23. Norah
Chapter twenty-three
Norah
The bell chimes as my last customer steps out, and I stay at the door a moment longer than I need to, one hand resting against the door jamb while he lingers outside on the step.
There’s always a second like this with Mr. Faber.
He pauses, as if measuring the space between staying and going.
He’s been coming in on Thursdays for two years, always for something obscure, always ready to talk longer than necessary.
I’ve never minded. He asks intelligent questions and actually listens to the answers. It’s rarer than it should be.
“I’ll ask around,” I tell him. “A first edition of Gulliver’s Travels doesn’t turn up often, but I know a few people who keep lists of books they’re pretending not to collect.”
He smiles at that. “You make it sound like a secret society.”
“More like a coffee klatch,” I laugh. “But it works.”
“I appreciate it.” He doesn’t move. His gaze slips past me into the shop, taking in the shelves, the soft lamplight settling into the corners now that the day is done. “You closing up now?”
“Just about.”
“Are you parked close?”
I let a small smile touch my mouth. “Around the corner.”
“Good,” he says. He gives a small nod, turns, and walks off down the sidewalk, and I watch him go for a moment before I step back inside.
The shop morphs immediately when the lock turns.
I stand with my hand against the glass for a second, then start the closing routine.
Lights dim in the back first, then along the aisles, the glow softening from business-bright to the warmer light of evening. The register balances cleanly. Receipts stack, square, disappear into their place.
The familiarity of the routine may be reassuring, but the monotony of it is soul-crushing.
It’s been sneaking up on me the past year, but for over a month, it’s come on strong.
A restless energy balled up in dissatisfaction, keeping me on edge.
I don’t spend too much time trying to make the correlation between my ennui and Silas Coulter arriving in my life.
By the time I grab my bag, the light outside has gone the dusky purple that arrives just before full dark. It’s a kinder light for the city, smoothing over the rough edges.
I turn the sign to Closed, step out onto the sidewalk, and double-check the lock.
The air has changed since this morning. Warmer now, but not heavy, a breeze moving through the street, carrying with it the layered rhythm of a city easing toward night.
A car passes somewhere out of sight. Music drifts from the bar two blocks over and disappears.
Laughter rises from somewhere ahead of me and fades as quickly, absorbed back into the general noise.
The kind of evening that usually makes me glad to be out in it.
I stand there a second longer than I need to, letting the breeze lift the hair off the back of my neck, and then I turn toward the alley.
The alley changes the evening immediately.
The light narrows. The sounds soften. The air cools slightly where the buildings close in on either side, and I brace for the smell that usually greets me here—stale, faintly sour, the smell of a city space that doesn’t get enough sun.
Tonight, clove cigarette smoke fills the air. I wrinkle my nose. It doesn’t sit well on an empty stomach.
I keep walking.
My car sits where it always does, angled enough that I can see the driver’s side clearly from where I am. I would have walked straight to it without breaking stride if the space felt right at this hour: predictable, mine for the ten seconds it takes to cross to it.
It doesn’t feel that way.
Two guys stand behind my car.
Close enough to the mouth of the alley to catch the last of the streetlight.
One leans against the trunk with his arms crossed, broad through the chest and shoulders, filling the alley.
Close-cropped hair, a heaviness to his jaw, the kind of face that doesn’t give much away.
The other stands slightly apart, hands loose at his sides, watching the street behind me.
Taller. Leaner. The one with the cigarette in his hand.
They aren’t talking to each other.
They’re watching me.
I don’t stop right away. I ease my pace instead, giving myself time to take them in without making it obvious.
Late teens, early twenties—but nothing about them is harmless.
They’ve positioned themselves deliberately.
How they’ve placed themselves. The gap between them is precisely wide enough to require me to pass between them to reach my car, and that gap did not happen by accident.
The broad one pushes off the trunk as I get closer, narrowing the path enough that walking past without acknowledging them would be a choice I’d have to make deliberately.
I stop ten feet away.
“Evening,” I say.
The broad one tips his chin toward the street behind me. “You work over there?”
“I do.”
“We’ve seen you.”
Information they’ve already decided is relevant and want me to know they have it.
“It’s a small neighborhood,” I say, adjusting my bag on my shoulder.
“Smaller than people think,” the tall one says.
His voice is quieter than the first one’s, but it carries more weight. I look at him more closely. There’s a scar along his jawline, thin and old. He brings the clove cigarette to his mouth and takes a lazy drag. His other hand stays still at his side.
That stillness is the more frightening thing.
“You’ve been spending time with someone,” he says.
I don’t answer right away. I’m calculating the distance to my car, the gap between them, and whether I could get around the broad one before he blocked me. Probably not.
The alley is darker than it was when I walked in.
The streetlamp at the mouth of it throws light maybe twelve feet in.
We’re past that. The shops on either side of The Last Chapter are closed, their front windows dark, no foot traffic, no one taking out trash, no delivery trucks, nothing that would give me a reason to call out or anyone who would hear it.
I am alone in an alley with two men who positioned themselves between me and my car.
I file that under things I should have noticed sooner.
“You know who I mean,” the broad one says.
I do, but I say nothing.
Up close there’s a bruise under his left eye, fading to that muddy yellow-green that means it’s been there a week at least. Still visible if you’re looking. I’m looking.
“You don’t belong in it,” the tall one says. His voice still hasn’t changed. “His world. Wolves. Pack. Whatever you think you’re getting into.”
I study him for a moment. Behind his flat stare is resentment rather than outright hatred and isn’t quite concern.
It is the resentment of a man who has decided that another person’s choice is a statement about him.
About what loyalty means. About what it says about me that I’m making a different choice than the one he considers correct.
It is the most human kind of bias.
He calls it protection while standing in a dark alley and blocking my car.
“I appreciate the concern,” I say.
“It’s not concern,” the broad one says. “It’s a warning.”
“I know,” I say. “I noticed.”
“Then take it.”
I look between them. The broad one with his flat eyes and his fading bruise. The tall one with his stillness and his patience. The gap between them. My car on the other side of it.
The last thing I’m going to do is let them see my fear. Showing it puts me in a more dangerous position than I’m already in, and I’m definitely already in it.
“No,” I say.
The word comes out clean. No edge, no apology, no academy award winning act of bravery. Just the word, sitting where it sits.
The broad one stares at me.
The tall one is very still.
“You’re making this harder than it needs to be,” the tall one says finally.
“I’m not making it anything,” I say. “You came to me.”
“And we’re telling you,” the broad one says, “this ends badly. For you.”
“You don’t know how it ends,” I say. “Neither do I. That’s how endings work.”
He shakes his head. The contempt isn’t personal because I’m not a person to him right now. I’m the naive human woman who doesn’t understand what she’s walking into.
“Is that how most of your endings work?” I point to the broad one’s large, yellow bruise. “That doesn’t look so great to me.”
The tall one looks at me for a long moment, eyes narrowed, mouth set in thin line. Then he steps aside.
They don’t leave. The space they’ve opened is wide enough for me to walk through. They want me to know they’re the ones giving it to me.
I walk through at my own pace in a straight line. I don’t hurry, but I don’t dawdle either. I keep my attention on my car, reach for the handle, slide into the seat, and shut the door.
The lock clicks.
The engine turns over on the first try, the one small mercy the evening offers. I breathe a sigh of relief as the guys stroll down the alley, their swagger noticeable even in the dim light.
I let my heart rate decelerate and check the rearview mirror, making sure they haven’t changed their mind and decided to come back for round two.
My bag is on the passenger seat. My phone is in my bag.
I reach for it, the motion instinctive, and I find his name before I’ve thought about what I’m going to say. My thumb hovers over the call button for a moment. I can hear how it would land: two guys cornered me in the alley behind the shop and told me to stay away from you.
I close the phone.
I don’t want to be the woman making that call.
The uncomfortable thing about being independent is that there are moments when you can see clearly that if you’re not willing to pay the cost of independence, you risk becoming a woman who can’t manage her own life. That’s not me, and I can’t let two guys in an alley break me.
I scroll to Penny’s name. However, my sister is a different deal.
My thumb moves toward her number, but I shake my head and close the phone again.
Because Penny would want details. She’d have opinions that would cause her to circle back, eventually and inevitably, to I told you to be careful. With the concern of an older sister who feels somewhat responsible for her single sister walking into exactly the kind of trouble she warned her about.
Complete and utter horseshit, because rarely do I ever take Penny’s advice on any level of my life.
It’s the whole dynamic of our sister relationship, and as much as I love her, she would be completely flummoxed if I suddenly jumped up and says, “Damn, Penny. You’re right. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
So, since I cannot sit in this car and hear a sisterly version of concern that sounds like I told you so, I put the phone back in my bag and put the car in reverse.
I drive. Not fast. Not with any urgency. I drive like I’m running a marathon, not trying to get anywhere quickly. I take the streets I know, and make turns on instinct because I’ve made them enough times that the car could probably drive itself
As I get closer to my neighborhood, the streetlights come on in sequence, white pools of light bathing the street. I think about the tall one saying this ends badly for you with a certainty that leaves no room for any other possibility.
I think about the two possible calls sitting in my phone.
I have a story now that starts with two guys cornered me. That story isn’t mine. It belongs to a version of Norah who is a victim of two men in an alley rather than a person making choices.
I’ve made my choice. And I should feel frightened. Or angry. Or at least shaken. Sharing it doesn’t change the fact that it’s still my story, the fear, the triumph. The loneliness. Because that’s what I feel tonight.
I drive through the streetlights making pools of amber on the pavement.