Catherine (8 page)

“Come on, baby. I’ll make you feel really good.” Now he was
right up against me, the front of his cheap polyester shirt brushing my chest. I took
a step back and hit the wall. It occurred to me that maybe I should be careful of
this guy. I tried to look for Dad or Eddy, the bouncer, who would have beaten the
guy to a pulp if he could see what was happening, but he was big enough that I couldn’t
even see over his shoulder. He had his hands around my waist, his big clumsy thumbs
trying to cop a feel, and he was planting a sloppy kiss on my mouth, except he missed
and was sliming my face. I may not have been strong, but I was quick, so I could slip
out of his grasp and get around him and away. As I bolted I could hear him shouting
behind me, “You think you’re some kind of princess?”

By that point, I’d stopped caring about the Splendid Weather. I only wanted to get
out of there. So I slipped past the
EMPLOYEES ONLY
sign and into the service elevator, planning to escape to my room. And I almost made
it; one second later, I would have been clear. But he was right behind me. His thick
arm jammed into the door to keep it from closing, and before I could do anything about
it he’d forced his way into the too-small elevator and the doors had clunked shut
behind him.

“Where we going?” Now his voice, though still blurry, was ominously quiet. “Someplace
private?” The hideous, too-muscular bulk of him was between me and the control panel,
and he hit the stop button. “Princess.” He said it scornfully this time. “Stuck-up
bitch.”

He backed me into a corner and bit my neck hard, his beefy hands tearing at my blouse,
forcing their way into my jeans. Into my mind popped the self-defense tactics I’d
learned in health
class—poke both fingers into his eyes, jab a knee into his crotch—but he was so much
bigger and more insistent, his knees pressing my legs against the wall, his thick
arms pinning mine. He started kissing me, though the word
kiss
doesn’t begin to describe it. His tongue kept me from screaming, and his aftershave
burned my eyes.

I struggled, trying to wriggle my shoulders hard enough to shake him off me. I was
beyond terrified; I’d passed into a place where I was thinking really clearly, foreseeing
how upset Dad would be when he learned I’d been raped in his club. Maybe this guy
wouldn’t stop there but would even
kill
me, and Dad would blame himself forever, but he shouldn’t because he tried to keep
me safe, he taught me to take care of myself, and after all he couldn’t watch me every
minute of the day and night.

The man’s weight shifted. His hands pulled out of my pants as clumsily as they had
shoved their way in. For a second I felt relief, but then I could feel him fumbling
with his own pants, and a new and useful idea popped into my mind. As he struggled
with his zipper, his fat tongue still prodded mine, so I bit it. Hard.

He roared and fell backward off me. Sweating and red-faced, pants partly undone, he
still stood between me and the elevator’s control panel. I was struggling to think
of what to do next when I noticed a crowbar prying open the elevator door, and the
blessed sound of somebody shouting on the other side.

The rapist noticed, too. By the time Hence had forced himself through, the man was
cowering in his corner, tugging at his stuck zipper, this time hurrying to get it
back up, as if he could hide what he’d been trying to do to me.

Then Hence was in the elevator, swinging the crowbar, his face glowing with electric
anger. “Get out of here. If I see you in this club again, I’ll bash your head in.”
His voice and face were so full of rage they scared me. The rapist was gone before
Hence could even get the words all the way out.

I knew I should thank Hence, but I didn’t have the words. I felt for what was left
of my clothes, tugging my now-buttonless blouse closed.

“Here.” Hence pulled off his T-shirt, handed it to me, and averted his gaze. We were
silent a long time, frozen there in the elevator.

Hence finally broke the silence. “Did he…?” His hands were still hardened into fists.

“No. He would have. You stopped him.”

“You should tell your father.” His mouth was set in a grim line. “He’d want to know.”

“It would only worry him. Please don’t say anything. Promise you won’t.”

But he didn’t answer, his gaze fixed on the red emergency-alarm button I’d been unable
to reach.

“Hence,” I said. “Look at me. Please.”

And he complied, his expression still grim.

“You saved me from… I don’t even want to say it,” I said.

“If he’d hurt you, I’d have killed him.” Hence’s voice was quiet, with an edge to
it I’d never heard before. His dark eyes had iced over, and I realized with a shock
that he meant it literally. If things had gone any further, Hence would have willingly
killed my assailant.

A chill passed over me.

“You’re shivering,” he added in a softer tone. It was true: I was trembling with relief
and terror, and something new—maybe
awe
would be the right word. Later, when the shock wore off, I would tell myself I must
have imagined Hence’s rage. Quiet, solemn Hence couldn’t be capable of real violence.
But at that moment in the elevator, I completely believed he would do anything it
took to protect me, and I was grateful.

Hence pressed the button for the fifth floor. In our apartment he waited, arms crossed
over his chest, as I climbed into bed. He brought me a glass of water and fiddled
with the doorknob so it would lock behind him when he left.

The next morning I got up early, hoping to catch him before he disappeared to wherever
he spent his days off, but he was already gone by the time I got downstairs. Now more
than ever I wanted to get to know him better. Maybe someday I could find a way to
pay him back, to help him the way he’d helped me.

The next morning over breakfast, I rehearsed the speech I would give to convince Hence
he should let me stay. But when I took the elevator downstairs, the club seemed empty.
There was no sign of Cooper, or any of the other workers I’d seen bustling around
the previous day. Before I’d fallen asleep the night before, I’d found something intriguing:
the endpaper of
Gone with the Wind
covered with the word
Riptide
—doodled about a thousand different ways.
Riptide
rang a bell; I knew I’d seen it somewhere on The Underground’s website, but there
was nobody around to give me the WiFi password. So with my laptop case slung over
my shoulder, I set out in search of caffeine and Internet access.

The Bowery sidewalks were busier than they’d been when I’d arrived, which made me
feel braver about venturing out and
exploring. My path zigzagged into tree-lined streets, past funky stores unlike anything
we had back home—boutiques selling high-design Japanese clothes in cartoon Harajuku
colors; studded leather jackets and diamond collars for lapdogs; and ultrachic graphic
tees in stark blacks, whites, and silvers—but I pressed on until I found a coffee
shop with a WiFi sticker in the window. The place was crowded with tattooed hipsters.
I probably stood out like the ordinary suburban girl I was, but at least I could sit
in the corner and gawk while I drank my iced peppermint mocha and soaked up the free
Internet.

For starters, I searched for
Riptide
, my earbuds in this time so nobody would glare when the first link I clicked on started
playing music—a song I vaguely recognized. With their narrow red ties, black button-down
shirts, and skinny jeans, the four guys in the home-page picture looked to be from
about my mom’s era. Had Riptide been her favorite band? Though that was kind of cool
to know, unless she’d run away from my dad and me to become a groupie, it didn’t qualify
as useful information. Discouraged, I exited the page, and just as the photo began
to vanish, I recognized the second face from the left.

Dark eyes, caramel skin, sharp cheekbones.

I clicked and waited, holding my breath, while the page reloaded and Hence’s much
younger self materialized before me. Here was a deeply uncomfortable fact: Hence had
been hot once. The arm around my mother’s shoulders, the hand she’d been holding in
those slashed photographs I’d found? I now had a pretty good idea who they’d belonged
to.

Fun facts about Riptide: They’d had one big hit album and a platinum single (presumably
the song playing through my earbuds). After one whirlwind world tour, they’d disbanded.
Hence had been lead guitarist and vocalist. And, judging by the website’s forum pages,
they still had a whole bunch of rabid fans willing to argue the meaning of their lyrics,
or debate whether or not a Riptide reunion tour was on the horizon—lots of information,
but very little of any use to me until I found one particular conversation on a thread
about The Underground:

Hence had an ex-wife? I did another search and found a picture of her right away,
on the Infamous Groupies website: a busty redhead in a sheath of turquoise satin,
eyes hidden behind cat-eye sunglasses. The caption read:
Sexy siren Nina Bevilaqua changed
boyfriends as often as she changed her hair color. Linked to Richard Linklater of
the Hopping Johns, Skeeter Freeman of the Tumbling Dice, and Dane Slater of Pineapple
Crush, she retained her swinging single status until she married Riptide frontman
Hence, a tempestuous union that landed them both in divorce court. With her groupie
days long behind her, Bevilaqua now lives a much quieter life far from the Lower East
Side.

Next I tried searching for an address or phone number for this Nina Bevilaqua, figuring
she’d know a thing or two about my mom—her ex-husband’s ex-girlfriend—but her number
was unlisted, and I couldn’t turn up an address. Another dead end. The other person
who could maybe help me, the Jackie my mom mentioned in her letter, was an even longer
shot, seeing as how I didn’t know her last name.

Hopped up on iced mocha and starving for information I could actually use, I packed
up my laptop and hurried past tattoo parlors, sex boutiques, and sushi bars, toward
the one person who could tell me what I needed to know. Unpleasant as the prospect
was, I needed to talk to Hence.

When I got to The Underground, the front door was propped open. Men in tight black
T-shirts were noisily unloading amps and other gear from the back of a truck. I squeezed
past them into the building. Cooper was so busy positioning guitars on the stage that
he didn’t even notice as I breezed past.

I found Hence in his office, standing at the desk, arms crossed,
glaring down at a ledger like it had done him some kind of personal insult. Maybe
it wasn’t a good time to bother him, but from what I’d seen so far, I doubted there
would ever be a good time. I’d have to be careful not to say anything to tick him
off—a tall order, since ticked off seemed to be his more or less permanent state.

I took a deep breath and tried to sound confident. “So,” I said. “That’s my mother’s
apartment I’m sleeping in?” I might as well start with the obvious.

“It was her bedroom. She had that whole floor to herself.” His tone implied something
about my mother—maybe that she was some kind of princess. “Anyway, don’t get used
to it. You’re not moving in.” He went back to scowling down at the desk.