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From fifty floors up, I feel like I’m floating above it, watching from the silver-lined edge of a rain cloud, rather than being at street level, inside it, breathing inside it, inside its lungs.
Bathed in moonlight, it’s so beautiful, ethereal. I lay my hand against the cool window pane, and it instantly fogs around my fingertips. I pull my palm away and watch the steamy shape of my hand against the glass slowly fade into nothing. Like I was never even there.
We mostly walked here from the diner, slowly, in silence. I think the fact that I wasn’t chattering away like a nervous squirrel on meth told him that I was deep in my thoughts. He let me walk at my own speed, but halfway there, once the pain in my feet became too much, I stopped to sink onto a bench and pulled off my boots.
He frowned at my red and blistered feet and stood at the side of the road, waving his hand in the air. Within seconds, a black car pulled up to the curb, and without a word, he opened the car door and came back to help me into it.
I let him.
Whatever energy I’d gained from the sandwiches had felt completely sapped from my body. And I was limp and lifeless.
“Come on, you’re dead on your feet,” he said softly, making sure all my limbs were in the car before he closed the door.
I’d half expected the car to drive away into the night without him, and with me so mad with fatigue that I couldn’t even tell it where to go. But he was soon sliding in from the other side ofthe car, his long legs folding as he climbed into the car and then stretching out in front of him as he gently tapped on the glass partition, instructing, “The office, please.”
We drove for about ten minutes before he gently helped me out of the car. I remember my head against his chest as we took an elevator up to a penthouse apartment, and then somehow, he practically dragged me onto a couch, laying me down on it. Then he disappeared.
The leather under my body felt divine, but after lying there for a few minutes, I realized he hadn’t come back, and I forced myself to my feet to look around and gather my bearings.
And hope to fuck I hadn’t found myself in the apartment of a serial killer.
“Ax or butcher knife?” I immediately ask, when he finally comes back around the corner, a glass of water in his hand.
“Ax,” he says without hesitation and hands me the glass of water. “Drink.”
I obey because I’m parched and if we’re going to argue again or if I’m going to need to scream for help, I need my tongue to not be sticking to the roof of my mouth. I down the glass, and he takes it from me to refill it from the jug.
“Drink,” he says again. And he watches me gulp down half the glass before placing it on the coffee table. He nods, as if satisfied with my hydration.
“You answered that a little too quickly, you know. You shouldn’t tell people what your preferred method of murder is.”
“Did I, though?”
“You said ax. You showed your hand.”
“Or maybe I said ax to distract you. What if my chosen mode of murder is actually poison?” He flicks his eyes to the glass of water.
I guffaw, surprised over his unexpected joke. I feel my body start to re-engage with my brain as I sink back into the couch, feeling it hug my body from all sides. “Where are we?”
“A suite off my office. I stay here overnight sometimes when I’m working late,” he explains and sinks into the other end of the black couch.
He looks like he’s at home here.
He’s somehow even more commanding here than elsewhere, which is saying something.
What it must be like to go through life feeling like you can control everyone in every room you walk into.
My fingertips trace the gaps and worn creases in the leather. “It’s a nice place. This couch probably costs as much as my…” My voice trails off of its own accord. As much as my what? I own a grand total of three dresses—one of them a candy striper uniform—two pairs of shoes, and a duffel bag that doubles as a pillow. This couch costs more than all my organs would be worth on the black market.
“It gets the job done.” He shrugs. “I actually don’t spend too much time here.”
“Where are you usually?”
“In my office.” He gestures vaguely to a door I hadn’t even noticed in the far wall.
So much for my highly honed sense of awareness of my surroundings. I guess I should be lucky he’s not an ax/poison murderer.
“Workaholic?”
