I actually hadn’t thought about that, if I was honest. I didn’t think there would be an “after.”
The city is always alive with people, all kinds—a circus of good and bad, wild and tame, freakish and square. Even at that hour, I wasn’t alone. Paul always says that it’s safer than it used to be. But it’s still not safe. Nothing is. Not even the quiet, rural place where I grew up.
I loved that isolated farmhouse that my father rented for cheap from an old man who bought properties for investment. With its creaky floors, and fireplace, the big barn out back and acres of woods where I could get lost without ever being lost, it was a child’s dream.
My dad loved it, too. We’d wander with our dog, Catcher, out in the woods, down to the river. It was a big luxury—all that land, all that space and sky—for a city boy like my dad, who had lived in an apartment most of his life. He hated the city, didn’t even like to visit. Unlike Paul, who couldn’t sleep without city noise, who could never imagine himself anywhere but the East Village. They were very different.
My parents and I felt like the place was ours, not a rental, because the old man who owned it never paid it any mind. If something went wrong—the toilet clogged, or the roof needed repairing—my dad would call Mr. Bishop, and the old man would either tell my dad to take care of it and deduct it from the rent, or if the repair required more money, time, or skill than my father possessed, Mr. Bishop would send someone to take care of it quickly. It was the rare relationship that worked without conflict. We probably would have stayed there forever.
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BY THREE IN THE MORNING, years and miles, eons away from the farmhouse, I was back at Nate Shelby’s loft, loping into the opulent lobby under the suspicious eye of the night doorman, a thick guy with the scarred face of someone who once had terrible acne. There’s something flat about his gaze, menacing about his gold-ringed hands. He would never pass muster for the day doorman, who needed at least a modicum of refinement.
“Where you staying again?” he asked as I tried to slink past him.
“I am house sitting for Mr. Shelby,” I said. I didn’t slow my pace toward the elevator.
“There’s a package.”
I paused, keeping my back to him.
“Where?”
“In the apartment,” he said. “It came late. Mr. Shelby called, said to bring it inside.”
“Okay,” I said.
The conversation was going on too long. The elevator was slow, and he walked around the desk to keep talking. Which was weird.
“What’s with the getup?” he asked. Finally, I had to turn to face him. It was too weird not to. “The hoodie, the backpack, the Chuck Taylors.”
I looked down at myself. “It’s not a getup. It’s just what I wear.”
“Just saying,” he said. “You’re a pretty girl. What are you hiding from?”
It wasn’t wolfish or threatening. In fact, now that he was talking, there was a softness to him, an easy curiosity. A kind of twinkle. I didn’t answer him, though. I am not much of a conversationalist.
“Good night,” he said as I walked away, ducked into the waiting elevator. The doors closed. That made three times I’d been seen when I didn’t want to be seen: caught on camera, green-eyed Erik asking me out for a drink, inappropriately curious doorman.
What was wrong with me? Why was I not invisible?
I knew the answer, though. It was getting to me. I was vibrating, giving off the energy of the thing I tried to hide and harness. I had given it a name. A thing that lived inside of me. The Red Hunter. Rage.
In the apartment’s inner foyer there was a box, which I might have left where it was except there was a noise coming from it and Tiger was sniffing around it mewing loudly. There were wide holes in the side and on top; beside it was another box, filled with supplies. I flipped the lid with my toe, and sitting on a bed of newspaper was a white kitten with one blue eye and one green eye.
“Meow,” he said, opening his tiny mouth wide. “Meow.”
There was no hissing from either Tiger or this new addition, just some rubbing and a little purring. The white kitten climbed clumsily out of the box as I stood watching, trying to process this turn of events. There was a note on top of the supplies—toys, kitten food, litter, a tiny litter box, a bed, all from the expensive organic shop where I got Tiger’s stuff.
Let’s call him Milo.
Best,
Nate Shelby
Milo was cute, but the whole thing was an annoying distraction, one that I had created. This is what happened when you let yourself show; you attract things into your life. I had violated a personal policy and reached into Nate Shelby’s world, causing a reaction in him. He had reached back into mine. The best thing to do would be to quit. To write him a note and say I got called away; he would need to find someone else.
But I didn’t do that. Instead, I unpacked the supplies, filled Milo’s litterbox, and put it next to Tiger’s in the tiny laundry room. I put out Milo’s food and some water across the kitchen from Tiger so there wouldn’t be any issue about whose food was whose. Of course, there would be, but they would need to figure that out. Then I watched the two of them tangle on the floor a little, finally settling on the windowsill together. I felt something I hadn’t felt in a while. Was it pleasure?
If you open the door, life wanders in. It’s harder to ask it to leave than never to invite it in the first place.
I almost went to bed. Fatigue weighted my limbs. I almost sank into the white bliss of Nate Shelby’s bed. But the computer screen beckoned. I couldn’t unsee what I had seen earlier. I needed to go back to it. I needed the information so that I could formulate the final stages of my plan. That’s what I told myself.
It was surreal, dreamlike to see the house online, to see the hallway where our pictures used to hang, the room where I used to sleep. The corner where we used to put our Christmas tree. And the basement where every nightmare I ever had came true. As I scrolled through the photos, the videos she’d posted, I couldn’t see anything as it was. I could only see it as it had been. Memory is like that; it colors the present like a patina.
Outside the tall windows of Nate Shelby’s loft, the cats watching me from the sill, the city hummed—its ceaseless song of sirens and horns and voices and tires on asphalt. Inside, all I could hear was the thrumming of the engine in my chest, my deep breaths.
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