Page 10 of Hard Hitter
Ari walked home, heading north toward the tiny Brooklyn neighborhood of Vinegar Hill where the streets were brick and the buildings were barely three stories high. The houses here were smaller and older than in almost any other part of Brooklyn. The townhouse where Ari lived dated back to the Civil War. Someone had put a rather pedestrian brick facade on it during the sixties, which dimmed some of its charm. But as Ari approached from a block away, its blue-painted wooden door beckoned her home.
She was lucky as hell to live here. The building was worth a couple of million dollars at least, in spite of the Con Edison substation blocking the entire neighborhood from having a decent view of the river. The townhouse belonged to Ari’s great-uncle. He and the rest of her Italian family had decamped for Florida a decade ago. She paid only a very modest monthly rent in exchange for looking after the building.
As she approached, though, she saw something that made her slow down. The back end of her ex’s dark-red van was visible just around the corner. The sight of it made her stomach ache instinctively, but its presence wasn’t necessarily bad news.
Three days ago she’d sent him an ultimatum—an e-mail notifying him that he had two days to finally clear the rest of his belongings out of her storage room. He hadn’t repliedat all. Just this morning she’d been wondering what to do about it.
If Vince was finally clearing out his junk from her basement, that was progress.
Ari dug out her keys—still shiny from their newness—and covered the rest of the block quickly. She jogged up the four steps to her front door and unlocked the brand new deadbolt. Then she closed and locked the door. And listened.
The only voices she could make out were muffled, and coming from the rear of the building. She set her bag down at the foot of her staircase and tip-toed through the dining room and on into the kitchen, stopping only to kick off her boots to silence the sound of footsteps on her hardwood floors. She hung back near the old refrigerator, taking a cautious, oblique glimpse out the back window.
Nothing.
Her heart was racing for no good reason. Vince was outside and she was inside, behind the safety of new locks. His presence unsettled her nonetheless. Vince Giardi was the embodiment of her worst, most embarrassing mistake. The grandmother who’d helped raise her—God rest her soul—had been right about Vince.Thank you, Nonna.Sorry it took me eight years to notice.
Ari leaned against the fridge, its hum at her back, and took a six-count breath, expanding her diaphragm. She wouldn’t let Vince get her riled up today. There was no need, anyway.
She heard the distinctive slam of the exterior basement door, and stood on tiptoe to take another peek out the window. A beanie hat appeared. But when the man came into view, it most certainly wasn’t Vince. That was obvious even with the guy’s back to her. He was thin and wearing dirty jeans. Vince would never dress like that. And, damn it, the man wasn’t carrying anything. If there were strangers coming in and out of her basement storage room, they’d better have moving boxes containing Vince’s clothing and video games.
Damn. It. All. Now what?
More than a month had passed since the awful weekend their relationship had finally ended after an epic fight. Her flight was late in from Ottawa, and she’d gotten home to find Vince waiting up for her, drunk and angry. He wanted to know where she’d been. Why hadn’t she called?
This was nothing new, sadly. As soon as she’d taken the job with the Brooklyn Bruisers, things had headed downhill. But that awful night he didn’t bother to couch his jealous little jabs behind a tense chuckle. He flat out accused her of sleeping with hockey players.
Even as she’d taken out her phone with shaky hands to show him the official arrival time of their charter flight on her Katt Phone, she’d understood that he’d finally gone too far. That she couldn’t live under a cloud of pointless suspicion anymore. It ended right then, even if Vince didn’t know it yet. But instead of playing it cool like a smart girl, she’d raised her voice. Blame it on her Italian heritage, but her top blew right off. “I shouldn’t have toproveit, Vince,” she’d said angrily. “If you think I’m a cheat, then leave me already! Walk out the fucking door! Juststop this!”
He did stop it—by grabbing both her wrists and shoving her toward the stairs. In her wool socks, she’d slipped. Heart-stopping fear rose up in her throat as the staircase sliced into view. Her head bounced off the wall as she grabbed for the carved antique bannister.
Her foot stopped her fall, though—caught between two balusters. At first it was such a relief to stop falling that she didn’t feel the pain shooting up her instep. And then, shaking with fury and freaked out, she’d tried to conceal it. But that’s hard when you can’t put weight on one leg.
At the sight of her injury, Vince had sobered up fast and used Uber to get them a ride to the ER. “I’m sorry, baby,” he babbled. “Terrible accident. Never happen again.”
She made sure it wouldn’t. The next night, when he went to work at the club, she’d had an emergency locksmith come over to change the deadbolts. She’d asked her tenant, a flight attendant named Maddy, to help put Vince’s clothing intotrash bags. It was possibly the most embarrassing favor she’d ever asked of anyone.
It had been far easier to shake off the hospital staff’s probing questions than Maddy’s. “He did this, didn’t he?” she demanded, pointing one long red fingernail at Ari’s walking cast. “I never liked the look of him. Good for you showing him the door.”
Ari had neither confirmed nor denied Vince’s role in her tumble. He probably hadn’t meant to break a bone, but it really didn’t matter. A bone was broken, and he’d been the cause of both her trip to the ER and her sudden wake-up call. With Maddy’s help she’d hobbled around, doing her best to be respectful of his things even as she scrambled to get them all out of the house and into the basement storage unit. Maddy made all the trips down those back stairs herself, which meant Ari owed her. Big.
“You’d do the same for me,” Maddy protested. And surely it was true. When the job was done, Ari gave her a hug and a pre-apology for whatever grief Vince might give her if he happened to show up when Maddy was coming or going. “I can take care of myself, hon. You do the same.”
The fourA.M.pounding on the exterior door had been awful. When Ari didn’t come to the door to explain herself, he’d begun yelling terrible things up at her bedroom window. “Fucking cunt! Get down here and let me in.”
Maddy’s chainsaw voice had rung out from her third floor window. “Go away or I’m calling the police. You have ten seconds. Tomorrow Ari will tell you how to get your stuff.”
“Meddling bitch!” he’d returned. But when Maddy’d told him she was dialing 911, he’d actually left.
In the morning she’d e-mailed Vince to let him know he could retrieve his own things from the storage room with his old key. The fact that he didn’t answer or turn up for a week only made her more anxious. It was unlike him to give up and walk away. Especially if his collection of expensive suits was on the line.
But then one day she’d spotted his van nearby. And she’dheard the basement door open and close. It happened again a couple of days later. For the past few weeks he’d either been moving out one article of clothing at a time, or merely torturing her with his sporadic presence.
That’s why her latest e-mail had threatened to change the locks on the basement door, too. She should have done that weeks ago. It’s just that the basement was so inhospitable—its entrance barely a step up from the cellar door inThe Wizard of Oz—she thought he’d get sick of the lurker charade and leave her alone for good.
Hopefully today was the day.
Hugging herself, Ari kept up her vigil by the fridge. Eventually the door slammed again and Vince strode into view, his back to the window, his swagger intact. He disappeared around the corner of the building. A moment later she heard what had to be the van’s engine start up and then drive away.
