А Финн - The Woman in the Window

He’s quiet for a moment.

Finally: “Well, now it’s the Ed talking,” he says.

I miss this, too—his stupid puns. He used to tell me I put the “Anna” in “psycho-anna-lyst.” “That’s terrible, ” I’d say, gagging. “You know you love it,” he’d reply, and I did.

He’s quiet again.

Then:

“So what do you miss about me?”

I hadn’t expected this. “I miss . . .” I begin, hoping the sentence will complete itself.

And it spouts from me in a torrent, water pluming from a drain, a burst dam. “I miss the way you bowl,” I say, because these idiot words are first to my tongue. “I miss how you can never tie a bowline right. I miss your razor burn. I miss your eyebrows.”

As I speak, I find myself climbing the stairs, past the landing, into the bedroom. “I miss your shoes. I miss you asking me for coffee in the morning. I miss that time you wore my mascara and everybody noticed. I miss that time you actually asked me to sew something. I miss how polite you are to waiters.”

In my bed now, our bed. “I miss your eggs.” Scrambled, even when sunny-side up. “I miss your bedtime stories.” The heroines rejected the princes, opting instead to pursue their doctorates. “I miss your Nicolas Cage impression.” It got shriller post– Wicker Man . “I miss how for the longest time you thought the word misled was pronounced ‘mizzled.’”

“Misleading little word. It mizzled me.”

I laugh wetly, and find I’m crying. “I miss your stupid, stupid jokes. I miss how you always break a piece off a chocolate bar before eating it instead of just biting into the fucking chocolate bar.”

“Language.”

“Sorry.”

“Also, it tastes better that way.”

“I miss your heart,” I say.

A pause.

“I miss you so much.”

Another pause.

“I love you so much.” I catch my ragged breath. “Both of you.”

No pattern here, not that I can see—and I’m trained to discern patterns. I just miss him. I miss him, I love him. I love them.

There’s a silence, long and deep. I breathe.

“But, Anna,” he tells me, gently, “if—”

A sound downstairs.

It’s quiet, just a low roll. Possibly the house settling.

“Wait,” I say to Ed.

Then, clearly, a dry cough, a grunt.

Someone is in my kitchen.

“I have to go,” I say to Ed.

“What—”

But I’m already stealing toward the door, phone clutched in one hand; my fingers glance across the screen—911—and my thumb hovers over the Dial button. I remember the last time I called. Called more than once, in fact, or tried to. Someone will answer this time.

I stalk down the stairs, hand slick on the banister, the steps beneath my feet invisible in the dark.

Round the corner, and light swerves into the stairwell. I slink into the kitchen. The phone trembles in my hand.

There’s a man by the dishwasher, his broad back to me.

He turns. I press Dial.

22

“Hi,” David says.

For fuck’s sake. I exhale, quickly cancel the call. Tuck the phone back into my pocket.

“Sorry,” he adds. “I rang the bell about half an hour ago, but I think you were asleep.”

“I must have been in the shower,” I say.

He doesn’t react. Probably embarrassed for me; my hair isn’t even wet. “So I came up through the basement. Hope that’s okay.”

“Of course it’s okay,” I tell him. “You’re welcome to anytime.” I walk to the sink, fill a glass with water. My nerves are shot. “What did you need me for?”

“I’m looking for an X-Acto.”

“An X-Acto?”

“X-Acto knife.”

“Like a box cutter.”

“Exactly.”

“X-Acto-ly,” I say. What is wrong with me?

“I checked under the sink,” he continues, mercifully, “and in that drawer by the phone. Your phone’s not plugged in, by the way. I think it’s dead.”

I can’t even remember the last time I used the landline. “I’m sure it is.”

“Might want to fix that.”

No need, I think.

I move back toward the stairs. “I’ve got a box cutter in the utility closet up here,” I say, but he’s already trailing me.

At the landing I turn and open the closet door. Black as a spent match inside. I yank the string beside the bare bulb. It’s a deep, narrow attic of a room, folded beach chairs slumped at the far end, tins of paint like flowerpots on the floor—and, improbably, toile wallpaper, shepherdesses and noblemen, the odd urchin. Ed’s toolbox sits on a shelf, pristine. “So I’m not handy,” he’d say. “With a body like mine, I don’t need to be.”

I unlatch the box, rummage.

“There.” David points—a silver plastic sheath, the blade peeking out at one end. I grasp it. “Careful.”

“I won’t cut you.” I hand it to him gently, the blade aimed toward myself.

“It’s you I don’t want cut,” he says.

A little flicker of pleasure within me, like the bud of a flame. “What are you doing with this, anyway?” I tug the string again, and once more it’s night in here. David doesn’t move.

It occurs to me as we stand there in the dark, me in my robe and David with a knife, that this is the closest I’ve ever been to him. He could kiss me. He could kill me.

“The guy next door asked me to do some work. Open some boxes and put some stuff away.”

“Which guy next door?”

“The one across the park. Russell.” He walks out, heads for the stairs.

“How did he find you?” I ask, following him.

“I put up some flyers. He saw one in the coffee shop or someplace.” He turns and looks at me. “You know him?”

“No,” I say. “He came by yesterday, that’s all.”

We’re back in the kitchen. “He’s got some boxes need unpacking and some furniture to assemble in the basement. I should be back sometime in the afternoon.”

“I don’t think they’re there.”

He squints at me. “How do you know?”

Because I watch their house. “It doesn’t look like anybody’s home.” I point to number 207 through the kitchen window, and as I do, their living room flushes with light. Alistair stands there, a phone cradled between cheek and shoulder, his hair just out of bed.

“That’s the guy,” says David, heading toward the hall door. “I’ll be back later. Thanks for the knife.”

23

I mean to get back to Ed—“Guess who,” I’ll say; my turn this time—but there’s a knock on the hall door a moment after David walks through it. I go to see what he needs.

A woman stands on the other side, wide-eyed and lissome: Bina. I glance at my phone—noon exactly. X-Acto-ly. God.

“David let me in,” she explains. “He gets better-looking every time I see him. Where does it end?”

“Maybe you should do something about that,” I tell her.

“Maybe you should shut your mouth and get ready to exercise. Go change into real clothes.”

I do, and after I’ve unfurled my mat, we begin, right there on the living room floor. It’s been almost ten months since Bina and I first met—almost ten months since I left the hospital, my spine bruised, my throat damaged—and in that time we’ve become fond of each other. Maybe even friends, as Dr. Fielding said.

“Warm out today.” She lays a weight in the hollow of my back; my elbows wobble. “You should open a window.”

“Not happening,” I grunt.

“You’re missing out.”

“I’m missing out on a lot.”

An hour later, with my T-shirt sucking at my skin, she hauls me to my feet. “Do you want to try that umbrella trick?” she asks.

I shake my head. My hair clings to my neck. “Not today. And it’s not a trick.”