For the first time in his life, Henry was living in a famous city. Even his apartment building had a well-known history – the broker had told him some tale about a famous deli owner and his famous death in the building. His whole block was bustling. There were rough-looking bars meant to attract college kids. There were Japanese-looking hair salons full of the Japanese. There were convenience stores run by men of ambiguous origins, selling cold fish, canned pantyhose, prayer cards, everything. Dry cleaners with signs that boasted ‘delivery.’ A nameless store that sold only a dozen plain white t-shirts. The block was packed. In that first week, it was enough for Henry to just walk up and down it. He decided to save himself and take it slow with the city: content to sit in his new apartment, listen to the radio, read the Classifieds, make phone calls, check his balance, nap. He let entire portions of the day escape him. He let the day exist only as it did outside his one and only window.
He lived in a small studio on the third floor, which he accessed by elevator. The elevator was a good alternative to the strange traffic of the steps, which had presented itself to him on his first day, as he lugged the last of his boxes and found himself overtaken by a pack of howling children. They were in a bad rush. Henry was shoved against the railing. He was not convinced it was an accident. He suspected one child had even tried to trip him. He also felt mildly sure he had heard another mutter old man.
Henry had just turned 33.
It felt right to be paranoid. The city seemed to say to him, I am a city of the strange, a city to interpret paranoically. He was adjusting. Still, he felt it would not be wrong, in the adjustment month or two, to stay in more, to know his space a little better, and then branch out. There was no hurry to know the city in full, to know all his neighbours. He already got his share of the outside world just sitting there. He could even count on some socialising, as he could count on daily visits from maintenance.
Since he had moved in, the building’s two maintenance men had been constantly at work in his apartment. The maintenance men were remarkably active, while their landlord-boss remained entirely anonymous. (Henry sent his rent cheque to a name whose source was shrouded in absolute mystery: ‘Bettina.’ He didn’t know what – agency, person, or what – ‘Bettina’ was.) Their work never ended. They were constantly checking radiators, unscrewing and re-screwing knobs, tapping at ceilings, flushing toilets, running water, stepping on things, talking in hushed voices between themselves. One night, Henry awoke to the taller one standing on the ledge outside his window. He was painting. The maintenance man explained that they had painted the outer window frame just before Henry had moved in, but that they now had to repaint them, because ‘Bettina’ didn’t like white; the building, after all, was off-white. What annoyed Henry even more was how they almost always left their tools in his apartment, knocking hours, sometimes days, later to retrieve them. The first few times this happened they had not even knocked; they had keys, and they let themselves in. Henry didn’t have to be there, they reminded him, but Henry let them know he was always at home, he did his work from home, and that knocking was nice. They respected this.
The city said to him, as if with a playful rib-jab, Deal with it, jerk, and so he dealt with it. He reminded himself that the maintenance men were really a minor complaint. It was worth it – worth the thrill of the city that he felt more than enough, perhaps even more strongly, he thought, bottled in as he was, looking out.
The window was not for everyone. The broker had even shrugged at it, emphasising the high ceilings instead: You know you’re in the city when your ceiling is high! In the other cities that Henry had lived in (towns, really), they had only had short buildings with short ceilings, wide roads full of lanes, parks packed with giant trees and picnicking families, and he was sick and tired of that stuff. In a city like this, a man required height, he thought, and a high ceiling symbolised this nicely. It also somehow made up for the many square feet his floor space lacked. In the city you give up a few things – space is one – to be in the city, to really BE in the city, get my drift?
So, beside the window, he set up his swivel chair – the one he had stolen from his old office on his final day, duct-taping it to the floor of the cargo van for the 180-mile-drive up the coast. He adjusted the height so his head got a good bottom quarter’s perspective of the view.
The view was sky-less. All he faced was another jutting part of his building, the portion of it which, he imagined, contained one- and two-bedroom apartments. All he had was another person’s window and its insides.
It belonged to a woman.
In his down-time – mornings when he waited for his mind’s fog to clear, evenings when he fought a gassy restlessness behind his ribs – he watched her. Mornings and evenings were good times, because they were the only times the woman appeared. The woman worked.
She was alone, always. She was not the type of woman men watched, he figured. Sometimes it did occur to him to feel strange or even guilty – after all, in those other towns, good citizens regarded such watching as suspect, even bad. But he was in the city now, he reminded himself, and he was just looking out; it was allowed; he paid a high rent; it was not his fault there was a woman in his view.
Plus, her sight was not seductive. She was a thick, although not fat, woman. What little he saw of her flesh – wrists, neck, face – revealed a body solidly clotted and permanently flushed. She had an ample bundle of carpet-brown hair that she tied back with a rubber band. She did have nails, however, long and red and professional. He could not tell her age.
His interest was innocent. He admired her substance. The first time he saw her – his first night there – one word instantly popped into his mind: decency. She looked decent. Here was a woman who respected the right things in life and in return got respect. She did not seem to participate in ‘going out on the town’. She stuck by a routine. She came home at roughly the same time each evening, in suit-sets of respectable shades (gray, navy, brown, black) and tasteful makeup; then she would disappear and return in sweats, a t-shirt, and a scrubbed face. She would pop a meal in the microwave, lie on her couch, and watch TV. Shows and more shows. Once in a while, when her face was lit with the battling flashes of the television, he could see her mouth something to herself. Sometimes she would smile. Once he saw her sneeze. Then when it came time to end the day, to get the recommended eight hours of sleep, she would one by one switch off the lights, and shade by shade, in dimming frames, simply disappear.
Then the day came when Henry suspected she might have caught his eye catching her. He was not sure but felt it was possible. She had abruptly turned away from the television and walked over to her window to get something left on the sill, he figured. As she reached out for it, Henry sensed her seem to become, for a quick second, conscious of him. He was not sure. After all, it was possible that her eyes might have accidentally fallen on the air-space that corresponded with his exact eye-level. Who knew? All that mattered was that she had looked away and gone on with her business.
But an hour later when his doorbell rang, Henry felt the stirring of a small yet staunch fear, like the unlodging of old gum in the gut. He quietly walked to his door and looked through his peephole, hoping for the maintenance men. It was not them, but it was thankfully not her either.
It was a child.
Of course. The building was teeming with children. And sourceless children, children whose parents were invisible. He did not expect this of the city – he was sure the city would say, I am a fucking-nice city, but not a good one for families (at best, couples with dogs.) But not his building. His was full of them – children seemingly on their own, children with big words, children with money in their pockets, children going places, children with authority and agenda. Children who made their presence known.
The child was a girl, a wisp of a little girl who Henry had not yet seen.
She said, ‘Sir, do you have heating, sir? We think the boiler’s down and that we should call maintenance.’
He assured her that he had heat. He went as far to ask which apartment was hers. She said she lived downstairs. Henry smiled, relieved.
The girl suddenly said, ‘Hey, sir, wait, I have something for you!’ She darted off and came back with a black plastic suitcase, which she dramatically flipped open before his eyes. Inside: knives.
‘Steak knives,’ she said, the words glowing through her almost. ‘We’re selling them to family, friends. And neighbours! I’m sure you could use a new steak knife set, right? I mean, really think about your steak knives – when was the last time you got around to buying one? We got it all, eight-piece, nine-piece, all made in Germany, with high-carbon-stamped-stainless-steel, micro-serrated-four-and-a-half-inch blades, with three-rivet polypropylene handles, full tangs, on birch wood blocks or in pine gift boxes or plastic carrying cases, 61% off the list price, sir. We got real beauties …!’
Henry looked at her gleaming, sharp, deadly things, and her freckles and glasses, and explained – tenderly – that they were very nice, but that no, thank you, he couldn’t. Still, a part of him was sold; since the move, with his silverware still boxed, he’d been working at meats with plastic knives. Plus he had never owned steak knives, and he could believe they were nice.
‘Whatever, sir!’ the girl snorted, skipping off.
Minutes later, his doorbell rang again. This time it rang several times in a row, with an urgency that worried Henry. When he looked out the peephole, he saw a young gangly boy who looked somewhat like the girl – same freckles, same frame.
The boy held his middle finger up to the peephole.
Henry opened the door, for the sake of being natural, once the boy had galloped off. Although he realised it was a gesture not uncommon in the city, and maybe not even intended for hostile interpretation, he was glad to avoid confrontation. He didn’t know what a child like that could do to him.
Exhausted, Henry slumped into his swivel chair. The evening had been congested with events. He turned to the window until the woman’s lights went out and he decided it was time be done.
But it was bound to occur; that he knew. So when the moment came, only days later, that she noticed and made it known that she had noticed, when she didn’t, even out of politeness, break the stare, Henry felt its inevitability like a bad knee ahead of a rainy day.
He did not lose control. He paced. He cursed the placement of his window – better yet, the architects of the building, for not thinking ahead and knowing better. He cursed his space – he wished he had other rooms, any room, that he could go to. He thought of the bathroom; he dashed into the bathroom. He was embarrassed to have ‘dashed.’ He sat on the lid, cursing his own alarm. He was disappointed in himself for letting a minor sensation of dirtiness loiter inside him, for something he hadn’t done – or rather had done, and a lot, but for an altogether other purpose; namely, no purpose. None at all.
He flushed the empty toilet bowl and decided to go back out. He would just turn off the lights and go to bed, just like that. Then he realised there was the possibility he would look all the more conspicuous and guilty and dirty – what if she thought the darkness meant him wanting to be alone with and discreet about and enraptured by the whole mess? – and he did not want that.
When he finally walked out, he tried his best to avoid the window. But by the time he made it to his chair, out of the corner of his eye he could sense something. Something big. There was suddenly no flashing of a television, no other light. Her world was blocked off by something else in his view.
There she was, in sweats and a winter coat, standing on the ledge by his window, her red, red nails tapping away on the pane. Her knees were shoved up against the glass. He did not have to look her in the eye to know she was quite, considerably, pissed.
He did not know what to do. There he was, staring her up with his head only at her shin-height – and there she was, glaring him down, a mad tower of woman, taking up the full length of his window perfectly – just as he envisioned those Amsterdam red light window girls – standing and waiting, her face wearing the worst expression he had seen on it yet, tapping away with her nails (square-tipped, he noticed now), probably not banging only because it was glass – now that was decency – because by her expression, if she could, she would be banging. He felt the throb of a stale heat inside him. He quickly banished the Dutch whores from his head.
He had options. He knew this. He could, for instance, just not let her in. Just look at her, shake his head, turn off the lights, and go. Where? He had no other rooms. He could go out. Grab his keys, his coat, gloves, hat, and leave. But then he’d be in their courtyard, and certainly she could follow him out to the street. That would not be getting rid of her; that would just be transporting her to another spot.
Or he could, for instance, open the window a tiny slit and say, ‘Yes?’ And she could say her part and he could apologise, no matter what she said; anything, anything just to make her go away. But what if she didn’t go away? What if she yanked the window up over on her side, crammed a thigh in, and then what?
Or, he could, for instance, just try to communicate with her through the window – certainly they could hear each other, somewhat at least, through glass. But what if they couldn’t really? What if the outside world – the cabs, the kids, the city – just didn’t allow it? Certainly that could anger her more? What if she grew frustrated and went back, to her window, to her living room, to her door, out her door, down his hall, to his door, knocking, banging – then what?
He sat there, spinning idly from side to side. He went to the corner that served as a kitchen – where the minifridge heaved atop the microwave, next to a table topped with rice maker and blender and juicer and hot plate and hot pot and toaster oven – and he found his mug. He dumped in three spoonfuls of instant coffee, turned on the ‘H’ tap, filled it halfway, and drank.
He couldn’t avoid the window altogether. She was not going anywhere. Sometimes the tapping would stop and that would only worry him more – her just being there. Then he would look over, just for a quick scan of the hard white of her face, or the hazy blur of her hair’s wild brown. And then it would start again. Tap, after tap, after tap.
After a while, it occurred to him that outside it was probably cold, and that the cold could kill a person. He decided he had to do it. It had been a while. He could not let the cold get her. He was not that kind of character.
‘What the fuck were you looking at?’
She had repeated the sentence over and over. Her dirty diction hurt. Fuck: the right word – maybe; a city word – yes. But from her: bad, wrong, out of place, mislead, unforgiving, overeager …
She said other things too.
She said, ‘You know, that wasn’t the first time. I see you, you don’t know that, but I’ve seen you do it, asshole, and I want to know what the fuck …’ He thought of the gangly boy and his middle finger. The city said Be tough and you’ll BE tough.
She said, ‘How would you like it, bastard, if someone was doing that to you? You like being watched? I mean, what the fuck were you looking at? You like being a spy? You think it’s some kind of joke …’
He felt embarrassed that his house was so bare and ill-lit and that still, weeks into his arrival, there were boxes everywhere. Her voice sounded different than he had imagined, but somehow familiar and still nice, in spite of the words. He considered putting them away, pushing them to the side, something.
She said, ‘I mean, I am not leaving until we get this fucking nightmare sorted.’
He nodded to himself.
He would have to find a nice way to get rid of her.
She said, ‘Busted, bastard!’
Busted: he had a history. He remembered the feeling as a child. Getting busted for busting, for example. He remembered kindergarten, and in particular, their lunch hour. He remembered the rules. Like the one about saving the dessert for last. The teacher had even reiterated it that day: meal first, then dessert. The dessert that day had been cantaloupe. His peers, no matter how dull the dessert, always wanted to go for it first. Henry never did it; he understood the rules and respected them. The disobedience of his peers annoyed him. And on that particular day, he had really had it –
She said, ‘Bastard! You hear me? Son-of-a-bitch!’
So when the kid next to him reached for her cantaloupe slice, he shot his hand up. He had something to say about that. Teacher came over and he told on his neighbour, just like that. His neighbour began to cry. Teacher looked at his neighbour, the crying girl, then at Henry, over and over, thinking long and hard about it. Teacher put an arm around the crying girl, and turned to Henry, and tagged him with a word he knew well from the playground –
She said, ‘Mute! Retard! You want to just sit there? Creep!’
She said, Snitcher! ‘Snitcher’ from a teacher – the adult world’s adoption of a children’s insult, used to label those who had done an allegedly bad thing that was really an intended good thing that might look like a bad thing for a good reason, or, a bad reason. The buster had gotten busted. The world had turned itself upside down on him. The misunderstanding, miscommunication, misinterpretation; it still sickened him.
She said, ‘Sicko! Motherfucker!’
She said, ‘Fuckingmotherfucker!’
He remembered what her voice reminded him of: a voice he had loved in childhood, the voice of the man in the chocolate syrup commercials who went on about the thick, rich, deep, dark, milky, velvety stuff. That man had the ideal voice for chocolate. That was it. Hers was the voice of the thick-rich-deep-dark-chocolate man.
He popped a bagel into the toaster. He ate it slowly and even managed to look her in the eye a few times as he ate.
She ran out of names to call him. She sat on the floor, like a retired puppet. He had no other furniture to offer her but boxes, and of course his chair – but he could not get himself to offer the chair. She was still bundled in her coat. When he was convinced that she was done shouting, he toasted her a bagel and placed it on a plate.
She grabbed the bagel in her hands, squishing it down to dough, in the manner they handled complimentary stress-relieving balls at his old office, and said ‘I’m gonna kill you.’
‘Look who’s looking at you, asshole.’
She had undoubtedly grown up in the city. She did what they did not do in the city unless out of hostility – she stared. She stared at him with a mean resolution. He stared back. For a very long time, lengthy paragraphs of silence, they just stared. Until she got up, shuffled aimlessly, kicked a couple boxes, and made a noise.
It was apparently a sob.
She said, ‘Do you know what we go through? We go through hell, asshole.’
We. It terrified him. It could also mean she had causes.
He wondered what she could do. She had said it plainly: kill. That was her goal. That was that. That plus the fact she could have other causes. Plus the fact she could have causes and be crazy. He thought about it harder and concluded it wasn’t too much to think she was crazy. The city said, Crazy yourself.
But he was worried; about her causes. If she was right, if she was crazy, where to draw that line; her misunderstandings, his. Because at an early age, he had learned. He recalled a certain sundries store of his youth, where the young son of the owner, roughly his age, had worked. They were almost friends. The young son had asked Henry if he could draw. Henry said he had done it before, he could, but maybe not well. The young son asked him what he drew. Henry shrugged and named various school projects, maps of the world, dinosaurs, dead presidents. The young son concluded that he could draw people. Henry shrugged. The young son phrased it differently: would he draw people? Henry said he would if he had to. The young son went further: what about naked people? Henry thought about this, and admitted he’d rather not. The young son told him there were free cigarettes or ice cream or whatever he wanted from the store in it for him. Henry thought further. Before he knew it the young son took out a piece of paper and a pencil and ordered him to draw. He wanted a naked woman. Henry choked back the lump in his throat. He took a while to lightly sketch a smallish naked woman. The young son told him it wasn’t so great but it would do OK. Henry got a free Astropop that day. Another time, he got a radio. He got other things as well. One day, the young son demanded a naked man. Henry told him he would rather draw naked women. The young son told him to do it, he had to, and besides, it would be easier. Henry did not know what to do, so he did his best. The young son looked at it and suddenly got angry, accusing Henry of drawing men and women the same. He suddenly wasn’t so sure of Henry’s naked women. Hadn’t he seen a woman? Hadn’t he seen himself? What was he trying to do – hustle, steal, shoplift? The young son told him to get out or he’d call the cops. He crumpled the paper and Henry ran out, thinking of course he knew, of course men and women were different, of course. It had just been a mistake, a mis-rendering, a bad translation …
She said, ‘Do you hear me?’ over and over again.
Then, ‘I am tired,’ she said, done.
It wasn’t the window – the window hadn’t done a thing but gotten conceived in a bad spot. It was the chair’s fault. He wondered why he had ever put his chair there. He remembered: because his desk was there. Maybe it was the desk’s fault. He had spent a good deal of time thinking about it. In a studio, you had options, too many options. Desk near radiator? Dresser near desk? Bed near radiator? Bed near window? Radiator near dresser? Desk near window? Desk near window. He thought it would be the best thing. He had read it somewhere, that it would be good for him, as well as for the general wellbeing of the room, to have his desk beside the window.
He wondered why he had never put up curtains. He remembered: nobody had curtains in the city. Blinds at most, and usually open blinds. In those other towns, people were always worried about privacy and protection and inner lives, things like that. Here the city said, What the fuck are you looking at? Oh, you’re looking at me? Go the fuck ahead, the city said, go the fuck ahead.
It was different watching her in person, up close, and ‘live.’ It was like running into a famous film star taking out the trash (something he had not yet seen, but anticipated he soon would once he began to go out in such a famous city).
She was herself with him soon enough. He recognised that.
She would scrape her nose with the tip of a nail, raking up dead cells.
She would scratch her shoulders, crossing her arms over her chest to reach the opposite shoulder.
She would whimper, rant, yell, choke up, go quiet.
She would pace and then sit down again, always at the one corner under the window, sometimes with her thick legs wrapped around each other, often in a peculiar knot, which made them look slimmer and limber.
Once, she did something he liked. She got up and put one foot up onto the sill to tie her white nurse-style sneaker. It reminded him of that certain girl who lived in his old teenage mind, the girl in the short skirt on the spring day, hiking a leg up against the bark of a tree to tie her shoe. He did not know who exactly that girl was, only that it was a girl he was sure had romped through the minds of most men at some point in their lives.
He thought it looked nice, but he did not understand it. Tying her laces when she wasn’t going anywhere.
Constantly, like a child’s wind-up toy car, he bumped into the wall that was the idea: what-to-do. He sat down next to her, wondering what she would do. He imagined abuse. To his shock, she said nothing. She reached over to the distorted mass of bagel, ripped off a piece with her teeth, and chewed. She kept chewing. He thought she might need water. He went to get her water, but by the time he returned, her head was tipped back and her eyes were closed. She looked asleep. He sat down next to her again and tried to fall asleep as well.
When he opened his eyes, her eyes were open too. He had one thought: they had done it. Almost, in a sense, with a few of its intimate connotations intact, they had slept together.
The idea bore a bad acid. He felt sick. The city had a saying, he thought, and he remembered: he told the idea to take a walk; Take a fucking walk, jackass.
‘Sex, is that it? You want me? Is that what we’re getting at?’ she said.
‘I have kids, you know,’ she said.
‘I’m not afraid to admit that I’m scared,’ she said.
‘They don’t live with me,’ she said.
‘But you know that, you know I live alone,’ she said.
‘God, what time is it,’ she said.
‘You think I do this every day?’ she said. ‘I do not do this every day.’
‘How are you going to pay me back, asshole?’ she said.
She took the plate beside her, and with both hands slammed it against the floor. She could break things, this woman. He worried that the broken pieces might be the only weapon he would have to defend himself, when the time came.
When the doorbell rang, they both looked at it, then each other, accusingly. He wondered if there was any chance she had called the police and he imagined she wondered the same thing.
He looked through the peephole. It was the young girl from downstairs, in pink flannel pyjamas, squinting through her glasses with sleepy eyes, smothering the shaggy blue rabbit tucked snugly in her armpit.
He looked back at the woman: biting her lip, staring at the ground, in plain view. It wouldn’t look right. He would have to be careful. He opened the door just a bit. He fought the urge just to run out, and instead stepped out on the doormat.
He asked if he might help her.
‘Can you turn the TV down, sir?’ she said. ‘Some people have to be up early, you know.’
He apologised. She had started to walk off when he had an idea. He yelled for her to wait, adding that he would like to know more about those goods she had been selling the other day …
‘Yeah, sir, I got the knives. I’ll show you tomorrow again, if you want ’em.’
He told her he needed to see them now, if possible.
Certainly it was possible. She rolled her eyes. ‘Which one? I have my two best sets left. Bundy, Bush. Your choice, sir.’
He was going for cheap, sharp, big, impressive, safe.
‘Bundy. That’ll be $129.99, 61% off the list price. Cash or cheque, sir?’
The price was still very high, didn’t she think?
‘Whatever, sir!’
He fished out his chequebook and pen and filled it out. She tucked the cheque under her arm. He asked her when he would get the knife set.
‘Oh, soon,’ she said, ‘I promise. It’s worth the wait, sir, it’s a steal!’
He told her to run right back with it. She sprinted off with a quick careless wave that he hoped meant goodbye and not whatever. Had he not written her a cheque that was guaranteed to bounce, he could fear that she had just robbed him, mugged him in the most professional way possible.
He closed the door and prayed the woman hadn’t heard a thing. The transaction seemed ripe for misreading.
Instead, he found her lost in her own world. With her back to him, with hands gently resting on his glass, the woman was gazing out his window, at the light beyond her own window.
‘I am tired,’ she said, later.
It was later. He hadn’t stayed up all night in ages. All he knew was that they were somewhere around the point where late meets early and things get really confused.
He was ashamed not to own a clock yet. He used the radio announcer on the AM news to tell the time, but thought it would be inappropriate to turn on the radio.
He tried to look past her and out the window. He saw nothing but the dim light of her living room. With windows like theirs, there was no telling what shade of blue the sky outside had in store that moment.
Suddenly there was song. The silence was singed with a tinny chorus. It was a tune he knew and a tune he liked. It was a tune from his childhood.
It was ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’!
It was her cell phone.
The woman, who worked, of course, had a cell phone. She fished it out of her coat, with little surprise.
She said, ‘Morning.’
She said, ‘Oh, geez, yeah, thanks, sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, but I can’t ride with you today. Can you tell him I might be late? Tell him, in fact, I might need the day off. Can you do that?’
She said, ‘Just stuff, you know. Oh, no everything is fine, really.’
She said, ‘Love you!’ and hung up.
She put the phone away. Her face suddenly collapsed into her palms. Even muffled, he could make out the words ‘What the hell am I doing.’
He had instincts; he did not have answers.
When he heard the knock on the door, he thought one thing: the Bundy. He rushed to the door and opened it, without looking through the peephole. He was eager for the girl and her gift.
Instead there stood the two maintenance men. Their greetings, as usual, came in the form of nods, which Henry returned.
‘Bettina has sent us to check your locks,’ the shorter one said.
‘May be a problem with your locks,’ the taller one said.
Henry told them he had no such problem, no such complaint. He told them to come back some other time.
‘Bettina has sent the order,’ the shorter one said. ‘It will only take a second.’
‘Good safety to have your locks checked,’ the taller one said.
He told them he was not arguing with that, but it was late, or early, in any case, a bad hour, he had things, work, affairs – until he remembered: their tools. He knew how this went. The men would come, ‘work’, leave their tools …
The Bundy would have won, but tools could do too. He seemed to remember hearing that women backed down at the sight of tools.
He did believe in safety. He told them to go ahead.
‘It will be very quick,’ said the shorter.
They fiddled with the doorknob, shaking it, jiggling it, oiling it, each taking turns standing outside and then in, opening and closing the door, over and over.
‘The door is fine,’ the shorter finally announced. And he began to place their tools inside his bag.
Henry announced that there was no way they could leave – yet. There was more work to be done, he was sure.
‘Please call Bettina if there is a problem,’ the shorter said.
‘Back once Bettina sends the order,’ the taller said.
He tried to plead with them, that there were other doors with locks, the bathroom door, certainly that was what the damned Bettina meant –
‘Bettina said the front door,’ the first man said. ‘We will gladly check the other doors once we have an order for them.’
He stood in their way, trying to reason. They were adamant. Eventually they pushed; pushed their way right through Henry, as if he were just some insignificant ghost.
As they speed-walked down the hallway, Henry called to them, asking if they could just lend him something, a screwdriver, a power drill, anything, so he could just fix things himself –
‘Please call Bettina and place the order,’ the first man said.
‘Other doors to check now,’ the second man said.
He closed the door, and leaned his forehead against the wood, thinking, until he heard her ‘Shithead’ – suddenly too loud, loud enough to be too close.
‘Oh, I heard that. I’m on to you. I know what you’re up to, bastard!’
He must have forgotten what the city always said: Always, always, keep your bags packed.
‘I want to sleep,’ she said, ‘in your bed. Now.’
He wondered if in the pockets of her coat – the pockets that had housed her cell phone, after all – the woman could be harbouring a weapon.
He wondered how to hold a plastic knife with dignity.
She said, ‘Oh, c’mon, at this point, isn’t this what we’re expected to do?’
He had not yet heard her black, black laugh. It was bad.
She got up and grabbed his hand. Her hand was colder than he expected. What he expected was the moment when the nails dug deep into his palm.
He did not remember her name, but he could never forget her, that certain young girl in his schoolyard. The girl had only been at their school for a day. It was enough. At recess she singled him out, said, You, come over here, you. She grabbed his hand with her nails, nails he noticed were torn jagged and dirt-packed. She led him behind a trailer in the schoolyard, an empty trailer the kids called ‘the Matson,’ because painted on it was the enigmatic word ‘MATSON.’ The kids never had much use for the Matson. It was too obvious a spot for hide-and-seek, too appendage-less for proper play. She, however, had a purpose for it. Without warning, still holding his hand, she kicked him hard in the crotch. She said, There. He bent over in pain, trying to hide his tears. She ran off, and the next day she was gone. Nonetheless, he told the teacher – not the full story, not where she had struck him, but that she had struck him, and hard.
Teacher had smiled, and patting his head, explained, Oh, that’s just what girls do when they like you! She had made it sound like sunshine. It was something that he, and apparently all adolescents at some point were told of – how a kick in the crotch could (sometimes) mean a kiss, how it would come like a hurt that was not meant to hurt, how situations were often just situations but also sometimes their inverse.
She said, ‘What else do men and women do?’
She said, ‘Isn’t it what they want us to do?’
They. He froze. How did he know what those theys really did, what the other theys really wanted? How did anyone really know?
He opened his eyes. She was at the window. She was standing on the inside ledge, leaning carefully on his glass, hands clutching the frame. She was looking straight at him.
She said three words: ‘Take it easy.’ That was all.
She walked out the window, one sizable thigh after another, out of his world and back into hers. She left his window open. He watched her shut and lock her own.
He locked his own door; once, then again, just in case.
And he stopped watching.