Interlude #6
(His Dream Turned Cold in Response to His Loss of Her.)
Penny was curled up against him when he woke. Her slight body was wrapped around him. Her skin was slick with sweat and he wondered how much had been a dream. He slid his hand under the sheet and felt naked skin. At the foot of the bed was a bathrobe that was as flimsy as mist but thick as a pillow. His arm wrapped around her, and her hand rested against the hollow at the base of his neck.
Her skin was impossibly hot, and where his arm touched her, he could feel the film of sweat between them. His hand was resting on the base of her back the smooth curve of it made his heart race. Ryan wondered what had happened to him. In the past, he couldn’t walk past a woman without wanting her. He wouldn’t be able to help himself. Even when she had been in the hospital giving birth to their son, he had been more interested in the nurses.
Something had happened. Penny was pressed against him, and he knew she would be a willing – even an eager – participant in anything he wished to do. The problem was that he didn’t want to do anything. Whatever part of his mind had given him a roaming eye and octopus fingers had been co-opted for other purposes.
The anger. It was not directed in any direction. He didn’t even hate the woman who had abandoned him, he didn’t hate anyone. He looked at people and felt nothing. No, that wasn’t entirely true; he did feel something when he looked at Penny, but he didn’t understand what it was. He had only known her for half a day, but his kinship with her seemed a lifetime old. It was as if he had re-met someone he had once been deeply intimate with. Someone he had spent many nights with, not in the throes of passion but in the pursuit of understanding.
She felt good against him, but the feeling was of her presence, not just her body. It had been like when he had met the woman, the one he could no longer bring himself to name. Similar, but not the same, this was deeper; this made him realise that what he had felt before was an illusion.
If love was real, and not created to sell greeting cards, then this was it.
He rolled over to face her, his free hand slipping around her waist. Her face was close to his, her lips slightly parted, her eyes closed. He saw that her hair was an uneven mess of wedges, and the makeup she wore had been scrubbed from her features. Her skin was marred by brief scars and tiny pockmarks of healed blemishes, but otherwise clear, and smooth. She breathed in a soft exhale that was almost a snore, her breasts pressing against him with each intake of air. Ryan drifted in the sensation, his consciousness halfway between wakefulness and sleep. He remembered he had dreamt, but he didn’t know what of. The memory of it nudged at the edge of his understanding. It had no doubt been a nightmare, and it had no doubt been a retelling of the turmoil that had befallen him in recent months.
Penny wore her beauty differently now; she was not the facsimile of cover girls he had met the day previously. Her lips were unadorned with the knowing smirk that always lived under them. In the relaxation of sleep, her features had moved to their natural state, and Ryan thought she could not look more beautiful. The tiny scars that covered her cheeks and the bridge of her nose were the remains of poor skin in her youth, but they didn’t detract from her beauty, they intensified it. Ryan always wondered why so many women strove for the beauty they saw on the printed page when their natural glow was superior. Perfection was only fit for manufactured items. Art was measured by its imperfections, beauty doubly so.
Ryan watched his new companion sleep. He sank into the moment, and it was a moment before sleep retook him he realised what he had said to himself. Perfection was only fit for manufactured items, but what was his and Penny’s meeting if it wasn’t perfection?
His sleep was troubled, but not so that he woke with it still in his mind. In it he was chased by nothing monstrous, nor was it filled with death or pain. Instead, he was coupled with Penny, and they were a single twist of muscle and sweat. Her breath was heavy and sweet, dousing his skin in hot exhalations as her body strained against his own. Her half-lidded eyes were close to his own, one moment hazel, the next green. Ryan pulled his head away, and Penny smiled at him. The smile was a twitch of flesh at her cheek, her jaw shuddered, and she pulled his head down and kissed him.
Ryan’s body drew him back into the moment. Her fingers slipped on his sweat-oiled skin.
His sudden fright was forgotten dream logic. The woman he could not bring himself to name had green eyes. Penny had hazel. Or was it the other way around?
He didn’t feel her move as he dreamed, she slipped from his bed like a ghost, but his dream turned cold in response to his loss of her.
By the time the rapping came at the door, he had already woken more refreshed than he had in his adult life, and he felt as though he had shed ten years overnight. The clothes he had found fit him well, and if he had not known better, he would have thought them custom-made for him.
He opened the door and was greeted by the tall woman.
“Good morning, Ryan,” she said, and she smiled a viper smile, “Mr Grey has requested your company for a late breakfast; if you’re ready?”
Ryan nodded and followed her without speaking. She was an attractive woman, tall and strong, but despite his thoughts from the evening before he now felt his stomach squirm slightly at the sight of her. He felt suddenly conscious of his idle thought about her, it weighed on him when he thought of Penny.
They turned left at the end of the hall.
“Aren’t we going to wait for Penny?” He asked as they walked. The Tall woman didn’t turn her head, but he saw the mane of black hair shake.
“She should already be there.” She replied.
She took the next left, then a right. Ryan tried to remember the route but quickly forgot as she took another left, followed by the right fork of intersecting corridors. Each corridor appeared identical to the last, and they seemed to go in a circuitous route that felt like they were back the way they had come.
Ryan was about to comment on this when he heard music. It was operatic, and he thought he recognised the language as Italian. He remembered a little of the language from his youth. He had neighbours who spoke the language around the house, and he had picked up many words from overhearing their raised discussions. It always sounded like they were arguing, and though that wasn’t true he still learned quite a few obscene words in Italian.
What followed was almost a re-enactment of his first morning at JC’s house at the beginning of his journey. But instead of a vast greenhouse, Ryan stepped into a small room panelled with wood that had been stained so dark it was almost black. In the centre of the room was a table set for four people, past it, an old man stood talking to a woman dressed in a little black dress that hugged her to perfection. Her back was to him, and all he could make out of her appearance was a shock of severely cut ebony hair. It was shaved down to the scalp at the nape of her shapely neck and grew longer until it was flicked in a wave across the top of her head. Despite its masculine style, it looked lovely on her.
The old man turned and smiled at Ryan, the tip of his cane clattering on the hardwood floor. He could have been JC’s brother, and if they stood beside each other, Ryan would not have been confident in telling them apart.
He began to speak but that was when the young lady turned to face Ryan, and the sound in the room became muffled.
It was Penny. Her hair had been cut and coloured, and someone had applied make-up that was nothing less than transformative. It was not that she was more lovely than she had been before, it was the shift from truck stop waif to socialite that had thrown him. She looked like she belonged in such lavish surroundings, and he wished he could belong too.
The old man laughed at Ryan’s confusion, but the sound was wasted on the younger man. Ryan stepped closer to Penny. She saw the look in his eyes, and her smile was filled with pure joy.
“It seems that you are acquainted?” The old man said.
“Barely,” Ryan answered, but he was not sure what he had meant by the word.
The old man led him to the table with a gentle hand sat him in a chair opposite Penny, then deposited himself between them, the chair opposite him empty. Ryan and Penny stared at each other; the old man momentarily forgotten as servants brought in silver platters filled with their meal.
“I recommend the lobster frittata, the caviar gives it a salty bite,” the man said, and Ryan felt his hand move out to the platter closest to him. The pink lobster meat lay on a wedge of fried potatoes, across it was an artful scoop of glistening black caviar. Ryan slid a portion onto his plate and grabbed a fork. He wasn’t thinking about the food in front of him. His attention was still focused on Penny’s transformation, but when he slid a forkful of the food into his mouth that taste pulled him back to reality.
“The Gull’s Egg Omelette is also hard to beat. Though the chef is often a little heavy on the Champagne he adds to the Italian truffles. I prefer a more nuanced flavour, though he does something to the asparagus that defies description.”
Ryan turned to the man for the first time, searching his mind for the name the tall woman had used.
“Mr Grey?” Ryan asked, and the man nodded.
“I am he,” he replied, “Charles Johann Grey, though most call me CJ. It’s an affectation of my group to refer to members by their initials. Rather juvenile, I know, but it amuses.”
“I met JC,” Ryan said, “and he told me a little…”
“Very little I imagine,” Charles replied and laughed.
“He did tell me that whatever we were delivering was important, I hope it arrived safely?”
“We did,” Penny said. The two words cut into the men’s conversation like a razor. Both men turned to her, and from the corner of his eye, Ryan caught a sudden smile across Charles’ face.
“My dear,” the old man said, and then he sighed, “you are a lady of uncommon understanding.”
“I hope I haven’t upset anything,” she said, clearly hoping she had.
“No, not at all my dear. Your presence is the topping on the cake.”
Ryan’s eyes moved back and forth between them. Something was going on here that he didn’t understand. He shifted nervously in his seat, and Penny’s eyes moved to him briefly. He saw concern in them, a flash of warning, and he knew she knew something he did not.
“JC told me that I would be paid on receipt.” Ryan cut in. Charles’ gaze remained on Penny for a moment, and when they moved to Ryan she deflated slightly, as if she was holding something at bay that had suddenly retreated.
“Yes, of course. If you need to leave, I can arrange that immediately, however,” he paused as if considering something. It looked like a performance, and Ryan realised he had felt that way about the world for a while.
“I do have another little delivery job that I could offer you, it’s quick, and the address is close.”
“Of course,” Ryan said, but he wanted to take Penny and go. Whatever plans were churning behind the old man’s eyes felt wrong to Ryan, but this wasn’t a man to engage in an argument.
The old man’s face lit up as he lifted a fork topped with lobster to his lips.
“You have made an old man very happy Ryan, please enjoy your breakfast. I have a few arrangements to make.” He rose from his seat, taking one last bite of the frittata. “I’ll be in the office for the next hour, but after that, I shall retire to the games room along the Northern corridor, opposite the pool. Feel free to use the amenities in my absence.”
The man’s cane clipped the floor as he walked past. Penny’s eyes never left his back until the door closed behind him.
“So, what was all that about?” Ryan asked, but Penny didn’t answer, instead, she held up a hand to silence him and Ryan heard the staccato clipping of the cane as it retreated down the hallway.
Ryan waited, surprised at himself for his patience.
“So?” He said again, this time more harshly in tone.
When Penny spoke her words were slow, and she talked as if she didn’t want to be overheard. She leaned forward, her belly pressing against the edge of the table, her breasts heaving against the neckline of her dress.
“Last night I went back down to the loading bay. I was curious about the cargo we brought here.” Her eyes were locked on Ryan’s. He felt his heart quicken. “I opened the back and looked inside.”
“Yeah?” Ryan whispered.
“Six concrete blocks,” she shook her head, and said, “that was it.”
He could tell the truck had not been fully laden, he could tell by its response, but he also knew that the weight was distributed low. Different distributions made the trailer move differently.
“Are you sure they weren’t, I don’t know… pieces of modern art or something?” He asked. “Rich people spend their money on some crazy things.”
Doubt crept across her face, and she slipped back from the table’s edge, and then her eyes hardened.
“No,” she said quietly, “don’t you feel it, Ryan? How improbable all this is? We meet in a late-night café you were told to stop at, and they happen to have rooms ready. We discover clothes that fit us, and no one – no one at all – has any problems with you bringing a strange woman along on private business?”
“I wasn’t told to stop at that café.”
“No, but you said that ‘timing was important.’ Remember?”
“For the cargo, yes.”
“For slabs of concrete?” She paused to let that sink in. “Or us?”
“What?”
“I think we’re the cargo, Ryan.” As she said it, she knew it was true, and she saw something in Ryan’s eyes that made her believe he did too. “I think they have some kind of purpose for us.”
“This is ridiculous,” Ryan poured a glass of something from a decanter set in the middle of the table. He sniffed it and took a sip. He didn’t do it because he needed a drink, he did it because he needed something to do. He knew it was ridiculous. He also knew it was true.
He looked back at Penny and saw that she knew it too.
“So, what do we do?” She asked.
“We do the delivery, get paid, and take off.”
“You’re not going to get paid, Ryan. They’ll always have another job until it’s the last one.”
Ryan drained the glass and poured another.
“Let’s just go, Ryan. We don’t need the money. I’ve been living on the road alone since I was a child and I’ve done okay. Together we’ll be fine. We’ll go down to the coast, find work, and just,” she paused, searching for the right word.
“Live.” She said, finally. “Just live.”
“I said I’d do it, so I got to do it.” He said. It was not the reason. It was the promise they had made to him. A doorway to another world had cracked open and he had glimpsed inside. “Look at yourself, Penny. Don’t you want to look like that every day? You could have a different dress for every mealtime, and lobster for breakfast.”
“No.” She replied. Her tone was final. “They won’t let us into their club, it’s not how it works. They use people like us. Think about it Ryan, please.”
“I am. I know they’re creepy, Penny.”
“Creepy? They live in a pocket universe complaining about the amount of Champagne in the truffle paté, Ryan. They’re not just creepy; they’re delusional.”
Ryan put the glass back down without drinking any more of its contents. The edges of the cut crystal pressed into the pad of his thumb, and he wondered how much the glass cost. How much did that bottle he had shared with JC cost? Was it thirty grand? Ryan couldn’t remember, but he knew this new old, white dude made the last one look broke. He wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the glass cost more than his car.
“I’m doing the delivery, then we’re going.” He said, but the words felt empty, and his conviction weak. Penny’s response was a deep sigh of resignation that echoed his better judgment. Penny was right, it was a bad idea, and Ryan knew it. They needed to get out of here. Something bad was waiting, but Ryan needed a little more time.