AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The bus drops me off about half a mile’s walk from where google maps tells me the restaurant is, a part of Manhattan that’s been redeveloped recently so everything looks like it’s been zapped in from some future city a thousand years from now. I don’t know what it is with glass, steel, exposed brick walls and the kind of light bulbs where you can see the element inside hanging in multitudes from the ceiling like a millipede’s legs, but everywhere right now that considers itself modern seems to be a variation on that exact theme. On this street, which at one point not so long ago used to be the thoroughfare of an industrial zone that encompassed warehouses, markets and buildings like the one in Red Hook where we left Shadowheart’s skull, there are places now that look like the frantic drawings of an architect student, desperate to create something no-one has ever seen before, regardless of whether it suits the environment.
There are windows that aren’t windows but huge TV screens instead, outside walls made of organic plants and the obligatory bright element light bulbs everywhere I look.
My concern I won’t be able to find The Exchange is assuaged when I realize that not only is the name projected on the sidewalk in bright red lettering, it’s also spread across the front of the place in an enormous font that makes the Hollywood sign look like something you might have to put glasses on to read properly.
There is a red carpet, a barrier rope, a queue outside and the kind of door staff that look like they break people’s legs for fun. I expected big based on the place that Mr. Money Bags took us to last time, but I didn’t expect to have to queue for an hour, get padded down and then pass an interview in order to get a meal. This kind of attention is way too much for a girl like me, and I can already feel myself getting nervous.
I call Mom, hoping I might be able to convince her that we’d all be much more comfortable in a cafe in Brooklyn, where they keep the food in trays under artificial lights and you pay once and eat as much as you like, but when I finally get through, she’s got an entirely different solution.
“Your name’s on the door”, she says plainly, as though the thing were entirely obvious.
I still feel bad skipping the queue and heading directly up to the door staff, but I don’t exactly want to queue up either. I get what I can only assume are a mixture of hateful, jealous and unconvincing looks from those people that have spent most of the afternoon waiting patiently behind the barrier, while they watch a nervous girl in jeans and woolly jumper who looks like she doesn’t belong on the street at all, cross the sacred red carpet in a bee-line for the six foot blond haired girl wielding the clipboard.
I’m not even on the first step when an arm the size of my leg halts my progress. I look slowly up to the man who might have just walked out of the pages of a fairy story.
“Can I help you?” he says.
“My name’s on the door?” I say, so nervous I somehow make it into a question.
“That depends what your name is”, the man says, before raising his hand like a castle raises it’s drawbridge to give me access to the woman behind him.
“Penny Breen”, I say, but the man has already turned his back, to keep an eye on whoever else might be thinking about attempting a mutiny.
I close the distance between myself and Brigitte Nielsen, who only gets taller the closer I get.
“Name?” she says curtly to me.
“Penny Breen”, I say, my neck sore just looking up to her.
She gives me a confused look that is so powerful it makes me briefly consider whether I am actually who I say I am, before checking her list to make sure. “I thought you’d look different”, she says. “Follow me.”
I haven’t got time to wonder what she means by different, or indeed why she’s considering how I look at all, before I’m whisked quickly through the oversized entrance doorway, at a pace I find needlessly difficult to keep up with. Getting chaperoned to the table is all very well, but if it means arriving there out of breath I think it’d much rather do it on my own.
I have barely a brace of heartbeats to appreciate the opulence that surrounds us before I’m delivered like an unwanted Christmas present (I thought you’d look different) to a couple that already have way too much.
Brigitte Nielsen strikes my name off her list, clicks her heels and disappears back to the entrance, like a robot with a single setting.
Mom and Brandon - Brandon, that’s it, I knew it was in there somewhere - look like they’ve been on the happy meds. There is champagne on the table, already half drunk and Mom’s got the same kind of rosiness in her cheeks I got used to seeing a lot after the divorce.
If they’re not celebrating something, they’re doing a really good job of pretending.
“Hi, Penny”, Brandon says, standing up to give me a hug. “It’s great to see you again.”
“Hi”, I say, a little taken aback by the familiarity of the hug. “Mom.”
“Hello, darling”, Mom says. “Thanks for coming.”
“You don’t have to thank me for coming, Mom”, I say. “It’s always a pleasure to see you.”
I go to pull out the chair to sit down, and struggle so much with the weight of it I have to use both hands. I also notice there are five chairs and not just three, which means either we’re expecting company, or Brandon is so rich, he just pays extra just to have the space.
“Champagne?” Mom asks, lifting the bottle towards me.
I tilt both of the glasses they’ve been kind enough to prepare for me in advance and narrow my eyes at her. “So, are you going to let me know what this is all about?”
Mom lets the bubbly fizz into the crystal before responding. “Don’t be so cynical Penny”, she says. “It’s nothing major.”
“You left me five whatsapp messages”, I remind her. “You haven’t sent five whatsapp messages to me since I installed it on your phone.”
“I just wanted to make sure you were coming”, she says. “We don’t get to do this that often.”
“We thought it would be a chance to get the family together for the first time”, Brandon adds.
“The family?” I ask, the word sounding way too united for my liking.
“I have two sons that should already be here and aren’t. When they get here and we’ve all done the introductions, we’ll let you know why we’ve got everyone together.”
“It’s nothing bad”, Mom says, giggling a little.
“Mom!”
“Sorry, it’s the champagne”, Mom says, her face and chest going red.
Champagne, talk of family, five whatsapp messages in a row, one of Manhattan’s new exclusive restaurants, Brandon’s entitled children to meet us for the very first time, this better not be going the way I have a horrible feelings it’s going, and I’m not talking about drug muling either.
“You’re not selling the house are you?” I say.
Mom gives me a quizzical look and then falls about giggling again. “Why would I sell the house?” she asks when she’s finally composed herself.
“No reason”, I say.
She better not be thinking about selling the house I grew up, fantasized and developed my imagination in. If this is about Mom moving in with Brandon, in his mansion that looks out over central park, I might have to refuse point blank on the basis that stealing a child’s history is the worse crime of all.
“Do you like the place?” Brandon asks, perhaps as a way of distracting my attention away from the gigantic elephant in the room that might just be him stealing my mom away and turning her into a champagne guzzling maniac with money to burn.
I give the place a look, just to give the impression that these kind of things impress me. Actually, I am impressed, it would be impossible not to be, but I’d be equally happy and a lot less stressed if we were sat in a booth in Chipotle.
“It’s amazing”, I say. “I love the lightbulbs over the bar.”
The entire place is open planned, with exposed brick walls, high ceilings that seem to disappear up into the void of space abov
e us, where ventilator fans and light fixtures hang like modern art sculptures. I can see the chefs cooking, the waiting staff buzzing around like swarms of bees and Jack and Logan looking at me with a pallid express of horror.
Jack and Logan?
“What the fuck?”
I’ve not only said it out loud, I also happening to be standing right now, the chair that must weigh fifty kilos flat on it’s back like a knocked out boxer and both of my champagne glasses on their side and guzzling liquid out all over the tablecloth and floor. Not only is it Jack and Logan, not only are they here, where they shouldn’t be in a million years, they are making their way to the table.
Mom and Brandon look at me in abject horror, and then over to where my line of sight leads, to find out just what category of cold-sweat inducing nightmare has made me react in the way that I have.
