He taps his spoon on the side of his demitasse, angles his chair. Squints up, examining the side of their tenement. If he used the fire escape to break into Nomi’s apartment, would anyone see him from the street? Does he even care if he’s seen?
Simon finishes his coffee and his cigarette, walks back to the tenement and takes the stairs to the third floor, lets himself in. There are three windows in his apartment; the one farthest left, near his bed, has the attached fire escape. He hangs up his coat and goes to the bathroom for some more medication, then to the kitchen, where he finds the tools he thinks he’ll need and puts them in his back pocket.
Then he walks over, unlocks the window and opens it, climbs out.
He hasn’t been outside on the fire escape before. The metal grille clangs under his boots, and the pavement seems a long way down. Rusted paint is coagulated on the metal bolts. The hardware securing the fire escape to the external wall of the tenement is loose, and the whole thing seems fairly flimsy. But he’s committed now, and if he’s going to do this, he needs to just move fast and not think about it.
Ishe going to do this? It’s a profound invasion of Nomi’s space and privacy.
And yet.
Simon squeezes around the fire escape rail and goes backward down the metal stairs. Ducks under the brackets welded to the rampway he’s just descended. Nobody seems to be watching him at ground level from the sidewalk; it’s almost like people in NYC try to ignore what’s going on with their neighbors. Incredible.
Now he’s facing the window that sees into Nomi’s office. And there it is, almost exactly like he imagined: The document envelope lies to one side of her desk, discarded. On the blotter, a gray cardboard wallet with a yellow sticky note on top. That’s got to be his file.
His file.His name, his past, his identity.
There’s rust on his hands; Simon wipes it on his jeans without thinking. Looking at the window, it seems like the same double-hung arrangement as the windows in his own apartment. He’d use the same technique to break into either of them: Rather than disable the latch, Simon uses the butter knife he took from his kitchen drawer and removes the beading around one of the small glass panels in the upper window. With so much weather damage, the beading breaks away from the wooden casement quite easily. Then he only has to pull out a few nails with his pliers and remove some old putty, and he’s got the bottom left panel loose.
Now he can just remove the glass, reach inside and undo the latch, push up the window, and step over the frame into her apartment. The whole exercise takes him about five minutes.
Nomi’s office is cramped and dark. Simon props the glass window panel on the floor against the wall, pulls down the blind, which makes the room darker still. He sets his housebreaking tools to one side.
There’s a reading lamp on the corner of the desk, and he switches it on. Wipes the sweat off his palms onto his shirt. Picks up the gray document wallet.
He starts reading the file standing up, but as soon as he sees the mug shots, he sits down.
Chapter Twenty
October 1987, Friday
It’s after sundown by the time Nomi makes it back to her apartment. Being at the tenement makes her nervous, but she’s really sick of feeling like she hasn’t got a home to go to. Fuck it—if Claude Ameche comes, let him come. If Simon Noone knocks at her door, let the cards fall where they may.
It’s Friday, and she has other priorities.
She lets herself in, walks down the hall, dumps her tote and her leather jacket in the living room, backtracks to the bathroom. Grabs her kit bag and returns via the kitchen, where she collects a beer from the fridge. She’s still got her holster on, and she’s too impatient right now to take it off. Her whole body feels fragile. Her skin is tight, itching and humming, like she’s a glass balloon stuffed full of angry bees.
The apartment is still dark, which suits her mood, but she needs a light to do this. Nomi moves a strand of spider plant aside, switches on the mellow standing lamp in the living room, sets up on the coffee table. Her skin feels grimy with sweat, but she’ll feel better soon.
The Valium she bought from Mischa last night is still in the key pocket of her jeans, but again, it’s not her priority right now. Her hands are shaking slightly. Preparing her tools—arrowhead, Kleenex, alcohol, dressing—only takes a minute, seems to take forever; this isthe economy of time when you’re about to perform the ritual. Once she’s got everything laid out, she unbuckles her belt and tucks the hem of her T-shirt under the bottom edge of her bra, uncaps the rubbing alcohol; the acrid smell immediately brings a metallic-tasting wash into her mouth.
She’s always tempted by her left arm, but those days are over. When the scarring got too bad, too noticeable, she got her first tattoo cover-up: Now inky flames and thorns and roses protect that space, warning her not to create further damage. Instead, she finds a piece of soft, unblemished skin near her belly button, just above the place from last Friday. She wipes it down, feels herself shiver, takes up the obsidian arrowhead’s reassuring weight. Shoves her hair out of the way, holds her breath, makes two swift cuts—yesandyes...
As the blood springs out and a glittering euphoria slides through her body, she exhales deeper than she ever has in her life. Okay, now she feels better. Now she feels human.
Nomi lays her tool on the table and puts her head back. She’s allowed to enjoy the rush of cutting but not rely on it. It’s tempting to say, “I’ve had a hard day, I deserve this,” but it’s a trap she refuses to fall into. Cutting logic is to feel deserving every day, because every day is hard. That’s a downward spiral to nowhere. She has appetites; she controls them. Otherwise, the appetites control you, and it’ll be a cold day in hell before she lets herself be controlled again. She’s fine about feeling relief, though: The last twenty hours have been a fucking nightmare.
Blood dribbles down into the waistband of her jeans in a warm leak, and it’s absurdly peaceful. The buzzing inside her has settled. She feels focused, clear, with a kind of satisfied tiredness, like she’s just gone for a long run. There’s a mild sting, and she folds a Kleenex, presses it over the wound to settle it, pulls down her shirt.
As she leans forward to do the cleanup, a voice to her right says, “Were you ever going to tell me?”
Nomi jerks around and draws her Smith & Wesson in one motion.
In the gloomy living room light, Simon Noone stares along the barrel of her gun, along the taut length of her arm, right into her eyes. The suspension of sound and movement seems to stretch out to infinity.
Nomi remembers to breathe. She doesn’t lower her weapon. “You broke in.”
“Yes.” He’s in the doorway of her office. Dark chambray shirt, blue jeans, blue eyes, full lips just like the mug shots in the file. He’s older now, but is he wiser? She’s seen how fast he can move, but she doesn’t think he can move faster than a bullet.
