“Yeah, well. It’s my dinnertime and I’m hungry.”
“Yes—hungry, isolated, and friendless. Aside from me, of course.”
“Thanks. I’ve loads of friends.”
“’Course you have. I’ve seen bag ladies with more active social lives.”
Suddenly I realized how very weary I was. I got up to put the tea kettle on.
“Ooh, careful when you cross the room you don’t collide with any of your pals,” the skull called. “I can barely see the far wall, there are so many close chums lining up to chat with you….” When I didn’t answer, it gave a chuckle. “Lucy, I’m a malevolent skull, without an ounce of compassion. You’ve got to be worried if I’m feeling sorry for you.”
I’d picked up the french fry packet and paper bag to put into the trash, but when I got there I found it was full, so I set them carefully on the floor. Then I took a detour back to the jar and twisted the lever on its lid closed, shutting off the continuing jibes from the ghost within. Even with the traffic blaring below my window, a sudden sense of peace enfolded me. I decided not to make tea after all, but go to sleep. I drew the curtains, lay back on the bed, and closed my eyes.
I was still in the same position five hours later. Afternoon sunlight streamed past the ironworks and through a gap in the curtains and lay like a shining counterpane across the wasteland of my bed. I had a crick in my neck and an ache in my jaw, and my muscles were stiff with weariness. Consciousness was a struggle; moving was harder. I wouldn’t have woken in the first place except someone was knocking on my door.
I shuffled the few necessary paces across the room. It was a puzzled sort of shuffling, since no one ever called on me. Clients didn’t come here; I spoke to them on the phone. So who could it be? There was the girl from the floor below who took my clothes on the weekends and delivered them back, washed and pressed, on Monday mornings. She was due today. But she always just left them outside the door, a neat little package of ironed skirts and underwear. She never knocked. It wouldn’t be her.
There was my neighbor across the landing, a nervous gentleman of late middle age who wore iron ghost-wards in his hat and whose apartment stank of lavender. He seldom spoke to me, and jumped whenever I went by. I think he was unnerved by my profession.
It wasn’t going to be him, either.
There was my landlady, a ferocious matriarch who resided like a spider in the basement flat, sensitive to every creak of door and stair, particularly if you hadn’t paid your rent. But I’d shelled out three months in advance, and she never bothered me. So it was unlikely to be her.
I didn’t know who it was. I went to the door, yawning, blinking, my hand busy scratching at an itchy spot down the back of my pajamas. I undid the lock and swung it open.
Mid-yawn, mid-scratch, I opened that door.
And it was Lockwood.
Lockwood.
It was Lockwood standing there.
Lockwood.
After four months, his proximity was shocking; it was shocking, too, how familiar and unfamiliar he was all at the same time. He was standing on the dowdy little landing in his long dark coat, his right hand still hovering by the bell. His hair, as ever, flopped to one side over his brow; his eyes sparkled at me between the fronds. As I met his gaze, he smiled—and that smile was a world away from the hundred-gigawatt version you saw in the papers. It was warm but somehow hesitant, as if it hadn’t been used recently. It was the smile I’d hazily imagined a hundred times; only now it was real, solid, meant just for me. He wore the same old coat with the same old claw marks, from the night we opened Mrs. Barrett’s tomb. The suit was new, though, charcoal-gray with the thinnest purple stripe; as always, it was elegant, stylish, and slightly too tight for him. I even recognized the tie—it was one I’d given him a year ago, after the case of the Christmas Corpse. So he still had that, still liked to wear it….
I blinked, and stopped thinking about his clothes.
Lockwood was standing at my door.
All this ran through my mind in the first split second. “Hello, Lucy,” he said.
I just managed to avoid the worst-case scenario, in which my mouth would simply have stayed wide open while emitting a gassy whining sound. But I didn’t get close to the cool, calm reaction I’d dreamed about during those four long months apart.
“Hi,” I said. I withdrew my hand from my pajamas. I rubbed hair out of my eyes. “Hi.”
“Sorry it’s a bit early,” Lockwood said. “I see you haven’t been up long.”
Funny, when I’d lived with him at Portland Row, I’d puttered around in nightclothes all the time. Now that we worked apart, I was suddenly wildly embarrassed. I looked down. No, they weren’t even my best pajamas. They were an old gray pair I was using while my laundry was being done.
My laundry…My blood went cold. The laundry package! If it was outside the door…
I craned my head out, surveyed the landing to either side. No. No sign of it. Good.
“Are you all right?” Lockwood asked. “Something wrong?”
“No, no. Everything’s fine.” I took a deep breath. Be calm. The pajamas weren’t a biggie. I could deal with this. It was all going to be great. I put one hand nonchalantly on my hip, tried for an expression of airy unconcern. “Yes. Everything’s fine.”
“Good. Oh, there was this package on your step,” Lockwood said. He produced a see-through plastic bag from behind his back. “Looks like it’s got a lot of…nicely ironed items in it. Don’t know if they’re…”
I gazed at it. “Yeah, those are…those are my neighbor’s. I’ll look after it for him. For her.” I snatched the bag and tossed it out of sight behind my door.
“You look after your neighbor’s underwear?” Lockwood glanced back across the landing. “What kind of an apartment building is this?”
“It’s—Well, actually I—” I ran harassed fingers through my uncombed hair. “Lockwood,” I said, “what are you doing here?”
His smile broadened, carrying me with it. It became a sunnier place, that little landing; the smell of my neighbor’s lavender plantation receded; I no longer noticed the peeling wallpaper in the stairwell. How I wished I was properly dressed. “I wanted to check in, see that you were doing okay,” Lockwood said. “And,” he added, before I could challenge him, “I’ve got something to ask you, too.” His gaze flicked past me for an instant, into the room. “If you’ve got the time, that is.”
“Oh. Yes. Yes, of course I have. Um, why don’t you come in?”
“Thanks.”
He stepped inside, and I closed the door. Lockwood looked around.
“So this is your place,” he said.
My place. Oh, God. With the shock of seeing him, I hadn’t stopped to think about the condition of my room. I glanced around, and with an instant awful clarity I saw everything: the sorry hump of bedspread in the center of the mattress; my pillow, laced with ancient stains; the various mugs and chips bags and plates with toast crusts stacked to the left of the sink; the dirty bags of iron and salt, the rusty chains, the ghost-jar with its horrid skull (now mercifully quiet); the colorful scraps of clothing scattered on the floor. Then there was the carpet. I hadn’t vacuumed the place in months. Why hadn’t I? Why hadn’t I actually bought a vacuum cleaner? Oh, God.
“It’s…nice,” Lockwood said.
His voice, so calm and measured, had an immediate effect on me. I took hold of my thoughts and quieted them. Yes. Actually it was nice. It was mine, after all. I was paying for it; I was making it work. It was my place. It was fine.