The man smiled at him. “Of course.”
Ryan met his eye and tried to convey a message to him, but he had no idea if it was sinking in. He walked back over to Doris, grabbed her by the elbow and marched her inside.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she immediately said, sounding somewhat angry.
“Oh yes I did.” He looked around again; this place stank too.
“I can take care of myself, you know,” she continued, but he ignored her again.
“I have to go now. Will you be okay?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll be fine. I’m always fine.”
“Good night,” he said and started walking away.
She called after him. “Enjoy your dinner tonight with . . .your wife?”
He stopped walking and turned around. “I don’t have a wife,” he said.
“Sorry. Enjoy your dinner with your girlfriend, then.”
“I don’t have one of those either.”
“Sorry. Enjoy your dinner with your . . .?” She looked at him with questioning eyes.
He paused for a moment, wondering if he should tell her, but that was definitely crossing a line.
“That’s none of your business actually.” He turned around and stormed off, knowing that he’d probably left a very shocked and confused Doris behind him.
CHAPTERTWENTY-FIVE
Ryan
He was running late for work again, but this time it hadn’t been because of Emmy. He hadn’t been able to find his wallet. He was sure he’d put it on the table in the entrance hall, like he always did. But it wasn’t there and it had taken him ten minutes to locate it. So by the time he reached Doris’s apartment he was running ten minutes late. But when he saw a police van outside and Doris nowhere in sight, a bolt of panic shot through him. His immediate thoughts drifted to Little Mike. He looked around nervously for a moment and then jumped out of his car and ran into her building.
He pushed his way through a dodgy-looking group of guys loitering outside who, he was sure, had just offered him some weed—clearly, they were unperturbed by the cops. He walked into the dimly lit hallway and looked at the wall to see if there were any names and address on post boxes, anything to tell him where Doris lived. But there was nothing. He walked over to the elevator. It was obviously broken. A single orange cone was all that warned younotto take a step and plummet down the shaft below. He made a move for the staircase, and on his first step had to climb over an old pizza box and an empty bottle of Mountain Dew. Delightful!
He walked up the first flight and looked down the corridor. It was empty. The only clue that people actually lived there was the overflowing garbage can that stank to high hell. He held his nose and continued up the stairs.
Up the next flight, and the next and the next . . . he had no idea where he was going, or how he was going to find her, but he knew he needed to try. When he reached the sixth floor, he heard the sound of loud chatter and thebeep,beepof police radios going off. He followed the noises and, as he got closer, he could see the police and hear her voice.
She sounded angry. “I’m late for work, okay!” He heard her stamp her foot. “I don’t have time for this. Do you know that my boss is a very, very important man, and if I’m not at work on time, I will be in serious trouble. Serious trouble.”
He smiled and decided to hang back in order to hear more.
“We just need a statement from you, then you can go,” one of the officers said.
He heard a long sigh. “It was the usual. She probably threw a chair at him when he came home late. He probably threw one back. Then they screamed, as usual. Stamped and jumped up and down, and that’s when some of my ceiling fell down, and then there was a loud crash and that’s probably when someone decided to call you guys.”
“Did you hear what they were saying?” the officer asked.
Another sigh. “You cheating asshole this, you bitch that, mother fucker et cetera, and cu—”
“Okay. You can stop there. I think we get the picture,” one of the officers said.
Ryan smiled again. He couldn’t have imagined that string of words coming out of Doris’s mouth. But there it was. He walked up to her door and stopped a few feet away.
“Morning, officers. Is everything okay here?” he asked casually.
