Dream Lover (10 page)

But it did last. Marvelously, the sensations became not only bearable, but wonderful. She felt a sudden, deep twisting of her insides, and this extended out to her limbs in wave after wave. Her head was light. She saw stars in the bright blue sky.

She was finally dying, a blessed end to this long woeful journey; she welcomed the prospect. She matched his thrusts to hasten it. The stranger’s face suddenly contorted, and he shouted out for all the jealous graves to hear. His release felt more powerful inside her than what she had seen in the church that first night.

She did not die. The stranger rolled over and rested her insubstantial frame on him like a blanket. She could feel her impending separation. She’d done so wrongly, she could not remain like this. She pushed up from his chest. “You have to leave. Now.”

“Just a little while longer, Lauren.” He gripped her tighter.

“I’m not her. I lied, understand? I—took advantage—you better—” Belle felt like escaping steam, and she suddenly found herself back in the safety of her room. She was relieved and looked out the window to where she had been. He fumbled with his clothes and raced like a hunted rabbit into the church then back out, tossing items in the open backpack as he ran along the overgrown road. He suddenly stopped. Fearful though his face was, he went back and brushed the ashes from the grave marker with the words A TAYLOR.

As he disappeared, Belle tried to follow, but could go not farther than the edge of town. She went back to the church though she knew it too would be off limits again, and yet she went in easily. The pot that the stranger had emptied now sat upon the pulpit, the lid set beside it. It was all that he had left behind. Belle looked inside as if an answer might be in it: just a few ashes. He’d made her feel so good, so alive, and now he was gone. She knew that her punishment had been just, but this, the sudden sensation of being alive, just to have it repealed, was too cruel.

But it was just.

“Annabelle.”

She jumped then looked back.

The stranger smiled. “Belle is short for Annabelle.”

She lowered her head. She was as much embarrassed as surprised. When was the last time anything had scared her?

“You’re Annabelle Taylor.” It was not a question.

She did not meet his eyes. She nodded slightly.

“I have to know, have you seen Lauren on the other side? Is she happy? Did she go, you know, to heaven? I mean, I never really believed in…but she…I mean, Lauren, she believed.” He approached and stood by Belle, who was still dressed in her tiny red garment.

She stepped away and went to the window. “I see nothing but the sure decay of this empty town.” He followed and started to reach for her. He paused. A realization came over her. “Take heart, the truly good do move on.”

He sighed with relief then pulled his hand away from Belle. “Wait, so you’re not good?”

She did not turn to him. Her voice was shimmering, eerie. She didn’t want it to be. “If I’ve learned anything, it’s that I’m bad. Very bad. So now
you
better move on.”

After a moment of careful thought, he gripped Belle’s small waist and pulled her tight. He moaned as he tasted the length of her neck. He pressed his scorching lips to her cool mouth for a long, deep kiss that popped when he eased away. “Let me be the judge of that, Annabelle.”

Belle looked down at her body. Surely it would vaporize.

She remained whole.

 

 

 

 

 

I
know he watches me. He watches me having sex when he takes his cigarette breaks by the rear fire door of Charlie’s Steakhouse. He smokes a lot. I have sex a lot, and the blinds in my bedroom are thin. I imagine him in the street below, smoke trickling from his lips as he watches the shadow of me, three stories above, giving head to the shadow of a stranger. I wonder if he wishes he were the one sliding into my red, wet mouth; if his cock swells inside his grubby chef’s whites; if he returns to the sweating kitchen and scalds or cuts himself because his mind’s not on the job.

I like to think he hurts himself because of me.

In the mornings when I leave for work, he peers through a slit in his curtains. I know he does. I think he looks at my mail too—just the envelopes. But to look at the envelopes, he’d need a key to open my mailbox in the hallway. I think he has this key. I think he has all sorts of keys and his morals are loose.

I think this because I watch him as much as he watches me.
At least, I hope that’s the ratio. Most of the residents of Tate Court have left and those who remain must stay vigilant. He senses my fear, I’m sure he does. Worse, he enjoys it.

Before the elevator broke down, he joined me one afternoon as the doors were sliding shut. He came from nowhere, bringing with him a whiff of sweat, cooking oil, and cigarettes. I held my gaze several feet above the ground, staring at geometric repetitions on a panel of parquetry, hoping I seemed cool, not intimidated. When he pressed the button for his floor, I glanced up, despite knowing five was his level. Everyone does this. We’re habitually on our guard, seeking confirmation that the people around us are still themselves. It doesn’t do to be lax about the details.

The floor shuddered and the elevator creaked upward as if carrying the weight of the world. Tate Court is dying. Its cool, modernist lines are slumped and cracked, concrete gapes through chipped mosaic floors, and over half the apartments stand empty. We are a burden on the building, although our number is dwindling. That was the last day I used the elevator. The mechanism jammed, leaving us stuck between the second and third floors, only for a few minutes, but those minutes changed everything.

“Damn.” I jabbed at the floor buttons.

“There’s no point,” he said. “It’ll move when it’s ready.”

He was calm while I was tense. “You speak as if the building’s alive.” I couldn’t keep the accusatory tone from my voice.

He smiled smugly, implying he knew it was. The elevator whirred but we said nothing. The dial above the door flickered between two and three. Sweat prickled in my armpits and across the small of my back. I made a mental note to remind myself of this moment in winter when I was huddled in a blanket, the heating having failed once again. Perhaps it would warm me.

Eventually, he said, “Rachel, isn’t it?”

He was leaning against the paneled wall, forearms resting on the brass rail, effectively taking ownership of the elevator’s space. Stubble shaded his jaw and his dark skin gleamed with grime-streaked sweat. He looked like a laborer, dirty and vigorous. Two of the knuckles on his right hand bore raw, red wounds, and a finger on his left was wrapped in a blue bandage. Above his right wrist, an inch or so of silvery scar tissue made a bare patch among his soft, dark hair. Inexplicably, I wanted to suck him there.

“Yes,” I replied. “And you’re Merrick North.”

There was no friendliness between us, merely an acknowledgment that we were equally wary.

Another silence passed. I focused on my breathing exercises, trying to get a grip by reassuring myself I wasn’t in danger. My fears were irrational. The walls were not closing in on us; the space was not getting smaller; we were not running out of air; we would not die together in each other’s arms.
Deep breaths, Rachel
.

I didn’t know where to look or what to say. In our hard, boxy surroundings, he seemed increasingly real: human and vulnerable yet intent on protecting himself, just as I was. After only a few minutes—minutes that seemed like hours—the living, breathing physicality of him began to get to me. You can’t blame me. If you were stuck in an elevator with a stranger, I bet your thoughts would start warping too. He filled the space and he filled my mind. His jeans sat neatly on his hips, a thick buckle riding above his crotch, and his stomach was flat beneath a shabby, blue T-shirt. I wanted to touch him, wanted to press my head to his chest and hear his heart. I wanted the warmth of his flesh. The walls of the elevator made a coffin. I don’t know why that made me want to fuck him but it did: a crazy thought.

I wondered what he did when he wasn’t working. Sometimes I hear music seeping from his apartment two floors above mine. A soprano sings about drowning in a river; a weird, haunting fairground tune as lively as it’s mournful. The music drifts through walls and floors, winds its way down the stairs and bleeds inside my head. It sounds as if it’s coming from an old tape recorder, a reminder that the past dances in the dust motes of this near-empty building.

After a while, I forced out a laugh and said, “Phew. Hot in here, huh?” I pressed the third-floor button again. The elevator growled and dropped fractionally. My stomach lurched. “Oh, fuck.”

When everything was still again, he said, “You do realize you’re trapped, don’t you?”

His eyes were the color of blueberries.

“Me?” I glanced at the doors; pointless really, because they would only slide open onto the blank wall of the shaft.

“She wants you,” he said.

“Who?” My heart beat faster.

“This isn’t an accident.”

“Who wants me?” A note of panic thinned my voice.

“This is how it started for me.” He cast his eyes around our small space. “In here.”

“Who wants me?”

He was with me in two steps. His scent hit me, fresh sweat overtaking the smells of steak and cigarettes. His face was before mine, a muddle of stubble, neck, nose; a lock of ink-black hair falling across his forehead. Then his lips were on my lips, moist, warm and insistent. I found myself responding. I couldn’t help it. He leaned into me, the brass handrail digging into my back, the weight of him squashing my breasts and my breath. I touched his sides, not knowing whether to push him off or embrace him.
Almost without me knowing it, my hands were running up and down, chasing the hardness of him, the ripple of his ribs beneath muscle and flesh, the pliant softness around his waist. My cunt throbbed. When my hands slipped beneath his tee and found smooth, hot skin he pulled away and smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. It was self-satisfied and secretive. Panting, I swiped the back of my hand across my mouth. I felt such a fool.

“Who wants me?” I breathed.

Above us, the mechanism clanged. The elevator shuddered, whirred, then began its slow, noisy ascent.

“Tate Court,” he replied. “But it’s already too late.”

 

That night, I dreamed Tate Court was fucking me. Freaky, I know. It was a rectangular, strangulating fuck. The swirls on the Egyptian-green marble in the lobby became botanical tentacles writhing around me. I squirmed in their vile grip as the building’s Art Deco angles jabbed and poked. When I woke, the name “Peter” was on my lips. “Peter, oh, come to me, Peter. Please.”

Who the hell was Peter?

I was wet and wanting. I made myself come while thinking about Merrick in the elevator, thinking how I didn’t like him or trust him, but I wanted him all the same. He knew something we didn’t. None of the residents who’ve left Tate Court have been able to fully explain their departure. “I don’t like it here anymore.” “It’s giving me bad dreams.” “This building is diseased.”

I noticed the decay before I noticed the emptiness. Several months ago, Tate Court began falling apart as fast as a modern construction. The stained glass sun rays no longer shine over the entrance like a brave new future. Instead, the floor is littered with chips of glass, yellow and red like piss and rubies. Damp
began seeping into my apartment, leaving stains on walls and mildew on windowsills. Bulbs popped within weeks of being fitted. I use candles to light my rooms now.

They couldn’t let the vacated apartments. Rumors of bad feelings increased. The rents were lowered, but still no one wanted to move in. Merrick, though he’s watchful, doesn’t have the hunted look of the remaining residents. But then I’m not sure I do either. I’m cautious and alert because I’m not sure what’s happening. But I’m not cowed. My biggest fear is of Merrick because he doesn’t seem afraid, so mine is a fear grounded in logic and suspicion. I don’t have that inexplicable bad feeling shared by so many others.

Last year, the guy I was dating said it crawled all over him, whatever “it” was. Before long, he stopped staying the night. Then he said I was creeping him out too. He said, “It’s not me, it’s you.” We split after that. I don’t take kindly to being called “creepy.” Since then, I haven’t met anyone prepared to stay the night. I’ve given up trying to get a boyfriend and instead I make do with random hookups.

The incident in the elevator upset my equilibrium. I began avoiding Merrick North. I felt strange, not quite myself. Flashes of déjà vu kept assaulting me. I couldn’t identify what might already have happened but I was left washed by melancholy and longing. At other times, I was consumed by a desire for Peter, my groin thumping with sudden lust as I climbed the stairs or hailed a cab or sank into a candlelit bath. But I didn’t know who Peter was. I had no image of him. Nonetheless, I knew my lust was for him, and that he wanted me too.

After several days, my unfathomable hunger for Peter led me to Merrick’s apartment. The drowning song was playing again, the woman’s high, otherworldly voice warbling over a plinky-plonky, music-box tune. I took a flashlight, feeling half
drunk, my senses wading through a sea of unreason. I barely knew what I was doing. I just knew something up there wanted me and in return I wanted him or it. On the fourth floor, an open door revealed a cracked, peeling room, empty except for a dehumidifier. I made a mental note to return and swipe it for my place if it worked. For now, the important thing was to reach Peter or Merrick or the music or whatever was drawing me on.

The door to Merrick’s apartment was open. I tiptoed into a large room, sparsely furnished but with an atmosphere of warmth and age, despite the dampness in the air. Candles in wine bottles dotted the room high and low, and a silver candelabra on an old TV set made ghoulish shadows wobble in one corner. A wide sweep of windows overlooked the city, reflected candle flame flickering among the squares of lit apartments. Debris littered a threadbare Turkish carpet, but the biggest mess of all was a vast, ragged hole where a wall had been knocked through, connecting Merrick’s apartment with the one next door. Structurally, it looked unwise. A yellow-handled sledgehammer lay across the rubble. There was no sign of Merrick.