As I pushed myself to my feet, an unfamiliar weight bumped against my leg. What the hell? I scrambled away, but the thing bumped me again, dragging at one of my pockets. Then I remembered that scuffle, the hand clasping my arm, the brush against my trousers. Holmes, goddamn it.
As if it could hear my thoughts, the thing burst into a loud staccato buzz. Swearing under my breath, I fumbled inside the pocket. My hand closed over a small flat rectangle that vibrated angrily. A cell phone?
I extracted the device, which immediately stopped vibrating. The thing was the size of an old-fashioned playing card and almost as thin. Made from some kind of silvery metal that felt warm to my touch. It continued to buzz, but more quietly. I ran my thumb over its surface, then along the edges. No buttons, recessed or otherwise. Then I remembered reading about the new voice-activated screens. “Holmes,” I said. “Is that you?”
The buzzing stopped. The center of the object transformed from silver to black. Amber text flowed over its surface.
I am sorry. I have the bad habit of showing off, as Jacob will confirm. However, my tendencies do not excuse the hurt I’ve caused.
The address is 2809 Q Street NW. Your better judgment will no doubt send you back to your hostel room, there to seek quarters less troubling. If by chance you decide to meet the challenge, however, I’ve instructed the rental agency to send a representative to meet us at 3 p.m. Whatever you choose, I would suggest you take the job with the VA Medical Center.
Regards and Regrets, Sara Holmes
I choked back a laugh, then rubbed my hand over my face, which felt numb from the lingering rage. Difficult, Jacob had called her. Impossible was more like it. However genuine the apology, I could foresee more episodes like this one if we lived in the same apartment.
The text dissolved into a new message: Are you afraid?
“Damn you,” I whispered. “Damn you to hell, Sara Holmes.”
The screen went blank, as if declining to respond.
Three years ago, I might have tossed the device into the trash and gone away, untouched by that accusation. Back in those days, I’d been as arrogant as Sara Holmes. All the doctors were, the surgeons more than anyone else. I had lost that arrogance, somewhere between my residency and Alton, Illinois.
And what if you went to that apartment? You could prove her wrong. You can prove yourself wrong. And then, Jacob’s earlier words. You can always say no.
* * *
Three o’clock was twenty minutes away.
I hesitated only a moment, then flagged down a taxi. All the taxis in DC had human drivers, either in spite of the new driverless technology or because of it. Two sped past me, flags clicking over to occupied. A third slowed. I brandished a handful of bills, and the driver pulled over to the curb. “Q Street Northwest,” I said. “Number 2809. I have a three o’clock appointment.”
The cab’s trip display showed 2:57 when we arrived. I handed over two twenties and waved away the change. I would regret the expense later. But here I stood on the sidewalk, with a strange flutter of excitement in my chest as I gazed upward at the apartment building.
It was a modest redbrick structure, only three stories high and with very few flourishes of design. Two sets of stairs wound up through a narrow ivy-covered lawn. More ivy crept up the walls, its pattern echoed by the wrought iron grates covering all the windows. I suspected the ironwork disguised even more effective security—electronic sensors, perhaps. Underneath the windows hung planters filled with Black-eyed Susans, Queen Anne’s lace, and other wildflowers that called up memories of the pocket field behind my parents’ house, before the local mall overran it.
I do not belong here.
I quashed my doubts and mounted the dozen steps to the entry. There were no doorbells, nor the usual list of names for the residents. Here was a place where the residents clearly valued privacy. In spite of my resolve, I felt a second ping of warning that said my kind was not welcome.
The door swung open and a young woman smiled at me. “Dr. Watson?”
She wore a close-fitting suit of navy silk, with an ivory shirt that billowed over the almost invisible lapels. Her blond hair was clipped short, framing her narrow face in wisps and curls. Whatever she thought of my appearance—my gray T-shirt and baggy trousers, the badly fitted prosthetic arm, the color of my skin—her bland expression gave nothing away.
“I’m Jenna Hudson,” she said. “I’m from the rental agency. Ms. Holmes told me to expect you. Please come in.”
She gestured to one side. I passed through the door into a cool entryway, floored in dark gray marble, with freshly painted ivory walls. Several tall vases held ferns or English ivy, and a modest staircase coiled upward to the next floor. I could see a hallway extending toward the rear of the building but no sign of any apartments.
“For this particular building, our accommodations are second- and third-floor only,” Jenna Hudson was saying to me. “Our clients prefer the added privacy. I hope that’s not a difficulty for you.”
I couldn’t tell if she thought the stairs posed an obstacle for me, with my missing arm, or whether I might simply dislike the idea of a second-floor apartment. “Has Sara Holmes arrived?” I asked instead.
“Ms. Holmes telephoned to say she was delayed, but she would arrive within the hour. I can show you the apartment while we wait. Please follow me.”
We climbed the elegant staircase to the second floor. Here there was no other corridor, only four doors that opened onto the wide landing, while the stairs continued upward. Jenna Hudson unlocked the door labeled 2B and stood off to one side.
The sense of not belonging had increased with every step inside this building. As I passed Jenna Hudson into the apartment’s entryway, I had to fight against the urge to turn and flee. Only the reminder that I could say no, that I had promised nothing, helped.
But oh, oh, this lovely set of rooms.
It was so perfectly designed, as if God herself had read my desires and transmitted them to the architect two hundred years ago. First a vestibule with its spacious closet to one side, and a niche perfectly fitted for an umbrella stand. The tiles matched those of the landing and the entryway below—dark gray with threads of silver and gold—and the archway into the parlor was edged with more marble of a lighter hue.
Perhaps I made a hum of contentment, because Jenna Hudson smiled with obvious satisfaction. “There are two bedrooms,” she said. “Each with access to the main bathroom. There is also a second half bath off the parlor for guests. The kitchen has been updated with new appliances, though if you prefer, you may order meals through our concierge service. The same applies to laundry and other services. Cleaning is part of the rental fee, as are the furnishings themselves.”
I could never afford such rooms, with or without extra fees. Who was Sara Holmes that she insisted on an apartment like this? Why did she need a stranger to share it?
Still wondering, I continued through the archway into the parlor.
A vast bay window faced me, with the ubiquitous ironwork and a bank of wildflowers below. Bookcases lined the walls to either side, with another set of shelves beneath. There were even a few books. Austen and Eliot. Woolf and Russ and Lorde. A comfortable couch and two chairs occupied the space in front of the window. I noted an old-fashioned telephone in one corner, the discreet security cameras, and a small cabinet equipped with electronic devices. The whole room had the air of something from the late nineteenth century, but with grace notes of the twenty-first.
I turned through the doorway on my right to find myself in a short hallway. Doors led into a kitchen and a half bath. The kitchen was little more than a galley, but outfitted with granite counters and stainless steel appliances. There was a small alcove next to it that served as a dining nook. I glanced into the bathroom, which matched the rest of the apartment, then noticed the corridor angled around to yet another open area, this one with doorways for the two bedrooms. There were closets everywhere. Exquisite, practical, artistic closets,
the kind my mother would have wept for.
This, this was far too much for a retired captain from the army. Especially one who had no prospects for a job.
I returned to the parlor with its bay window overlooking Q Street. Off in the distance, the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial were visible above the skyline. I remembered, as a kid, staring up at Lincoln’s implacable stone face, hating and loving him all at the same time.
“It’s not as expensive as you think.”
Sara Holmes leaned against the entry to the parlor, arms folded and her mouth quirked into a smile. The lace gloves on her hands were just visible, though their color had faded to a pale gray.
“How did you—?”
“Deduction. And a certain empathy born of like experience.”
She came into the room to stand beside me at the window. I stared at her, trying to unravel what experiences she’d had that could possibly overlap mine.
“I have no job,” I said softly.
“Not yet,” she agreed.
A bluff. And yet . . .
“Why?” I said next. “You don’t need help with the rent. You certainly don’t need me.”
She shrugged. “Then perhaps I simply don’t wish to live alone. And you seem restful.”
Restful? I almost laughed.
“And you?” I asked. “Are you restful?”
“Not at all. Think of me as a challenge.”
Oh, yes. She liked to give challenges.
“Ladies.”
Holmes spun around. Her left hand went to one pocket, the other brushed over her forehead. I swallowed down the rush of panic, the same as I felt when I heard the thundering of helicopters approaching camp.
But this was no helicopter, no enemy soldier, only Jenna Hudson. She approached from the vestibule, where she had no doubt listened to our conversation. Had she overheard my comment about having no job?
“Have you decided?” she asked.
Holmes glanced in my direction. “I like it. Very much. But . . .” She tilted a hand toward me. “The decision is yours, Dr. Watson.”
No job. Not even an interview yet, though I had not forgotten Sara’s mysterious recommendation to take one job over the other.
“How much is the rent?” I asked.
“Your share would be twelve hundred dollars a month, taxes and fees included.”
That was . . . far lower than I expected.
Yet not so low that I could immediately disbelieve her. It was possibly—barely—that Hudson Realty needed to keep these apartments occupied. Subsidized rents were not uncommon.
An all-too-vivid image of my hostel room came back to me. The trash in the corridors, the sheets with their ghostlike stains, the walls that did nothing to shut out the noise. The sense of isolation, even amidst the crowds.
My gaze met Sara Holmes’s laughing one. I felt the itch of excitement, as I had not for two or three years.
“We’ll take it,” I said.
4
September 6. One week exactly since I met Sara Holmes in front of Dalí’s grand and gaudy painting. One week that felt much longer than seven days. Longer and stranger, as though Holmes had grabbed a handful of time, shaking the days inside out, simply to see what happened. I could imagine her doing that.
So. Let me tell you about this past week, Dear Journal. Immediately after I agreed to the apartment, Holmes announced we would meet with Jenna Hudson the following Friday to sign the lease. Hudson made soft murmuring noises about Tuesday, not Friday, and really, the company did not wish to leave the apartment vacant another week. Holmes ignored her. Friday, she repeated.
And Friday it was.
But first came a series of impossibilities, to make Friday possible.
I can’t remember anything about Sunday or Monday except panic and second-guessing. And a quantity of Johnnie Walker Red. Thank god for Jacob. Poor Jacob. At one point I’m certain he wished me back in Alton and himself in Maine. Tuesday morning, I visited the VA center the moment it opened. Three emails waited for me in my job search inbox. Suburban Hospital had filled its position from an internal review, but they would put me on their waiting list for future openings. BioStar Laboratories, in Silver Spring, wanted to interview me three p.m. Wednesday. The VA Medical Center had an open slot Thursday morning at nine a.m. Please click Confirm or Cancel to reply.
I paused. How to describe those interviews? No, not just the interviews, but the sense of coincidence that permeated the entire week? Sitting there on my cot in the hostel, I had the impression that Sara Holmes had orchestrated the entire production, from the moment I encountered Jacob Bell, to his mention of a friend, to that meeting with Sara herself in the National Gallery.
Half a page remained in the journal, and my pen was running dry. I wrote:
The interviews themselves were ordinary enough. Questions about my medical training. My plans for the next five years. How would I rate my ability to cope with a demanding work environment? They did not ask about my lost arm, though they clearly wanted to. Government regulations protecting the rights of the disabled and all that. Brief polite glances, however—at me, at my device—were obvious enough. In spite of my anxiety, the thing behaved throughout. (NB: Does this mean I think of my device as a dog, somewhat given to mischief? No, my feelings are hardly that affectionate.)
Six more lines to this page and book. The ink is fading. So. Two interviews, two offers delivered Thursday afternoon to my VA email. Both required a voice reply. Inside half an hour, I bought a cheap voice-only cell phone from the electronics truck around the corner. By end of day, I had my job. Too fast, too easily, oh yes, but I needed the money. Friday, paperwork and keys and the two months’ security deposit. And now this journal is truly finished.
I set the dying pen aside and flexed my right hand. There was much more I had meant to record. The moment of awkwardness when the technician reached for my left arm to record my fingerprints for the security lock. The glance Jenna Hudson exchanged with Sara Holmes when she stated the terms of our lease. How Sara wore no lace gloves that day, and yet I could make out faint lines, like a second set of veins, running over the surface of her skin. The whiff of sandalwood perfume that reminded me of Angela, when we bent over the paperwork to write our signatures. And Sara’s sardonic expression when I tried to hand back her texting gadget.
Just as well, I thought. The alarm clock I’d bought last Saturday was ticking fast toward ten a.m. I wanted to check out before the hostel charged me another day’s fee. Between the security deposit for the apartment, the cell phone, and a dozen other items I’d bought over the past week, my bank account had dipped alarmingly.
One of those items—a new leather suitcase—lay on the floor next to me, packed with all my possessions, including my old duffel bag. An oversized convertible tablet, bought from the neighborhood pawnshop, leaned against the wall in its vinyl case. I packed my last few items—the alarm clock, my journal, a few other odds and ends that had somehow escaped my attention before—then closed and latched the suitcase.
I glanced around the hostel room one last time. It looked—if that was possible—even shabbier and emptier than when I first arrived. Even the bed was stripped, the sheets and blankets returned to the front desk. How had I lived here fifteen days and left no trace of myself?
It’s safer this way, I thought. Then I slung the tablet’s bag over one shoulder and angled the suitcase onto its wheels. Time to go.
* * *
The taxi pulled over to the curb in front of 2809 Q Street.
Common sense had told me to walk the two miles from the hostel, but apparently I wasn’t on good terms with common sense these days. No, I just had to arrive in style, didn’t I, with my expensive luggage and my silk suit bought from the vintage store, one that disguised any number of defects except confidence and color.
Girl, you are some fool.
A fool willing to be fooled, as my mother would have put it.
I had not fooled the driver, howev
er. He was as black as me, but back at the hostel, when I gave him my destination, he had demanded a cash deposit—forty dollars—before he would load my suitcase into his trunk. Even now, as I handed him a tip, he scowled at me, then at the brick building behind its winding steps and iron-grated windows.
He didn’t need to say what he was thinking. I’d heard it often enough from the neighbors back in Suitland. Doctor or surgeon, that was for white people, and though they always said what a fine thing it was to aim so high, I could tell they wondered if I thought myself better than them.
Maybe I did. Maybe I was riding for a fall.
I could hear those selfsame words in my grandmother’s voice, back when I was seven and my parents announced they would move north.
The cab drove off. I swung my suitcase onto its wheels and stared up at my new home. It was a hot September day, the wildflowers in riotous bloom, but a faint breeze carried with it a whiff of autumn, of seasons in change, of possibilities I could not yet imagine.
My device shivered, an electronic echo of my nerves. The neighbors would be watching, of course. Black woman. White neighborhood. What was she doing here, and did she mean trouble? The times, they had changed since the 1960s, and those times had changed even more since 2008, when the country elected a black man as their president, but I knew what my parents always said was the truth. We’ve changed, but not enough. Otherwise 2016 would never have happened. Otherwise, we’d never have to fight a second civil war.
I hauled my new suitcase up the dozen stone steps to the portico. Here was the real test. Would my thumbprint work to open the lock?
I do belong here. I do, I told myself.
But my hand was slick with sweat as I studied the discreet gray panel next to the door. The ordinary metal keys were a backup system, Jenna Hudson had explained to us. The older residents preferred them. Our best security, however, lay in the biometric keys, provided by our own fingerprints. I wiped my hand over my trousers and pressed my thumb against the pad. There was a long and doubtful moment of silence, then a soft buzzer sounded and the door clicked open.
A Study in Honor Page 5