The Artist’s shock was immediate and disabling, but it wasn’t until he’d used the chloroform that he could get her safely down from the roof.
The chloroform was in his backpack. For weeks now he’d been carrying the bottle around with him inside a ziplock bag along with a lint-free cloth, imagining himself using it, rehearsing the steps involved in his mind.
She’d still been spluttering and crying and hyperventilating when he’d hurriedly doused the cloth and risen up and clamped it over her mouth and nose.
And of course it wasn’t anything like he’d planned because the whole thing was impromptu and rushed, and because he was far more scared and unnerved than he’d been prepared for, and because she’d moaned briefly and writhed and then dropped to the ground before he could hold her up. There was a hoodie in his backpack. He’d dressed her in it hurriedly, pulled the hood up over her head.
The journey down the stairwell was problematic. She was heavy and her body was slack and the stairs were endless and his terror writhed under his skin unlike anything he’d ever experienced before, but it was still better than taking the lift because nobody saw them and there were no cameras.
And all right, it took him an age and the ambulance had already arrived before he reached the ground floor, but that just gave him a chance to gather his thoughts, to steel himself, to administer a top-up dose of chloroform (just in case) before he coiled her arm over his shoulder and walked her swiftly out through the crowds of partygoers that were now spilling out onto the street, and along the road where he hailed the first cab he could see.
Thursday night in the city. Maybe the driver didn’t care, or maybe Sam simply sold the whole boyfriend-looking-after-his-wasted-girlfriend routine better than he could have hoped for, or perhaps his vague answers about a possible stabbing or a heart attack were enough to allay the cab driver’s listless enquiries about the ambulance and the group of stunned and appalled revellers who had gathered outside the apartment building nearby.
The Artist stirred a few times on the drive home. She mumbled incoherently. Her head rolled against his chest and rested against his chin, and he could smell her apple shampoo, and they were both perspiring unpleasantly, but then the cab pulled up at Forrester Avenue and Sam paid the driver, who pulled away again almost before they were clear of the cab.
And then it was actually happening.
He was finally taking her in through his front door to the tired and smelly hallway. Flicking on the lights.
The drab and withered interior sprang out of the darkness. The old and broken kitchen was in disarray. There was his general mess and clutter in the living room. Piles of student essays and takeaway containers on the coffee table and the sagging sofa and the mismatched armchair.
He would have liked to get her take on it. Her first impressions. But all of that could wait.
Because the one thing he’d finished was the basement.
Everything had been prepared for weeks.
Down they went – her feet bumping on the stairs – and then he adjusted his grip and stiffened his back until he was holding her under the arms and she began to stir again as he walked her forwards, a secret, surging thrill buzzing in his head as he reached out for the shower curtain.