doing that,” I say. “It’ll start falling out.”

“Ooh,” Robbie grins. “Must have been a bad day if Little Miss Perfect’s back to telling me how to wear my hair.”

“Don’t call me that,” I grump. “You know I hate it.”

Robbie elbows me in the ribs. When she does that, she’s not messing around. I wince and rock away; almost spilling my milkshake in the process. Robbie leans over and gracefully steals it from me. She brings the straw to her mouth and takes a sip.

“Wild Turkey,” she says, naming the brand of bottom shelf bourbon I’ve used.

“It must’ve been a really bad first day. Geez, Penny, you know how many calories they put in these drinks? If you want to fit into one of those sexy li’l pencil skirts tomorrow, you better lay off. Don’t worry, I’ll help.”

Help she does.

A long, lingering slurp fills the cramped booth. I know Robbie’s messing with me on purpose, but it sure as hell works. I’m distracted by a little flicker of annoyance. It’s like having a stone in my shoe while I’m being chased by a bear. I shouldn’t notice it, but I do.

It’s all I can think about.

I guess that’s what best friends are for.

“Why are you so upbeat?” I growl. “I screwed it up. Everything detail we’ve been planning, for months, I wrecked it all.”

Robbie clunks the heavy milkshake glass down. She loops her arm around my shoulder and squeezes me tight. It feels funny, because she’s half a foot shorter than me, and doesn’t weigh hundred pounds soaking wet, but I don’t complain. I need a hug.

“Hey, Penny?”

“Yeah?”

“You know how they say misery loves company?”

“Yeah.”

“Well they say bullshit. Or I do, if that makes more sense. Screw it, what I mean is that if I’d wanted someone to bring me down. I’d have gone over to Dan’s place.”

Dan.

He’s Robbie’s on-again, off-again boyfriend. He’s a musician – guitar – not that I’ve ever heard him practice. As far as I’m concerned, he’s an anchor dragging Robbie to the depths of despair. I’ve told her that, but she doesn’t agree. Besides, the sex is too good; or so she says. Seems like a crazy reason to stay with a guy to me. But then again, I can’t really say. It’s not like I’ve been with a man before.

“You’re too good for him, Robbie,” I say. It’s an automatic reaction.

“Bull. Shit.” Robbie grins.

She reminds me of Harley Quinn from Suicide Squad. She’s got that same deliciously unhinged personality. Don’t get me wrong: I love it, but I’m not lying to myself. My friend is all kinds of crazy. On the plus side, at least, she doesn’t walk around town swinging a baseball bat.

Yet.

“I mean it –” I protest.

“Nuh uh; trust me, girl, I know my strengths. My pussy’s dynamite, I’ve got a rack to die for, but like you say, my hair looks like straw and I’m so pale it looks like Dracula’s drained me of ten pints of blood.”

“Robbie –!”

“I told you, Pen. We ain’t having this conversation. Not now, not ever. Anyway, you’re the one drowning your sorrows in a freaking milkshake; so spill.”

I wriggle free from Robbie’s arms. “You don’t have to be such an ass about it,” I mutter.

“And you don’t have to keep deflecting, Pen. I know your game. I know something’s up, so tell me what it is. You can’t have screwed up that badly, can you? I’m sure it’s nothing. Just a storm in a teacup –”

I fix my friend with a pointed stare.

“I’m babbling again, aren’t I,” she says. She doesn’t even have the grace to look embarrassed.

I nod.

I speak softly. “I ruined everything, Rob. You know how I was supposed to stay under the radar: keep my head down; just get the lay of the land for a few weeks?”

“Don’t tell me you spilled coffee all over your boss’s shirt or something.” She leans forward, a wicked glint in her eye. “You did, didn’t you? Did he change in front of you? What does he look like naked? Oh – shit.”

My eyebrow kinks upward at the sound of her yelling. “What?”

“He made a move on you, didn’t he? Charlie Thorne, I mean. What an asshole. What did you do?”

“No,” I protest. “It’s nothing like that.”

“No?”

I shake my head. Dark red hair dances across my vision like I’m caught in a wind tunnel. “No,” I say. “Worse.”

“Worse?” Robbie says. There’s a slight hint of disappointment to her tone. I know she wouldn’t really want me to be in that kind of situation.

“Much worse,” I say.

A crawling sense of worry strangles my stomach. I feel like I’m on a roller coaster, creeping up the rails, almost at the highest point. I’m just going to have to come out and say it. If not, in a few seconds, I won’t be able to speak at all.

“Robbie – we’re getting married.”

There aren’t many things that can strike my best friend dumb, but that statement is one of them. She turns to me with a look of shock on her face. If I wasn’t buried ten feet deep in crap, I’d almost think it would be worth it, just to see that.

My heart beat drums loudly inside my chest as I wait for Robbie’s response.

Thump, thump.

Thump, thump.

Thump –

A wicked peal of laughter rings out across the diner. Customers turn their heads to search out the source, and quickly look away. I don’t blame them. I’m used to Robbie’s look – thick black lipstick, blue hair, and the choker collar around her neck, but most people aren’t.

I grip my friend’s arm, digging my nails into her skin. “Robbie,” I hiss. “Shut up, people are looking.”

She doubles over with laughter, slapping the table as it consumes her. “Pen, this is too much,” she says over snatches of giggles. “Say it again.”

I look around the diner. Everyone’s looking studiously away – but I can’t help but feel they are listening into our conversation. I lower my voice. It comes out in a hushed, embarrassed murmur.

“I’m not joking, Robbie. I’m freaking marrying him. Hell, I told a woman from Child Protective Services that we were already married!”

Robbie blinks. The laughter dies in her throat. “Wait,” she says. “You’re serious.”

Like I said, not many things can turn Robbie quiet. I’ve done it twice in one day. I’d go buy a lottery ticket, but I don’t think it’s my lucky day; the exact opposite, maybe?

“Deadly.” I hiss. “What the hell am I going to do?”

“Whoa. Take it from the top, Pen. And stop panicking. This might be exactly what we need.”

I tell her everything. How I made a split-second decision to throw myself in at the deep end. How Charlie’s lawyer told us that we need to get married, that she can alter the wedding registry of some Central American state like the Dominican Republic so it makes it look like we got married months ago.

How I’m moving in with Charlie Thorne, CEO of Thorne Enterprises.

Now it’s Robbie’s fingers digging into my forearm. I wince. “Geez, that hurts. Lay off, will you?”

“Penny; what the hell has you so worried?” Robbie asks. “You’re in. We don’t need to con the dude out of his fortune anymore. He’ll just give it to you. You’ll be married, right? In a few months you can walk away with half of everything he owns: shotgun the master bedroom.”

“It – It doesn’t work like that,” I say. Apparently I spoke too quietly, because Robbie reaches over and envelops me in a hug.

“This time next year,” she laughs, “we’ll be millionaires!”

“Robbie,” I hiss. “I told you, it doesn’t work like that.”

The smile falls off Robbie’s face. In that instance, I realize exactly who we are: a couple of formally-homeless girls who are in way over our heads. It’s only day one, and our plan is already falling apart. “Why not?”

“You don’t understand,” I whisper. I look around, making sure that no one’s listening in on our conversation.

“We underestimated this guy, Rob. We were so dumb. There’s no way I can just waltz into Thorne Enterprises and help myself to the gold. It’s too big, too professional. He’s got security everywhere, and his lawyer –.”

“Wait, there’s gold?”

I grimace as my best friend winks at me.

“But that’s the magic of it, Penny, don’t you understand? We don’t have to steal from him anymore. If you marry Charlie Thorne, he’ll have to give you anything you want.”

“We my ass,” I say. “It’s me putting my freedom on the line, not you.”

“Don’t be like that, Penny,” Robbie says. She pastes a hurt look on her face, but I know it’s just for show. She’s got thicker skin than your average rhinoceros. She lifts up her arms, turns them over, and shows me the cuts that scar her forearms.

“It was the only way. There was no way a nut job like me gets a gig in a fancy office like that. You’re the hot one, the one no self-respecting billionaire in existence would be able to stop slobbering over. You know that. Hell, you were the one who suggested it!”

“Don’t try and butter me up, Robbie,” I mutter.

“I know better. Look, you weren’t there. They are going to button me down to an ironclad prenup. I know it. You didn’t meet his lawyer, Rob – she’s one cold fish. I put one foot out of place, and she’ll do whatever it takes to put me away.”

Robbie goes quiet. She bites her lip.

“Don’t you back out on me now, Penny,” she says. Her voice is hard. She’s only just concealing her anger.

“I’m not –It’s just…”

“You are, and you know it,” she says. “Have you forgotten what happened to us, Penny?”

It’s my turn to fall silent. Of course I haven’t forgotten. I remember everything. After dad went into the hospital, I found myself on the streets. You know what sleeping outside in New York in January is like?

No?

I hope you never have to find out. You can’t stop shivering. Every time you breathe in, it’s like an icicle slicing through your heart. When you sweat, it freezes, and your clothes become icy shells. Your fingers get so cold that if you tap them, you don’t feel a thing.

I don’t recommend it.

“You remember living in that shelter?” Robbie says.

I nod.

Shelter is putting it a bit strong. It wasn’t a homeless shelter, just an abandoned factory down on the outskirts of Brooklyn. God only knows how it was still there, and hadn’t been acquired by some faceless developer. It was boarded up, there were weeds everywhere. It stank in summer and froze in winter.

But it was home.

“Of course I do,” I whisper. “How could I forget?”

I found the old factory one night. It was close to zero, and all I had was a dirty bag I carried on my back. It was two years ago, almost three. I was barely seventeen. I didn’t have any relatives to take me in, and the city forgot about me. I was abandoned.

I tried shelter after shelter, but they were all full. I was barely more than a kid, but it didn’t help. I didn’t blame the women who turned me away. Those shelters were overflowing, some filled with mothers and their kids. You can’t let a five-year-old sleep on the streets.

So I walked.

“That place was home,” Robbie says. “How many of us were there; twenty; thirty?”

“More,” I say.

Robbie’s right.

The factory was salvation. I saw a flicker of candlelight coming through the boarded windows. I lingered on the street: first for a minute, then two, then five.

I might have waited there all night. I was too scared to go in. Being a female out on the streets is a dangerous business. Everyone’s looking for something from you – and it’s usually no good. There’s no way I was about to walk into an abandoned factory.

Then I saw Robbie.

“Remember the parties: the food; the community?” She asks.

I nod. “Of course I do.”

She was carrying a bottle of cheap vodka in her hand. She couldn’t have been much older than sixteen, yet her fingers were rosy from the booze. She stumbled through the snow.

“Hey, you,” she said. “Got a cigarette?”

I remember turning, numb with cold. This girl in front of me, wearing a mismatched selection of thrift shop furs, she seemed like she’d fallen from some other universe. She was so damn confident.

“I don’t smoke,” I said. I turned to leave.

“Nor do I, really,” Robbie said. She flicked her cigarette butt into the snow. “It’s a horrible habit. Fancy a drink?”

But it’s not the parties I remember. It’s the fact that, for the first time in weeks, I found a group of people who welcomed me in with open arms: a group of people who cared for me; a group of people who loved me.

“And,” Robbie says – her voice stirring, “Remember how it’s all gone?”

I do.

I got back from a day’s casual work. The kind you find hanging around outside shitty temp agencies that cream off half your pay check. The kind where some sleazy manager tells you that if you go into the back room with him, unbuckle his pants, and do you-know-what, he’ll let you come back and work another day.

Yeah, that happened a lot.

I got back to the old factory after work – the one I’d called home for months, and there was a fresh fence around it. The construction company was already bringing in bulldozers. They cleared us out, every one of my friends. The only home I knew was gone in weeks, just rubble on the ground.

“Of course I do,” I say. “How could I forget?”

“And you remember who did it?”

“Of course I do,” I repeat. The words clatter out of my mouth, harsh and aggravated. It’s not like the bulldozers turned up with Thorne Enterprises painted on them, or anything. It was only a year or so later we found out who owned the company that bought our home.

Charlie Thorne.

My boss.

“Penny,” she says. “He’s the same kind of prick who refused to pay out on your dad’s health insurance. They are all the same, these rich assholes. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” I mutter. I feel my resolve begin to stiffen. “I do.”

“So, what do you say? Way I see it, we’ve got two options: either we stick to the original plan, and con the asshole out of his cash; or you become Mrs. Penny Thorne, and take him for everything he’s worth in the divorce.”

An evil grin stretches across Robbie’s face. “So which is it: You in?”