“Nice tits,” Gianni says, his voice a mean scrape. “I mean, I seen ’em before. But they’re bigger now.”
My vision swims. I make myself look away from the picture by cramming it into my coat pocket. As if that would help at all.
I can barely breathe, but self-preservation is a strong force, so I know what to say. “It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. We’re getting divorced.”
“That’s what you said last time,” Robert grunts.
With a hand that’s still shaking, I unzip my bag and pull out the envelope. “This is the paperwork, asshole. I’m sending it to the lawyer right now. It’s done. It was just a joke. Never meant to last.”
Even as I say this, I know it was always true. You can take the girl out of the slums, but you can never get the slums out of the girl.
“So what?” Robert says. “You can still get the money.”
“I never could have,” I say. “Go ahead. Show that picture to whoever you want. It’s not Neil in that photo. Nobody cares if I worked in that club. Nobody cares what I do. Just like nobody cares about you, either. So how about you both fuck off?”
I couldn’t even tell you how the conversation ends. I keep talking, and then I start walking. There’s a mailbox on the corner, and I pull down the handle and throw the divorce papers in.
My body is shaky and too loose. I have the worst urge to look over my shoulder to see if they’re following me. I don’t think they are. I head up the street, where there are plenty of pedestrians on the sidewalk with me, so I’m no longer in danger.
But I feel like I am. Like I’ll never be safe again.
When I put my hands in my coat pockets, the rumpled picture is in one, and Fiona’s key is in the other. My feet point me toward their apartment on Water Street.
As I approach the front door, I finally give in to the urge to look over my shoulder. I don’t see my cousin or his father. But that doesn’t mean they can’t see me.
I’d better never forget that.
I hastily open the door, and I climb the stairs like a zombie. I insert the key into the deadbolt on the apartment’s door, and I let myself in.
“Charli!” Sylvie calls from her bedroom. “Is that you? I’m still here. Come see these tops!”
But I only make it as far as the sofa, where I sink down onto the cushion. I weigh a thousand pounds.
“Charli?”
I open my mouth to greet her, but the oddest sound comes out. It’s like the bark of a seal. My ribs contract painfully.
It’s a sob. I take a gasping breath, trying to hold myself together. But it’s like a dam bursting. My chest heaves again. My eyes spout like fountains.
It hurts. It hurts so bad. My head is a boulder. Tears stream down my face, and I can barely breathe.
Everything hurts. And nothing will ever be right again.
FORTY-TWO
THE ONE WITH ALL THE BAGGAGE
Neil
It turns out that comedy clubs aren’t that much fun if you’ve been stood up.
My texts to Charli go unanswered. At first, I assume she’s just late. She probably took the subway. Maybe there’s a delay.
But then I start to worry. Can she not get inside? Did they screw up her ticket at Will Call?
Is she hurt? Did something happen?
And now I’m that asshole sitting in the front row, looking at his phone.
“Dude, am I boring you?” the comic says, miming a kick at my head. “Oh no! There’s an empty chair here. Looks like he got stood up. Was it a guy or girl?”
Yeah, I don’t know why I thought this would be fun. “My wife,” I say drily, and the whole room laughs.
“Look, I know a good divorce lawyer,” the comic says. “I’ve been divorced. I sat across that pricey table from my ex while they explained the terms to me, and I said, ‘Hey honey, I wish you’d tried to screw me this much when we were still married.’”
More laughter.
My phone finally pings with a text. It says only: I can’t. I’m sorry.
I get up and thread my way through a hundred tables on my way out of the room.
By the time my taxi crosses the bridge, I’ve tried calling Charli fifty times. She doesn’t pick up.
I see an incoming call from Anton, and I pounce. “Bro,” he says. “Something is the matter with Charli, but she won’t say. She wouldn’t want me telling you.”
“What do you mean? Is she hurt?”
“Not that Sylvie can tell. But she’s a crying mess on their sofa. She won’t say why.”
“Shit. I’m almost there.” We hang up, and I try to imagine what’s wrong. I come up with nothing. She sounded fine when we were texting this morning. And yesterday, too.
What the hell?
I hit Sylvie’s buzzer with an impatient finger until somebody unlocks the door for me. I take the stairs two at a time, unable to shake a feeling of dread.
Sylvie opens the door. And there’s Charli—tipped over on the couch, still wearing her jacket, her face red and puffy and hardly recognizable.
She squeezes her eyes shut when I walk into the room. “Baby?” I plead. “What is it?”
“I’m sorry,” is all she says. “I really am.”
I walk over to the sofa and lift her feet, so I can sit at the end of the couch. I put a cautious hand on her knee. “Charli. Can you come here, please?”
“No,” she says in a hoarse whisper. “I filed the papers.”
It takes me a second. “The divorce papers?”
She gives a jerky nod.
“You going to tell me why?”
“No.”
I sigh. “I want to hear it, Charli. Whatever it is.”
“There’s always something to drag me back down. This time it’s so, so bad.”
Glancing up at Sylvie, I give her a pointed look.
After hesitating a moment—after all, I’m shooing her out of her own living room—she turns and heads for the bedroom. The door clicks shut.
“There is nothing you can’t tell me,” I say quietly.
“I’m tired, Neil. So tired of being the one with all the baggage.”
“Men like carrying your luggage around, doll.”
She picks up her head and turns her angry eyes my way. “It’s not funny, Neil. Not everything can be laughed away.”
“Are you sick? Are you hurt?”
She shakes her head.
“Then it can’t be that bad. Come on.” I drop my hand on her hip, and something crinkles under my hand. There’s something in Charli’s pocket.
Her hand whips back and shoves mine off, then clamps down on the pocket.
I always let Charli win these fights, but not tonight. I wait until her arm relaxes and perform a ninja move where I nudge her hand and yank out whatever’s in her pocket. It’s a piece of paper with a photo printed on it.
“Neil!” she shrieks, lunging for it.
I see the picture before she grabs it. “Jesus. Is that you?”
She crunches up the paper tightly, then covers her face with her hands and cries.