in the orange bedroom

The laundry room door swings open with a rush of cool air.

Your hands pause on the baby blue plastic basket, and you twist around to watch his entrance, head hung low, shoulders slightly hunched. Unassuming at first glance, but you’ve learned to recognize the quiet confidence that moves him. He straightens up. A grin tugs up the corner of his lips. You take in his stature, the strong line of his neck, the glimmer of his eyes tucked in the shadow from the brim of his hat. Familiarity hasn’t killed this miracle. You doubt it ever will.

“Look at that,” he says, and his low baritone wraps around you like a gentle caress, “actual laundry, tonight.”

Seemingly unfazed by your stunned silence, he drops his black duffel bag on top of the machine next to yours. It indeed looks like both of you have simultaneously run out of clean clothes, which explains his early arrival.

“How are you?” he asks.

“I’m good,” you articulate over the buzzing wire in your sternum. “Today was sunny, felt nice.”

You resume feeding your dirty laundry to the washing machine.

“Yea. That was unexpected. How was work?”

He always asks. Every night of every work day.

“Dull. Whatever. You?”

“Pretty good. I got to fly for over an hour.”

You suck in a lungful of shaky air. It’s been a little over two months since he first told you about his occupation, and you experience a fresh wave of awe and wonder washing over you every time it’s mentioned in the conversation.

“That’s nice,” you whisper, your voice imperceptibly warped with arousal.

He gets to his chore, untying the faded strings of his bag and transferring its content into the machine in front of him. From the corner of your eyes, you catch another glimpse of that blue and gold jersey with his name on it, which you assumed was from a university. You never got around to investigating it, what with the past months' numerous events. Feeling somewhat bold, you decide to question him about it.

“What’s that?” you ask, jerking your chin in the general direction of the glass porthole.

“What, that?” he asks, holding up a black boxer brief.

You can’t withhold your giggling, rolling your eyes exaggerately. Every so often he makes you feel like you’re a teenager again. Or young. Or careless. And perhaps all three things are the same. In turn, he chuckles at his joke. You’ve noticed he seems to appreciate making you laugh. Or, rather, he answers in kind, you don’t want to get ahead of yourself.

“The jersey,” you specify before your confidence has a chance to deflate.

He pulls it out of the machine and hands it over to you. It takes all of your strength not to bury your face in it and inhale until you faint. Instead, you smooth it over your thrumming chest, tipping your head down to look at it.

“I was captain of my high school swimming team. Three consecutive years,” he says with audible pride.

The swimming team. That explains the shoulders. And his impossible breadth.

“Wait, high school, you say? But that thing is huge!” you exclaim, holding the jersey up in front of you, obstructing the view of his gorgeous face beaming with delight.

“Had an atomic growth spur the summer before 11th grade. Drove my mother crazy, none of my clothes fit anymore. But I certainly got Pam Sutton’s attention, at fucking last.”

“I bet you did,” you mutter, jealousy clawing at your heart. “Did you, erm… did you get more than her attention?”

“Nah,” he shrugs. “She was one of the mean girls. Had no interest in riding with that crew. I stuck with the nerds. But damn. Pam was hot.”

“Mmh,” is all the answer you can produce. You clutch the fabric one last time and place the jersey on top of the machine, struck by a sudden wave of bittersweet nostalgia. The laundry room fades out, and you’re in a high school corridor lined with red lockers, watching a young Frankie walk past in his gold and blue jersey, his name stretched across his shoulders. His brown eyes alight with hope and the promises of his future, standing straight, tall and assertive, without complacence. Drawing everyone’s attention yet dismissing the popular girl’s advances, loyal to his friends. To himself.

“And what’s that one?”

His voice yanks you out of the borrowed memory. You look down at your hands to find you’re holding a maroon t-shirt, Kellerman’s written on the chest in yellow-gold lettering.

“Oh it’s nothing,” you answer quickly, stuffing the old tee inside the machine, hiding your burning face behind the porthole door.

There’s a lull in the conversation while you both finish the task at hand, moving in sync as you close the doors, turn the antique analog knobs, and insert the coins into the machines’ slots. They jolt to life together with an initial bounce, water flushing the drum, before harmonizing their tumbling song. You’re about to go take your usual seat on top of the folding table when he breaks the silence.

“Oh and, here,” he says, pulling a small brown paper bag out of his rucksack and handing it to you. You frown and bite your cheek, having an inkling as to what it contains.

“Pretty sure that thermal is yours. And there’s your green panties, the ones with the little white flowers.”

Your face feels as if violent flames were licking your skin from the neck up. Sheepish, you take the bag with a mumbled apology.

“I'm going to say something, Leigh. Are you listening? I don’t mind finding your shit tangled with mine. I really don’t mind at all. Obviously you don’t do it on purpose, and even if you did… But it’s the third time this month. It’s not like you. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” you mutter. “I’m sorry. It’s nothing. I forget to check if I got everything when the wash ends. I’m just distracted.”

“I don’t want that fucking 2B douchebag finding your panties in his wash, Leigh.”

“Oh god,” you pale.

It’s a valid concern. Four days ago, Amy and Emilio showed up on your doorstep with one of your sweatshirts. They’d asked Rita, who directed them to you. It was daytime, and it felt safe to invite them in for a hot drink. It turned into a nice moment getting to know them better, the little boy so very endearing, but it doesn’t change the fact that Frankie’s right. You need to pull yourself together.

Only, you haven’t been able to, since your encounter with that woman on Bowery. She left you with a pounding heart and a dazed mind.

You bought the army shirt. Thirty five fucking dollars for something that was rightfully yours. Your inheritance. Then you rushed home, forgetting where it was you’d been heading to in the first place, sitting still and rigid on the crowded subway, clutching the jacket with a white-knuckled grip so your fingers wouldn’t tremble. You pushed your front door and dashed to the bathroom with your coat still on, a grim intuition sunk in the pit of your belly. The hatch under the bathtub resisting your fumbling prying, you were sweating profusely, bent forward on all fours, the rugged-edged tiles biting into the pulp of your fingers.

It gave, eventually, and you stuck your hand far into that hatch, far into the darkness, searching for the military box you knew to be there, miraculously back from the dumpster.

And it was. Your hand stopped on it, and you lifted it up, testing its weight. It was there and it was full. And then, something, or someone, scratched your wrist.

You pulled back so fast you fell back on your behind on the bathroom rug, your skin streaked with pinkish shallow lacerations.

This wasn’t the shrouded figure. You knew that much. It was the lacquered-clawed hand of that witch woman.

“Leigh. You okay?”

“I’m okay, yeah. Sorry.”

You’re just never sticking your hand out into a dark space, ever.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for, you did nothing wrong.”

“Alright, yeah, sorry,” you perk up, “I mean don’t worry. I’m fine. Don’t worry!” you punctuate your last words with a wink and a set of finger guns that has you immediately grimacing, mortified, while a warm, husky laughter rumbles out of him.

“Oh!” he exclaims, jabbing his finger at you, “Dirty Dancing!”

“What?”

“Your t-shirt! It’s from Dirty Dancing, right? That name? That’s the place where they… where all the dirty dancing is happening, right?”

You laugh, goodheartedly this time, the dread lifting off your shoulders.

“If anybody asks you, my favorite movie is Ernst Pabst’s Pandora’s Box, okay?”

“Sure it is,” he says, shaking his head, smiling wide and dimpled.

“How do you know about Dirty Dancing anyway?”

“It’s also not my sister’s favorite movie,” he says, air quoting the not.

You’re not exactly certain why you presented it this way. Your love for this movie is loud and unabashed. On countless occasions, you’ve argued about its qualities, pitted against misogynistic ass-wipes who were quick to disregard it as a simple chick flick, not that there’s anything wrong with chick flicks either. You have many fond memories tied to it, most of them shared with Jules. Yet there’s something too tender, there, too vulnerable in admitting this to Frankie.

It strikes you then. That pinning look on Baby’s face, every time she looks at Johnny. It’s the look on your face whenever you glance at Frankie.

“And what is your favorite movie?”

“Hmm…” he thinks, crossing his arms over his chest. “It’s probably a tie between Solaris and The Thing.”

“Oh, I see, sci-fi and sci-fi horror, yeah okay. Makes sense.”

“It does?”

“Yes. The isolation. The alienation. The downward spiral.”

“Wow, ouch,” he winces, brow cinching.

“Well, and also a pilot is kinda the center character in The Thing and all.”

“The dog is the center character in The Thing,” he says, dead serious.

“Can you… can you fly helicopters?” you timidly ask.

“I can. I can fly helicopters,” he says, his face falling like the skill somehow makes him sad.

“Where did you learn all that?” you ask in earnest. “Was it in college?”

“No. It was… it was somewhere else.”

Shadows play across his face, darkening his eyes. He’s millions miles away from you. The machines’ soft droning melody coats the room. Your mind races, searching for ways to bring him back to you. You want to close the distance between you and wrap your body around his. Uncross his arms and kiss the frown off his face, smooth all the pain with your lips.

You don’t.

In a few moments, it will be time for the transaction. He will come close, close enough for his scent, amber and leather, to overpower that of the softeners and detergents. Closer still, and he’ll engulf you in his hold, in his presence. Filling your brain with static and you will feel him everywhere around your pulsating body, taste him everywhere inside you. Commanding your pleasure until you’re spent and sated and he can lead you back upstairs, where you will dream of him still, him striding down along a high school corridor.

“Oh shit Frankie! The jersey!” you exclaim. “You forgot to put it in the wash!”

“I didn’t forget,” he says, turning to face you.

“Didn’t you want to wash it?”

“Changed my mind,” he says, straightening up and coming to stand in front of you in one long step. “You’re gonna strip out of your clothes, and you’re gonna put it on. And then I’m gonna fuck you on this table, in my high school jersey.”

You swallow audibly, blood rushing to your feet, slick pooling down your panties, live wire buzzing frantic and taut.

“Are you gonna pretend I’m Pam Sutton?” you deflect, breathless.

“Oh no,” he says, towering over you, lust-blown pupils narrowing on yours. “I’m fucking exactly the woman I want to be fucking.”

****

The front door to your neighbor’s apartment shuts close with a resounding bang.

Frankie. 

You wake up with a start, bolting upright in your bed, disoriented. 

In your bed. 

It’s a solid minute before you recognize your surroundings. The bedroom has been mainly unused for over a month, save for storage. At this point, it’s an extended closet. The city is unusually silent, the light from the window a bluish kind of bleak. Morning. 

On all fours, you crawl clumsily over the mattress to reach the window, tripping, tangled in the old duvet cover that got twisted around your legs and waist as you slept in it. In time to see Frankie stepping briskly into the empty street below and climbing into his pickup, a northern wind swirling scattered remnants of the festive night around him.

I’m saying we should fuck, Leigh. 

“Oh god.” Blood rushes prickling to your chest. What have you done?

You fall back on the bed, breathing shallow against your constricted lungs, all drowsiness evaporated. Is it real? Did it really happen? Maybe you got drunk on expensive champagne and had a fever dream. Maybe nothing happened. 

Only, you can smell his skin on your skin, in the crook of your neck. Where he nestled his face as he–

Fuck, that feels good, Leigh. 

You clench your eyes shut, but it’s not enough to bar the flickering image. You press down on them with the heels of your hand until it hurts. Until the pain overpowers the pleasant soreness between your hips. 

What time can it be? You were supposed to have lunch with Rita.

On your nightstand, your phone is useless, the battery dead. Your watch—your grandmother's—is on the dresser, but you’re hesitant to get up, suddenly struck with a childish fear of something lurking under the bed. What if that’s where it hides during the day?

The previous night keeps pushing at the edges of your groggy consciousness, invading your thoughts in flashes of crude images and explicit soundbites.

Can I see it? 

With trembling fingers, you slide past the waistband of your pajamas, over your hip and down to your inner thigh. The sensation of his release is still there, thick, searing, but there’s no evidence on your skin. 

Bucking off the mattress, you disentangle yourself from the duvet and fumble with it, searching for a particular spot. Near one of the corners, the fabric is caked with a dried-out stain. Where Frankie used it to wipe off the mess he’d made.

Fuck, it’s pretty. 

Fuck, it’s real. 

The admission is enough to unlock the memory of what happened next. 

After cleaning you up, Frankie folded the duvet carefully, meticulously, you could say, and helped you down from the dryer, splayed fingers a grounding touch around your waist. 

He gathered your cardigan and the empty bottle of champagne, and placed his large hand on the small of your back. Radiating warmth, the heat from his palm seeping into your skin through your t-shirt. He guided you to the stairs. You didn’t want to go back to your apartment but your body was still wobbly from your orgasm, your brain humming soft static, your willpower nonexistent. So you walked before him, lamblike, even though you knew it was a mistake, knew that shrouded thing would wait for you there, ready to play his undead game of hide and seek, to taunt you all the way to sleep-deprivation-induced madness. 

But it wasn’t. Frankie followed you up to the fourth floor, steadfast, quiet, and when you closed the door of your apartment, the place was empty. Empty for real. 

On the landing, Frankie had looked at you. The crease in his brow seemed less pronounced, his shoulder less tense. 

“Goodnight, Leigh,” he’d said. 

“Goodnight, Francisco,” you’d answered. 

Goodnight indeed. No nightmare, no unwanted presence. 

A couple of steadying breaths, and you peek under the bedframe: nothing but a vast expanse of thick beige carpet and a fluffle of dust bunnies. You get up on sore, exerted legs, and check the time. It’s 9:30, meaning you got a little over seven hours of uninterrupted rest. You can’t remember the last time you slept that long. Whenever you stay overnight at Jules’, Enoch rouses the entire household at dawn.

In the oval mirror over the dresser, you see no traces of the kisses and bites he lavished along your neckline the previous night. The observation is rueful. There's nothing left but his scent, and a troubling ghost sensation. Hot lips, bristling stubble. 

What is noticeable is the change in your face. Your traits seem smoother, your posture unwound, and your skin a healthy tint of flushed. Your eyes, especially, are so relaxed you hardly recognize your own reflection. A likeness to what you saw last night on Francisco’s face. Spent and rested. Which was the sole and entire purpose of your…transaction. Mission accomplished, you guess.

It does something to you, this parallel between the two of you. In your traits, and in your vital need to escape your head. It darts somewhere beyond your ribcage, landing right between your lungs. That’s not part of the mission. 

As you sort out your clothes for the day, you wonder if Rita will register those changes. She’s nothing if not observant. Clever to boot, and wizened by a lifetime of experience. There’s no concern whether she might judge you; you’ve gathered enough about her past to imagine she’s been down to freakier things than you could ever get involved in.

It’s not until you step into the bathroom and strip out of your pajamas that you see it: on the swell of your lower belly, a little to the left, a mark that shapes a heart in a crimson shade of purple. You remember Frankie fastening his mouth over your skin and pulling it in with a harsh suck. You remember the scything pain, and the soothing press of his lips that followed. You remember welcoming it all, the marking and the pain and the care. On closer inspection, you find brownish flecks of fingerprint bruises on your left thigh and your right hip, where he dug into your flesh to hold you in place. You contort yourself to place your hands into the imprints of his. You can’t cover them all. Your hands are too small. 

Never in a million years would you have allowed any other man to handle you so. Yet you let him do that to you. You would have let him do so much more. Anything, really. Anything but kiss you. 

The thought settles in your chest like shame, like atomic dust, coating the live wire that’s never not humming to stillness. Like a dark, expanding cloud, creeping up your insides, reaching out to your toes and fingertips and your nape and your scalp. 

Climbing into the tub, you turn on the water and stand with closed eyes underneath the showerhead. The scalding stream does little to appease your mind as more details resurface.

The strand of curls plastered to his forehead. His tongue lapping the sweat pooled in the dip of your throat. His hands kneading your flesh, thumb and index tweaking your nipples. So far, you have successfully avoided thinking about the fact that his hands can fly aircraft, beyond your initial awe. But the competency undeniably translates to other fields, because you don’t remember ever coming so hard. At least not by someone else’s hand. Or mouth, you think, covering your face with both hands. Perhaps—well, probably because you’ve never wanted anyone so bad. 

His presence alone, the very density of him, the things he made you feel, dwarf all your prior experiences, making your previous partners seem like inexperienced college boys. No one had ever prioritized your pleasure over theirs before. But then, you remind yourself, this is part of the transaction. You open your eyes, blurred vision looking beyond the shower’s green tiles.

Methodically, you proceed to wash your hair. First, shampoo, then conditioner, allowing it to soak in while you lather shower gel over your body. Little by little, the mundane, practiced actions anchor you back to your bathroom, to the present, until a new wave of anxiety washes over you, its undertow bringing back the persisting question: what have you done? You’ve upended the established order. Whatever form of intimacy you shared with Francisco before was good. It was working. What did you agree to?

And what if it never happens again? What if, come tonight, you find yourself alone in the laundry basement? Back to square one. Always and forever. 

When you knock on Rita’s door two hours later, Frankie still hasn’t returned. He did mention, not without a hint of bitterness, that his boss refused to close the school for the holidays. Do people really need flying lessons on New Year’s Day? You looked up the school, fancy website, fancier prices. Obviously marketed for the rich and leisurely, a kind you wouldn’t know the first thing about. Either way, Frankie’s not in the building, and pining in your living room with your ears perked, pretending to read a book, surprisingly didn’t make any difference. 

Lunch is agreeable, as is every occasion spent in Rita’s company, but your train of thought keeps derailing, branching out to very unsuitable images of the previous night. His tousled hair, his parted lips, his chin glistening with your slick. The sensation of his sex in your hand, its veiny girth, its velvety underside, and the hard, throbbing heat of it. Staying focused on your conversation requires a monumental effort, but you are, however, more than willing to provide it. 

Your friend has ordered two soba kakiage from your favorite Japanese restaurant, which you’ve only ever mentioned in passing, meaning she went above and beyond to treat you, as often. The least you can do is pay attention. Complimenting her mastery of the chopsticks earns you a delightful tale about the time her dance company toured occupied Japan in 1951 for two and a half months. And for a brief moment, you forget about the heart-shaped imprint of Francisco’s lips on your belly.

On two distinct instances, you try to steer the conversation on the Crain’s unit. A commendable attempt at honoring your New Year resolution that Rita dismisses, twice, with an uncharacteristic clipped answer. 

“The family moved out overnight.”

That’s all she will share; that’s all you will learn. 

——

Once you leave Rita’s place, sometimes after 3 pm, filling the rest of the day is trickier. You usually start the year with a visit to your grandparents grave in the Hoboken cemetery, provided you’re in town and the weather is not Siberian. This year, for obvious reasons, you’d rather skip the trip. 

As the day progressively sheds its shortened hours, and dusk sprawls in dark gradations in the bleak winter sky, so does your anxiety rise. You are no stranger to the feeling; it has become a daily fixture. Tonight, however, as you sit on the couch with the same old book lying unread on your lap, your concern has shifted, from the shrouded figure to your next-door neighbor. You still haven’t heard the latter come home, and all your thoughts are of him. Enabling the former to return with a vengeance. 

It happens without a sound. There’s no sign to alert you, no rustling fabric, not even the usual ripple of cold air that wafts around you whenever it comes out. 

Sometime after nightfall, you walk over to the kitchen for a snack. You stop short at the door. It’s ajar, a faint glint streaking the floor and the lintel. You don’t remember switching any of the kitchen lights on. Surprises like this one have become standard since last September. So many “incidents” for you to minimize into innocuous forgetfulness, or shrug off as perfectly normal. But this one feels different. You know it in your bones, before you even push the door open. 

The room is coated in snow-like silence. A smell, terribly pungent, invades your nostrils, your mouth, your throat. Rot, dirt, moldy soil. Something is wrong with the luminosity, something you fail to comprehend. The single window in the left corner has turned to a pitch-black rectangle, obliterating the yellow streetlamps. The light is coming from the fridge to your right, its door hanging open, illuminating the round table in the center of the room. 

It takes another few seconds for your eyes to adjust to the semi-darkness, and all the blood freezes in your veins at the sight that greets you. 

The military tin box crawled back out of its hole underneath the bathtub. It’s displayed on the table with all its content out, like a gutted fish. Except this time, the objects are not lying flat and neat in a monstrous circle. Every single one of them is standing up, vertically balanced on its smallest surface, dancing in the eerie, sound-absorbing quiet. The knife, upright, blade drawn out, the tip of it barely touching the wood, the picture perpendicular to the table, the dog plates seemingly hanging upward toward the ceilings next to the MOS 25V patch, like gravity doesn’t apply, like it’s some kind of physics inside joke. 

Fear trickles down your spine in icy droplets, bleeding into your bones. Across the room, in the cluster of shadows near the blinded window, the darkness flickers. 

It’s here. Tall, so tall, a willowy silhouette hiding in the shadows, hovering a few inches above the linoleum. The shrouded figure. Eyeless, staring in your direction. The white linen is curved inward where its mouth should be, tracing the shape of a slack jaw. Sucked in with every raspy, straining breath. A quiver in the fabric outlines the contour of its hands. They’re low, way too low, making its arms too long to be anatomically accurate. 

It sucks in a deeper, strenuous breath, like it’s about to talk. The unearthly sound makes your skin crawl. 

“Leave me alone,” you grit, fists balling tight against your fear. “LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!” 

You smash the toggle switch on with the flat of your trembling hand. The overhead lamp blinks on, then off, then on again with an abnormal delay, and the shrouded figure vacillates with it, drawing one last ear-splitting breath like a dying violin before it vanishes. 

Instantly, the city background noises return. The street reappears beyond the windowpane, and with it, the rest of the world. 

You charge into the room, grabbing the knife first with all of your strength, expecting some resistance, but when none is opposed, you lose your equilibrium, catching yourself on the edge of a chair, hitting your hipbone. You don’t stop; carried by your momentum, by your pent-up anger, fear, and grief, you throw the knife into the trash can. The picture is next, then the MOS 25V insignia and the hanging dog tags. You twirl on yourself between the table and the trash in a dance of fury, a choreography of rage, before deciding it’s not fast enough and taking the trash can in your arm to scoop the rest of the cursed memorabilia off the table and slide it into the garbage, kicking the fridge closed for good measure. 

Ripping the plastic bag out of the can, you garrote it with its thin red string, yanking it so forcefully it cuts into your palms. 

Grabbing your coat and your purse, you storm out of your apartment.  

You haven’t gone out all day. The cold northern wind takes you by surprise. It bites your cheeks and numbs your fingertips. You inhale until you're lightheaded, filling your lungs with what feels like a million prickling needles.

You wish you could have a panic attack, like you continually had in college when your grandfather passed. Or that you could cry. Cry so much you’d forget to eat, cry so hard you couldn’t keep your food down, like when your grandmother died. You wish you felt anything other than this blazing, incapacitating rage. Other than this debilitating fear that has been plaguing you for months, that has you lying to everyone around you and yourself, to the point that you can’t recognize your own face in your dresser mirror.

You dispose of the black garbage bag in another building’s dumpster and walk briskly over to the closer corner deli a couple of blocks away, failing to ignore the fact that the red Ford pickup is nowhere in sight. You get two Baby Ruth and a coffee, stalling, awkward and gauche under the clerk’s scrutiny, before you head back to your building, dragging your feet. 

The wall of heat in the laundry room flushes your skin with a burning discomfort. You toss your coat on the folding table, and sit cross-legged next to it. 

The coffee cup is too hot to hold, and the black liquid scalds your tongue anyway. Dejected, suddenly drained, you bite into the Baby Ruth with a grimace. It’s too sweet, cloying even, without the bitterness of the coffee. 

“Happy fucking New Year to me,” you mutter. You hate yourself for indulging in self-pity. 

It’s too early to start waiting for Frankie, especially since there's a reasonable chance he might not show up at all. Despite your best efforts, the clock above the door is like a magnet to your eyes. You should have grabbed this stupid book before storming out. But that’s the thing with these kinds of exits: satisfyingly dramatic, not really thought through. 

The image of that gaunt, spectral figure towering in a corner of your kitchen keeps flooding your mind. Its gaping mouth, gasping for air with that ghastly grating sound. The fretful fumbling of its thin fingers. You can’t blink hard enough to get rid of the vision, of the coldness in your rattled bones, can’t eat enough Baby Ruth to rinse off the taste of decay lingering in the back of your throat. 

Calling Jules would be a reasonable option. She’d believe you, of course she would, sapping all your efforts to convince yourself none of this is real. You’d have to rewind to the beginning, back to the nightmares, the insomnia, then recount everything that’s happened since you moved into this apartment. How it all descended from uncanny to creepy to downright impossible to disregard. 

With every passing day, the secrecy feels more and more like a betrayal of your bond. You’ve already waited too long. This, you fear, she might not forgive. 

Your phone and its promise of mind-numbing entertainment is burning a hole in your jeans’ back pocket. You resist its siren song until you don’t. Instagram may be the devil incarnate, but it’ll swallow the hours while you wait for…something. 

You’re already thirty reels down into soul-wrenching intellectual torpor when a gut instinct alerts you to a familiar gait. You mute the app as the laundry door flings open.

“Evening, Leigh.” 

Frankie walks in, amber scent, life, and warmth. The fear and loneliness swelling inside you moments ago ebb away under the density of his presence. 

“Hi,” you reply after a beat. 

Seeing him is terribly unsettling, albeit not in the awkward way you had anticipated. After spending most of the day fencing off reminiscing sensations tied to specific parts of him, he’s standing in front of you as a whole person, no longer a fragmented memory. 

Frantically, you scan his features for something, anything, perhaps specifically regret, but the Standard Heating Oil hat is back, flattening his curls and muting his expressions.

He leans against the door, chewing gum, crossing his arms as if he were hugging himself. The stance is almost defensive, but the shape of him is intimidating, beyond distracting, reigniting the dulled-out live wire in your chest. 

The sleeves of his green flannel are rolled up high on his forearms. The darker color enhances his silhouette and makes the brown in his eyes more vibrant. You’ve never seen this shirt before, or the gray sweatpants he paired it with, and you will your eyes to stay up on his face. 

You must look as dumb as you feel because he narrows his eyes at you, before asking if you’re okay. Snapping out of your trance, you nod your answer, putting the phone away. 

“You just came in?” he probes again, tilting his chin at your coat. 

“I left home in a rush,” you confess. To your surprise, the truth is tempting. You smother the velleity. “I wanted a snack.” 

There’s a pause, during which he looks on the verge of calling out what sounds, even to you, like an obvious lie. You wonder if you could tell him how good he looks in this shirt. How it flatters his eyes and his complexion. Would he accept the compliment? Would he blush? Would that earn you a dimple and a smile?

“You sure everything’s okay? You are okay?”

“Yes, I’m okay.” I’m just relieved to see you.

“So the jeans and sweater, that’s not to keep me away or anything?” 

“Oh no!” you exclaim, finally realizing he’s more accustomed to seeing you in pajamas. “Not at all. It was really just a—just a peanut emergency,” you add with a timid smile. 

If the explanation is a semi-truth, the feeling behind it is genuine. It seems to provide him with the reassurance he needed because he uncrosses his arms, taking off his hat to comb his fingers through his hair.

“So, how’d you sleep?” he finally asks.

Right. The transaction. His tone is businesslike and you hate that it stings so bad. 

“I slept like the dead,” is your answer, the choice of words in poor taste. But you did, indeed, sleep like the dead, and not with the dead.

“Good,” he says, and you straighten your shoulders, your lower back arching. 

“What about you? Any nightmares?”

“Nope,” he shakes his head, “I fell asleep right away, head blissfully empty.”

“Good,” you say in turn, your face on fire.

The hint of a smirk ups the corner of his lips.

“How long did you sleep for?”

“Hum… a little over seven hours, I think.”

He lets out an admirative whistle; you smile, too, amused. 

“You?”

“Five and a half hours. Consecutive, mind you. I can’t remember the last time I slept so well.”

Pride flares your chest around the buzzing live wire. Your head swims. 

“Oh, cool. That’s nice,” you blurt out, inwardly cringing at your insipid answer. 

For the second time in less than a minute, the hat goes up, and Francisco runs a hand through his curls. When the hat comes back down on his head, something shifts around you. The air feels heavier, more compact. Charged with anticipation. In the next room, the boiler’s rumbling sounds grow to a roar. 

Francisco pushes off the door. Slow and deliberate, he proceeds to lock the laundry room, turning the brass key twice in its cylinder, and with his hand still on it, he looks straight at you, dark eyes boring into yours.

You’ve forgotten how to breathe. Everything thrums inside you, blood pumping fast inside your ears. You understand that he’s waiting with a silent question. Waiting for a sign or a word, something to indicate you acknowledge what’s coming and confirm you agree to it. 

But desire constricts your throat, and you don’t trust your words. So instead, you do something bold. Unlike anything you’ve ever done before. You uncross your legs and shimmy to the edge of the table, where you let them hang, spread out for him.

The smug grin returns, wider and devastating.

He lets go of the key and closes the distance between you in two strides, planting himself between your open thighs. 

“So I guess it’s effective,” he says, taking off his hat and tossing it on top of your coat. “The fucking.”

The precision is purely for shock value. Both of you know it.

“I guess it is,” you say, bravely withholding his gaze. 

He leans into you, his face dipping into the curve of your neck. Like the night before, he inhales you there, deep and long, traveling along the column of your throat. Nuzzling the shell of your ear, he takes another inspiration. It pierces through your heart, this repeated gesture. Intimate, primal. Gently territorial. Your eyes drift close, your shoulders slump, your body slants forward, and he catches you, steadying arms wrapping around your back, straightening your posture, pulling your body toward his to hold you close. 

In this position, up on the table, his mouth is leveled with yours. If you only swiveled your head a few degrees to the right, you could kiss his beautiful lips. 

You don’t. In fact, you won’t even let yourself think of it; bracing your hands on his arms, you turn your face the other way, but he follows your movement, stubborn and undeterred, chasing your cheek with his. He presses you flush into his solid chest. His warmth permeates his flannel, permeates your clothes, seeping into your skin like oozing nectar, disintegrating the dread tonight has sunk deep inside your bones as he digs his fingers into your shoulder blades. You feel him all around you, you bask in his scent, his stubble grating your cheek, his soft humming in your ears, replacing that ghastly earlier sound.

You exhale, shaky and quiet, waning control and frantic pulse, knees hitching high on his hips, arms encircling the breadth of his frame. 

There’s nothing transactional about this embrace. His hand cradling your head. No space left between you. His heartbeat inside your chest. You won’t move anymore, not ever, not yet, for fear that he’ll let go of you and never hold you like that again. Maybe the world will forget about you and move on. Maybe the dead will let you be. Maybe you’ll forget about yourself. 

And when he does stir, ever so lightly, you can’t help but whimper at the loss. Do you imagine it, his soothing shush, the comforting squeeze of his hand? He keeps you there, enveloped in his hold, in his warm body, but his mouth finds your skin, and it’s a pointed kiss on your pulse point. Parted lips, wet and warm. You melt into it, into him. In your heart of hearts, you’ve prayed for this to happen again. 

“Untie your hair,” he murmurs. 

“Wh—what?”

“Untie your hair.”

With an economy of movement, reluctant to take your hands off him, you do as you're told. He buries his face in your loose locks and, for the third time, takes a deep breath. 

“Thank you,” he husks, pressing his forehead to your temple. 

Your heart is bankrupt. 

He finds the line of your neck with the ridge of his nose, gentle, leisured, trailing kisses along your skin, the tip of his tongue peeking between the plush of his lips. Time fades as you abandon yourself to his kisses and his strokes, reciprocating his ministrations. As he rocks against you between the cradle of your hips, offering you friction, growing harder as desire trickles down your folds. 

There’s a moan, his of yours, you’re not sure, and his teeth sink into your jaw with a full bite, not playful, not light. You know this to be a demand. A reminder. You clutch your legs higher, claw your fingers deeper into his biceps.

He peels away from you, enough to tug your wooly sweater off. Your eyelids crack open against the blinding neon light, but you keep your head down, for fear of what your face might reveal. Docile, you follow his lead, and your thermal goes off next. When the left cuff catches on your grandmother’s watch, he frees the pulled thread with calm and caution, and this, too, sends the live wire buzzing tenser. 

Warm, calloused palms brush up along your sides, the lightest touch, a controlled strength, raising gooseflesh in their wake. Exploring the expanse of your naked skin, chasing the ripples of your shivers. Lightheaded, you hang on to him.

Your midrise Levi’s are a snug fit around your waist, flesh gushing over the line of your belt, a test on your crippled self-confidence, even now, even like this, even after what happened between you two the night before. No matter how much you want to, you can’t bring yourself to look at him. Your gaze remains cast down, your only cues his heavy breathing and roaming hands, constantly moving, touching, kneading. Skimming up to your breasts, excruciatingly slow, cupping you through the mesh fabric of your bra, pulling down on it. 

When your breasts spill out, your nipples are already hard and erect, and his breathing grows louder. You risk a glance. Under the crease of his brow, behind the screen of his lashes, his eyes are inky black, fixed on your breasts, his thumb a teasing rub against your sensitive peak. 

The pink tip of his tongue darts between his parted lips, and it makes you sick, the plump cushion of them, the heart-shaped divot. Sick with want and self-denial, sick with not knowing their taste. This rule was your choice, your decision, your safeguard against the consequences of this transaction. 

Does he perceive your scrutiny? He looks up, planting his eyes in yours. The connection strikes you like a lightning bolt, too sudden and overwhelming. And perhaps he feels it too, somehow, because his frown deepens. 

You close your eyes, and he dives back into you, lips, tongue, and teeth, everywhere he can reach while you cling onto his frame with your fingers tangled in his curls. Until his kisses become more teeth than lips, sloppier, sharper, until his hunger becomes yours, ravenous, visceral, a high-pitched static building up in your brain that only the contact of his skin will quiet. 

A groan rumbles in his throat when you push him away. With a fumbling touch, you begin to work open the small buttons of his flannel. It’s not easy, you’re too eager and he won’t keep still, leaning into you, biting the round of your shoulder, squeezing the swell of your breast. 

You wiggle off the table, grounding your balance on the floor. Standing up, you’re shorter than him, and he finally stops moving, running a palm over his face in your peripheral as you undo the last two buttons. 

Together, you slide the shirt off his frame, revealing the plane of his chest. The live wire drums too strong as you try to take it all in. His solid breadth, his jutting collarbone, and the hollow at the base of his throat. The freckles nestled there, the difference in skin tone between his chest and his neck, a darker shade of tanned. The small, soft belly, and the dark line of hair under his navel. And on his left flank, a long and sinuous scar, ridged line and raised skin. 

The alarm in your head rings off again, more strident, closer to the surface of your awareness. You don’t heed it, rushing back into him instead, wishing to press your skin to his, to burrow your face into the strong column of his neck. To forever stay like this. And you do. For a short, blissful moment of abandon, you hide in this space between his jaw and collarbone. Placing the most delicate kiss on his tanned, pebbled skin, eyes shut close, belly pulled taut, heart failing. Giving in to the instinctual certitude that this is where you belong, despite the blaring alarm, despite his ghosts and yours. This is where you’re meant to be. Just for a heartbeat, weak and hesitant. Just for a kiss, soft and meaningful.

There’s no such thing as fate. 

His fingers card through your hair at the base of your skull. You feel the working of his throat under your lips. You need to rip yourself away from him, away from this. 

And if you can’t do it yourself, you know just how to make him. Bringing your hand around his torso, you cover the long scar with your palm. His reaction is immediate. He pulls you back with a commanding tug on your hair, not enough to hurt, enough to signal this is off-limits. You scan his face with a silent question he immediately rejects, shaking his head with a stern frown. 

Seizing your wrist, he folds your arm backward over the small of your back, crowding you against the table. You feel his erection pressing against your belly through his sweatpants.

“Is kissing still off the table?” he asks abruptly, his face barely an inch from yours.

“Yes,” you confirm, despising yourself for your cowardice.

He nods, a thousand expressions playing over his gorgeous face. They all elude you. He’s an insurmountable mountain to you, an ocean that can’t be crossed. 

“Okay. No kissing. How about we fuck for real, then?”

You can’t hold back your shuddering gasp, betraying your nervousness. You are nervous, aching with how much you want him, all of him, even the pieces he’s still hiding from you, even the parts you know will hurt you. 

You nod, and start undoing your fly with your free hand. He catches that one, too.

“Words, Leigh.”

There’s so much contained shadows in his eyes. You’ll do anything to bring back the afterglow that illuminated his face last night.

Anything but kiss him.

“We fuck for real,” you whisper.

He smiles at you, a joyless smile, but not an empty one. 

“Lemme do,” he says, unbuttoning your jeans. 

With a couple of swift moves, he kneels at your feet, slipping your pants down your legs along with your underwear. You move a leg up, thinking to take off your boots, but he stops you. He’s staring at the heart-shaped mark he sucked into your skin. You’re terribly self-aware again, arms hanging limp at your sides, face burning from the neck up. Terribly aroused, too, slick leaking down your seam. Something he must become promptly aware of when he brushes a hand between your thighs to cup you. 

He looks up at you, and electricity sparks in your core.

With another smirk, he glides his fingers between your folds, testing your composure. When you don’t react, he sweeps his thumb in circles over your clit, teasing your entrance with his middle finger, tracing the thin membrane, over and over. You’re chewing your molars. 

“Think you can take me, or do I need to stretch you first?”

His tone is back to business, purely factual, and the question produces the expected effect: a punch to the gut that hollows your chest. 

This, is transactional. And if it hurts, it’s also efficiently liberating. 

“I can take you,” you reply with a tone matching his. 

He moves before you can congratulate yourself, getting up and shucking down his sweatpants. While you’re distracted by the bulge tenting his black boxer briefs, he produces a condom wrapper. He’s terribly deft, and before you can volunteer your help, he's teared the wrapper open with his teeth, freeing his erection with his other hand. Something inside your belly quails as you watch him roll the condom down his length. Maybe he wasn’t bragging. Maybe you can’t take him. Maybe if you’re lucky enough, next time he’ll fuck your throat.

“Turn around,” he says, clipped words in a round husk. You comply as he guides and bends you over the table. You meet its surface with a light thud and a wide grin, hair spilling around your face. With your legs hindered at the ankles by your jeans, you can’t move. Once more, you’ve relinquished control of the situation to him without so much as batting an eyelash, and you hate that it is exactly how you want it to be. 

His hands drift down along your back and round the swell of your ass, and he presses against you, throbbing sex and smooth latex rocking imperceptibly between the cleft of your ass. You clench around nothing, a wanton little moan slipping past your lips. Behind your closed eyelids, you remember his face last night, the way his jaw slacked as he guided your hand along his length, desire clouding his dark eyes. 

Pushing away, he adjusts his grip on you and spreads you open with a squelching sound.

“This pretty cunt,” he mutters, and self-awareness slices through your chest again, still. He slants his searing mouth over your entrance and you jolt forward into your coat, sending his hat to the floor. You buck against the restraint of his hold, but he only strengthens it, his tongue darting into your heat, working saliva into you, like you’re not already dripping for him, like you need more lubricant. But then again, you probably do.  

He lets out a long groan, one you feel more than you hear, and you whimper in turn, your coat mercifully swallowing the sound. 

Cold air hits your folds as he pulls away. His hold shifts to your hip, lifting your ass, and his cock is at your entrance. You hold your breath, bracing yourself for a welcome pain that doesn’t come. He stays there, teasing you with the tip of his cock like he did with his finger, with his impossible restraint. 

You whisper his name, and he answers you with a long hum. 

And then, he inches into you, slowly, measured. It’s a lot, no matter how much you want him. You rub your pinched brow against the scratchy wool of your coat, the discomfort a vain diversion. 

He hisses a low “fuck,” and you’re up in your head again, wondering how you must look underneath him, sweat beading in the curve of your spine, face pressed into the table. Reminding yourself this is nothing but a transaction, that he’s not here because you’re pretty, you’re not. You’re a commodity, a partner of sorts.

He keeps thrusting further into your tight heat, with a roll of his hips, and it’s too much. With a jerky move, you try to get up. 

“Nuh-uh, stay down,” he orders, pushing down on you with a splayed hand between your shoulder blades. And then, softer, “Do you still want this?”

“I do,” you answer, probably a little too fast. “You’re a lot.”

“You’re too tense,” he says, gently stroking your back. “Relax, Leigh. I got you.”

You do. His voice and his touch coaxing you, you relent, surrender control. You do want to take whatever he gives. Your clutch on your coat releases, muscles loosening, lungs expanding. His rocking resumes, his cock dragging heavy against your walls, sinking deeper with each careful stroke until it blooms inside you: bright pleasure, like a flower unfurls, like a summer sunrise, warm and fuzzy, radiating through your limbs.

You rise to your tiptoes, chasing the pressure. 

“There you go,” he grunts, his voice like gravel, “Jesus, Leigh, it feels so fucking good.”

You huff a short chuckling sound, because, yes, it does feel so fucking good. He picks up the pace, hips going faster, cock drilling deeper. Seeking purchase, you stretch out your arms, clamping the edges of the table, meeting him trust for trust, and he picks up on that, too, gripping your waist, sliding you over his cock in a steady rhythm.

Sounds fill up the room, crude and obscene, as you stare blindly at the naked concrete wall. His labored breathing, your explicit moans, his hips a wet slap against your ass with every one of his hard shoves, the whole table moving with it. 

Towering over you, he splits you in half, reaching a spot right at the center of you you never even knew existed. Pleasure and pain combine into something new, something exquisite and devastating. It rises inside you, thrust after unforgiving thrust, as he nudges against that buried thing. It stirs deep and powerful, a giant tide, a colossal wave. You keen, fingers scrabbling helpless and frantic over the hard surface of the table, calling his name.

“Oh god. Oh god, Frankie. Frankie!”

He leans over you, covering your body with his, the anchoring press of his chest gliding over your back as he grinds against your ass in tight and rapid thrusts, your sweat mingling. 

You let out a hoarse moan, your voice unrecognizable, the landslide cresting.

“Let go, Leigh, I got you,” is the last thing you hear before it seizes you, your world capsizing, and you’re coming, crashing down with his name on your lips, legs trembling, lights dimming, head filled with static as the live wire snaps. 

He fucks you through it, your walls an endless flutter around his hard cock, your consciousness vacillating. 

There’s the sharp sink of his teeth into the slope of your neck, a long growl that echoes in your ears, and he’s lifting your limp body off the table, an arm banded between your breasts to keep you flush to his chest. Fucking into you with his hips angled up, his cock brushing against something else, and it’s another range of blooming rapture, your feet barely touching the ground, your head lolling back onto his shoulder. 

You’re a rag doll in his arms as he fucks into you at a punishing pace, chasing his own relief, dragging you down with him. 

The second wave hits you as he comes, his face buried in your hair, his low, dragged-out groan almost pained. 

He stops moving, his cock still throbbing inside your cunt, his chest heaving. Stays there for a beat, clutching you against him, before he lets go of you, and you collapse on the table as he collapses to the floor. 

You drip down onto the cool concrete like wax dribbling from a candle, sitting with your back against the table foot. He’s lying back, sprawled out, tanned skin glistening with sweat under the harsh neon lighting. 

He chuckles, wiping the damp locks off his brow with the back of his wrist. 

“What?” you smile, winded. 

He looks at you, mischief in his eyes, and your smile widens.

“How long do you think we’re gonna sleep?” 

——

Whoever said money makes the world go ‘round clearly never had a prolonged bout of insomnia. 

A week. A whole week, you think, walking briskly up Bowery towards Astor Place, the unforgiving January wind numbing your face.

Seven mornings waking up refreshed and rested in your bed. 

Seven nights getting fucked blissfully senseless in the laundry basement. 

Seven days without an unwanted visit, without so much as the rustling sound of fabric. 

It’s so embarrassingly cliché, mortifying, really, to think that all you really needed was a good fuck. A good fuck that becomes a good sleep, and suddenly, you’re laughing at yourself for believing in that grotesque fantasy your sleep-deprived brain conjured up. Ghosts don’t exist. Their shadows aren’t real, and your world is now painted in bright colors. 

You’re able to focus on your task. You have a sense of humor. People no longer look at you with concern etched across their faces. You return calls, share lunch with your coworkers, and plow through the backlogged work. There’s a spring in your step as you climb the stairs, stopping by to chat with Rita every day on your way up. 

And when you get home, you’re alone. Perfectly alone.  

On the outside, your routine has barely changed, but everything that’s right now resides in the slight differences. You wait for him to join you in the laundry, shortly after ten. There’s no more hurry for you to go down there, only gleeful anticipation. When he comes in, clad in a loose t-shirt and those gray sweatpants, you exchange stories about your respective days. It sounds like small talk, except it’s foreplay. And when you’re done talking, Francisco pulls out his key. 

He hasn’t asked you again about kissing. But he always makes sure to confirm your consent, in one way or another. Some nights, you wish he would just barge in and take. You can’t resent the man for being decent. If anything, he’s proven himself a fast learner, quick to master your body. 

You have yet to tell Jules about it. The transaction. You will eventually. But for now, you let it sit inside your heart, gently strumming the live wire across your chest. Your dirty little secret. Never not thinking about it. Never not thinking about him. About his voice and his eyes and his chest and his hands. About his neck, your piece of heaven. 

The chimes of Grace Church bells haul you out of your sinful daydream. You’re way past Astor Place, having apparently taken a left on Broadway at some point. 

You’re about to turn back when you see her. A blond woman in a billowing coat and a colorful shawl, with an impressive head of curls, exiting the church. At first, you pay her no mind. Rather, you notice the business across the street from the church: once a record store, now a fitness club. 

“Fucking Giuliani,” you mumble. 

You see her again as you cross 10th St., reflected in a bank’s large window, her head strangely glowing, the twilight glistening off her mop of curls in such an incongruous fashion, you think it must be a wig. She’s close behind you, looking straight at you through the reflection. Smiling. You step onto the street as soon as the pedestrian light changes to green. There’s something unsettling about her smile. It contains too many teeth.

You lengthen your stride, pulling your collar up against the wind, knowing the chill scuttling down your back has nothing to do with the weather. When you reach 9th St., you risk a glance back over your shoulder. She meets your worried gaze with a cheeky wink and another toothy grin. You smile back with a curt little nod, reflexively, lengthening your steps. But the faster you go, the closer she gets, so close you discern the sound of her red boots over the city’s late afternoon bustle. 

Astor Place is crowded with commuters and tourists. You push your way through the crowd, hoping to shake off the strange woman. Turning on 8th St. in the direction of St. Mark, you finally succeed. She’s nowhere to be seen. 

There’s a pain in your side, you need to catch your breath, but you’d rather she doesn’t find you again. You walk into a thrift store, one of the scarce survivors of New York’s grittier days. The clerk greets you, but you don’t hear them, the heat in here is suffocating, the small store clustered and dimly lit. You tug your scarf looser, absentmindedly browsing the racks of clothes while your heartbeat settles. 

She catches your hand midair from the other side of a rack, pressing it into the hangers’ metal heads.

You suck in a sharp gasp, swallowing a gulp of musty air.

“Shhh,” she soothes. 

Standing two feet apart, she’s even more unsettling. A beautiful woman, well into her 50s, but something in her face doesn’t seem to make sense. Her eyes are pitch black, devoid of pupils. Her red lipstick has run into the crevices at the corners of her mouth. She smiles again. Definitely too many teeth.

“Sweet baby girl,” she starts, her voice like an untuned theremin, “he’s not going anywhere, you know that, right?”

“Who’s not—” you start, but the words die in your throat. Her hair. It’s not a wig. It’s a human scalp full of curls. Stitched to her head with a thick black thread, clumps of dried blood like a ruby tiara on her forehead.

You twist your hand to free it from her grip, but she clutches you harder.

“Hey! Pay attention! You need to listen. You think he’s only following you at night? You think he’s gone because you let the handsome one touch you? Hahaha, you’re cute!” she laughs exaggeratedly. Your eyes dart to the clerk, their face lit in bright blue light by the window of their phone’s screen. The woman commands your attention, stabbing her purple lacquered nails into your wrist.

“Pay. Attention. You have to do something about him. It’s important, you hear me? Throwing the box was a nice move, but it’s not enough,” she says, shaking her curls. “Do something about him, before he does something about you. And stop running away, you’re not a child anymore.”

She smiles that horrible, toothy smile, and she’s gone. Storms away in a twirl of blond curls and a swoop of her patchworked shawl, and you let out a quivering breath. 

Your legs are wobbly, you’re sweating in your winter layers. You look at the clerk again, who’s still oblivious to you and the scene that just happened. Did it really happen? Her nails have left little red crescents on your wrist. 

This will be difficult to ignore. To reshape into something else. Even more arduous to blame on your lack of sleep. You peel your hand off the rack, and a green garment falls off to the floor. With a huff, you crouch down to pick it up. The air is a bit fresher closer to the floor, and you stay there for a beat, eyes clamped shut. When you reopen them, you look down at the crumpled fabric heaped on the black and white checkered tiles. Its dark green shade turns your stomach. You reach for it, swallowing audibly, already knowing what you’re holding. A US Army shirt, you recognize the mid-1970s model, worn-out cotton and pointy collar. A 25V round patch on the right breast pocket, and on the left one, a tag in capital letters spelling your father’s name. 

****