4. Harry
4
HARRY
I’m towel-drying my hair with a fluffy white hotel towel when someone starts pounding on my door. I grab a bath sheet towel, wrap it around my waist and open the door.
“It’s our last day in Chicago.” Alessandro pushes past me and flops backwards onto my unmade bed, arms and legs spread eagled like a starfish. “I want to go to the amusement park.”
I close the door and wrap the towel around my neck. “Right now?”
“Why not?” He props himself up on his elbows and eyes up my bare chest like he’s comparing our physiques and congratulating himself on still being the hottest member of the group.
“I’ve just got out of the shower.” As if this isn’t obvious.
Alessandro crosses the room to the mini bar and fixes himself a drink. JD and Coke. It’s barely mid-morning.
The curtains are open, but the world outside seems white and muffled like we’re nestling in the middle of a bank of clouds. When I peer outside, I understand why. It must’ve been snowing all night—the plows have cleared tracks along the street , and the sidewalks are lined on both sides by ridges of slushy snow.
“Have you looked outside?” I turn to face Alessandro who’s peering into his empty glass tumbler. “We could go to the museum instead or, I don’t know, somewhere inside … and warm.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure? Or are you worried that I’ll make you ride the Ferris Wheel?”
“Seriously, man?”
“It’s settled anyway. Call it research.”
“Research? An amusement park?”
“Sure. There’s a movie my agent wants me to audition for. I’ve never been on a rollercoaster before. If it’s going to make me throw up, I’d rather know about it now.”
Alessandro has always had more energy than the rest of us put together. He’s always the last one to leave a nightclub and the first one out of bed the morning after, even with a hangover. It’s almost as if his blood fizzes through his veins like soda, making him chase the next thing and the next until he finally crashes.
This morning is no exception.
“How did the date go?” I blurt it out before I can talk myself out of it.
He came to me yesterday morning and begged me to help him find Ruby, said that she was the most extraordinary woman he’d ever met, said that he couldn’t leave Chicago without seeing her again.
And, like an idiot, I agreed to help him.
I told myself that if Ruby was the woman for my best friend, then who was I to stand in the way of true love? And if she wasn’t…
Ruby Jackson wasn’t hard to find, especially when we dangled the name Alessandro Russo in front of the manager of the skating rink. He told us about Ruby’s other jobs, and when we learned that she worked in the library, the rest was easy. Alessandro wanted to barge straight in there, bribe the manager to let her off her shift and impress her with a trip to the Skydeck Chicago Willis Tower and dinner.
The limited-edition book was my idea. If anything was going to speak to Ruby Jackson’s heart it was her favorite love story.
“Great. Yeah, fantastic.” He downs his second drink.
“What did she say about the book?”
He grins at me. “Gotta give it to you, man, that was ace. She was … lost for words.”
My stomach twists. It’s what I wanted to hear, right? I wanted her to like the book. In fact, I want her to treasure it for the rest of her days, pulling it off the bookshelf and rereading it over and over until she’s old and gray. I want to be old and gray myself with that image still fresh in my mind.
I can’t quite put my finger on it, though, but something about his attitude this morning feels a little off, and my hackles are up.
“Where did you take her?”
“We had dinner at the new restaurant on State Street. You’ll never guess who was there. Kurt Russell.” He doesn’t wait for me to guess. “He came over and spoke to me like I’d known him all my life.”
Me. I. My.
This is Alessandro all over. But I’m noticing it more now, and I don’t know if that’s my bad or his.
He sets the empty tumbler down on the desk and goes to the door. “I’ll round up the others and wait in the lobby for you.” Then he’s gone.
Surprisingly, Great America is busy with people who want to experience the thrill of the world’s tallest carousel and the three-armed Ferris Wheel in the snow. The aromas of hot dogs, barely fried onions, and cotton candy follow us around along with the klaxons and tinny tunes of the rides in motion.
Alessandro wants to ride everything. He’s wearing his trademark leather coat and a Russian hat that only he could pull off, lapping up the appreciative stares of everyone who recognizes him.
We ride the rollercoaster, but once isn’t enough for him today. He lines up behind a young couple who are holding hands and huddling together for warmth, stomping their feet to stop their toes from freezing.
“What’s he doing?” Ronnie elbows me in the ribs through my coat.
When I check out the line, Alessandro has sidled in between the couple, turned his back on the man and is stepping forward with the young woman to share a car with her. He sits a little too close, his arm pressed up against hers. I think I must be the only one who has noticed, but then the woman’s boyfriend walks away, head down, hands stuffed deep inside his pockets.
I want to go after him, tell him that it doesn’t mean anything, that Alessandro will go find someone else to ride with next time, but they’re futile excuses. She chose him. She chose Alessandro because he didn’t give her the choice.
I ball my gloved hands into fists and walk off to grab a hamburger and a coffee.
He did the same to Ruby. He didn’t give her a choice, and now that he has no doubt spent the night with her, he’s out here looking for the next thrill.
Ruby Jackson isn’t anyone’s next thrill.
But I have the strongest suspicion that Alessandro hasn’t been entirely honest with me. He hasn’t gloated about how many times they fucked when he took her back to his room or elaborated on what position she liked best or how loudly she screamed when she had an orgasm. By the time I’ve finished my hamburger and tossed the wrapper into the trash can, I’ve convinced myself that Ruby turned him down, and the klaxon blaring from the bumper cars nearby doesn’t even rattle my nerves and make me jump.
While I’ve been eating, the snow has started falling in thick fluffy clumps, settling on my overcoat and turning the park into a winter wonderland. I tilt my face towards the sky and wonder if Ruby is doing the same. Or perhaps she’s curled up in an armchair in front of a roaring fire with her rare edition of Wuthering Heights .
Ronnie comes running over and almost lands on his ass when his feet slide out from under him. “Alessandro got into a fight. He’s leaving.”
“A fight?” Maybe that guy didn’t walk off and forget about his girlfriend after all.
“Yeah. It’s nothing. He knocked the guy over, but he says he’s getting out of here.” Ronnie is already backing away, and I follow him towards the entrance.
Alessandro is outside, making footprints in the settling snow. I call out to him, but he doesn’t break stride or glance over his shoulder.
“Let the others know that we’re leaving,” I say to Ronnie. “I’ll go after Alessandro.”
I run to catch up with him. He gives me a sideways glance, but he doesn’t stop, doesn’t even acknowledge my presence. Once he gets to the main road, he hails a cab, barely waiting for me to climb in next to him.
“What happened?” I ask.
He slides a silver hip flask from his pocket and glugs whatever liquor he filled it with earlier. His right eye looks puffy, gray-mauve bruising already seeping through the delicate skin. “Nothing I couldn’t handle. You should see the other guy.” He gives me a lopsided grin and offers me the hip flask.
I shake my head. “You wanna talk about it?”
“Nope.”
“We’ll go back to the hotel, warm up, and take a look at your eye.”
“I’m not sticking around.” He tips the flask into his mouth again, only this time he gets the dregs.
I sit back. “I checked the weather forecast. This is only the start of it. They’re expecting a blizzard overnight.”
“I’ll be in St. Louis by then.”
“What’s in St. Louis?”
“My cousin’s throwing a party. I was going to bail, but I think I’m done here.” He keeps his eyes fixed on the passenger window, peering through the slushy ice trickling down the glass and forming a narrow ridge at the bottom.
It’s early afternoon, but the world is already preparing for sleep, twilight taking over before its time. The streets are not as busy as usual. Folks are staying inside, cranking up the heating, and making hot chocolate. No one in their right mind would travel in this.
“The flights will probably be cancelled.”
“Who said anything about flying?” He looks at me then for the first time, his eyebrows dancing independently.
“Buses too.”
He shakes his head. “Don’t worry about me, Harry. I’ll get there.”
My pulse is racing. I don’t know what was in that hip flask, but he already had a couple of drinks in my hotel room before we left, so he can’t be considering driving to St. Louis. Or can he? He’s no longer buzzing with energy, but his mood is scratchy now, jerky, like there’s a rope fastened around his neck, and someone is tugging on the other end.
I pay the driver when the cab stops outside the hotel.
Alessandro is already out of the vehicle and heading straight for his neat blue Porsche parked out in the front. He opens the driver’s door and climbs in.
“Hey! What are you doing?” I barely manage to jump in and close the passenger door behind me before he starts the engine.
The wipers drag a mini mountain of snow across the windshield. He ramps up the heating to full capacity and throws the car into gear. I peer through the snow-streaked glass at the ominously gray sky, heavy with the blizzard to come. The streetlamps are on, casting puddles of eerie yellow light across the slippery sidewalks, a few people dipping in and out of the glow with their heads down.
I fasten my seatbelt as the rear wheels lose their purchase on the street. Alessandro turns the steering wheel into the spin and straightens the car inches away from careening into a lamppost.
“You can’t drive to St. Louis in this.” I’d hoped that he was joking in the cab, but my thumping heartbeat and his white knuckles on the steering wheel are telling me I was wrong. He’s doing this.
“No one asked you to come.” He hunches forward in his seat and wipes the inside of the windshield with the sleeve of his coat to clear the steam that’s forming with the heat inside the car.
I ignore his comment. “You’ve been drinking. The roads are already treacherous, and the blizzard hasn’t even started yet.”
“Anytime you want to get out, you just say the word.”
I study his profile which looks gaunt in the flickering lights trying to reach us from the storefronts and streetlamps. I wish I knew what he was thinking. He has always been the adventurous one, the guy who’d sign up to freefall from an airplane or climb a mountain or go diving with sharks. But driving from Chicago to St. Louis in a blizzard to attend a party…
There’s a huge difference between being adventurous and being reckless, and I find myself gripping the sides of the passenger seat like my life depends on it.
“If I say the word, will you stop the car and walk back to the hotel with me?” He hasn’t even gone back for his clothes.
The traffic signals turn red, the glow turning the dashboard rosy, and Alessandro hits the brakes, the car spinning out of control across the road. I hear a strange guttural sound that might be me, and then the car jerks to a stop. I don’t know how.
I can’t think straight. My head is pounding with the blood pumping around my heart, but Alessandro laughs out loud.
“Woohoo!” He doesn’t waste a beat. He hits the accelerator and speeds off again towards the Interstate out of town.
I don’t speak. My mouth is dry, and all I can taste is the hamburger I ate at the amusement park. I don’t want to be in the car, but I can’t let him do this alone.
By the time we reach the highway, the blizzard is in full swing, the heavy flakes hitting the windshield with a series of dull whumps. The wipers try to keep up with the snowfall, but I can barely see the road through a couple of inches of smeared glass.
“We could find a roadside motel and pull over for the night,” I suggest.
Alessandro either doesn’t hear me, or he’s choosing to ignore me because he doesn’t want to admit defeat.
Bright lights make me squint and turn my eyes away. A truck is coming towards us on the other side of the road. That’s why I don’t see it happening.
I feel the rear tires skidding across the icy slush, the sensation inside my stomach a little like being on the Ferris Wheel when it tilts sideways. My fingertips grip the seat more tightly. My head moves in slow motion to watch Alessandro turning the wheel back and forth, the car lurching into a spin that makes the bile rise in my throat.
And that’s when I realize that he isn’t wearing his seatbelt.