"How did he find my cell
"He must've begged
someone at your mobile phone company to give it to him," said Galloway. "Are you going to change it again now that he has it?"
"No," said Noah looking down at the cell phone and browsing his call record to find Henry's number, but Henry's call appeared as 'unknown'. "Damn!" he said. "He called me from a public phone."
"His friend George gave me his home number," said Corey. "Do you want to call him?" He pulled the phone number, handwritten in blue ink out of his pocket.
"Yes," said Galloway, "call him. Call him from my phone. I want to talk to him."
"Ok," said Noah and picked up the phone on Galloway's desk. He dialed the number. Henry and Paola were talking in the living room with the baby. George got up and went to the phone in the living room. He saw Galloway's number on his caller ID. He wanted to give Galloway the benefit of the doubt, so he didn't interrupt Paola and Henry's conversation to tell him that he had called. He just took the call.
"Hello, this is Enrique Rubio's residence." None of Henry's fans knew that Henry's real name was Enrique and not Henry.
Galloway took the phone from Noah and said, "Hello, this is Steven Galloway. I want to speak to Mr. Rubio, please."
George remained silent and crossed his arms across his chest. He didn't know if to give the phone to Henry or not. "Uh, Mr.---"
"Don't say my name. Give him the phone and don't tell him that it's me."
George took the phone in his hand looked Henry and Paola's way and said, "Henry, come to the phone. You got a phone call."
Henry let go of Paola's delicate hands, gave the baby back to her, got up, walked to the phone, and took the phone from George. George walked to the sofa and sat with Paola. "Hello, this is Enrique." "Enrique Rubio, my
beautiful, enviably beautiful man, how are you?"
"Is this Mr. Galloway?" "Yes, it is. Long time, no
talk."
"Why did you call me
enviably beautiful?"
"I called you that because as badly as you hurt me, I'd rather have your face than have this--- this---thing that they call a face."
"No, you don't want to have my face. If you ever do, you'll hurt yourself in front of the damned mirror. That's why I sent your real face to you, so that you wouldn't be tempted to take mine to get back at me."
"That would be a great way to get back at you. I could take your face and commit crimes in your name and put you in jail for the rest of your life---"
Henry gasped knowing that he'd given him the worst idea of getting his revenge.
"However, I'm not going to do that because that's just not my style. Gee, I thought that the only thing that worried you about me taking your face was the crimes that I could've committed in your name if I wanted to."
"No," said Henry. "I'd spent the rest of my life in jail just to make it up to you. I know that you think that I'm crazy for telling you this and that this sounds like bull to you, but I'd never hurt anyone before I met you, and I can't stand my guilty conscience."
Worried about Henry's mental health, Mr. Galloway said, "Enrique---"
Henry interrupted him. "I can't sleep at night. The image of my hand tearing off your face, I can't get it out of my mind." He started to cry.
Smiling evilly, Mr.
Galloway replied, "Maybe that's because you've been keeping my face in your nightstand. I take it that you stopped loving yourself since the morning that this happened. Your performance doesn't show it, though. You sing like an angel, literally. It's not noticeable how miserable you are."
Noah felt sick when he watched Steven enjoying Henry's pain, but at the same time, he didn't blame him for it. He was glad that he hadn't become a Christian because it would cause an internal conflict for him to love his fellowman no matter what and pray for God to forgive him or her, and hate Hailey so passionately at the same time. "That's because I pretend to be someone that I am no longer," replied Henry. "I pretend to be happy and sure of myself, but I'm not."
"You hate to pretend, don't you? You want to get out of this world of mayhem, don't you?"
"Yes," said Henry, crying. "I know that no matter how hard I try," Paola got up and went up to him and gave him a big hug to comfort him. "I'll never be the man that I used to be, but I want to be happy again. I want to regain the peace of mind and the tranquility that I had before we met."
Steven's smile turned into a serious face. "Well, if you want to do that, you have to pay for my surgery."
"No, no, no," said Noah, "I'll pay for your surgery."
"Let him do something for me, Noah."
"I'll give you anything that you want that I don't have to buy with money," said Henry, crying. "Just give me one last chance to make it up to you, please."
Steven smiled again and said, "You're willing to get me anything that you don't have to give any of your money for, something that I want that is not material?"
Smiling in between tears, Henry said, "That's right."
"Get me a woman." Noah looked at him,
gasping, and said to Corey, "A woman? Is he out of his mind?" and Corey told him to keep quiet with his index fingers in front of his lips.
"That's not hard to do." "It's not hard for you to
get a woman for me, but it is hard to convince her to love me for who I am and not what I look like, and that's your real task, and your real challenge."
"Oh, I get it," said Henry. "Well, I think that convincing a woman to love you for who you are is something that only you can do. I can tell her wonderful things about you even though I hardly know you."
Steven laughed and said, "Saying sweet things about me, that would work!"
"Ok. I'm going to hook you up with a friend of mine, a woman that I know is tired of having unsuccessful relationships with men that she refers to as 'pretty guys'. She thinks that dating an---" He was going to say 'ugly' but he felt that this would greatly offend Steven and this was the last thing that he wanted to do. "She thinks that dating a physically imperfect guy---" This was the term that Steven expected the least and liked the most, "she'll finally have a good relationship because she feels that good-looking guys, all of the good-looking guys, that they're vain." Steven laughed hysterically and said, "Oh, so I'll finally score! Oh, so she is your friend even though she thinks that you're vain."
Noah and Corey laughed even though they knew that Steven wasn't sucking up to Henry. Henry just smiled and said, "You're saying things that you don't mean to make me feel better about me, aren't you?"
"You offend me! I never suck up! What I say is what I mean."
"Why do you insist on telling me how good-looking I am? I know that you're not in love with me."
"One doesn't have to be in love with another person to tell him or her that he or she's good- looking. Some people say it out of lust and others say it out of admiration. I'm among the second group."
Henry laughed for the first time in nine months without pretending and said, "You're something else, Steven Galloway, you really are. Well, I'm going to talk to my friend tomorrow morning and we'll pay you a visit," and hung up and said to George and Paola, "You will not believe what he asked me for to heal his pain."
The morning after, Brandy, Dean and Henry's best friend, she came over to Henry's house. Brandy knew that he was attempting to get her together with a physically-imperfect guy, like the one that she wanted. She thought that there would be a beautiful and long-lasting relationship with Noah, but she was wrong. Brandy's dream would've come true if Noah had never met Nicole, but she guessed that Nicole came into the finish line first, so she was obviously the winner of the race and the championship. She rang the bell and Henry walked out of the kitchen and into the primary living room and walked to the door and opened it. He was making breakfast at the moment. "Come in," he said, and she went in and closed the door behind her. They walked to the kitchen.
Henry was also Dean's
favorite singer since the year 2000, when he made his debut into the celebrity world in Latin and North American soap operas, long before debuting as a singer, so he took Brandy to one of his recordings of an episode of a Latin soap opera that he was the villain in. This was in Mexico. He was from Costa Rica and not from Mexico, but he and his parents moved to Mexico hoping that he would make his dreams come true there. He did, big time. From that moment, Brandy loved Henry deeply. They'd been friends since then. Although Henry wasn't born in Mexico, he felt that he was Mexican because he'd lived there for four years of his life, before moving to the United States to start his career as a singer. They weren't related at all, but they loved one another as brother and sister.
"So," he said as she sat in the dining room, "are you ready to meet Mr. Right?"
"I've met so many Mr.
Wrong's that for me anyone could be Mr. Right."
"Is Mr. Noah Spears," he said and leaned over on the counter and looked her in the eyes, "one of those Mr. Wrong's?"
Chapter 36
"Yes," said Brandy, "he is, not because he's a bad man, but because he never loved me the way that I wanted him to."
"How do you know that he's not a bad man?" said Henry as he served Brandy's breakfast from the range. "You know the minute that you started talking to me about Noah Spears, I figured that he'd suffered a lot, too much. How do you know that all of that crap that he's been through hasn't turned him into an evil man?"
As Henry walked to the table with the two breakfasts in his hand, cinnamon-flavored oatmeal, bananas, two pieces of toast, and a glass of juice and a glass of milk for each one of them, Brandy said, "Because it takes a lot more than that to turn evil someone like Noah."
He placed Brandy's
breakfast in front of her, placed his breakfast where he wanted to sit, right in front of her, sat down and said, "If my child had been raped, I'd be a serial killer."
"I know how different you are from Noah. You're a lot less... good, so to speak."
"That's right. He's got a much more tender heart than I do."
"He's been to hell and back, but he's pressing on."
"I'm not pressing on," said Henry and put the first spoonful of oatmeal in his big mouth. He chewed it and said, "God blesses Noah for being such a sissy."
"Oh, come on," said
Brandy.
"It's true. If half of those
things had happened to me, I would've killed half of the people in the whole American nation."
"Geese, Enrique..." "Don't be loud. You'll
wake up Paola and the baby."
Astonished, and when she was swallowing a spoonful of her oatmeal, Brandy almost choked, but she couldn't stay quiet. "Paola finally moved in with you? How did you get her to do it, a conservative and old-fashioned young woman like her? What baby are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about our baby together."
Brandy gasped and said, "Oh, my God," and laughed hysterically. "She gave in to you?"
"Yes, sort of."
"Nobody beats you when it comes to seducing someone."
"I didn't seduce her. I hadn't gotten a piece of ass since--- "
She laughed hysterically and almost choked with her third spoonful of oatmeal.
"I hadn't had any since my birthday." She just kept on laughing like crazy. "I got an STD from some whore that I didn't even know and there was Paola."
"Man, you're..." "That was after we
conceived Ricky."
"You had sex twice? Oh, my God, what kind of sex was it?" "The first time it was
everything but intercourse and the second time it was only oral. Paola figured that vaginal sex wasn't the only thing that would calm me down."
"Did she mind? Didn't she find it disgusting?"
"She let go of me before that thing came. If a woman doesn't want to eat that I don't make her eat it. When she doesn't care, I don't care."
crazy."