Pete Hamill - Brooklyn Noir

“Jesus…”

“I know! Totally fucked up, right?” He was on a roll now, and his dark eyes flashed. “But here’s the thing: If a woman thinks she’s worthless, if she’s been dumped by enough guys and her self-esteem is that low, she’ll excuse anything to keep you. I was so under her skin, she was dependent on me like a drug, she was hooked just like a junkie and she’d put up with whatever she had to.”

Brian was grinning hard now. He’d never had an office job, never made serious money, kept getting fired, and had the shittiest credit of anyone he knew, but in this one sport, he was a champion. “Here’s the secret, and I know it’s so fucking wrong, but the worse you treat them, the more they want you. It’s totally fucked up, but the sooner you understand that, the better off you’ll be. I’m telling you.”

Sean was quiet and let Brian’s story sink in. He was colder now, inside and out. The van hadn’t stopped once and they still had no idea where they were going or why. The back of his head was throbbing from where he had pounded his head into the van wall to try and get someone’s attention. He looked over to his left and saw the blond guy’s eyes were still closed, though he wasn’t slumped over anymore.

“Hey, look at him,” Sean whispered to Brian. “Is he awake yet?”

“Hey, buddy! You awake?” Brian barked.

Blond guy’s eyes opened, suspiciously, like he’d been awake and listening to them for a long time.

“Yeah, Brian,” he sneered. “I’m awake.”

“How do you know my name?” Brian accused.

“You and your pal, Sean, have been using up all the fucking oxygen in this van for the last hour or two, that’s how, genius.”

“So who are you, asshole?”

“The name isn’t Asshole, it’s Frank.”

“Do you know why we’re here?” Sean said flatly, now a good cop to Brian’s bad cop.

“We must all have something in common, right?” Frank smiled. “I’ll save you two some time: I’m a trader for Pettigrew Dean and I live on the Upper East Side in the city. I’m forty-one, single, I don’t gamble, I don’t owe anybody money, I don’t deal with the mob, I don’t have a criminal record, I don’t go to the Alibi, although I own some property in Fort Greene and Park Slope, and I don’t read Star Trek novels…”

Frank was kind of enjoying this.

“… And, oh yeah. I know her too.”

The air in the van went ice cold as Sean’s eyes shot quickly to Brian, then back to Frank. This was seriously fucked up now.

“I heard all about you guys.” Frank narrowed his eyes at Sean. “The time she brought a glass of fresh orange juice and a clean towel to you as you were stepping out of the shower and you just walked right by her. That fucking slayed her. She never forgot it.”

Sean crumbled at the memory; he’d never told anyone about that. He felt nauseous.

Frank turned to Brian. “And you? Yeah, she told me all about you and how you twisted her inside out like a game. How cold you were, how you used her for fun and then fucked her over. She didn’t see anyone for almost a year after that, she just holed up in her apartment and didn’t go out. Did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t know that,” Brian admitted quietly, as the bravado slid off his face like he’d been caught by his mother. He leaned back, away from the light of the van’s harsh bare bulb. It never occurred to him that there would be real dam-age. Everybody played hard, it was part of the game.

“Yeah, guess not,” Frank said coolly, his pale hair and pale eyes seeming to soak up the light. “Did you know she six different anti-depressants that year? Did you know she started having a hard time leaving her apartment? Did you know she thought everything was her fault, that she was a terrible person? She thought there had to be something wrong with her for everyone to keep treating her like this, right? By the time I met her, she was so fucking fragile, I thought I’d break her if I held her hand.”

Frank was furious now.

“How did you meet her?” Sean asked quietly, staring at the floor. Was that blood?

“At a dinner party.” Frank’s voice quieted at the memory. “We were sitting next to each other and she was just starting to go out again, but she was so gun shy, she was really having trouble talking to me. It took an hour to even drag a conversation out of her. She couldn’t function at all, so I asked her about what she did, and then we talked about movies, cool flea markets, what we were reading, all kinds of stuff.

“I liked her,” Frank recalled, moving his head from side to side. His neck was cramped from leaning over for hours. “She seemed sweet and, I don’t know, textured in some way. She wasn’t glossy at all and I could tell by the way she hunched her shoulders and shuffled when she walked that something bad happened to her, she’d been thrown away. She seemed really hurt and tired when she finally told me about it all. It made me furious, and sad, like, how dare they? How dare… you?

Frank seemed larger now, and Sean and Brian had lost their swagger, shamed.

“So I kissed her hand goodnight, really gently, and I gave her my phone number so she could decide if she wanted to talk to me. I left it up to her, we’d talk when she was ready. I wasn’t going to press her. It was two or three weeks before she called me, and she was so nervous that I knew she’d been practicing what she was going to say. I’ve gotta tell you, it was so sweet it tore my heart out. She said she had to find a bedside table and did I want to go scout some places on Washington Street? Saturday afternoon, easy enough, no pressure, so I said, yeah, sure. I got there and she was dressed up more than usual, like she’d really thought about what she was going to wear. She had this flared black-and-white tweed skirt and black shoes with a strap across them, like showgirls wear, with this burgundy coat that had a fur collar, and this dark red lipstick sort of smudged like it was an accident. She looked like an old-fashioned movie star on her day off. Adorable, totally adorable.

“We started dating and I spent a lot of time with her. She was real cautious and warned me to go slow with her, that she needed time to work some things out and could I deal with that? I said, sure, she was worth it. So we started talking every day, then we were traveling together, like she’d come out to my place in the Hamptons for the weekend and she’d stay over at my apartment a few nights a week. We were going to the opening of a new club, Plush, you know that one? I took her shopping for a dress, and I guess that freaked her out because she wasn’t used to being treated well. Do you believe no guy had even sent her flowers? I mean, fuck.”

Sean looked at Frank and Brian across from him. He wondered who was thrown in the van first.

“So I took her on as kind of a personal project. Get her out, get her to take some classes… We started to take trips together, she got more social, and I started seeing a real difference in her. We’d go to art openings, I took her to some dinner parties, and I’m thinking she could be a good corporate wife, like do charity work during the day and take care of the house stuff. Plan the vacations and take care of the kids — I mean, I’ve got to start thinking about that because I’m not going anywhere without the wife and family thing… Company’s not going to promote someone who doesn’t fit the picture. Clients don’t trust a guy handling their money who’s not like them. Like, if you’re forty-five and still running around? Forget it. Doesn’t matter how good you are.

“Now it’s been a few months and I’m thinking she might be the one. So I start training her like they trained me at PD — I start teaching her about my job, how to make chitchat at a charity event, negotiate with antiques dealers… had to get her out of that place in Fort Greene. I’m thinking if it works out, I just might marry her, but we never talked about it.