A New York Romance (4 page)

“No, I’m going to prove once and for all the power of my thoughts,” he said as he stepped up on the ledge of the rooftop.

“Oh no, you don’t have to do this,” she begged.

He turned to face her and said, “Don’t worry,
something
will catch my fall.”

A sinister look came into his eyes. He stretched out his arms, feeling the icy wind between his fingers.

“Are you crazy? You don’t have to do this,” she began to scream. “Get down!”

“Something will be there for me when I need it,” Charlie said as he suddenly slipped on the ice and fell backwards off the building. Julie ran to the edge of the rooftop and saw him freefalling toward the pavement below. Half way to his certain death she turned her head and buried her eyes in the palms of her hands and the broken flowers. There was silence, then the screeching of tires down below.

He fell on the street,
she thought to herself. Julie removed her hands from her face and walked toward the edge of the building, fearing what she would see. She hesitantly looked down and pulled away until what she saw registered in her mind. She looked over the ledge again and saw a truck filled with mattresses, but no Charlie. She heard him struggle as he clung to the restaurant marquee over the sidewalk.

“Charlie, you’re alive,” she yelled.

“Get me down from here!” he yelled, “Oowww,” he said as he slid off the marquee and slammed into the concrete below.

“You’re down,” Julie whispered to herself as she panicked and ran toward the fire escape, still holding the crushed and broken flowers in her hand. Charlie had startled the residence in the apartments above the restaurant, as they saw him fall from the roof then bounce back up with a look of bewilderment staring back into their living room.

Julie climbed down the ladder and ran over to Charlie, who opened his eyes to see the polished black boots of NYPD’s finest. The officer just stood there and looked at him and then looked up at the roof and shook his head.

Charlie sat on the cot as Julie dabbed a wet cloth on the cuts and scratches on his hands and forehead. Whispers from the officers drifted across the station bouncing back and forth like a plastic ball on a ping pong table.

“Is that the idiot who tried to kill himself by jumping onto some mattresses?”

“It sure is, Captain.”

Julie did her best to ignore them. She was grateful she could sit in the cell with him while they waited for the verdict so she could mend his wounds. Charlie didn’t seem to care. He was preoccupied with the attention he was getting from Julie.

After some time one of the officers approached the cell.

“Okay, Evel Knievil,” he said. The officers in the background chuckled. “Since you refused to go to the hospital you’re going to have to spend the night in jail, unless you can get $200.00 in bail money. We take these kinds of stunts very seriously in New York City. Your hearing will be set in a few weeks. Do you want to call anyone for the money?” the officer asked, under the assumption that from the looks of his corduroy jacket and worn out shoes, these two didn’t have $200.00 to their names.

“No sir, Julie will pay for me,” Charlie replied.

“I don’t have that much money,” she whispered to him, still dabbing his face with the wet cloth.

“Well, you’re going to have to spend the night unless you can get someone else to bring the money,” the officer explained. “Let’s go, ma’am. You can’t stay here with him.”

“No sir, Julie has the money in her purse. I put it there earlier, remember?” He looked at her and distorted his face with a half wink.

“Oh yes, I forgot.” She handed him the wet towel and opened her purse to find two hundred dollar bills tucked in the corner under her makeup case.

She turned to Charlie with a look of surprise as she pulled the money out. He nodded. She stood up, turned to the officer, and handed him the money.

“Here you go, officer.”

The man in uniform squint his eyes with curiosity, recognizing there was something strange about all this, especially with
him
, the young man huddled up on cot in ugly clothes. He figured he should have forced Charlie to go to the hospital for psychiatric care, just to keep him off the streets for the night. He took the money and turned his attention back to Julie.

“I’ll be back with your receipt and you’ll be free to go.” Then he turned back to Charlie. “You will get a notice in the mail at your Brookville address of when your court date is and you can make your plea. If you don’t show up, a warrant will be issued for your arrest. Is that understood Mr…” the officer paused as he read his name from the report and paused longer when he saw what the actual name was, “Mr. Daniels.”

“Yes, officer,” Charlie replied. “I understand.”

“Charlie Daniels!” Julie whispered with a smirk on her face as the officer walked away. She sat down next to him on the cot again. “Your name is Charlie Daniels?” she chuckled in disbelief.

“Yes. What’s your last name?”

“Lavine.”

“Huh,” Charlie grunted.

She took the towel and started dabbing his forehead again.

“What’s wrong with my name?”

“Actually, nothing. Juliet Lavine. It’s very nice.”

“Thank you.”

There was a pause. Charlie felt that pleasant uncomfortable feeling rise in him again as she stopped dabbing and studied his face.

“So what happened to you? Why are you like this? I mean not that anything is wrong with you; it’s just a little weird. You jump off a building and a truck full of mattresses happens to veer off the road and crash where you should have been splattered all over the sidewalk, come on.”

“So you believe me now?” he raised his eyebrows.

“Yes, I think so. I don’t want to believe you caused the bus to crash but everything else…how did this happen again?”

“I’m not sure. It just came with the bod…” he rethought his words, “It just started happening one day.”

Julie could tell there was more to this secret than he was willing to reveal to her. She had kicked off her shoes in the cell. Her feet were cold. Her hands were chilled. Charlie felt warm and she noticed his skin was soft, even his hands (with the exception of the new scrapes), as if he never worked a day in his life.

“So what do you think about all day? I mean if I had the ability to make things happen instantly with my thoughts people would be dropping dead all over the place.”

“That is why I spend most of my time alone. I cannot get upset at anything. It was much easier before…” Charlie refrained again from what he was about to tell her.

“Before what?” she insisted.

“It’s getting late. We should get a hotel for the night when we get out of here. I mean separately,” he nervously added, “and if you want, I can help you find your mother tomorrow.”

“Actually, I lied to you," she sighed. Charlie looked up with a surprised look upon his face, although he was not surprised. He knew she was keeping things from him as he kept secrets from her. "I haven’t seen my mother in a long time. I did hear she was here in the city, but I don’t really care to find her. She left my father and me when I was young. My father died a few years ago. There’s nothing in that redneck town for me anymore so I just left. I didn’t even pack. I thought I’d just come out here for a few days, do some shopping and get my feet wet so to speak; see if I could live in a big city. You’re going to think this is silly but I want to be an actress,” she said, a bit embarrassed. All Charlie noticed was the sweetness of her smile. “I know it’s crazy, but don’t you feel like just jumping off that bridge sometimes just to see where you’ll land? Oh,” she paused, realizing he did just jump off a building. “You know, take a big risk so you don’t wake up in a small town twenty years from now wondering what it would have been like if you had taken that chance? I don’t want to regret anything.”

Charlie did know that feeling, but it was not like her quest to escape the possible regrets of a dull life in a redneck town. His quest revolved around a simple human feeling that most people took for granted.

“What is so silly about being an actress? I think it’s an excellent idea,” he said. “And yeah, I’ve had those feelings before.”

“Well it’s just that every girl dreams of being an actress. I’m just another ordinary girl hoping something big will happen for her. Worse for me, I have no training.”

The officer opened the cell and presented them with the release papers.

“You’re free to go, Mr. Daniels.”

However, the uniformed man blocked their way out as they stood up.

“Do you know just how lucky you are, sir? I called the mattress factory and asked why they were hauling mattresses in an open truck while it was snowing. Seemed like an odd thing. They said they had an emergency order and the one delivery truck was already out and the other wouldn’t start. So they piled the mattresses up in that truck and placed a tarp over them. If that other truck had started, you would have hit metal. If there wasn’t that icy spot on the road from the hydrant leaking earlier that day, you would have hit concrete. Guess you got someone looking out for you.”

Charlie said nothing as if he was neither grateful for his luck nor disturbed by his near demise. Julie put her shoes and the officer stepped out of the way.

“These are for you,” Julie said as she exited the cell and handed the officer the broken stemmed flowers, stripped of their petals, and wilted from the cold.

He took them, studied them like he was looking for evidence from a murder scene, then threw them in the garbage.

Charlie and Julie stepped out of the police station onto the cold, snow-covered sidewalk. She looked up, staring at the snowflakes fluttering down under the streetlights then at Charlie. She noticed the wound on his forehead appeared as if it was already a few days old.

“Hey, your wound looks a lot better.”

“I had a good nurse,” he chuckled. Then he stood there looking like his nerves were getting the best of him as she reached out to touch his face.

“They’re not even scabbed,” she added.

He noticed the coarseness of her fingertips. They were slightly worn from days of labor, but softened again with lotions.

She drew back her hand.

“Well this has been an interesting night, Charlie Daniels. It’s getting too cold and too late to be out here on the street. I should go. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

Charlie nodded without uttering a word. She turned away and started walking. For a moment he felt the twitching in his stomach trying to form words, the right words to call out to her. They rose to the tip of his tongue then sunk back down into his stomach as he swallowed the lump in his throat. She purposely ignored his request to get separate rooms, together. Perhaps it was best to let her walk away.

Charlie had found the nearest motel to stay in, stayed up most of the night, then checked out early the next morning. He walked the streets with images of Julie lingering in the back of his mind, popping to the surface like bubbles in boiling water. With each of these thoughts came a feeling of strange joy, but the busyness of the city made him uncomfortable to say the least. He felt his nerves twitch with every honking horn. Claustrophobia engulfed him on the crowded sidewalk. Even the pale, worn-out mannequins that stared at him from every storefront window brought about paranoia. The cold, crisp air was his only refuge, but the fumes of endless automobiles clustered between the crowded buildings took that tranquility away.

Charlie stopped for a moment and turned to face the window in order to avoid the swarm of people rushing by. Through the window he saw Julie standing in the storefront, trying on a jacket. Out of the corner of her eye she felt someone leering at her and turned to see Charlie. She walked over to the window looking at the mannequins beside her and struck a pose like them, remaining perfectly still, trying not to laugh in the process.

Charlie walked into the store and was greeted by an aged woman, dressed to the nines with gaudy earrings that accented her overly painted face. “May I help you? Are you looking for something for your girlfriend?” the sales assistant asked after glancing at his ring finger and finding it bare. Julie remained lifeless in the window.

“Yes, as a matter of fact I was interested in that lovely leather jacket in the window,” he answered.

“Ah, yes,” the woman said in her high, sophisticated voice and walked over to Julie, still poised like a mannequin. As she attempted to remove the coat, Julie turned her head and laughed. The woman let out a loud, sophisticated scream, nearly fainting in the process.

Julie quickly took off the coat and handed it to the woman, “I’m not interested.”

Charlie looked back and forth at the woman and Julie leaving the store.

“Ah, me either. I have to go.”

Julie stepped back in and dragged him out the door laughing.

The sales assistant turned to the other mannequins to see if any of them were real also.

“That was hilarious! I hope we didn’t scare her too much,” Julie said.

“I think she’ll be alright.”

Charlie was unaware that his paranoia and claustrophobia were gone, vanquished by the presence of a beautiful young lady.

“Hey, the wound on your forehead is completely healed,” she remarked stopping on the sidewalk to look at it. She went to touch his face where the red mark once was. She could feel his nervousness. “Are you afraid of me Charlie?”

“Why do say that?”

They started walking down the busy street again.

“Because you are obviously attracted to me, but you’re the type that would avoid me like the plague,” she answered very directly, not ‘beating around the bush,’ as they used to say in her redneck town. “You did call me beautiful.”

“I was nervous to talk to you but I was never afraid of you. I just focus on your imperfections now and I’m not even nervous anymore,” he answered honestly, perhaps too honestly.

“Oh thanks. Every girl wants to hear about those. No wonder you don’t have a girlfriend,” she replied. “I shouldn’t even ask but alright, what are they Charlie?”

“What?” he answered as they entered another clothing store. Charlie held the door for her, sensing he was in a no-win situation.

“My imperfections! What are they?”

They entered the store and began rummaging through the clothes.

“I told you if I don’t watch my thoughts bad things can happen,” he explained. “Looking at your imperfections helps me to ignore the feelings that go along with this body,” the volume of his voice faded. Even as he was saying the words he knew he was throwing more heat on an already burnt breakfast.

“So what are my imperfections? Is my nose too big? My butt too big? My boobs not big enough?”

“No, nothing like that. Just that you’re vulnerable. You’ve been hurt before and you could be hurt again,” he replied. “You’re,” he hesitated but continued in the least threatening voice he could muster, “fragile.”

“Ah huh,” Julie grunted, uncertain if he was just being nice and avoiding what he really thought. “What do you think of these?” she asked, picking out the ugliest set of clothes in the store: a hideous puke green shirt with pink, yellow, white, and black polka-dots and a faded pair of oversized yellow corduroy pants, as if to also mock his taste for corduroy jackets. “If this won’t make you feel sorry for me, I don’t know what will.”

“Very nice,” Charlie nodded as he added a pale burgundy stocking cap to the ensemble. “Now all you need is an umbrella to carry around on sunny days,” he laughed.

Charlie looked at the clock on the wall, “Well I have to get going. It was nice to see you again,” he suddenly said, and quite to her surprise.

“Where are you going?”

“I have to meet my friends at the cafe up the street.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot about your friends.” She was curious to see what kind of people they would be. “I could sure go for a coffee,” she hinted for the invite.

“Would you like to come?”

“I wouldn’t want to impose, besides I have a lot of stuff to do,” she said.

“Well okay, maybe I’ll see you around again,” he said, then began to walk toward the door again.

“Hey,” Julie shouted, “that was rude. You’re supposed to say ‘you wouldn’t be imposing. I would love for you to come.’”

Charlie looked at her in confusion, thinking,
I thought she had a lot of stuff to do
, but then thought,
that might not be the best thing to say now.
“I would love for you to come, but I wouldn’t want to impose on the stuff you have to do.”

He was hoping
that
was the right thing to say.

“Well, okay. Since you insist,” she agreed, passing him on her way to the door.