Somewhere in the City

by Toby Neal

  “You models! All the same. Your boyfriend leaves and you fall apart!” She actually grabs my arm and gives a yank. I yank back, stepping up to loom over her. She may be mean as a snake, but I’m big enough to stomp her.

  “I need at least half a day off. If you can arrange some sort of spa treatment to bring down the puffiness around my eyes, I’ll agree to it,” I say with deadly cool. “And if you ever lay a hand on me again, you won’t be able to use it.”

  Odile gives me a look and decides I mean it. “I’ll book you in for a facial and de-tox treatment. But now I have to call the team and reschedule today’s shoot, and we’re out time and money. I’m taking that out of your pay.”

  “You can take that situation up with Melissa, but I’m pretty sure that’s illegal. I’m going for a walk.”

  I brush past her and go down the steep steps of the pensione. One of my last days in Venice, and it’s gorgeous today. Chilly, but the sun is out and there’s no fog. I’ve grabbed my old wool coat, and a few days ago I bought a soft blue scarf at one of the street markets that Brandon told me brought out my eyes. I wrap that over the stream of my hair and around my neck, and walk to Saint Mark’s square. I buy a hot chocolate at one of the cafe bars and a small packet of biscotti.

  The crackers are for the pigeons and doves.

  I find a spot to sit in one of the wire chairs in the grand expanse of the Square. The gold on the cupolas of the church gleams in the rich low winter sunlight, and sipping my chocolate, birds pecking around my feet, I feel good being alone.

  I remember Dad for the first time without the agonizing shame. His sunburnt face, thinning blond hair, the same blue eyes I have. His broad shoulders and work-worn hands. His big heart to help others, his generosity. I cried at his funeral on Saint Thomas, true, but I never really grieved for him. I couldn’t afford the emotional price tag then. But now I think of how he tried to rescue me from the Carvers, from what was done to me and compounded by my own choices—and I begin to cry again, but it feels clean and good.

  “Bella. You okay?” An accented Italian male voice, a soft touch on my shoulder. The waiter’s come to check on me, worried.

  “Si, si. grazie,” I say, snuffling into a napkin. I really am okay. It’s kind of a miracle, and I have to give Magnus credit for that. I need to check if Odile got me any reservations at the spa. “Telefono?”

  The waiter lets me use the cafe’s phone to call her. “Got you in for treatments. Come back to the pensione.”

  The next few days pass in a blur. I’m able to resist temptation to use by being totally exhausted at the end of each day, and while I fell in love with Venice, I’m ready to be home in my pink bedroom at Rafe and Ruby’s by the time I get on a plane for Boston.

  Soon I’ll be seeing Magnus again. I decide I have to force things to come to a head between us. I can’t go on wishing and wanting and hoping, confusing Brandon with mixed signals, when it’s so obvious to me that Magnus and I are meant to be together.

  Ruby and Rafe pick me up at the airport. “How was Italy?” Ruby’s grinning as she hugs me. “Your ads are showing up everywhere. You’re a star!”

  “It was amazing. The only bummer was that I couldn’t eat everything in sight. Have you ever had Italian hot chocolate?” I’m so excited to tell them about all my new experiences, and I feel lighter.

  Telling Magnus about Dad really did start to lift that stone off my chest.

  We catch up in the car, and Ruby says, “Melissa called the house yesterday. You have an 8:00 a.m. meeting with her. She sounded pretty serious. I hope it’s not any trouble.”

  “It could be,” I say, thinking of Odile’s frequently-pinched expression.

  Melissa doesn’t get up from behind her sleek desk when I’m shown into the inner sanctum the next morning. “Good morning,” I say. “I brought you something.” I set my gift on her desk.

  Surprise flickers in the lift of her elegant brows as Melissa opens the simply-wrapped brown paper package I’ve set in front of her. She uncovers a silky scarf in a leopard print. She holds it up against her gold blouse. It looks perfect.

  “How thoughtful. Thank you, Pearl.” She looks up and her hazel eyes are serious. “Close the door please.”

  I get up from my chair and close the door of her office, feeling apprehensive.

  “Let’s review your performance on this last assignment,” she says, sliding the scarf aside and opening a file. “First of all, everyone on the team felt that you did well, considering it was your first time in a foreign country on a shoot.”

  “Even Odile?”

  “Even Odile.” Melissa finally smiles. “But that brings me to something important and personal I need to discuss.” She makes a pyramid of her fingertips, with her perfect scarlet nails touching. “I don’t want you to see Brandon anymore.”

  My mouth falls open a little, feeling a pang. Or a twinge. Something painful. “Why not? We didn’t do anything inappropriate.”

  “Because I need both of you to focus. You have jobs to do. You lost most of a day’s work after your emotional breakdown after Brandon left, and he isn’t doing well either. He had a semester break at MIT but took two more days off to go to Italy. His concentration and his studies are suffering.”

  “I would never want to do anything to hurt him.” I can feel my face flushing. “It was all his idea. Visiting me. Taking me out every day.”

  “I know.” Melissa taps her nails together, looks at me over them. “But you’re both distracted, and I need it to stop. I want you to break up with him.”

  I feel my mouth tighten into a line. Paradoxically, I want him now that I’m being told no. That’s how I work. “Do you get to tell me what relationships I can and can’t have?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.” Melissa takes out my contract and shows me a highlighted section. “Model will abstain from substances, activities, and relationships that have a deleterious effect on her appearance and health.”

  She tapped the sentence. “Your appearance was definitely affected the day after Brandon left. And his grades are dropping. Enough already.”

  I sit back in my chair. It really is a good thing I didn’t sleep with Brandon or let things get any more serious. “Wow. I can’t believe you get to dictate to me like this.”

  “Believe it. And break it off. Now. Or you’ll be let go from this agency.” Melissa’s eyes are opaque and hard as bronze. “And if you ever want to work in this industry again, you’ll make a good excuse to him that he believes.”

  “Yeah, you wouldn’t want your son to find out that his mother is dictating who he can and can’t see. He wouldn’t take that well.” I stand up. “Is there anything else?”

  Her face softens a little. “I like you, Pearl. You have a future in this business. But you have to stay focused. No boyfriends. They’ll only drag you down.”

  I had no idea modeling was not only hard work, but often uncomfortable. It’s constant dieting, working out, no partying and no men.

  “Talk about false advertising,” I say. “Everything I promise in those ads. All a lie.”

  Melissa smiles. “Now you’re catching on.”

  Chapter 19

  I’ve withdrawn from school due to my new schedule, but I still need to make it to the lunchtime meeting, where I’m hoping to see Magnus. I’m surprised to get a message at home from Megan and Kayla wondering where I went, and that makes me feel good. I have to get in touch with them when I have time, water the tiny buds of our friendship with some attention.

  I hurry to change into jeans, boots and the leather jacket I bought in Italy—a suede so soft it feels like velvet. I’m hoping Magnus will take me for a ride after the meeting. My hair brushed into a silvery waterfall, I know I’m looking good. Hell, I could do a shoot looking the way I do right now.

  The group leader, Mrs. Svenson, greets me warmly, and the people in the group ask where I went, and I end up sharing that I have a “new job” that makes me travel a lot, but that I battled te
mptation overseas and won.

  All the time I’m talking, and as the circle of experience, strength and hope moves on, I am looking for Magnus. He doesn’t appear and my belly feels hollow and tight.

  Finally, when we’re standing up and holding hands for the Serenity Prayer, I spot him entering through the side door. He has a woman with him.

  My stomach plummets.

  I turn to the girl standing next to me as the meeting ends and begin an animated conversation with her, watching Magnus out of the corner of my eye.

  He’s waiting for me, I can tell. He’s all in black leather, looking dangerous, brooding and mysterious and oh so bad, but I know how good he makes me feel, how good he is inside. How good he is in every way.

  It’s no problem breaking up with Brandon if I can have Magnus.

  Finally, the girl I’m talking to breaks away from me, confused by my overly friendly behavior, and Magnus catches my eye.

  His hair is loose over his shoulders in coarse black waves. I see, more than I ever noticed before, the Native American ancestry in the blades of his cheekbones, the curl of that sweet hard mouth. The woman beside him is all in black too, tall and narrow-hipped, with an angular face and shimmering black hair. I hope she’s a cousin or a relative of some kind. Anything but his woman.

  He crooks his finger at me.

  I flush at how embarrassing that is even as I leave the circle of chairs Mrs. Svenson is beginning to fold up, and approach him.

  I can’t let this woman see how totally under his spell I am. I try not to think of his voice in the dark, telling me how to touch myself.

  “Hey, Magnus.” Elaborately casual.

  “Pearl.” He inclines his head in acknowledgement and indicates the woman beside him. “This is Valley. Valley, Pearl.”

  “Hello.” I shake her cool hand. Valley’s face has a quality better than beauty—a kind of charisma that makes you want to keep looking at it, though her mouth is too narrow, her eyes too wide-set.

  “I’ve asked Valley to be your sponsor. You need someone to call when you’re tempted to slip, someone to tutor you in the principles of the program.”

  I turn to him, my mouth opening to protest. “I don’t need a sponsor. I have you.”

  “You do need a sponsor. I’ve been filling that function, no matter what I’ve called it, and I’ve done badly by you.” Magnus almost bites off the words. I see red at the tops of his cheekbones.

  “You’ve been great,” I whisper. “The best.” I feel like my heart is in my eyes, showing how I feel. How I want. How I love, though I haven’t dared to call it that, even to myself.

  He deliberately looks away. Tightens his jaw. Looking at the far wall, not at me, he says, “You need to be working on your sobriety with a woman. And Valley has been where you’ve been.”

  I cut my eyes over to Valley. Her mouth is a little quirked, and I see sympathy in her dark eyes.

  “I’m going away for a while,” Magnus says, his voice firm and low. “And I didn’t want you not to have someone to call.”

  I want to throw myself bodily on him and hang on for all I’m worth. “Now?” My voice comes out a squeak. “Why?”

  “Work. You need to focus on your modeling, anyway.” He pushes away from the wall. “So this is goodbye. I know you’ll do fine.”

  “No!” I exclaim. “You can’t just shuck me off like...scraping gum off your shoe!” My voice rises. The few people still in the room look over at us. I don’t give two shits that I’m getting loud, frankly. Magnus is not just dumping me off on this woman.

  Valley pushes away from the wall with a mysterious half-smile, and saunters gracefully over to where she’s left a helmet on the floor by the back doorway. So she even rides a motorcycle! But I’m too terrified of what Magnus is saying to worry about offending her.

  “Pearl.” He looks around, takes me by the arm, tugs me around the corner into the hall. He tries a doorknob and it opens into a storage room piled with extra chairs and smelling strongly of mothballs. He tugs me into the room, shuts the door. “You’re making a scene.”

  “I don’t care. You can’t just—hand me off like a package.” My throat’s constricting, my eyes welling up. “You’ve helped me so much. What you did in Venice. . .” I can’t complete the sentence; I’m too devastated.

  “It wasn’t good for us to go there. Physically. I should never have resorted to that,” he says. “I can’t get involved with you. It was a mistake.”

  “No!” I stomp my boot and it’s unsatisfyingly muffled by the stacks of smelly chairs. “It wasn’t! It helped me. I’m not the same! I cried for Dad the other day. I grieved, like I never have since he died. You kept me from using. You kept me from hurting myself!”

  “But not the right way.” Magnus finally looks at me with those deep brown eyes, so dark I can’t see the pupils. He has the longest lashes. I want to lay my cheek against them and feel them touch me like butterfly wings. “I’m going away. I knew I was, and I never should have let you get attached to me. I’m sorry.” He pushes away from the wall. “Give Valley a chance. She’s a great sponsor and she can even take you out on her bike.”

  “No!” I cry again, and grab the front of his jacket with both hands, desperate, terrified. Every fear I’ve ever had is activated. Abandonment is trying to suck me into a nameless void of rejection and loss. I’m pretty sure I’m going to die of the pain, the feeling of my heart breaking.

  “Pearl. Jesus, honey.” He takes hold of my hands, tries to pry them off his jacket. “You’re young, you’re gorgeous. You’re going to be a star supermodel. You don’t know what you’re feeling, what you’re saying. I’m just the first guy who didn’t take advantage of you—well, maybe I did. I couldn’t help myself. But I do know I’m going to be gone for two years, and you won’t be able to keep in touch. This, whatever it was, is over.”

  I won’t let him pry my fingers off. I just latch onto the leather in another place.

  “No. I know I meant something to you. I know I did. Please don’t do this. Please.” I realize that tears are rolling down my cheeks, catching on my lips, running into my mouth and choking me. I know I’m acting like a clingy psycho but I can’t seem to help myself. “I’ll let go if you tell me it meant something to you. If I wasn’t the only one to feel something. And if I decide to wait for you, that’s my decision.” I gulp down sobs, letting the tears fall where they may.

  He stands still, for such an agonizing moment. Then, just when I feel my legs are giving out and I’ll fall to my knees in front of him, those hard arms come around me and crush me close. My wet face is buried in his jacket, dampening the leather, and his arms stroke me and hold me, from the top of my head, down my back, tracing the length of my hair, tangling in the locks.

  “Oh, Pearl. You’re a drug to me,” he breathes into my ear. “You have no idea what you’ve done. Yeah. It meant something, but I wish to God it never happened—for both our sakes.”

  A protracted, sweet moment. Our hearts are thundering in the same frantic rhythm, our breaths mingling in sync.

  I matter to him. He matters to me. There’s nothing better in the world than right now.

  And then he pushes me away, so hard I stagger backward into a stack of chairs, and by the time I right myself and stand back up, he’s gone and I’m left in the room alone.

  I sink to the floor, weeping, and it feels like that other time in the park with Brandon, like a dam breaking, like all the grief and shame and regret I ever had are flowing out. And there’s a lot of it and it goes on awhile.

  Suddenly the door cracks open, and I look up through the fall of my hair blearily, hopefully, but it’s only Mrs. Svenson. “Pearl! Oh my goodness. We’re locking up the building and someone said they heard crying in here!”

  Her ruddy, comfortable face crumples with concern, inciting me to fresh crying. She lifts me up, hollering for help into the main room, and who comes to her aid but Valley, her fox face carefully neutral as she hoists me up on one side
and the therapist the other, and they force-march me out of the building.

  In the bracing light of the afternoon sun on the sidewalk outside the church, I try to pull myself together, dabbing my face and blowing my nose with a handful of paper napkins Mrs. Svenson hands me.

  “Do you want a ride home with me on the bike? Or should we call your family?” Valley asks.

  I gaze at her. Some other day I’d think she was really cool. I’d want to know her better. Today I’m too gutted to care about anything except that she’s the only connection I have to Magnus Thorne. He gave her to me, so she must be the right thing to do next.

  “Please take me home,” I say. “On your bike.”

  And that’s how I come to be riding a low rider down Mass Avenue, the sharp wind drying the tears off my face, trying to scrape together what’s left of my heart.

  Chapter 20

  Valley drives us around for a while, and while not as thrilling as when I’m with Magnus, it’s still a totally immersive experience. By the time she brings me home on the back of her bike, I’m calm if wrung out. She parks the motorcycle in front of the brownstone.

  “I’d like to come in, if I can. Meet your family. Introduce myself as your sponsor,” she says.

  “Okay.” I am too flattened for anything but agreement. Valley is cool and charming with Rafe and Ruby and I can tell they like her as she explains that she’s a computer programming major at Boston College and in recovery herself, and happy to take me to meetings when she can. They invite her to dinner in a couple of days, and she agrees.

  Finally, I say, “I’m so tired. Jet lag from Italy. Can I call you later?” and she gives me her phone number and I can finally go upstairs and pour myself into bed, where I fall asleep instantly.

  I wake up disoriented, in the dark. It’s probably midday in Italy or something, but it’s pitch black here, and I look at the glowing digital clock on the bedside table.

  I slept for twelve hours.

  I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling. It’s painted the very faintest pink, though it’s shadowy darkness outside at four a.m. Still, I’ve watched the dawn come up outside the windows before, and the ceiling, with its delicate coffering and old-fashioned glass light fixture, blooms slowly into reflecting the faintest salmon glow, like the sky over Saint Thomas lighting with dawn.