Chapter 11 — Mercy
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Blood hit the steel sink in three bright drops before I got my hand under it.
I stood bent over the back-room sink of the Opal Room with my left palm cupped beneath my eyebrow and my right hand braced on chipped porcelain, listening to the bass bleeding through the east wall in a steady four-count and the rattle of the dock door every time the wind found it.
The room smelled like clove smoke sunk into old velvet and the sweet vanilla fog the machines pumped onto the dance floor, with spilled champagne sour underneath it all.
My bare feet stuck a little to the concrete where somebody had mopped with too much soap.
Behind me, Ophelia kept counting cash like I was not actively leaking onto her plumbing.
“Do not pass out on my floor, baby bat,” she said without looking up. “I just had it mopped.”
“Not passing out,” I said. “Bleeding photogenically.”
“Same thing in those shoes.”
I was not in the shoes. My nude heels were kicked under the back-room bench where I had left them, the left one on its side with the strap twisted, and I was barefoot in my emerald slip dress and my black wool coat hanging open because I had shrugged out of one sleeve to see what I was doing.
My chignon had half-fallen on the left side and a damp curl kept sticking to my cheek.
The cut above my left eyebrow stung in that clean, bright way that meant it was shallow but enthusiastic, and every time I blinked I felt fresh warmth slide down toward my lashes.
Tuesday had been a charity fitting all day, two calls dodged from a number I did not know, the Opal at nine fifty through the staff door, and at ten twelve the service corridor and a crate latch someone left flipped up.
One second competent. The next cupping my face and swearing while a fleck of my blood sat bright on the latch edge.
Walk it off. You have bled in worse dresses.
Ophelia snapped a rubber band around a stack of twenties and finally looked at me.
She was fifty-two and built like a verdict, her silver-streaked hair pinned in a severe twist, her black caftan dusted with cash-drawer lint, her reading glasses down on her nose.
Mercy leaned by the back-room door where she always leaned, the scarred Louisville Slugger with the word MERCY burned into the barrel in crooked capitals, close enough for Ophelia to grab without standing.
Ophelia took one look at my face and stood up so fast her stool scraped concrete.
“Oh, no. Come here. Hands down, let me see.”
“It is fine. It is a scratch.”
“Baby, that scratch is writing checks. Hands down.”
I dropped my hand. She cupped my jaw in one warm palm and tilted my face toward the caged bulb over the sink, her thumb careful of the locket chain at my throat. The bulb threw hard shadows and made the blood look black at the edges. She made a small tch sound through her teeth.
“Latch?” she said.
“Latch.”
“Which crate?”
“The third one down. The latch was up like a little guillotine.”
“I told Marcus to file those down in August. August.” She turned on the tap with two fingers and tested the water. “Lean in. We are washing it.”
The water ran cold and then lukewarm. I leaned in and let her guide my forehead under the thin stream with a hand at the back of my neck, and the sting sharpened and then dulled.
She worked fast, rinsing the cut, pressing gauze to the edges, murmuring low profane affection the whole time.
Her elbow bumped the ice tray and the cubes clinked in their steel beside stacked bar towels.
“You are lucky you have a hard head,” she said. “Harder than most of my ex-husbands. That is saying something. That is saying so much.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere.”
“Damn right.” She patted the cut dry and reached for the little paper sleeves in the tin. “Hold still. You are getting the good butterfly strips. The expensive ones. Do not tell the girls, they will start injuring themselves for preferential treatment.”
I held still. The adhesive tugged when she fitted the first strip across the cut, then the second, precise as stitching.
Her breath smelled like cloves and coffee.
Up close her eyeliner was perfect and her worry was showing at the corners of her mouth, which she would have denied with a bat if asked.
“How many fingers?” she said.
“All of yours. Plus the rings. The big one is especially clear.”
“Smart mouth.” But her shoulders dropped a fraction. “Headache?”
“Three out of ten. Flickering at the edges when I move fast.”
“Sit.” She pointed at the stool with a bar towel already in her hand. “Sit before you fall. Ice next. Ten minutes.”
I sat. The stool was cold through thin silk. I let the coat slip off one shoulder. In here it was just weight, and Ophelia had seen me in worse shape than a half-fallen chignon. She wrapped ice in the bar towel, folded it neat, and pressed it to my brow with a palm that allowed no argument.
“Hold that,” she ordered.
I held it. The cold bit beautifully and the ache receded one degree. She resumed counting for exactly eleven seconds and then stopped, stack half-banded, and looked at me over her glasses.
“Start talking,” she said.
“About the crate? I told you. Latch.”
“Not the crate.” She jerked her chin at my face, at the dress, at everything.
“You walk in here at nine fifty on a Tuesday in a twenty-minute dress with your good locket on and your mouth half-painted, you hide in my back room instead of working the floor, and then you bleed on my sink. That is not a Tuesday. That is a woman avoiding a man or hunting one. Which is it?”
Heat climbed my neck. I adjusted the ice and stared at the concrete between my bare feet.
The stiletto rested snug in its thigh sheath, a familiar flat pressure.
My clutch sat on the shelf where I had put it, the burner inside, the cornflower ribbon tied around my right wrist like a visible pulse.
The locket lay warm against my throat. Everything that mattered was on my body or within six feet, and still I felt unzipped.
“Both,” I admitted.
Ophelia nodded like a judge receiving a guilty plea. “Name?”
“You know his name.”
“Say it anyway. Confession is good for the soul and excellent for my curiosity.”
“Dante.” The word came out quieter than I intended. I pressed the ice harder. “Dante Kross.”
“That tall drink of trouble in the wool coat who looks at you like you are a locked door and he has all night.” She fanned herself with a stack of tens. “Lord, the restraint on that man. I have seen statues make the first move faster. What did he do?”
“Nothing.” I heard the defensiveness in my own voice and winced. “That is the problem. He does nothing. He buries my traces twice, he stands between me and every man who thinks my wrist is a handle, he looks at me like—” I stopped.
“Like what?”
Like he is counting the ways to keep me alive without touching me.
Marcus grabbed my wrist at the gala and Dante went still in the way that meant violence doing math.
Gideon grabbed it in the cloakroom and I still remembered the temperature of Dante's hand on my elbow after, careful, never closing on the bruise.
Three nights of standing close enough to smell wool and soap, watching his hands stay open at his sides like a promise.
Say it plain or do not say it at all.
“He wants me,” I said, “and he will not take. Even when I want him to. Especially then.”
Ophelia was quiet for four beats of the bass. Then she crossed to the bench, took my clutch, and set it in my lap like serving papers.
“Good,” she said flatly.
“Good?”
“Men who take are a dime a dozen and worth less. A man who can stand there starving and still ask what you want for dinner — that is rare meat, baby bat.” She tapped two fingers against her own temple.
“But listen to your auntie, because I love you and I will also kill for you and those two things live in the same house. You love the leash until it locks.”
The sentence landed like a palm on a table. I opened my mouth and closed it. Ice-melt seeped through the towel onto my knuckles.
“That is not—” I started, and stopped, because my throat went tight in a way that had nothing to do with the cut. “I do not want a keeper.”
“No. You want a witness.” Her voice gentled, which was worse.
“You want somebody who sees the whole hungry animal and does not flinch and does not chain it either. That is a narrow door, Wren. Narrower than you think. You keep testing whether he will grab, and baby, one of these days you need to decide what you will do if he never does.”
Two tears spilled before I could stop them. Ophelia pretended not to see and handed me a tissue, which was love in its native language.
“Fix your face,” she said. “Then I am giving you something.”
I blotted around the strips, reapplied the red from the clutch tube with a shaking hand, got it crooked, wiped it, did it straighter.
Ophelia watched with folded arms, nodding at the second attempt.
Then she went to the hook by the dock-door keys, lifted a single brass key on a plain ring, pressed it into my palm, and closed my fingers over it with both hands around mine.
“Service-corridor key,” she said. “Spare. Mine stays on the hook, this one is yours. No more bleeding on my crates because you cannot get through my back room fast enough. You come and go. My word is law in this building and I am saying you are law too.”
The brass was warm from her hand. Small and heavy and unromantic, and I loved it so much my chest ached.
“Ophelia—”
“No speeches. Put it in the clutch.” She waited while I dropped it into the champagne clutch beside the burner phone and snapped the clasp. “That key does not leave your person unless you are dead or done with me, and you are not allowed to be either. Understood?”
“Understood.” My voice came out thick. “Thank you.”