25. Atlas
25
ATLAS
I ’ve never made it up to the sixth floor faster. I unlock Elena’s door and barrel inside, into the chaos of a sitting room that’s been completely destroyed, books thrown around, cushions slashed, feathers everywhere. And written on the wall in streaky red letters, the words GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!
“Atlas, is that you?” Elena calls from the bedroom.
“Come unlock the door.”
She scrabbles with the lock then hurries out of the bedroom, wide-eyed and pale. “I heard them in the other room! At first, they were quiet, but I wasn’t asleep. I could hear rustling. I could have unlocked the door, maybe seen who it was, but then they started smashing things, and I?—”
“You did the right thing calling me.”
“How did they break in?”
“I don’t know. The door was still locked.”
“But I thought no one else had a key!” Her voice rises hysterically.
I put my arms around Elena and pull her against my chest, stroking my palm slowly down her hair, down her back, down her hair, down her back until she calms.
That’s what concerns me, too…the curious case of the locked door. Because I’m the only other person who has the new key. Even the maids have to borrow it from me then bring it back again.
“Oh god!” Elena stiffens in my arms. “My camera!”
She rushes over to the table, feathers whirling from the slashed cushions. My stomach churns. The lamps are tipped over, paintings pulled off the walls, pages torn out of the books. If someone were here to fuck with Elena, the very first thing they’d do is smash her beloved camera.
But when she lifts it off the table and turns it over in her hands, her voice loosens with relief. “I think…it’s okay.”
That’s…unexpected.
In fact, it might just change my mind about what’s going on here…but I’m not sure yet.
“I don’t understand.” Elena stares miserably at the new mess on her walls, the words wilder and messier than ever, jumbled, streaky, almost delirious. “Who’s doing this?”
It almost looks like?—
“You won’t leave me, will you, Atlas?” she begs, turning tear-filled eyes up to me.
Not a fucking chance.
“You couldn’t get me out of here with a wrecking ball.”
Elena throws her arms around my waist and buries her face in my chest. “Thank you. I was freaking out, I’m sorry.”
“Understandable.”
She laughs a little, looking up at me again. “You always say that.”
“Because it is—of course you were afraid when someone broke into your room in the middle of the night. Anyone would be. We’re all the same—we get scared, we freak out, we make and break promises. We fuck around, we avoid work, we cheat on our diets. We’re humans. And it’s a bit better than a chimp but not much.”
Now Elena laughs the hardest I’ve heard, rich and throaty. “Just when I was about to say, ‘he’s so empathetic.’”
I shrug. “Empathy is understanding even the ugly things. And there are a lot of ugly things.”
“But a lot of beautiful things, too.” Elena is looking up at me as she says it. Looking right at a face that I don’t think anybody’s ever called beautiful before. But if you looked at her face, you’d think she was gazing at a piece of art.
It’s dangerous when looking into someone’s eyes makes you feel smarter and stronger and more beautiful. When their mirror makes a hero of you.
Because then you might want to live up to it.
You might do all sorts of wild things so that image of you in their eyes never fades, never tarnishes.
But here’s the problem…I already looked. I saw myself as she sees me. And now it’s burned in my mind.
I sit down on the couch and pull Elena onto my lap. It’s nearly three o’clock in the morning, and she’s obviously exhausted, swaying on her feet, dark circles under her eyes.
She curls up with her toes tucked under a slashed cushion, her head in my lap.
I stroke her hair gently until her body grows heavy and warm and her breathing slows. All the while I’m staring at the closed, locked door.