Back at the Flanagan Condo, I moved up into apartment 306. I knew Suzy and Greco were in the bedroom. The dining table of the living room was littered with takeout lunchboxes and empty beer cans. And the place was lined with folders of CDs, brimming with all kinds of music collections. Some wall-tacked vinyl records even served as astute ornaments.
It was around a quarter to three in the afternoon, but all the blinds were down, permitting only the right amount of dusty light to filter in to create the right sultry mood sought after by the young couple who desired their lovenest to be airtight.
A small giggle came from the bedroom. I went in there.
“Gently Gre… Not so hard.”
In the half-gloomy atmosphere of the square room, Greco was snuggling against Suzy on a downy bed, trying hard to coax her back into some bed play, which she seemed not to really relish.
“Sorry,” he said and pulled off her.
Fresh from a bath, her body had the smell of youth. Nothing short of a goddess, Greco thought.
Now he was lying bare-chested under the creased blanket. Atop the sheet, Suzy was spread beside him in her slim see-through kimono robe. Greco was feasting on the sight of her sleepy form, his eyes almost dancing with desire. Likewise, she was looking over at him from the corner of her eye, drowsy from their intense session of lovemaking. You could see that the passion was dying on her face though, like a candlelight burning out altogether. Greco realized that if he didn’t reignite it now, pretty soon, looking at her would be like looking into a void. He tenderly let his hand creep across her hip, until it sank under her robe.
“Gee, I already took a shower…” Suzy said.
“Come on,” Greco teased, full of lust. “Nothing keeps you from showering a second time.” It was obvious he wanted to make love again.
“Leave me alone.”
Greco grinned. Suzy turned herself over on her stomach and bent her legs up. Then after punching a pillow into a comfortable position, she buried her face into it like a schoolgirl. Understandably, Greco found himself aroused even more.
“I thought you’d be up for a rematch,” he said.
“Well, now it’s a little too late for that.” Suzy said harshly, lifting her head from the pillow. She was now looking at her reflection in a large mirror by the door.
“Alright, I’m not gonna beg for it,” He added, “But let me remind you that you started it.”
“It wasn’t for me; it was just to please you. Because that’s all you keep thinking about.”
Greco laughed. “And I have cause, don’t I?” Then he observed, “Your back is just so pretty and so irresistible.”
Unheeding of the comment, Suzy began stirring her toes amiably; she was studying them in the mirror.
“What do you think of my toes?” She asked.
“Your toes?” Greco said. “I like your toes.”
“Why?”
“What a question –– because they’re yours.”
“And my legs, what do you think of them?”
As Greco was taking a few seconds to formulate his answer, I allowed myself to pan across her prodigious body. Her curves were divine under the fabric of her robe. Her skin had a silk-feel quality to it. And her eyes had the color and depth of the ocean. There was no doubt that Suzy McCorkle had the tragic face of some ancient Greek queen.
“I think they’re supple,” Greco said. “Supple like the reed that yields under the flurry of a gentle wind on a warm autumn evening.”
This elocution robbed Suzy of the shade of a smile.
“And my thighs,” Suzy said again. “Do you like them?”
“Yes, I like them. I like them very much.”
Suzy spun on her back and wistfully stroked her stomach.
“And my tummy, what do you think of it?”
“I think it looks fine.”
“And that’s it?”
“It looks gorgeous. So gorgeous that I wish I had one just like it.”
“Don’t joke around,” Suzy said, folding her arms behind her head. “It’s an important question.”
“How is it important?” Greco sneered, as if her saying it was important made it sound whimsical. He then shortened the space between them and began kissing her on the cheek. But Suzy immediately rebuffed him.
“I told you to knock it off, didn’t I?”
Looking askance at her, Greco complied without making a fuss about it.
“What’s wrong?” He asked. “You’re kind of mean today.”
“It’s your fault!” Suzy said. “I just want to be left alone, just for a few minutes.”
“If I did or said something that upset you, you can tell me.”
“You haven’t done anything, I promise you. Now please, be nice and stop talking.”
Greco did not say anything more. He quietly shifted away from her to the edge of the bed. Then he looked at her, bewildered.
Facing up, Suzy had an unusually thoughtful air about herself, as if roped into some obscure, philosophical meditation. After a moment, the ceiling fan naturally caught her eye, and she segued into counting the number of rotations of its whirling blades. She couldn’t tell why she suddenly endeavored to do it, but she knew right off that it was a queer way to pass the time.
So many rotations within a second, she thought. Just like so many choices in one’s life… After a while – one minute… two minutes… a year… ten years – you miscount. But you keep on counting. You keep on counting, even though you know the numbers are wrong. But maybe somewhere ahead you’ll get it right again. Because if you start over, all the time you’ve already spent on this will be lost – one minute… two minutes… a year… ten years – So you keep on counting, hoping to catch up with the right number. But the further you miscount, the more you get dizzy by those stupid numbers that don’t even matter. So what’s the point? They’re numbers. It’s like trying to catch the wind. You’ll always get them wrong, because it’s so easy to miscount them. So why even try to be right about them? It’s a fool’s errand, a loaded dice; a tricky paradox imposed on us by someone – or something – that had the foresight to know the outcome. So what’s the solution?
She closed her eyes.
Because wherever you look, the numbers are still there. And it’s madness; it’s billions and billions of lives; and the numbers, they run it all. There’s no way around it, no escaping it. We have to keep counting, keep trying to make them work for us. But how do you manage not to get dizzy?
Suzy’s eyes opened up again on the whirling blades. They were going full swing, with a hectic whoosh. Slowly her mouth shaped into an ironic smile as she welcomed an unexpected, yet satisfying answer to her own question.
You leave it all to chance, of course, she thought again. You wait. And after one minute… one year… you just pick a number and don’t waste your time counting for nothing. Right or wrong, guessing will at least remove the headache from the equation. So that’s it – you just leave it to chance and randomly, you pick a number…
“What number?” Greco asked in a whisper.
Suzy turned her face to look at him. She hadn’t realized that she was thinking out loud.
“Nothing,” she said. “I was just thinking of something.”
Suzy withdrew her arms from behind her head and rolled onto her side, still facing Greco. In the mirror, he could see her wet blond hair cascading down her shoulders in a single mass, branching off into five wavy tresses on her spine. Gosh – he loved blond hair. Without warning, his arousal rushed back up. He repressed it.
“You were faraway for a moment there,” he said. “Like very deep in your head. I’ve never seen you like that.”
“And that surprises you?” she said, staring right into his eyes.
“Yeah, a little bit.”
“So I guess to you I’m just another brainless hip doll who cannot think ––”
“Of course you can think,” Greco said with a smile. “And you’re not a doll. See, you’re smarter th
an me.” Suzy giggled and that spurred him on. “What I meant was, you looked as if you were having some kind of epiphany, that’s all.”
“Such a big word for such a little thought.”
Suzy rolled again; her back was to him now. Greco didn’t like to see her like that, aloof and silent. So he looked up at the ceiling, trying to be enthralled by whatever had originally sparked her meditation. He wanted to rise to the same emotional (or maybe spiritual) level as her if he was to successfully communicate with her.
Whoosh… Whoosh… The blades of the ceiling fan were whirling up there, disturbing the fabric of the air. Staring up intently, Greco murmured to himself,
“Ahem… Pick a number.”
He had said it in an incanting way, as if the words themselves held some mystical power in them, and they were not to be pronounced in vain or else they’d turn into fire and burn the blasphemer’s tongue. Aware of his own levity of mind, he chortled under his breath and could hardly stop.
“Gre, I don’t think it’s funny,” Suzy said. And in the mirror, the flesh around her bright eyes pinched inward. She was definitely vexed.
“I know – I’m sorry. Never mind, I’m just playing with you.” He then concentrated less on his physical needs and looked at her without intent. “Are you going to visit your father’s grave tomorrow?”
Her father had lost his battle against Lewy body dementia a few years back. Watching him slowly deteriorate into a blank-eyed, saliva-dribbling, sour veggie, had forever blighted the good memory she had of him in his more glorious times.
He didn’t even know who I was in the end, she remembered. Or did he? She tried to recall his lifeless eyes, just before they went to eternal sleep. They were full of nothing but a crazy void; and yet they were staring at her as if a sense of belated recognition was holding them open for a while longer… That’s what she wanted to believe anyway: but even with his eyes open, he was already gone.
“Eh, are you there?” Greco called to her, knitting his eyebrows together. “Will you visit him?”
“Why? Want to tag along?”
“Maybe,” he said noncommittally. “If we go somewhere else after.”
Suzy said nothing. Greco watched an emotion he didn’t recognize come over her. He wanted to say something but he kept quiet as well. Silence settled in between them, like an ocean between two opposing nations.
“Gre, do you love me?” Suzy finally worked up the nerve to ask. “I mean really.”
It was because of the way she had asked that question that Greco replied with another question.
“Why are you asking?”
“Do you?”
“Of course I love you. Don’t you know that?”
“So how come you never say it. You have to say these things. But you don’t. Ever…”
“Alright –– I’ll say it now: I love you.”
“That doesn’t count. I don’t want you to say it like that. Because then it doesn’t sound right. It sounds like a cheap line straight from a raunchy rom-com. And you know how much I hate those.”
Greco shifted closer to her again, so close that he could actually kiss her neck and work his way down to the blade of her round shoulder. He resisted the urge.
“But Suzy – Does it really matter whether I say it? I mean, we’ve been together for, what ––”
“That’s the thing. We go places together; people see us as a couple. But sometimes it’s like we’re just… pretending, you know, like we’re playing along with one foot in and one foot out, hoping not to cut ourselves as we walk this thin razor line. I guess what I’m trying to say is: we may be together, but we are not together. So, what are we doing?”
“Do you want commitment?” Greco said calmly, but with a look of concern on his face. “Because I recall asking you to move in with me and you said no.”
“You know what I’m doing.” Suzy answered back.
“And I don’t care.”
“I dance for a living. And my workplace is not exactly swell because of its Vesper Martinis. The girls there are the attraction…”
“Suzy ––”
“No. It’s a rat hole, sure, but I’m part of the slideshow and I need the money, and that’s that. I wouldn’t want the decent families of this condo to go ape-shit whenever one of the lowlife jerks that hits the joint on a regular basis has had one too many and actually believes I’m his wife or something, and hounds after me to let his drunken sorry ass into my apartment and into my bed. Believe me; you wouldn’t want that kind of scene out here.”
Greco put his hand on Suzy’s forearm and gently rolled her over to have her beneath him. He met her eyes; they were sodden.
“Alright, I’ll move in to your apartment then.” Greco said, all diplomatic.
“I don’t want you to move in to my apartment.”
“You just said that it didn’t feel as if we were together. I don’t know why you’d think that, but maybe living together just might do the trick.”
“I don’t know,” Suzy said after a short reflection.
“I know I want to be with you. Don’t you want to be with me?”
Suzy’s lips pressed into a red line as she determined the trueness of the answer she was about to give:
“If I’m being honest Gre, I don’t know.”
Suddenly, Greco’s eyes were suspended above hers like two windows fronting an empty house. Suzy could see his eyelashes scarcely batter now, as if the weight of his pain had crippled their fluttering.
“Yesterday I knew,” Suzy said again in the same honest tone. “But today I don’t.”
“What changed?” Greco asked. “Is it something that I did?”
“No – It’s not about you… Am I not allowed to also have my own moment of clarity without you stealing my thunder and making it all about you?”
“Your moment of clarity?” Greco repeated with urgency. Now he had turned her onto her back. “What kind of talk is that?”
“Forget everything that I just said.”
“Suzy ––”
She cold-shouldered him and again turned her back on him.
“Susanne ––”
He never called her that, except when he wanted to be very serious and needed her full attention. They hadn’t had one of those lover’s spats they were having now in a long time, so it felt quaint to hear that name again. She roguishly smiled at that and, for the same reason, willed herself to tune in.
“What?” Suzy said with an impatient tone.
“Something happened between yesterday and now,” Greco said.
“I told you to forget everything I just said… please.”
“I can’t – I won’t. So tell me: what’s going on.”
Suzy kept quiet.
“Come on – There’s no point running out on this. Let me have it. What’s bothering you? Why are you acting like that?”
“If I tell you, will you stop harassing me with your questions?”
“If you tell me the truth – yeah.”
“How will you know it’s the truth?”
“I will know.”
Suzy sat up on the bed and with a conscious gesture pulled down her kimono robe to cover the top of her thighs. She looked down at Greco who was lying on his side.
“But there’s nothing to tell, though,” she said. “I don’t know where I was going with this. I love you. And you just said that you loved me. So that should be enough, right?”
“Was it Stone?” Greco insisted, aggressively. “Did he try to pull something on you?
Rowley ‘Stone’ Bormann was the owner of the Penthouse, the underbelly strip club Suzy was dancing for. He was a double-chinned seedy character, and was very rough about the edges with a gruff voice. He was reportedly known to have an abusive attitude towards the girls that worked for him.
“I own them,” “They’re mine,” and, “They do as I command,” were just a few of the catchphrases he used quite frequently. Also, he’d pimp them out, depending on how big the pay,
to salacious patrons who held binge-drinking parties at remote locations where the no-touch rule didn’t have an abiding effect.
Greco despised the man very much, but his hatred had amounted to nothing but a few snarls and grunts under the table. He couldn’t run afoul of the old bull because Stone was dangerous. Greco had confirmed it when he learned of Stone’s connections to some hinky entities.
“Suzy, you have to tell me,” Greco said again to get her to talk. “Has he tried something?”
“Please… Gre,” Suzy pleaded. “Come off it... Stone didn’t do anything. I mean, anything that he hasn’t already done.”
For a moment, Greco remained silent, staring straight ahead. He seemed unconscious of Suzy’s presence beside him. Suzy put out a hand and laid it on his head. Her touch brought him back.
“Listen,” he said in a low voice. “It kills me to know that every night you go back to that place, that low-down establishment... That you actually walk through the gates of Sodom and Gomorrah, and when you finally come out of it the next day, you come out a little more hardened than the night before. And every time you look at me, I dread you’ll say something hurtful to give me a hint that you and I – this right here – is drawing to a close.” Greco looked her in the eye. “Suzy, is that what this is? Are you trying to tell me that… that…”
Slowly, Suzy lay herself down next to him and rested her head upon his broad chest.
“Gre, I don’t know,” she said, her tiny fingers inching along his jaw line. “Right now, I think I’m very confused. Maybe I just need some time alone to make my thoughts clear.”
“And after that?”
“I don’t know. I have to start thinking about my future.”
Greco suddenly became conscious of the overwhelming hopeless feeling spreading through his bones. He’d picked up yet another hint when Suzy said, “my future,” in lieu of, “our future.”
“My parents were so proud of me when I got my scholarship,” Suzy said ruefully. You could tell she was talking to herself. “My mom would often say to me, ‘You’re gonna do well for yourself, you’ll see. You’re gonna make it, girl, just wait and see…’ She made me believe in myself, Gre. She made me believe in my dreams…”
“Keep trusting in your dreams Babe” Greco said softly, trying to get the conversation going, in hopes of getting to the bottom of it all.
“Only foolish little girls dream, Gre.”
Her expression had suddenly hardened just as the lines of her mouth had. Mooning over past dreams was the surest way to bring down one’s defense against harsh cold reality.
“Come on –– what’s wrong, Babe?”
She hesitated at first. Then she said, looking down at her hands, “My grandfather spent the last months of his life with us. I was just a kid then, and I loved helping him out through his day. But I was just a kid, you know. I thought he’d live longer with my help.” Her inflexion shifted, and became less self-pitying. “Well, you could say that’s what drew me into recreational therapy school. Me wanting to buy elderly people more time.”
“Look, I know it’s tough but you’re managing, right?”
Her head came off his chest and she sat upright. “I’m underwater on the loan I took to help pay the medical bills of my father, and now I can’t count on any more scholarships to resume school. And even if I socked away enough money to go back, I don’t think I would because… I mean, am I even going to be good at it? What good can a stripper do in this world except entertain?”
“But that’s not who you are,” Greco said.
Her face was heavily steeped in dim shades of the dying daylight, that incidentally cast dubious shadows across all four walls of the bedroom. Greco could see that she was reining in a burst of flowing emotions.
Suzy sighed, “What if I cannot be something else? What if this is it?”
She was looking at him squarely, but was also conscious of wanting to avoid his eyes.
But she continued, “I have to keep doing what I do until I can at least pay off all my debts and get back on my feet…”
Her attitude gravely upset Greco, but he turned his face away in an effort to not show just how much. He knew what she was driving at, and he didn’t like it.
He said, spitefully, “Nobody forced you to become indebted with those medical bills to begin with!”
Because he already regretted his comment just as the words were slipping off his tongue, he confronted her eyes and added, “Look, there wasn’t even much chance that the medication would work; you told me so yourself.”
“What was I supposed to do? Just watch him die?”
He saw her shoulders tense and said, “No –– of course not. All I’m saying is, I don’t think your father would’ve wanted you to sacrifice your education and your dream.”
“I did what I had to do,” Suzy said, and her shoulders seemed to relax. “It was a difficult situation and I dealt with it. What? You think maybe I asked for him to get ill during a pivotal moment of my life?”
Greco wasn’t going to argue with her over the choices she had made during the period of her father’s illness.
Besides, this happened way before they met, so he didn’t want to question her actions. Nowadays, her takings from stage dancing at the Penthouse was what made her ends meet. And after nearly eighteen months of struggling through constant financial woes, she deserved a little slack. Though inside, Greco was fighting the rising urge to reassure her and tell her to lay all of her worries on him. But he too was living on a tight budget, and could not really help clear the slate of her humongous loans.
The small record label that he was running was currently more or less without a heartbeat. But not for long, he thought. Things are going to come around eventually.
“Gre…” Suzy mildly called out to break silence. “You’re not mad at me, are you?”
“No, I’m not…” Greco said, absentmindedly. “Why would I be mad?”
“I know you dislike the idea of me working at the Penthouse. But I’m not likely to quit just yet ––”
“Right –– you’ve got loans to pay off,” Greco said. “I got it loud and clear the first time.”
“I’ve got things to figure out,” Suzy snapped back crossly, echoing the coldness in his voice. “So if you want to break this off and call it quits, I’d understand.”
He turned a depressed eye on her and firmly grabbed hold of her arm, as if he expected her to suddenly flee from his life and never come back.
He said, breathlessly, “Jesus Christ, Susanne –– You trying to get rid of me or what?”
“No, I just want to make sure you know what you’re in for…”
“Well, because I’m not one of those large-type assholes who know exactly what they’re in for every night they come and see you perform, I guess I don’t know…”
He realized he was hurting her arm with his iron grip when she tried to pry herself free. His fingers loosened and he felt terrible. They looked at each other for a moment in silence. The hell is happening to us? He thought.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Greco said calmly. “I told you I loved you and I meant it. But I have the feeling there’s something else you’re not telling me.”
She looked away from him and a lock of blond hair fell forward, hiding her face.
The alarm clock on her cell phone suddenly went off, sounding its shrill symphony, filling all the empty rooms of the apartment. But it seemed it was their heads that were getting filled. Suzy grabbed her cell phone from the nightstand and silenced it: it was three o’clock.
She said while gracefully hopping out of bed, “I don’t feel like talking anymore.”
“Where are you off to?” Greco asked, drawing himself up.
“I’m leaving. I’ve got to get ready for work, you know. I’ll stop by my place first.”
“Come back to bed, come on. I don’t see any fire here.”
When she started to get dressed, he added, “So you’re just going to lea
ve like that?”
Suzy gestured at her whole body in a sort of flaunting way. “You’ve enjoyed the spoils of the full house service. Now be grateful and kiss me goodbye.”
He stared at her for a few seconds. She wasn’t going to come back to bed. Shrouded in blankets, Greco reluctantly set foot on the floor and kissed her on the mouth. She cut it out though, as soon as his tongue got involved.
“Will you swing by after work?” Greco asked.
Now that Suzy had the upper hand, it was obvious he wanted to get back in her good graces.
“I don’t know,” she said. “That depends.”
“Depends on what?” Greco asked, one eyebrow raised.
“On a lot of things, Gre. But I got to sort them out first, since you’re so prone to act like a jerk whenever you hear something you don’t like.”
And without delay, Suzy swept out of the bedroom, leaving Greco to wonder if he was going to run after her and roughen her back to bed, or simply grovel at her feet and ask for forgiveness.
I left him there alone with his quandary and bowed out south toward the City Park…
Chapter VIII
QUALITY TIME FOR THE GREAVES…
AND THE FRUSTRATIONS OF ZOE