by D. N. Hoxa
He watched me but didn’t say anything. He just looked like he was trying to convince himself not to slap me, or kill me, or at least yell at me.
“Can I go get my shower now?”
He sighed. “Go take your shower,” he said and let go of my shoulders before he disappeared.
I didn’t want to give myself the chance to think about what just happened. I knew it was my fault. I wasn’t going to admit it, so why bother my brain with pointless thoughts?
I found the bathroom and the four bottles of water Hammer had put on the floor right next to the door. The small space was in poor condition to say the least. Dirt and rust caked the corners of the blue tiles. The plastic of the shower was broken, but I found a spot to put both my feet on, and I didn’t move.
The water wasn’t all cold, almost as if the bottles had stood in the sun all day. I wouldn’t be surprised if Hammer had put them there before he went to sleep.
Once I got out of the shower and dried myself with my old shirt—since Hammer said he had a new one—I put on my new pair of pants. With them and my bra on, I opened the door to call for him. But I didn’t have to. By the door, three pieces of clothing were neatly folded, waiting for me. And next to them was my lipstick.
I found Hammer alone standing outside the house he’d put us in. I could see the rooftop of the building where I’d fallen unconscious. It wasn’t far, but it was far enough if he had to carry me.
“Feeling better?” he asked without turning to look at me, but I heard the smile in his voice.
“Much,” I said and went to stand next to him. The darkness ahead showed no sign of life. The place looked worse than Boston outside the wall.
Hammer handed me a cigarette and lit it for me.
“The lips again,” he mumbled, but he didn’t look like he was expecting a reply so I didn’t give any.
“Where’s Bugz?” I asked. I had heard her when I woke up, so I knew she was there somewhere.
“Gone to do a last check,” he said, drawing smoke from his own cigarette.
“So we just wait for her?”
“No. I want to show you something,” he said and walked ahead. “Come on.”
I followed him in the direction of Manhattan Island without word. The wall took my breath away all over again. It didn’t make any sense to me that they would keep something so huge hidden. It was so stupid and pointless.
Hammer continued to walk down the hill and straight ahead to the black water.
“Hey, where are you taking me?”
“In there,” he said and pointed at the wall.
“Are you out of your mind? They’ll shoot us!” I said, though the excitement built fast in my chest at the thought of seeing Manhattan. Who knew what they had in there? I was dying to take a peek.
“They’ll shoot me if I go. They won’t notice you’re there if you go alone.”
“Alone?” I asked, the excitement dimming a little. I didn’t know anything about the place to go there alone.
“Yeah. You’ll be fine. I can tell you how to get in and out,” he said and offered me his hand. I took it, and we started to walk around the edge of the water.
“What about you?”
“I’ll be right here. I’ll wait for you.”
I already knew that, but that wasn’t the point.
“I don’t know…” I whispered. I didn’t want to tell him that I was afraid.
“If you don’t go now, you might not get the chance later,” he said with a sad smile. “Besides, I know you’re dying to see what it’s like in there.”
“Of course I want to. But I don’t want to postpone our trip to Brazil.”
I knew he was in a hurry. I didn’t want to mess up his plans.
“We’re in no hurry.” Huh. Guess I’d gotten that one wrong. “We don’t have to leave tonight. We can leave tomorrow.”
“But…” I started to say, but he squeezed my fingers and stopped me.
“No buts. You go in there and take your time. We can leave tomorrow,” he said, leaving no room for arguing. Well, for someone else, of course. Not me.
“Why? Why do you insist I go see Manhattan?” I asked. Not that I was suspicious or anything, but I was just curious.
“Because I want you to see it.”
I did want to see it. I just didn’t feel like it was the right thing to do, to keep them here for another night.
“Is there no chance for you to come with me?” I asked. I would’ve felt so much better with him there.
Hammer smiled and shook his head.
His ‘I know how to get you in’ idea wasn’t what I was expecting. Not at all. I fought him for ten minutes, and he still won. I did trust him, but it didn’t mean that what he wanted to do wasn’t stupid.
There were guards all around the wall. So when he told me that he was going to use rocks to lay the way for me to the wall, to where I’d have to jump—really high—to get to the other side, I said no. He insisted that he knew the place. If I jumped at a certain place at exactly nine-fifteen, no guards would be there to see me.
It was ridiculous to watch him put rock after huge rock in the water, one at a time. But I still hadn't forgotten that he’d undressed me without my permission, so he was making up for it.
“I’ve already paid off three unauthorized pants’ removals,” he mumbled by the time he set the sixth rock in the water.
“Unauthorized maybe, but unconscious is something else,” I said, while I watched him with my arms crossed in front of me.
“Can’t you just—”
“Nope. Not going to help you. Besides, you’re the one who’s insisting I go in there.”
“Yes, because I know how much you want to see it,” he mumbled, more to himself than to me.
I, of course, started to feel bad again, but after one look at him holding that huge rock that made the muscles under his shirt clench deliciously, I was perfectly fine standing there, watching. I was mesmerized by the way his body moved. I was tempted to reach out and touch him too many times. By the time he was on his way to put the last rock in place and hopped from one to the other, I was feeling too warm to be normal. And when he stopped in front of me, rock in hand, watching me, it was physically painful to remove my eyes from his.
“You don’t look so good,” he said with only a trace of a smile on his small, beautiful mouth.
“I’m fine,” I mumbled.
He stood in front of me for a couple more seconds, before he disappeared and appeared again on the last rock. I almost gasped.
“Why the hell didn’t you do that from the beginning?” I said, raising both hands at the rocks. He could’ve just jumped like that and not wasted time hopping from one to the other.
He grinned like a little boy.
“And deny you the pleasure of watching me work? I’m not that cruel,” he said, and my cells caught fire. I felt as red as blood, and I opened my mouth to speak, but for a long while, I couldn’t make myself say anything, because I couldn’t think.
“I did not,” I finally whispered, but it came off as if I was breathless. Which I was. I had been so sure he wouldn’t see me.
“You remember that I can smell you, right?”
“Then don’t! Don’t freaking smell me,” I hissed.
What the hell? I couldn’t even have the privacy of my own feelings? And why did I feel so embarrassed? I felt like going for a swim in the creepy black waters.
“Okay, fine…sorry,” he said, still chuckling,
Since my brain wasn’t functioning properly, I had nothing left to say. I just turned my back on him and looked ahead. I was going to have to jump the giant wall, and then I would see Manhattan. Which should’ve been much more exciting than knowing Hammer was watching me.
“Once you land on the other side, on your right there will be an old, green door. It only has one lock, which you can easily break with a push, and you get inside immediately. It’s the backdoor to a bar that is crowded all the time, so you’ll look l
ike you came out of the bathroom, and no one will suspect anything,” he said. “Grab a whiskey and relax for a while. It’s very important that you don’t stop and stare. Act normal and not impressed.”
“I’ve lived inside a wall before,” I reminded him.
“Trust me. You will be impressed with what’s in there. Completely different from Boston.” I took his word for it. “After you leave the bar, take a right and walk straight ahead until you reach a crossroads, and then turn left. From there, you’ll be able to take a cab and ask to be taken downtown.”
“Downtown, got it,” I said with a nod, feeling like I should’ve felt if my mother had seen me off to any of my pathetic school trips. She never did show, but I imagined it would’ve felt something like that.
“Once there, you take your time and walk around, see things, whatever, and make sure to get in a cab at least one hour before sunset. This should cover the expenses.” He put two hundred dollars in my hand. “Get to the bar, and take the same way back. Make sure there are no guards before you jump.”
“Okay,” I said, and we both nodded.
“You’ll be fine. It’ll be fine.” He seemed a bit nervous.
“I’ll be fine.” I nodded again.
“I wish I could come with you.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
“Stay out of trouble, okay? I’ll wait for you here,” he said, pointing back at the hill on our side.
“Okay. Okay, I’ll be fine.” I couldn’t believe how nervous I felt.
“Go ahead,” he said and took a step back. I was tempted to follow him and forget Manhattan. I didn’t want to be on my own.
But when I thought of it…Manhattan. Knowing it actually existed was like a distant dream, but actually getting to see it, it was more than I could’ve hoped for.
I stepped on the first rock, and once I saw it was more stable than it looked, I felt safer. I could do this. I could do this, because he was making this possible for me. The way he instructed me, as worried as a parent should be, was so adorable, I wanted to hug him.
On second thought…I turned before I could think twice and ran back to give him a hug. Call it impulse. It felt wrong to leave without at least a sign of appreciation. Since I wasn’t going to say thanks anytime soon, a hug seemed appropriate.
When I put my arms around his waist, he didn’t waste a second before wrapping his around all of me. I heard him giggle, and I smiled against his shirt. It felt amazing in his arms. Finally, I knew what it was like to have someone worry about if you made it back alive.
Unfortunately, I had to let go of him because Manhattan was waiting for me.
“Go!” he said, chuckling. His eyes held more emotion than I’d ever seen in them before. I took just a tiny little second longer to watch him, to imprint the image in my brain for a while, before I left.
***
Darkness and silence greeted me the second my feet touched the cold ground of the inside of the wall. I didn’t even allow myself to breathe until I was sure that nobody had seen me. The wall was higher than that of Boston, and I did have my doubts, but my body could do much more than I gave it credit for, and it didn’t let me down. I made it safely. Now, I just had to make it back the same way.
I found the green door, just like Hammer said. It was turquoise, but it would have been weird if Hammer had known the difference, so it was fine. I took the time to listen before I walked in. Hammer was right. The place was more than crowded.
With a deep breath, I pushed the metal, and the lock broke. I was inside.
So. Much. Blood.
I bought a bottle instead of a glass. I had a feeling I would need it because, like I said, so much fucking blood.
I practically ran out of the bar and to the street. Again, Hammer was absolutely right. I was more than impressed. I was amazed, most of the time.
The downtown looked like it was completely made out of lights. Half the whiskey went inside my system in the first hour. There were just too many people around me. It was perfect, an exact image of the times that were. I even played a game with myself and pretended the world had never gone through the explosions. That the end had never come and there were no walls and no RO. I’d never seen something so wonderful, such filled streets, so much laughter and so much chatter, all at once.
I did my best to follow Hammer’s advice and not stare, but it was much harder than I thought it would be. Everything was so inviting to my eyes, calling, screaming for my attention. I kept pointing from one building to another, from one of the giant screens to the other, but there was no one to tell.
Sure, I grew up on my own. I would’ve enjoyed this much more if I’d never met Hammer.
But I did. And every time I saw something especially awesome, like the man selling ice cream in his ice cream van or a bunch of teenagers dancing right there in the middle of the street, I felt the urge to tell him.
It was all I could’ve ever dreamed it to be. Yet it felt less than I imagined or believed that it was.
Because of him.
I’d grown attached to the vampire without even realizing it. For the first time since I met him, I noticed just how much I missed him as I walked down the streets of Manhattan. I did my best to convince myself that what I was feeling was normal, that I was going to die soon, and therefore, I somehow developed a new need to rely on someone, to miss someone. Only because I didn’t want to leave the world without knowing how that felt. But deep down, I knew.
And I confirmed it to myself when I got into a cab to get back before it was even one after midnight.
Yeah, I knew I was pretty screwed when I felt more excited to see him than I had been to see a whole city. A city I hadn’t even known existed.
But when I jumped, after triple checking that there were no guards for ten feet on both sides, and I landed with one foot on a rock and the other in the creepy water, I didn’t even flinch.
He was there. He had waited for me just like he said he would.
“Hey?” he said. “Are you all right?”
He waited for me by the rocks and reached out his hands to help me while he analyzed every inch of my body until he was convinced that I was unharmed.
“I’m fine,” I mumbled.
“But it’s not even two,” he said, his eyes squinting in suspicion.
“I know. I just saw it all and got back sooner.”
It wasn’t entirely a lie. Being alone made the process much faster. I just walked and looked.
“Well, how was it?” he asked, still as surprised as when he first saw me. I sat on the ground right where he had been sitting, waiting, and he joined me.
“It was amazing. I never thought I’d see something like it. It was absolutely breathtaking.”
“See? Told you you’d like it.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“What? You just came back from Manhattan, and you want to know what I did?” he said and looked at me like he didn’t know if I was kidding.
“Yeah.”
Unbelievable, but still true.
“Nothing. I went to see Bugz and then got back here around midnight.”
And he waited for me.
I didn’t like to admit it, but Manhattan changed me. In just a few hours it changed a lot of things about me. And they were all related to Hammer.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked again. Of course he’d doubt. I did nothing but fight him and told him that I’d take care of myself ever since the day I met him. He wouldn’t understand if I told him, so I didn’t.
“I’m fine. I can't wait to see Brazil now,” I said, in an attempt to change the subject.
“It’s not going to be anything like Manhattan,” he said and leaned back on his elbows.
But you’ll be with me, I thought.
We didn’t talk for a while. We just sat there, in complete darkness, watching the wall in front of us, thinking. Try as I might, I didn’t get anything figured out. Not one thing. My mind was in a place it had never bee
n before.
“What are you thinking?” he asked me after his patience wore thin. I was tempted to laugh that he chose exactly that question.
“Nothing.”
“Come here,” he said. He lay down on the ground and waved for me to lie down next to him. Without a word, I dragged myself over and rested my head on his chest. When his arm wrapped around my shoulders, I forgot all about Manhattan. Strangely, the knowledge almost made me cry.
“What are you thinking?” I asked him next to take my mind off the stupid tears.
“You,” he whispered, catching me off guard.
“Me?” Maybe I hadn’t heard him right.
“Yeah, you.”
“What about me?”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking. What is it about you?” he said, but he wasn’t asking me. He was wondering out loud, so I didn’t say anything. Soon enough, he told me. “One moment I think I have you figured out, and the next, you…leave Manhattan early and come back to me,” he said, like that was the most unbelievable thing he’d ever witnessed.
“I didn’t…” Okay, I did. Fine.
He said nothing else, just tightened his grip around my shoulders, but I almost heard his lips stretch into a smile. It sucked that he knew. It sucked that there was nothing I could do to deny it. But it rocked to lie there in his arms.
In need of a subject change, I remembered something. “What did the man ask you, back at the bar in Paris? You said he always asked the same question, but you never did tell me the meaning.”
“He asked, have you found her yet?”
I only nodded against his chest, because I was afraid to ask how he’d answered.
“Run,” Hammer whispered next. I leaned up to look at him.
“What?” I asked, a dumbfounded smile on my face. He wasn’t smiling. In fact, he looked dead serious.
“Run.”
He was on his feet and pulled me to mine the next second, before we began to run.
The scenery never changed. All broken stuff always looked the same. But soon, I heard them.