“Okay,” I answer, stomping over to the front door, and putting my hand on it’s stupid-ass middle of the door doorknob as I add, “In fact, you don’t have to come back here at all. Take the job. Be free. I don’t give a fuck anymore.”
Again, her expression doesn’t change, and she carefully stands and reaches over for the backpack she placed in a chair before answering, “Okay.” Then she says, “Ah, thank you—”
“Don’t fucking thank me, just get out,” I say before she can finish. I yank open the door for her so she knows I am serious.
A beat of hesitation passes. Then Sylvie takes the out I’ve given her, eyeing me warily as she slips past me and through the door as if she is afraid I’ll pounce at the last minute.
I don’t. Little does she know I couldn’t follow her out into the hallway even if I wanted to. And that’s probably why I shove the door closed as soon as she’s on the other side, just to make sure she hears the slam before she makes it to the elevator.
I’m angry. Furious. For reasons that have nothing to do with the drugs or the alcohol. Or maybe they do. Who the fuck knows? Who the fuck cares?
That’s what I tell myself. But too soon after she leaves, I’m standing with the bottle of wine at the front room’s street facing windows. I watch the sidewalk below until she appears. I brace myself, prepared to step back behind the curtain if she looks up.
But she doesn’t look up. She heads down the street in what I know from past experience is the direction of New Haven’s Union Station where she’ll catch a bus that will take her back to Hartford. I watch her go. At first, she walks away at a fast clip, but then she breaks into a flat out run.
And from where I’m standing, she looks like what she is: small prey who unexpectedly escaped a dangerous predator.
Chapter Five
SYLVIE
I’m free! I’m free! I still don’t know or completely understand why, but halfway down the street I burst into a run toward the bus stop. I’m afraid he will come after me or tell me he was only joking. Holt has the worst kind of rich Connecticut humor. Tight jawed and so dry that half the time he has to tell me he’s joking so I know whether or not to laugh.
I am free and that is good…but as soon as I get to the Union Station stop, I pull out the Blackberry 8300 his guard gave me the very first night I reported for dinner duty and check it. There are no new notifications hovering over the background picture of a road to who knows where. And for the first time since Holt met me at the door earlier, my heartbeat begins to decelerate.
He’d acted so strangely tonight. Smiling at me, big and goofy one moment, then grinding his teeth the next. I’d gotten used to listening to him talk during our dinners. About music I’d never heard of, and reality shows I’d never seen, along with things he learned at Yale that I never knew. But tonight, he’d been…off. Drinking wine instead of beer. Listening instead of talking. Staring hard at me instead of eating.
For the first time in the three weeks since I had been going to his, I had to guide the conversation. Which had been painful on top of awkward because I could feel him tonight in a way I hadn’t before. The way he looked across the table at me made it impossible to believe the lies I’d been telling myself to get through these dinners. That he didn’t really desire for me to do anything with him. He just wanted company…a friend…that was all. I figured I was like a charity project to him. The same as the big donors I wrote thank you letters to at the beginning of every year.
I had just started feeling comfortable around him, and it had been nice to spend time with someone who genuinely wanted company. Company was something I knew how to do after spending the last three years helping care for my father. And I wasn’t kidding about how much I liked The Doors, even if I was troubled by “Touch Me”…and the different way it made me feel inside.
The truth is, I had been looking forward to tonight. To talking with him about the Doors, and getting my new playlist with a song Holt had raved about yesterday. It was called “Seven Nation Army” and he’d told me that Kanye West, a rapper even I had heard of, claimed it was a song all black people loved. I’d looked forward to finding out if that was true.
But tonight had not gone anywhere near how I had imagined it would on the bus ride to New Haven this morning. Holt hadn’t even touched the mixtape square I placed carefully on the table between us. And when I asked him about his strange behavior, he yelled at me and told me to never come back.
Good, I decided on the bus ride back to Hartford. Back home where I belonged. No more lying to my parents. No more sitting across from someone who smelled like the smoke wafting out from under the supply room door at my old junior high. No more listening to the music my mother warned me about. No more jokes that don’t sound like jokes. No more Holt. I’ll never have to see him ever again.
I’m happy about this. Grateful even. But the bus ride back to Connecticut feels longer than usual without Holt’s latest “required listening” playlist. And even though this is the best thing that could have happened to me, I cannot stop replaying those last few moments with him in my head. The way he looked as I carefully scooted past him out the door. His face set in stone, blue eyes dark and stormy with anger like he’d known all along it would end this way.
Tortured, troubled, and tragic: those were the labels I had privately put on him to explain why he would want to have dinner every weeknight with some poor Jamaican girl. And he’d looked exactly that way before I left his apartment tonight.
But that is beside the point, I tell myself when the bus driver calls out our arrival at Hartford Union Station.
I am free, and that is all that matters, I remind myself on the short walk from the terminal to the stop at the corner of Asylum and Union Place. I also think hard about throwing the Blackberry away. Really hard.
But I don’t.
And thirty minutes later when my mom asks why I am home early, I mumble some excuse about the preschool director letting me off early because there weren’t enough kids enrolled in extended care today.
I could have told her I’d been taken off the extended daycare shift altogether since I’d only made that up to explain why I was never home in time for dinner. That’s what I should have said. But instead, I sit down in the chair beside Daddy to watch Antiques Roadshow until it’s time for him to go to bed.
I don’t have to go there today. That’s the first thought that comes into my head when I wake up the next morning. And I continue to remind myself of this as I shower and put on my clothes—jeans and a t-shirt that can easily absorb the mess of eight hours at a daycare. I’m a good girl again. Thanks to Holt letting me off the hook, I can be a perfect daughter again. No more conscripted dinners. No more lying. Good…
But for some reason, my heart still isn’t singing a joyful chorus.
As I do every morning, I jog down the concrete steps of our house to pick up the Hartford Courant. I tut when I see it resting on top of daddy’s newly bloomed marigolds. I know that the driver who tosses it from the window of his van in the predawn hours can’t help where rolled up paper drops, but I wish it had landed in a less fragile section of the garden. I’m barely keeping Daddy’s beloved front yard garden up as it is and who knows how much longer I will be able to maintain it without his guidance.
“Is this one of the weeks you get paid?” Mommy calls from the kitchen when I return with the paper. I can’t see her but I can imagine her going through her usual breakfast routine. Heating up Daddy’s porridge and adding enough sugar to mask the bitterness of the pills she crushes into it every morning.
I wince a little because Mommy is used to being paid in cash as soon as the job is done, and she continues to have problems tracking my paychecks.
“No, next week,” I call back as I free the rolled-up newspaper from its thin plastic wrap and sit with it at the table where my father waits in his wheelchair.
“Good morning, Daddy,” I say as I flip through the entire front section, scanning all the head
lines so I can decide the order of reading for today. There are a couple of stories about the Democratic presidential primaries between Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama, which I know he will want to hear first. Then I’ll move on to the local stories, and maybe end with a couple of fluff pieces about people doing good deeds…if I can find any—
I freeze halfway through my scan, the blood draining from my face when my eyes lock onto an article entitled, “Remembering Heiress 10 Years after Tragic Death.”
Deeply troubled…jumped while her son watched…son recently graduated from Yale in May…will join the Cal-Mart New York City offices as a junior executive in September…husband never remarried, but is rumored to be dating…
I read the article but don’t understand it because it reads like a tragic story with a happy ending. There is even a head-and-shoulders picture of Holt looking clean-cut and All-American handsome in the article sidebar with a blurb beneath it about how he interned at a centuries old multinational banking corporation last summer and will be starting a career as a junior executive in Cal-Mart’s New York offices in the fall.
But the boy in the photo only bears a passing resemblance to the tragic, tormented, and tortured guy I’ve been having dinner with for nearly a month. The one who I have never seen sober, and who I suspect hasn’t set foot outside his graveyard penthouse in a long, long time. The one whose mother jumped out a window right in front of him ten years ago on this very day. I don’t care what’s printed in black-and-white for the official record. This boy they are describing is not okay. I know it.
“You be reading that news to your daddy or yourself, daughter?”
Mommy’s question lifts my eyes from the newspaper and I must look as shaken as I feel because she asks, “What is going on with you, now?” as she sets down three bowls of porridge on the table.
“Nothing,” I answer quickly. “I was just thinking.”
“Just thinking,” she repeats, voice suspicious like I’ve confessed to something dangerous. And her eyes stay on me, even after I find an article about the new iPhone and start reading it aloud like I’m supposed to be doing.
And I can’t say she’s wrong to be suspicious. Dangerous thoughts swirl inside my head as I go through the rest of my morning routine. And even though there is no reason to bring the Blackberry with me today, since Holt and his bodyguard are the only ones with the number, I bring it anyway. Bring it and check it more than I should throughout the day. But it never goes off.
The weather is in the high 80s so the lead teacher asks me to fill a bunch of spray bottles with water. We hand them out to the kids and let them have fun outside. What follows are screams of joy mixed with a little anger, but mostly joy. The children’s laughter is infectious and when I finish filling out my time card a full two hours before what I told my mother was the end of my work day, a wave of gratitude strikes me. I only took this job because my family desperately needed the money, but in actuality, it does not feel much like a job at all. However, that moment of gratitude is soon overtaken by a thrum of guilt, like a kalimba striking a sour note inside my stomach. The same guilt that has been dogging me ever since I half-read that article about Holt’s mother.
I squash the sensation down and try to feel relieved when the West Campus shuttle lets me off at Union Station. Tonight, instead of walking twenty minutes to Holt’s building, I can just hop on the next 950 and take it in a straight shot to the Union Station bus terminal in Hartford. Tonight, I will be home in time to eat dinner with my parents. A nice Jamaican meal instead of takeout.
But the relief I’ve been expecting to feel since last night never comes. And instead of waiting for the next 950, I continue north on Union, turning left on Chapel, and right on Church. I walk and do not stop walking until I am standing in front of the tallest building on a certain block. It still has an old-fashioned brass sign declaring it the Worthing Electric Headquarters even though the company was acquired by a big energy conglomerate back in the early eighties.
The lights on the bottom floor remain dim, the windows to what were once Worthing Electric’s main offices tinted over. I stand back as far as I can without risking my life in the street. But no matter how much I strain my neck, I cannot see all the way to the top floor. Cannot see if there are any lights turned on above…
“I thought you weren’t supposed to come today,” Javon says in his usual surly tone when I show up at his elevator post.
He’s no nicer than he was the first night I showed up as Prin’s plus one, but apparently, I am much better at lying than I used to be. Because instead of cowering, I widen my eyes and act confused. “He texted me to come over earlier. He didn’t ask you to order food?”
“No, he didn’t,” Javon answers frowning hard, and I’m 90% sure he can see right through me.
But in the end, he waves me through to the elevator. “Call me if he agrees to eat,” Javon tells me. “I’ll bring something up.”
I nod in silent consent, too scared my voice will give me away if I answer out loud. And for the first time since I started coming here, it doesn’t feel like he’s locking me up when he slides the accordion gate closed.
Instead, the relief I’ve been waiting to feel all day suddenly hits when the old elevator goes through its now familiar angry buzz-and-jerk routine before carrying me up to the place I am not supposed to be.
I’m only checking to see if he’s okay, I tell myself as I walk down the golden hallway. That’s why I lied to his guard, so I could go up and check on him, and then clear my conscience. That is what I say to myself, but it feels like my heart will beat straight out of my chest as I knock on one of the black-and-gold doors.
No answer. I hesitate, wondering how to handle this unexpected barrier. Without much hope, I try the knob in the middle of the right-side door…only to have it turn easily. It’s closed but not locked. Closed but not locked…
This feels too close to the kind of metaphors I had to write essays about after reading books in which daring women met tragic ends. And thoughts of turning back tickle at the back of my mind as I enter what turns out to be a very dark front room. It is still light out, but all the blackout curtains are drawn, casting the apartment into a near pitch which means I can’t easily find a light switch near the front door.
So, I leave it open and carefully pick my way across the dark space with the little light provided by the outside hallway light. Deeper and deeper…
Without the ability to see clearly, I rely on my other senses to guide me. And that is a mistake, because the luxury penthouse smells like a bar. As if it’s been distilled and pickled. As I hand over hand the inside hallway wall to get to the last door, I brace myself to find Holt passed out or altered beyond all comprehension.
But I soon discover the hard way that there’s no amount of bracing to prepare me for what I find on the other side of the door.
Chapter Six
I’m tempted to take off my glasses and rub the lenses clean with my shirt. That is how hard it is to believe the scene in front of me.
Holt isn’t passed out on the floor. He sits at a desk, bent over some forms that look an awful lot like paperwork. His usually messy hair has been brushed and pulled back into a neat ponytail. And though he is wearing jeans and a t-shirt, the same as last night, it doesn’t look as if he picked these clothes up from off the floor. In fact, there are no clothes on the floor, and his bed is made so neatly, it could be the star feature in an ad for a luxury hotel room.
I take a step back, because I was obviously mistaken. Holt is fine and I am the silly one for coming here to check on him.
“Sylvie?”
I cringe at the sound of Holt’s voice, and wonder on a scale of understandable to truly terrible how wrong it would be for me to continue fleeing so I do not have to talk to him.
But he’s up out of his seat, his brow wrinkled with confusion. “Sylvie?” he asks again. Obviously expecting an answer from me.
“Yes, it’s me, Sylvie…hello…” I s
ay, but then trail off because of the way he’s looking at me. Hyper-focused, but not in the same unnatural way as last night. His expression is intent, but his eyes are sharp and wide open without the sleepy quality I have become used to over the last three weeks.
“Holt?” I say, my own voice filled with confusion because I have never seen his blue gaze so clear. “Are you…are you actually sober?”
His head jerks a little at my question. But then he answers, “Yeah, I’m sober,” his mouth tilting down like he’s not necessarily happy about it. “What’re you doing here?”
I guess I haven’t become as good at lying as I thought because I end up answering with the truth. “I know you said you were not wanting company today, but I thought this being the day and all, I should come around and see about you.”
“The day,” he repeats, eyes squinting.
I wonder if he’s serious, if he’s really going to make me spell it out. I pray he won’t make me spell it out.
But seconds go by and my prayers remain unanswered with me feeling more and more awkward by the second.
“I’m sorry. But this is the day…the day your mother killed her poor self—I read about it in the paper this morning,” I finally burst out in a rush, like a hurried confessor. “I tried to respect your privacy but I kept thinking about you up here all alone with no company. And I thought it would be better if I came by, is all.”
“Is all,” he repeats. Then his face screws up in disbelief as he asks, “Sylvie, are you saying you came here when you didn’t have to because it’s the anniversary of my mom’s death and you didn’t want me to be alone?”
When he puts it this way, it sounds very silly. Like I am a foolish girl who does not and has never known how to just “be cool.”
“Okay…I am sorry for having bothered you. I will leave you alone with your feelings now,” I answer, turning to the door.
I want to escape his penetrating blue gaze. I want to get out of here before I melt into a pool of complete mortification.
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