What little I own, I love—cherish even—probably because I grew up with nothing. Men like our landlord, Barry Franz, inherited everything they own. Clearly, a block of apartments on the wrong side of town doesn’t register on his radar of shits to give.
Goddamn these stairs.
Stamina builders, I tell myself.You’re getting the arse every woman dreams of with each flight you stumble down.
I jog; my feet developing a bouncing rhythm that I count out in my head, but the further I descend, the more the motion becomes unnatural. My feet stumble and hop, my pace falters, forcing me to stop and begin again more slowly. I’m almost there, just two stories from the ground floor, when a low, irregular hum catches my ear and forces me to a standstill.
The hum develops nuances of pitch and volume.Voices. I slide back and press myself against the wall.
People on the stairs equal bad news. Everyone knows the local dealers use the camera-less stairs and the last thing I want is to end up on a dealer’s radar. I’ve kept myself invisible. Invisible is safe.Never make eye contact and keep moving like you’re late. Those are the keys to survival in Harrison Vale. They’ve worked for me so far, and instead of hiking up my skirt to pay my father’s debts, I work two jobs and escape the touchy-feely dealers looking for a new drugged-up whore to sell.
If dealers or pimps catch me on the stairs tonight, though, things could get nasty. One might ignore me, but two? Two makeme vulnerable.
The cold concrete chills my back; the exposed blocks leeching heat through my jacket. Goose pimples prickle along my skin as I strain to listen. I only make out certain words, the ones they shout at each other in their crisp, articulate voices.
“This is a bad idea.”
“We need to handle this before it blows out of proportion.”
“Well, for the record, I don’t like it. I think we should tell Dax.”
“We’re not involving him. We can handle this ourselves.”
Two well-spoken men. They sound out every vowel to its fullest, every consonant pronounced in a combination of soft tongue-swept curves and sharp staccato. Not dealers then, and not from the Vale either. No one from Harrison Vale talks like that. Everyone here speaks with the same accent; a slow, drawling, lazy accent that belies an over-reliance on weed and conveys the intrinsic tiredness that weighs upon us as a community. Words are shortened, nicknames thrive, sentences usually hold no formal structure.
The guys on the stairs are classy, though; more like the people who live in Harrison Heights.
I dare cross to the banister, peering over the edge to glimpse what awaits me below. Definitely two men. I guessed as much from the back-and-forth chatter. One sits on the bottom step. The washed-out blue light of the only working bulb bathes the right side of his hair and shoulders.
He shakes his head and mumbles low, the sound too muffled for me to make out what he’s saying. The other man’s feet click against the concrete;one, two, three, fourtimes, and then scuff the floor as he turns to pace back the other way. He stomps harder with each rotation.
From what I can tell, they’re not faces I’ve seen around the area or even people I expect in this neighbourhood. The walker is tall and angular. His body is trim and fit in his grey suit pants and crisp white shirt. He holds a matching suit jacket, scrunched at the neck, within his fist. His knuckles are white and his shoulders taut.
I lean further, holding my breath, desperate not to be noticed but nosy enough to take the risk. Flakes of peeling painted metal bite into my palm as I grip the banister. I have a clear view of the second man when my foot slips and clangs off the base rail. Tolling like a bell, the sound reverberates up the narrow shaft and echoes back down, pinpointing my position. Scared to breathe, with my eyes shut to the sound, I wait for a yell, but when the echoes die, there is only silence.
An iron tang of blood bursts across my tongue. I release my lip from between my teeth and dare to look. Two pairs of emotionless eyes stare up at me, one set hazel and the other blue, both so cold I shudder.
“Who the fuck—”
I don’t wait for them to finish asking the question. For reasons I can’t even explain, I run straight up a flight and through the metal fire door to the third floor. Not stopping, I dart into the corridor, identical to my own nine floors above, and around the corner to cower beside the padlocked waste chute.
Olive Tower is simple in its design; half a dozen apartments on each floor, punctuated at either end by a mirrored wall. It is tacky and, over time, the mirrors were shattered or graffitied over, but someone on the third floor clearly likes them. Here they are polished and untouched, creating an illusion of one long corridor and disguising the fact that the corridors are horseshoe in shape. I take advantage of the view, waiting for the reflection of my pursuers to crash through the fire door.
Why did I run? Was it the embarrassment of getting caught eavesdropping, the frigid intensity in both pairs of eyes, or the voice in the back of my head warning me to hide? They don’t seem like people who I’d normally run from, but they don’t seem like people I want to get close to either. Still, they spotted me. If they aren’t already coming after me, they’ll be waiting. There’s no escaping it.
I watch and wait, the digital seconds flick by on my wristwatch. After two minutes, a man appears — the one I didn’t get a clearlook at earlier. I see him now; casually dressed, fair hair, and a scar that clefts his chin. He barges through the door and halts in the middle of the floor, turning left and right and glancing up and down the length of the corridor. He steps toward me and then, seeing nothing but his own reflection in the silvered glass, turns back toward the stairs.
“Not here, either.”
“Shit. We don’t have time to chase trouble.”
“She could be a part of this. I want to be sure.”
The man exits and the building falls quiet again. Ten minutes roll by. Two loud bangs echo up the waste chute, punctuated a few moments later by a third, louder, rattling bang. Possibly the ground floor fire door? Have they gone? I wait another five minutes to be safe and then I can’t wait any longer. I can’t hide all night. If I want to keep my job, I need to quit behaving like a scared little girl. Face this head on.
With every step I take toward the stairwell, I expect the door to swing open. It’s so inevitable that a wave of expectancy builds within. Even as I push the door open, thrusting it against the concrete wall to squash anyone hiding behind it, I expect twin faces, each with ice and shadows in their eyes.
But there is no one.
