I opened the door, surprised to find one of the tenants from the elevator waiting in the hall, a thin young man, with wire-rimmed spectacles and a bright orange T-shirt under a brown leather vest. “Yes?” I said.
The man grinned. “Dramatic scene.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Boy goes missing. Cops show up. Unexpected.” He stepped across the threshold, forcing me back with his casual momentum. He wandered over to the window and peered down at the street. “Nice view.”
“Can I help you?” I stammered, still standing by the open door.
The man turned with a slow smile. “I think the question is, can I help you?” If he’d noticed Zoe on the bed in the next room, he didn’t show it. He sat down on the loveseat, knees apart, forearms on his thighs.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Just a little conversation.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what—”
“Is this your hardware?” He nodded at my open laptop on the coffee table, the email I’d been working on clearly visible. “Dear John,” he read out loud. “You are a useless, pathetic, good for nothing troll…” He leaned back, looking amused. “Well, that’s not very nice.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“I told you. I’m just here to talk.”
I still hadn’t closed the door. Physically, he was hardly imposing, but his dead-eyed smile made me reconsider forcing him to leave. “We could have talked at the café,” I said. No point pretending I didn’t know who he was.
He nodded. “True. But I like to know who I’m talking to in a situation like this. I wanted to meet…” He picked up a power bill from the coffee table and looked at it. “Felix Mallory.”
“Why?” I asked, faintly.
“Why don’t you shut the door.”
It was more of a command than a suggestion, and I obeyed with a brief glance at the bedroom, unable to see the bed from where I was standing.
“You know,”—the man propped his feet on the coffee table—“you should really be more careful about your online interactions. You got lucky this time. You could have been talking to anyone. The cop downstairs, for instance. You looked a bit spooked by him.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“Of course you haven’t. We’re just two regular guys having an innocent conversation… Did you get the money, by the way?”
“Yes,” I said.
He looked impressed. “You really want to find this girl, don’t you?”
I looked him in the eye for the first time and his smile opened, revealing rows of blunt white teeth.
“Do you mind if I ask what you plan on doing when you find her?”
I looked away and he chuckled.
“Well… I’m sure you’ll think of something.” He pulled a slip of paper from the pocket of his vest and held it out between two fingers.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“The answer to your prayers…” He waved the paper. “Redhead stripper. Hummingbird tattoo. Only her real name isn’t Jasmine, it’s—”
“Angela,” I whispered.
He looked surprised, then his grin came back, wider than ever. “Give the man a cigar.”
I pulled out my wallet and he held up his hands.
“Oh, I don’t want your money. That was just to see if you were serious.”
“So what do you get out of it?” I asked, confused.
“Just the pleasure of helping a fellow… enthusiast. We’re solitary animals, Felix. We’ll never be friends. People like us don’t have friends. But that doesn’t mean we can’t look out for each other.” He held out the paper again. I told myself he was wrong. We weren’t the same. But in that moment, it felt as if he knew me better than I knew myself. I stepped into his orbit. Our fingertips brushed with a snap of static electricity, and the paper changed hands.
“Well,” he said. “I guess that’s everything.” He got up and strolled over to the door, then turned back. “Oh, there was one last thing. I wouldn’t consider this a condition as much as a request. A professional courtesy, if you like. If you find her. When you find her. Take pictures. You know where to send them…” He dropped me a theatrical wink. “I like to watch.”
Before I could respond, the man had slipped out of the apartment and shut the door quietly behind him. I stared at the door for quite some time before locking the bolt and chain. If it weren’t for the paper in my hand, I’d have wondered if he’d really been there at all.
“Hey.”
I spun round, stuffing the note into my back pocket. Zoe had shuffled out of her room in her sunglasses and an ankle-length bathrobe, her hair wilder than usual. “Did you make coffee?” she asked.
“I… No, not yet.”
She yawned and gave me a bleary smile. “Everything all right?”
“Yes,” I said, mechanically.
Boris padded out of the bedroom. It occurred to me that he hadn’t made a sound the whole time the man had been there.
“How long have you been up?” Zoe asked.
“Not long.”
She looked around the room with a frown. “Were you on the phone a minute ago?”
“No.”
“That’s weird. I thought I heard you talking.”
She plodded into the kitchen, as Boris sniffed around the sofa.
“No,” I muttered quietly, fireworks thudding in the right hemisphere of my brain. “It wasn’t me.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I should have been used to the gaps in time, but this felt different. I was on my feet in pitch darkness, with no point of reference, nothing to anchor me to any specific location. A sudden flash of light illuminated a face, inches from my own, and I staggered back from what I belatedly recognized as my reflection in a pane of glass.
“Zoe?” I called out in the renewed darkness.
I felt my way through rooms filled with strange objects: a lawnmower, a pile of firewood, a body sprawled on the floor. The body groaned, and I knelt down to touch fur. A glint of bared teeth. I drew my hand back and stood up. “Zoe?” I called again, my voice edged with fear. My fingers grazed a wall, and I stepped through an open doorway. Light flashed again, briefly illuminating Zoe’s photo album, lying open on the living room floor, filled with the pictures of my old apartment. I reached for the book, but my hand closed around a folded piece of paper. I lifted the paper, straining to read what appeared to be John Ayes’ handwriting.
Keys rattled in the door and Boris barked.
“Shut up,” I said. He barked again and I aimed a kick at him. “I said, shut up!”
The door swung open and Zoe’s silhouette appeared in the doorway. “Felix?”
“What?” I shouted back.
“What’s going on? Why is it so dark in here?”
Zoe flipped a switch and I winced, shielding my eyes from the sudden light. Boris charged over to greet her, whining, tail pumping. She dropped a suitcase and bent to hug him. “Hi boy! How are you doing? Oh, I missed you so much!” I looked out the window. Lightning flickered in the night sky, a hard rain pummeling the street. Zoe stood up and grinned. “Is that for me?” She was looking at the paper in my hand—not a note after all, but a twenty-dollar bill. I jammed the money into my pocket and took a step back.
“Felix?” Zoe said.
“Sorry. I just need to…” I pointed to the bathroom and hurried inside. I pulled out the paper. It had changed again, this time into a photograph of my old kitchenette—a large pot in the foreground on top of the stove. I held the picture up, noticing something I hadn’t before: a distinct reflection of the photographer in the pot’s curved metal. I brought it closer to my face, seeing not the man with the truck, but a woman, with fiery red hair.