Chapter 4 – Geralynn
Chapter Four
Geralynn
Present Day
Ihate the way Renzo looks at me.
I know Nicki can’t help her circumstances (or her family), but every time I come over to her house, I have to face her terrifying older brother.
He waits at the doorway every time for a “security interview”, which he doesn’t leave to the guard at the front gate.
Work was terrible today. I work as a cleaner at a commercial building downtown owned by one of the richest men in town, Peter Corsini.
I think he’s Nicki’s cousin, but she honestly doesn’t talk much about her family unless necessary, so I can’t be sure.
Today at work, I accidentally walked in on my boss getting a blowjob. To punish me, he made me deep clean all the bathrooms on the fifth floor, scrubbing toilets on my hands and knees until I gagged. To maintain the impact of the punishment, he says to me before I leave, “Remember to knock.”
The $100 tip burns a hole in my pocket and as soon as I’m done hanging out with Nicki, I’m going to blow every last dollar of that tip on a 1 gram weed vape.
If I have any money left after buying the gram, I’ll spend it on iced coffee.
I’m not in the mood for Nicki’s brother to question me, but I promised her I’d show up after work and I need her bad ass attitude to motivate me to quit this stupid ass job.
I walk the half-mile up their long driveway knowing that Renzo is watching me on camera and choosing not to drive down to the end of the driveway in his new black Jaguar to pick me up.
He leans on the stone wall with a wrought iron gate that could keep out a small army.
I can see him staring at me from a distance and pretend to be texting someone on my phone.
Of course, he’s smoking. He thinks it makes him more authentic and Italian, but he just smells like a baby boomer.
Nobody smokes anymore. It doesn’t make you cool.
“Good afternoon, Geralynn,” he says in heavily accented English once I’m close enough that I can’t pretend that I didn’t hear him. I glance up at him, exerting as much effort as I can into defying Renzo the one way I know how – showing him that his stupid ass doesn’t bother me in the slightest.
“Hey.”
“Phone. Backpack.”
I slide my backpack over my shoulders, relieved by the absence of the weight.
I have to walk so damn far from the bus stop to get to their house that my back aches.
I’d rather walk than call for Renzo to pick me up, despite Nicki’s assurances that it would be fine.
I don’t trust being trapped in a car with this psychopath.
He just gives me the creeps. I don’t even like handing him my phone.
Renzo takes my phone and slides it into an opaque black pouch which I’m pretty sure is some type of Faraday cage. Paranoid, much? He takes my backpack and slings it over his shoulder. He looks weird and out of place with a backpack on, and not just because he’s 6’4”.
“You just wear a suit to hang around your house all day?” I ask Renzo, purposefully testing him with my attitude because I find myself fundamentally repulsed by arrogant white men who think they’re on top of the world because of the money and status that they inherited.
“I’m not a farmer, Geralynn. I believe in dressing for my job.”
“Being a landlord isn’t a job. You’re technically a parasite.”
“I told Nicki I would no longer discuss politics with you. Welcome. She’s waiting with half a bottle of wine at the kitchen island.”
Nicki sent out an “SOS” text halfway through my shift today, which is the only reason I fought my bad mood and low energy after today’s humiliation to trek all the way out here to the lake house where she’s effectively a prisoner.
If she’s even let Renzo into her emotional tribulations, it must be pretty bad.
If she’s moved on from a joint to alcohol, bad might not even begin to describe it.
“What’s going on with Nicki?”
Engaging with Renzo is a total mistake, but I stumble forward recklessly because I hate hearing about my best friend in trouble.
“It really isn’t any of your business,” he says. Renzo’s voice drips with disdain and I want to ignore him, except it’s not enough for him to respond rudely, he has to sneak in a personal dig next. “Nicki should keep better company.”
“I just asked a question.”
“It was annoying,” he says. “I would much rather listen to… anything else.”
He’s still looking at me intensely for someone who finds me so deeply annoying. I roll my eyes and look at my phone.
“Whatever, we don’t have to talk, Renzo. I can just wait for Nicki in silence next to her asshole brother.”
“You’re a janitor, right?”
Heat burns around the edges of my ears. I feel guilty for the shame I feel, especially because it’s so familiar.
I learned pretty early on in elementary school that most other people thought there was something wrong with cleaning work.
My mom worked as a janitor at another elementary school across town.
When the word got out from a transfer student who joined my class in fourth grade, nobody ever let me forget it.
They called me “mop bucket”, an insult that evolved and followed me to the only place on earth worse than elementary school – middle school.
By the time I started high school, I was a pariah.
Anybody who knew about me would quickly find out about my so-called reputation and all the colorful rumors that came with it.
It’s just a job, not who I am. But there’s something painful about doing the same work my mom did, knowing that I spent months applying to jobs with utter desperation to end up somewhere better.
I didn’t want to be “mop bucket” anymore.
I wanted to push out all the insults that I grew up with and make myself believe that I was better than those ignorant kids.
I don’t actually think of myself as a worse person just because I clean for a living. I don’t. But hearing Renzo call me a “janitor” with such derision brings back painful memories and puts me on the defensive even more than I was with him previously.
“I work at the TC Center downtown.”
It’s the commercial building that I clean. He snickers and the cruelty makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
“A janitor, like I thought. Do you know how hilarious that is?”
“What’s funny about it?” Making bullies explain their jokes always disables them on the spot, right? I’ve never had to face anyone as entitled or arrogant as Renzo. He doesn’t just stick to surface level insults, making it so much harder to stop his attacks from cutting deeply.
“I bet you tried,” Renzo says. My stomach turns. “I bet you tried so hard to be something better, but you just ended up cleaning shit for a living.”
He chuckles, twisting in the knife. There’s something disturbing about standing next to a man who genuinely thinks of himself as superior. It’s a deep, primal unnerving sensation that Renzo is dangerous and he wouldn’t hesitate to hurt me if it suited him.
“I’m just here to talk to Nicki.”
“Good luck,” he says. “She’s making a fool of herself.”
Renzo leads me through the front door into the mansion’s large foyer. I pass through the arch way with the disguised metal detector nervously. I know there are cameras everywhere in this house to keep Nicki safe, although I suspect this is more about ensuring she doesn’t run away.
I can hear music playing from Nicki’s JBL speakers in the kitchen. The sound is distinct from the speaker system Renzo has throughout the house. He would never allow Taylor Swift on the big speakers. Nicki belts out the lyrics to one of the older Taylor Swift songs, You Belong With Me.
She’s so painfully off-key that I mistakenly try to share a human glance with Renzo to show my concern. He scowls when I make eye contact with him.
“Get her to shut up,” Renzo says. “And my offer still stands. I will pay you to stay out of my sister’s life. She needs friends on her level, not people no better than slaves.”
My mouth drops open. Nicki appears in the doorway behind her brother, distracting me from my response and giving that racist bastard enough time to escape and disappear.
“Geralynn!” Nicki shrieks when she sees me, momentarily numbing my anger at her brother, because Nicki is the complete opposite of that idiot.
She wraps her arms around me and I smell the liquor on her breath as she holds me close.
I hug her back, forgetting my work problems for a second.
We have huge plans to share a joint on the dock tonight and I can already feel my troubles melting away from the anticipation.
“Taylor Swift. Talking to Renzo. Are you having a psychotic break?”
Nicki sobs into my shoulder. Okay… she might be having a psychotic break. I’m still not sure. I hold Nicki away from me, gripping her shoulders as I look into her eyes. Something is definitely wrong, but I can’t tell what just from staring at her.
“I’m in trouble, Geralynn,” she says. “But… if I tell you… Renzo will hear.”
She whispers the last three words, confirming my suspicions that this house is essentially wire-tapped.
Her family seems absolutely paranoid that something will happen to Nicki.
Either that, or she’s just a prisoner. My heart pounds with the realization that Nicki’s long stay with her brother might not be entirely intentional.
Despite her warning, I drop my voice and try to get more information out of her.
That could be why Renzo wants to keep me away. If Nicki is a prisoner here… she’ll eventually crack and try to escape. Anyone who knows Nicki Taviani would guess that, including her brother.
I whisper, hoping that the cameras here don’t have strong microphones. “Nicki. Are you allowed to leave… ever? I mean… are they allowed to hold you captive?”
Nicki leans in like she’s about to tell me the truth.
“We can’t talk about it,” she says, her voice dropping to match my low whisper.
And that’s apparently it, which doesn’t really work for me, because I still want answers…