22
People were real kind – real friendly, if you came to think of it. They were fussing around her, visiting her in the hospital, bringing her sweets, bringing her books, for goodness sake! Even the Mayor of the town came; a really friendly lady, that one. The elderly guy in a smart tie came many times, which was kind of him, but slightly embarrassing, for he did impose himself on her a bit and seemed to expect her to respond, somehow. But that was a general problem of all her visitors, actually – they all thought they knew her, and talked to her accordingly, and she, not having a clue whenever they were right or wrong, just smiled and nodded. Whereas now, when she knew herself, she could see that her well-wishers were completely off the mark about her. She was not shy or bookish or dependent, as their compassionate looks suggested; she could take care of herself, thank you very much. She had to – she had been on her own since God knows when: she never knew her mother, and as to her father… Well, she hadn't seen him for a while, and thanks heaven for that: the less caring, boorish, coarse man she could not imagine. As soon as she came of age he got rid of her, practically buying her off with a very 'generous' gift of a one-room apartment on the outskirts of the town. She never spoke to him since, nor had she wanted to. She was happy on her own, in her own small space, where no one would shout at her or to tell her which clothes to wear, or what to do with her time, or to spoil her fun.
That was precisely what she was doing since she left home – having fun. There was plenty to have here, at the bar; people were nice, music was good, and she never had to pay for her drinks – men always insisted on buying her one. And right now, leaning upon the sink at the ladies' and watching her face in the dim mirror, she had a feeling she had had one too many. Her cheeks felt slightly numb, and her vision was a bit bleary; sounds seemed to come as if from a distance. She'd probably have to slow down a little – it was too early in a day for being in such a state. What was the time, actually? She wasn't too sure. She creased her brow, trying to think straight. What time was it when she left home this morning? She didn't seem to be able to recall that. In fact, she didn't remember leaving home at all, or being there at all. Did she spend the night somewhere else? How could she forget that? That was seriously disturbing. She always prided herself in being able to hold her drink – having a proper blackout felt alarming. She concentrated again, with no effect. She did remember being in the hospital, and the guy in a tie promising to help her when she'd be discharged. After that – nothing: the next thing she knew she was here, in a place she loved best, having a gin-and-tonic at the bar and saying hello to her regular crowd.
Thinking of the man in a hospital, she felt uneasy. It was not because of the strange revulsion that she felt towards him when she was first injured – that was gone as soon as he stopped pestering her and almost forgotten when they've stopped giving her so many drugs. No, she felt uneasy about the way she chucked him as she was leaving the hospital – she assumed she did, as she obviously left without him and was on her own now. He seemed a nice enough guy when he wasn't trying to kiss her – a bit mild, may be, but that was to be expected at his age – he must be at least fifty. He did seem eager to help, anyway. Well, what was done was done now – she was out, and he was left behind.
She shook her head, clearing it of dizziness and uneasiness, and splashed her face with cold water. It was a good thing she didn't need any powder or tone – reapplying them in such a light would have been problematic. Opening her clutch, she fished out her mascara and lipstick and freshened her make-up. Yep, she felt much better now, and the head was definitely clearer. She'd go and play some pool now, that's what she'd do – it will help her wear the rest of the drink off and restore her sense of well-being.
She was always extremely good at pool, and she enjoyed the game. It was so nice to move around the table, teasing the guys around with risky poses, to laugh, to be free. She was quite happy as she trashed her opponent, a meek fellow who kept sneezing all the time. And then he – the tie-guy – came into the bar, and spoke to her, and looked at her very strangely: he was pale as sheet, as if he had seen a ghost. He called her by somebody else's name, just as people in the hospital did, and he seemed shocked and disappointed. This rubbed her the wrong way: what was wrong with her, why did she have to be somebody else – someone called 'Belle'? It was weird that, while it did not matter to her when other people made the mistake, when this guy spoke to her thus she felt instantly angry. He did make it look as if she was… worse than this 'Belle', a lesser-quality person. And anyway, who was he to judge? He might have been old enough to be her father, but he was not her father, for crying out loud.
Well, she put him in his place – she brushed him away as briskly as she could (it was good luck that she did remember his name in time, otherwise she'd be at a disadvantage), and he retreated looking positively beaten. And the guys in the bar gave her very, very startled looks, and started to whisper. That was odd, so she asked them what made them uneasy. And the barman said: 'Well, Lacey, you've got some nerve, to talk to Mr. Gold like you did!' She asked why – the man looked harmless. The men exchanged glances, and started talking. Well, not talking really – hinting, mumbling, and stammering, telling her that Mr. Gold was all sorts of things he did not look. They said he owned the town – literally owned the ground it stood on. That everybody was in debt with him. That he was completely ruthless when dealing with his debtors – or with anyone who looked at him the wrong way, in fact. That was seriously baffling – she thought herself a good judge of character, and this fellow did not strike her as anything they talked about. Yet, they seemed very sure of their words, and positively scared of the man. Her fresh behavior with him awed them; his extremely mild reaction to it surprised them no end.
That intrigued her, and set her thinking. She was not sure her dear friends the bar-regulars could be trusted entirely – perhaps they were exaggerating; yet she felt annoyed with herself for not having seen deeper than the buttoned-up appearance of this Mr. Gold. She kept coming back to their brief encounters, questioning herself if there might have been more then met the eye in the man. Well, may be there was something – a set of the mouth, a certain coldness in the eyes, the distancing in the manner, that suggested that here was a man who was hiding something – some part of himself. If he was, she would have liked to find out – she was ever curious about people, and she had to admit that people that surrounded her usually weren't very interesting. All of them – all these guys in the bar – seemed hollow, one-dimensional. They were nice enough, but they were nobodies. This man, this Mr. Gold, might be somebody. And to think that she just sent him packing without a second glance!
She felt irritated with herself, and her mood dropped. She welcomed a drink that mysteriously appeared before her, and then welcomed another from the thuggish guy that had an eye on her for a while – a handsome enough fellow, if you liked that sort of brutal size, but not really her type. Still, he seemed ok, and there was no harm in letting him chat her up a bit. She was just considering letting him buy her another drink when Mr. Gold walked into the bar again.
She felt absurdly nervous, watching him out of the corner of her eye. He hesitated at the door, looking the place over. He was not alone; this time, he was accompanied with a tall, powerful guy with a nice, but rather stupid face – his bodyguard, perhaps? If this Mr. Gold was indeed the kind of kingpin in town, a sort of shadow authority of a slightly criminal nature he might have a need of the bodyguard, him being so slight and having a game leg. The big guy stayed behind, pretending to be busy with his beer. Mr. Gold came forward and spoke to her, and she suddenly found herself not knowing what to say. With dismay, she heard herself blabbing something about pop music – gosh, just how stupid was that, it was obvious this guy knew nothing about good music; it was just not his thing. She saw his puzzled face, felt like blushing, and hurriedly escaped to the jukebox, supposedly to illustrate her point in conversation, but in reality just to hide her face. She was making a fool of herself, for no reason at all, and she felt young and girlish, and unsettled.
She was bending over the jukebox playlist panel, not really seeing it, when she heard his voice behind her back. He was asking, in that curiously ceremonious way he had, whenever they could 'spend some time together'.
She wheeled around: 'You mean, like a date?'
He seemed hesitant. 'Yes. A date'.
She looked at him closely. She felt exited and interested – after all, if he was the man they said he was, then the most powerful guy in town was asking her for a date – in plain view of everybody – after she already jilted him once! That was something. But she wanted to make sure he was talking to her.
'You do know that I am not this 'Belle' you are always talking about?'
'Yes, of course'.
He answered that one too quickly. She hesitated, watching him. His was a tired, lined, kind face. His eyes were sad. He looked nervous, and she was filled with doubts. There was no way this chap could be the dark power her friends described him to be.
'I've heard about you. People in town… They are afraid of you, Mr. Gold'.
He shook his head: 'Don't let that deter you. Give me a chance, please'.
She felt like snorting. Deter her? Why would it 'deter' her? What sort of word was that, anyway? It seemed that she'd have to buy a dictionary if she were going to date the man.
And, having said that to herself, she knew she was going to date him.
She told him to be at Granny's the same night, and walked away, feeling the whole crowd at the bar watching her back in awed silence.
Then she went to the ladies' again, and washed her face again, and made it up again. Then she looked at her clothes, and found them inadequate, and catalogued her dresses mentally, and found all of them wanting. She went out, and bought herself a new dress, and new shoes. She did not feel like going home – she was too strained, strangely buzzing inside. She put the new dress on in the ladies' room, and then had another drink – just to steady her nerves.
She had thought of being elegantly late for her date, but did not manage it – she was too eager to get to Granny's to slow her walk down. He beat her to it, anyway – he was already there when she came. And, seeing his dapper, collected slight figure sitting there at the window table, with a carefully arranged unreadable expression on his face, she knew the date would go wrong. Her main reason for coming was her curiosity; and, by the look of him, Mr. Gold wasn't going to satisfy it. He kept avoiding her questions about his reputation. He was unaccountably nervous; he dropped the menu, he ordered without asking her what she wanted, and though she did not mind his choice, actually – Granny's burgers were good – she just had to make a stand and ask for something different. She saw that some things she did annoyed him, and took grim pleasure in doing exactly them. He pursed his lips at her order of wine – she filled her glass to the brim, and felt like draining it at once. All the time they were sitting there, she talking unthinkingly and feeling ridiculously overdressed, he mooning her with those dark eyes of his, searching in her face for something that wasn't there, she felt that both of them were in for a disappointment. He was obviously stubbornly trying to find 'Belle' in her; he wanted her to be somebody she wasn't, and that was bad enough, for it suggested that she wasn't good enough, and if it were so, why did he ask her out, anyway? Yes, that was bad enough, but there was something worse. She felt he was not open with her – he was pretending to be somebody he wasn't; his assumed modesty about his position, his evasiveness, his studied pretentious remarks were maddening. The point when he said that she could have everything she wanted sounded actually filthy: he came across as a sugar-daddy promising well-financed future to a cheap whore.
There was one thing, which she valued in people above everything else: honesty. God knows she had enough bullshit in her life. And this man was not honest with her, and it felt… insulting. He intrigued her; she did want to see what would induce people to think him dangerous. She wanted to know him, and she obviously had no chance to.
By the time he turned over his stupid iced tea, staining her dress, she was thoroughly annoyed. She welcomed a chance to escape to the bathroom, for she knew that otherwise she'd say something rude. The wine didn't help, too: she felt reckless and her spirits were low, all at once. When she cleaned the stain, she hesitated whenever it was worth it to come back to the table. She did not want to eat that stupid chicken she ordered out of spite. She couldn't swallow a bite, anyway. She needed some space to think; she wanted to look into herself and check what pissed her off more, his inability (or unwillingness) to be honest with her, or the fact that he seemed to expect from her something she couldn't deliver. Anyway, both ways it was not good.
She needed a breath of fresh air, and went to the back entrance of the Diner. The night was chilly; she shivered in her short dress. She felt sad. For the first time in a very long time she took fancy to a man, and it was all in vain: they didn't seem to connect, at all. She glimpsed the big guy who tried to pick her up at the bar earlier: he must have been passing by, and saw her standing there all alone, and said 'Hi'. He was honest enough – it was easy to see what he wanted from her. 'What the hell', she thought tiredly, and stepped down into his greedy hands. At least this guy wasn't reserved, and he didn't look at her as if she stunk, and he took her for what she was, and didn't expect from her more than she could deliver. The fact that she didn't like him, and his kisses were too sloppy, and his palms sweaty, didn't matter too much. A girl can put up with a lot just for the chance to be accepted – to be valued as she is.
She wasn't thinking much as the guy was kissing her, and she wasn't feeling much. Perhaps she has drunk more than she thought. Or may be she was just terribly, terribly unhappy. It was funny: she never felt she was unhappy until this abortive date with Mr. Gold, but now she knew it for a fact. She was very unhappy. And lonely. And unloved.
She felt like crying, but it is very difficult to cry when you are being kissed on the mouth by the guy you don't really fancy. She closed her eyes, and let her mind drift. It was going to be over soon, anyway – men that are that enthusiastic at the start rarely ran long-distance.
It was over even sooner than she thought, for her admirer was thrown bodily away from her. He stuttered something; Mr. Gold yelled at him angrily. And, though the big guy's fear and Gold's extreme anger seemed to confirm partly what people were saying about him and what he so consistently denied, it was all completely ridiculous. He behaved as if she was a damsel in distress, and he was her noble protector. He seemed shocked she could have wanted to kiss somebody, and to be kissed by somebody. It appeared he didn't even realize that she wasn't happy on their 'date', and did not listen properly when she tried to explain why. It was perfectly clear that he was still looking at her, and wishing to see somebody else. And it hurt. She never felt so diminished, so cheated and so neglected in her life.
When he mentioned their alleged 'past' again, she couldn't stop herself from saying it out loud, angrily, almost shouting: 'This is still about Belle, isn't it? Look, Mr. Gold, I am sorry, she may have loved you – but I am not her!'
Surely he could understand that it was insulting for a girl to be treated in such a way – to be dismissed in such a way for somebody who existed only in his imagination? She was here. Wasn't she good enough, or interesting enough, or beautiful enough, or whatever else it was that he wanted from that other girl he took her to be?
She left him standing there in the backyard among the rubbish bins, muttering something. She ran back to Granny's bathroom, locked herself in, and cried terribly.
She did not know why it hurt so much that he didn't see her for what she was, and didn't appreciate her, and didn't want her to know him – the real him. It was absurd, she hardly knew the man; he was nothing to her. Yet it hurt awfully, and it took her a long time to calm down.
She heard him from behind the locked door; he said to Granny, quite curtly, that they will not be dining today, and asked for the bill. He obviously paid it and left; she heard the sound of his cane tapping the floor. She sniffled. Now that he was gone, she could go too.
She looked at the mirror at her flushed face, and grimaced. She seemed to spend a lot of time in bathrooms today. Well, it was a weird day – a strange day. She'd have to make herself a stiff drink at home, before she turned in. No more bars tonight. She was too tired.
She walked out of the bathroom, trying to avoid Granny's disapproving glare. She took her coat off the hook, and walked out of the Diner, and then stood hesitating, not knowing which way to turn. She wasn't sure which way Mr. Gold went, but instinctively felt like taking another route. She couldn't face him again tonight.
After a while, she decided to go by the car park. It was shorter, anyway.
As she was turning the corner, she heard strange sounds – systematic heavy thuds, dull, followed by muffled grunts. It sounded as if somebody was beating up a huge piece of meat, and it responded in a mute but pained way.
She walked into the car park to see detached, elegant and cool Mr. Gold violently beating with his cane the man who kissed her.
She stood, watching him, transfixed.
He was completely changed. He was electrified – fuelled with fury, demonic. He was himself, apparently, he did not pretend to be anything he wasn't, and she felt a surge of energy and power emanating from him. He seemed… alive, and real, and at the same time he seemed to be something much more than he looked.
Now she could believe everything people said about him. Now she saw it in him – the authority, the ruthlessness, the power to get what he wanted at any given price. He looked as if he had a natural, indisputable right to command the world around him – and, because of that, she knew she would never resent him ordering her around again, as she did earlier.
She liked this man so much better then the sugar-daddy he pretended to be before.
She stepped forward, and told him so. He gave her a startled, searching look: for a second his dark eyes seemed to turn completely black, empty and still as eyes of a snake. But then something in them changed – a kind of recognition dawned on him; and, for the first time, she knew he was looking at her, as she was, and that he liked what he saw.
