This from the guy who couldn’t get away fast enough earlier that day, terrified – rightly so – of losing his job, or at the very least facing a harsh reprimand. Faye wanted to ask how he’d talked his way out of the situation, but found that she barely cared. Her mind hadn’t fully awoken yet, was still swimming between sleep and the waking world, as yet undecided which it preferred.
“What time is it?” she asked, looking around the room, trying to remember through the fog of sleep where on the wall the clocks in her living room were located.
“Just past eleven,” Steve said, then just stood there, waiting.
“Christ!” Faye said and opened the door wider, letting Steve in. She motioned him to the couch. “Sit down. I just wanna change. Been in this uniform all day. Be back in a second.”
She scurried to her bedroom down the hall. Came back a few minutes later wearing jeans and a T-shirt. She carried a big blanket. Much bigger than the one from the hospital. “Alright, let’s go.”
Steve’s odd behavior niggled a little at the back of Faye’s brain as they headed out into the hall. She had known Steve would help her when she asked this morning, but he’d never been the type to follow up in this manner once he’d lent a hand. He wasn’t the overly considerate type in general. Maybe his return was tied to his apparent romantic interest in her – which she’d never suspected before he’d tried to put his arm around her.
Or maybe it was just that he was privy to an incredible secret, and was simply intensely curious now. Perhaps a combination of these factors.
Whatever the reasons for his return, she had no time to consider them right now; they had to get Henry out of the dumpster – it was already well past the time she should’ve gone for him, and she was terrified now that she would look inside and he would no longer be there.
* * *
Downstairs in the dumpster, Milo’s sense of something being incredibly wrong suddenly kicked him in the chest. And it wasn’t only that Faye should have come for Henry hours ago.
Whatever it was, he felt it coming. Soon.
It began snowing heavily again.
* * *
Faye made note of how many people they passed as they walked the four flights down the stairs. Exactly one: a young guy taking his dog for a walk. That was it. But even one was too much. Too risky. She thought briefly of trying to get Henry to the elevator, then realized he probably weighed too much for that. His weight, plus hers and Steve’s would easily tip the scale, and the last thing they needed was for the elevator to break down, or worse, for the line to snap entirely. No way to get out of that one.
No, it would have to be the stairs.
When they reached the rear entrance, she turned to Steve, said, “Wait here. I’ll go get him. You be my eyes for this stretch of hallway. If we can get him to the stairwell, we should be OK.”
Steve nodded, again with that weird look on his face.
Something in Faye’s gut flipped over, settled strangely, and she wondered again why he’d bothered to come back.
Faye walked out the doors, looked both ways, crunched her way through the fresh snow toward the dumpster. Once beside it, she whispered, “Henry, it’s Faye. I’m going to take you inside now. Don’t say anything, just stand up as best you can without being seen. I’ll toss a blanket on you, then you’ll need to climb out. As quietly as you can.”
She heard shuffling sounds inside, one semi-loud crash as Henry’s elbow or knee connected with the side of the bin. She looked around quickly again. No one in sight. She craned her neck back – no one hanging out on balconies. Too cold and snowy for that. She thanked the universe this hadn’t all fallen at her doorstep in the middle of summer.
She looked back to the dumpster, saw the tip of Henry’s great metal cranium peek out from the top, and whispered, “Down! Lower!”
Henry’s head dipped a bit. She flung the blanket up and over the lip of the bin; it settled on his head, then draped him entirely. Or at least as far down as it could go before coming to rest on garbage bags and old coffee tables.
“Climb out,” Faye said. “Do it as quickly and quietly as you can, Henry.”
She stepped back, kept an eye out for any movement. She glanced back toward the building, imagining for a crazy moment that Steve would be gone, having panicked. She wouldn’t put it past him to have just fucked off somewhere at the very moment she needed him. But he was still there. Nervously shuffling from foot to foot, sure, but he stood right where she left him. He moved his head side to side as she watched. When he noticed her looking, he gave her a thumbs up. She returned it, feeling ludicrous.
Henry hoisted himself up surprisingly gracefully. He knocked once more against the dumpster as he pulled himself up with his massive arms, but it was even quieter than the first time. His right foot settled on the edge of the bin, then he was over, landing – once again – more gracefully than she’d ever have thought possible.
He crouched low, stayed as small as he could, and didn’t move a muscle until he heard her say, “I’m going to put my hand on your head and just position you in the direction of the doors. When I say ‘go,’ move forward as quickly as you can, got it?”