5. Chapter 2 | Elle
Elle heard it at half past two.
A noise from downstairs — not the building settling, not a pipe, not the New Orleans street noise she'd already learned to sleep through. Deliberate. Solid.
She was out of bed before she was fully awake, feet on the cold floorboards, hand reaching for the clothes iron on the dresser — still out from pressing her dress that afternoon. Heavy enough. She wrapped her fingers around the handle and stood in the dark, listening.
The old man's snoring carried on through the wall, steady, undisturbed.
She thought about waking him. He was seventy-three and asleep, and whatever was downstairs was hers to handle — that was the unspoken agreement, the price of him letting her stay. She wasn't going to wake him over what might be nothing.
Gripping the iron, she went down.
The back hallway was dark except for streetlight through the courtyard gate, thin bars of orange laid across the floor.
Elle came around the corner with the iron raised and found a figure — broad-shouldered, tall, in a dark suit, one hand braced against the wall, the other pressed hard against its own side.
A stranger, and a big one. Her grip tightened.
Then the light caught the face. A woman.
Close-cropped hair, a strong jaw, her collar dark and wet with blood — Elle couldn't tell whose.
The woman had made it maybe six feet past the back door before her body decided that was enough.
Her head came up at the sound of Elle, and they just looked at each other.
Neither moved.
The woman's breathing was careful, deliberate — the way people breathe when buying time. Elle recognized it because she was doing the same thing: counting exits, angles, the weight of the iron in her hand.
"Who are you?" Elle said.
"Who am I—" The voice was low, rough with the effort of holding steady. "I'm Dom. This is my house. Who are you?"
"I work here."
"Since when?"
"Since Monday afternoon."
Dom stared at her. Her hand at her side didn't move. The blood on her collar was still wet. "The bar's closed. Why are you still here?"
"I live here."
"Did that also happen Monday afternoon?"
"It did."
Dom opened her mouth. Closed it. "He does this," she said, mostly to herself. "Takes people in. Strays and musicians."
"I'm not a musician."
Dom's eyebrow rose. "Stray, then."
It wasn't a question, and Elle bristled, worse for having no good answer. "I have a job here," she said. "I work for what I get."
Dom looked around the dark hallway, then back at her, and said nothing — which was somehow worse.
Elle pushed off the wall and made it one step before a gasp escaped her. She watched pain cross Dom's face — fast, bitten back, the kind of control that came from practice.
"You're hurt," Elle said.
"I'm fine."
"You just stopped moving."
"I'm thinking about my next step." She didn't take it. "Give me a minute."
Elle watched her in the dark — the gray underneath her skin, the careful rationing of each breath, her torso rigid, like one wrong move might unravel something worse. "Take all the time you want. You've got nowhere to be but the floor."
Dom's jaw tightened. "I'm not going to fall."
Elle set the iron on the step and came the rest of the way down. She took Dom's arm — felt its rigidity under her hand, braced against being touched at all.
"Come on," she said. "I'll get you to the bar."
Dom didn't answer, but she didn't pull away either.
Elle found the lamp behind the bar and kept the wick low. Dom lowered herself onto a stool slow, careful, both hands flat on the bar. Breathing.
In the lamplight she was striking — strong features, square jaw, dark, unwavering eyes. A short afro. Broad shoulders filling out a suit clearly cut for her and no one else. Papa Louie had said granddaughter, and Elle had pictured someone smaller. Softer. Someone the word usually meant.
Dom's gaze moved over her once, unhurried, and didn't linger before it moved on. Elle noticed. Said nothing.
"How bad is it?"
"Ribs." Dom glanced at the iron on the step, then back. "Is that a clothes iron?"
"I was considering using it on you."
A flicker at the corner of Dom's mouth. "Cold. I like it."
"Can you take a deep breath?"
Dom tried. Her face changed halfway through, and she let it out slow. "Cracked. Not broken. This time."
"Want me to wrap them?"
"You know how?"
Elle didn't dignify that with an answer. "Where's your wrap?"
"Bathroom. Drawer under the sink."
When she came back, Dom was watching her. Elle felt it before she looked up and confirmed it.
"What kind of fight puts you like this? Bar brawl?"
"I don't start fights." Dom reached into her breast pocket and set a wad of bills on the bar — close to forty dollars.
"It was a planned match. Off the books. A man named Tureaud was supposed to go down in the fifth.
Didn't. I took him down anyway, and his people called it foul play.
" Her mouth thinned. "Three of them jumped me in the parking lot after. I stood my ground."
"You're a boxer? I didn't know there was a women's league."
"There isn't, really." A beat. "I'm more or less a league of one."
Elle wrung out the cloth. Dom grew quiet.
"Take off your jacket."
Dom worked it off slow, folding it over the next stool with the care of someone who owned exactly one good suit.
The shirt underneath was worse than Elle expected.
She started on the buttons without asking — her hands just knew the motion from countless repetitions — and found dark, smooth skin over muscle that hadn't come easy.
She was aware of Dom. That was the honest word for it. Aware in a way that made the wrapping take more concentration than it should have.
Dom started humming — "This Little Light of Mine," thin and strained, catching every time the pain caught her.
Elle had expected something to match the rest of her — low, certain — but the voice that came out was lighter than that, almost soft, like it belonged to someone smaller.
It frayed a little every time Elle pulled the bandage taut.
Elle kept her hands moving and didn't comment.
When she finished, Dom rolled her shoulders and took the fullest breath she'd managed since walking in.
"Better." Like she was conceding something.
Elle wrung out the cloth again. "What's the song for?"
"Pain's got to go somewhere." Dom's voice had steadied. "My mother taught me that. Said if you're making music, you can't be making noise."
"Good tip." Elle smiled, remembering the days she could stand on a stage and pour all of herself into a song. Where she'd lean into a microphone, and all the pain and expectation would melt into the note in front of her. But that life was over now.
She tied off the wrap.
"You never told me your name," Dom said.
Dom looked at her sideways. "You never told me your name."
"Elle. Elle Brown."
"Elle." She tried the shape of it. "That French?"
"I don't know. It's easy to say." Elle shrugged. "I like things easy."
Dom's gaze moved over her again, slower this time, long enough that Elle became aware of the thin fabric of her nightshirt, the cold air, the lamplight doing what lamplight does. "You don't strike me as easy."
Heat climbed Elle's neck. She cleared her throat. "I should get some sleep."
She turned for the stairs.
"Hey." Dom's voice was low. "Next time you come see about me — leave the iron upstairs."
Elle paused. The bar was very quiet. Under the warmth, the pull, was something else — the way Dom's gaze had lingered a beat too long before releasing her. The look of someone filing something away for later.
It would come to her eventually. That was the problem.