One Way or Another(10)

It was a fairly quiet night when Ahmet Ghulbian first came into the restaurant and made himself known to me. Well, made a pass, to be frank. I was used to it but this time I was also attracted. Still, I was wary. He was different, foreign looking. “Exotic” was the word I used to myself. Of course I did not call the number on the card he gave me, I figured that was that, just another guy wanting to hook up for the night. I thought of my mother and what she would think of me, her daughter, who by now should have been on her way to being married. Sometimes, standing in five-inch heels and a narrow skirt, white shirt strategically buttoned so as not to reveal what should not be revealed to the restaurant’s customers, believe me, I wished I was that girl my mom had hoped I would be.

That night, disappointment filled my mouth like bile; I had achieved nothing, not even my “potential,” as Mom called it. I had done well in school, good enough to be accepted by a college, though of course I could not go. I had to work, bring in some money; pay the rent on the third-floor, two-room apartment in Queens, the grocery bills; vodka; cigarettes. It was the latter which killed her, though to her credit she had stopped. Too late. It’s because of her I never so much as put a cigarette between my lips, just to try; neither that, nor marijuana, because I was afraid of that too. Drugs were sold on the streets where I lived, I’d seen the results and wanted no part of it. I was, I guess, what was known as “a good girl.” The truth is I had never wanted to be “bad.”

I did not go in for one-night stands. My first relationship was head-over-heels passionate. We were so madly in love nobody else mattered. His name was Henry, always known as Hank, and for a year we were all we knew; all we saw was each other. Then one day, it was over. Thanks for everything, hon, he said, as he left for a Southern college where he would stand out like an onion in a field of tulip bulbs. And I went to work the cash register at the local supermarket, where I blended into the background as though I belonged. Which I did. Apart from the red hair of course, but in a tearful downbeat moment after watching an old DVD of Audrey Hepburn in the movie Roman Holiday, like her I had it all cut off, shorn like a sacrificial lamb. Which, looking horrified at the result, I knew I might well have been. I had sacrificed myself to the ego of Hank, the new college boy, and now look at me. It took ages to grow in again.

And now. At the moment of my demise I had this cloud of coppery red hair standing out from my head as though electrified, spiraling in tendrils around my face, curving in the glossy waves that attracted Mr. Ghulbian and were to be the cause of my death.

“I’ll rest in peace with you now, Mom” was my final thought when the blow had vibrated through my head, sending me spinning, tumbling over myself, my hand to the bloody spot. I’d staggered forward, caught from the corner of my eye a glimpse of them, watching me. Him and the woman who had struck me with the champagne bottle. Watching me about to die.





8

Zacharias trawled Angie in like a fish from the ocean. Her red hair tangled in the meshes of the net; her skull gleamed white in the sun; her open eyes stared into his.

“She is a dead woman,” he said, peering closer. And then she blinked. He jumped back. “How can she be still alive? She must be drowned. No woman could survive that, and that broken head.”

But I am alive, she wanted to say. And you are right to call on God, because I need all the help I can get. You saved me from drowning but you might not save me from what happened that made me run from them, to fall—or did I jump?—into the sea to escape.

They brought towels, wrapped her in them, carried her into Zacharias’s cabin, laid her down in the shade. Zacharias himself bathed her face with clean fresh water. He himself lifted her long red hair out of the way. He saw the gaping wound, the broken skull, and drew in his breath sharply, asking who could have done this to her? And why?

Because I knew too much, she wanted to tell him. I was a fool, an innocent, or more probably merely dumb. I believed what they said. I did as they asked. I thought it was the adventure I had been looking for. I did not understand that I was perfect for their plans, a young woman alone in the world, no family, only the usual friendships that could be dismissed with talk of plans to move to the West Coast. No one really to care or come looking for me. What a sad state of affairs, that I could reach the age of twenty-one and have no one who cared enough to find out what happened, or where I was.

*

It began on a cold night in a luxury hotel in New York.

I had known Ahmet Ghulbian for exactly one month. He was lying in bed next to me, propped on one elbow, gazing into my eyes. A half-empty bottle of champagne and two glasses waited on the table. He sat up, leaned over to refill them, offered me one. I shuffled upright, tossing back my hair, allowing it to fall forward again over my breasts because I suddenly felt very naked in front of this man who had just made love to me and had already seen it all.

“You’ll have a private plane, of course,” he said.

“A private plane,” I repeated, wondering what he was talking about. I seemed to be having memory lapses these days, sometimes forgetting what day it was and whether I was supposed to be at work, or what. Ahmet had been giving me some pills. He said he suffered from the same thing and they would help.

“Think of it,” he’d said, smiling, popping another pill into my champagne. “A private plane, all to yourself. Just you and the pilots. Then a yacht where my friends will look after you. Oh, you can trust me, dear little red-haired Angie, they will certainly look after you. Anything you want will be yours. Caviar, foie gras, breakfast in bed, sunset drinks on deck. It will be champagne all the way.”