Page 18 of Graceless

CATE

The door closed upstairs and I stood at my easel with a swab drying in my hand, and somewhere around the third full second of staring at the stairs I decided no. No. You do not get to do that in my basement and then say it's late and leave.

I went up after him. Took the stairs two at a time in my socks, threw the door open —

The street was empty.

Both directions. I came out onto the stoop and looked toward the avenue and looked toward the el and there was nothing. Parked cars. The gates down over the fish store. The laundromat doorway, dark and vacant. Ten seconds — maybe fifteen, I'll give it fifteen — and a man the size of a doorframe was gone off a straight, flat, empty block with no cab, no footsteps, no nothing.

Again. Fifth Avenue all over again.

I was holding Nonna's rolling pin. I have no memory of picking it up.

I went back inside and chained the door and threw the bolt and then my hands stopped working.

Not dramatically. They just — stopped. I stood in the hallway between the eleven saints with my back against the door and the rolling pin still in my fist and my heart slamming, and for a solid minute the inside of my head was just noise. He vanished. He vanished, twice now, that's two vanishings, people don't vanish, there's no — the street was EMPTY, I looked BOTH WAYS like a good girl and the street was empty and I swore an OATH to a DOOR —

St. Jude watched me from the wall. Patron of lost causes. He had a look.

"Okay," I said, out loud, to the hallway. "Okay. Okay okay okay." Breathing. In through the nose, the way Nina's yoga phase taught both of us against our will. "You are a thirty-four-year-old woman. You are a professional. You find things under surfaces for a living. You can do this."

I peeled myself off the door. I put the rolling pin on the shelf. I picked it back up. I put it down again and left my hand on it.

"Evidence," I told St. Jude. "We're going to do evidence."

Exhibit A: he heard something. Mid-sentence — my sentence, I was talking about the bottom edge — and he was up and at the window like the chair had caught fire. That's not a startle. A startle has flail in it. That was a response. Trained, aimed, fast.

Exhibit B: there was nothing there. I looked. I looked while he was interrogating my window latch and I looked again from the stoop. Dusk and parked cars. Nothing.

Exhibit C: lock the door behind me, no one through it tonight, say it. Say it. He made me swear. Twice. Over a painting. Insurance men do not make you swear.

Exhibit D.

I stood in front of St. Jude, patron saint of lost causes, and made myself do Exhibit D honestly, because the evidence only works if you don't lie about the evidence.

When he crossed the room — too fast, too close, close enough that I had to tip my head back, close enough that I could see the exact place where his jaw met his throat and feel the temperature coming off him — my heart went off like a starting gun. And then he looked down at me. That face, that impossible Caravaggio face, aimed at me point-blank from a foot away, and those eyes — dark past dark, and this close I could see the blue living down in them, banked, like something burning behind smoked glass — and breath: gone. Heat everywhere, and I mean everywhere, and here is the problem, here is the thing I would not be telling Nina: not one molecule of it was fear.

A strange man stood over me in my basement demanding oaths about a door, and my body responded like the band had started playing something slow.

So. Either something is very wrong with him, or something is very wrong with me, and I have reviewed the evidence and I would honestly prefer him.

I looked at St. Jude. St. Jude looked at me.

"Not one word," I said, and went to call Nina, because those were the terms.

She picked up on the first ring. "Report."

"He made me swear to lock the door."

A pause. The TV went mute on her end. "Go on."

"Right before he left. He got — weird. Stood up in the middle of me talking, stared out the window like the street owed him money, asked me if the gate holds, if the latch works. Then he made me swear no one comes through the door tonight. Say it, Cat. Twice. And then — 'it's late, I have to go.' Gone. I went up after him and the street was empty."

"Empty."

"Empty-empty. Fifteen seconds, Nina. Both directions."

She was quiet the way she gets when she's rearranging furniture in her head. "What did he hear?"