My stomach growled at the sight and smell of food. I hadn’t had much appetite in the last couple of days. My stomach had been tied in knots of anxiety, confusion, and fear, not to mention the nausea caused by my wounds and infection. But after reading those replies, I felt suddenly ravenous.
I was headed in the right direction, it seemed, and that did a lot to allay my fears.
I downed my antibiotics with my last swallow of coffee. I didn’t bother with the Vicodin or oxycodone. My hand was feeling pretty good. Hell, I was feeling pretty good. Then Taylor and I hit the streets.
It was surprisingly warm out, and almost all the snow had melted from the ground. The only remaining patches of white were hidden away in the shadows: circles around the trunks of trees, small drifts piled against houses. I watched Taylor as she walked beside me. She wasn’t watching the pavement in front of her feet. Instead, she was looking far into the distance. It made her look strong. She wasn’t squinting despite the bright sun overhead. Her skin was perfectly smooth, a beautiful tea-soaked ceramic. I wanted to touch her, to run my thumb across her smooth cheek. But I could imagine her pulling away in horror, recoiling from my touch, and the thought of that reaction was enough to hold me back. I didn’t want to cause her any type of distress.
She glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked, a perplexed smile appearing on her lips. “You’re kinda freaking me out here, Dean.”
“I’m just thinking about taking your picture,” I said. “I’m thinking about capturing the way the sun illuminates your skin and sets your eyes on fire. I’m thinking about the lens I’d use, the framing I’d try to get, the stuff I’d keep in the background.”
We continued to walk, and I continued to study her face.
When I didn’t move to unholster my camera, Taylor let out a warm laugh and shook her head. “Okay, Dean. Just keep thinking about that photograph.”
“Always.”
As we continued downtown, she kept glancing my way, a self-conscious smile on her lips. I watched as her cheeks blushed a gentle shade of red—a rosy, pinkish red—and my chest filled with warmth. There was a smile on my lips. It felt goofy—big and unrestrained—but I couldn’t dial it down. It had taken over my entire face and wouldn’t let go.
Looking back now, this was by far my happiest time in Spokane. I was with Taylor, and I’d managed to make her happy; maybe I made her feel beautiful and loved.
And maybe, for a time, she made me feel the same.
“Let me do the talking,” Taylor said as we turned south on Monroe. “These guys are all right, but they can be pretty intense. They’re territorial and very touchy.”
“Homestead?” I asked, guessing at our destination. I recognized the street from my first day in the city. Weasel had escorted me past these very buildings, bitching about the Homestead and all of its rules. I remembered people staring out at us distastefully, peering from doors and windows. But looking back, I realized that those disgusted looks might have had more to do with Weasel than with the stranger entering the city for the first time.
“Yeah,” Taylor said. “They know me. I lived here for a while, before I found the house. They’ll let us in.”
Taylor led me to a street-level door halfway between First and Second Avenue. The building itself was squat and unremarkable: a two-story structure sandwiched between a pair of taller neighbors. As soon as we got within a dozen feet, a man stepped from the shadows inside the building. He was big and thickly muscled, and he had a kinked black beard that masked most of his face. There was a baseball bat clenched in his hands, and he was holding it like he was getting ready to drop down a bunt: his right hand down on the knob, his left wrapped around its thick barrel. I could see an eagle tattooed on the back of his hand. I stopped dead on the sidewalk, but Taylor continued forward. As she approached, the man shifted the bat up against his shoulder and pulled himself to his full height.
“What are you doing here?” the man growled. “I thought you’d left for greener pastures.”
“I can’t pay the old man a visit?” Taylor said, her voice cold, confrontational. “Do you really think Terry’s going to turn me away?”
The man grunted. “Maybe not, but that’s his weakness. In my opinion, the gone should stay gone. If they have nothing to offer, they have nothing to offer.”
Taylor made a clucking sound at the back of her throat, and then she flashed the man a mocking grin. The grin looked out of place on her delicate lips. “Since when did you get so deep, Mickey? And since when do you guard doors?”
The big man let out a frustrated sound—something between a grunt and a deep-throated growl—then he lifted his chin toward me. “If you go in, you leave your boy behind.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “We go in together. That’s what Terry would want.”
The big man glowered, stone-faced, for a couple of seconds, then he flexed his fingers against the bat. It was a gesture of pure frustration, his fingers pulsing with pent-up energy. “Fine,” he said. “I don’t care! This place is going to hell. No rules. No fucking order!” With that, he turned and disappeared into the building. Taylor followed. I had to break into a trot in order to catch up.
There was a second man standing just inside the doorway, and he stayed behind as Mickey led us back into the building. All the exterior windows had been boarded over with sheets of reinforced plywood. It looked like the Homestead had battened itself down for a hurricane. Or a military assault. Mickey produced a flashlight and waved us forward impatiently.
Before the evacuation, the building had housed a number of small businesses. Every door sported a different name and slogan. We passed MATTHEW FRANK DISCOUNT AUTO INSURANCE, TEMPLE SMITH OFFICE SUPPLIES, and, toward the back of the building, perhaps the sketchiest acupuncture clinic I’d ever seen, labeled simply ACUPUNCTURE. Then Mickey led us up a narrow flight of stairs, and we started back toward the front of the building. Halfway there, Mickey stopped at one of the boarded-up windows. He hit the plywood with a sharp, practiced rap, and the large sheet of wood swung aside. Outside, a five-foot plank spanned the distance to the neighboring building.
Taylor didn’t hesitate. She climbed over the sill and crossed the gap, disappearing into the building on the other side.
Mickey gestured impatiently for me to follow. It wasn’t a long way down—maybe fifteen feet—but I still took my time. I held my hands out for balance and placed my feet with care. When I reached the middle, the board suddenly started to bounce, and I looked back to see Mickey crawling out of the window behind me. The thought of that behemoth bouncing along at my heels—the thought of the wood cracking beneath all that extra weight—was enough to speed me up.
I stumbled over the windowsill on the far side, but thankfully Taylor was there to stop me from falling. Mickey jumped down a couple of seconds later.
“What the fuck is this?” I asked. “What the hell are we doing?”
“Precautions,” Taylor said. She gave me a brief, placating smile but didn’t offer any further explanation.
We were in a short hallway. There was a small bathroom to our right and an even smaller office to our left. The floor was a beautiful polished wood, and Taylor’s footsteps thumped solidly as she took over Mickey’s lead. I followed a couple of steps behind, and I could feel Mickey looming at my shoulder.