The door to the attached town house, in an endless oblong row of town houses, now had its brass numbers missing. The faded impression of the number 348 remained. The doormat was missing. A rat fished scraps from an overturned bin beneath the window.
I swallowed. Knocked.
And Patrick, who perhaps sensed that my heart was lashing itself against my ribs in some last spasm of self-preservation, took my hand in his, enveloped my fingers with his own and pulled me just slightly behind his left shoulder. He took on that indecipherable expression, the one he used in moments of bad business.
There was a grunt from within, the sound of wood whining against tile, heavy discordant footfalls, a wracking cough.
The door opened, one hinge pulling free of the frame.
Fletcher Harrow, a man who was fifty but looked seventy, stood at the threshold, as though the past fourteen years hadn’t gone by at all.
There was still the apparent sense that he flirted with death, as though he was already half gone. Leathery skin pulled down toward some grave he was destined for. The blond of his mustache, now stark white and untrimmed, covered his lips. The scruff of his beard was encrusted with what might have been decades of soot. Likely bluff, too.
The hair on his head was thinning, his eyelids impeding his pupils, the capillaries beneath threatening to burst.
When one opened the door on Fletcher Harrow, they opened it to one of two men. The first was sedated from top to toe, tongue still wagging, eyes rolling, the venom slow-moving. He slept in fits and spurts, never conscious long enough to be of any trouble.
The second was a possessed man. A frenetic one. The tips of his fingers pulling at the tangles of his beard, twisting the hair behind his ear until it broke off. Tongue darting out to wet his cracked lips, eyes moving over you, past you. Hardly seeing you at all.
“What d’you want?” he said, Eastern accent so thick it was barely understandable.
He didn’t look at me long enough for recognition to dawn. But then, had it been so different at the age of twelve? How many times had he confused me for an intruder? For my mother, weeping to know why I’d left him?
I shivered back into that old skin, stung myself on a thousand thorns to do it. “It’s Nina, Dad,” I said loudly. Those who were closer to hell than earth didn’t hear so well. I bent slightly to put my face in his line of sight. He was looking to the street, then down it, as though something beck-oned him.
“He’s strung out,” John grunted unnecessarily, scowling. “Lord… he ain’t got a gun in there, does he?”
“You coppers?” said my father, his eyes oscillating to Patrick’s hands now, then John’s, then mine, as though expecting shackles.
“Dad. It’s me. Nina.”
Finally, he looked at me. “Caranina,” he mumbled. “Like the singer.”
“Yes,” I nodded heavily. “Like the singer.”
Patrick pulled me farther back, as though he could drag me out of this pit and spare me.
“Do you remember me?” I asked.
My father’s eyes narrowed, moving over my face too fast. “Nina?” he said, mouth gaping. Then again, as though he was trying out the sound. “Nina.”
John stepped forward then, his patience apparently spent. He skirted Patrick and stood an inch from Fletcher’s face, leaning down to accommodate the height difference. “All right now, lad? Mind if we come in for a nip?” John spoke loudly, too.
Fletcher Harrow startled, some reflex shrinking him. He blinked spasmodically. “Ain’t got none.”
“Not a beer? Or brandy?” John inquired, looking over his shoulder at Patrick. “Workin’ man like you needs a pick-me-up.” John pulled a bottle of whiskey from his coat. Shook it.
Fletcher’s eyes fell to the bottle, and then he was backing away from the door, leading them inside.
My father was skeletal. His shoulder bones jutted outward, his waist was too narrow with a double-looped belt. When I passed him, his sunken eyes skirted over me, and I shivered.
“Just needs a little weight in the gut,” John was saying conversationally, finding a mug on a shelf—the same shelf my mother had put up. He wiped the grime from the inside with his finger and poured in an ample amount.
Patrick took his hat from his head and looked around the single room.
It was smaller than I remembered. Dingier. It stank sweetly of rot. The counter was laden with every dish and utensil Fletcher seemed to own. Flies hovered lazily, as though even they were sobered by the mess.
I was ashamed to bring Patrick here. To have him see it.
