HER DARK DAYS part 2

Copyright (c) 2017 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

Part 2

By R. Peterson

J.J. often didn’t know who she was when she first woke up; it usually took a minute. Acting for eighteen hours a day under bright studio lights will affect a person that way. This time however the mind-storm went unnoticed. She was sprawled halfway in the street next to Washington Square Park in lower Manhattan and knew only that she hated who she was. The Academy award winning actress and Grammy nominee’s Fifth Avenue apartment was ten blocks north but she didn’t know that. Her mind had gone astray in a nightmarish urban jungle of gloom, remorse and self-destruction.

The elderly man wearing a ragged fedora and a stained overcoat who stopped while others walked past thought she looked familiar but he wasn’t sure. He didn’t go to the theatre or movies and had only a tiny AM radio in his apartment tuned to an Italian language station. Possibly the granddaughter of a friend? “È una bella botta in testa,” he said as he helped her to stand and carefully touched her bleeding head. “Forse dovrei trovare un telefono … so you can see a doctor?” She was a little surprised that she understood him.

“I don’t want un'ambulanza o un medico,” J.J. replied in Italian wiping filthy hair out of her eyes. “I want to die.”

“We all will go when the master calls,” the man said sadly. “Why enter a race? My name is Zanobi Esposito. Perhaps I can help you?”

“Unless you have a razorblade, a gun, or a full bottle of Vicodin in your coat pocket I don’t see how,” J.J. told him while raking cigarette butts and tiny bits of dog feces out of her hair with her fingers.

“Foolish talk from such a … pretty … young lady. Tell me your name and I won’t mention what you said to your poor mother!”

“My poor mother and father are both dead … and … I don’t know who I am.” J.J. found herself stunned by the sudden knowledge, but she didn’t think being an orphan was what her trouble was. She had lost someone very dear to her … but just couldn’t remember who. A fleeting image of a breathtakingly handsome man throwing a clam-shell down a sandy beach and laughing together with him at fighting seagulls made her insides blister but she didn’t know why. Was he dead too? What happened? The woman with no name couldn’t think about that right now … it was just too painful.

“Frost on a few vines and you want to burn your fields!” Zanobi took off his hat and brushed arthritic fingers through his greying hair before he sighed. “The people selling tickets for the ship lied when they told us America was a land of goat-herds and honey.”

“Oh, the dreams are here alright,” J.J. told him. “But if you don’t have enough cash in your pockets those goats transform into demon-herds and you’re apt to get stung.”

Zanobi looked at the torn jeans and the sneakers she was wearing with the laces untied. The glittery but dirty yellow t-shirt with a screen print of I LOVE NY on the front looked expensive but then everything in Manhattan did. He took her hand as they crossed 6^th. Avenue and he led her west into Greenwich Village. “I’m sure someone must know where you belong.”

-------2-------

Zanobi Esposito led the bewildered young woman down several streets in the village and no one knew her although several said she looks familiar. “She looks like the girl who played Jane in Tarzan,” a woman selling Hobo sandwiches suggested.

 “Nah,” a man putting spicy mustard on a roll corrected her. “Robyn Janette has a robust figure. This poor woman looks like she works in a broom closet.”

“Robust? Look at the face - not her boobs … you guys are disgusting!”

“If they didn’t want us to look they wouldn’t film so many close-ups of a young girl running half-naked through the jungle!”

“Anyone know who this young lady is? She seems to have lost her memory!” Zanobi shouted to several people across the street.

Zanobi and J.J. crossed the street and after stopping at a café to get a sandwich and using the telephone the Italian immigrant decided to try a different section of the village. “Don’t worry,” he told her, “you belong somewhere … everybody does! If we can’t find your life we’ll just have to make you a new one … and find you a job and get you a place to stay.”

“I don’t want a job … and I don’t want to live.” J.J. began to cry.

-------3-------

A smiling black brother wearing a six thousand dollar Brioni suit and eight-hundred dollar shoes watched and listened from a café service entrance next to the What a Ride! taxi parking area. Eddie had just finished slamming a seventeen-year old runaway’s head into a wall for holding back fifty from her last three-hundred dollar fare. He’d started by twisting her arm just a little. Girls from Kansas are always so slow to learn. Now a dishwasher would have to be paid to clean the blood from the brick. Eddie forgot about his troublesome intern when he recognized the superstar and heard the word amnesia mentioned. He slipped the brass knuckles back into his jacket. He couldn’t believe his good fortune. Of course Eddie didn’t come forward or say anything; that wouldn’t be good business.

Edward Coffee (Fast Eddie Black) was always on the lookout for opportunities. Most of his legitimate money came from his café and from securing models for the hundreds of form artists in Greenwich Village just one canvas away from success. The illegal uses he found for his unemployed girls (and sometimes boys) made a thousand times that amount. The taxi service was by appointment only and on a Saturday night every hack was continually in service. If the woman wasn’t Robyn Janette she was her identical twin … even without makeup and with sidewalk smeared on her face.

Three of Robyn’s golden-framed movie posters graced Eddie’s bedroom walls including her Oscar winning movie Escape the Night and he had over two hundred publicity photos downloaded to his smart phone. A few of his favorites had been photo-shopped by desperate computer artists into full-frontal nudes. Robyn had a tiny mole in the exact same place as this woman on her lower left cheek and a few others in less viewed places. This was no lookalike. Eddie thumbed through some of his collected images now. To say this sexy entertainer was an obsession was an understatement.

Eddie used his iPhone to call several associates. People had to be warned. No one in the direction the pair walked would give them any help at all … or else! Then he texted an employee who drove one of his fleet of custom equipped taxis (fold-down back seats) and with special dark tinted windows – currently at a local carwash being cleaned - apt clean/class - stock expensive size 3 bitch / white-blow no cuts ASAP This would get things rolling. He’d give Benji Jets more detailed instructions later. The young blonde from Seattle had been moved from back seat entertainment to tour-driver because of a broken arm. If the bitch messed up this time, or if he just decided to have some fun, she was in the river … she wouldn’t be the first. Now all Eddie had to do was come up with a business plan.

As J.J. and Zanobi walked away, Fast Eddie followed … sniffing, wiping his nose, cool as rain. A smiling African American just off the boat driving a BMW with fresh paint and a new serial number. Praise the Lord and show no frown! There do be a God in New York Town! And Eddie wasn’t talking about his friend Slicer the president of East Harlem Crips. He wasn’t going to lose sight of this particular sweet-thing … No way! This was a dream-ride sent to him from heaven … waiting just down the street to be jimmied, hot-wired and driven all over the city.

-------4-------

J.J. may not have known who she was but she still was perceptive to her surroundings. As she and Zanobi grew near his Bleeker street apartment building, people became friendlier although none seemed to speak English. Many of the residents seemed to know him; some even called him “Pappa” Esposito. “The people in your neighborhood like you,” J.J. said.

“What’s not to like,” Zanobi told her. “You treat people with respect and they do right by you.”

It wasn’t just that the people liked him, J.J. detected an underlying sense of esteem from his neighbors that made her look at the old man wearing scuffed shoes a ragged fedora and a stained overcoat in a new way. “This is the building where I live. Don’t worry, mamma knows you’re coming.”

J.J. was surprised at the elegance of the apartment building. She expected dark hallways in a shabby tenement overflowing with children and trash cans. Where Zanobi lived was modern and elegant. Mrs. Esposito met them at the elevator. “Look at that nasty bump on your head! And he has you walking around half the city!” She ushered J.J. mother hen like into a large, white-carpeted apartment tastefully furnished in modern glass and chrome.

J.J. noticed the bright artwork hanging on the walls … it looked original and expensive. Mrs. Esposito noticed her amazement. “Mio marito lavora molto duramente! Do we have to live like hobos?”

The well-dressed gentleman opening what looked like a medical bag in the kitchen took J.J. by surprise. “Have a seat,” he told her. “While I have a look at your pretty head.” J.J. stared at Zanobi accusingly.

            “What? I knew you would refuse be taken to a hospital … so I had someone come here!”

            “I didn’t know doctors made house calls anymore!” J.J. winced as the doctor cleaned the bump on her head with an alcohol soaked tissue.

            “He’s not just any doctor,” Mrs. Esposito corrected her. “Benny is finest Neurosurgeon in all of Manhattan.”

            “Mr. Esposito and I go back a long way,” the doctor who introduced himself as Benito Russo told J.J. as he tracked the movement of her pupils with a small light, “All the way from Sicily! Pappa has done many kind things for my family over the years … it’s a small thing for me to come here and look after one of his friends.”

            “I’m afraid I don’t know if I have any money!” J.J. began to get worried.

Dr. Russo allowed his voice grow gruff with mock sternness. “A smile is my fee for house-calls … and I demand to be paid at once!”

J.J. managed a small grin and Zanobi applauded. “Now! That’s more like it!”

            “I don’t detect any apparent temporal lobe damage that would cause your memory loss,” Dr. Russo told her gently. “It’s my opinion that you probably don’t remember who you are … because you don’t want to.”

            “Why would I do that?” J.J. had a feeling that he was correct.

            “Sometimes people have things done to them or do things to others that are so horrible that they want to forget … so they do.”

The misty image of a man throwing a clam shell down a sandy beach flashed through J.J.’s mind and then was quickly gone. “I remember something … but it was a happy memory!”

            “It’s like after someone you know very well dies,” Dr. Russo told her. “We only remember the best things about them.”

Sadly that seemed to make sense to the woman who didn’t know who she was. Whatever her life had been before - it was now gone forever … she had overwhelming feelings of guilt and regret. Had she hurt someone? Had she done something illegal? Were the police looking for her? It didn’t seem likely but it was still probably best to bury the past. “I do want to live,” she told Zanobi. “Thank you for helping me … and perhaps I can find a job and hope my memory returns!”

-------5-------

Fast Eddie Black had spent a week learning everything he could about Robyn Janette from her rise to Hollywood stardom to her current romance with newcomer Johnny Lang.  Word on the street was they had had some kind of blowout. Now he looked up and down the hallway as two of his associates, Bill (Beef Boy) Nelson and Lester Holmes kicked a door open on the sixth floor of a shabby nine-story tenant building. They didn’t bother knocking.

A sickly pale Steven Bates, and a swarm of circling flies, jumped from a torn and stained sofa and made a dash together for the bathroom – the only room in the filthy apartment with a locking door. Lester grabbed him by the neck and body-slammed him onto a rug covered with cigarette butts, wood splinters, beer-soaked upholstery-padding and stale popcorn.

The Walking Dead was playing on a battered black and white TV and Beef Boy punched his huge fist through the bulky picture tube without wincing. “Relatives of yours?”

“I’ll pay you the money in the morning! I promise!” Steven squirmed as Lester pinned his head to the floor garbage with his foot.

“Damn! Don’t you ever clean this stink-hole up?” Eddie covered his nose with a silk handkerchief.

“I will tomorrow,” Steven bawled, “right after I get you your money!”

“You still have that photo equipment … or did it all go shooting up your arm?”

Steven pointed to a digital camera covered with a dirty dishtowel on a tripod and a color printer next to a battered Apple computer. “Yes I still have them,” Steven closed his eyes. “The hock-shop will only give me a hundred bucks for everything … and it’s my only way to make any money.”

            “You still have those pictures you took of Robyn Janette at the airport and in the park? The ones nobody would buy because they looked too domestic?”

            “Yeah sure!” Steven said feeling better. “I must have several hundred. I followed her for two weeks the last time she came to town. You want me to make more Photoshop nudies for you?”

Eddie handed Steven a stack of photos of himself. “I want you to put me in the pictures and make them look real … no dirty stuff … washing the family car, dining together on a cruise ship that sort of thing. Oh, and a baby. I want us to have a baby together. I want it to look like me and Robyn Janette are the happiest married couple you’ve ever seen … you got that?”

            “I can make you a whole photo album … wedding pictures with all the attendants and the honeymoon … you want a cruise to the Caribbean? I can do that!” Steven felt born again.

            “You have a week,” Eddie told him. “You do a good job and maybe I’ll forget about the money you owe … Hell! I might even throw in a taxi ride!”

Beef shook his head. “Not until after I’m finished,” he said.

            “You won’t be sorry,” Steven promised. “Her own mother will think you two are married!”

-------6-------

            It had been a week since Zanobi took J.J. home and he had begun to think of her as his own daughter. Mrs. Esposito had two of her younger friends give the girl, who couldn’t remember who she was, a complete makeover cutting the gum out of her hair making it short and putting in blonde highlights. “As long as you don’t know who you are … you might as well look pretty!”

J.J. even had a new job working in a local bakery. Zanobi had many friends ready to do anything for him and slowly the pain of J.J.’s past, whatever that was, was beginning to slip away.

One morning J.J. who everyone now called Jane, somehow the name seemed familiar, was just carrying a large pan filled with Danish muffins to the rack to cool when a well-dressed black man came in the shop. “Where on Earth have you been?” he demanded as his eyes filled with tears.

            “Right here,” J.J. was stunned. “You know me?”

            “Of course I do … you’re my wife,” Eddie told her.

            “I don’t remember you,” J.J. said dropping the still warm pan on the counter.

            “We’ve been married for two years … we have a son,” Eddie looked frustrated as he tried to convince her. Then he opened his wallet and showed her the pictures. “You disappeared after Johnny’s accident and we’ve looked everywhere for you!”

The name Johnny sent cold shivers down J.J.’s spine. She knew the name was dear to her and somehow connected to her guilt and memory troubles.

            “You thought our son had drowned in the family swimming pool while you were supposed to be watching him … but by some miracle the doctors brought him back!”

            “Johnny’s alive?” J.J. was already taking off her apron. All she knew was that she had to find him.

            “He’s home from the hospital and off from life support … he’s been asking for his mamma.”

            “I’ve got to see Johnny,” Her head was swimming. She didn’t remember much but she remembered the name Johnny. J.J. burst into tears as Eddie followed her outside to the waiting limo.

            “Don’t worry,” Eddie said under his breath as he flipped the window sign on the shop to CLOSED and then pushed her into the back seat. J.J.  was bawling tears of joy. “When I get tired of you, you’re going to see lots of Johnny’s.”

And the long black car sped away …

TO BE CONTINUED …