Pat, and Iliana, and Daniela. My family, too.
“When Nic fell pregnant, well, it wasn’t planned. But I was happy. It was bound to happen with someone someday. And I was happy.”
He turns his head toward the fountain on our right, toward the jazz musicians playing a few feet away from it.
“Did she...say...anything, Johnny?”
He looks down at me, pulls himself off the top of the bench. Sits next to me. “She didn’t want the kid, Cat. She wanted to abort. Even when we took those photos with you, she was already talking about getting rid of it. I was against it, of course. I wasn’t raised that way.”
“You told her no?”
“I asked her to wait. And we fought, yeah. We fought about it. She didn’t want the child, still wants to become a supermodel or something like that. Or an actress. I told her that’s all possible even with a child, and that I would always be there for the kid, even if she was away.
“She seemed so happy, Cat, when she first told me, that night at Club Abre. She seemed contented, as if this was the greatest thing that could have happened to us.”
I don’t tell Johnny what I’m thinking, because it’s a disgusting thought, and I shouldn’t be thinking that stuff about the people I care about.
But Johnny already knows it: “She’s insecure, Cat. And...” He runs his hand through his hair. “She was always insecure about...me...and you.” He looks at me. “She was on the pill. She had this alarm on her phone and we were together often enough for it to ring when she needed to take it. She never skipped, Cat. Ever. She hates the idea of kids. Always has. And she could be in the middle of a sentence or dancing on the dancefloor—that alarm went off, boom, she was in her purse, pulling out her pill, sucking it down. And then she’d finish her sentence.
“You never notice something when it’s absent, only when it occurs. No one notices the absence of things.
“Well, only after she told me she was pregnant did I start remembering things, remembering that she hadn’t had that ghastly alarm go off once a day to take her pills. And then I figured maybe I just didn’t notice. I don’t know how this shit works, if you guys have to take that shit at the same time every day or at different times. I don’t know.
“Anyway, I didn’t care, either.
“She was pregnant. And I figured something had changed. Maybe she had come off the pill so that we could have a baby. I was happy with that. Ecstatic with that. I could respect either of her choices—kids or no kids. But if she was suddenly getting that biological clock thingy going, hey, I wasn’t going to complain.
“Well, I thought she had changed.
“And then...after she told me about the baby, directly after—it all changed.” He stops, licks his ice cream, stares out at an older woman knitting on the bench across from us.
“What changed?”
“She started asking me questions like, Would you still love me if I wasn’t pregnant? And Is this the only reason you’re with me, because I’m carrying your baby?
“I put it down to hormones. I let it slip. We did the photos with you. But there were comments, always comments, things that gave me the idea she wasn’t interested in the kid, not at all.
“And then the hints were too many, and I confronted her on it. She told me she did want it. She did. She cried, we hugged, we kissed, we...
“That night, she disappeared at two in the morning—”
“—And we found her at Marky’s L8 Night Owls,” I finish for him, remembering.
“Drunk,” he says.
“She wasn’t drunk.”
“She was tipsy. That’s drunk for a pregnant woman.
“I never told you, Cat. But that night, it came spilling out. It...” He looks over at me. “She’s insecure, Cat. She started rambling about how I look at you and how I didn’t love her and how I actually love you.” His eyes close, his hand goes through his hair. “It was all bullshit, Cat. It’s impossible to compare what I felt for you and what I feel—felt—for her. It’s impossible to say which is more or which is less. Things happened. Shit happened. We made choices, and we were happy with those choices.
“It wasn’t good enough for Nicole.
“Hormones. I said it was hormones, because I hadn’t seen any signs of this before.
“But the second time it happened, I flipped. I told her...” He shakes his head, lowers his voice. “I told her I’d kill her if she harmed my baby. I confronted her about the pills, and she admitted it, Cat. In the heat of the moment, she admitted that she’d stopped taking them, because, and I use her words exactly here, ‘You’ll never fucking love me as much as you did that bitch. And if I need to have the spawn of your goddamn child inside me to keep you, goddamnit, I will.’
“I couldn’t answer that, Cat. She was pregnant. I... I didn’t want to upset her more than she already was.
“She stormed out the building, and then called me up later that night to pick her up.
“Drunk again.
“I tried to take her to a doctor to make sure the baby was still OK, but she refused. What was I gonna do, manhandle her over there?
“I begged, I pleaded, I told her I’d do anything. She told me she was sorry, and that she believed I loved her. Man.
“We kissed, and, well, we made up.
“But something had changed between us. I almost wanted to follow her around, trying to protect my goddamn kid inside her belly.
“I did follow her once or twice, to see if she was gonna booze it up again.
“I felt like scum for doing it. Scum. Like a jealous boyfriend or something. I told myself I needed to trust her. That one day she would be my wife, goddamnit, and this was no way to treat her.
“So I let her be.
“But every day, every day, I was freaking out, panicked, wondering when she’d take it too far.
“We had sex like rabbits. That’s all me and Nic ever had. She’s insatiable.
“When I caught her smoking on the terrace after one such night, I couldn’t even get angry at her. I walked out and said, ‘Nic.’ There was only disappointment in my voice.
“‘Oh, Johnny, chill out, it’s only one. It’s not gonna harm it!’
“‘Nic, please,’ I said.
“She puffed three deep drags, hesitated, looked out over the street.
“Then she dropped it, crushed it under her foot, and stormed past me, into the house, and then out.
“I sat on the couch, thinking about Jack Daniels, thinking what I should do. I had nobody to talk to, Cat. I couldn’t bring this to you. I couldn’t make Nic even more paranoid about us.
“So I went to Thunder.”
“To Thunder.”
“Yeah. He knew, Cat. He knew already. Dude was suspicious form the moment she told me she was pregnant. Sure, he smiled, patted me on the back, but he knew. He was gentleman enough not to say anything to me, not to get in the way. But when I brought it to him, he was quite clear about what I should do. ‘She’s gonna kill that kid, Johnny. Or you’re gonna end up with a kid that looks like something out a science fiction movie, with two brain cells left. You can’t force her to keep it.’
“I went to her that night, told her it was fine, told her she could abort if she wanted to. It’s her choice.
“She wept. And she told me she wanted to keep it, Cat. She told me she was sorry. That she’d go see an OB/GYN and make sure all was still OK.
“By some miracle, it was, but they said it’s hard to tell. She came clean to the doc, told her everything. Things had changed, I thought. Nic was trying.
“That was a week ago.”
Johnny’s ice cream is starting to melt, some of it landing on his fingers. He licks it off, stares at it, then throws it out.
“Christ,” I say. “She didn’t tell me any of this. Whenever I saw her she told me how you guys were planning a room in the house and looking at color schemes and—”
“I was doing all that, Cat. I was doing it. And the kid couldn’t grow
up in an apartment above a nightclub, damn it. So I was looking at some other property. Heck, I was even considering moving up to Long Island, doing like my dad did, giving the kid a good home in the suburbs. I could make the commute every morning and back at night. I’d do that for my family.”
“And Nic would be a stay-at-home wife.” I say this more as a thought than as an accusation.
Johnny shrugs. “She wouldn’t have to, Cat. I didn’t expect that of her. If I had to choose between work and my family, my family would come first. I have Thunder. He’d run the nightclub in my absence. He’s big on family himself, even though he doesn’t have one of his own. It could work, Cat. It could all work.”
“But Nic doesn’t want kids.”
Johnny shakes his head. “Clearly not.” He looks over at me. “Where is she, Cat?”
Another brief hesitation on my part. Should I tell him? Should I?
I sigh.
Then: “Wisconsin. They found her...in a cabin.”
“Drunk.”
Worse. “Uhm, I don’t know.”
“You don’t need to protect her, Cat.”
“It’s horrible what she did, Johnny. Detestable. But it’s done.”
“She’s a conniving bitch, Cat. She wanted me ever since high school. She’s been jealous of you since then, since you were fifteen. It’s all been a big fucking plan with her, all these years.”
“That’s not true, Johnny. That’s the anger talking inside you.”
“You’re too trusting.”
I know. “If she needs my help, I’ll be there for her.”
“That makes one of us.”
I can’t answer. I remember how Nic posed for my early shots, how she helped me get my first website up, helped get my first few sales.
It wasn’t all fake.
“She’s insecure, Johnny. That doesn’t make her evil.”
“All evil is based on cowardice. And it’s pretty damn cowardly what she did, Cat.”
“Agreed. But she’s not evil.”
Johnny looks over at the old woman on the other bench. Says nothing.
-16-
We decide to watch a chick flick, something light where the girl gets the guy and there’s lots of laughter and cute one-liners. Johnny seems irritated throughout the show, I’m not too much into it either. It’s just too happy in a day that isn’t happy at all.
Thirty minutes into it, after our popcorn’s finished, Johnny looks over at me, cocks an eyebrow. “Right,” I say. “Wrong mood.”
We walk out halfway through a happy scene where the girl thinks she’s been cheated on but it was all just a big misunderstanding...
Outside, we stare at the options, the whiff of buttery popcorn floating in the air. “That,” Johnny says, pointing at a poster with lots of blood and two people (male and female) holding big-ass guns. Behind them is something that looks like an alien, or maybe a vampire, and a lot of fog, a creepy house. Flesheaters, it’s called.
“Looks pretty horrific.”
Johnny smiles. “I’m in the mood for horrific.”
I check out the other options, a thriller, a mystery, another RomCom. I’m not in the mood for any of them. “Fine,” I say.
The next showing is in twenty minutes. We fill up again on popcorn (free refills, Johnny likes popcorn) and sodas (we took the bottomless option, ‘Only One dollar more!’) and head into the theater.
I confess, I scream in terror a few times. Like, several times. And I’m closing my eyes and blocking my ears.
Jeez, I hate horrors.
Johnny’s laughing, and I’m not sure if he’s laughing at the very realistic slaughter on the screen (special effects are way too convincing these days) or at me.
Every now and then he leans closer and whispers in my ear, “You can look now.”
Then, when that shrill, single-note music comes on (peeeeeeeeeeeeeee), he says, “Best close your eyes, something gruesome’s about to happen.”
I keep my eyes open, just a little longer, but the shrill Single Note gets louder (PEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE), and I close them tight.
Johnny squeezes his fingers around my knee, keeping me calm. “Probably you should block your ears.”
I do.
But it doesn’t help.
Thankfully, I don’t scream. I just give a sort of whimper.
Johnny’s grip loosens, which I take as a sign that the horrible scene is over.
I start to open my eyes—
He squeezes hard again.
—and I shut them immediately, and cover my ears.
Shrieks and loud music (PEEE, PEEEE, PEEEE, PEEEEEEEEE!) and more screams and screeching and howling and the vrrrrrrrrr of a chainsaw (I think.)
Johnny’s laughing, laughing so loudly.
His hand leaves my leg. The sign. I open my eyes. The sun is shining on the screen, the house is well lit, the main character is...alive?
I lean over to him. “They’re alive?” Fuck, I can’t believe how invested I was in this boy and girl (they were trying to turn him into a Flesheater.)
“Yeah.”
“Oh, thank God.” Despite all the eye-closing and ear-shutting, somehow I’ve been rooting for these freaking characters throughout the movie.
“But it’s horror. Something bad’s gonna happen just before the end.”
“What?”
“Best close your eyes now.”
“But there’s happy music on.”
“Close your eyes.”
I can’t. I have to know if they make it. Have to. The sunlight becomes brighter, people are smiling, the main character (blond, female, unknown actress, sweet face) is holding her boyfriend’s hand.
“Best close your eyes,” Johnny says. “It’s near the end.”
But I can’t. I can’t. They have to make it!
She leans in closer to the guy she’s been trying to get throughout the whole bloodbath of a movie.
He’s smiling.
She’s smiling.
Birds are chirping—
“OH, FUCK! OH, FUCK NO!” I scream, aghast, shocked.
Johnny’s hosing himself at my expense.
“JESUS. FUCK!”
The guy on the screen ate her head.
And blood splatters all across the screen.
End credits.
-17-
“Johnny, that was horrible.”
Johnny’s holding me by my wrist. I feel like I’m about to fall over. I’m looking around me wondering if any of these people are Flesheaters.
Johnny’s still cracking up.
“I’m not gonna be able to sleep for days.”
He guides me out the theater, to the street. Somehow it doesn’t look so happy outside, even though the sun is shining. Flesheaters everywhere.
I shake my head.
“Drink?” he says.
I look up at him suspiciously. “No alcohol. That’ll only give me nightmares. I think—Christ, how can you like shit like that?”
“It’s real.”
“It’s not real.”
“Metaphorically.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of a happy ending?”
Johnny’s smile falters.
“Yeah, sure, let’s get a drink...outside. I don’t wanna be anywhere dark for, like, three years.”
We stroll on over to a park. Johnny grabs us a soda from a food stand, some hotdogs. The sight of ketchup on the hotdog makes me feel sick. “How is it that you downed an entire bottle of Jack and can still eat that shit, and I’m ready to hurl just at the sight of it?”
“Must be the vitamins you gave me.”
“Har har.”
He smiles, and for the first time today, I see that smile brightening his eyes. “Truthfully, my head is killing me, Cat. But I’m having fun. I haven’t had this much fun since... Well, in a long time.”
We chomp down our hotdogs, saying nothing, just chilling.
Slowly, the world looks less menacing, people chilling on the grass don’t look like the
y’ll turn into flesh-eating monsters any time soon. A girl walks past in a short pink dress, smiles widely at Johnny, then stops smiling when she sees me.
“Still haven’t lost it, have you?” I say.
“Lost what?”
“You know what.”
“Neither have you. See that dude over there, the one on the blanket?”
I squint, trying to find the guy Johnny’s referring to.
“Where?”
“There.” Johnny points, obviously. And that’s when I see the look of fear on a guy, and then the sudden rolling up of his blanket, moving away.
“Hey, you did that on purpose.”
Johnny grins. “Maybe. Anyway, he was checking you out surreptitiously since you sat down.”
“I didn’t notice a thing.”
“Like I said, surreptitiously.”
“But you noticed.”
“It wasn’t hard. He was giving me the I’m-A-Tough-Guy-So-Don’t-Mess-With-Me look.”
“Oh, and how does that look go exactly?”
There’s a slight pause, and then Johnny squishes up his face into something that looks like he’s in pain. And he glares at me.
I can’t stop laughing. I’m laughing so much my chest hurts.
“That, my dear Cat, is the I’m-A-Tough-Guy-So-Don’t-Mess-With-Me look.”
Still laughing, still struggling to get the words out: “And he was giving that to you?”
“Ever since he saw you weren’t here on your own and I had hotdogs and sodas in my hand.”
I look around the park. “Who else?” I say. “And don’t point this time!”
“Ten o’clock. Black hair.”
“Ooh, he’s hot.”
Johnny makes an unimpressed face. “He’s a dork.”
“He’s tall, strong.”
“And he’s wearing a top that looks like it hasn’t been washed in a week. Dude’s probably a drug-addict.”
“Who else?”
Johnny scans the area. “Two o’clock.”
“Oh, God, no.”
“Yip, he’s been checking you out.”
“OK, next.”
“Why, Cat? He looks cute.”
“And fifteen years old.”
“He might be in love.”
“Next!”
Johnny’s chuckling.
Claiming Johnny: A New-Adult Novel Page 4
