Chapter 17 – Penny

I wake to loss. It’s an unbelievable, aching feeling. It rips at me until I open my eyes and jolt back to my senses. It’s still dark outside – the middle of the night. I reach over and turn on a bedside lamp.

“Charlie?” I whisper.

The memory of the pain takes a few seconds to fade. I can still feel it – tearing at my stomach, squeezing down on my lungs. Then it’s gone – as though it were never there in the first place.

I pat the bed to the left of me. It’s empty, but still warm. I look up, searching for a crack of light underneath the bathroom door, but find instead that it’s empty, and the light is off.

That clears one thing up, anyway. Charlie’s not here – but wherever he is, he only just left. But where would he disappear to in the middle of the night?

I sit up in bed. Charlie’s silk sheets pool around me, and I toss them off, swinging my feet out from the low-set bed and onto the floor.

I pause, and examine my assumptions. Why am I so sure that something’s changed? Why am I so sure that Charlie’s gone somewhere? He might simply be getting a glass of water.

But he’s not.

I’m sure of that.

My eyes pass over Charlie’s nightstand. I distantly remember him slipping his watch from his wrist and settling it there – but the leather banded wristwatch has disappeared. That settles the argument.

Charlie’s gone.

As I stand up, I distantly recall the contents of my dream. It was a cold, damp dream, like swimming in a garden pond in the depth of night. I was at dad’s hospital. They were giving me the news – the news I’ve dreaded for months, years even.

They give me the news that he’s passed away: that the cancer got the better of him; that I’ll never hear him speak again –

– that I was too late.

“But it’s not true,” I whisper.

I might whisper it, anyway. I’m not sure whether any words actually escape my mouth. Maybe the dream’s just my brain’s way of communicating something to me. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything about dad, but Charlie, instead …

… about where he’s gone.

I slip out of a pair of silk pajamas. Like everything in my new wardrobe, they are way out of my price range, and they appeared in exactly my size. I step out of them, and grab my favorite pair of worn jeans instead.

There are piles of new – brand-name – denim in my room, but none of them fit right. They just aren’t me. These, however, are. They are “thrift shop” finest, and they fit my body down to a T. I leave my pajama top on, and walk into the penthouse’s lounge.

It’s quiet. I barely hear a sound.

Until I do.

It’s so faint I barely catch it. The elevator doors sliding closed, and the dampened mechanism whirring as it sends the metal box inside dropping forty floors.

The hell?

A cold shiver runs through me. I don’t know why – call it woman’s intuition, but I feel that something’s wrong; in my bones. I know it’s an overused phrase, but it’s the only way to describe how I’m feeling.

Uneasy: like my lies are about to be discovered.

I hate this: this powerlessness. I want to – need to – know where Charlie’s going. More importantly, I need to know whether it has anything to do with me.

Maybe I’m just being dramatic. Maybe he’s gone to –, to –. Hell, I don’t know where he could possibly be.

Charlie slipped out of our bed in the middle of the night.

Why would a man do that?

I can think of only two explanations: neither of them is good. One: Charlie has suspected me from the start, and he’s gone somewhere to confirm his suspicions. Or two: and strangely, this is the thought that truly scares me, he’s gone to meet another woman.

Have I just given my virginity to a man like that?

“You’re just jumping to the worst possible option,” I tell myself. My voice seems to echo around the empty penthouse. I bite my lip, and before I know it I’m doing it hard enough that my eyes begin to water.

Jealousy rages inside me like a wildfire: jealousy and suspicion. I know that I won’t get another wink of sleep tonight unless I get an answer. I need to know where Charlie’s gone, and what he’s doing.

My feet start moving instantly. I grab a tattered leather jacket that goes well with my tattered denim jeans and throw it over my shoulders – and over my pajama top. I button it up so that no one can tell. Next I grab my favorite pair of studded leather boots and slip them on.

I glance at myself in the dark reflection of one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. I nod, like a Jersey dude checking himself out in a nightclub mirror.

I’ve got bad bitch mode on.

Whatever Charlie’s up to, I’m going to find out. If I need to run, then I’ll be gone before he knows to stop looking. If he’s sleeping with another woman with my scent still on his cock, then…

Hell, I don’t know what I’ll do.

But he won’t like it.

My fingers stab the elevator call button, and just seconds later it slides into position. I step in, and follow Charlie down. Who knows, this might all just be a wild goose chase. Charlie might have popped out for a snack,

God, I’m a jealous girlfriend: no – a jealous wife.

That label seems to make it better. I am Charlie’s wife for better, or for worse: no matter how shaky our foundations. No matter that he does the slightest little thing and I apparently fly off the handle. Not just a bad bitch, but a crazy one.

“Can I help you, Miss Thorne?” The doorman asks as I step into the marble lobby.

I shake my head. “I’m good.”

The cool air of a New York night greets my skin. I look left: then right; just in time to see a limousine with blacked out windows drive off and merge into the traffic.

“Shit,” I groan.

I hadn’t thought this far ahead. I’ve got no idea what I’m going to do now. I pat the pockets of my jacket down in a half-frantic hurry. My breast pocket clinks, and I shove my hand inside to find a stack of coins in a couple of dog-eared, filthy twenty dollar bills.

Good enough.

I throw myself to the edge of the sidewalk and hail down a pulsing yellow cab. It screeches to a halt, and I climb inside, slamming the door behind me.

“Follow that car,” I pant. I point at Charlie’s departing limousine.

“Hey, lady,” the driver says in a thick New York accent. “This isn’t the movies. I ain’t doing anything illegal, you hear?”

My balloon popped, I grimace. “Fine; but can you go already, we’re losing him!”

The driver huffs, but does as I ask. In the end, I can’t fault him. He pulls out into traffic – indicating, definitely not like in the movies – and merges with the river of cars flowing in our direction.

My driver, for all his protestations, seems to have an excitable glint in his eyes whenever I catch them in the rearview mirror.

“Two cars back,” he says.

I’ve got my cheek pressed right up against the glass of the window, so I miss what he says at first. “Huh?”

“Distance,” he says, glancing up at me in the mirror. “You’re supposed to keep two cars in between you and your target. I learned that on The Wire.”

“I haven’t seen it,” I say.

“Girl like you,” the cab driver says, “wouldn’t be able to understand a word of it. Hell, my daddy grew up around Baltimore, and even I had to turn the subtitles on.”

I pout, but don’t reply. My eyes are scanning the traffic. I remember Charlie’s bodyguard saying something about pursuit cars, and my eyes are peeled for them. I don’t see any. Maybe Charlie decided to travel light.

My stomach rumbles at the thought. I don’t like it. Why would he need to hide what he is doing – and where he’s going – from his own men?

Yet again, my driver breaks his silence. For a man who was grumpy as hell when I climbed into his cab, he sure likes to chat. “I’m Goldie, by the way. They call me that because of the rings.”

He takes his hand off the wheel and waggles four fingers and a thumb that are encrusted with gold rings at me. “You like ‘em?”

“Sure,” I reply.

“So who is this guy, huh?” Goldie grunts. “He cheat on you or somethin’? Or are you one of those sugar babies I’ve been reading about.”

“What?”

“Sugar babies,” he grunts again. You don’t need to be offended or nothing. I know how it is. Girl’s gotta make a living.”

I shake my head. “No, I just don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Goldie pauses for a second, indicates left and turns with Charlie’s limousine. At this time of night the streets are quiet. The traffic thins out, making it harder to follow without being caught. Still, it sets my mind at ease; I don’t see any evidence of other cars turning with us.

I sit up straight, eyes narrowing. I know where we’re heading: the Bronx.

Now why the hell would Charlie want to come here?

“Ladies,” Goldie starts.

He glances at me in the mirror, and I can’t tell whether he admires what he sees. I know I’m not exactly dressed to impress. “Who like to maintain a certain standard ‘o livin’, if you know what I mean.”

His meaning began to dawn on me. “I’m sure I don’t.”

“Ack, don’t be like that. I ain’t saying you screwing the guy or nothing; nothing wrong with it anyway. Like I said; girl’s gotta make a living.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t make mine on my back,” I mutter, flustered.

Goldie laughs. “Ain’t no shame in it, girl. I make mine sitting on my ass, don’t I? Hell, if I could do it on my back on silk sheets, maybe I would. Hold up –”

At first I’m just relieved that my driver has given up talking about me selling my body for cash. Maybe I’m only this happy about it because his comments hit so close to home.

But then I glance up.

The change in Goldie’s tone hits home – even if it is slightly delayed. I feel the tired, old yellow cab’s engine cough, and a rattle transmitted through the chassis and right up into my ass cheeks. The car slows, and bounces over a pothole that feels big enough to swallow both cars up.

“He’s stopping,” Goldie says.

The big man with the gold on his fingers swivels in his seat as he brings the cab’s protestations to a halt and kills the lights. As he turns, I notice his neck is ringed with golden ornaments as well.

“You sure you’re going to be all right around here?” He asks. “Pretty bad neighborhood for a pretty girl like you…”

I ignore Goldie’s mild chauvinism, and his insinuation that if I wasn’t a pretty girl, it wouldn’t matter. I don’t even take issue with his calling me pretty. I know he only means well.

“Where are we?” I ask quietly, as if Charlie might be able to hear me.

My eyes flicker around the dark neighborhood. Half the streetlights are out, and the other half look like they need their bulbs replaced: throwing out dull, useless light.

“Woodlawn,” he replies. He lowers his voice as well. I feel like I’ve stumbled into a cop move. “The Bronx: it’s an Irish neighborhood.”

I watch, transfixed, as Charlie’s limousine’s passenger door opens, and he steps out. He’s wearing a hooded sweatshirt pulled up over his eyes. The drawstring cords are cinched tight – he’s barely recognizable. I wonder if that’s his intention.

“Irish,” I whisper.

I don’t know why, but that word rings a bell. Something Charlie said, maybe. But no sooner does the thought enter into my mind, than it’s gone. I curse my useless brain.

“I didn’t catch that,” Goldie says.

I don’t reply. I reach into my jacket pocket and pull out forty bucks and change. “Keep it,” I mutter, kicking the door open and stumbling out into the cool night breeze. Goldie’s worried protestations for my safety die the second I slam the door closed.

The Bronx smells like you imagine a city should smell: of fryer oil carried by the wind, and rotting food round the back of a Chinese restaurant. It sounds like one, as well. I hear sirens, and the incoherent mumbling of drunks stumbling down the sidewalk.

Most other women would be terrified here. I kind of like it. It reminds me of where I grew up in Brooklyn.

My heart beat thuds in my chest. I have that bitter taste of adrenaline on the back of my tongue. My face scrunches up as I try to wash it away.

I stick to the shadows as I follow Charlie. The limousine’s parked exactly where he left it. I wouldn’t want to be the driver; not in a neighborhood like this. I don’t give that fancy car ten minutes before someone puts a brick through the windshield. What the hell’s Charlie thinking?

Charlie walks to an underpass. He slows as he approaches an old, beaten-up van. I watch as he pulls his hands out of his pockets.

What are you doing?

Conspiracy theories flood my mind. Charlie must be coming here to buy drugs, or else inside information – or something –

– anything, in fact, except the real explanation.

He makes a fist and bashes the rear panel three times, hard. The sound reverberates around the neighborhood, echoing around the underpass’s walls.

“Hey, Tommy,” he shouts – though I swear his voice is suddenly New York Irish. “It’s your brother: time to get to work.”

Curiouser and curiouser.

The van’s rear doors open from inside and swing out, missing Charlie’s nose by inches.

“You’re late,” a man grunts. I inch forward, straining my ears to make out the conversation.

“I had… Business to attend to,” Charlie says.

Business – He means me.

“Sure you did,” Tommy says. Charlie’s brother, Tommy. I didn’t even know he had one.

“Where is everyone else?” Charlie asks, hopping into the van. Both men disappeared into blackness. I hear rummaging, then the thud of something heavy falling against the van’s metal floor.

“Careful, asshole,” Tommy chuckles. “This shit doesn’t pay for itself…”

I can almost hear Charlie rolling his eyes. “No. I do…”

Both men back out with wheeled trolleys, stacked high with cardboard boxes and… Cabbages?

I blink twice, just to be absolutely certain I’m not making this up. It’s been a long night. But no, I’m right. Charlie’s come out to the Bronx to wheel cabbages around with his brother.

I stay thirty yards back, following the two men as they disappear around the side of a railway bridge. I’m barely breathing. I feel like I’m going to get jumped at any second. I slow down before I round the corner, and notice light flickering on the brick wall of an abandoned factory.

Fire light.

I stick my head round the corner, inching forward so I don’t get caught.

Never in a million years would I have guessed what I see. Charlie’s walking into a homeless encampment, Mary as you like. Old, rusted oil barrels – four of them – provide the light, and act as makeshift barbecues.

“No way,” I mouth silently to myself.

I can’t hear what he’s saying from this distance, but I watch as Charlie waves to an older, white-haired man. He looks up, and then hugs Charlie, almost like a…

… father.

I don’t know how much longer I stay there. Half an hour? An hour? Maybe more. Time doesn’t seem to matter. Not now.

I watch as Charlie, and what appears to be his foster family, unpack huge cardboard crates of food, and start to cook full meals. I watch as he ladles out portions, and then goes around chatting to different families in turn, even to the old guys sitting alone.

Shit, I even watch as he grabs toys from a pack and hands them to a family with kids.

I realize I’ve made a terrible mistake. Even now, I expected the worst from Charlie Thorne, when all he’s shown me is the goodness inside him.

I stumble away, hot tears filling my eyes. I reach for my phone. I compose a text through blurred eyes.

To Robbie.

“It’s over.”