I'm always looking. I see everything.
After dinner, we head back upstairs. The staircase is narrow, and he's ahead of me, filling the whole width of it, and my hand finds the knife in my pocket before we reach the top. I hold my breath, waiting to see what happens next.
"We should get to bed early," he says. "Lot of work tomorrow before the storm hits." He says it casually.We.Like I'm part of this. As if my being here tomorrow is a settled fact and not a favor that can be revoked at any moment.
"Get some rest," he says, standing in the hallway outside my door. He's so tall that he has to duck slightly at thedoorframe. "If you need anything in the night, I'm right next door. But I sleep like the dead, so you might have to bang on the wall."
I nod.
"You know, you don't have to nod at me like I'm your commanding officer," he says. "I'm just a guy with a bar and a big mouth. Get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a busy day." He slaps the doorframe. "Night, Stormy."
I want to say thank you, because even I know that what this man is doing deserves words. But my throat has closed around every word I own and none of them will come.
I just stand there, nodding like that's all I know how to do, and he seems to understand because he doesn't wait for more. I lift one hand. A small wave. It's the most I can manage and it's pathetic. I know it's pathetic but he just waves back.
He goes into his room and closes the door, and I stand in the hallway listening to the sound of him moving around. The creak of floorboards under his weight, a drawer opening and closing, the muffled thud of those heavy boots hitting the floor one at a time, until the sounds stop and the apartment goes quiet.
I close the door and reach for the lock. It's a push-button. I press it and try the knob and it engages, barely. I can feel the give in it. The mechanism is loose, worn out from years of use. I twist the knob harder, testing it, and the lock pops free with almost no resistance. It doesn't work. It's not going to hold against anything, not a shoulder, not even a firm push.
The air goes out of me. Not all at once but in a slow, sick leak, like a tire with a nail in it. I press the lock again. Try the knob. It pops free. Again. Pop. Again. Pop.
It doesn't lock.
I scan the room. The nightstand is too light to do anything. The bed frame is bolted to the wall. A smart choice for a room where drunk people sleep it off, a terrible choice for me right now. The closet has nothing useful. There's a small wooden chair in the corner, the kind that exists in guest rooms because someone decided guest rooms need a chair even though no one ever sits in them.
I pick it up and wedge it under the doorknob. It fits. It won't stop a man his size but it might slow him down. It might give me three seconds, and three seconds is the difference between asleep and awake.
I turn off the lamp and get into bed. The sheets are clean. They smell like laundry detergent. The pillow is soft. The comforter is warm. It's the most comfortable bed I've slept in, or tried to sleep in, in a long time, and I hate it because comfortable is dangerous. Comfortable means your guard is down. Comfortable means you've forgotten that a closed door without a lock is just a suggestion.
I slide the pocketknife under the pillow. Three inches of dull blade against the biggest man I've ever stood next to. The math doesn't work. If he comes in, and he decides to take what he wants, the knife isn't going to stop him.I know that.I've done this math before with other men in other rooms and the answer is always the same.
I'm not big enough. Strong enough. Never enough to change the outcome.
But the knife is under the pillow and my hand is on it. It's the only thing between me and whatever comes through that door tonight. I don't turn it loose.
The wind is getting louder. The building groans and creaks around me, this concrete fortress that survived a Category 5 hurricane. I lie in the dark and listen to everysound. The rain against the window. The rattle of wood loose on the exterior — a sign, maybe, or a shutter.
And then footsteps.
I stop breathing. My fingers close around the knife handle so hard my knuckles ache. The footsteps are heavy. Everything about him is heavy and they're in the hallway. Moving. Getting closer.
They pass my door.
The door to the bathroom opens. Closes. Water runs. The toilet flushes. The door opens. The footsteps come back down the hall. They slow near my door and my heart is beating so hard I can feel it in my teeth. I'm gripping the knife and staring at the doorknob and waiting for it to turn, waiting for the chair to scrape, waiting for the thing that always comes—
Please don't stop. Please don't stop.
The footsteps pass. His bedroom door opens. Closes. The floorboards creak once, twice, his bedframe creaks as he collapses on top of it, then nothing.
I don't relax. I don't breathe. I lie there with the knife in my hand and my eyes on the door and I wait.
I wait for an hour. I wait for two.
The storm is getting louder outside, the wind making sounds I've never heard wind make before, sounds like a train or an animal. The building holds. The door doesn't open. The knob doesn't turn.
At 2 AM, I'm still awake. My eyes are dry and burning from staring at the door in the dark. My hand is cramped around the knife. Every time I start to drift, my body jerks awake with a spike of adrenaline.
At 3 AM, the chair is still wedged under the knob. Nobody has moved it.
