Alex Palmer - Blood Redemption

— went through his mind. He was close to turning away when a young, blonde woman arrived at the door, a keycard in hand.

‘Do you think you could let me in?’ he said, and showed her his warrant card. ‘I need to talk to one of the tenants but I can’t get an answer on the buzzer. I know they’re in there.’

‘No one’s in any trouble, are they?’

She spoke with a European accent and he guessed she was a backpacker, passing through.

‘No, this is just information.’

‘I guess it’s all right,’ she said with a slow smile and opened the door. She glanced at him when he stopped at Grace’s door.

‘Gracie’s in her music, that’s why she can’t hear you,’ she said. ‘But if you ring that buzzer, it’ll light up on her wall. You have to wait until she notices you.’

‘Thanks,’ he said, willing her gone.

‘I’m up here, if you don’t have any luck,’ she said with a grin and disappeared.

He rang the door bell, wondering how long this might take, but shortly afterwards he heard the security chain being unfastened. She opened the door to him.

‘Hi,’ she said, ‘how did you get into the building? I didn’t hear you ring.’

‘This young German girl let me in. She turned up while I was at the door.’

‘Bennie? I’ll have to talk to her. She’s not supposed to do that. Do you want to come in?’

‘Yeah.’

He stepped into a small flat where everything needed for living was on display. Several CDs and a set of headphones were lying on a small couch. He tried not to look at the wide bed with its bright coverlet under the window.

‘Do you want something to drink? I’m afraid I don’t have anything alcoholic.’

‘No, just some water will do, thanks, Grace.’

They stood awkwardly side by side in the tiny kitchen while he drank a glass of water.

‘How are you?’ he asked.

‘I’m okay, I think. I keep finding it hard to believe it really happened. I sit there and I start thinking, is this true? Then I shake my head and I think, yes, it’s true and I’m still here. How are you?’

‘Me?’ He stopped for a moment. ‘That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Telling everyone it was finished like that. I built that team up from nothing. They asked me to come back from a little country town to do just that. Now they’ve thrown it away. They didn’t even give it a second thought.’

‘Why not give it to Trev? He could have done it.’

‘Why do you think? No, it’s not even that really. No, this is them giving Marvin his little bit of blood on the way through. Just so I know I’m not getting something for nothing. Forget it. I didn’t come here to cry on your shoulder.’

‘That’s okay,’ she said. ‘I didn’t expect to see you. Not so soon anyway.’

‘Well, I’m here.’

He put the empty glass down on the kitchen bench. He felt a wave of exhaustion roll over him.

‘I don’t know why I’m bothering you, Grace. I’m a dead man.’

‘Do you want to stay? Dead or alive?’

‘If you want me to.’

‘Do you want to go to bed in that case? It’s getting late and I’m pretty wiped out myself.’

She pulled back the covers on the bed and then gave him a clothes hanger for his suit while she disappeared into the bathroom. He hoped she would not come out to see him half-dressed in shirt and socks as he slipped jacket and trousers into the wardrobe between her spangled, shiny dresses and workday outfits. He got into bed and waited. She reappeared and undressed, tossing her clothes into the laundry basket. He watched her.

‘You’re lovely,’ he said.

‘Am I?’

She shook back her hair and lay down beside him.

‘You don’t have to say it. It doesn’t matter if I am or I’m not,’ she said.

It mattered to him although he did not say this. He stroked her face and wondered why she did not take more pleasure from the way she looked. It might have occurred to both of them that they had not so much as kissed each other yet. He would have done so but his fatigue was overpowering. He lay beside her and slept. He did not even remember her turning out the light.

When he woke later, he saw by the illuminated clock that it was just after four in the morning. He got out of bed and went to the bathroom, staring at his face in the cabinet mirror as he flushed the toilet. He thought that he looked better than he should have expected to and perhaps there was life after death. If you had not been asked (or chosen) to leave straightaway, this was the time in the morning when you did it. Dressing quietly, sitting on the edge of the bed to do up your shoelaces, saying goodbye as the other person stirs, arriving home at five in the morning with enough time for a shower and a shave, a clean shirt and possibly even some breakfast before going to work.

As he came back into the main room, he saw Grace sit up quickly in bed.

‘Did I wake you?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she replied, shaking her head and lying down again, breathing a little fast. ‘Bad dreams, that’s all.’

He got back into bed and touched her forehead lightly.

‘You don’t let them in there, Grace. That’s your revenge on them.

They can’t touch you.’

‘She’s not in my head. I’m keeping her out. I am.’

They kissed each other for the first time and made love without speaking in the partial darkness. Paul, having arrived at a place where he had wanted to be for some time now, encountered the firmness of her body under the softness of her skin. He liked this. He thought that this was the first but not the last time he intended to be here. Grace was pleased just to take him into her body and for that contact to be their only complexity before there might be other layers of emotion and memory for them to contend with. It was a slow lovemaking, shaded by their mutual tiredness. When they were finished, neither of them spoke. She lay with her head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat, while he placed his hand on her hair, stroking it. They slept again.

The next thing that broke into Paul’s consciousness was Grace’s hand on his shoulder, gently shaking him awake.

‘What time do you have to be at your desk this morning?’ she asked.

Suddenly, his eyes were open. Through the windows, he saw that the sky was a clear winter blue.

‘Nine o’clock,’ he said.

‘It’s ten to eight.’

He closed his eyes again and lay there.

‘I don’t have a clean shirt,’ he said, and contemplated turning up to his new job, on a day which included media visits, unshaven and wearing a dirty shirt together with used underwear.

‘You can have one of mine if you like.’

Her voice had a slightly sardonic edge. He sat up to see her smiling at him, her nakedness disappearing into a voluminous red kimono.

‘Will it fit me?’

‘You never know. I buy them to lounge around in so they’re all too big for me. What colour would you like? I know. Grunge yellow. That would suit you.’

He lay down again.

‘White if you’ve got it.’

A white shirt landed under his chin.

‘There you go,’ she said with a grin. ‘You can iron it while I make some coffee.’

In a shorter time than he would have liked, he was standing in her kitchen showered and dressed and swallowing mouthfuls of coffee.

The shirt she had given him was dangerously tight across his shoulders and uncomfortable around his neck. He had rejected her offer of a lady-shaver, thinking he would rather turn up unshaven than with cuts to his chin. The day-old underwear would have to be lived with.

‘There’s a barber I can get to, I should just have time for that,’ he said, rubbing his chin. ‘I might get him to brush my suit down as well.