“I need to rent another unit,” Matt said. He had rung the bell at the counter and waited several minutes for Ms. Cavanagh, she of the great accent and the chip on her shoulder, to appear. He spent those minutes looking around the Wall Storage office, which was neat and clean, but sad, its two faux leather and faux chrome chairs against a side wall, a Walmart flower print hanging slightly askew above them; a faux leather sofa under the room’s one window. And it was hot, near ninety degrees in the room. The air conditioner fitted into a wall cutout sat there silently, the words old and broken written all over it. While he was waiting a fax came in, something, he could not miss seeing, from the Superior Court of Ocean County, Domestic Violence Unit.
“In addition to A-17?” Anna Cavanagh answered.
“Yes.”
“What size?”
“Small, I just have to put this in it,” said Matt, lifting the duffle bag he was holding above the level of the counter that separated them.
“I have lockers behind the office.”
“So we don’t have to go outside?” Matt was thinking of Nico, sitting in Matt’s car in the parking lot just inside the front gate. He had walked from unit A17, the duffle bag over his shoulder, through the back streets of the facility and entered the office through a back door.
“No. We go there,” Cavanagh said, pointing to a metal door to her right.
“Is there an entrance from the outside?”
“Yes, behind the office, but I will take you through from here.”
“Good, let’s do it.”
“I will need your credit card.”
Matt, twenty-two, six foot tall, a trim one hundred ninety pounds of good-looking young man untempered by any bad experience with women, had been, as a matter of course, rapidly assessing Anna Cavanagh as they spoke. After saying let’s do it, he paused to take a better look. She was far from what he had expected. Her pinned-up hair—what he could see of it—was a pretty, golden blonde, her skin fair. A tiny bead of sweat was making its way slowly down a straight, slightly large, but finely modeled nose, a proud nose set between full lips below and wide apart green eyes above. One—the left one—was slightly off-center, looking permanently at the faint but distinct dusting of freckles on the bridge of her nose. They were beautiful, these eyes, made more beautiful by the one that was slightly cocked, but not beautiful enough to hide the shadow behind them. Of what, he could only guess. Fear? Hatred? Loss? They were eyes that would be magnetic if she ever smiled, feral if she got angry. A grown woman’s eyes.
“I am waiting,” said Cavanagh.
“You have it,” Matt answered. Why so serious? He wanted to say, to break the ice, to get some kind of a reaction from her, but held back, remembering the fax he had seen. Domestic Violence Unit. Something was very wrong in Anna Cavanagh’s life.
“I must run it through this time.”
In the parking lot, Nico was standing outside the car, looking toward the facility’s front entrance, where the locksmith’s van was just passing under the black and white gate arm. He smiled and waved when he saw Matt approaching across the hot tarmac, a smile that Matt was familiar with, beaming, wide open, too innocent to be true.
“So, what did she look like? Nasty?” Nico asked when they were underway, heading toward the Garden State Parkway. On the drive down from Manhattan, Matt had told him about his audio-based impression of Anna Cavanagh, leaving out the accent, the most interesting thing, until today, about her.
“No,” Matt replied. “Worn down, wary, but not nasty.”
“Good looking?”
“She’s okay.” She’s beautiful, Matt thought. And then: You’re guarding your treasure. Like Smaug the dragon.
“The body?”
“Tall, thin.”
“Too thin? Is she a woman?”
“Not too thin.”
“How old?”
“Twenty-nine, thirty.”
“Married?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Twenty-nine is the best age, Matvey,” Nico said. “They want to make the most of the last of their youth.”
“Not this one,” Matt said.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t smile once.”
“For me she will smile.”
“Sure, Nick, give it a try.”