Penelope Page 8

  I stood there, wondering what I was supposed to do. Then, from behind a long desk, a woman spoke to me. “May I help you?”

  “Okay,” I said happily.

  There was a silence, and then she asked, “How can I help you?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t hear you.”

  The scarf was muffling my voice. I moved closer to the desk.

  “Would you like a room?” the woman asked.

  “Yes! Yes, that’s it. I want a room to stay in.”

  “Do you have a reservation?”

  “Um, I don’t know. I don’t think so. What’s a reservation?”

  She looked at me oddly, and I didn’t know if she hadn’t heard me or if she didn’t understand me. But her eyes swept over my expensive coat, and that seemed to assure her. “We do have a room available. Three twelve.”

  “Three twelve,” I repeated. “Okay, thank you.” I turned to go toward the elevator.

  “Miss!”

  I turned back. “Yes?”

  “May I check you in?” She crooked a finger, indicating that I should come closer. “Your name?”

  “Penelope Wilhern.”

  “I’m sorry, I really can’t hear you.”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out my mother’s credit card. The woman took it from me.

  “Jessica Wilhern.” She must have recognized the name, because she looked impressed. “Very good, miss. And will you be using this card to pay for your room?”

  I nodded.

  “Very good, miss,” she said again. She did something with the card and handed me a paper to sign. I signed my mother’s name, then a man appeared by my side and picked up my suitcase. I tried to grab it back.

  “Stop, thief!” I yelled. Even with the scarf covering my mouth, no one had any problem hearing these words. Half the people in the room turned and looked at me.

  “He’s the porter, Miss Wilhern,” the woman behind the desk said. “Would you prefer to take your suitcase to the room yourself?”

  I nodded, and the man relinquished it to me. And the woman gave me a key. “Three twelve,” she reminded me. As I turned away, I heard her whisper to the porter, “You know how eccentric these aristocrats can be.”

  After that, everything was easy. I found the room, the key opened the door, and once I was inside, I could take off my scarf and breathe normally. By now, I was starving. I whipped off my coat, opened my bag of goodies, and ate. It wasn’t until after I’d stuffed myself that I saw the menu by the bed. Room service. They would deliver real food right to your room here! I’d have to remember that for next time.

  The room was fine—I could live here permanently, I thought. The bed was huge, and there was more than enough room in the dresser and closet for the few things in my suitcase. In the bathroom was a Jacuzzi tub, and there was even a telephone on the wall just by it. Not that I had anyone to call.

  I went over to the window and drew back the curtains. The sun was going down and lights were coming on all over the city. It was all so new and strange, I could have been on another planet. A very, very beautiful planet…

  Minutes earlier, I’d been utterly and completely exhausted. Now, I was exhilarated. I had to get out there and go… where?

  The answer came to me quickly. The park. Max’s park. He’d said it was wonderful at night. Just thinking his name gave me a pang, but I fought it back. I couldn’t let myself brood. There was too much to do, to see, so much lost time to make up for.

  There was a map in the room, and I looked it over. Just like Max said, the park took up a big chunk of Midtown, and it didn’t seem too far away. I bundled up again, adjusted my scarf, and left the room.

  The streets weren’t as crowded now. I passed restaurants filled with people eating, theaters where people were lined up to buy tickets. And shops—amazing shops! I pressed my nose against the windows and gaped at the gorgeous clothes, shoes, handbags. It dawned on me that I could use my mother’s credit card to buy these things. Tomorrow would be an adventure in shopping.

  I forced myself away from the windows and kept walking. A few minutes later, I reached Max’s park. I knew it was everyone’s park, not just Max’s, but that was how I thought of it. I wandered around until I thought I’d found his favorite bench, overlooking the lake.

  There were soft lights illuminating the grounds. No tulips, of course—it was still winter. And most of the trees were bare. But it was beautiful anyway. Still, and silent, and beautiful. I was really and truly outside, in the world.

  Occasionally people walked by, but none of them paid any attention to me. They didn’t seem to be paying any attention to where they were, either. How could they not look at everything in awe? It was a wonderland here, it was magic. All this time I’d thought I was living in a fairy tale. I was wrong. This—this park, this world—was the fairy tale. And it was real.

  A man and a woman walked by, not speaking, just holding hands. Tears began to sting my eyes. This was the worst part of being still—you couldn’t stop the thoughts from filling your head. Why had I thought that Max would be any different from all the others? Because he didn’t scream when he saw my face? He just had more self-control than most men, that was all.

  I didn’t need Max. I didn’t need any man. With the scarf around my face, hiding my nose, I could go anywhere, do anything, just like ordinary people. Maybe the witch’s spell would never be broken. So what? As long as I had my scarf, I’d be fine.

  But after a while I was getting hungry again, and I began to think about that room service menu. I walked back the way I came, and thought about snuggling up in that huge bed, turning on the TV, eating whatever I wanted.

  I turned a corner, and the hotel loomed before me. Home, I thought happily as I bounced up the steps and nodded at the man in uniform who was opening the door.

  “Good evening, Miss Wilhern,” he said.

  He knew my name! The hotel really was beginning to feel like home. So much so that as I walked into the lobby, my imagination started playing tricks on me. I could almost hear my mother’s voice.

  “I demand to know what room she’s in! It’s my credit card that’s paying for it!”

  It wasn’t my imagination. There they were, at the reception desk, talking to the woman who’d checked me in earlier. My mother and my father. The woman looked up and saw me. I didn’t wait for my parents to turn around and do the same.

  Running back out the door, I raced up the street. I took a right, then a left. People stared at me as I tore past them. They probably thought I was a bank robber, fleeing the scene of the holdup I’d just committed. They were practically right—I’d stolen a credit card, and it had come back to haunt me. Crime didn’t pay.

  I knew I couldn’t go to another hotel. My mother would have reported the missing card, the hotel people would call the police, and someone would come after me. I had no money, no place to stay, I was hungry, and even bundled up, I was cold.

  So I went back to the park, where it wasn’t any warmer, but I thought I would find Max’s bench again and I’d be able to think. When I got there, I saw that someone had left an open newspaper behind. I would have tossed it in the nearby trashcan, but something on the page caught my eye.

  It was a drawing—very rough, like a sketch. A girl, no, more like a female monster, with fangs instead of teeth. And a nose like a pig’s. Words over the picture screamed, “Have you seen this girl?”

  I read on. A five-thousand-dollar reward was being offered to anyone who could provide the newspaper with an actual photo of the pig-girl. There was a phone number, and a name I recognized: Lemon.

  I thought long and hard. Then I tore off the sheet, folded it carefully, and put it in my pocket.

  Max had said something about a fountain where people threw in coins for good luck. I had to wander for a while, but eventually I found it. There weren’t many coins—somebody probably cleaned the fountain out on a daily basis. But I was able to pick out som
e quarters, and I hoped that would be enough.

  I remembered having passed a photo booth at the entrance to a subway, and I made my way back there. I went inside, closed the curtains, and took off my scarf. Then I put my quarters into the slot. Four times, a light flashed. I didn’t have to wait long for the results.

  I still had quarters left for a pay phone, and I dialed the number from the newspaper.

  “Could I speak with Mr. Lemon, please? I have something he might be interested in.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  At nine in the morning, the Cloverdilly pub was pretty empty—just a couple of hard-core drinkers at the bar. Lemon assumed the back gambling room was busier.

  But he didn’t have to go there to find Max. He spotted the shaggy-haired guy at the other end of the room. He wore an apron, and he was sweeping the floor. Lemon was glad he’d been able to shake off Edward that morning. He could just imagine the sad SOB teasing Max about his new working uniform.

  Actually, Lemon wasn’t sure what he was doing here himself. There’d been a message on his desk that morning from Max, asking that Lemon meet him at the Cloverdilly. All he could think of was that maybe the guy had won some money in a game and wanted to pay back the five grand.

  He studied the boy, who hadn’t noticed him yet. He really seemed like a regular sort of guy. Something about the whole experience still didn’t make sense. As he watched, the bartender approached Max.

  “Hit the toilets next. They’re a mess.”

  Max nodded, lifted the bucket of water, and trudged off into the restroom. Lemon felt a twinge of pity, which he forcibly brushed away. Why should he care if an impoverished aristocrat was reduced to scrubbing toilets? Max had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he’d blown the Campion fortune, he’d made his own bed. He wasn’t worth feeling sorry for.

  And yet, Lemon couldn’t help feeling there was something, something decent about Max. Then he shook his head wryly at his own assessment. What did he, Lemon, know about decency? He’d spent his entire adult working life in this job, exploiting the unfortunate, exaggerating rumors, manipulating scandals. Integrity was not exactly his middle name.

  He went over to the bar, ordered a coffee, and opened a newspaper that was lying there. While Lemon’s paper had broken the story in the early morning edition, the other city newspapers had all picked it up by now. Headlines had varied: SHE’S REAL, THE WALKING, TALKING PIG, THE PIG-GIRL EXISTS! But all the articles carried the photos Lemon had picked up the evening before.

  He still couldn’t believe how it had happened. When he got the call at his paper, he thought it was a prank, and he’d been about to hang up on the muffled voice—and then he thought he heard something plaintive in the tone, and he continued to listen.

  “This is Penelope Wilhern. I have some photos for you. Photos of me.”

  He was stunned. “Why do you want to give me photos of yourself?”

  “I’m not giving them to you, I’m selling them. I want the five thousand dollars.”

  He was surprised when she explained why she needed the money, but the more he thought about it, the more sense it made. It was as if for the first time ever, he was realizing that she wasn’t just some bizarre object of interest hidden away from view. And when he arrived at the designated meeting place, at midnight in the park, Penelope became even more real.

  Not that he really saw her. She had told him to meet under a certain bridge, but she wasn’t actually there.

  “Lemon?” a voice called.

  “Yes,” he replied. He looked up and saw that she was standing on the bridge. At least, he assumed it was her. The figure on the bridge in the dark was heavily bundled and covered up.

  She was holding what looked like a pail. Slowly, she lowered it down with a rope. Inside, there was a strip of photos. He took it out, put an envelope containing five thousand dollars in it, and gave it a jiggle. The pail was hoisted back up.

  Lemon looked at the cheap grainy photo machine snapshots for a long time. They were not exactly what he expected to see.

  He was looking at a person. Not a monster, not a freak, not a grotesque creature-from-the-black-lagoon. He saw a girl, a young woman, with pretty brown curly hair, big brown eyes, a wistful smile. The famous snout was there, of course, but he wasn’t overcome with horror at the sight of it, just a little depressed. He looked up from the photos, but Penelope had disappeared.

  Now, sitting at the bar, looking at the grainy newspaper version of the photos, he tried to cheer himself by thinking of the girl’s mother, that evil harridan who took out his eye. She had to be suffering now, with the face of her pig-daughter in every newspaper, exposed to the world. Funny, though, how the image didn’t give him the kind of gratification he’d thought it would.

  “Are you happy now?”

  Lemon looked up to see Max standing by his bar stool. The younger man’s face was grim.

  “How’s it going, Campion?”

  Max didn’t answer the question. “You couldn’t leave her alone, could you? You had to have your revenge. Nothing was going to keep you from your damned exposé. You had to hound her, you had to have that picture, you had to embarrass her publicly. I know you hate the mother, I know she screwed up your life, but why did you have to take it out on Penelope? What did she ever do to you?”

  Lemon tried to break into the tirade. “Whoa, hold on there—”

  But Max wasn’t finished. “You make me sick, you and Vanderman. Okay, Vanderman’s an ass, but you—you’re even worse. You don’t even know the girl. Why did you want to hurt her?”

  Lemon couldn’t let this go by. “Why did I want to hurt her? What about you? You’re no better than me or Vanderman. I think you’d better step down from your moral high ground, my boy.”

  Max stared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean, Lemon?”

  “You could have helped her, you could have changed her life. You could have married her and lifted that stupid curse. You had the means to make Penelope Wilhern happy, but you didn’t. And I know why.”

  There was uncertainty in Max’s eyes. “You do?”

  “You’re no better than Vanderman. You were grossed out by her face.”

  Max looked away, and Lemon pressed his point. “Actually, come to think of it, you’re worse than Vanderman. Because I think you like the girl. Maybe you even love her. But you can’t deal with the snout. You’re just as shallow as all those other guys who ran away.”

  Was he getting through to Max? There was no expression at all on the boy’s face, and he’d made no attempt to defend himself.

  “And I’m going to tell you something else, too.” Lemon tapped the photo. “It was Penelope herself who gave me these pictures.”

  That got a reaction. Max’s mouth fell open. “What?”

  “She called me last night and offered them to me.”

  Max narrowed his eyes. “I don’t get it. Why would she do that?”

  “She wanted the money. No, it was more than that. She needed the money.”

  “That’s crazy. You’re not making any sense. She’s a Wilhern—they’re loaded.”

  Lemon played his trump card. “It seems our Penelope has made a change in her lifestyle. She left home.”

  Max seemed to have gone speechless. It took several seconds before he could even manage a weak “You’re kidding.”

  “She’s out there right now, Campion. I don’t know where she’s staying or what she’s doing, but she broke out. Penelope Wilhern is on her own. She’s declared her independence.”

  There was another moment of silence. “Huh. How ‘bout that.” Then a slow smile spread across Max’s face. “Good for her.”

  The bartender came down to their end of the bar. “You finished for the day?”

  “Yep,” Max replied.

  The bartender opened the cash register and counted out some bills. “There you are. Thanks.”

  Just then a man appeared in the doorway leading to the back room. Lemon recognized him as
one of Max’s gambling partners.

  “Hey, we got an empty chair back here.”

  Max shook his head. “No thanks, man.” He extended the money to Lemon. “An installment on my debt.”

  Lemon didn’t want to take it. But he had a feeling he’d be insulting Max if he didn’t. “Thank you.” He stuffed the bills in his pocket as Max put the broom back in the closet, took off the apron, and ambled out of the bar.

  Chapter Twenty

  Control. It was a completely new sensation, something I’d never felt before. I—not my mother, my father, Wanda, or Jake—was in control of my life. I, Penelope Wilhern, was making the decisions, calling the shots. It was scary, it was bewildering … it was wonderful.

  Of course, the room I woke up in that morning couldn’t compare to the room at the grand hotel or to my room back at the Wilhern mansion. After getting the money from Lemon, I walked through the Midtown streets and eventually found a shabby-looking building with a ROOMS FOR RENT sign in a window. The bed was lumpy, the wallpaper was faded and peeling, there was no TV or phone or fabulous view from the tiny window, but I’d been able to put a month’s deposit down in cash and still had plenty left.

  And they’d never come looking for me here. Some people might look at this place and say, she’s come down in the world. Not me, though. I’d say, she’s taken her first step up, out, and into the world.

  I dressed quickly, wrapped the scarf around my face, and left the room. Outside, I merged with the crowds on the streets and set off to explore. Window shopping was great fun. Without my mother’s credit card, I knew I’d have to watch my budget, but I made mental notes of certain shops that displayed some gorgeous clothes.

  On the other hand, when I passed a group of women in chadors and face veils, I wondered if that might be something that would work for me. I’d probably have to become a Muslim, and wearing black all the time couldn’t be too exciting, but it would resolve the issues regarding the exposure of my face. It was another option, and that was what I found so thrilling—all the possibilities I was encountering.