3. Georgia
3
GEORGIA
Now
“ H old still, or I swear, you’ll know what pierced nipples feel like,” I warned past a mouthful of pins.
“Ha! More fool you, I’ve always wanted pierced nipples, oh, and a Venus piercing, too… if you happen to get near my clit.” Erica, my friend, muse, and pain in my ass giggled at me.
“Pass. Something has gone seriously wrong with this design if I stick a pin anywhere near your pussy.” I sighed, pulling the last pin from my mouth and tucking the sweetheart neckline of the gown. I stepped back and eyed the design critically.
Erica turned around and looked at the floor-length mirror behind her, and gasped dramatically.
“Oh my God, I’m a goddess,” she murmured reverently.
“That’s undeniable, but there’s something not quite right about the waist.”
I reached for my measuring tape, and she stuck a hand up in front of me.
“Halt! It’s nearly midnight, and you promised me drinks tonight. We are going out. I’ve been your mannequin for three hours. I’ve earned my fifteen-dollar cocktail.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Fifteen dollars? If you want to drink branded spirits, then we are going to the Weaver.”
Erica huffed. “Great, so you can buy me a free drink? There’s never anyone cute there.”
“Then statistically, it’s due for a visit from a hottie.” I grinned at her and tidied up. My tiny apartment was hardly big enough for dressmaking. The only spot was between the refrigerator and the sitting room sofa. It made cleanup easy.
I stabbed my last pin back into the pincushion on my wrist and tugged it off. My apartment was groaning under the weight of the extra work I’d brought home from the dressmaking shop I worked at, so I had to keep everything tidy and in its place, or I’d disappear under bolts of fabrics and jeans needing hemmed. I should have been trying to catch up on my work — there was always an endless amount of tailoring needing done — but it was the weekend, and I’d wanted to work on my passion project for one evening. I’d have to make up for it tomorrow.
I reached for my measuring tape. “Come on, let’s go, or if you’ve changed your mind, we could redo the entire hem—” I started.
“I’m going!” Erica blurted and tried to take the dress off, letting out a short scream.
“Watch the pins!”
Ten minutes later, we were both dressed, my design on a hanger, dangling on a clothes rack, and I was wrestling with my front door lock. The damn thing always jammed.
“You need a new door.” Erica watched me critically.
“I’ve got it, it just needs to be jiggled the right way,” I said, trying my damnedest to make the damn thing turn. Come on, don’t embarrass me now.
“You need a new apartment. You can’t stay here for long. It’s a miracle you haven’t been mugged or robbed yet.” Erica peered down the stairs like the building was the ninth circle of Hell. Clearly, she didn’t know about the damn loan shark who came sniffing around looking for repayment of my late husband’s debts every month, and it was going to stay that way. The only person more broke than me was Erica, and knowing her, she’d try and help, putting herself last.
“To be fair, I have nothing to steal, so more fool them. Anyway, my lock might be a difficult little bitch sometimes, but she’s mine and she doesn’t let just anyone in.”
Erica narrowed her eyes at me. “Are you talking about yourself or the lock?”
“Fuck off.” I grinned at her and turned the key triumphantly. “See! Easy,” I forced the pant from my voice.
“Whatever,” Erica said and headed down the stairs.
I followed, taking a step and pulling my vibrating phone out of my jacket. It was a message. In Italian.
I dragged my thoughts away from the doom spiral before it began. Step one to recovery was to recognize the thought patterns that marked the beginning of an emotional deep dive. Then, try to stop yourself from plummeting. I was better at that when I had someone else to focus on.
I paused on the stairs and read. I was embarrassed to admit my mother tongue was rusty. I’d been living in America for fourteen years.
A deep chill spread through my limbs, and the hand holding my cell went numb. I didn’t need to refresh my Italian to understand the message.
Mrs. Conti, I am a lawyer representing your father. I need to speak with you urgently. Please contact me at your earliest convenience. I am awaiting your call.
The first rule of continuing to live when your heart has been broken into a million pieces is not to think of the past. Draw a line through it. Stay away from thinking about things associated with it. Push it all away. That was the reason why I hadn’t seen or spoken to my father in over ten years. He reminded me too much of the worst day of my life. In the beginning, I’d sent him updates on my life, entirely false, pretty, rosy images… to keep him and his concern away. Over time, even that had stopped. It hurt too much.
To my father, my life was a carefully curated feed of happy photos and cheerful memes. A lot of people scorned social media for setting unrealistic expectations for others, but sometimes, that was what I valued the most about it.
Why should I have to bare my soul, and every excruciating disappointment and stress in my worthless existence, to curious outsiders? I didn’t. I could hide behind the perfect shot and a holiday card written in a cheerful tone. Sometimes, the fact that no one else knew how low I’d fallen was the only thing that kept me going. Even after all this time, I still had my pride. I didn’t have much else to my name, so I figured I should be grateful.
Why was a lawyer contacting me about my father? Had he died?
“What’s up anyway? Since we left your place, you’ve moped like your cat died. Cheer the fuck up!” Erica demanded.
I blinked at her. My mind was far, far away from the dive bar we were sitting in.
In my mind, I was thousands of miles away, in a small town, overlooking a different sea, young and naive… and about to be irreparably shattered.
“Sorry, I’m not feeling good. I should go. I’m cramping your style.” I nodded toward a hipster-type dude at the bar giving Erica the eye.
“You don’t have to go,” she pouted, sending a smile in the hottie’s direction.
“Yes, I do… Have fun.” I summoned a smile for her from somewhere and grabbed my jacket and left. It wasn’t cold. LA seldom got cold enough to wear anything heavier than a light jacket.
I wandered home along quiet streets, lost in the halls of memory.
The message played over again and again in my head. It was too early in Italy to call, with the time difference. I had to wait. It was sure to be a sleepless night until I spoke to someone.
I got home and fiddled with the lock. It refused to open.
“Just open, fanculo !” I rasped, tears pressing on my eyelids.
I rattled the door, twisting the key this way and that, until the damn thing bent. I sank down against the wall and leaned my head on my knees, tears pushing up and out, uncontrollably.
Why could nothing ever be easy?
My work paid well enough, but living alone in the city was expensive. Being a widow in her thirties, I didn’t want to share a space with roommates, so here I was, in a place where the door didn’t even lock and I was too scared to call the landlord about it.
I couldn’t go home to Italy; I’d rather die in my little apartment alone than relive all that I’d experienced there. Not to mention the paralyzing fear of flying I’d discovered when I left. So, I was stuck. Life had stopped, and there was no restarting it.
By the time the knees of my jeans were soaked through and my cheeks burning with salt, a soft sigh sounded. I looked up just in time to see Old Albert standing at his door across the hall from me.
“The lock again?” His voice was the result of a pack-a-day habit over the last seventy years. He sounded like the Crypt-Keeper and yet was the healthiest ninety-year-old I’d ever met.
I nodded.
He shuffled out of his apartment, screwdriver in hand.
“Nothing to cry that much over,” he remarked lightly, jiggling the lock.
I watched him work. His gnarled old hands were like knots of wood. A rush of gratitude threatened to overwhelm me.
“I’m not crying about the door… I’m just wishing you could be my dad,” I muttered.
Old Albert chuckled. “Dad? More like granddad.”
“Whatever. Family, I guess.” I glanced down at my hands. “I’d trade my own family in a heartbeat.”
“Family is as family does. You can choose your own, I reckon, if you want,” Old Albert said kindly and swung the door open. “There you go. Right as rain.”
I stood and impulsively hugged him.
He patted my back.
“Go on in and get to bed. Everything will feel better in the morning; take it from someone who’s been around the sun a few times more than you.”
I nodded and gave him a smile. He went back to his apartment, and I waited until the door closed safely behind him then slipped into my own. My tiny, piece-of-shit, hole-in-the-wall with a door that barely worked, no AC, and a landlord who liked to come over in person for the rent and remind me that I could pay a reduced rate if I let him watch me shower once a week. Not free rent, just reduced. How flattering.
I caught sight of myself in the hallway mirror as I set down my keys.
My dark eyes stared back at me. Erica was right. I seemed off. I was haunted, but that made sense, in a way.
I’d always been haunted by the past. The year I’d turned nineteen, a bomb had imploded my world, and the aftershocks were still rocking me.
I’d never get over them.
My necklace glinted in the darkness, and I pulled it out from under my hair and held the beautiful silver locket between my fingers, rubbing my thumb over the smooth metal. Inside the locket was a perfectly preserved sprig of heliotrope.
It was my altar to the past. My tribute to all I’d lost.
A hard bang at the door startled me. I jumped and dropped my necklace. I turned. Dark shadows cut through the light at the bottom of the door.
“Georgia? You home? Let me in!”
Bang, bang, bang.
Oh my God. Not again. Was it the end of the month already?
I backed away from the door, my sadness and worry for my father disappearing. A very real fear of the present worked through me. Jackson Howel was a local lowlife and loan shark. Tom, my dearly beloved late husband, had gone into a lot of medical debt in the end, and now that the dust had settled, I was finding out that he’d borrowed to pay that debt in less-than-ideal ways.
There was a sharp sound of metal clicking against metal, and then the door swung open. I spun, making a dash through the apartment, then a hand landed in my hair and tugged me back ruthlessly.
Howel was a small guy but strong and mean. His gold teeth caught the light from the window as he leaned over me. He’d dragged me to the floor, and my scalp was on fire. He’d ripped a good chunk out, I could just tell.
“Well, look who was home after all. You don’t inspire confidence in our payment plan, you dumb bitch, when you don’t answer my calls.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve been busy working, trying to get the payments together,” I told him as emotionlessly as I could. Fuck, I had to fight every instinct I had to kowtow to a man like this, but I had no choice. I had no power, no influence, and I was broke as hell.
“And you need to tell me that, loud and clear… so we can think up alternatives,” Jackson snarled and twisted my hair back so hard that blood dripped down my forehead.
“I’ve got your payment,” I panted, tapping his hand, trying to convince him to let me up.
“You do?” He studied me and then smiled.
It was so greasy and cunning I shuddered.
“You should have said. I don’t like hurting paying clients.”
He held my hair for a second longer, making it clear who the boss was between us, and then released me. I fell to the side, panting.
“Get it then, now,” Jackson said.
He drew out a chair at the kitchen table and sat, watching me scramble around. Tears of pure frustration and anger threatened to push through, but I drove them back.
Fuck this guy. I wasn’t going to let him see me cry.
I went to my dressmaking dummy and reached inside the hollow interior for the envelope I’d been carefully stuffing all month. I brought it out and handed it to him.
He took it and started to count.
I crossed my arms over my chest, leaned against the kitchen counter, and watched, counting with him in my head.
“Well, look at that. It’s all here.” Jackson smiled and eyed me up and down. “I can’t say I’m not a little disappointed about that.”
“So, that’s all you need. You can leave. I’ll see you next month, right?” I strove to be strong, at least in my tone. He didn’t get to see how much he’d scared me.
Jackson studied me. “You can pay it off faster, you know, if you pay more. The way you’re going… you’re only paying off the interest.”
I swallowed. “It’s all I can afford right now.”
Jackson smiled. “Then I guess I’ll be seeing you next month and the month after… as long as we both shall live, bella .”
I stiffened at the nickname. Jackson was connected to some low-level Mafia thugs in the area. I didn’t know much of anything about them, except that since Tommaso had died, they’d made my life a living nightmare.
After Jackson left, with much swagger, lewd glances, and promises to be back next month, I locked the useless door and sank down on the floor.
Fuck . What was I going to do? Jackson was no financial genius, but it didn’t take one to know I wasn’t paying off Tom’s debt fast enough. I’d been to the cops, and they couldn’t do anything about it. I either had to pay up or run. Leaving everything I’d worked for in LA made me feel like my life up to now had been a waste of time. Sure, it wasn’t much, but the small life I’d pieced together for myself from the tattered remains of my dreams mattered to me. It was all I had to live for.
I gripped my necklace tight between my fingers and closed my eyes. Well, that and my memories. I was the memory keeper, and if I didn’t house those precious moments, they’d be lost forever.
Alone, in the dark, I let the tears come.