The Twelfth Child (Serendipity #1)(39)
“How dare you!” she cried out. “Stop! Stop this instant!” She began beating her fists against the bulk of his shoulders. He slammed her head back against the wall, angrily ripped open the front of her dress and sunk his teeth into her tender breast. She screamed and tried to wrench herself free, but it was useless. He was bigger, stronger and driven by arousal. He jammed his right hand up beneath her skirt – to Abigail it felt more like a fist than a hand. For a brief moment the maneuver caused him to loosen his grip on her buttocks and she slid down far enough that her feet touched onto the floor. Quick as a lightning bolt she rammed her knee into his groin.
“Son-of-a-bitch,” he screamed and doubled over.
Abigail ran – she went flying up all three flights of stairs and didn’t slow for a breath until she’d slammed and bolted the apartment door.
Still trembling, she huddled into a corner of the room and cried. Sometime before sunrise, she drifted off to sleep. When she woke in the morning she saw the large purple mass just above her right nipple and the mark of Paul’s teeth edging it.
For six days Abigail did not go to work. She walked to the corner store, telephoned Itchy and told him she’d somehow gotten food poisoning. Believing the story to be true, Gloria came to call with a crock of homemade bread pudding, two bananas and a blueberry muffin. It was a full five minutes before Abigail summoned up enough courage to answer the knock.
“Food Poisoning, my ass,” Gloria said when she saw the blackened eye.
“I tripped and fell on the stairs.” To Abigail, a lie seemed far more honorable than the truth of what had happened.
“Yeah, sure. Was it Paul?”
Abigail shook her head side to side.
“It was him,” Gloria grumbled, “I know the type.” She peeled the wax paper back from the muffin and smacked it down on a plate. “You gotta wise up,” she told Abigail, “lounge lizards like him ain’t got no scruples. They think girls like us is dime store trash. Good time weenie-wagglers, that’s what they think!”
“Paul seemed different.”
“Ain’t none of them different,” Gloria answered.
That thought stuck in Abigail’s head but it wasn’t something she wanted to believe. When the bruise on her eye faded to yellow and she could cover it with face cream and a heavy dusting of powder, she returned to Club Lucky.
For a long while she shied away from the good-looking men and migrated to mild-mannered fellows, the ones who were hiding behind themselves, sitting alone and nursing a glass of whisky. She’d sit down alongside them and right away start imagining things like white roses and baby carriages. Thing was, they really weren’t all that different than Paul – each of them wanted something and had nothing to give. Steven Miller ordered a bottle of champagne and then groped her bosom. Frank Something-or-another wanted to sleep at her apartment. Bobby Tollinger, who for three weeks had behaved like a perfect gentleman, eventually got so rough that Itchy had him thrown out of the club.
If it had been other circumstances, Abigail would have walked off – found another job, become something more respectable, a secretary or a governess even – but times were hard and jobs were almost nonexistent, so she stayed at Club Lucky. After a time it got so that Abigail could circulate through the crowd like the sound of a song, she was there and then gone, no trace left behind, no promises, no expectations.
She set aside thoughts of becoming a writer and rationalized that she at least had a job, was no longer hungry and was, in fact, adding money to the coffee can on the top shelf of her closet. But there were days when a sense of shabbiness worked its way into her heart and she’d wonder what her father would say of her now. Likely as not, she thought, he’d grimace. “Daughter?” he’d say, “I have no daughter!” Her mother would think more kindly. Livonia would understand; she’d hold Abigail close and say, “Child, these are hard times. People do what they have to do to survive.” When the emptiness of life took root in Abigail’s heart, she closed her mind to reality and dreamed of Chestnut Ridge back when she and Livonia walked together in the springtime and stopped to smell the wild roses blooming along the high road.
In time, Abigail came to accept that life was a road which traveled in only one direction – forward. There was never any going back. The following April she emptied out the coffee can and moved to the classier side of town. Abigail was making good money at Club Lucky and much as she hated being a hostess, the job did make it possible for her to live in a nicer place. She rented a spacious three room apartment in a brick building with azaleas lining the walkway and a uniformed porter standing at the door. The building was only six blocks from Miss Ida Jean Meredith’s house – which, to Abigail’s dismay, had now been transformed into a study center for aspiring poets. A crooked sign was taped to the inside of the living room window, a sign that cried out for someone to straighten it.
Nothing that once was – was anymore.
Middleboro, Virginia
The year 2000
Destiny Fairchild was the best thing that ever happened to me. I’m well aware of a tendency to repeat myself, but the truth about Destiny is a fact that bears repeating. She was the one who saw me through that last year, when things got bad. I’d mention something about my back hurting like the devil and without me even asking, she’d start rubbing those little hands of hers up and down my spine. Most folks would have chalked it up to old age and told me to take an aspirin, but Destiny was a person who believed aches and pains could come from loose worries floating around your head. “Now, close your eyes and relax,” she’d say; then she’d get to talking about how we’d go one place or another just as soon as I felt better. Before you could peel a banana I’d be ready to go shopping! How could you not appreciate a person like that?