The Altar Girl: A Prequel

CHAPTER 9

Life was moving in slow motion now…

Donnie put my glass on the table. He didn’t reach for the refrigerator door. Instead he paused to listen to himself. He grinned. I had no idea what he was talking about because I was focused on what I was about to do. Which was unthinkable. The conviction with which I needed to act, the suffering I was going to inflict, the repercussions to my face, body, and life if I messed it up…

“You still go to the blessing of the Easter baskets?”

I sharpened my focus. Heard Donnie. He’d just asked a question. I realized I’d better answer.

“Sure,” I said. “I go every year.” In fact, I couldn’t remember when I’d last gone. Maybe fifteen years ago.

“I used to go with my mother. Everyone getting together in the school gym for the priest to go around and sprinkle holy water on their babkas and tacky colored eggs. It’s all bullshit but I liked it. I liked it because it was the one day a year where no one gave a shit who you were. Your family welcomed you back. The community welcomed you back. It’s just a great tradition. Wayward boys like me can come home for one day. No matter what you’ve done, everyone is happy to see you. Happy to see children with their mothers.”

Donnie Angel extended his arm and grasped the fridge door. He had to twist a little bit to the right because of the refrigerator’s location in the corner. He opened the door and reached inside to grab the bottle.

I jumped to my feet, stepped forward and curled my right leg up to my waist. This time I was the one with the element of surprise. His face registered shock but there was no time for him to react. His legs remained twisted, still facing the fridge. I snapped my heel against his lower left leg with all my might. The meat of my shoe connected with the bone.

I heard the crack. It was a sick, gut-wrenching noise. I must have closed my eyes before impact because the image of a paint stick breaking in half flashed in my mind. By the time I opened them, Donnie was lying on the floor wailing. He brought his hands to his leg and touched it, but that only made him scream even more.

My plan at this point was to get out of the van as quickly as possible. Much to my shock, however, I stood there staring down at the man who’d taken me against my will, who had a machine to break legs and was about to use it on me. The truth was I felt compassion for him. He was a human being. I’d hurt him. To make things worse, I truly believed that he liked me. In his own demented way, he believed he’d done me a favor by not killing me, and by planning to break my left instead of my right leg. And, as he’d said at the beginning, we went back. We went way back, all the way to the Grantmoor on the Berlin Turnpike.

Also, I’d been a devout Ukrainian Catholic growing up, and I took this cheek-turning business very seriously. I believed in the life-affirming power of unequivocal forgiveness. Based on my life until this moment, I would have expected to have been consumed with empathy for the man I’d hurt even though it was an act of self-defense. That’s the way I was wired.

But now, compassion wasn’t the only emotion that gripped me. Instead, a quiet rage had gathered inside me. It was accompanied by a giddy sense of satisfaction. It coursed through my veins, drowned my Catholic tendencies, and left me liberated. Perhaps I’d overdosed on humility, which was a way of saying I was sick of being pushed around. By my parents, my ex-husband, my bosses in New York, and now Donnie Angel. Whatever the reasons, I felt more empowered than I had since childhood as I gazed at the agony I’d inflicted.

“Bitch… Are you fucking crazy?” Donnie clenched his teeth as though gathering some more willpower to fight the pain. A deep breath. Eyes looking as though they might pop out of his sockets. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “I know what I’ve done.” The words rolled off my tongue one at a time. “Spiral… tibial… fracture.”

I assumed the van was soundproofed for obvious reasons. The driver and the other man who’d lifted me off the street hadn’t heard Donnie any more than they would have heard me if my leg were the one that had been broken. I found the phone beside the liquor decanters and lifted the receiver.

A man’s voice. “Yeah?”

“Pull over,” I said, sounding as agitated as I could. “I think he’s having a heart attack.”

The van swerved right and slowed down. I jumped out the back door before it came to a complete stop, leaving Donnie shouting obscenities in my wake. What impressed the hell out of me was that he’d switched to Ukrainian swear words. Maybe that line I’d made up about my godfather saying Donnie had a Ukrainian soul wasn’t completely fiction after all.

I recognized my location as soon as my feet kissed the pavement. The grand stairs leading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the right. The former Stanhope Hotel on the left. Fifth Avenue and 81st Street. Six blocks from my apartment. They really had been circling my neighborhood.

I ran north along 5th past the museum. The van wouldn’t be able to make a U-turn. Traffic flowed only one way and that was south. I didn’t bother looking behind me. I kept my eyes focused on the lights atop the yellow cabs.

A vacant taxi appeared within four blocks. I jumped inside and told the driver to take an immediate left on 84th Street. The van was still parked to the side. I’d left the door open behind me but it was shut now. I suspected the men were tending to Donnie.

I told the cabbie to drive straight across 83rd and drop me off on 1st Avenue. I ran the final block to my apartment and locked myself inside. Logic dictated Donnie would expect me to go home, but I wasn’t worried about him. I lived in a protected building with seasoned doormen. No thug was going to get past them. To make sure, I called downstairs and told them a blind date had gone bad and to keep me informed if any strangers asked about me. The doorman who picked up promised to keep me safe, and I was glad I’d been a generous tipper at the end of the year, back when I had the money to be one.

I trembled as I peeled my clothes off. Didn’t leave the steaming shower for twenty minutes until I’d managed to calm down.

Then I did what I’d been planning to do all night.

I uncorked that bottle of wine and tried to figure out what I was going to do next.