How the fuck does she even know? Hell, took twenty years to even get Doctor Leigh to believe. How the hell does this woman now about the curse? There’s no way I’m awake. I have to be dreaming. I’ll wake up next to inmate number 34203, otherwise known as Charles Regal – my old cellie. He’ll be chewing on his nails and spitting them out on the floor. Then, when I tell him to clean that shit up, he’ll ask if I ‘wanna go, bro?’ His fists will be balled up tight and I’ll have to turn the other way just so as not to fuck up another parole date.
I wished I could believe it. But the memory of Charles reminded me of what should have been obvious enough. The curse. It’s why she’s here. It’s also what I can use against her. I stared at her long, light auburn hair as she bent down to dig through an overpriced clutch she pulled from the inside of her coat. She appeared to have no fear in the world about the fact that we were out on the city street and people were staring at us.
She hadn’t noticed the homeless guy, who will die of hypothermia. It made no difference to her that the prostitute—two years to overdose—heading up from the other end of the block had her thumb out. It would be lost on my captor that two drunk guys were hanging out a window on the fifth floor of an apartment building even Ray would think twice about living in. And the guy on the corner picking through the trash didn’t seem to bother her either. No, instead, the girl who needed to turn around so I could get a better read on her just continued to dig through a lavender Coach wallet-style purse. Before I knew it, she even handed me her credit cards to make room.
“Hold this, will ya?”
I took the thing, wondering if she missed that whole part about me being a con or the parole officer who had just come by to check on me. I mean, it’s not like she was blind. She saw it herself. And hell, she obviously knew I had a rap sheet. She’d told me she was with the law herself. It had to be some kind of a test. I was determined I would pass.
“Um. It’s kind of dangerous just to stand here on this street. This isn’t the safest of neighborhoods. You really should look around. I mean, get a sense of your surroundings at least.”
“No need. Death Flames.”
What the actual fuck? The woman was out of her mind.
“Well, thank fuck for those then!”
“You really need to watch your mouth. That rubs off, you know.”
“What does?”
She didn’t answer for a minute or two more. Instead, she pulled a long tube of bright purple lipstick from her coat. “Phew! I thought I forgot it!” With that, she coated her lips in a God-awful shade of a bad cartoon character and smacked them at me. “You like?”
With her full face on me for the first time since the invisible, miserable pain tie, I was able to take her in. She wore those stupid cat eye fake contacts. It was pretty clear to me she had to be a club kid. Only no one told her 1999 was over and the millennium was calling. She wore tall heels with shank-sized buckles any inmate would have killed for in the clink. I thought maybe a stripper, but that didn’t seem right either. What she did for a living, though, didn’t matter. What mattered was that, with those stupid contacts in, I couldn’t see her. There was no heart attack, no ALS, no family at her bed. No suicide. No car accident. No old age or pneumonia. I couldn’t even see asthma. Not diabetes, not a chronic disease. Nothing.
I hardly noticed when she frantically pulled her coat off, shaking it onto the street. If it weren’t for the electric shock, which burned my wrists and shot up my arm, I might not even have noticed.
Lurch.
She pulled me forward as she banged the sides of her head with both hands. With each bang, I had to get closer as to avoid another shock from her invisible weapon.
“Are you trying to kill me? Can you stop doing that?” I barked.
“Oh! Sorry. My phone. I lost it.”
“Your phone?”
“Yeah. It was here.” She bent down to pick up her coat, now on the ground for the second time in the few short minutes I’d ‘known’ her. A tiny piece of paper fell out with my name and Ray’s address scrawled in plum-colored marker. I reached for it, but she quickly beat me to it. “Sorry, that was to find you. My phone was here. I swear it was! Where did it go?”
I smiled. “Ray’s apartment.”
“What?”
“Ray. The guy who’s putting me up. Where else would it be? It has to be on the floor in the hall. It probably just fell out of your pocket.”
She stared at me as if she knew. Going back to the apartment would mean me having another shot at getting Ray’s attention. Was her phone in the hall? Fuck if I knew. If I had to take a guess, I’d put money on it that the neighbors already snagged it. Ray’s neighbors had a habit of spying on anyone in the hall through a peep hole. By now, they surely knew that another con was living down the hall. And they surely wouldn’t be fond of the cops sniffing around. But that was neither here nor there. What mattered now was my shot at getting myself back into that hall.
“Oh. Good call,” she said, smiling.
It was impossible not to notice how white her teeth were. They reminded me of perfect squares of peppermint gum – lined evenly in rows too symmetrical to be natural. It shouldn’t have surprised me. The more I looked at her, the more I could see the money. Better, the pretense that she had money. Something about her was off, not genuine. Her perfect nails, her straightened hair, the thick liner at her eyes that pulled up to make her look more feline. What I knew about Violet is she wasn’t my type. Pretty, for sure. But I’d always preferred the natural type. To me, there was nothing sexier than a girl next door.
Jesus, dude. Stop thinking about it. No chicks. Women are off limits. Do you really want another Jenn? No! Too much hurt. Besides, this one would probably bite.
Again, I tried to get a read on her and nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing?
“Be careful what you decide to do next. Running away, or trying to, is only going to get you shocked,” she said, batting her eyelashes. “Come on, let’s go inside. And stay close. Don’t know how many more shocks a guy like you can take.”
“More than you can hand out.”
“Oh, really, now?”
“Really.”
I wasn’t amused. I was tempted to trip her and send her and her ridiculous shoes flying down the hall. Instead, I moved closer to her to give myself slack, dug in my pocket, and pulled out Ray’s spare building key.
“Might need this,” I said, holding it in front of me but far enough above her head that she’d have to beg for it. “Don’t ya think? Or, perhaps, we could wait for another nice tenant to let us in? Not sure there are many of them around here. We New Yorkers don’t got much time for southern hospitality.” This time it was me smiling as she glared at me – a cold burst of frosty air seeping out from under her teeth.
Chapter Four
Violet
As much as I wanted to, I didn’t murmur one peep as I followed him through the dirty building. I said not one word as I watched his legs take the stairs two at a time, even though I wanted to tell him how hard it was for my shorter self to keep up with him. When we reached the hallway he was living on, my purple-flowered case shined like a spotlight on the stained carpet. The only time I said something to James was when I leaned down to pick up my phone, and then it hit me—literally, like an invisible wall.