“What’s goin’ on? Everythin’ alright?”
“Eh, everything’s fine,” Larry said. “I-I just think Markie wanted to make some arrangements for your homecoming.”
“Oh, I don’t want no celebration or nothin’,” she waved off. “I just wanna see my man.”
“You want help with your bags?” Bruno offered.
“No. Two men in the lobby at all times,” she said, reinforcing one of Markie’s rules. “He upstairs?”
“Yeah,” Bruno answered. “But…”
“But what?” she asked.
After a pause, the bigger man shrugged, “Nothin’.”
Goldie grabbed the raised handle of her suitcase and headed for the elevator. As she did, Larry and Bruno looked at one another anxiously, and the moment the elevator door closed with Goldie inside, Larry hurried over to the house phone on the counter.
Markie and Goldie’s condo was on the fifth floor, which was the top floor of the building. After using her key and stepping into the foyer of the 1,800-square-foot layout, she immediately noticed a change. There was a narrow wall table in the foyer for holding keys, gloves, and purses. Usually, hanging on the wall above it were six ceramic decorative masks tastefully arranged that Goldie had bought at an art gallery. But now, the masks were gone. In their place was a modernistic Jackson Pollack-style painting she neither recognized nor liked.
“What the hell is this?” she asked herself quietly. “Looks like somebody shook up a can of Cherry Coke. Hey, baby?” she called. “I’m home! What happened to my masks?”
She rolled her suitcase into the living room and put her tote on a chair. She looked around with a furrowed brow. She was home, but things looked different. A favorite floor vase had been moved. There was an empty shelf near the stereo where she had kept her collection of vinyl albums. They were mostly artists from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, decades of music she particularly liked.
“Hey!” she said, walking over to the empty shelf. “Where’s mySergeant Pepper? Back In Black?Where the fuck’s mySaturday Night Fever!”
She looked around, not understanding. “Markie?” she called.
Suddenly, a young woman entered from the opposite side of the living room. She appeared at the end of the hallway that led to the master bedroom. She was a little younger than Goldie, blonde and pretty like her, but much more casually dressed. She had her hair loosely piled atop her head with several strands hanging down. She also wore an oversized NYU sweatshirt, baggy plaid sweatpants, and bright pink high-top sneakers. She carried a long blue down coat over her arm and cracked the faintest of smiles at Goldie as she headed for the front door.
“Uh, excuse me?” Goldie said, taken aback. “Who are you?”
The young woman didn’t respond and continued toward the door.
“Hey!”Goldie insisted, her temper igniting while she eyed the other woman’s oversized clothes. “Walkin’ lampshade: I’m talkin’ to you!”
The other blonde opened the front door and tossed Goldie a dismissive look as she exited. Goldie took a couple of steps toward the front door to pursue, but stopped when Markie entered the room, also appearing at the end of the same hall.
“Ay,” he said in a Bronx accent as thick as hers. “You’re back early.”
“That damn well better be the new maid,” she snapped.
“Chill,” he said, walking over to her. “There’s a perfectly logical explanation.”
Markie Santina was a good-looking twenty-seven-year-old Italian, six feet tall, weighing 175 pounds, and lean but taut. Some said he looked like a young Richard Gere, although he didn’t know who that was. He wore slim-fitting Lucky jeans, a powder-blue Lauren pullover sweater, and some Fly London Chukka black boots. His excellent taste in clothing only accentuated his good looks. He walked over and put his arms around her waist.
“I wasn’t expectin’ you ‘til tomorrow,” he smiled.
“Yeah, I can see that,” she said suspiciously. “Who just walked out of our bedroom, and why was she in there?”
“We’ll get to that,” he said. He gave her a quick kiss that she hardly reciprocated, then let go of her waist. “Tell me about Nevada. How’s your aunt doin’?”
“Her partner is dead,” Goldie answered. “How do ya think she’s doin’? Speaking of dead partners, you better start explainin’ who that person was that walked out of our bedroom. And where are my masks? And my albums? Why does my house not look like my house?”
“C’mere,” he said, moving over to the sofa and gesturing for her to sit. “Sit down.”
“What goin’ on, Markie?”
“Sit down,” he smiled.
