Low, tuneless, close. Threaded through the dead air like it’s been there all along and I’m only now being let in on it.
I go still. I don’t breathe. I make myself part of the quiet so it’ll keep doing whatever it’s doing.
Three years. No footsteps. No voices. Nothing.
And now this.
It’s about fucking time.
Chapter 5
Erik
I leave the clearing with the sound still in my ears.
Tonight of all nights, finally something happens. Humming, so quiet I’d have lost it if I weren’t always listening. Gone before I could be sure it was real. I’ve gotten good at calling things imagination. It’s easier to live with.
I get onto the bike and start the engine.
I tell myself that’s why I’m heading back early. The sound. Not the time. Not the fact that Ashley collected Elara at six, and Ashley has never once closed down a bar in her life. Two drinks in, Elara starts narrating. Three, and she’ll hand a stranger her whole childhood.
I know her at every count. I know it the way I know which board in my floor creaks.
I check the time.
Then again.
By the third time I stop pretending I’m not doing it.
It’s 9:51 when I reach the block, and I slow down without deciding to.
Nothing to worry about. If anyone asks, I was coming home. At a reasonable hour. To the building where I pay rent. A coincidence that I arrive the same minute Ashley’s car turns the corner. Also a coincidence that I timed it to that minute, but that part stays with me. I’m tired of lying to myself. I keep at it anyway, because the alternative is admitting I did this on purpose.
Then the car door opens and Elara steps out and every reasonable plan I had dies on the curb.
She’s upright. Mostly. She’s got a hand flat on the roof of the car for a second longer than getting out requires. She steadies herself while she says goodbye to Ashley and steps onto the sidewalk. The careful way she’s standing tells me how the night went — she’s fine, she just had enough that the filter’s off and the floor’s negotiable.
Ashley’s eyes find mine over the roof of the car as I park the bike and start toward them. She takes in the whole picture in under a second and looks delighted. Or predatory. With Ashley it’s hard to tell the two apart. She doesn’t say a word. Just gives me a small two-finger salute, gets back in her car, and leaves me alone with the problem.
I’m going to kill her. Slowly.
She knows exactly what she’s doing.
Who am I kidding? I’m here specifically for the problem.
Elara aims herself at the building and arrives at the door on a diagonal, reaching for a handle that isn’t where she thinks it is. I catch it before it catches her.
We’re too close.
She looks up. I can see her working through it, the wheels turning slow and out of sync. The confusion is a little funny. The slow smilethat comes after it is not something I can afford to think about right now.
“Oh,” she says. “It’s you.”
“It’s me.”
“You live here.”
“I do.”
