"No."
"Well, I have a way to
make him remember what happened simply as something that happened. I know that it's impossible for someone to forget something, especially something this gruesome, unless you take away their memories. I've got a way of giving him back what I took from him."
"Tell me about it. I want to know. I'll tell Mr. Galloway right away."
Henry explained everything to Corey. He asked Corey to escape from his father's hands for a few minutes and come to his house and pick up his beloved kosher jar. Noah and Galloway could pay for the services of a good plastic surgeon better than Henry could. He had what the surgeons needed to rebuild this face, but he didn't have the money to pay them because an operation like this would exceed
$30,000, and Henry needed his money to liquidate his credit card and identity theft debt. Ten minutes later, while Noah and Galloway were distracted with Galloway's contract and the instructions on how he wanted this to be done, Corey took a cab to Henry's house. Fortunately, Henry's house was only twenty minutes from Galloway's mansion. It wasn't a mansion, but it was a beautiful, gigantic and madly expensive house that cost Henry $600,000. He had just bought it with the money that he'd reunited, solely from TV performances! He had a fortune in the bank, but it was reserved to pay for all of the money that he owed. He couldn't use it for anything else. One hour and forty minutes later, Henry and George arrived at Henry's house. Corey was right in front of the entrance door, safe from kidnappers; thus if someone tried to take him away, the alarm would instantly go off. Henry and George saw him while they were getting out of the car. "Excellent!" Henry said, with the most beautiful smile on his face. "Mr. Spears is here!"
Corey ran up to him and when they collided, he gave him a big hug and Henry carried him. "You know what? What I said to you when we started our conversation on the phone, I take it back. You are an example to follow. An imperfect man can't demand another imperfect man to be perfect."
"The world is imperfect," said Henry as he walked to the front door and George followed, "so why don't we stop talking about perfection?"
"I agree. Perfection doesn't exist on this earth."
George took the keys from the pocket of Henry's pants and unlocked and opened the front door, and he, Henry and Corey walked in. Henry accommodated Corey in the sofa and sat beside him. "I have something that I want you to give to Mr. Galloway. You can't keep it because a malicious person could take it away from you, just to ruin whatever plans that you have with it, and we don't want that, do we?"
"No, we don't."
George turned on the TV. "It's in my room, but I don't want you to come to my room because even though I look just like your father, I'm not your father, so it's totally inappropriate."
"I agree, but why do you say that? Were you abused the night that you ruined Galloway's life?"
"No, I wasn't, but a friend of mine was, so I know what it feels like. You can't come to my room unless your father or your mother comes with us." "My mother's dead." "I'm sorry. Geese, Corey,
How many times have I had to say, 'I'm sorry' to you? How many horrible things have happened in your life to make me repeat that?"
"I know," said Corey with his head down. "My life's literally been hell."
"Poor child," said Henry, holding Corey's hand. "You've suffered so much. I haven't had children yet, but I don't want any of my children to suffer as much as you have."
Staring at him and Corey as they kept talking, George thought, Yes, you do. You just don't know it yet, but I just got a call in which I knew that you're about to find out.
Henry went upstairs to get the jar, and as he did that, the doorbell rang. George got up to go to open the door, but Corey made it seconds before he did and opened it with his supervision. The young woman that stood there, she carried a nine-day-old baby boy in his arms, a baby boy that she'd named Enrique Javier Rubio, Jr. She gasped when she noticed that Corey was literally Henry's mini- me and said, "I can't believe it!"
"Is something wrong?" said Corey.
"Yes, something is very wrong," said the woman, crying. "Henry told me that he didn't have children. He lied to me! You look more like him than my baby does!"
George stood in front of the woman and said, "Paola, this is a misunderstanding. This child is not Henry's, it's Noah Spears'," and Corey smiled.
"Oh," said Paola and held her head as the baby started to cry and she rocked him to calm him down, "that's right, I completely forgot about Noah Spears, Henry's perfectly identical double, well, if he didn't have the disease that he has where the muscles are excessively big."
"That's right," said Corey, "Henry is my father's healthy version. Why don't you come in, Mrs. Rubio?"
Paola smiled as George and Corey made way for her to come in and she came in. George closed the door and whispered, "Corey, they're not married!"
"They will be once that Henry meets his baby's son."
"Oh, yes, sure."
Henry walked downstairs concealing the contents of the jar with aluminum foil. Unless someone took it off, no one could see what was in there. He gasped when he saw the baby in Paola's arms. He instantly knew that the baby was his because the night that they conceived him, they were starting sexual intercourse and when Henry touched her hymen, he instantly stopped. Since he didn't think that there was going to be a serious relationship between them, he didn't want to take her. Even so, he'd made his way into her vagina and the sperm that entered her body were more than enough for her to conceive, and she did. She didn't tell him that she was a virgin because she knew that he would reject her if she did. He'd become sexually active only nine months before in the hands of ten different women at the same time, and he didn't want an innocent woman to go through the same thing that he went through, so he vowed not to ever have sex with a virgin. The mother of his child was a virgin, so when he married her, which he surely would do, he'd have to comply with his duty as her husband. It seemed that Henry and Paola were meant for each other because they were living their lives the exact same way. Paola had just turned twenty-five and she was still a virgin. She was a singer, too. She was on the Catholic Church Choir as a child. She'd lived a happy life... until she slashed a younger woman's face, disfiguring her for the rest of her life. The only difference was that Paola wasn't drunk when she slashed the woman's face. She did it because the woman told her that she would enamor Henry, have a child with him and marry him. At that moment, Paola decided that this would never be because the woman wasn't as sweet and loving as she was. She was evil, she was a cheater, and she was a gold digger. Paola decided that she would be the one to have Henry's child and marry him, because she deserved it, and not the other woman.
Paola seriously thought that real love was more than enough to deserve all of the good things that Henry had to offer to a woman. She was right, but no one agreed with her, except her friends. All of Henry's fans, they thought that all that it took to make their way to Henry's heart was to have a beautiful and tempting body, being vastly sexually experimental, and being almost vain. They thought that was the kind of woman that Henry wanted. They couldn't be more wrong. All of the relationships that Henry had had in the past seven months, they failed precisely because of the total absence of love, and he was tired of that. His ex-lovers had given him everything that he wanted except love, and that's why he dumped them. They didn't know that. They thought that they'd been dumped because they were terrible lovers or because they had had so many lovers that they'd become magnificent lovers by the time that they'd bumped into him. The victim of Paola's jealousy, she thought that Paola was dangerous and so she never reported her. She knew that now that she would never have Henry because of her disfigurement, there was no use in fighting Paola for him. The only reason why she'd ever fight Paola now was revenge.
Henry walked up to Paola and said, "Give me my son," as he took the baby in his arms.
Astonished, Paola asked, "How do you know that it's your son?"
George and Corey looked at each other. "It's obvious, isn't it? He's not identical to me like Corey is," and looked at Corey, "but he looks like me."
"Don't you think that I could've been with other men after the night that I did all of those things with you, and that this could be another man's child?" "No way," said Henry, looking at the baby. "This baby is mine. He stretched his hands to me the minute that he saw me, and he couldn't have done that to any other guy. Look at the bond we've formed.
"You're right," said Paola with tears in her eyes. "Every time that I was alone and I had nothing to do, I'd show my baby pictures of you when I was pregnant and said, 'Baby,' she said, crying bitterly, 'this is your father'."
Henry couldn't help but to shed tears. "That's nice of you.
Being that the love that we had wasn't exactly the love that you wanted to receive from me, and the relationship that we had wasn't what you expected, you should've told him horrors about me."
"I wanted everything from you except sex, but I guess that despite my obvious imperfections you found me---"
"The world is imperfect," he said looking her deeply in the eyes, "so I don't find you imperfect. Only God is perfect." George nodded in agreement and said, "That's right."
"You found me irresistible."
"That's right, but when I started seducing you, you turned out to be something completely different than what I expected."
She replied, "And when I came to you looking for love, you didn't give me the love that I expected. I had a new project at the time and all that I wanted was your support."
Chapter 35
Henry, Paola and George sat on the couch together as Corey made his way back to the front door. "I better go," he said. "By now, Dad and Galloway must be going crazy looking for me."
However, Galloway had gotten Noah drunk. Since Noah didn't know what he was saying or what he was doing, he told him things that he'd only told Dr.
Lester, and Galloway was recording every word that he said. "That's true, they're nuts looking for you," said Henry, sarcastically. He imagined Noah and Galloway doing anything except worrying about Corey. He imagined them machinating evil things against them. Henry really thought that Galloway didn't respect his new life as a Christian, and that he still hated him and wanted the worst for him.
Corey opened the door to get out. George stood up, went around the sofa, walked up to him and said, "Shouldn't you call a cab first? We're not two blocks from the Galloway mansion, you know?"
"And may we never be," added Henry and Paola laughed, not understanding why he made such a comment.
George looked at Henry, shaking his head, and Henry looked at him and then looked back at the baby, which was still in his arms. George went on to say, "We're twenty miles away from that mansion."
"I don't want you to take me there because I don't want my father to know that I've been spending God knows how much of my time with total strangers."
"Why don't we ride the cab together? That way you're not at the mercy of the taxi driver."
"You're right."
Henry gave the baby back to Paola, looked back at Corey and said, "Besides, Galloway and your father are so busy that they won't even know that you left the Galloway mansion."
Estranged, Paola asked, "What do you mean, Enrique?"
Henry looked back at her and said, "I didn't mean that their bodies were busy, I meant that their minds were busy."
"Oh!" exclaimed Paola. "What are their minds busy thinking about?"
"They're thinking about me and how to hurt me."
"No," insisted Corey. "You're wrong."
"Huh?" said Paola. "There are a lot of things
about me that I haven't told you," said Henry, looking Paola in the eyes, "and that I feel that you have to know now that I know that you're the mother of my baby."
"Henry, the fact that I'm the mother of your firstborn, it doesn't mean that you have to tell me all of your secrets."
"You never know when we might be more than the parents of this beautiful baby."
Paola gasped. "Oh, my
God."
"I can hear the bells
tolling," commented Corey and Paola looked at him and gasped again. "Well, we have to go. I'll see you later, Henry."
They walked out the door and George pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed the taxi number. Twenty minutes later, a cab picked them up and took off.
On their way back to the Galloway mansion, the same cab driver that had taken Corey to Henry's house, started talking to George and Corey thinking that they were father and son. He had no time to make friends and these strangers could become his new friends. "So," he said, "where are you headed?" "We want to go to the
Galloway mansion," said Corey. George held the jar in his hands. Corey had forgotten to take it with him, but George hadn't. Otherwise, it would've been useless for Henry to let into his home a child that he didn't know, and that would've made Henry so mad that he wouldn't have talked to George for several years. The sweet Enrique Rubio had been transformed into a merciless and unforgiving creature. Every day, he was figuratively becoming less and less human and more and more cruel.
"You want to go back, right son?" said the driver to Corey.
"I have to go back if I don't want to get my ass kicked," said Corey and George laughed hysterically. Corey smiled through the front mirror.
"Your parents are very strict, aren't they?"
"My mother was lenient and my father's strict. He's as strict as fathers were back in the 1930's."
"Ouch!" said the driver. "When did your mom stop being lenient?"
"She stopped being the way that she was the day that she died."
sorry." George.